Sharpe’s Fortress: The Siege of Gawilghur, December 1803

Sharpe picked up the fallen musket, then turned the man over to unstrap the cartridge box. The man was dead, or so near as to make no difference.

‘Flint,’ a front rank man called. ‘I need a flint!’

Sergeant Colquhoun elbowed through the ranks, holding out a spare flint. ‘And where’s your own spare flint, John Hammond?’

‘Christ knows, Sergeant.’

‘Then ask Him, for you’re on a charge.’

A man swore as a bullet tore up his left arm. He backed out of the ranks, the arm hanging useless and dripping blood.

Sharpe pushed into the gap between the companies, put the musket to his shoulder and fired. The kick slammed into his shoulder, but it felt good. Something to do at last. He dropped the butt, fished a cartridge from the pouch and bit off the top, tasting the salt in the gunpowder. He rammed, fired again, loaded again. A bullet made an odd fluttering noise as it went past his ear, then another whined overhead. He waited for the rolling volley to come down the battalion’s face, then fired with the other men of six company’s first platoon. Drop the butt, new cartridge, bite, prime, pour, ram, ramrod back in the hoops, gun up, butt into the bruised shoulder and haul back the doghead, Sharpe did it as efficiently as any other man, but he had been trained to it. That was the difference, he thought grimly. He was trained, but no one trained the officers. They had bugger all to do, so why train them? Ensign Venables was right, the only duty of a junior officer was to stay alive, but Sharpe could not resist a fight. Besides, it felt better to stand in the ranks and fire into the enemy’s smoke than stand behind the company and do nothing.

The Arabs were fighting well. Damned well. Sharpe could not remember any other enemy who had stood and taken so much concentrated platoon fire. Indeed, the robed men were trying to advance, but they were checked by the ragged heap of bodies that had been their front ranks. How many damned ranks had they? A dozen? He watched a green flag fall, then the banner was picked up and waved in the air. Their big drums still beat, making a menacing sound to match the redcoats’ pipers. The Arab guns had unnaturally long barrels that spewed dirty smoke and licking tongues of flame. Another bullet whipped close enough to Sharpe to bat his face with a gust of warm air. He fired again, then a hand seized his coat collar and dragged him violently backwards.

‘Your place, Ensign Sharpe,’ Captain Urquhart said vehemently, ‘is here! Behind the line!’ The Captain was mounted and his horse had inadvertently stepped back as Urquhart seized Sharpe’s collar, and the weight of the horse had made the Captain’s tug far more violent than he had intended. ‘You’re not a private any longer,’ he said, steadying Sharpe who had almost been pulled off his feet.

‘Of course, sir,’ Sharpe said, and he did not meet Urquhart’s gaze, but stared bitterly ahead. He was blushing, knowing he had been reprimanded in front of the men. Damn it to hell, he thought.

‘Prepare to charge!’ Major Swinton called.

‘Prepare to charge!’ Captain Urquhart echoed, spurring his horse away from Sharpe.

The Scotsmen pulled out their bayonets and twisted them onto the lugs of their musket barrels.

‘Empty your guns!’ Swinton called, and those men who were still loaded raised their muskets and fired a last volley.

‘74th!’ Swinton shouted. ‘Forward! I want to hear some pipes! Let me hear pipes!’

‘Go on, Swinton, go on!’ Wallace shouted. There was no need to encourage the battalion forward, for it was going willingly, but the Colonel was excited. He drew his claymore and pushed his horse into the rear rank of number seven company. ‘Onto them, lads! Onto them!’ The redcoats marched forward, trampling through the scatter of little fires started by their musket wadding.

The Arabs seemed astonished that the redcoats were advancing. Some drew their own bayonets, while others pulled long curved swords from scabbards.

‘They won’t stand!’ Wellesley shouted. ‘They won’t stand.’

‘They bloody well will,’ a man grunted.

‘Go on!’ Swinton shouted. ‘Go on!’ And the 74th, released to the kill, ran the last few yards and jumped up onto the heaps of dead before slashing home with their bayonets. Off to the right the 78th were also charging home. The British cannon gave a last violent blast of canister, then fell silent as the Scots blocked the gunners’ aim.

