sir.”
Green sounded embarrassed.
“What about him?” Sharpe asked.
“He’s recovered, sir. His tummy, sir, it got better’ Green managed to
keep a straight face as he delivered that news ‘and he said no one else
was to climb the cliff, sir, and he sent me to fetch the men what had
climbed it back down again. That’s why I’m here, sir.”
“No, you’re not,” Sharpe said.
“You’re here to number off twenty men who’ll give the rest of us
covering fire.”
Green hesitated, looked at Sharpe’s face, then nodded.
“Right you are, sir! Twenty men, covering fire.”
“Thank you, Sergeant,” Sharpe said. So Morris was conscious again, and
probably already making trouble, but Sharpe could not worry about that.
He looked at his men. They numbered seventy or eighty now, and still
more Scotsmen and sepoys were coming up the cliff and crossing the
wall. He waited until they all had loaded muskets and their ramrods
were back in their hoops.
“Just follow me, lads, and when we get there kill the bastards. Now!”
He turned and faced east.
“Come on!”
“At the double!” Campbell called to his company.
“Forward!”
The fox was in the henhouse. Feathers would fly.
CHAPTER 11
The 74th, climbing the road that led from the plain to Gawilghur’s
Southern Gate, could hear the distant musketry sounding like a burning
thorn grove. It crackled, flared up to a crescendo, then faded again.
At times it seemed as though it would die altogether and then, just as
sweating men decided the battle must be over, it rattled loud and
furious once more. There was nothing the 74th could do to help. They
were still three hundred feet beneath the fortress and from now on they
would be within killing range of the guns mounted on Gawilghur’s
south-facing ramparts. Those guns had been firing at the 74th for over
an hour now, but the range had been long and the downward angle steep,
so that not a ball had struck home. If the 74th had had their own
artillery, they could have fired back, but the slope was too steep for
any gun to fire effectively. The gunners would have had to site their
cannon on a steep upwards ramp, and every shot would have threatened to
turn the guns over. The 74th could go no farther, not without taking
needless casualties, and so Wellesley halted them. If the defenders on
the southern wall looked few he might contemplate an escalade, but the
sepoys carrying the ladders had fallen far behind the leading troops so
no such attack could be contemplated yet. Nor did the General truly
expect to try such an assault, for the 74th’s task had always been to
keep some of the fort’s defenders pinned to their southern walls while
the real attack came from the north. That purpose, at least, was being
accomplished, for the walls facing the steep southern slope looked
thick with defenders.
Sir Arthur Wellesley dismounted from his horse and climbed to a vantage
point from which he could stare at the fortress. Colonel Wallace and a
handful of aides followed, and the officers settled by some rocks from
where they tried to work out what the noise of the battle meant.
“No guns,” Wellesley said after cocking his head to the distant
sound.
“No guns, sir?” an aide asked.
“There’s no sound of cannon fire,” Colonel Wallace explained, ‘which
surely means the Outer Fort is taken.”
“But not the Inner?” the aide asked.
Sir Arthur did not even bother to reply. Of course the Inner Fort was
not taken, otherwise the sound of fighting would have died away
altogether and fugitives would be streaming from the Southern Gate
towards the muskets of the 74th. And somehow, despite his misgivings,
Wellesley had dared to hope that Kenny’s assault would wash over both
sets of ramparts, and that by the time the 74th reached the road’s
summit the great Southern Gate would already have been opened by
triumphant redcoats. Instead a green and gold flag hung from the gate
tower which bristled with the muskets of its defenders.
Wellesley now wished that he had ridden to the plateau and followed
Kenny’s men through the breaches. What the hell was happening? He had