Sharpe's Fortress (18 page)

“How wide is the approach?” he asked.

“At its narrowest, sir, about fifty feet.” Blackiston tapped one of the sketches.

“It's wide enough for most of the approach, two or three hundred yards, but just here
there's a tank and it squeezes the path cruelly. A ravine to the left, a tank to the
right.”

“Fall to your death on one side,” the General said, 'and drown on the other. And
doubtless the fifty feet between is covered by their guns?"

"Smothered, sir. Must be twenty heavy cannon looking down the throat of the approach,
and God knows how much smaller metal.

Plenty."

Wellesley removed the inkwells that had been serving as weights so that the drawings
rolled up with a snap.

“Not much choice, though, is there?” he asked.

“None, sir.”

Wellesley looked up suddenly, his eyes seeming very blue in the tent's half light.

“The supply train is twelve hours late, Captain. Why?”

He spoke quietly, but even Sharpe felt a shiver go through him.

Torrance, his cocked hat held beneath his left arm, was sweating.

“I . I.. .” he said, too nervous to speak properly, but then he took a deep breath.

“I was ill, sir, and unable to supervise properly, and my clerk failed to issue the
chitties It was a most regrettable occurrence, sir, and I can assure you it will not
happen again.”

The General stared at Torrance in silence for a few seconds.

“Colonel Wallace gave you Ensign Sharpe as an assistant? Did Sharpe also fail to obey
your orders?”

“I had sent Mister Sharpe ahead, sir,” Torrance said. The sweat was now pouring down his
face and dripping from his chin.

“So why did the clerk fail in his duties?”

“Treachery, sir,” Torrance said.

The answer surprised Wellesley, as it was meant to. He tapped his pencil on the table's
edge.

“Treachery?” he asked in a low voice.

“It seemed the clerk was in league with a merchant, sir, and had been selling him
supplies. And this morning, sir, when he should have been issuing the chitties he was
employed on his own business.”

“And you were too ill to detect his treachery?”

“Yes, sir,” Torrance said almost pleadingly.

“At first, sir, yes, sir.”

Wellesley gazed at Torrance for a few silent seconds, and the Captain had the
uncomfortable feeling that the blue eyes saw right into his soul.

“So where is this treacherous clerk now, Captain?” Wellesley asked at last.

“We hanged him, sir,” Torrance said and Sharpe, who had not heard of Dilip's death, stared
at him in astonishment.

The General slapped the table, making Torrance jump in alarm.

“You seem very fond of hanging, Captain Torrance?”

“A necessary remedy for theft, sir, as you have made plain.”

“I, sir? I?” The General's voice, when he became angry, did not become louder, but
more precise and, therefore, more chilling.

“The general order mandating summary death by hanging for thievery, Captain,
applies to men in uniform. King's and Company men only. It does not apply to civilians.
Does the dead man have family?”

“No, sir,” Torrance said. He did not really know the answer, but decided it was
better to say no than to prevaricate.

“If he does, Captain,” Wellesley said softly, 'and if they complain, then I shall have
no choice but to put you on trial, and depend upon it, sir, that trial will be in the
civilian courts."

“I apologize, sir,” Torrance said stiffly, 'for my over-zealousness."

The General stayed silent for a few seconds.

“Supplies were missing,” he said after a while.

“Yes, sir,” Torrance agreed weakly.

“Yet you never reported the thefts?” Wellesley said.

“I did not believe you wished to be troubled by every mishap, sir,” Torrance said.

“Mishap!” Wellesley snapped.

“Muskets are stolen, and you call that a mishap? Such mishaps, Captain Torrance, lose
wars. In future you will inform my staff when such depredations are made.” He stared at

Torrance for a few seconds, then looked at Sharpe.

“Colonel Huddlestone tells me it was you, Sharpe, who discovered the missing
supplies?”

“All but the muskets, sir. They're still missing.”

“How did you know where to look?”

“Captain Torrance's clerk told me where to buy supplies, sir.” Sharpe shrugged.

“I guessed they were the missing items, sir.”

Wellesley grunted. Sharpe's answer appeared to confirm Torrance's accusations, and
the Captain gave Sharpe a grateful glance. Wellesley saw the glance and rapped the table,
demanding Torrance's attention.

“It is a pity, Captain, that we could not have questioned the merchant before you so
summarily executed him. May I presume you did interrogate the clerk?”

“My sergeant did, sir, and the wretch confessed to having sold items to Naig.” Torrance
blushed as he told the lie, but it was so hot in the tent and he was sweating so heavily that
the blush went unnoticed.

“Your sergeant?” Wellesley asked.