Some of the Arabs wanted to fight, others wanted to retreat, but the charge had taken them by surprise and the rearward ranks were still not aware of the danger and so pressed forward, forcing the reluctant men at the front onto the Scottish bayonets. The Highlanders screamed as they killed. Sharpe still held the unloaded musket as he closed up on the rear rank. He had no bayonet and was wondering whether he should draw his sabre when a tall Arab suddenly hacked down a front rank man with a scimitar, then pushed forward to slash with the reddened blade at the second man in the file. Sharpe reversed the musket, swung it by the barrel and hammered the heavy stock down onto the swordsman’s head. The Arab sank down and a bayonet struck into his spine so that he twisted like a speared eel. Sharpe hit him on the head again, kicked him for good measure, then shoved on. Men were shouting, screaming, stabbing, spitting, and, right in the face of number six company, a knot of robed men were slashing with scimitars as though they could defeat the 74th by themselves. Urquhart pushed his horse up against the rear rank and fired his pistol. One of the Arabs was plucked back and the others stepped away at last, all except one short man who screamed in fury and slashed with his long curved blade. The front rank parted to let the scimitar cut the air between two files, then the second rank also split apart to allow the short man to come screaming through on his own, with only Sharpe in front.

‘He’s only a lad!’ a Scottish voice shouted in warning as the ranks closed again.

It was not a short man at all, but a boy. Maybe only twelve or thirteen years old, Sharpe guessed as he fended off the scimitar with the musket barrel. The boy thought he could win the battle single-handed and leaped at Sharpe, who parried the sword and stepped back to show he did not want to fight. ‘Put it down, lad,’ he said.

The boy spat, leaped and cut again. Sharpe parried a third time, then reversed the musket and slammed its stock into the side of the boy’s head. For a second the lad stared at Sharpe with an astonished look, then he crumpled to the turf.

‘They’re breaking!’ Wellesley shouted from somewhere close by. ‘They’re breaking!’

Colonel Wallace was in the front rank now, slicing down with his claymore. He hacked like a farmer, blow after blow. He had lost his cocked hat and his bald pate gleamed in the late sunlight. There was blood on his horse’s flank, and more blood spattered on the white turnbacks of his coat tails. Then the pressure of the enemy collapsed and the horse twisted into the gap and Wallace spurred it on. ‘Come on, boys! Come on!’ A man stooped to rescue Wallace’s cocked hat. Its plumes were blood-soaked.

The Arabs were fleeing. ‘Go!’ Swinton shouted. ‘Go! Keep ’em running! Go!’

A man paused to search a corpse’s robes and Sergeant Colquhoun dragged the man up and pushed him on. The file-closers were making sure none of the enemy bodies left behind the Scottish advance were dangerous. They kicked swords and muskets out of injured men’s hands, prodded apparently unwounded bodies with bayonets and killed any man who showed a spark of fight. Two pipers were playing their ferocious music, driving the Scots up the gentle slope where the big Arab drums had been abandoned. Man after man speared the drumskins with bayonets as they passed.

‘Forward on! Forward on!’ Urquhart bellowed as though he were on a hunting field.

‘To the guns!’ Wellesley called.

‘Keep going!’ Sharpe bellowed at some laggards. ‘Go on, you bastards, go on!’

The enemy gun line was at the crest of the low rise, but the Mahratta gunners dared not fire because the remnants of the Lions of Allah were between them and the redcoats. The gunners hesitated for a few seconds, then decided the day was lost and fled.

‘Take the guns!’ Wellesley called.

Colonel Wallace spurred among the fleeing enemy, striking down with the claymore, then reined in beside a gaudily painted eighteen-pounder. ‘Come on, lads! Come on! To me!’

The Scotsmen reached the guns. Most had reddened bayonets, all had sweat streaks striping their powder-blackened faces. Some began rifling the limbers where gunners stored food and valuables.

‘Load!’ Urquhart called. ‘Load!’

‘Form ranks!’ Sergeant Colquhoun shouted. He ran forward and tugged men away from the limbers. ‘Leave the carts alone, boys! Form ranks! Smartly now!’

Sharpe, for the first time, could see down the long reverse slope. Three hundred paces away were more infantry, a great long line of it massed in a dozen ranks, and beyond that were some walled gardens and the roofs of a village. The shadows were very long for the sun was blazing just above the horizon. The Arabs were running towards the stationary infantry.

‘Where are the galloper guns?’ Wallace roared, and an aide spurred back down the slope to fetch the gunners.

‘Give them a volley, Swinton!’ Wellesley called.

The range was very long for a musket, but Swinton hammered the battalion’s fire down the slope, and maybe it was that volley, or perhaps it was the sight of the defeated Arabs that panicked the great mass of infantry. For a few seconds they stood under their big bright flags and then, like sand struck by a flood, they dissolved into a rabble.

