Sharpe's Triumph (31 page)

The cavalry that remained in Naulniah were ordered to saddle their horses and ride
to the Kaitna, there to form a screen on the southern bank, while the tired infantry, who
had marched all morning, were now rousted from their tents and chivvied into ranks.

“No packs!” the sergeants called.

“Firelocks and cartridge boxes only. No packs! Off to a Sunday battle, lads! Save your
bleeding prayers and hurry up! Come on, Johnny, boots on, lad! There's a horde of heathens
to kill. Look lively, now! Wake yourselves up! On your feet!”

The picquets of the day, composed of a half company from each of the army's seven
battalions, marched first. They splashed through the small river north of Naulniah and
were met on its far bank by one of the General's aides who guided them onto the farm track
that led to Peepulgaon. The picquets were followed by the King's 74th accompanied by
their battalion artillery, while behind them came the second battalion of the 12th
Madras Regiment, the first battalion of the 4th Madras, the first of the 78th Madras and the
first of the 10th Madras, and lastly the kilted Highlanders of the King's 778th. Six
battalions crossed the river and followed the beaten-earth track between fields of
millet beneath the furnace of an Indian sun. No enemy was visible as they marched,
though rumour said the whole of the Mahratta army was not far away.

Two guns fired around one o'clock. The sound was flat and hard, echoing across the
heat-shimmering land, but the infantry could see nothing. The sound came from their left,
and the battalion officers said there was cavalry somewhere out there, and that
doubtless meant that the cavalry's light galloper guns had engaged the enemy, or else
the enemy had brought cannon to face the British cavalry, but the fighting did not seem to
be ominous for there was silence after the two shots. McCandless, his nerves strung by the
disaster he feared was imminent, galloped Aeolus a few yards westwards as if wanting to
find an explanation for the two gunshots, but then he thought better of it and turned his
horse back to the road.

More cannon fire sounded a few moments later, but there was nothing urgent in the
distant shots which were monotonous, flat and sporadic. If battle had been brewing to the
boil the gunshots would have sounded hard and fast, but these shots were almost
lackadaisical, as though the gunners were merely practising on Aldershot Heath on a lazy
summer's day.

“Their guns or ours, sir?” Sharpe asked McCandless.

“Ours, I suspect,” the Scotsman said.

“Cavalry galloper guns keeping the enemy horse on their toes.” He tugged on Aeolus's
rein, moving the gelding out of the path of sixty sepoy pioneers who were doubling down
the road's left verge with pick-axes and shovels on their shoulders.

The pioneers' task was to reach the Kaitna and make certain that its banks were not too
steep for the ox-drawn artillery. Wellesley cantered after the pioneers, riding to the
head of the column and trailing a succession of aides. McCandless joined the General's
party and Sharpe kicked his horse alongside Daniel Fletcher who was mounted on a big roan
mare and leading an unsaddled Diomed by a long rein.

“He'll want him when the bay's tired,” Fletcher told Sharpe, nodding ahead at Wellesley
who was now riding a tall bay stallion.

“And the mare's in case both horses get shot,” he added, slapping the rump of the horse he
rode.

“So what do you do?” Sharpe asked the dragoon.

“Just stay close until he wants to change horses and keep him from getting thirsty,”
Fletcher said. He carried no less than five water canteens on his belt, bulked over a heavy
sabre in a metal scabbard, the first time Sharpe had ever seen the orderly carrying a
weapon.

“Vicious thing, that,” Fletcher said when he saw Sharpe glance at the weapon, 'a good wide
blade, perfect for slicing."

“Ever used it?” Sharpe asked.

“Against Dhoondiah,” Fletcher answered. Dhoondiah had been a bandit chieftain whose
depredations in Mysore had finally persuaded Wellesley to pursue him with cavalry.
The resultant battle had been a short clash of horsemen that had been won in moments by
the British.

“And I killed a goat with it for the General's supper a week ago,” Fletcher continued,
drawing the heavy curved blade, 'and I think the poor bugger died of fright when it saw the
blade coming. Took its head clean off, it did. Look at this, Sergeant." He handed the blade
to Sharpe.

“See what it says there? Just above the hilt?”