“You mean your havildar?”

“Sergeant, sir,” Torrance said.

“I inherited him from Captain Mackay, sir. Sergeant Hakeswill.”

“Hakeswill!” the General said in astonishment.

“What's he still doing here? He should be back with his regiment!”

“He stayed on, sir,” Torrance said, 'with two of his men. His other two died, sir, fever.
And he had no alternative orders, sir, and he was too useful to let go, sir."

“Useful!” Wellesley said. He had been the commanding officer of the 33rd, Hakeswill's
regiment, and he knew the Sergeant well. He shook his head.

“If you find him useful, Torrance, then he can stay till Gawilghur's fallen. But then he
returns to his regiment. You'll make sure of that, Campbell?”

“Yes, sir,” the aide said.

“But I believe some of the 33rd are on their way here, sir, so the Sergeant can return
with them.”

“The 33rd coming here?” Wellesley asked in surprise. “I ordered no such thing.”

“Just a company, sir,” Campbell explained.

“I believe headquarters detailed them to escort a convoy.”

“Doubtless we can make use of them,” the General said grudgingly.

“Is it awkward for you, Sharpe? Serving with Hakeswill?” Officers who were promoted
from the ranks were never expected to serve with their old regiments, and Wellesley was
plainly wondering whether Sharpe found his old comrades an embarrassment.

“I daresay you'll get by,” the General said, not waiting for an answer.

“You usually do. Wallace tells me he's recommended you for the Rifles?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That could suit you, Sharpe. Suit you very well. In the meantime, the more you learn about
supplies, the better.” The cold eyes looked back to Torrance, though it appeared the
General was still talking to Sharpe.

“There is a misapprehension in this army that supplies are of small importance,
whereas wars are won by efficient supply, more than they are won by acts of gallantry.
Which is why I want no more delays.”

“There will be none, sir,” Torrance said hastily.

“And if there are,” Wellesley said, 'there will be a court martial. You may depend upon
that, Captain. Major Elliott?" The General spoke to the engineer who until now had been
a spectator of Torrance's discomfiture.

“Tell me what you need to build our road, Major.”

“A hundred bullocks,” Elliott said sourly, 'and none of your spavined beasts, Torrance.
I want a hundred prime Mysore oxen to carry timber and road stone. I'll need rice every
day for a half-battalion of sepoys and an equivalent number of pioneers."

“Of course, sir,” Torrance said.

“And I'll take him' Elliott stabbed a finger at Sharpe 'because I need someone in charge
of the bullocks who knows what he's doing.”

Torrance opened his mouth to protest, then sensibly shut it.

Wellesley glanced at iSharpe.

“You'll attach yourself to Major Elliott, Sharpe. Be with him at dawn tomorrow, with
the bullocks, and you, Captain Torrance, will ensure the daily supplies go up the road
every dawn. And I want no more summary hangings.”

“Of course not, sir.” Torrartce, relieved to be let off so lightly, ducked his head in an
awkward bow.

“Good day to you both,” the General said sourly, then watched as the two officers left
the tent. He rubbed his eyes and stifled a yawn.

“How long to drive the road, Elliott?”

“Two weeks?” the Major suggested.

“You've got one week. One week!” The General forestalled Elliott's protest.

“Good day to you, Elliott.”

The engineer grumbled as he ducked out into the fading light.

Wellesley grimaced. “Is Torrance to be trusted?” he asked.

“Comes from a good family, sir,” Blackiston said.

“So did Nero, as I recall,” Wellesley retorted.

“But at least Torrance has got Sharpe, and even if Sharpe won't make a good officer, he's
got the makings of a decent sergeant. He did well to find those supplies.”

“Very well, sir,” Campbell said warmly.

Wellesley leaned back in his chair. A flicker of distaste showed on his face as he
recalled the terrible moment when he had been unhorsed at Assaye. He did not remember
much of the incident for he had been dazed, but he did recall watching Sharpe kill with a
savagery that had astonished him. He disliked being beholden to such a man, but the
General knew he would not be alive if Sharpe had not risked his own life.

“I should never have given Sharpe a commission,” he said ruefully.

"A man like that would have been quite content with a fiscal reward. A fungible
reward. That's what our men want, Campbell, something that can be turned into rum or
arrack."

“He appears to be a sober man, sir,” Campbell said.

“Probably because he can't afford the drink! Officers' messes are damned expensive
places, Campbell, as you well know. I reward Sharpe by plunging him into debt, eh? And God
knows if the Rifles are any cheaper. I can't imagine they will be. He needs something
fungible, Campbell, something fungible.” Wellesley turned and rummaged in the
saddlebags that were piled behind his chair. He brought out the new telescope with the
shallow eyepiece that had been a gift from the merchants of Madras.

