Sharpe's Fortress (16 page)

Hakeswill smiled.

“Won't be in a position to deny anything, sir, will he? On account of being .. .” He
paused, stuck his tongue out, opened his eyes wide and made a choking noise.

“Good God, Sergeant,” Torrance said, shuddering at the horrid picture suggested by
Hakeswill's contorted face.

"Besides, he's a good clerk!

It's damned difficult to replace good men."

“It's easy, sir. Jama will give us a man. Give us a good man.” Hakeswill grinned.

“It'll make things much easier, sir, if we can trust the clerk as well as each other.”

Torrance flinched at the thought of being in league with Obadiah Hakeswill, yet if he
was ever to pay off his debts he needed the Sergeant's cooperation. And Hakeswill was
marvellously efficient. He could strip the supplies bare and not leave a trace of his
handiwork, always making sure someone else took the blame. And doubtless the Sergeant was
right. If Jama could provide a clerk, then the clerk could provide a false set of accounts.
And if Dilip was blamed for the late arrival of the pioneers' stores, then Torrance would be
off that particularly sharp and nasty hook. As ever, it seemed as though Hakeswill could
find his way through the thorniest of problems.

Just leave it to me, sir," Hakeswill said.

“I'll look after everything, sir, I will.” He bared his teeth at Clare who had brought
his mug of tea.

“You're the flower of womanhood,” he told her, then watched appreciatively as she
scuttled back to the kitchen.

“Her and me, sir, are meant for each other. Says so in the scriptures.”

“Not till Sharpe's dead,” Torrance said.

“He'll be dead, sir,” Hakeswill promised, and the Sergeant shivered in as he anticipated
the riches that would follow that death. Not just Clare Wall, but the jewels. The jewels!
Hakeswill had divined that it had been Sharpe who had killed the Tippoo Sultan in
Seringapatam, and Sharpe who must have stripped the ruler's body of its diamonds and
emeralds and sapphires and rubies, and Sharpe, Hakeswill reckoned, was still hiding those
stones. From far away, dulled by the heat of the day, came the sound of artillery firing.
Gawilghur, Hakeswill thought, where Sharpe should not reach, on account of Sharpe being
Hakeswill's business, and no one else's. I will be rich, the Sergeant promised himself, I
will be rich.

Colonel William Dodd stood on the southernmost battlements of Gawilghur with his back
against the parapet so that he was staring down into a palace courtyard where Beny Singh
had erected a striped pavilion.

Small silver bells that tinkled prettily in the small breeze were hung from the
pavilion's fringed hem, while under the canopy a group of musicians played the strange,
long-necked stringed instruments which made a music that, to Dodd's ears, sounded like the
slow strangulation of cats. Beny Singh and a dozen pretty creatures in saris were
playing some form of Blind Man's Buff, and their laughter rose to the ramparts, making Dodd
scowl, though if truth were told he was inordinately jealous of Beny Singh. The man was
plump, short and timid, yet he seemed to work some magical spell on the ladies, while Dodd,
who was tall, hard and scarred to prove his bravery, had to make do with a whore.

Damn the Killadar. Dodd turned sharply away and stared over the heat-baked plain. Beneath
him, and just far enough to the east to be out of range of Gawilghur's largest guns, the edge
of the British encampment showed. From this height the rows of dull white tents looked like
speckles. To the south, still a long way off, Dodd could see the enemy baggage train
trudgiilg towards its new encampment. It was odd, he thought, that they should make the
oxen carry their burdens through the hottest part of the day. Usually the baggage marched
just after midnight and camped not long after dawn, but today the great herd was stirring
the dust into the broiling afternoon air and it looked, Dodd thought, like a migrating
tribe. There were thousands of oxen in the army's train, all loaded with round shot,
powder, tools, salt beef, arrack, horseshoes, bandages, flints, muskets,

spices, rice, and with them came the merchants' beasts and the merchants' families, and
the ox herdsmen had their own families and they all needed more beasts to carry their
tents, clothes and food. A dozen elephants plodded in the herd's centre, while a score of
dromedaries swayed elegantly behind the elephants. Mysore cavalry guarded the great
caravan, while beyond the mounted picquets halfnaked grass-cutters spread into the
fields to collect fodder that they stuffed into nets and loaded onto yet more oxen.

