“Do you know what’s beyond that river?”
“No, sir.”
“Another river, Sharpe, and they meet just a couple of miles downstream’ he pointed eastwards towards the place where the waters met ‘and if we cross that ford we shall find ourselves on a tongue of land and the only way out is forward, through a hundred thousand
Mahrattas. Death on one side and water on the other.” Sevajee laughed.
“Blundering, Sergeant, blundering!”
But if Wellesley had blundered he was still in high spirits. Once back at Naulniah he ordered Diomed unsaddled and rubbed down, then began issuing commands. The army’s baggage would stay at Naulniah, dragged into the village’s alleyways which were to be barricaded so that no marauding Mahratta cavalry could plunder the wagons which would be guarded by the smallest battalion of sepoys. McCandless heard that order given, understood its necessity, but groaned aloud when he realized that almost five hundred infantrymen were thus being shorn from the attacking army.
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.