stayed in Mysore. But Hakeswill, he reckoned, was as good as any
lieutenant.
“You can order men to fire if you’re certain you see the enemy, but God
help you if you’re wrong.”
“Very good, sir,” Hakeswill said, then hissed at the men to spread out.
They vanished into the blackness. For a moment there was the sound of
boots, the thump of musket stocks hitting rocks and the grunts as the
redcoats settled, but then there was silence. Or near silence. The
wind sighed at the cliff’s edge while, from the fort, there drifted a
plangent and discordant music that rose and fell with the wind’s
vagaries. Worse than bagpipes, Morris thought sourly.
The first axle squeals sounded as the oxen dragged the gab ions
forward. The noise would be continuous now and, sooner or later, the
enemy must react by opening fire. And what chance would he have of
seeing anything then, Morris wondered. The gun flashes would blind
him.
The first he would see of an enemy would be the glint of starlight on a
blade. He spat. Waste of time.
“Morris!” a voice hissed from the dark.
“Captain Morris!”
“Here!” He turned towards the voice, which had come from behind him on
the road back to the plateau.
“Here!”
“Colonel Kenny,” the voice said, still in a sibilant whisper.
“Don’t mind me prowling around.”
“Of course not, sir.” Morris did not like the idea of a senior officer
coming to the picquet line, but he could hardly send the man away.
“Honoured to have you, sir,” he said, then hissed a warning to his
men.
“Senior officer present, don’t be startled. Pass the word on.”
Morris heard Kenny’s footsteps fade to his right. There was the low
murmur of a brief conversation, then silence again, except for the
demonic squeal of the ox-cart axles. A moment later a lantern light
showed from behind the rocks where Stokes was making one of his main
batteries. Morris braced himself for the enemy reaction, but the
fortress stayed silent.
The noise grew louder as the sappers heaved the gab ions from the carts
and manhandled them up onto the rocks to form the thick bastion. A man
swore, others grunted and the great baskets thumped on stone.
Another lantern was unmasked, and this time the man carrying it stepped
up onto the rocks to see where the gab ions were being laid. A voice
ordered him to get down.
The fort at last woke up. Morris could hear footsteps hurrying along
the nearer fire step and he saw a brief glow as a linstock was plucked
from a barrel and blown into red life.
“Jesus,” he said under his breath, and a moment later the first gun
fired. The flame stabbed bright as a lance from the walls, its glare
momentarily lighting all the rocky isthmus and the green-scummed
surface of the tank, before it was blotted out by the rolling smoke.
The round shot screamed overhead, struck a rock and ricocheted wildly
up into the sky. A second gun fired, its flame lighting the first
smoke cloud from within so that it seemed as if the wall of the fort
was edged with a brief vaporous luminance. The ball struck a gabion,
breaking it apart in a spray of earth. A man groaned. Dogs were
barking in the British camp and inside the fortress.
Morris stared towards the dark gateway. He could see nothing, because
the guns’ flames had robbed him of his night vision. Or rather he
could see wraithlike shapes which he knew were more likely to be his
imagination than the approach of some savage enemy. The guns were
firing steadily now, aiming at the small patch of lantern light, but
then more lights, brighter ones, appeared to the west of the isthmus,
’99
and some of the gunners switched their aim, not knowing that Stokes had
unveiled the second lights as a feint.
Then the first rockets were fired, and they were even more dazzling
than the guns. The fiery trails seemed to limp up from the fort’s
bastions, seething smoke and sparks, then they leaped up into the air,
wobbling in their flight, to sear over Morris’s head and slash north