Dodd glanced at the sentries who guarded the southern stretch of Gawilghur's walls and
he saw the awe on their faces as they watched the enormous herd approach. The dust from the
hooves rose to smear the southern skyline like a vast sea fog.

“They're only oxen!” Dodd growled to the men.

“Only oxen! Oxen don't fire guns. Oxen don't climb walls.”

None of them understood him, but they grinned dutifully.

Dodd walked eastwards. After a while the wall ended, giving way to the bare lip of a
precipice. There was no need for walls around much of the perimeters of Gawilghur's twin
forts, for nature had provided the great cliffs that were higher than any rampart a man
could make, but Dodd, as he walked to the bluff's edge, noted places here and there where an
agile man could, with the help of a rope, scramble down the rock face.

A few men deserted Gawilghur's garrison every day, and Dodd did not doubt that this
was how they escaped, but he did not understand why they should want to go. The fort was
impregnable! Why would a man not wish to stay with the victors?

He reached a stretch of wall at the fort's southeastern corner and there, high up on a
gun platform, he opened his telescope and stared down into the foothills. He searched for a
long time, his glass skittering over trees, shrubs and patches of dry grass, but at last he
saw a group of men standing beside a narrow path. Some of the men were in red coats and one
was in blue.

“What are you watching, Colonel?” Prince Manu Bappoo had seen Dodd on the rampart and had
climbed to join him.

“British,” Dodd said, without taking his eye from the telescope.

“They're surveying a route up to the plateau.”

Bappoo shaded his eyes and stared down, but without a telescope he could not see the
group of men.

“It will take them months to build a road up to the hills.”

“It'll take them two weeks,” Dodd said flatly.

“Less. You don't know how their engineers work, sahib, but I do. They'll use powder to
break through obstacles and a thousand axe men to widen the tracks. They'll start their work
tomorrow and in a fortnight they'll be running guns up to the hills.” Dodd collapsed the
telescope.

“Let me go down and break the bastards,” he demanded.

“No,” Bappoo said. He had already had this argument with Dodd who wanted to take his
Cobras down into the foothills and there harass the road-makers. Dodd did not want a
stand-up fight, a battle of musket line against musket line, but instead wanted to raid,
ambush and scare the enemy. He wanted to slow the British work, to dishearten the sappers
and, by such delaying tactics, force Wellesley to send forage parties far into the
countryside where they would be prey to the Mahratta horsemen who still roamed the Deccan
Plain.

Bappoo knew Dodd was right, and that the British road could be slowed by a campaign of
harassment, but he feared to let the white coated Cobras leave the fortress. The garrison
was already nervous, awed by the victories of Wellesley's small army, and if they saw the
Cobras march out of the fort then many would think they were being abandoned and the
trickle of deserters would become a flood.

“We have to slow them!” Dodd snarled.

“We shall,” Bappoo said.

"I shall send silladars, Colonel, and reward them for every weapon they bring back to the
fort. But you will stay here, and help prepare the de fences He spoke firmly, showing that
the subject was beyond discussion, then offered Dodd a gap-toothed smile and gestured
towards the palace at the centre of the Inner Fort.

“Come, Colonel, I want to show you something.”

The two men walked through the small houses that surrounded the palace, past an Arab
sentry who protected the palace precincts, then through some flowering trees where
monkeys crouched. Dodd could hear the tinkle of the bells where Beny Singh was playing with
his women, but that sound faded as the path twisted deeper into the trees.

The path ended at a rock face that was pierced by an arched wooden door. Dodd looked up
while Bappoo unlocked the door and saw that the great rock slab formed the palace
foundations and, when Bappoo thrust back the creaking door, he understood that it led
into the palace cellars.

A lantern stood on a shelf just inside the door and there was a pause while Bappoo lit its
wick.

“Come,” Bappoo said, and led Dodd into the marvelous coolness of the huge low
cellar.

“It is rumoured,” Bappoo said, 'that we store the treasures of Berar in here, and in one
sense it is true, but they are not the treasures that men usually dream of." He stopped by a
row of barrels and casually knocked off their lids, revealing that the tubs were filled
with copper coins.

“No gold or silver,” Bappoo said, 'but money all the same. Money to hire new
mercenaries, to buy new weapons and to make a new army." Bappoo trickled a stream of the
newly minted coins through his fingers.

