“So I shall be losing your services, Sergeant?”
“It ain’t what I want, sir,” Hakeswill lied, ‘but I has my responsibilities, sir, and if we’re leaving baggage at Naulniah, sir, then I shall have to stay there with my prisoner. Colonel Gore’s orders, sir. Is that Naulniah up ahead, sir?”
“It seems to be,” Mackay said, for the distant village was busy with men laying out the lines for the regiments’ tents.
“Then, if you’ll forgive, sir, I have to be about my duties.”
Hakeswill had deliberately waited for this moment, reckoning that it would be far too great a bother to keep marching northwards with Sharpe under escort. It would be better to wait until the army had established the baggage camp where Hakeswill could keep Sharpe while the battle was fought, and if one more redcoat died that day, who would miss him? So now, freed from Mackay’s baggage guard, the Sergeant hurried his six men up the column to find Colonel McCandless.
McCandless’s leg was still throbbing, and the fever had left him weak, but his spirits had recovered, because riding Aeolus had convinced him that no finer horse had ever stepped on earth. The gelding was tireless, McCandless declared, and better schooled than any horse he had ever ridden. Sevajee was amused by the Colonel’s enthusiasm.
“You sound like a man with a new woman, McCandless.”
“If you say so, Sevajee, if you say so,” McCandless said, not rising to the Indian’s bait.
“But isn’t he a beauty?”
“Magnificent.”
“County Meath,” the Colonel said.
“They breed good hunters in County Meath. They have big hedges! Like jumping a haystack.”
“County Meath is in Ireland?” Sevajee asked.
“It is, it is.”
“Another country beneath Britain’s heel?”
“For a man beneath my heel, Sevajee,” the Colonel said, ‘you look in remarkably fine fettle. Can we talk about tomorrow? Sharpe! I want you to listen.”
Sharpe urged his small Mahratta horse alongside the Colonel’s big gelding. Like Wellesley, Colonel McCandless was planning what he would do at Borkardan and, though the Colonel’s task was much smaller than the General’s, it was no less important to him.
“Let us assume, gentlemen, that we shall win this battle at Borkardan tomorrow,” he said, and waited for the invariable riposte from Sevajee, but the tall Indian said nothing.
“Our task, then,” the Colonel went on, ‘is to hunt Dodd among the fugitives. Hunt him and capture him.”
If he still lives,” Sevajee remarked.
“Which I pray God he does. He must face British justice before he goes to God’s condemnation. So when the battle is joined, gentlemen, our task is not to get involved with the fighting, but to search for Dodd’s men. It won’t be difficult. So far as I know they’re the only regiment in white jackets, and once we have them, we stay close. Stay close till they break, then we pursue.”
“And if they don’t break?” Sevajee asked.
“Then we march again and fight again,” the Colonel answered grimly.
“But by God’s grace, Sevajee, we shall find this man even if we have to hunt him into the deserts of Persia. Britain has more than a heavy heel, Sevajee, it has a long arm.”
“Long arms are easily cut off,” Sevajee said.
Sharpe had stopped listening. He had heard a commotion behind as a group of army wives were thrust off the road and had turned to see who had barged the women aside and, at first, all he had seen was a group of redcoats. Then he had recognized the red facings on the jackets and he had wondered what on earth men of the 33rd were doing here, and then he had recognized Sergeant Hakeswill.
Obadiah Hakeswill! Of all people, Hakeswill! Sharpe stared in horror at his long-time enemy and Obadiah Hakeswill caught his eye and grinned maliciously and Sharpe knew that his appearance boded no good.
Hakeswill broke into a lumbering run so that his haversack, pouches, bayonet and musket thumped against his body.
“Sir!” he called up to Colonel McCandless.
“Colonel McCandless, sir!”
McCandless turned and frowned at the interruption, then, like Sharpe, he stared at the Sergeant as though he did not believe his eyes.