“Now,” he added and, with one last glance at the attackers, he ran down the steps.
“Jemadar]? he shouted to Gopal, whom he had promoted as a reward for loyalty.
“Sahib?
“Form up! March by companies to the north gate! If any civilians block your path, open fire!”
“Kill them?” the Jemadar asked.
“I don’t want you to bloody tickle them, Gopal. Slaughter them!”
The interpreter had listened to this exchange and stared appalled at the tall Englishman.
“But, sir.. .” he began to plead.
“The city’s lost,” Dodd growled, ‘and the second rule of war is not to reinforce failure.”
The interpreter wondered what the first rule was, but knew this was not the time to ask.
“But the kill adar sir…”
“Is a lily-livered mouse and we are men. Our orders are to save the regiment so it can fight again. Now, go!”
Dodd saw the first redcoats burst out of the inner door of the bastion, heard the Arab volley that threw some of the attackers down into the bloodied dust, but then he turned away from the fight and followed his men into the city’s streets. It went against the grain to abandon a fight, but Dodd knew his duty. The city might die, but the regiment must live.
Captain Joubert should be holding the north gate safe where Dodd’s guns waited, and where his own saddle horses and pack mule were ready, and so he called for his other French officer, the young Lieutenant Silliere, and told him to take a dozen men to rescue Simone Joubert from the panic that he knew was about to engulf the city. Dodd had rather hoped he could fetch Simone himself, posing as her protector, but he knew that the fall of the city was imminent and there 8? would be no time for such gallantries.
“Bring her safe, Lieutenant.”
“Of course, sir,” Silliere said and, glad to be given such a duty, he ordered a dozen men to follow him into the alleys.
Dodd gave one backward glance towards the south, then marched away from the fight. There was nothing for him here but failure. It was time to go north, for it was there, Dodd knew, beyond the wide rivers and among the far hills and a long way from their supplies, that the British would be lured to their deaths.
But Ahmednuggur, and everything inside it, was doomed.
CHAPTER 4
Sharpe followed McCandless into the gatehouse’s high archway, using the weight of his mare to push through the sepoys and Highlanders who jostled in the narrow roadway that was still half blocked by the six pounder cannon. The mare shied from the thick powder smoke that hung in the air between the scorched and smoking remnants of the two gates and Sharpe, gripping the mane to keep in the saddle, kicked his heels back so that the horse shot forward and trampled through the fly-blown intestines of the sepoy who had been struck in the belly by the six-pound shot. He hauled on the reins, checking the mare’s fright among the sprawled bodies of the Arabs who had died trying to defend the gate.
The fight here had been short and brutal, but there was no resistance left in the city by the time Sharpe caught up with McCandless who was staring in disapproval at the victorious redcoats who hurried into Ahmednuggur’s alleyways. The first screams were sounding.
“Women and drink,” McCandless said disapprovingly.
“That’s all they’ll be thinking of, women and drink.”
“Loot too, sir,” Sharpe corrected the Scotsman.
“It’s a wicked world, sir,” he added hastily, wishing he could be let off the leash himself to join the plunderers. Sevajee and his men were through the gate now, wheeling their horses behind Sharpe, who glanced up at the walls to see, with some surprise, that many of the city’s defenders were still on the fire step though they were making no effort to fire at the red-coated enemy who flooded through the broken gate.
“So what do we do, sir?” he asked.
McCandless, usually so sure of himself, seemed at a momentary loss, but then he saw a wounded Mahratta crawling across the cleared space inside the wall and, throwing his reins to Sharpe, he dismounted and crossed to the casualty. He helped the wounded man into the shelter of a doorway and there propped him against a wall and gave him a drink from his canteen. He spoke to the wounded man for a few seconds. Sevajee, his tulwar still drawn, came alongside Sharpe.