redcoats charging. He should have fired, but instead he ordered his
men to fix their own bayonets and so the enemy was still twisting the
blades onto their muskets when the leading redcoats burst through the
smoke. Sharpe hacked his heavy sword at the front rank, felt it bite
and slide against bone, twisted it free, lunged, kicked at a man, and
suddenly Eli Lockhart was beside him, his sabre slashing down, and two
Highlanders were stabbing with bayonets. Sharpe hacked with the sword
two-handed, fighting in a red rage that had come from the nervousness
that had assailed him during the charge. A sepoy trapped the Cobras’
Havildar, feinted with the bayonet, parried the tulwar’s counter-lunge,
then stabbed the enemy in the belly. The white coats were running now,
fleeing back towards the smoke that boiled up from the gatehouse which
lay beyond the bulge of the hill. Tom Garrard, his bayonet bloodied to
the hilt, kicked at a wounded man who was trying to aim his musket.
Other men stooped to search the dead and dying.
The Scottish Captain came in from the flank. He had the winged
epaulettes of a light company.
“I didn’t know the 74th were up here,” he greeted Sharpe, ‘or is it the
33rd?” He peered at Sharpe’s coat, and Sharpe saw that Clare’s newly
sewn facings had been torn in the climb, revealing the old red material
beneath.
“I’m a lost sheep, sir,” Sharpe said.
“A very welcome lost sheep,” the Captain said, holding out his hand.
“Archibald Campbell, Scotch Brigade. Brought my company up here, just
in case they got bored.”
“Richard Sharpe, 74th,” Sharpe said, shaking Campbell’s hand, ‘and
bloody glad to see you, sir.” Sharpe suddenly wanted to laugh. His
force, which had pierced the Inner Fort’s de fences was a ragged mix of
Indians and British, cavalrymen and infantry. There were kilted
Highlanders from the 78th, some of Campbell’s men from the 94th, maybe
half of the 33rd’s Light Company, and a good number of sepoys.
Campbell had climbed one of the low timber platforms that had let the
defenders peer over the fire step and from its vantage point he stared
at the gatehouse which lay a quarter-mile eastwards.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking, Mister Sharpe?” he asked.
“I’m thinking we should take the gatehouse,” Sharpe said, ‘and open the
gates.”
“Me too.” He shifted to make room for Sharpe on the small platform.
“They’ll no doubt be trying to evict us soon, eh? We’d best make
haste.”
Sharpe stared at the gatehouse where a great smear of smoke showed
above the ramparts that were thick with white-coated Cobras. A shallow
flight of stone stairs led from inside the fortress to the fire step
and the gates could not be opened until that fire step was cleared of
the enemy.
“If I take the fire step he suggested to Campbell, ‘you can open the
gates?”
“That seems a fair division of labour,” Campbell said, jumping down
from the platform. He had lost his hat and a shock of curly black hair
hung over his narrow face. He grinned at Sharpe.
“I’ll take my company and you can have the rest, eh?” Campbell strode
up the hill, shouting for his own Light Company to form in a column of
three ranks.
Sharpe followed Campbell off the platform and summoned the remaining
men into line.
“Captain Campbell’s going to open the gates from the inside,” he told
them, ‘and we’re going to make it possible by clearing the parapets of
the bastards. It’s a fair distance to the gate, but we’ve got to get
there fast. And when we get there, the first thing we do is fire a
volley up at the fire step Clean some of the buggers off before we go
up there. Load your muskets now. Sergeant Green!”
Green, red-faced from the effort of climbing up the ravine and running
to join Sharpe, stepped forward.
“I’m here, sir, and sir-‘ “Number off twenty men, Green,” Sharpe
ordered the panting Sergeant.
“You’ll stay down below and provide covering fire while we climb the
steps, understand?”
“Twenty men, sir? Yes, sir, I will, sir, only it’s Mister Morris,