Colonel Wallace, Wellesley’s healthy brigade commander, had also
dismounted and was inspecting the fortress through his own glass.
“Devil of a place, Sir Arthur,” Wallace said “How high is it,
Blackiston?” Wellesley called to one of his aides, an engineer.
“I took a triangulation yesterday, sir,” Blackiston said, ‘and
discovered the fortress walls are eighteen hundred feet above the
plain.”
“Is there water up there?” Colonel Butters, the chief engineer,
asked.
“We hear there is, sir,” Blackiston said.
“There are tanks in the fort;
huge things like lakes.”
“But the water level must be low this year?” Butters suggested.
“I doubt it’s low enough, sir,” Blackiston murmured, knowing that
Butters had been hoping that thirst might defeat the garrison.
“And the rascals will have food, no doubt,” Wellesley commented.
“Doubtless,” Wallace agreed drily.
“Which means they’ll have to be prised out,” the General said, then
bent to the glass again and lowered the lens to look at the foothills
below the bluff. Just south of the fort was a conical hill that rose
almost halfway up the flank of the great promontory.
“Can we get guns on that near hill?” he asked.
There was a pause while the other officers decided which hill he was
referring to. Colonel Butters flinched.
“We can get them up there, sir, but I doubt they’ll have the elevation
to reach the fort.”
“You’ll get nothing bigger than a twelve-pounder up there,” Wallace
said dubiously, then slid the telescope’s view up the bluff to the
walls.
“And you’ll need bigger shot than twelve-pounders to break down that
wall.”
“Sir Arthur!” The warning call came from the officer commanding the
East India Company cavalry who was pointing to where a group of
Mahratta horsemen had appeared in the south. They had evidently been
following the lingering dust cloud left by the General’s party and,
though the approaching horsemen only numbered about twenty men, the
sepoy cavalry wheeled to face them and spread into a line.
“It’s all right,” Wellesley called, ‘they’re ours. I asked them to
meet us here.” He had inspected the approaching horsemen through his
telescope and now, waving the sepoy cavalry back, he walked to greet
the silladars.
“Syud Sevajee,” Wellesley acknowledged the man in the shabby green and
silver coat who led the cavalrymen, ‘thank you for coming.”
Syud Sevajee nodded brusquely at Wellesley, then stared up at
Gawilghur.
“You think you can get in?”
“I think we must,” Wellesley said.
“No one ever has,” Sevajee said with a sly smile.
Wellesley returned the smile, but slowly, as if accepting the implied
challenge, and then, as Sevajee slid down from his saddle, the General
turned to Wallace.
“You’ve met Syud Sevajee, Wallace?”
“I’ve not had that pleasure, sir.”
Wellesley made the introduction, then added that Syud Sevajee’s father
had been one of the Rajah of Berar’s generals.
“But is no longer?” Wallace asked Sevajee.
“Beny Singh murdered him,” Sevajee said grimly, ‘so I fight with you,
Colonel, to gain my chance to kill Beny Singh. And Beny Singh now
commands that fortress.” He nodded towards the distant promontory.
“So how do we get inside?” Wellesley asked.
The officers gathered around Sevajee as the Indian drew his tulwar and
used its tip to draw a figure eight in the dust. He tapped the lower
circle of the eight, which he had drawn far larger than the upper.
“That’s what you’re looking at,” he said, ‘the Inner Fort. And there
are only two entrances. There’s a road that climbs up from the plain
and goes to the Southern Gate.” He drew a squiggly line that tailed
away from the bottom of the figure eight.
“But that road is impossible. You will climb straight into their guns.
A child with a pile of rocks could keep an army from climbing that
road. The only possible route into the Inner Fort is through the main
entrance.” He scratched a brief line across the junction of the two
circles.
“Which will not be easy?” Wellesley asked drily.
Sevajee offered the General a grim smile.
“The main entrance is a long corridor, barred by four gates and flanked
by high walls. But even to reach it, Sir Arthur, you will have to take