“And the three hundred men the Major has placed at the north gate?”
Sanjit Pandee said.
“Is it because he expects an attack there?”
“Ask the idiot why else they would be there,” Dodd instructed the interpreter, but there was no time to tell the kill adar anything further because shouts from the ramparts announced the approach of three enemy horsemen. The emissaries rode beneath a white flag, but some of the Arabs were aiming their long-barrelled matchlocks at the approaching horsemen and the kill adar quickly sent some aides to tell the mercenaries to hold their fire.
“They’ve come to offer us cowle,” the kill adar said as he hurried towards the south gate. Cowle was an offer of terms, a chance for the defenders to surrender rather than face the horrors of assault, and the kill adar hoped he could prolong the negotiations long enough to persuade Major Dodd to bring the three hundred men back from the north gate.
The kill adar could see that the three horsemen were riding towards the south gate which was topped by a squat tower from which flew Scindia’s gaudy green and scarlet flag. To reach the tower the kill adar had to run down some stone steps because the stretch of wall just west of the gate possessed no fire step but was simply a high, blank wall of red stone. He hurried along the foot of the wall, then climbed more steps to reach the gate tower just as the three horsemen reined in beneath.
Two of the horsemen were Indians while the third was a British officer, and the three men had indeed come to offer the city cowle. If the kill adar surrendered, one of the Indians shouted, the city’s defenders would be permitted to march from Ahmednuggur with all their hand weapons and whatever personal belongings they could carry. General Wellesley would guarantee the garrison safe passage as far as the River Godavery, beyond which Pohlmann’s compoo had withdrawn. The officer finished by demanding an immediate answer.
Sanjit Pandee hesitated. The cowle was generous, surprisingly generous, and he was tempted to accept because no man would die if he took the terms. He could see the approaching column clearly now, and it looked to him like a red stain smothering the plain. There would be guns there, and the gods alone knew how many muskets. Then he glanced to his left and right and he saw the reassuring height of his walls, and he saw the white robes of his fearsome Arabs, and he contemplated what Dowlut Rao Scindia would say if he meekly surrendered Ahmednuggur. Scindia would be angry, and an angry Scindia was liable to put whoever had angered him beneath the elephant’s foot. The kill adar task was to delay the British in front of Ahmednuggur while Scindia gathered his allies and so prepared the vast army that would crush the invader. Sanjit Pandee sighed.
“There can be no cowle,” he called down to Wellesley’s three messengers, and the horsemen did not try to change his mind. They just tugged on their reins, spurred their horses and rode away.
“They want battle,” the kill adar said sadly, ‘they want loot.”
“That’s why they come here,” an aide replied.
“Their own land is barren.”
“I hear it is green,” Sanjit Pandee said.
“No, sahib, barren and dry. Why else would they be here?”
News spread along the walls that cowle had been refused. No one had expected otherwise, but the kill adar reluctant defiance cheered the defenders whose ranks thickened as townsfolk climbed to the fire step to see the approaching enemy.
Dodd scowled when he saw that women and children were thronging the ramparts to view the enemy.
“Clear them away!” he ordered his interpreter.
“I want only the duty companies up here.” He watched as his orders were obeyed.
“Nothing’s going to happen for three days now,” he assured his officers.
“They’ll send skirmishers to harass us, but skirmishers can’t hurt us if we don’t show our heads above the wall. So tell the men to keep their heads down. And no one’s to fire at the skirmishers, you understand? No point in wasting good balls on skirmishers. We’ll open fire after three days.”