“Find a goldsmith in the camp followers, Campbell, and see if the fellow can replace
that brass plate.”

“With what, sir?”

Nothing too flowery, the General thought, because the glass was only going to be
pawned to pay mess bills or buy gin.

“In gratitude, AW,” he said, 'and add the date of Assaye. Then give it to Sharpe with my
compliments."

“It's very generous of you, sir,” Campbell said, taking the glass, 'but perhaps it
would be better if you presented it to him?"

“Maybe, maybe. Blackiston! Where do we site guns?” The General unrolled the
sketches.

“Candles,” he ordered, for the light was fading fast.

The shadows stretched and joined and turned to night around the British camp. Candles were
lit, lanterns hung from ridge-poles and fires fed with bullock dung. The picquets stared at
shadows in the darkness, but some, lifting their gaze, saw that high above them the tops of
the cliffs were still in daylight and there, like the home of the gods, the walls of a
fortress showed deadly black where Gawilghur waited their coming.

The first part of the road was easy enough to build, for the existing track wound up the
gender slopes of the foothills, but even on the first day Major Elliott was filled with
gloom.

“Can't do it in a week!” the engineer grumbled.

“Man's mad! Expects miracles. Jacob's ladder, that's what he wants.” He cast a morbid
eye over Sharpe's bullocks, all of them prime Mysore beasts with brightly painted horns from
which tassels and small bells hung.

“Never did like working with oxen,” Elliott complained.

“Bring any elephants?”

“I can ask for them, sir.”

“Nothing like an elephant. Right, Sharpe, load the beasts with small stones and keep
following the track till you catch up with me. Got that?”

Elliott hauled himself onto his horse and settled his feet in the stirrups.

“Bloody miracles, that's what he wants,” the Major growled, then spurred onto the
track.

“Elliott!” Major Simons, who commanded the half-battalion of sepoys who guarded
the pioneers building the road, called in alarm.

“I haven't reconnoitred beyond the small hillock! The one with the two trees.”

“Can't wait for your fellows to wake up, Simons. Got a road to build in a week. Can't be
done, of course, but we must look willing. Pinckney! I need a havildar and some stout
fellows to carry pegs. Tell 'em to follow me.”

Captain Pinckney, the officer in charge of the East India Company pioneers, spat
onto the verge.

“Waste of bloody time.”

“What is?” Sharpe asked.

“Pegging out the route! We follow the footpath, of course. Bloody natives have been
scurrying up and down these hills for centuries.” He turned and shouted at a havildar to
organize a party to follow Elliott up the hill, then set the rest of his men to loading
the oxen's panniers with small stones.

The road made good progress, despite Elliott's misgivings, and three days after they
had begun the pioneers cleared a space among the trees to establish a makeshift artillery
park where the siege guns could wait while the rest of the road was forged. Sharpe was busy
and, because of that, happy. He liked Simons and Pinckney, and even Elliott proved
affable. The Major had taken Wellesley's demands that the road be made in a week as a
challenge, and he pressed the pioneers hard.

The enemy seemed to be asleep. Elliott would ride far ahead to reconnoitre the route and
never once saw a Mahratta.

“Stupid fools,” Elliott said one night beside the fire, 'they could hold us here for
months!"

“You still shouldn't ride so far ahead of my picquets,” Simons reproved the Major.

“Stop fussing, man,” Elliott said, and next morning, as usual, he rode out in front to
survey the day's work.

Sharpe was again bringing stones up the road that morning. He was walking at the head of
his ox train on the wooded stretch above the newly made artillery park. The day's heat was
growing and there was little wind in the thick woods of teak and cork trees that covered the
low hills. Groups of pioneers felled trees where they might obstruct a gun carriage's
progress, and here and there Sharpe saw a whitewashed peg showing where Elliott had marked
the track. Shots sounded ahead, but Sharpe took no notice. The upland valleys had become a
favourite hunting ground for the shikarees who used nets, snares and ancient matchlocks to
kill hares, wild pigs, deer, quail and partridge that they sold to the officers, and Sharpe
assumed a party of the hunters was close to the track, but after a few seconds the firing
intensified. The musketry was muffled by the thick leaves, but for a moment the sound was
constant, almost at battle pitch, before, as suddenly as it had erupted, it stopped.

His bullock drivers had halted, made nervous by the firing.

