dead.
“They’ll find one,” Pinckney grumbled.
“If there’s something the
King’s army doesn’t need then you can be sure they’ve got a healthy
supply of it.”
“The Company army’s better?” Sharpe asked.
“It is,” Major Simons said.
“We work for a sterner master than you, Sharpe. It’s called
book-keeping. You fight for victories, we fight for profits.
Leadenhall Street won’t pay for fancy engineers in blue coats, not when
they can hire plain men like us at half the cost.”
“They could afford me,” Sharpe said.
“Cheap as they come, I am.”
Next morning Simons threw a strong picquet line ahead of the work
parties, but no Mahrattas opposed the pioneers who were now widening
the track where it twisted up a bare and steep slope that was littered
with rocks. The track was ancient, worn into the hills by generations
of travellers, but it had never been used by wagons, let alone by heavy
guns. Merchants who wanted to carry their goods up the escarpment had
used the road leading directly to the fortress’s Southern Gate, while
this track, which looped miles to the east of Gawilghur, was little
more than a series of paths connecting the upland valleys where small
farms had been hacked from the jungle. It was supposed to be tiger
country, but Sharpe saw none of the beasts. At dawn he had returned to
Deogaum to collect rice for the sepoys, and then spent the next four
hours climbing back to where the pioneers were working. He was nervous
at first, both of tigers and of an enemy ambush, but the worst he
suffered was a series of drenching rainstorms that swept up the
mountains.
The rain stopped when he reached the working parties who were driving
the road through a small ridge. Pinckney was setting a charge of
gunpowder that would loosen the rock and let him cut out a mile of
looping track. His servant brought a mug of tea that Sharpe drank
sitting on a rock. He stared southwards, watching the veils of grey
rain sweep across the plain.
“Did Wellesley say anything about sending a new engineer?” Major
Simons asked him.
“I just collected the rice, sir,” Sharpe said.
“I didn’t see the General.”
“I thought you were supposed to be a friend of his?” Simons observed
sourly.
“Everyone thinks that,” Sharpe said, ‘except him and me.”
“But you saved his life?”
Sharpe shrugged.
“I reckon so. Either that or stopped him getting captured.”
“And killed a few men doing it, I hear?”
Sharpe looked at the tall Simons with some surprise, for he had not
realized that his exploit had become common knowledge.
“Don’t remember much about it.”
“I suppose not. Still,” Simons said, ‘a feather in your cap?”
“I don’t think Wellesley thinks that,” Sharpe said.
“You’re a King’s officer now, Sharpe,” Simons said enviously. As an
East India Company officer he was trapped in the Company’s cumbersome
system of promotion.
“If Wellesley thrives, he’ll remember you.”
Sharpe laughed.
“I doubt it, sir. He ain’t the sort.” He turned southwards again
because Ahmed had called a warning in Arabic. The boy was pointing
downhill and Sharpe stood to see over the crown of the slope. Far
beneath him, where the road passed through one of the lush valleys, a
small party of horsemen was approaching and one of the riders was in a
blue coat.
“Friends, Ahmed!” he called.
“Looks like the new engineer,” Sharpe said to Simons.
“Pinckney will be delighted,” Simons said sarcastically.
Pinckney came back to inspect the approaching party through a
telescope, and spat when he saw the blue coat of the Royal Engineers.
“Another interfering bastard to teach me how to suck eggs,” he said.
“So let’s blow the charge before he gets here, otherwise he’ll tell us
we’re doing it all wrong.”
A crowd of grinning sepoys waited expectantly about the end of the
fuse. Pinckney struck a light, put it to the quick match then watched
the sparks smoke their way towards the distant charge. The smoke trail
vanished in grass and it seemed to Sharpe that it must have
extinguished itself, but then there was a violent coughing sound and
the small ridge heaved upwards. Soil and stone flew outwards in a