“Close the files!” the sergeants shouted.
“Close up!”
The drummer boys beat the advance. There was low ground ahead, and the sooner the attacking line was in that gentle valley, the sooner they would be out of sight of the gunners. Wellesley looked to his right and saw that Orrock had paused in his advance and that the 74th, who should have been forming to the right of Orrock’s men, had stopped as well.
“Tell Orrock to go! Tell him to go!” the General called to Campbell who spurred across the advancing line. His horse galloped through a cloud of shell smoke, leaped a broken limber, then Sharpe lost sight of the aide. Wellesley urged his horse closer to the ySth who were now drawing ahead of the sepoys. The Highlanders were taller than the Madrassi battalions and their stride was longer as they hurried to gain the dead ground where the bombardment could not reach them. A bouncing shell came to rest near the grenadier company that was on the right of the 778this line and the kilted soldiers skipped aside, all but for one man who dashed out of the front rank as the missile spun crazily on the ground with its fuse spitting out a tangle of smoke. He rammed his right boot on the shell to make it still, then struck hard down with the brass butt of his musket to knock the fuse free.
“Am I spared the punishment now, Sergeant?” he called.
“You get in file, John, get in file,” the sergeant answered.
Wellesley grinned, then shuddered as a ball went perilously close to his hat. He looked round, seeking his aides, and saw Barclay.
“The calm before the storm,” the General remarked.
“Some calm, sir.”
“Some storm,” an Indian answered. He was one of the Mahratta chiefs who were allied to the British and whose horsemen were keeping the cavalry busy south of the river. Three such men rode with Wellesley and one had a badly trained horse that kept skittering sideways whenever a shell exploded.
Major Blackiston, the engineer on Wellesley’s staff who had been sent to reconnoitre the land north of the army, now galloped back behind the advancing line.
“Broken ground up by the village, sir, cut by gullies,” he reported, ‘no place to advance.”
Wellesley grunted. He had no intention of sending infantry near the village yet, so Blackiston’s report was not immediately useful.
“Did you see Orrock?”
“He was worried about his two guns, sir. Can’t take them forward because the teams have all been killed, but Campbell’s chivvying him on.”
Wellesley stood in his stirrups to look north and saw Orrock’s picquets at last moving smartly away. They were marching obliquely, without their two small guns, making space for the two sepoy battalions to come into the line. The 74th was beyond them, vanishing into a fold of ground.
“Not too far, Orrock, not too far,” Wellesley muttered, then he lost sight of Orrock’s men as his horse followed the 778th into the lower ground.
“Once we have them pinned against the river,” he asked Blackiston, gesturing to show he meant the River Juah to the north, ‘can they get away?”
“Eminently fordable, sir, I’m afraid,” Blackiston answered.
“I doubt they can move more than a handful of the guns down the bank, but a man can escape easily enough.”
Wellesley grunted an acknowledgement and spurred ahead, leaving the engineer behind.
“He didn’t even ask if I was chased!” Blackiston said to Barclay with mock indignation.
“Were you, John?”
“Damned sure I was. Two dozen of the bastards on those wiry little ponies. They look like children riding to hounds.”
“But no bullet holes?” Barclay asked.
“Not a one,” Blackiston said regretfully, then saw Sharpe’s surprised look.
“It’s a wager, Sergeant,” the engineer explained.
“Whichever of the General’s family ends up with the most bullet holes wins the pot.”
“Do I count, sir?”
“You replace Fletcher, and he didn’t have to pay to get in because he claimed he was penniless. We admitted him from the goodness of our hearts. But no cheating now. We can’t have fellows poking their coats with swords to win points.”
“How many points does Fletcher get, sir?” Sharpe asked.