“Just get in among the houses, boys,” he called.
“Get in and hunt them down! Quick now!”
More muskets fired from the houses, but the 74th were running now, and cheering as they ran. The first men scrambled over the makeshift breach blown by the big guns, while others hauled aside a cart that blocked an alleyway and, with that entrance opened, a twin stream of Scotsmen and sepoys hurried into the village. The Arab defenders fired their last shots, then retreated ahead of the redcoat rush. A few were trapped in houses and died under Scottish or Indian bayonets.
“You go ahead, Sharpe,” McCandless said, for his wounded leg was making him limp and he was now far behind the Highlanders.
“See if you can spot the man,” McCandless suggested, though he doubted Sharpe would. Dodd would be long gone by now, but there was always a chance he had waited until the end and, if men of the 74th had trapped Dodd, then Sharpe could at least try and make sure that the wretch was taken alive.
“Go, Sharpe,” the Colonel ordered, ‘hurry!”
Sharpe dutifully ran on ahead. He clambered up the dust of the breach and jumped down into the pitiful wreckage of a room. He pushed through the house, stepped over a dead Arab sprawled in the outer door, edged about a dung heap in the courtyard, then plunged into an alleyway. Shots sounded from the river and so he headed that way past houses that were being looted of what little remained after the Mahratta occupation. A sepoy emerged from one house with a broken pot while a Highlander had found a broken brass weighing-scale, but the plunder was nothing like the riches that had been taken in Ahmednuggur. Another volley sounded ahead and Sharpe broke into a run, turned a corner and then stopped above the village’s ford.
Dodd’s regiment was on the far side of the river where two white coated companies had formed a rear guard It was just like Ahmednuggur, where Dodd had guarded his escape route with volley fire, and now the Major had done it again. He was safely over the river with
Pohlmann’s two elephants, and his men had been firing at any redcoats who dared show on the ford’s southern bank, but then, just as Sharpe arrived at the ford, the rear guard about turned and marched north.
“He got away,” a man said, ‘the bastard got clean away,” and Sharpe looked at the speaker and saw an East India Company sergeant in a doorway a few yards away. The man was smoking a cheroot and appeared to be standing guard over a group of prisoners in the house behind him.
Sharpe turned to watch Dodd’s regiment march into the shadow of some trees.
“The bastard,” Sharpe spat. He could see Dodd on his horse just ahead of the two rear guard companies, and he was tempted to raise his musket and try one last shot, but the range was much too great and then Dodd vanished among the shadows. His rear guard followed him.
Sharpe could see Sevajee off to the west, but the Indian was helpless.
Dodd had five hundred men in ranks and files, and Sevajee had but ten horsemen.
“He bloody got away again,” Sharpe said, and spat towards the river.
“With my gold,” the East India Company sergeant said miserably, and Sharpe looked again at the man.
“Bloody hell,” Sharpe said in astonishment, for he was looking at Anthony Pohlmann who had donned his old sergeant’s uniform.
Pohlmann’s ‘prisoners’ were a small group of his bodyguard.
“A pity,” Pohlmann said, spitting a scrap of tobacco from between his teeth.
“Ten minutes ago I was one of the richest men in India. Now I suppose I’m your prisoner?”
“I couldn’t care less about you, sir,” Sharpe said, slinging the musket on his shoulder.
“You don’t want to march me to Wellesley?” the Hanoverian asked.
“It would be a great feather in your cap.”
“That bastard doesn’t give feathers,” Sharpe said.
“He’s a stuck-up, cold-hearted bastard, he is, and I’d rather fillet him than you.”
Pohlmann grinned.
“So I can go, Sergeant Sharpe?”
“Do what you bloody like,” Sharpe said.