scorn.
“Move, move, move!” a major shouted at Morris.
“The job ain’t done yet! Move on!” He waved southwards.
“Sergeant Green,” Morris said reluct andy ‘gather the men.”
Sharpe walked up the hill, going to the high spot in the fort, and once
there he stared southwards. Beneath him the ground fell away, gently
at first, then steeply until it disappeared in a rocky ravine that was
deep in shadow. But the far slope was sunlit, and that slope was a
precipitous climb to an unbreached wall, and at the wall’s eastern end
was a massive gatehouse, far bigger than the one that had just been
captured, and that far gatehouse was thick with soldiers. Some had
white coats, and Sharpe knew those men. He had fought them before.
“Bloody hell,” he said softly.
“What is it?”
Sharpe turned and saw Garrard had followed him.
“Looks bloody nasty to me, Tom.”
Garrard stared at the Inner Fort. From here he could see the palace,
the gardens and the de fences and suddenly those de fences were blotted
out by smoke as the guns across the ravine opened fire on the redcoats
who now spread across the Outer Fort. The round shot screamed past
Sharpe and Garrard.
“Bloody hell,” Sharpe said again. He had just fought his way through a
breach to help capture a fort, only to find that the day’s real work
had scarcely begun.
Manu Bappoo had hoped to defend the breaches by concentrating his best
fighters, the Lions of Allah, at their summits, but that hope had been
defeated by the British guns that had continued to fire at the breaches
until the redcoats were almost at the top of the ramps. No defender
could stand in the breach and hope to live, not until the guns ceased
fire, and by then the leading attackers were almost at the summit and
so the Lions of Allah had been denied the advantage of higher ground.
The attackers and defenders had clashed amidst the dust and smoke at
the top of the breach and there the greater height and strength of the
Scotsmen had prevailed. Manu Bappoo had raged at his men, he had
fought in their front rank and taken a wound in his shoulder, but his
Arabs had retreated. They had gone back to the upper breaches, and
there the redcoats, helped by their remorseless cannon, had prevailed
again, and Bappoo knew the Outer Fort was lost. In itself that was no
great loss. Nothing precious was stored in the Outer Fort, it was
merely an elaborate defence to slow an attacker as he approached the
ravine, but Bappoo was galled by the swiftness of the British victory.
For a while he swore at the redcoats and tried to rally his men to
defend the gatehouse, but the British were now swarming over the
breaches, the gunners on the walls were abandoning their weapons, and
Bappoo knew it was time to pull back into the stronghold of the Inner
Fort.
“Go back!” he shouted.
“Go back!” His white tunic was soaked in his own blood, but the wound
was to his left shoulder and he could still wield the gold-hilted
tulwar that had been a gift from his brother.
“Go back!”
The defenders retreated swiftly and the attackers seemed too spent to
pursue. Bappoo waited until the last, and then he walked backwards,
facing the enemy and daring them to come and kill him, but they simply
watched him go. In a moment, he knew, they would reorganize themselves
and advance to the ravine, but by then he and his troops would be
safely locked within the greater fortress.
The last sight Bappoo had of the Delhi Gate was of an enemy flag being
hauled to the top of the pole that had held his own flag, then he
dropped down the steep slope and was hustled through the south gate by
his bodyguard. The path now ran obliquely down the steep side of the
ravine before turning a hairpin bend to climb to the Inner Fort. The
first of his men were already scrambling up that farther path. The
gunners on the southern wall, who had been trying to stop the redcoats