advance with forty thousand men, while the redcoats were not even a
third of that number.
“We shall wait,” Bappoo decided, ‘and let the enemy get closer.” He
would crush them with cannon fire first, then with musketry.
“Perhaps I shall release the Lions of Allah when the British are
closer, Colonel,” he said to pacify Dodd.
“One regiment won’t do it,” Dodd said, ‘not even your Arabs, sahib.
Throw every man forward. The whole line.”
“Maybe,” Bappoo said vaguely, though he had no intention of advancing
all his infantry in front of the precious guns. He had no need to. The
vision of eagles had persuaded him that he would see victory, and he
believed the gunners would make that victory. He imagined dead
red-coated bodies among the crops. He would avenge Assaye and prove
that redcoats could die like any other enemy.
“To your men, Colonel Dodd,” he said sternly.
Dodd wheeled his horse and spurred towards the right of the line where
his Cobras waited in four ranks. It was a fine regiment, splendidly
trained, which Dodd had extricated from the siege of Ahmednuggur and
then from the panicked chaos of the defeat at Assaye. Two disasters,
yet Dodd’s men had never flinched. The regiment had been a part of
Scindia’s army, but after Assaye the Cobras had retreated with the
Rajah of Berar’s infantry, and Prince Manu Bappoo, summoned from the
north country to take command of Berar’s shattered forces, had
persuaded Dodd to change his allegiance from Scindia to the Rajah of
Berar. Dodd would have changed allegiance anyway, for the dispirited
Scindia was seeking to make peace with the British, but Bappoo had
added the inducement of gold, silver and a promotion to colonel. Dodd’s
men, mercenaries all, did not care which master they served so long as
his purse was deep.
Gopal, Dodd’s second-in-command, greeted the Colonel’s return with a
rueful look.
“He won’t advance?”
“He wants the guns to do the work.”
Gopal heard the doubt in Dodd’s voice.
“And they won’t?”
“They didn’t at Assaye,” Dodd said sourly.
“Damn it! We shouldn’t be fighting them here at all! Never give
redcoats open ground. We should be making the bastards climb walls or
cross rivers.” Dodd was nervous of defeat, and he had cause to be for
the British had put a price on his head. That price was now seven
hundred guineas, nearly six thousand rupees, and all of it promised in
gold to whoever delivered William Dodd’s body, dead or alive, to the
East India Company. Dodd had been a lieutenant in the Company’s army,
but he had encouraged his men to murder a goldsmith and, faced with
prosecution, Dodd had deserted and taken over a hundred sepoys with
him. That had been enough to put a price on his head, but the price
rose after Dodd and his treacherous sepoys murdered the Company’s
garrison at Chasal-gaon. Now Dodd’s body was worth a fortune and
William Dodd understood greed well enough to be fearful. If Bappoo’s
army collapsed today as the Mahratta army had disintegrated at Assaye,
then Dodd would be a fugitive on an open plain dominated by enemy
cavalry.
“We should fight them in the hills,” he said grimly.
“Then we should fight them at Gawilghur,” Gopal said.
“Gawilghur?” Dodd asked.
“It is the greatest of all the Mahratta fortresses, sahib. Not all the
armies of Europe could take Gawilghur.” Gopal saw that Dodd was
sceptical of the claim.
“Not all the armies of the world could take it, sahib,” he added
earnestly.
“It stands on cliffs that touch the sky, and from its walls men are
reduced to the size of lice.”
“There’s a way in, though,” Dodd said, ‘there’s always a way in.”
“There is, sahib, but the way into Gawilghur is across a neck of high
rock that leads only to an outer fortress. A man might fight his way
through those outer walls, but then he will come to a deep ravine and
find the real stronghold lies on the ravine’s far side. There are more
walls, more guns, a narrow path, and vast gates barring the way!” Gopal
sighed.
“I saw it once, years ago, and prayed I would never have to fight an