breach summits or make new walls behind the raw new openings, but the
British kept one heavy gUn firing throughout the darkness. They loaded
the eighteen-pounder with canister and,
three times an hour, sprayed the area of the breaches with a cloud of
musket balls to deter any Mahratta from risking his life on the rub
bled slopes.
Few slept well that night. The cough of the gun seemed unnaturally
loud, and even in the British camp men could hear the rattle as the
musket balls whipped against Gawilghur’s wounded walls. And in the
morning, the soldiers knew, they would be asked to go to those walls
and climb the tumbled ramps and fight their way through the shattered
stones. And what would wait for them? At the very least, they
suspected, the enemy would have mounted guns athwart the breaches to
fire across the attack route. They expected blood and pain and
death.
“I’ve never been into a breach,” Garrard told Sharpe. The two men met
at Syud Sevajee’s tents, and Sharpe had given his old friend a bottle
of arrack.
“Nor me,” Sharpe said.
“They say it’s bad.”
“They do,” Sharpe agreed bleakly. It was supposedly the worst ordeal
that any soldier could face.
Garrard drank from the stone bottle, wiped its lip, then handed it to
Sharpe. He admired Sharpe’s coat in the light of the small campfire.
“Smart bit of cloth, Mister Sharpe.”
The coat had been given new white turn backs and cuffs by Clare Wall,
and Sharpe had done his best to make the jacket wrinkled and dusty, but
it still looked expensive.
“Just an old coat, Tom,” he said dismissively.
“Funny, isn’t it? Mister Morris lost a coat.”
“Did he?” Sharpe asked.
“He should be more careful.” He gave Garrard the bottle, then climbed
to his feet.
“I’ve got an errand, Tom.” He held out his hand.
“I’ll look for you tomorrow.”
“I’ll look out for you, Dick.”
Sharpe led Ahmed through the camp. Some men sang around their fires,
others obsessively honed bayonets that were already razor sharp. A
cavalryman had set up a grinding stone and a succession of officers’
servants brought swords and sabres to be given a wicked edge. Sparks
whipped off the stone. The sappers were doing their last job, making
ladders from bamboo that had been carried up from the plain. Major
Stokes supervised the job, and his eyes widened in joy as he saw Sharpe
approaching through the firelight.
“Richard! Is it you? Dear me, it is!
Well, I never! And I thought you were locked up in the enemy’s
dungeons! You escaped?”
Sharpe shook Stokes’s hand.
“I never got taken to Gawilghur. I was held by some horsemen,” he
lied, ‘but they didn’t seem to know what to do with me, so the buggers
just let me go.”
“I’m delighted, delighted!”
Sharpe turned and looked at the ladders.
“I didn’t think we were making an escalade tomorrow?”
“We’re not,” Stokes said, ‘but you never know what obstacles have to be
overcome inside a fortress. Sensible to carry ladders.” He peered at
Ahmed who was now dressed in one of the sepoy’s coats that had been
given to Syud Sevajee. The boy wore the red jacket proudly, even
though it was a poor, threadbare and bloodstained thing.
“I say,” Stokes admired the boy, ‘but you do look like a proper
soldier. Don’t he just?”
Ahmed stood to attention, shouldered his musket and made a smart
about-turn. Major Stokes applauded.
“Well done, lad. I’m afraid you’ve missed all the excitement,
Sharpe.”
“Excitement?”
“Your Captain Torrance died. Shot himself, by the look of things.
Terrible way to go. I feel sorry for his father. He’s a cleric, did
you know? Poor man, poor man. Would you like some tea, Sharpe? Or do
you need to sleep?”
“I’d like some tea, sir.”
“We’ll go to my tent,” Stokes said, leading the way.
“I’ve still got your pack, by the way. You can take it with you.”
“I’d rather you kept it another day,” Sharpe said, “I’ll be busy
tomorrow.”
“Busy?” Stokes asked.
“I’m going in with Kenny’s troops, sir.”
“Dear God,” Stokes said. He stopped and frowned. “I’ve no doubt we’ll