“We have been lax in paying our men,” he confessed.

“My brother, for all his virtues, is not generous with his treasury.”

Dodd grunted. He was not sure what virtues the Rajah of Berar did possess. Certainly
not valour, nor generosity, but the Rajah was fortunate in his brother, for Bappoo was
loyal and evidently determined to make up for the Rajah's shortcomings.

“Gold and silver,” Dodd said, 'would buy better arms and more men."

“My brother will not give me gold or silver, only copper. And we must work with what we
have, not with what we dream of.” Bappoo put the lids back onto the barrels, then edged
between them to where rack after rack of muskets stood.

“These, Colonel,” he said, 'are the weapons for that new army."

There were thousands of muskets, all brand new, and all equipped with bayonets and
cartridge boxes. Some of the guns were locally made copies of French muskets, but
several hundred looked to Dodd to be of British make. He lifted one from the racks and saw
the Tower mark on its lock.

“How did you get these?” he asked, surprised.

Bappoo shrugged.

“We have agents in the British camp. They arrange it. We meet some of their supply
convoys well to the south and pay for their contents. It seems there are traitors in the
British army who would rather make money than seek victory.”

“You buy guns with copper?” Dodd asked scathingly. He could not imagine any man selling
a Tower musket for a handful of copper.

“No,” Bappoo confessed.

“To buy the weapons and the cartridges we need gold, so I use my own. My brother, I trust,
will repay me one day.”

Dodd frowned at the hawk-faced Bappoo.

“You're using your money to keep your brother on the throne?” he asked and, though he
waited for an answer, none came. Dodd shook his head, implying that "5

Bappoo's nobility was beyond understanding, then he cocked and fired the unloaded
musket. The spark of the flint flashed a sparkle of red light against the stone ceiling.

“A musket in its rack kills no one,” he said.

“True. But as yet we don't have the men to carry these muskets. But we will, Colonel. Once
we have defeated the British the other kingdoms will join us.” That, Dodd reflected, was
true enough. Scindia, Dodd's erstwhile employer, was suing for peace, while Holkar, the
most formidable of the Mahratta monarchs, was staying aloof from the contest, but if
Bappoo did win his victory, those chieftains would be eager to share future spoils.

“And not just the other kingdoms,” Bappoo went on, 'but warriors from all India will
come to our banner. I intend to raise a compoo armed with the best weapons and trained to
the very highest standard. Many, I suspect, will be sepoys from Wellesley's defeated
army and they will need a new master when he is dead. I thought perhaps you would lead
them?"

Dodd returned the musket to its rack.

“You'll not pay me with copper, Bappoo.”

Bappoo smiled.

“You will pay me with victory, Colonel, and I shall reward you with gold.”

Dodd saw some unfamiliar weapons farther down the rack. He lifted one and saw it was a
hunting rifle. The lock was British, but the filigree decoration on the stock and barrel
was Indian.

“You're buying rifles?”

he asked.

“No better weapon for skirmishing,” Bappoo said.

“Maybe,” Dodd allowed grudgingly. The rifle was accurate, but slow to load.

“A small group of men with rifles,” Bappoo said, 'backed up by muskets, could be
formidable."

“Maybe,” Dodd said again, then, instead of putting the rifle back onto the rack, he slung
it on his shoulder.

“I'd like to try it,” he explained.

“You have ammunition?”

Bappoo gestured across the cellar, and Dodd went and scooped up some cartridges.

“If you've got the cash,” he called back, 'why not raise your new army now. Bring it to
Gawilghur."

“There's no time,” Bappoo said, 'and besides, no one will join us now. They think the
British are beating us. So if we are to make our new army, Colonel, then we must first win a
victory that will ring through India, and that is what we shall do here at Gawilghur." He
spoke very confidently, for Bappoo, like Dodd, believed Gawilghur to be unassailable.
He led the Englishman back to the entrance, blew out the lantern and carefully locked the
armoury door.

The two men climbed the slope beside the palace, passing a line of servants who carried
drinks and sweetmeats to where Beny Singh whiled away the afternoon. As ever, when Dodd
thought of the Killa-dar, he felt a surge of anger. Beny Singh should have been
organizing the fortress's de fences but instead he frittered away his days with women and
liquor. Bappoo must have divined Dodd's thoughts, for he grimaced.