Sharpe's Triumph (32 page)

“Go on, Sharpe!” McCandless said.

“Hurry, man!”

Captain Campbell had secured Fletcher's mare.

“Ride her, Sharpe!” the Captain called.

"That little horse won't keep up with us. Just let her go.

Let her go."

Sharpe dismounted and ran to the mare. Campbell was trying to dislodge Fletcher's
blood-soaked body, but the trooper's feet were caught in the stirrups. Sharpe heaved
Fletcher's left boot free, then gave the booted leg a tug and the corpse slid towards him.
He jumped back as the bloody remnants of the neck, all sinew and flesh and tattered scraps,
slapped at his face. The corpse fell into the edge of the river and Sharpe stepped over it to
mount the General's mare.

“Get the General's canteens,” Campbell ordered him, and an instant later another
eighteen-pounder shot hammered low overhead like a clap of thunder.

“The canteens, man, hurry!” Campbell urged Sharpe, but Sharpe was having trouble
untying the water bottles from Fletcher's belt, so instead he heaved the body over so
that a gush of blood spurted from the neck to be instantly diluted in the shallow water.
He tugged at the trooper's belt buckle, unfastened it, then hauled the belt free with its
pouches, canteens and the heavy sabre. He wrapped the belt over his own, hastily buckled
it, then clambered up into the mare's saddle and fiddled his right foot into the stirrup.
Campbell was holding out Diomed's rein.

Sharpe took the rein.

“Sorry, sir.” He apologized for making the aide wait.

“Stay close to the General,” Campbell ordered him, then leaned over and patted Sharpe's
arm.

“Stay close, be alert, enjoy the day, Sergeant,” he said with a grin.

“It looks as if it's going to be a lively afternoon!”

“Thank you, sir,” Sharpe said. The first infantry were in the ford now and Sharpe turned
the mare, kicked back his heels and tugged Diomed through the water. Campbell was spurring
ahead to catch up with Wellesley and Sharpe clumsily kicked the mare into a canter and was
almost thrown as she stumbled on the riverbed, but he somehow clung to her mane as she
recovered. A round shot thrashed the water white to his left, drenching him with spray. The
musket had fallen off his shoulder and was dangling awkwardly from his elbow and he
could not manage both it and Diomed's rein, so he let the firelock drop into the river,
then wrenched the sword and the heavy canteens into a more comfortable position. Bugger
this, he thought. Lost a hat, a horse and a gun in less than an hour!

The pioneers were hacking at the bluff on the northern bank to make the slope less steep,
but the first galloper guns, those that accompanied the picquets of the day, were
already in the Kaitna. Galloper guns were drawn by horses and the gunners shouted at the
pioneers to clear out of their way. The pioneers scattered as the horses came up from the
river with water streaming from the leading gun's spinning wheels; a whip cracked over the
leader's head and the team galloped up the bluff with the gun and limber bouncing
erratically behind. A

gunner was thrown off the limber, but he picked himself up and ran after the cannon.
Sharpe kicked his horse up the bluff once the second gun was safely past and suddenly he
was in low ground, protected from the enemy's cannonade by the rising land to his
left.

But where the hell was Wellesley? He could see no one on the high ground that led towards
the enemy, and the only men on the road straight ahead were the leading companies of the
picquets of the day who continued to march northwards. A slapping sound came from the
river and he twisted in his saddle to see that a round shot had whipped through a file of
infantry. A body floated downstream in eddies of blood, then the sergeants shouted at the
ranks to close up and the infantry kept on coming. But where the hell was Sharpe to go? To
his right was the village of Waroor, half hidden behind its trees and for a second Sharpe
thought the General must have gone there, but then he saw Lieutenant Colonel Orrock riding
up onto the higher ground to the left and Sharpe guessed the Colonel was following
Wellesley and so he tugged the mare that way.

The land climbed to a gentle crest across stubble fields dotted by a few trees. Colonel
Orrock was the only man in sight and he was forcing his horse up the slope towards the
skyline and so Sharpe followed him.

He could hear the enemy guns firing, presumably still bombarding the ford that had not
been supposed to exist, but as he kicked the mare up through the growing crop the guns
suddenly ceased and all he could hear was the thump of hooves, the banging of the sabre's
metal scabbard against his boot and the dull sound of the Scottish drums behind.

