“He ain’t going to see the dawn, is he?”
“Got more lives than a basketful of bleeding cats, that one,” Hakeswill
said.
“If I had any sense I’d slit his throat now.”
“No!” Sajit said.
“He was promised to my uncle.”
“And your uncle’s paying us, yes?”
“That too is agreed,” Sajit said.
Hakeswill stood and walked to Sharpe’s unconscious body.
“I put those stripes on his back,” he said proudly.
“Lied through my teeth, I did, and had Sharpie flogged. Now I’ll have
him killed.” He remembered how Sharpe had flung him among the tigers
and his face twitched as he recalled the elephant trying to crush him
to death, and in his sudden rage he kicked at Sharpe and went on
kicking until Kendrick hauled him away.
“If you kill him, Sarge,” Kendrick said, ‘then the blackies won’t pay
us, will they?”
Hakeswill let himself be pulled away.
“So how will your uncle kill him?” he asked Sajit.
“His jet tis will do it.”
“I’ve seen them bastards at work,” Hakeswill said in a tone of
admiration.
“Just make it slow. Make it slow and make it bleeding painful.”
“It will be slow,” Sajit promised, ‘and very painful. My uncle is not
a merciful man.”
“But I am,” Hakeswill said.
“I am. Because I’m letting another man have the pleasure of killing
Sharpie.” He spat at Sharpe.
“Dead by dawn, Sharpie. You’ll be down with Old Nick, where you ought
to be!”
He settled against one of the tent poles and trickled jewels from one
palm to the other. Flies crawled among the crusting blood in Sharpe’s
hair. The Ensign would be dead by dawn, and Hakeswill was a rich man.
Revenge, the Sergeant decided, was sweet as honey.
Ahmed saw Sharpe fall back from the tent entrance, saw blood bright on
his forehead, then watched as hands seized Sharpe and dragged him into
the deep shadows.
Then Sajit, the clerk with the pink umbrella, turned towards him.
“Boy,” he snapped, ‘come here!”
Ahmed pretended not to understand, though he understood well enough
that he was a witness to something deeply wrong. He backed away,
tugging Major Stokes’s mare with him. He let the musket slip down from
his shoulder and Sajit, seeing the threat, suddenly rushed at him, but
Ahmed was even faster. He jumped up to sprawl across the saddle and,
without bothering to seat himself properly, kicked the horse into
motion. The startled mare leaped away as Ahmed hauled himself onto her
back. The stirrups were too long for him, but Ahmed had been raised
with horses and could have ridden the mare bareback, blindfolded and
back to front. He swerved southwards, galloping between tents, fires
and grazing bullocks, and leaving Sajit far behind. A woman shouted a
protest as he nearly galloped over her children. He slowed the mare as
he reached the edge of the encampment and looked back to see that he
had left Sajit far behind.
What the hell should he do? He knew no one in the British camp. He
looked up at the high summit where Gawilghur just showed. He supposed
his old comrades in Manu Bappoo’s Lions of Allah were up there, but his
uncle, with whom he had travelled from Arabia, was dead and buried in
Argaum’s black earth. He knew other soldiers in the regiment, but he
also feared them. Those other soldiers wanted Ahmed to be their
servant, and not just to cook for them and clean their weapons. Sharpe
alone had shown him friendliness, and Sharpe now needed help, but Ahmed
did not know how to provide it. He thought about the problem as he
knotted the stirrup leathers.
The plump, red-faced and white-haired man in the hills had been
friendly, but how was Ahmed to talk to him? He decided he ought to try
and so he turned the horse, planning to ride her all about the camp
perimeter and then back up the road into the hills, but an officer of
the camp picquets saw him. The man was riding a horse and he spurred
it close to Ahmed and noted the British saddle cloth.
“What are you doing, boy?” he asked. The officer presumed Ahmed was