Sharpe tipped the sabre to the sun. '“Warranted Never to Fail”," he read aloud. He
grinned, for the boast seemed oddly out of place on a thing designed to kill or maim.

“Made in Sheffield,” Fletcher said, taking the blade back, 'and guaranteed never to
fail! Good slicer this is, real good. You can cut a man in half with one of these if you get
the stroke right."

Sharpe grinned.

“I'll stick with a musket.”

“Not on horseback, you won't, Sergeant,” Fletcher said.

“A firelock's no good on horseback. You want a blade.”

“Never learned to use one,” Sharpe said.

“It ain't difficult,” Fletcher said with the scorn of a man who had mastered a
difficult trade.

“Keep your arm straight and use the point when you're fighting cavalry, because if you
bend the elbow the bastards will chop through your wrist as sure as eggs, and slash away like
a haymaker at infantry because there ain't bugger all they can do back to you, not once
they're on the run. Not that you could use any kind of sword off the back of that horse.” He
nodded at Sharpe's small native beast.

“It's more like an overgrown dog, that is. Does it fetch?”

The road reached the high point between the two rivers and Fletcher, mounted high on the
General's mare, caught his first glimpse of the enemy army on the distant northern bank of
the Kaitna. He whistled softly.

“Millions of the buggers!”

“We're going to turn their flank,” Sharpe said, repeating what he had heard the General
say. So far as Sharpe understood, the idea was to cross the river at the ford which no one
except Wellesley believed existed, then make an attack on the left flank of the waiting
infantry.

The idea made sense to Sharpe, for the enemy line was facing south and, by coming at them
from the east, the British could well plunge the compoos into confusion.

“Millions of the buggers!” Fletcher said again in wonderment, but then the road dropped
and took the enemy out of their view. The dragoon orderly sheathed his sabre.

“But he's confident,” he said, nodding ahead at Wellesley who was dressed in his old
uniform coat of the 33rd. The General wore a slim straight sword, but had no other weapon,
not even a pistol.

“He was always confident,” Sharpe said.

“Cool as you like.”

“He's a good fellow,” Fletcher said loyally.

“Proper officer. He ain't friendly, of course, but he's always fair.” He touched his
spurs to the mare's flanks because Wellesley and his aides had hurried ahead into the
village of Peepulgaon where the villagers gaped at the foreigners in their red coats and
black cocked hats. Wellesley scattered chickens from his path as he cantered down the dusty
village street to where the road dropped down a precipitous bluff into the half-dry bed of
the Kaitna.

The pioneers arrived a moment later and began attacking the bluff to smooth its steep
slope. On the river's far bank Sharpe could see the road twist up into the trees that half
obscured the village of Waroor. The General was right, he reckoned, and there had to be a
ford, for why else would the road show on both banks? But whether the ford was shallow enough
for the army to cross no one yet knew.

Wellesley stood his horse at the top of the bluff and drummed the fingers of his right
hand on his thigh. It was the only sign of nerves. He was staring across the river,
thinking. No enemy was in sight, but nor should they have been for the Mahratta line was now
two miles to the west, which meant that Scindia's army was now between him and Stevenson.
Wellesley grimaced, realizing that he had already abandoned his first principle for
fighting this battle, which had been to secure his left flank so Stevenson could join.
Doubtless, the moment the guns began their proper, concentrated work, the sound of their
cannonade would bring Stevenson hurrying across country, but now the older man would
simply have to join the fight as best he could. But Wellesley had no regrets at posing such
difficulties for Stevenson, for the chance to turn the enemy's flank was heaven-sent. So
long, that is, as the ford was practicable.

The pioneer Captain led a dozen of his sepoys down towards the river.

“I'll just see to that far bank, sir,” the Captain called up to the General, startling
Wellesley out of his reverie.

“Come back!” Wellesley shouted angrily.

“Back!”

The Captain had almost reached the water, but now turned and stared at Wellesley in
puzzlement.

“Have to grade that bluff, sir,” he shouted, pointing to where the road climbed steeply to
the screen of trees on the Kaitna's northern bank.

“Too steep for guns, sir.”

“Come back!” Wellesley called again, then waited as the dozen men trudged back to the
southern bank.

