“Campbell?” he called, but his aide had gone to another low rise a hundred yards westwards that offered a better view of the enemy ranks.
“Campbell?” Wellesley called again and, getting no answer, turned.
“Sharpe, you’ll do. Come here.”
“Sir?”
“You’ve got young eyes. Come here, and keep low.”
Sharpe joined the General on the crest where, to his surprise, he was handed the telescope.
“Look at the village,” Wellesley ordered, ‘then look at the opposite bank and tell me what you see.”
It took Sharpe a moment to find Peepulgaon in the lens, but suddenly its mud walls filled the glass. He moved the telescope slowly, sliding its view past oxen, goats and chickens, past clothes set to dry on bushes by the river bank, and then the lens slid across the brown water of the River Kaitna and up its opposite bank where he saw a muddy bluff topped by trees and, just beyond the trees, a fold of land. And in the fold of land were roofs, straw roofs.
“There’s another village there, sir,” Sharpe said.
“You’re sure?” Wellesley asked urgently.
“Pretty sure, sir. Might just be cat de sheds.”
“You don’t keep cattle sheds apart from a village,” the General said scathingly, ‘not in a country infested by bandits.” Wellesley twisted round.
“McCandless? Ask your fellow if there’s a village on the other side of the river from Peepulgaon.”
The farmer listened to the question, then nodded.
“Waroor,” he said, then helpfully informed the General that his cousin was the village headman, the naique.
“How far apart are those villages, Sharpe?” Wellesley asked.
Sharpe judged the distance for a couple of seconds.
“Three hundred yards, sir?”
Wellesley took the telescope back and moved away from the crest.
“Never in my life,” he said, ‘have I seen two villages on opposite banks of a river that weren’t connected by a ford.”
“He insists not, sir,” McCandless said, indicating the farmer.
“Then he’s a rogue, a liar or a blockhead,” Wellesley said cheerfully.
“The latter, probably.” He frowned in thought, his right hand drumming a tattoo on the telescope’s barrel.
“I’ll warrant there is a ford,” he said to himself.
“Sir?” Captain Campbell had run back from the western knoll.
“Enemy’s breaking camp, sir.”
“Are they, by God!” Wellesley returned to the crest and stared through the glass again. The infantry immediately on the Kaitna’s north bank were not moving, but far away, close to the fortified village, tents were being struck.
“Preparing to run away, I daresay,” Wellesley muttered.
“Or readying to cross the river and attack us,” McCandless said grimly.
“And they’re sending cavalry across the river,” Campbell added ominously.
“Nothing to worry us,” Wellesley said, then turned back to stare at the opposing villages of Peepulgaon and Waroor.
“There has to be a ford,” he said to himself again, so quietly that only Sharpe could hear him.
“Stands to reason,” he said, then he went silent for a long time.
“That enemy cavalry, sir,” Campbell prompted him.
Wellesley seemed startled.
“What?”
“There, sir.” Campbell pointed westwards to a large group of enemy horsemen who had appeared from a grove of trees, but who seemed content to watch Wellesley’s group from a half-mile away.
“Time we were away,” Wellesley said.
“Give that lying blockhead a rupee, McCandless, then let’s be off.”
“You plan to retreat, sir?” McCandless asked.
Wellesley had been hurrying down the slope, but now stopped and stared in surprise at the Scotsman.
“Retreat?”
McCandless blinked.
“You surely don’t intend to fight, sir, do you?”
“How else are we to do His Majesty’s business? Of course we’ll fight!
There’s a ford there.” Wellesley flung his arm east towards Peepulgaon.
“That wretched farmer might deny it, but he’s a blockhead! There has to be a ford. We’ll cross it, turn their left flank and pound them into scraps! But we must hurry! Noon already. Three hours, gentlemen, three hours to bring on battle. Three hours to turn his flank.” He ran on down the hill to where Diomed, his white Arab horse, waited.
“Good God,” McCandless said.
“Good God.” For five thousand infantry would now cross the Kaitna at a place where men said the river was uncross able then fight an enemy horde at least ten times their number.