“What the bastard did,” Sharpe was saying to his men, ‘was sell the bloody stuff to some heathen bastard.”
“That’s what you were going to do, Sergeant,” Private Phillips said.
“Never you bleeding mind what I was going to do,” Sharpe said.
“Ain’t that food ready?”
“Five minutes,” Davi Lal promised.
“A bloody camel could do it faster,” Sharpe grumbled, then hoisted his pack and haversack.
“I’m going for a piss.”
“He never goes anywhere without his bleeding pack,” Atkins commented.
“Doesn’t want you thieving his spare shirt,” Phillips answered.
“He’s got more than a shirt in that pack. Hiding something he is.”
Atkins twisted round.
“Hey. Hedgehog!” They all called Davi Lal “Hedgehog’ because his hair stuck up in spikes; no matter how greasy it was or how short it was cut, it still stuck up in unruly spikes.
“What does Sharpie keep in the pack?”
Davi Lal rolled his eyes.
“Jewels! Gold. Rubies, diamonds, emeralds, sapphires and pearls.”
“Like sod he does.”
Davi Lal laughed, then turned back to the cauldron. Out by the fort’s gate Captain Leonard was greeting the visitors. The guard presented arms as the officer leading the sepoys rode through the gate. The visitor returned the salute by touching a riding crop to the brim of his cocked hat which, worn fore and aft, shadowed his face. He was a tall man, uncommonly tall, and he wore his stirrups long so that he looked much too big for his horse, which was a sorry, sway-backed beast with a mangy hide, though there was nothing odd in that. Good horses were a luxury in India, and most Company officers rode decrepit nags.
“Welcome to Chasalgaon, sir,” Leonard said. He was not certain he ought to call the stranger ‘sir’, for the man wore no visible badge of rank on his red coat, but he carried himself like a senior officer and he reacted to Leonard’s greeting with a lordly nonchalance.
“You’re invited to dine with us, sir,” Leonard added, hurrying after the horseman who, having tucked his riding crop under his belt, now led his sepoys straight onto the parade ground. He stopped his horse under the flagpole from which the British flag drooped in the windless air, then waited as his company of red-coated sepoys divided into two units of two ranks each that marched either side of the flagpole. Crosby watched from inside his tent. It was a flamboyant entrance, the Major decided.
“Halt!” the strange officer shouted when his company was in the very centre of the fort. The sepoys halted.
“Outwards turn! Ground fire locks
Good morning!” He at last looked down at Captain Leonard.
“Are you Crosby?”
“No, sir. I’m Captain Leonard, sir. And you, sir?” The tall man ignored the question. He scowled about Chasalgaon’s fort as though he disapproved of everything he saw. What the hell was this? Leonard wondered. A surprise inspection?
“Shall I have your horse watered, sir?”
Leonard offered.
“In good time, Cartfain, all in good time,” the mysterious officer said, then he twisted in, his saddle and growled an order to his company.
“Fix bayonets!” The sepoys pulled out their seventeen-inch blades and slotted them onto the muzzles of their muskets.
“I like to offer a proper salute to a fellow Englishman,” the tall man explained to Leonard.
“You are English, aren’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Too many damned Scots in the Company,” the tall man grumbled.
“Have you ever noticed that, Leonard? Too many Scots and Irish. Glib sorts of fellow, they are, but they ain’t English. Not English at all.” The visitor drew his sword, then took a deep breath.
“Company!” he shouted.
“Level arms!”
The sepoys brought their muskets to their shoulders and Leonard saw, much too late, that the guns were aimed at the troops of the garrison.
“No!” he said, but not loudly, for he still did not believe what he saw.
“Fire!” the officer shouted, and the parade ground air was murdered by the double ripple of musket shots, heavy coughing explosions that blossomed smoke across the sun-crazed mud and slammed lead balls into the unsuspecting garrison.
“Hunt them now!” the tall officer called.
“Hunt them! Fast, fast, fast!”
He spurred his horse close to Captain Leonard and, almost casually, slashed down with his sword, ripping the blade hard back once it had bitten into the Captain’s neck so that its edge sawed fast and deep through the sinew, muscle and flesh.