in the Cobras. Your havildar speaks some English, doesn’t he?”
“A kind of English, sir,” Hakeswill said.
“Make sure he understands you. The palace guards are to be despatched
to the walls.”
“They will, sir, or else they’ll be dead ‘uns.”
“Very good,” Dodd said.
“But wait ten minutes.”
“I shall, sir. And good day to you, sir.” Hakeswill saluted, about
turned and marched down the ramparts.
Dodd turned back to the Outer Fort. Rockets seared out of the smoke
cloud above which Manu Bappoo’s flag still hung. Faintly, very
faintly, Dodd could hear men shouting, but the sound was being drowned
by the roar of the guns which unsettled the silver-grey monkeys in the
ravine. The beasts turned puzzled black faces up towards the men on
the Inner Fort’s walls as though they could find an answer to the noise
and stink that was consuming the day.
A day which, to Dodd’s way of thinking, was going perfectly.
The 33rd’s Light Company had been waiting a little to the side of the
track and Captain Morris deliberately stayed there, allowing almost all
of Kenny’s assault troops to go past before he led his men out of the
rocks. He thus ensured that he was at the rear of the assault, a place
which offered the greatest measure of safety.
Once Morris moved his men onto the fort’s approach road he deliberately
fell in behind a sepoy ladder party so that his progress was impeded.
He walked at the head of his men, but turned repeatedly.
“Keep in files, Sergeant!” he snapped at Green more than once.
Sharpe walked alongside the company, curbing his long stride to the
slow pace set by Morris. It took a moment to reach the small crest in
the road, but then they were in sight of the fortress and Sharpe could
only stare in awe at the weight of fire that seemed to pour from the
battered walls.
The Mahrattas’ bigger guns had been unseated, but they possessed a
myriad of smaller cannon, some little larger than blunderbusses, and
those weapons now roared and coughed and spat their flames towards the
advancing troops so that the black walls were half obscured behind the
patchwork of smoke that vented from every embrasure. Rockets added to
the confusion. Some hissed up into the sky, but others seared into the
advancing men to slice fiery passages through the ranks.
The leading company had not yet reached the outer breach, but was
hurrying into the narrow space between the precipice to the east and
the tank to the west. They jostled as their files were compressed, and
then the gunfire seemed to concentrate on those men and Sharpe had an
impression of blood misting the air as the round shot slammed home at a
range of a mere hundred paces. There were big round bastions on either
flank of the breach, and their summits were edged with perpetual flame
as the defenders took turns to blast muskets down into the mass of
attackers. The British guns were still firing, their shots exploding
bursts of dust and stone from the breach, or else hammering into the
embrasures in an effort to dull the enemy’s fire.
An aide came running back down the path.
“Hurry!” he called.
“Hurry!”
Morris made no effort to hasten his pace. The leading Scots were past
the tank now and climbing the gentle slope towards the walls, but that
slope became ever steeper as it neared the breach. The man with the
flag was in front, then he was engulfed by Highlanders racing to reach
the stones. Kenny led them, sword in hand. Muskets suddenly flamed
from the breach summit, obscuring it with smoke, and then an
eighteen-pounder shot churned up the smoke and threw up a barrow load
of broken stone amidst which an enemy musket wheeled.
Sharpe quickened his pace. He could feel a kind of rage inside, and he
wondered if that was fear, but there was an excitement too, and an
anxiety that he would miss the fight.
He could see the fight clearly enough, for the breach was high above
the approach road and the Scots, scrambling up using their hands, were