Cavalry trumpets blared. British and sepoy horsemen charged forward with sabres, while the irregular horse, those mercenaries who had attached themselves to the British for the chance of loot, lowered their lances and raked back their spurs.

It was a cavalryman’s paradise, a broken enemy with nowhere to hide. Some Mahrattas sought shelter in the village, but most ran past it, throwing down their weapons as the terrible horsemen streamed into the fleeing horde with sabres and lances slicing and thrusting.

‘Puckalees!’ Urquhart shouted, standing in his stirrups to look for the men and boys who brought water to the troops. There was none in sight and the 74th was parched, the men’s thirst made acute by the saltpetre in the gunpowder which had fouled their mouths. ‘Where the …?’ Urquhart swore, then frowned at Sharpe. ‘Mister Sharpe? I’ll trouble you to find our puckalees.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Sharpe said, not bothering to hide his disappointment at the order. He had hoped to find some loot when the 74th searched the village, but instead he was to be a fetcher of water. He threw down the musket and walked back through the groaning, slow-moving litter of dead and dying men. Dogs were scavenging among the bodies.

‘Forward now!’ Wellesley called behind Sharpe, and the whole long line of British infantrymen advanced under their flags towards the village. The cavalry was already far beyond the houses, killing with abandon and driving the fugitives ever farther northwards.

Sharpe walked on southwards. He suspected the puckalees were still back with the baggage, which would mean a three-mile walk and, by the time he had found them, the battalion would have slaked its thirst from the wells in the village. Bugger it, he thought. Even when they gave him a job it was a useless errand.

A shout made him look to his right where a score of native cavalrymen were slicing apart the robes of the dead Arabs in search of coins and trinkets. The scavengers were Mahrattas who had sold their services to the British and Sharpe guessed that the horsemen had not joined the pursuit for fear of being mistaken for the defeated enemy. One of the Arabs had only been feigning death and now, despite being hugely outnumbered, defied his enemies with a pistol that he dragged from beneath his robe. The taunting cavalrymen had made a ring and the Arab kept twisting around to find that his tormentor had skipped away before he could aim the small gun.

The Arab was a short man, then he turned again and Sharpe saw the bruised, bloody face and recognized the child who had charged the 74th so bravely. The boy was doomed, for the ring of cavalrymen was slowly closing for the kill. One of the Mahrattas would probably die, or at least be horribly injured by the pistol ball, but that was part of the game. The boy had one shot, they had twenty. A man prodded the boy in the back with a lance point, making him whip round, but the man with the lance had stepped fast back and another man slapped the boy’s headdress with a tulwar. The other cavalrymen laughed.

Sharpe reckoned the boy deserved better. He was a kid, nothing more, but brave as a tiger, and so he crossed to the cavalrymen. ‘Let him be!’ he called.

The boy turned towards Sharpe. If he recognized that the British officer was trying to save his life he showed no sign of gratitude; instead he lifted the pistol so that its barrel pointed at Sharpe’s face. The cavalrymen, reckoning this was even better sport, urged him to shoot and one of them approached the boy with a raised tulwar, but did not strike. He would let the boy shoot Sharpe, then kill him. ‘Let him be,’ Sharpe said. ‘Stand back!’ The Mahrattas grinned, but did not move. Sharpe could take the single bullet, then they would tear the boy into sabre-shredded scraps of meat.

The boy took a step towards Sharpe. ‘Don’t be a bloody fool, lad,’ Sharpe said. The boy obviously did not speak English, but Sharpe’s tone was soothing. It made no difference. The lad’s hand was shaking and he looked frightened, but defiance had been bred into his bone. He knew he would die, but he would take an enemy soul with him and so he nerved himself to die well. ‘Put the gun down,’ Sharpe said softly. He was wishing he had not intervened now. The kid was just distraught enough and mad enough to fire, and Sharpe knew he could do nothing about it except run away and thus expose himself to the jeers of the Mahrattas. He was close enough now to see the scratches on the pistol’s blackened muzzle where the rammer had scraped the metal. ‘Don’t be a bloody fool, boy,’ he said again. Still the boy pointed the pistol. Sharpe knew he should turn and run, but instead he took another pace forward. Just one more and he reckoned he would be close enough to swat the gun aside.

Then the boy shouted something in Arabic, something about Allah, and pulled the trigger.

The hammer did not move. The boy looked startled, then pulled the trigger again.

Sharpe began laughing. The expression of woe on the child’s face was so sudden, and so unfeigned, that Sharpe could only laugh. The boy looked as if he was about to cry.

