hills.
The lower slopes were green with trees, but above the timber line there
was nothing but brown and grey cliffs that stretched from horizon to
horizon. And at the very top of the topmost bluff he could just see a
streak of dark wall broken by a gate-tower.
“Gawilghur!” Lockhart said.
“How the hell do we attack up there?” Sharpe asked.
The Sergeant laughed.
“We don’t! It’s a job for the infantry. Reckon you’re better off
attached to that fellow Torrance.”
Sharpe shook his head.
“I have to get in there, Eli.”
“Why?”
Sharpe gazed at the distant wall.
“There’s a fellow called Dodd in there, and the bastard killed a friend
of mine.”
Lockhart thought for a second.
“Seven hundred guineas Dodd?”
“That’s the fellow,” Sharpe said.
“But I’m not after the reward. I just want to see the bugger dead.”
“Me too,” Lockhart said grimly.
“You?”
“Assaye,” Lockhart said brusquely.
“What happened?”
“We charged his troops. They were knocking seven kinds of hell out of
the 74th and we caught the buggers in line. Knocked ’em hard back, but
we must have had a dozen troopers unhorsed. We didn’t stop, though, we
just kept after their cavalry and it wasn’t till the battle was over
that we found our lads. They’d had their throats cut. All of them.”
“That sounds like Dodd,” Sharpe said. The renegade Englishman liked to
spread terror. Make a man afraid, Dodd had once told Sharpe, and he
won’t fight you so hard.
“So maybe I’ll go into Gawilghur with you,” Lockhart said.
“Cavalry?” Sharpe asked.
“They won’t let cavalry into a real fight.”
Lockhart grinned.
“I couldn’t let an ensign go into a fight without help. Poor little
bugger might get hurt.”
Sharpe laughed. The cavalry had swerved off the road to pass a long
column of marching infantry who had set off before dawn on their march
to Deogaum. The leading regiment was Sharpe’s own, the 74th, and
Sharpe moved even farther away from the road so that he would not have
to acknowledge the men who had wanted to be rid of him, but Ensign
Venables spotted him, leaped the roadside ditch, and ran to his side.
“Going up in the world, Richard?” Venables asked.
“Borrowed glory,” Sharpe said.
“The horse belongs to the igth.”
Venables looked slightly relieved that Sharpe had not suddenly been
able to afford a horse.
“Are you with the pioneers now?” he asked.
“Nothing so grand,” Sharpe said, reluctant to admit that he had been
reduced to being a bullock guard.
Venables did not really care.
“Because that’s what we’re doing,” he explained, ‘escorting the
pioneers. It seems they have to make a road.”
“Up there?” Sharpe guessed, nodding towards the fortress that
dominated the plain.
“Captain Urquhart says you might be selling your commission,” Venables
said.
“Does he?”
“Are you?”
“Are you making an offer?”
“I’ve got a brother, you see,” Venables explained.
“Three actually.
And some sisters. My father might buy.” He took a piece of paper from
a pocket and handed it up to Sharpe.
“So if you go home, why not see my pater? That’s his address. He
reckons one of my brothers should join the army. Ain’t any good for
anything else, see?”
“I’ll think on it,” Sharpe said, taking the paper. The cavalry had
stretched ahead and so he clapped his heels back, and the horse jerked
forward, throwing Sharpe back in the saddle. For a second he sprawled,
almost falling over the beast’s rump, then he flailed wildly to catch
his balance and just managed to grasp the saddle pommel. He thought he
heard laughter as he trotted away from the battalion.
Gawilghur soared above the plain like a threat and Sharpe felt like a
poacher with nowhere to hide. From up there, Sharpe reckoned, the
approaching British army would look like so many ants in the dust. He
wished he had a telescope to stare at the high, distant fortress, but
he had been reluctant to spend money. He was not sure why. It was not
that he was poor, indeed there were few soldiers richer, yet he feared
that the real reason was that he felt fraudulent wearing an officer’s