“This is yours, Sergeant,” he said to Sharpe, holding out the ruby.
“I saw it fall.”
“Thank you, sir. Thank you.” Sharpe took the ruby.
The General frowned at the ruby. It seemed wrong for a sergeant to have a stone that size, but once Sharpe had closed his fingers about the stone, the General decided it must have been a blood-soaked piece of rock. It surely was not a ruby?
“Are you all right, sir?” Major Blackis-ton asked anxiously.
“Yes, yes, thank you, Blackiston.” The General seemed to shake off his torpor and went to stand beside Campbell who had dismounted to kneel beside Diomed. The horse was shaking and neighing softly.
“Can he be saved?” Wellesley asked.
“Don’t know, sir,” Campbell said.
“The pike blade’s deep in his lung, poor thing.”
“Pull it out, Campbell. Gently. Maybe he’ll live.” Wellesley looked around him to see that the yth Native Cavalry had scoured the gunners away and driven the remaining Mahratta horsemen off, while Harness’s 778th had again marched into canister and round shot to capture the southern part of the Mahratta artillery. Harness’s adjutant now cantered through the bodies scattered around the guns.
“We’ve nails and mauls if you want us to spike the guns, sir,” he said to Wellesley.
“No, no. I think the gunners have learned their lesson, and we might take some of the cannon into our own service,” Wellesley said, then saw that he was still holding his sword. He sheathed it.
“Pity to spike good guns,” he added. It could take hours of hard work to drill a driven nail out of a touch-hole, and so long as the enemy gunners were defeated then the guns would no longer be a danger. The General turned to an Indian trooper who had joined Campbell beside Diomed.
“Can you save him?” he asked anxiously.
The Indian very gently pulled at the pike, but it would not move.
“Harder, man, harder,” Campbell urged him, and laid his own hands on the pike’s bloodied shaft.
The two men tugged at the pike and the fallen horse screamed with pain.
“Careful!” Wellesley snapped.
“You want the pike in or out, sir?” Campbell asked.
“Try and save him,” the General said, and Campbell shrugged, took hold of the shaft again, put his boot on the horse’s red wet chest, and gave a swift, hard heave. The horse screamed again as the blade left his hide and as a new rush of blood welled down to soak his white hair.
“Nothing more we can do now, sir,” Campbell said.
“Look after him,” Wellesley ordered the Indian trooper, then he frowned when he saw that his last horse, the roan mare, still had her trooper’s saddle and that no one had thought to take his own saddle off Diomed. That was the orderly’s job and Wellesley looked for Sharpe, then remembered he had to express his thanks to the Sergeant, but again the words would not come and so Wellesley asked Campbell to change the saddles, and once that was done he climbed onto the mare’s back.
Captain Barclay, who had survived his dash across the field, reined in beside the General.
“Wallace’s brigade is ready to attack, sir.”
“We need to get Harness’s fellows into line,” Wellesley said.
“Any news of Maxwell?”
“Not yet, sir,” Barclay said. Colonel Maxwell had led the cavalry in their pursuit across the River Juah.
“Major!” Wellesley shouted at the commander of the Native Cavalry.
“Have your men hunt down the gunners here. Make sure none of them live, then guard the guns so they can’t be retaken. Gentlemen?”
He spoke to his aides.
“Let’s move on.”
Sharpe watched the General ride away into the thinning skein of cannon smoke, then he looked down at the ruby in his hand and saw that it was as red and shiny as the blood that dripped from his sabre tip. He wondered if the ruby had been dipped in the fountain of Zum-Zum along with the Tippoo’s helmet. Was that why it had saved his life? It had done bugger all for the Tippoo, but Sharpe was alive when he should have been dead, and so, for that matter, was Major General Sir Arthur Wellesley.