Orrock had turned north along the skyline and Sharpe, following him, saw that the
General and his aides were clustered under a group of trees from where they were gazing
westwards through their telescopes. He joined them in the shade, and felt awkward to be in
such exalted company without McCandless, but Campbell turned in his saddle and
grinned.

“Well done, Sergeant. Still with us, eh?”

“Managing, sir,” Sharpe said, rearranging the canteens that had tangled themselves
into a lump.

“Oh, dear God,” Colonel Orrock said a moment later. He was gazing through his own
telescope, and whatever he saw made him shake his head before peering through the glass
again.

“Dear me,” he said, and Sharpe stood in his stirrups to see what had so upset the East
India Company Colonel.

The enemy was redeploying. Wellesley had crossed the ford to bring his small army onto
the enemy's left flank, but the Mahratta commander had seen his purpose and was now
denying him the advantage. The enemy line was marching towards the Peepulgaon ford,
then wheeling left to make a new defence line that stretched clean across the land between
the two rivers; a line that would now face head on towards Wellesley's army. Instead of
attacking a vulnerable flank, Wellesley would be forced to make a head-on assault. Nor
were the Mahrattas making their manoeuvre in a panicked hurry, but were marching calmly
in disciplined ranks. The guns were moving with them, drawn by bullocks or elephants. The
enemy was less than a mile away now and their steady unhurried re deployment was obvious
to the watching officers.

“They anticipate us, sir!” Orrock informed Wellesley, as though the General might not
have understood the purpose of the enemy's manoeuvre.

“They do,” Wellesley agreed calmly, 'they do indeed." He collapsed his telescope and
patted his horse's neck.

“And they manoeuvre very well!” he added admiringly, as though he was engaged in
nothing more ominous than watching a brigade go through its paces in Hyde Park.

“Your men are through the ford?” he asked Orrock.

“They are, sir, they are,” Orrock said. The Colonel had a nervous habit of jutting his
head forward every few seconds as if his collar was too tight.

“And they can reverse themselves,” he added meaningfully.

Wellesley ignored the defeatist sentiment.

“Take them one half-mile up the road,” he ordered Orrock, 'then deploy on the high
ground this side of the road. I shall see you before we advance."

Orrock gazed goggle-eyed at the General.

“Deploy?”

“On this side of the road, if you please, Colonel. You will form the right of our line,
Colonel, and have Wallace's brigade on your left. Let us do it now, Colonel, if you would so
oblige me?”

“Oblige you .. .” Orrock said, his head darting forward like a turtle.

“Of course,” he added nervously, then turned his horse and spurred it back towards the
road.

“Barclay?” the General addressed one of his aides.

“My compliments to Colonel Maxwell and he will bring all Company and King's cavalry to
take post to Orrock's right. Native horse will stay south of the river.”

There was still enemy cavalry south of the Kaitna and the horsemen from Britain's
Indian allies would stay on that bank to keep those enemies at bay.

“Then stay at the ford,” Wellesley went on addressing Barclay, 'and tell the rest of the
infantry to form on Orrock's picquets.

Two lines, Barclay, two lines, and the 778th will form the left flank here."

The General, who had been gazing at the enemy's calm re deployment now turned to
Barclay who was scribbling in pencil on a scrap of paper.

“First line, from the left. The 778th, Dallas's 10th, Corben's 78th, Orrock's picquets.
Second line, from the left. Hill's 4th, Macleod's i2th, then the 74th. They are to form their
lines and wait for my orders. You understand? They are to wait.” Barclay nodded, then
tugged on his reins and spurred his horse back towards the ford as the General turned again
to watch the enemy's re deployment

“Very fine work,” he said approvingly.

“I doubt we could have manoeuvred any more smartly than that. You think they were
readying to cross the river and attack us?”

Major Blackiston, his engineer aide, nodded.

“It would explain why they were ready to move, sir.”

“We shall just have to discover whether they fight as well as they manoeuvre,”
Wellesley said, collapsing his telescope, then he sent Blackiston north to explore the
ground up to the River Juah.

