“Well-made pieces, too,” Pohlmann boasted, leading McCandless up to the hot guns that stood behind the swathes of burnt grass caused by their muzzle fire.
“A little gaudy, perhaps, for European tastes, but none the worse for that.” The guns were all painted in bright colours and some had names written in a curly script on their breeches.
“Mega-wati,” Pohlmann read aloud, ‘the goddess of clouds. Inspect them, Colonel!
They’re well made. Our axletrees don’t break, I can assure you.”
Pohlmann was willing to show McCandless even more, but after dinner the Scotsman elected to spend the afternoon in his borrowed tent.
He claimed he wished to rest, but Sharpe suspected the Scotsman had endured enough humiliation and wanted some quiet in which to make notes on all he had seen.
“We’ll leave tonight, Sharpe,” the Colonel said.
“You can occupy yourself till then?”
“Colonel Pohlmann wants me to ride with him on his elephant, sir.” The Colonel scowled.
“He likes to show off.” For a moment he seemed about to order Sharpe to refuse the invitation, then he shrugged.
“Don’t get seasick.”
The motion of the elephant’s howdah was indeed something like a ship, for it swayed from side to side as the beast plodded northwards and at first Sharpe had to grip onto the edge of the basket, but once he had accustomed himself to the motion he relaxed and leaned back on the cushioned seat. The howdah had two seats, one in front of the other, and Sharpe had the rearmost, but after a while Pohlmann twisted in his seat and showed how he could raise his own backrest and lay it flat so that the whole howdah became one cushioned bed that could be concealed by the curtains that hung from the wicker-framed canopy.
“It’s a fine place to bring a woman, Sergeant,” Pohlmann said as he restored the backrest to its upright position, ‘but the girth straps broke once and the whole thing fell off! It fell slowly, luckily, and I still had my breeches on so not too much dignity was lost.”
“You don’t look like a man who worries much about dignity, sir.”
“I worry about reputation,” Pohlmann said, ‘which isn’t the same thing. I keep my reputation by winning victories and giving away gold. Those men’ he gestured at his purple-coated bodyguards who marched on either flank of the elephant ‘are each paid as much as a lieutenant in British service. And as for my European officers!” He laughed.
“They’re all making more money than they dreamed possible. Look at ’em!” He jerked his head at the score of European officers who followed the elephant. Dodd was among them, but riding apart from the others and with a morose expression on his long face as though he resented having to pay court to his commanding officer. His horse was a sway-backed, hard-mouthed mare, a poor beast as ungainly and sullen as her master.
“Greed, Sharpe, greed, that’s the best motive for a soldier,” Pohlmann said.
“Greed will make them fight like demons, if our lord and master ever allows us to fight.”
“You think he won’t, sir?”
Pohlmann grinned.
“Scindia listens to his astrologers rather more than he listens to his Europeans, but I’ll slip the bastards some gold when the time comes, and they’ll tell him the stars are propitious and he’ll give me the whole army and let me loose.”
“How big is the whole army, sir?”
Pohlmann smiled, recognizing that Sharpe was asking questions on behalf of Colonel McCandless.
“By the time you face us, Sergeant, we should have over a hundred thousand men. And of those? Fifteen thousand infantry are first class, thirty thousand infantry are reliable, and the rest are horsemen who are only good for plundering the wounded. We’ll also have a hundred guns, all of them as good as any in Europe. And how big will your army be?”
“Don’t know, sir,” Sharpe said woodenly.
Pohlmann smiled.
“Wellesley has, maybe, seven and a half thousand men, infantry and cavalry, while Colonel Stevenson has perhaps another seven thousand so together you’ll number, what? Fourteen and a half thousand? With forty guns? You think fourteen thousand men can beat a hundred thousand? And what happens, Sergeant Sharpe, if I manage to catch one of your little armies before the other can support it?” Sharpe said nothing, and Pohlmann smiled.