‘Leave him,’ McCandless ordered.
‘I was planning on it, sir,’ Sharpe said. He found his picklock again and reached for the padlock on the outer gate. This lock was much simpler, merely a crude one-lever mechanism, and it took only seconds to snap the ancient lock open. ‘Where are we going?’ Lawford asked.
‘To ground, man,’ McCandless said. The sudden freedom seemed to have lifted the Colonel’s fever. ‘We must find somewhere to hide.’
Sharpe pushed the gate outwards, then saw Mary gazing at him from a doorway across the courtyard and he smiled, then saw she was not smiling back, but was instead looking terrified. There were men with her, and they too were unmoving with fear. Then Sharpe saw why.
Three jettis were crossing the courtyard towards the dungeon cage. Three monsters. Three men with bare oiled chests and muscles like tiger thews. One carried a coiled whip while the other two were armed with hugely long spears with which they had planned to subdue the tiger before opening the prisoners’ cell. Sharpe swore. He dropped his coat and picklock.
‘Can you lock us in again?’ McCandless asked.
‘Those buggers are strong enough to tear the padlocks clean away, sir. We have to kill the bastards.’ Sharpe darted through the gate and ran to his right. “The jettis followed him, but more slowly. They were not fast men, though their massive strength gave them an easy confidence as they spread out into a line to trap Sharpe in a corner of the courtyard. ‘Throw me a musket!’ Sharpe called to Mary. ‘Quick, lass, quick!’
Mary snatched a musket from one of Kunwar Singh’s men and, before the astonished man could protest, she tossed it to Sharpe. He caught it, held it at his waist, but did not cock the weapon. Then he advanced on the middle jetti. The man had seen that the musket was uncocked and he smiled, anticipating an easy victory, then slashed out his whip so that its coiled end wound round Sharpe’s throat. He tugged, planning to pull Sharpe off balance, but Sharpe was already running towards him, cheating the whip’s tension, and the jetti had never faced a man as quick as Sharpe. Nor as lethal. The jetti was still recovering from his surprise when the muzzle of the musket rammed into his Adam’s apple with the force of a sledgehammer. He choked, his eyes widened, then Sharpe kicked him in the crotch and the huge man staggered and collapsed. One big muscle-bound brute was down, gasping
desperately for breath, but the long spears were turning towards Sharpe who, with the whip still trailing from his throat, turned fast to his right. He knocked the next jettfs spear aside with his musket barrel, then reversed the weapon and charged. The jetti abandoned his spear and reached for the musket, but Sharpe checked his rush so that the big man’s hands closed on nothing, and then Sharpe swung the musket by its barrel so that its brass-bound butt slammed into the man’s temple with the sound of an axe biting into soft wood.
Two of the bastards were down. The soldiers on the inner ramparts’ battery were watching the fight, but not interfering. They were confused, for Kunwar Singh was standing right beside the fight and doing nothing, and his jewels made him appear a man of high authority, and so they followed his example and did not try to intervene. Some of the watching soldiers were even cheering, for, though the jettis were admired, they were also resented because they received privileges far above any ordinary soldier’s expectations.
Lawford had moved to help Sharpe, but his uncle held him back. ‘Let him be, Willie,’ McCandless said quietly. ‘He’s doing the Lord’s work and I’ve rarely seen it done better.’
The third jetti lumbered at Sharpe with his spear. He advanced warily, confused by the ease with which this foreign demon had downed his two companions.
Sharpe smiled at the third jetti, shouldered the musket, pulled back the cock, and fired.
The bullet drummed into ihejettfs chest, making all his huge muscles shudder with the force of its impact. The jetti slowed, then tried to charge again, but his knees gave way and he fell forward onto his face. He twitched, his hands scrabbled for an instant, then he was still. From the ramparts above the soldiers cheered.