“The enemy can see the river, Captain,” the General explained, 'and I have no wish
that they should see us yet. I do not want them knowing our intentions, so you will wait
until the first infantry make the crossing, then do your work."

But the enemy had already seen the pioneers. The dozen men had only been visible in the
river's open bed for a few seconds, but someone in the Mahratta gun line was wide awake and
there was a sudden and violent plume of water in the river and, almost
simultaneously, the sky battering sound of a heavy gun.

“Good shooting,” McCandless said quietly when the fifteen-foot-high fountain had
subsided to leave nothing but a whirling eddy in the river's brown water. The range must
have been almost two miles, yet the Mahrattas had turned a gun, trained and fired it in
seconds, and their aim had been almost perfect. A second gun fired and its heavy ball
ploughed a furrow in the dry, crazed mud beside the river and bounced up to scatter
bucket-loads of dry earth from the bluff's face.

“Eighteenpounders,” McCandless guessed aloud, thinking of the two heavy siege guns that
he had seen in front of Dodd's men.

“Damn,” Wellesley said quietly.

“But no real harm done, I suppose.”

The first of the infantry were now marching down Peepulgaon's steep street. Lieutenant
Colonel Orrock led the picquets of the day, while behind them Sharpe could see the grenadier
company of the 74th. The Scottish drums were beating a march rhythm and the sound of the
flurries made Sharpe's blood race. The sound presaged battle. It seemed like a dream, but
there would be a battle this Sunday afternoon and a bloody one too.

“Afternoon, Orrock,” Wellesley spurred his horse to meet the infantry vanguard.

“Straight across, I think.”

“Has the ford been sounded?” Colonel Orrock, a lugubrious and worried-looking man,
asked nervously.

“Our task, I think,” Wellesley said cheerfully.

“Gentlemen?” This last invitation was to his aides and orderly.

“Shall we open proceedings?”

“Come on, Sharpe,” McCandless said.

“You can cross after us, Captain!” Wellesley called to the eager pioneer Captain, then
he put his big bay stallion down the slope of the bluff and trotted towards the river.
Daniel Fletcher followed close behind with Diomed's leading rein in his hand, while the
aides and McCandless and Sevajee and Sharpe all followed. Forty horsemen would be the
first men across the Kaitna and the General would be the first of all, and Sharpe watched as
Wellesley's stallion trotted into the river. He wanted to see how deep the water was,
and he was determined to watch the General all the way through, but suddenly the bang of
an eighteen-pounder gun bullied the sky and Sharpe glanced upstream to see a puff of
gunsmoke smear the horizon, then he heard a horse screaming and he looked back to see that
Daniel Fletcher's mount was rearing at the water's edge. Fletcher was still in the saddle,
but the orderly had no head left, only a pulsing spurt of blood from his ragged neck.
Diomed's rein was still in the dead man's hand, but somehow the body would not fall from the
mare's saddle and she was screaming in fear as her rider's blood splashed across her
face.

A second gun fired, but high, and the shot crashed low overhead to tear into the trees on
the southern bank. A third ball smashed into the water, drenching McCandless. Fletcher's
mare bolted upstream, but was checked by a fallen tree and so she stood, quivering, and
still the trooper's decapitated body was in the saddle and Diomed's rein in his dead hand.
The grey horse's left flank was reddened with Fletcher's blood. The trooper had slumped now,
his headless trunk leaning eerily to drip blood into the river.

To Sharpe it seemed as if time had stopped. He was aware of someone shouting, aware of the
blood dripping from the dragoon's collar, aware of his small horse shivering, but the
sudden violence had immobilized him. Another gun fired, this one of smaller calibre,
and the ball struck the water a hundred yards upstream, ricocheted once, then vanished in
a plume of white spray.

“Sharpe!” a voice snapped. Horsemen were wheeling in the river's shallows and reaching
for the dead man's bridle.

“Sharpe!” It was Wellesley who shouted. The General was in the middle of the river
where the water did not even reach his stirrups, so there was a ford after all and the
river could be crossed, but the enemy was hardly going to be taken by surprise now.

“Take over as orderly, Sharpe!” Wellesley shouted.

“Hurry, man!” There was no one else to replace Fletcher, not unless one of Wellesley's
aides took over his duties, and Sharpe was the nearest man.