“Come on, Campbell,” Wellesley said when Blackiston was gone and, to Sharpe's surprise,
instead of riding back to where the army was crossing the ford, the General spurred his
horse still further west towards the enemy.

Campbell followed and Sharpe decided he had better go as well.

The three men rode into a steep-sided valley that was thick with trees and brush, then
up its far side to another stretch of open farmland. They cantered through a field of
unharvested millet, then across pastureland, always inclining north towards another
low hill crest.

“I'll oblige you for a canteen, Sergeant,” Wellesley called as they neared the crest and
Sharpe thumped his heels on the mare's flanks to catch up with the General, then fumbled a
canteen free and held it out, but that meant taking his left hand off the reins while his
right was still holding Diomed's tether and the mare, freed of the rein, swerved away from
the General. Wellesley caught up with Sharpe and took the canteen.

“You might tie Diomed's rein to your belt, Sergeant,” he said.

“It will provide you with another hand.”

A man needed three hands to do Sharpe's job, but once they reached the low crest the
General halted again and so gave Sharpe time to fasten the Arab's rein to Fletcher's belt.
The General was staring at the enemy who was now only a quarter-mile away, well inside
cannon shot, but either the enemy guns were not ready to fire or else they were under
orders not to waste powder on a mere three horsemen. Sharpe took the opportunity to
explore what was in Fletcher's pouch. There was a piece of mouldy bread that had been soaked
when the trooper's body fell into the river, a piece of salted meat that Sharpe suspected
was dried goat, and a sharpening stone. That made him half draw the sabre to feel its edge.
It was keen.

“A nasty little settlement!” Wellesley said cheerfully.

“Aye, it is, sir!” Campbell agreed enthusiastically.

“That must be Assaye,” Wellesley remarked.

“You think we're about to make it famous?”

“I trust so, sir,” Campbell said.

“Not infamous, I hope,” Wellesley said, and gave his short, high pitched laugh.

Sharpe saw they were both staring towards a village that lay to the north of the enemy's
new line. Like every village in this part of India it was provided with a rampart made of
the outermost houses' mud walls.

Such walls could be five or six feet in thickness, and though they might crumble to the
touch of an artillery bombardment, they still made a formidable obstacle to infantry.
Enemy soldiers stood on every rooftop, while outside the wall, in an array as thick as a
hedgehog's quills, was an assortment of cannon.

“A very nasty little place,” the General said.

“We must avoid it. I see your fellows are there, Sharpe!”

“My fellows, sir?” Sharpe asked in puzzlement.

“White coats, Sergeant.”

So Dodd's regiment had taken their place just to the south of Assaye.

They were still on the left of Pohlmann's line, but now that line stretched southwards from
the bristling de fences about the village to the bank of the River Kaitna. The infantry
were already in place and the last of the guns were now being hauled into their positions
in front of the enemy line, and Sharpe remembered Syud Sevajee's grim words about the
rivers meeting, and he knew that the only way out of this narrowing neck of land was
either back through the fords or else straight ahead through the enemy's army.

“I see we shall have to earn our pay today,” the General said to no one in
particular.

“How far ahead of the infantry is their gun line, Campbell?”

“A hundred yards, sir?” the young Scotsman guessed after gazing through his spyglass
for a while.

“A hundred and fifty, I think,” Wellesley said.

Sharpe was watching the village. A lane led from its eastern wall and a file of cavalry
was riding out from the houses towards some trees.

“They think to allow us to take the guns,” Wellesley guessed, 'reckoning we'll be so
pounded by round shot and peppered by canister that their infantry can then administer
the coup de grace. They wish to treat us to a double dose! Guns and fire locks

The trees where the cavalry had disappeared dropped into a steep gully that twisted
towards the higher ground from where Wellesley was observing the enemy. Sharpe, watching
the tree-filled gully, saw birds fly out of the branches as the cavalry advanced beneath
the thick leaves.

“Horsemen, sir,” Sharpe warned.

“Where, man, where?” Wellesley asked.

Sharpe pointed towards the gully.

“It's full of the bastards, sir. They came out of the village a couple of moments ago.
You can't see them, sir, but I think there might be a hundred men hidden there.”