“Sharpe, sir.”
The name rang a bell in Kenny’s mind.
“Wellesley’s man?”
“Don’t know about that, sir.”
Kenny scowled at the evasion.
“You were at Assaye, yes?”
“Yes, sir,” Sharpe admitted.
Kenny’s expression softened. He knew of Sharpe and he admired a brave
man.
“So what the devil are you doing here, Sharpe? Your regiment is miles
away! They’re climbing the road from Deogaum.”
“I was stranded here, sir,” Sharpe said, deciding there was no point in
trying to deliver a longer explanation, ‘and there wasn’t time to join
the 74th, sir, so I was hoping to go with my old company. That’s
Captain Morris’s men, sir.” He nodded up the track to where the 33rd’s
Light Company was gathered among some boulders.
“With your permission of course, sir.”
“No doubt Morris will be glad of your help, Sharpe,” Kenny said, ‘as
will I.” He was impressed by Sharpe’s appearance, for the Ensign was
tall, evidently strong and had a roguish fierceness about his face. In
the breach, the Colonel knew, victory or defeat as often as not came
down to a man’s skill and strength, and Sharpe looked as if he knew how
to use his weapons.
“Good luck to you, Sharpe.”
“And the best to you, sir,” Sharpe said warmly.
He walked on, his borrowed musket heavy on his shoulder. Eli Lockhart
and Syud Sevajee were waiting with their men among the third group, the
soldiers who would occupy the fort after the assault troops had done
their work, if, indeed, the leading two thousand men managed to get
through the walls. A rumour was spreading that the breaches were too
steep and that no one could carry a weapon and climb the ramps at the
same time. The men believed they would need to use their hands to
scramble up the stony piles, and so they would be easy targets for any
defenders at the top of the breaches. The gunners, they grumbled,
should have brought down more of the wall, if not all of it, and the
proof of that assertion was the guns’ continual firing. Why would the
guns go on gnawing at the wall if the breaches were already practical?
They could hear the strike of round shot on stone, hear the occasional
tumble of rubble, but what they could not hear was any fire from the
fortress. The bastards were saving their fire for the assault.
Sharpe edged among sepoys who were carrying one of Major Stokes’s
bamboo ladders. The dark faces grinned at him, and one man offered
Sharpe a canteen which proved to contain a strongly spiced arrack.
Sharpe took a small sip, then amused the sepoys by pretending to be
astonished by the liquor’s fierceness.
“That’s rare stuff, lads,” Sharpe said, then walked on towards his old
comrades. They watched his approach with a mixture of surprise,
welcome and apprehension. When the 33rd’s Light Company had last seen
Sharpe he had been a sergeant, and not long before that he had been a
private strapped to the punishment triangle; now he wore a sword and
sash. Although officers promoted from the ranks were not supposed to
serve with their old units, Sharpe had friends among these men and if
he was to climb the steep rubble of Gawilghur’s breaches then he would
rather do it among friends.
Captain Morris was no friend, and he watched Sharpe’s approach with
foreboding. Sharpe headed straight for his old company commander.
“Good to see you, Charles,” he said, knowing that his use of the
Christian name would irritate Morris.
“Nice morning, eh?”
Morris looked left and right as though seeking someone who could help
him confront this upstart from his past. Morris had never liked
Sharpe, indeed he had conspired with Obadiah Hakeswill to have Sharpe
flogged in the hope that the punishment would end in death, but Sharpe
had survived and had been commissioned. Now the bastard was being
familiar, and there was nothing Morris could do about it.
“Sharpe,” he managed to say.
“Thought I’d join you, Charles,” Sharpe said airily.
“I’ve been stranded up here, and Kenny reckoned I might be useful to
you.”
“Of course,” Morris said, conscious of his men’s gaze. Morris would