British pursuit, but, twisting in his saddle, Dodd saw some infantry of
Gawilghur’s garrison standing on the fire step He also saw Manu Bappoo
who had out ridden the British pursuit and now gestured to Dodd from
the gate-tower’s turret.
Dodd told one of his men to hold his horse, then climbed the black
walls to the top fire step of the tower where he stopped in awed
astonishment at the view. It was like standing at the edge of the
world.
The plain was so far beneath and the southern horizon so far away that
there was nothing in front of his eyes but endless sky. This, Dodd
thought, was a god’s view of earth. The eagle’s view. He leaned over
the parapet and saw his guns struggling up the narrow road. They would
not reach the fort till long after nightfall.
“You were right, Colonel,” Manu Bappoo said ruefully.
Dodd straightened to look at the Mahratta prince.
“It’s dangerous to fight the British in open fields,” he said, ‘but
here .. . ?” Dodd gestured at the approach road.
“Here they will die, sahib.”
“The fort’s main entrance,” Bappoo said in his sibilant voice, ‘is on
the other side. To the north.”
Dodd turned and gazed across the roof of the central palace. He could
see little of the great fortress’s northern de fences though a long way
away he could see another tower like the one on which he now stood.
“Is the main entrance as difficult to approach as this one?” he asked.
I “No, but it isn’t easy. The enemy has to approach along a narrow
strip of rock, then fight through the Outer Fort. After that comes a
ravine, and then the Inner Fort. I want you to guard the inner
gate.”
Dodd looked suspiciously at Bappoo.
“Not the Outer Fort?” Dodd reckoned his Cobras should guard the place
where the British would attack. That way the British would be
defeated.
“The Outer Fort is a trap,” Bappoo explained. He looked tired, but the
defeat at Argaum had not destroyed his spirit, merely sharpened his
appetite for revenge.
“If the British capture the Outer Fort they will think they have won.
They won’t know that an even worse barrier waits beyond the ravine.
That barrier has to be held. I don’t care if the Outer Fort falls, but
we must hold the Inner. That means our best troops must be there.”
“It will be held,” Dodd said.
Bappoo turned and stared southwards. Somewhere in the heat-hazed
distance the British forces were readying to march on Gawilghur.
“I
thought we could stop them at Argaum,” he admitted softly.
Dodd, who had advised against fighting at Argaum, said nothing.
“But here,” Bappoo went on, ‘they will be stopped.”
Here, Dodd thought, they would have to be stopped. He had deserted
from the East India Company’s army because he faced trial and
execution, but also because he believed he could make a fortune as a
mercenary serving the Mahrattas. So far he had endured three defeats,
and each time he had led his men safe out of the disaster, but from
Gawilghur there would be no escape. The British would block every
approach, so the British must be stopped. They must fail in this high
place, and so they would, Dodd consoled himself. For nothing
imaginable could take this fort. He was on the world’s edge, lifted
into the sky, and for the redcoats it would be like scaling the very
heights of heaven.
So here, at last, deep inside India, the redcoats would be beaten.
Six. cavalrymen in the blue and yellow coats of the igth Light
Dragoons waited outside the house where Captain Torrance was said to be
billeted. They were under the command of a long-legged sergeant who
was lounging on a bench beside the door. The Sergeant glanced up as
Sharpe approached.
“I hope you don’t want anything useful out of the bastards,” he said
acidly, then saw that the shabby-uniformed Sharpe, despite wearing a
pack like any common soldier, also had a sash and a sabre. He
scrambled to his feet.
“Sorry, sir.”
Sharpe waved him back down onto the bench.
“Useful?” he asked.