rampart, motioning Hakeswill to follow him.
“It’s obvious what the Killadar is doing,” Dodd growled.
“He’s trying to make peace.”
“I thought we couldn’t be defeated here, sir,” Hakeswill said in some
alarm.
“We can’t,” Dodd said, ‘but Beny Singh is a coward. He thinks life
should be nothing but women, music and games.”
Which sounded just splendid to Obadiah Hakeswill, but he said nothing.
He had presented himself to Dodd as an aggrieved British soldier who
believed the war against the Mahrattas was unfair.
“We ain’t got no business here, sir,” he had said, ‘not in heathen
land. It belongs to the blackamoors, don’t it? And there ain’t
nothing here for a redcoat.”
Dodd had not believed a word of it. He suspected Hakeswill had fled
the British army to avoid trouble, but he could hardly blame the
Sergeant for that. Dodd himself had done the same, and Dodd did not
care about Hakeswill’s motives, only that the Sergeant was willing to
fight. And Dodd believed his men fought better when white men gave
them orders.
“There’s a steadiness about the English, Sergeant,” he had told
Hakeswill, ‘and it gives the natives bottom.”
“It gives them what, sir?” Hakeswill had asked.
Dodd had frowned at the Sergeant’s obtuseness.
“You ain’t Scotch, are you?”
“Christ no, sir! I ain’t a bleeding Scotchman, nor a Welshman.
English, sir, I am, through and through, sir.” His face twitched.
“English, sir, and proud of it.”
So Dodd had given Hakeswill a white jacket and a black sash, then put
him in charge of a company of his Cobras.
“Fight well for me here, Sergeant,” he told Hakeswill when the two men
reached the top of the rampart, ‘and I’ll make you an officer.”
“I shall fight, sir, never you mind, sir. Fight like a demon, I
will.”
And Dodd believed him, for if Hakeswill did not fight then he risked
being captured by the British, and God alone knew what trouble he would
then face. Though in truth Dodd did not see how the British could
penetrate the Inner Fort. He expected them to take the Outer Fort, for
there they had a flat approach and their guns were already blasting
down the breaches, but they would have a far greater problem in
capturing the Inner Fort. He showed that problem now to Hakeswill.
“There’s only one way in, Sergeant, and that’s through this gate. They
can’t assault the walls, because the slope of the ravine is too steep.
See?”
Hakeswill looked to his left and saw that the wall of the Inner Fort
was built on an almost sheer slope. No man could climb that and hope
to assail a wall, even a breached wall, which meant that Dodd was right
and the attackers would have to try -and batter down the four gates
that barred the entranceway, and those gates were defended by Dodd’s
Cobras.
“And my men have never known defeat, Sergeant,” Dodd said.
“They’ve watched other men beaten, but they’ve not been outfought
themselves. And here the enemy will have to beat us. Have to! But
they can’t. They can’t.” He fell silent, his clenched fists resting
on the fire step
The sound of the guns was constant, but the only sign of the
bombardment was the misting smoke that hung over the far side of the
Outer Fort. Manu Bappoo, who commanded there, was now hurrying back
towards the Inner Fort and Dodd watched the Prince climb the steep path
to the gates. The hinges squealed as, one after the other, the gates
were opened to let Bappoo and his aides in. Dodd smiled as the last
gate was unbarred.
“Let’s go and make some mischief,” he said, turning back to the
steps.
Manu Bappoo had already opened the letter that Gopal had given to him.
He looked up as Dodd approached.
“Read it,” he said simply, thrusting the folded paper towards the
Colonel.
“He wants to surrender?” Dodd asked, taking the letter.
“Just read it,” Bappoo said grimly.
The letter was clumsily written, but intelligible. Beny Singh, as
Killa-dar of the Rajah of Berar’s fortress of Gawilghur, was offering
to yield the fort to the British on the sole condition that the lives