astonished him. He disliked being beholden to such a man, but the
General knew he would not be alive if Sharpe had not risked his own
life.
“I should never have given Sharpe a commission,” he said ruefully.
“A
man like that would have been quite content with a fiscal reward. A
fungible reward. That’s what our men want, Campbell, something that
can be turned into rum or arrack.”
“He appears to be a sober man, sir,” Campbell said.
“Probably because he can’t afford the drink! Officers’ messes are
damned expensive places, Campbell, as you well know. I reward Sharpe
by plunging him into debt, eh? And God knows if the Rifles are any
cheaper. I can’t imagine they will be. He needs something fungible,
Campbell, something fungible.” Wellesley turned and rummaged in the
saddlebags that were piled behind his chair. He brought out the new
telescope with the shallow eyepiece that had been a gift from the
merchants of Madras.
“Find a goldsmith in the camp followers, Campbell, and see if the
fellow can replace that brass plate.”
“With what, sir?”
Nothing too flowery, the General thought, because the glass was only
going to be pawned to pay mess bills or buy gin.
“In gratitude, AW,” he said, ‘and add the date of Assaye. Then give it
to Sharpe with my compliments.”
“It’s very generous of you, sir,” Campbell said, taking the glass, ‘but
perhaps it would be better if you presented it to him?”
“Maybe, maybe. Blackiston! Where do we site guns?” The General
unrolled the sketches.
“Candles,” he ordered, for the light was fading fast.
The shadows stretched and joined and turned to night around the British
camp. Candles were lit, lanterns hung from ridge-poles and fires fed
with bullock dung. The picquets stared at shadows in the darkness, but
some, lifting their gaze, saw that high above them the tops of the
cliffs were still in daylight and there, like the home of the gods, the
walls of a fortress showed deadly black where Gawilghur waited their
coming.
CHAPTER 5
The first part of the road was easy enough to build, for the existing
track wound up the gender slopes of the foothills, but even on the
first day Major Elliott was filled with gloom.
“Can’t do it in a week!” the engineer grumbled.
“Man’s mad! Expects miracles. Jacob’s ladder, that’s what he wants.”
He cast a morbid eye over Sharpe’s bullocks, all of them prime Mysore
beasts with brightly painted horns from which tassels and small bells
hung.
“Never did like working with oxen,” Elliott complained.
“Bring any elephants?”
“I can ask for them, sir.”
“Nothing like an elephant. Right, Sharpe, load the beasts with small
stones and keep following the track till you catch up with me. Got
that?”
Elliott hauled himself onto his horse and settled his feet in the
stirrups.
“Bloody miracles, that’s what he wants,” the Major growled, then
spurred onto the track.
“Elliott!” Major Simons, who commanded the half-battalion of sepoys
who guarded the pioneers building the road, called in alarm.
“I haven’t reconnoitred beyond the small hillock! The one with the two
trees.”
“Can’t wait for your fellows to wake up, Simons. Got a road to build
in a week. Can’t be done, of course, but we must look willing.
Pinckney! I need a havildar and some stout fellows to carry pegs. Tell
’em to follow me.”
Captain Pinckney, the officer in charge of the East India Company
pioneers, spat onto the verge.
“Waste of bloody time.”
“What is?” Sharpe asked.
“Pegging out the route! We follow the footpath, of course. Bloody
natives have been scurrying up and down these hills for centuries.” He
turned and shouted at a havildar to organize a party to follow Elliott
up the hill, then set the rest of his men to loading the oxen’s
panniers with small stones.
The road made good progress, despite Elliott’s misgivings, and three
days after they had begun the pioneers cleared a space among the trees
to establish a makeshift artillery park where the siege guns could wait
while the rest of the road was forged. Sharpe was busy and, because of
that, happy. He liked Simons and Pinckney, and even Elliott proved