the man did not come close to Hakeswill who, petrified, edged on
another pace. His hand, feeling the ground ahead of him, suddenly
found something wet and sticky. He flinched, brought his fingers to
his nose and smelt blood.
“Jesus,” he swore under his breath. He groped again, and this time
found a corpse. His hands explored the face, the open mouth, then
found the gaping wound in the neck. He jerked his hand back.
It had to be Lowry or Kendrick, for this was about where he had left
the two privates, and if they were dead, or even if only one of them
was dead, then it meant that Captain Torrance’s death had been no
lovers’ tiff. Not that Hakeswill had ever believed it was. He knew
who it was. Bloody Sharpe was alive. Bloody Sharpe was hunting his
enemies, and three, maybe four, were already dead. And Hakeswill knew
he would be next.
“Hakeswill!” the voice hissed, but farther away now.
A gun fired from the fort and in its flash Hakeswill saw a cloaked
shape to his north. The man was crossing the skyline, not far from
Hakeswill, but at least he was going away. Sharpe! It had to be
Sharpe!
And a terror grew in Hakeswill so that his face twitched and his hands
shook.
“Think, you bugger,” he told himself, ‘think!”
And the answer came, a sweet answer, so obvious that he wondered why he
had taken so long to find it.
Sharpe was alive, he was not a prisoner in Gawilghur, but haunting the
British camp, which meant that there was one place that would be
utterly safe for Hakeswill to go. He could go to the fortress, and
Sharpe would never reach him there for the rumour in the camp was that
the assault on Gawilghur was likely to be a desperate and bloody
business.
Likely to fail, some men said, and even if it did not, Hakeswill could
always pretend he had been taken prisoner. All he wanted at this
moment was to be away from Sharpe and so he sidled southwards, down the
hill, and once he reached the flatter ground, he ran towards the now
dark walls of the fort through the drifting skeins of foul-smelling
powder smoke.
He ran past the tank, along the approach road, and round to the left
where the great gatehouse loomed above him in the dark. And once there
he pounded on the massive, iron-studded doors.
No one responded.
He pounded again, using the butt of his musket, scared witless that the
sound would bring an avenging horror from the dark behind, and suddenly
a small wicket gate in the larger door was pulled open to flood flame
light into the night.
“I’m a deserter!” Hakeswill hissed.
“I’m on your side!”
Hands seized him and pulled him through the small doorway. A smoking
torch burned high on the wall to show Hakeswill the long, narrow
entranceway, the dark ramparts, and the dark faces of the men who had
him prisoner.
“I’m on your side!” he shouted as the gate was closed behind him and
his musket was snatched away.
“I’m on your side!”
A tall, hawk-faced man strode down the stone road.
“Who are you?”
he asked in English.
“I’m someone willing to fight for you, sir. Willing and able, sir. Old
soldier, sir.”
“My name is Manu Bappoo,” the man said in a sibilant voice, ‘and I
command here.”
“Very good, sir. Sahib, I mean, very good.” Hakeswill bobbed his
head.
“Hakeswill, sir, is my name. Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill.”
Manu Bappoo stared at the redcoat. He disliked deserters. A man who
deserted his flag could not be trusted under any other flag, but the
news that a white soldier had run from the enemy ranks could only
hearten his garrison. Better, he decided, to leave this man alive as a
witness to the enemy’s crumbling morale than shoot him out of hand.
“Take him to Colonel Dodd,” he ordered one of his men.
“Give him back his firelock. He’s on our side.”
So Hakeswill was inside Gawilghur and among the enemy. But he was safe
from the terror that had turned his life to sudden nightmare.