“Come on!” Sharpe encouraged them. None of them spoke English, and Sharpe had no idea
which language they did speak, but they were good-natured men, eager to please, and they
prodded their heavily laden bullocks onwards. Ahmed had unslung his musket and was
peering ahead. He suddenly raised the gun to his shoulder, and Sharpe pushed it down
before the boy could pull the trigger.

“They're ours,” he told the lad.

“Sepoys.”

A dozen sepoys hurried back through the trees. Major Simons was with them and, as they
came closer, Sharpe saw the men were carrying a makeshift stretcher made from tree
branches and jackets.

“It's Elliott.”

Simons paused by Sharpe as his men hurried ahead.

“Bloody fool got a chest wound. He won't live. Stupid man was too far forward. I told him
not to get ahead of the picquets.” Simons took a ragged red handkerchief from his sleeve
and wiped the sweat from his face.

“One less engineer.”

Sharpe peered at Elliott who was blessedly unconscious. His face had gone pale, and
pinkish blood was bubbling at his lips with every laboured breath.

“He won't last the day,” Simons said brutally, 'but I suppose we should get him back to
the surgeons."

“Where are the enemy?” Sharpe asked.

“They ran,” Simons said.

“Half a dozen of the bastards were waiting in ambush. They shot Elliott, took his
weapons, but ran off when they saw us.”

Three shikarees died that afternoon, ambushed in the high woods, and that night, when
the road-builders camped in one of the grassy upland valleys, some shots were fired from a
neighbouring wood. The bullets hissed overhead, but none found a target. The picquets
blazed back until a havildar shouted at them to hold their fire. Captain Pinck-they shook
his head.

“I thought it was too good to last,” he said gloomily.

“It'll be slow work now.” He poked the fire around which a half-dozen officers were
sitting.

Major Simons grinned.

“If I was the enemy,” he said, “I'd attack Mister Sharpe's oxen instead of attacking
engineers. If they cut our supply line they'd do some real damage.”

“There's no point in shooting engineers,” Pinckney agreed.

“We don't need Royal Engineers anyway. We've been making roads for years. The fellows
in the blue coats just get in the way. Mind you, they'll still send us another.”

“If there are any left,” Sharpe said. The campaign had been fatal for the engineers. Two
had died blowing up the enemy guns at Assaye, another three were fevered and now Elliott
was either dying or already dead.

“They'll find one,” Pinckney grumbled.

"If there's something the

King's army doesn't need then you can be sure they've got a healthy supply of it."

“The Company army's better?” Sharpe asked.

“It is,” Major Simons said.

“We work for a sterner master than you, Sharpe. It's called book-keeping. You fight for
victories, we fight for profits. Leadenhall Street won't pay for fancy engineers in
blue coats, not when they can hire plain men like us at half the cost.”

“They could afford me,” Sharpe said.

“Cheap as they come, I am.”

Next morning Simons threw a strong picquet line ahead of the work parties, but no
Mahrattas opposed the pioneers who were now widening the track where it twisted up a bare
and steep slope that was littered with rocks. The track was ancient, worn into the hills by
generations of travellers, but it had never been used by wagons, let alone by heavy guns.
Merchants who wanted to carry their goods up the escarpment had used the road leading
directly to the fortress's Southern Gate, while this track, which looped miles to the east
of Gawilghur, was little more than a series of paths connecting the upland valleys where
small farms had been hacked from the jungle. It was supposed to be tiger country, but Sharpe
saw none of the beasts. At dawn he had returned to Deogaum to collect rice for the sepoys,
and then spent the next four hours climbing back to where the pioneers were working. He was
nervous at first, both of tigers and of an enemy ambush, but the worst he suffered was a
series of drenching rainstorms that swept up the mountains.

The rain stopped when he reached the working parties who were driving the road through a
small ridge. Pinckney was setting a charge of gunpowder that would loosen the rock and let
him cut out a mile of looping track. His servant brought a mug of tea that Sharpe drank
sitting on a rock. He stared southwards, watching the veils of grey rain sweep across the
plain.

“Did Wellesley say anything about sending a new engineer?” Major Simons asked
him.

“I just collected the rice, sir,” Sharpe said.

“I didn't see the General.”

“I thought you were supposed to be a friend of his?” Simons observed sourly.

“Everyone thinks that,” Sharpe said, 'except him and me."

“But you saved his life?”

Sharpe shrugged.

“I reckon so. Either that or stopped him getting captured.”

“And killed a few men doing it, I hear?”

Sharpe looked at the tall Simons with some surprise, for he had not realized that his
exploit had become common knowledge.

“Don't remember much about it.”

“I suppose not. Still,” Simons said, 'a feather in your cap?"

“I don't think Wellesley thinks that,” Sharpe said.

