looked relieved at his confidence, then some of them looked nervous
again as they watched a sepoy coming up the track with a British flag
in his hands. Colonel Kenny and his aides walked behind the man, all
with drawn swords. Captain Morris drank deep from his canteen, and the
smell of rum wafted to Sharpe.
The guns fired on, crumbling the breaches’ shoulders and filling the
air with smoke and dust as they tried to make the rough way smooth.
Soldiers, sensing that the order to advance was about to be given,
stood and hefted their weapons. Some touched rabbits’ feet hidden in
pockets, or whatever other small token gave them a finger hold on
life.
One man vomited, another trembled. Sweat poured down their faces.
“Four ranks,” Morris said.
“Into ranks! Quick now!” Sergeant Green snapped. An howitzer shell
arced overhead then plummeted towards the fort trailing its wisp of
fuse smoke. Sharpe heard the shell explode, then watched another shell
follow. A man dashed out of the ranks into the rocks, lowered his
trousers and emptied his bowels. Everyone pretended not to notice
until the smell struck them, then they jeered as the embarrassed man
went back to his place.
“That’s enough!” Green said.
A sepoy drummer with an old-fashioned mitred shako on his head gave his
drum a couple of taps, while a piper from the Scotch Brigade filled his
bag then settled the instrument under his elbow. Colonel Kenny was
looking at his watch. The guns fired on, their smoke drifting down to
the waiting men. The sepoy with the flag was at the front of the
forming column, and Sharpe guessed the enemy must be able to see the
bright tip of the colour above the rocky crest.
Sharpe took the bayonet from his belt and slotted it onto the musket.
He was not wearing the sabre that Ahmed had stolen from Morris, for he
knew the weapon would be identifiable, and so he had a tulwar that he
had borrowed from Syud Sevajee. He did not trust the weapon. He had
seen too many Indian blades break in combat. Besides he was used to a
musket and bayonet.
“Fix bayonets!” Morris ordered, prompted by the sight of Sharpe’s
blade.
“And save your fire till you’re hard in the breach,” Sharpe added.
“You’ve got one shot, lads, so don’t waste it. You won’t have time to
reload till you’re through both walls.”
Morris scowled at this unasked-for advice, but the men seemed grateful
for it, just as they were grateful that they were not in the front
ranks of Kenny’s force. That honour had gone to the Grenadier Company
of the 94th who thus formed the Forlorn Hope. Usually the Hope, that
group of men who went first into a breach to spring the enemy traps and
fight down the immediate defenders, was composed of volunteers, but
Kenny had decided to do without a proper Forlorn Hope. He wanted to
fill the breaches quickly and so overwhelm the de fences by numbers,
and thus hard behind the Scotch Brigade’s grenadiers were two more
companies of Scots, then came the sepoys and Morris’s men. Hard and
fast, Kenny had told them, hard and fast.
Leave the wounded behind you, he had ordered, and just get up the
damned breaches and start killing.
The Colonel looked at his watch a last time, then snapped its lid shut
and put it into a pocket. He took a breath, hefted his sword, then
shouted one word.
“Now!”
And the flag went forward across the crest and behind it came a wave of
men who hurried towards the walls.
For a few seconds the fortress was silent, then the first rocket was
fired. It seared towards the advancing troops, trailing its plume of
thick smoke, then abruptly twisted and climbed into the clear sky.
Then the guns began.
Colonel William Dodd saw the errant rocket twist into the sky, falter
amidst a growing tumult of its own smoke, then fall. Manu Bappoo’s
guns began to fire and Dodd knew, though he could not see over the loom
of the Outer Fort, that the British attack was coming.
“Gopal!” he called to his second in command.