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.