“On your feet!” Sharpe snapped at his lads as the Major headed towards them.
“Thought you were finding ox carts?” Crosby snarled at Sharpe.
“Dinner first, sir.”
“Your food, I hope, and not ours? We don’t get rations to feed King’s troops here, Sergeant.” Major Crosby was in the service of the East India Company, and though he wore a red coat like the King’s army, there was little love lost between the two forces.
“Our food, sir,” Sharpe said, gesturing at the cauldron in which rice j and kid meat, both stolen from Crosby’s stores, boiled.
“Carried it with us, sir.”
A hamldar shouted from the fort gate, demanding Crosby’s attention, but the Major ignored the shout.
“I forgot to mention one thing, Sergeant.”
“Sir?”
Crosby looked sheepish for a moment, then remembered he was talking to a mere sergeant.
“Some of the cartridges were spoiled. Damp got to them.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, sir,” Sharpe said straight-faced.
“So I had to destroy them,” Crosby said.
“Six or seven thousand as I remember.”
“Spoilage, sir,” Sharpe said.
“Happens all the time, sir.”
“Exactly so,” Crosby said, unable to hide his relief at Sharpe’s easy acceptance of his tale, ‘exactly so,” then he turned towards the gate.
“Humidor?”
“Company troops approaching, sahibV “Where’s Captain Leonard? Isn’t he officer of the day?” Crosby demanded.
“Here, sir, I’m here.” A tall, gangling captain hurried from a tent, tripped on a guy rope, recovered his hat, then headed for the gate.
Sharpe ran to catch up with Crosby who was also walking towards the gate.
“You’ll give me a note, sir?”
“A note? Why the devil should I give you a note?”
“Spoilage, sir,” Sharpe said respectfully.
“I’ll have to account for the cartridges, sir.”
“Later,” Crosby said, ‘later.”
“Yes, sir,” Sharpe said.
“And sod you backwards, you miserable bastard,” he added, though too softly for Crosby to hear.
Captain Leonard clambered up to the platform beside the gate where Crosby joined him. The Major took a telescope from his tail pocket and slid the tubes open. The platform overlooked the small river that should have been swollen by the seasonal rains into a flood, but the failure of the monsoon had left only a trickle of water between the flat grey rocks. Beyond the shrunken river, up on the skyline behind a grove of trees, Crosby could see red-coated troops led by a European officer mounted on a black horse, and his first thought was that it must be Captain Roberts returning from patrol, but Roberts had a piebald horse and, besides, he had only taken fifty sepoys whereas this horse man led a company almost twice that size.
“Open the gate,” Crosby ordered, and wondered who the devil it was. He decided it was probably Captain Sullivan from the Company’s post at Milladar, another frontier fort like Chasalgaon, but what the hell was Sullivan doing here? Maybe he was marching some new recruits to toughen the bastards, not that the skinny little brutes needed any toughening, but it was uncivil of Sullivan not to warn Crosby of his coming.
“Jemadar,” Crosby shouted, ‘turn out the guard!”
“Sahibl’ The Jemadar acknowledged the order. Other sepoys were dragging the thorn gates open.
He’ll want dinner, Crosby thought sourly, and wondered what his servants were cooking for the midday meal. Kid, probably, in boiled rice.
Well, Sullivan would just have to endure the stringy meat as a price for not sending any warning, and damn the man if he expected Crosby to feed his sepoys as well. Chasalgaon’s cooks had not expected visitors and would not have enough rations for a hundred more hungry sepoys.
“Is that Sullivan?” he asked Leonard, handing the Captain the telescope.
Leonard stared for a long time at the approaching horseman.
“I’ve never met Sullivan,” he finally said, “so I couldn’t say.”
Crosby snatched back the telescope.
“Give the bastard a salute when he arrives,” Crosby ordered Leonard, ‘then tell him he can join me for dinner.” He paused.
“You too, he added grudgingly.
Crosby went back to his tent. It was better, he decided, to let Leonard welcome the stranger, rather than look too eager himself. Damn Sullivan, he thought, for not sending warning, though there was a bright side, inasmuch as Sullivan might have brought news. The tall, good-looking Sergeant from Seringapatam doubtless could have told Crosby the latest rumours from Mysore, but it would be a chill day in hell before Crosby sought news from a sergeant. But undoubtedly something was changing in the wider world, for it had been nine weeks since Crosby last saw a Mahratta raider, and that was decidedly odd. The purpose of the fort at Chasalgaon was to keep the Mahratta horse raiders out of the Rajah of Hyderabad’s wealthy territory, and Crosby fancied he had done his job well, but even so he found the absence of any enemy marauders oddly worrying. What were the bastards up to? He sat behind his table and shouted for his clerk. He would write the damned armoury Sergeant a note explaining that the loss of seven thousand cartridges was due to a leak in the stone roof of Chasalgaon’s magazine. He certainly could not admit that he had sold the ammunition to a merchant.