“You're a King's officer now, Sharpe,” Simons said enviously. As an East India
Company officer he was trapped in the Company's cumbersome system of promotion.

“If Wellesley thrives, he'll remember you.”

Sharpe laughed.

“I doubt it, sir. He ain't the sort.” He turned southwards again because Ahmed had called
a warning in Arabic. The boy was pointing downhill and Sharpe stood to see over the crown
of the slope. Far beneath him, where the road passed through one of the lush valleys, a small
party of horsemen was approaching and one of the riders was in a blue coat.

“Friends, Ahmed!” he called.

“Looks like the new engineer,” Sharpe said to Simons.

“Pinckney will be delighted,” Simons said sarcastically.

Pinckney came back to inspect the approaching party through a telescope, and spat when
he saw the blue coat of the Royal Engineers.

“Another interfering bastard to teach me how to suck eggs,” he said.

“So let's blow the charge before he gets here, otherwise he'll tell us we're doing it
all wrong.”

A crowd of grinning sepoys waited expectantly about the end of the fuse. Pinckney
struck a light, put it to the quick match then watched the sparks smoke their way towards the
distant charge. The smoke trail vanished in grass and it seemed to Sharpe that it must have
extinguished itself, but then there was a violent coughing sound and the small ridge
heaved upwards. Soil and stone flew outwards in a cloud of filthy smoke. The sepoys cheered.
The explosion had seemed small to Sharpe, but when the smoke and dust cleared he could see
that the ridge now had a deep notch through which the road could climb to the next high
valley.

The pioneers went to shovel the loosened earth away and Sharpe sat again. Ahmed squatted
beside him.

“What am I going to do with you?”

Sharpe asked.

“I go to England,” Ahmed said carefully.

“You won't like it there. Cold as buggery.”

“Cold?”

“Freezing.” Sharpe mimicked a shiver, but plainly it meant nothing to the Arab boy.

“I go to England,” Ahmed insisted.

A half-hour later the new engineer appeared just beneath Sharpe.

He wore a wide-brimmed straw hat, rode a grey horse and was trailed by three servants who
led pack mules laden with luggage amongst which Sharpe could see a tripod, a surveyor's
level and a vast leather tube that he guessed held a telescope. The engineer took off his
hat and fanned his face as he rounded the last bend. “Pon my soul,” he said cheerfully, 'but
thank God the horse does the climbing and not me."

Pinckney had come back to greet the engineer and held out his hand as the blue-coated
Major slid from his saddle.

“Captain Pinckney, sir,” he introduced himself.

“Pinckney, eh?” the white-haired engineer said cheerfully.

“I knew a Pinckney in Hertfordshire. He made plough shares and damn fine ones too.”

“My uncle Joshua, sir.”

“Then you must be Hugh's boy, yes? An honour!” He shook Pinckney's hand vigorously.

“Major John Stokes, at your service, though I don't suppose you need me, do you? You must
have built more roads than I ever did.” Major Stokes looked towards Sharpe who had stood and
was now smiling.

“Good God in His blessed heaven,” Stokes said, 'it can't be! But it is! My dear Sharpe! My
dear Mister Sharpe. I heard all about your commission! Couldn't be more pleased, my dear
Sharpe. An officer, eh?"

Sharpe smiled broadly.

“OnJ} an ensign, sir.”

“Every ladder has a first rung, Sharpe,” Stokes said in gentle reproof of Sharpe's
modesty, then held out his hand.

“We shall be mess mates, as they say in the Navy. Well, I never! Mess mates, indeed! And
with a Pinckney too! Hugh Pinckney forges mill gears, Sharpe. Never seen a man make
better-toothed wheels in all my life.” He clasped Sharpe's hand in both of his.

"They grubbed me out of Seringapatam, Sharpe.

Can you believe that? Told me all the other engineers had the pox, and summoned me here
just in time to discover that poor Elliott's dead.

'34 I suppose I shouldn't complain. It's awfully good for my promotion
prospects." He let go of Sharpe's hand.

“Oh, and by the way, I travelled north with some of your old comrades! Captain Charles
Morris and his company. Not the most charming creature, is he?”

“Not one of my favourites, sir,” Sharpe admitted. Good God! Bloody Morris was here? First
Hakeswill, then Morris!

“He didn't want to come,” Stokes said, 'but higher powers deemed that I had to be
protected from the ungodly, so they insisted on an infantry escort." He turned as a
rattle of gunfire sounded higher up the escarpment.

“Bless my soul! Is that musketry?”

Ticquet line, sir," Pinckney explained.

“The enemy harasses us, but they're not thrusting home.”