shouted the commands to fire, to advance and to kill. Whatever British or Indian troops were trying to capture the wood were evidently in trouble, and it had been Gudin’s inspiration to snatch the first Englishman he could find in the barracks and use him to sow even more confusion among the attackers. Gudin drew a pistol. ‘Sergeant Rothiere!’ he called.
‘Man Colonel!’ The big Sergeant, who had first used Captain Romet’s horse to reach the fight, materialized out of the gloom. He gave Sharpe a suspicious glowering look, then cocked his musket.
‘Let’s enjoy ourselves,’ Gudin said in English.
‘Aye, sir,’ Sharpe said and wondered what the hell he should do now. In the dark, he reckoned, there should be no trouble in slipping away from the Colonel and Rothiere and joining the beleaguered attackers, but how would that leave Lieutenant Lawford? The trick of it, Sharpe decided, was not to make it look as though he was deliberately trying to get back to the British, but rather to make it seem as though he was captured accidentally. That still might make things very awkward for Lawford, but Sharpe knew that his overriding duty was to carry McCandless’s warning to General Harris, just as he knew that he might never get another opportunity as good as this one that Gudin had dropped so unexpectedly into his lap.
Gudin paused at the edge of the tope. Rocketmen were enthusiastically blasting their weapons through the trees where the missiles were being deflected off branches to tumble erratically through the leaves. Muskets sounded deep inside the wood. Wounded men lay at the trees’ edge, and somewhere not far off a dying man alternately screamed and panted. ‘So far,’ Gudin said, ‘we seem to be beating them. Let’s go forward.’
Sharpe followed the two Frenchmen. Off to his right there was a sudden blast of gunfire and the sound of bayonets clashing, and Gudin swerved towards the sound, but the fight
was over before they even reached it. The Tippoo’s men had encountered a small group of redcoats and had killed one and chased the others deeper into the wood. Gudin saw the redcoat’s body in the fast-dying flame light of an exhausted rocket and knelt beside the man. The Colonel took out a tinderbox, struck a spark, blew the charred linen in the box alight, then held the tiny flame down beside the redcoat’s chest. The man was not quite dead, but he was unconscious, blood was bubbling slow in his throat and his eyes were closed. ‘Recognize the uniform?’ Gudin asked Sharpe. The tinderbox’s flickering glow revealed that the redcoat’s turnbacks and facings were scarlet piped with white.
‘Bloody hell,’ Sharpe said. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ he added, then he gently moved Gudin’s hand up to the dying man’s face. Blood had poured out of the man’s mouth to soak his powdered hair, but Sharpe recognized him all the same. It was Jed Mallinson who usually paraded in the rearmost rank of Sharpe’s file. ‘I know the uniform and the man, sir,’ Sharpe told Gudin. ‘It’s the 33rd, my old battalion. West Riding, Yorkshire.’
‘Good.’ Gudin snapped the tinderbox shut, extinguishing the small flame. ‘And you don’t mind confusing them?’
‘That’s why I’m here, sir,’ Sharpe said with a suitable bloodthirstiness.
‘I think the British army lost a good man in you, Sharpe,’ Gudin said, standing and guiding Sharpe deeper into the trees. ‘If you don’t want to stay in India you might think of coming home with me.’
‘To France, sir?’
Gudin smiled at Sharpe’s surprised tone. ‘It isn’t the devil’s country, Sharpe; indeed I suspect it’s the most blessed place on God’s earth, and in the French army a good man can be very easily raised to officer rank.’
‘Me, sir? An officer?’ Sharpe laughed. ‘Like making a mule into a racehorse.’
‘You underestimate yourself.’ Gudin paused. There were feet trampling to the right, and a sudden blast of musketry off to the left. The musketry attracted an excited rush of the Tippoo’s infantry who blundered through the trees. Sergeant Rothiere bellowed at them in a mix of French and Kanarese, and his sudden authority calmed the men who gathered around Colonel Gudin. Gudin smiled wolfishly. ‘Let’s see if we can mislead some of your old comrades, Sharpe. Shout at them to come this way.’