The Mahratta behind the boy swung his tulwar. He reckoned he could slice clean through the boy’s grubby headdress and decapitate him, but Sharpe had taken the extra step and now seized the boy’s hand and tugged him into his belly. The sword hissed an inch behind the boy’s neck. ‘I said to leave him alone!’ Sharpe said. ‘Or do you want to fight me instead?’

‘None of us,’ a calm voice said behind Sharpe, ‘wants to fight Ensign Sharpe.’

Sharpe turned. One of the horsemen was still mounted, and it was this man who had spoken. He was dressed in a tattered European uniform jacket of green cloth hung with small silver chains, and he had a lean scarred face with a nose as hooked as Sir Arthur Wellesley’s. He now grinned down at Sharpe.

‘Syud Sevajee,’ Sharpe said.

‘I never did congratulate you on your promotion,’ Sevajee said, and leaned down to offer Sharpe his hand.

Sharpe shook it. ‘It was McCandless’s doing,’ he said.

‘No,’ Sevajee disagreed, ‘it was yours.’ Sevajee, who led this band of horsemen, waved his men away from Sharpe, then looked down at the boy who struggled in Sharpe’s grip. ‘You really want to save that little wretch’s life?’

‘Why not?’

‘A tiger cub plays like a kitten,’ Sevajee said, ‘but it still grows into a tiger and one day it eats you.’

‘This one’s no kitten,’ Sharpe said, thumping the boy on the ear to stop his struggles.

Sevajee spoke in quick Arabic and the boy went quiet. ‘I told him you saved his life,’ Sevajee explained to Sharpe, ‘and that he is now beholden to you.’ Sevajee spoke to the boy again who, after a shy look at Sharpe, answered. ‘His name’s Ahmed,’ Sevajee said, ‘and I told him you were a great English lord who commands the lives and deaths of a thousand men.’

‘You told him what?’

‘I told him you’d beat him bloody if he disobeys you,’ Sevajee said, looking at his men who, denied their entertainment, had gone back to looting the dead. ‘You like being an officer?’ he asked Sharpe.

‘I hate it.’

Sevajee smiled, revealing red-stained teeth. ‘McCandless thought you would, but didn’t know how to curb your ambition.’ Sevajee slid down from his saddle. ‘I am sorry McCandless died,’ the Indian said.

‘Me too.’

‘You know who killed him?’

‘I reckon it was Dodd.’

Sevajee nodded. ‘Me too.’ Syud Sevajee was a high-born Mahratta, the eldest son of one of the Rajah of Berar’s warlords, but a rival in the Rajah’s service had murdered his father, and Sevajee had been seeking revenge ever since. If that revenge meant marching with the enemy British, then that was a small price to pay for family pride. Sevajee had ridden with Colonel McCandless when the Scotsman had pursued Dodd, and thus he had met Sharpe. ‘Beny Singh was not with the enemy today,’ he told Sharpe.

Sharpe had to think for a few seconds before remembering that Beny Singh was the man who had poisoned Sevajee’s father. ‘How do you know?’

‘His banner wasn’t among the Mahratta flags. Today we faced Manu Bappoo, the Rajah’s brother. He’s a better man than the Rajah, but he refuses to take the throne for himself. He’s also a better soldier than the rest, but not good enough, it seems. Dodd was there.’

‘He was?’

‘He got away.’ Sevajee turned and gazed northwards. ‘And I know where they’re going.’

‘Where?’

‘To Gawilghur,’ Sevajee said softly, ‘to the sky fort.’

‘Gawilghur?’

‘I grew up there.’ Sevajee spoke softly, still gazing at the hazed northern horizon. ‘My father was Killadar of Gawilghur. It was a post of honour, Sharpe, for it is our greatest stronghold. It is the fortress in the sky, the impregnable refuge, the place that has never fallen to our enemies, and Beny Singh is now its killadar. Somehow we shall have to get inside, you and I. And I shall kill Singh and you will kill Dodd.’

‘That’s why I’m here,’ Sharpe said.

‘No.’ Sevajee gave Sharpe a sour glance. ‘You’re here, Ensign, because you British are greedy.’ He looked at the Arab boy and asked a question. There was a brief conversation, then Sevajee looked at Sharpe again. ‘I have told him he is to be your servant, and that you will beat him to death if he steals from you.’

‘I wouldn’t do that!’ Sharpe protested.

