“Why doesn’t he leave?” McCandless wondered aloud.
“He’s waiting for something, sir,” Sharpe said.
“We need men,” McCandless said.
“Go and fetch some. I’ll keep an eye on Dodd.”
“Me, sir? Fetch men?”
“You’re a sergeant, aren’t you?” McCandless snapped.
“So behave like one. Get me an infantry company. Highlanders, preferably. Now go!”
Sharpe cursed under his breath, then sprinted back into the city. How the hell was he expected to find men? There were plenty of redcoats in sight, but none was under discipline, and demanding that looters abandon their plunder to go into another fight would like as not prove a waste of time if not downright suicidal. Sharpe needed to find an officer, and so he bullied his way through the terrified crowd in hope of discovering a company of Highlanders that was still obeying orders.
A splintering crash directly above his head made him duck into a doorway just seconds before a flimsy balcony collapsed under the weight of three sepoys and a dark wooden trunk they had dragged from a bedroom. The trunk split apart when it hit the street, spilling out a trickle of coins, and the three injured sepoys screamed as they were trampled by a rush of soldiers and civilians who plunged in to collect the loot. A tall Scottish sergeant used his musket butt to clear a space about the broken trunk, then knelt and began scooping the coins into his upturned bearskin. He snarled at Sharpe, thinking him a rival for the plunder, but Sharpe stepped over the Sergeant, tripped on the broken leg of one of the sepoys, and shoved on. Bloody chaos!
A half-naked girl ran out of a potter’s shop, then suddenly stopped as her unwinding said jerked her to a halt. Two redcoats hauled her back towards the shop. The girl’s father, blood on his temple, was slumped just outside the doorway amidst the litter of his wares. The girl stared into Sharpe’s eyes and he saw her mute appeal, then the door of the shop was slammed shut and he heard the bar dropping into place. Whooping Highlanders had discovered a tavern and were setting up shop, while another Highlander was calmly reading his Bible while sitting on a brassbound trunk he had pulled from a goldsmith’s shop.
“It’s a fine day, Sergeant,” he said equably, though he took care to keep his hand on his musket until Sharpe had safely gone past.
Another woman screamed in an alley, and Sharpe instinctively headed towards the terrible sound. He discovered a riotous mob of sepoys fighting with a small squad of white-jacketed soldiers who had to be among the very last of the city’s defenders still in recognizable uniforms.
They were led by a very young European officer who flailed a slender sword from his saddle, but just as Sharpe caught sight of him, the officer was caught from behind by a bayonet. He arched his back, and his mouth opened in a silent scream as his sword faltered, then a mass of dark hands reached up and hauled him down from his white-eyed horse. Bayonets plunged down, then the officer’s blood-soaked uniform was being rifled for money.
Beyond the dead officer, and also on horseback, was a woman. She was wearing European clothes and had a white net veil hanging from the brim of her straw hat, and it was her scream that Sharpe had heard. Her horse had been trapped against a wall and she was clinging to a roof beam that jutted just above her head. She was sitting sidesaddle, facing the street and screaming as excited sepoys clawed at her. Other sepoys were looting a pack mule that had been following her horse, and she turned and shouted at them to stop, then gasped as two men caught her legs.
“No!” she shouted. A small riding whip hung from a loop about her right wrist and she tried letting go of the roof beam and slashing down with the leather thong, but the defiance only made her predicament worse.
Sharpe used his musket butt to hammer his way through the sepoys.
He was a good six inches taller than any of them, and much stronger, and he used his anger as a weapon to drive them aside. He kicked a man away from the slaughtered officer, stepped over the body, and swung the musket butt into the skull of one of the men trying to pull the woman from her horse. That man went down and Sharpe turned the musket and drove its muzzle into the belly of the second sepoy. That man doubled over and staggered backwards, but just then a third man seized the horse’s bridle and yanked it out from the wall so fast that the woman fell back onto the roadway. The sepoys, seeing her upended with her long legs in the air, shouted in triumph and surged forward and Sharpe whirled the musket like a club to drive them backwards. One of them aimed his musket at Sharpe who stared him in the eyes.