‘I would,’ Sevajee said, ‘and he believes you would, but it still won’t stop him thieving from you. Better to kill him now.’ He grinned, then hauled himself into his saddle. ‘I shall look for you at Gawilghur, Mister Sharpe.’

‘I shall look for you,’ Sharpe said.

Sevajee spurred away and Sharpe crouched to look at his new servant. Ahmed was as thin as a half-drowned cat. He wore dirty robes and a tattered headdress secured by a loop of frayed rope that was stained with blood, evidently where Sharpe’s blow with the musket had caught him during the battle. But he had bright eyes and a defiant face, and though his voice had not yet broken he was braver than many full-grown men. Sharpe unslung his canteen and pushed it into the boy’s hand, first taking away the broken pistol that he tossed away. ‘Drink up, you little bugger,’ Sharpe said, ‘then come for a walk.’

The boy glanced up the hill, but his army was long gone. It had vanished into the evening beyond the crest and was now being pursued by vengeful cavalry. He said something in Arabic, drank what remained of Sharpe’s water, then offered a grudging nod of thanks.

So Sharpe had a servant, a battle had been won, and now he walked south in search of puckalees.

Colonel William Dodd watched the Lions of Allah break, and spat with disgust. It had been foolish to fight here in the first place and now the foolery was turning to disaster. ‘Jemadar!’ he called.

‘Sahib?’

‘We’ll form square. Put our guns in the centre. And the baggage.’

‘Families, sahib?’

‘Families too.’ Dodd watched Manu Bappoo and his aides galloping back from the British advance. The gunners had already fled, which meant that the Mahrattas’ heavy cannon would all be captured, every last piece of it. Dodd was tempted to abandon his regiment’s small battery of five-pounders which were about as much use as pea-shooters, but a soldier’s pride persuaded him to drag the guns from the field. Bappoo might lose all his guns, but it would be a cold day in hell before William Dodd gave up artillery to an enemy.

His Cobras were on the Mahratta right flank and there, for the moment, they were out of the way of the British advance. If the rest of the Mahratta infantry remained firm and fought, then Dodd would stay with them, but he saw that the defeat of the Arabs had demoralized Bappoo’s army. The ranks began to dissolve, the first fugitives began to run north and Dodd knew this army was lost. First Assaye, now this. A goddamn disaster! He turned his horse and smiled at his white-jacketed men. ‘You haven’t lost a battle!’ he shouted to them. ‘You haven’t even fought today, so you’ve lost no pride! But you’ll have to fight now! If you don’t, if you break ranks, you’ll die. If you fight, you’ll live! Jemadar! March!’

The Cobras would now attempt one of the most difficult of all feats of soldiering, a fighting withdrawal. They marched in a loose square, the centre of which gradually filled with their women and children. Some other infantry tried to join the families, but Dodd snarled at his men to beat them away. ‘Fire if they won’t go!’ he shouted. The last thing he wanted was for his men to be infected by panic.

Dodd trailed the square. He heard cavalry trumpets and he twisted in his saddle to see a mass of irregular light horsemen come over the crest. ‘Halt!’ he shouted. ‘Close ranks! Charge bayonets!’

The white-jacketed Cobras sealed the loose square tight. Dodd pushed through the face of the square and turned his horse to watch the cavalrymen approach. He doubted they would come close, not when there were easier pickings to the east and, sure enough, as soon as the leading horsemen saw that the square was waiting with levelled muskets, they sheered away.

Dodd holstered his pistol. ‘March on, Jemadar!’

Twice more Dodd had to halt and form ranks, but both times the threatening horsemen were scared away by the calm discipline of his white-coated soldiers. The red-coated infantry was not pursuing. They had reached the village of Argaum and were content to stay there, leaving the pursuit to the horsemen, and those horsemen chased after the broken rabble that flooded northwards, but none chose to die by charging Dodd’s formed ranks.

Dodd inclined to the west, angling away from the pursuers. By nightfall he was confident enough to form the battalion into a column of companies, and by midnight, under a clear moon, he could no longer even hear the British trumpets. He knew that men would still be dying, ridden down by cavalry and pierced by lances or slashed by sabres, but Dodd had got clean away. His men were tired, but they were safe in a dark countryside of millet fields, drought-emptied irrigation ditches and scattered villages where dogs barked frantically when they caught the scent of the marching column.

Dodd did not trouble the villagers. He had sufficient food, and earlier in the night they had found an irrigation tank that had yielded enough water for men and beasts. ‘Do you know where we are, Jemadar?’ he asked.

‘No, sahib.’ Gopal grinned, his teeth showing white in the darkness.