exercising the horse, but Ahmed took fright at the challenge and kicked
back.
“Thief!” the officer shouted and gave chase.
“Stop! Thief!”
A sepoy turned with his musket and Ahmed nudged the horse so that she
ran the man down. There was a group of houses close by and Ahmed
turned towards them, jumped a garden wall, thumped through some beds of
vegetables, jumped another wall, ducked under some fruit trees, jumped
a hedge and splashed through a muddy pond before kicking the horse up a
bank and into some trees. The officer had not dared follow him through
the gardens, but Ahmed could hear the hue and cry beyond the houses. He
patted the mare’s neck as she threaded through the trees, then curbed
her at the wood’s edge. There was about a half-mile of open country,
then more thick woods that promised safety if only the tired mare could
make the distance without faltering.
“If Allah wills it,” Ahmed said, then kicked the horse into a gallop.
His pursuers were well behind, but they saw him break cover and now a
dozen horsemen were chasing him. Someone fired at him. He heard the
musket shot, but the ball went nowhere near him. He leaned over the
mane and just let the horse run. He looked back once and saw the
pursuers bunching in his path, and then he was in the trees and he
twisted northwards, cut back west, then went north again, going ever
deeper into the woods until at last he slowed the blowing horse so that
the sound of her thumping hooves would not betray him.
He listened. He could hear other horses blundering through the leaves,
but they were not coming any closer, and then he began to wonder if it
would not be better to let himself be caught after all, for surely
someone among the British would speak his language? Maybe if he went
all the way to where the men were making the road in the hills he would
be too late to help Sharpe. He felt miserable, utterly unsure what he
should do, and then he decided he must go back and find help within the
encampment and so he turned the horse back towards his pursuers.
And saw a musket pointing straight at his throat.
The man holding the musket was an Indian and had one of the spiralling
brass helmets that the Mahrattas wore. He was a cavalryman, but he had
picketed his horse a few yards away and had crept up on Ahmed on foot.
The man grinned.
Ahmed wondered if he should just kick the tired mare and risk his luck,
but then another Mahratta stepped from the leaves, and this one held a
curved tulwar. A third man appeared, and then more men came, all
mounted, to surround him.
And Ahmed, who knew he had panicked and failed, wept.
It seemed to Dodd that Prince Manu Bappoo’s policy of rewarding
freebooters with cash for weapons captured from the British was failing
miserably. So far they had fetched in three ancient matchlocks that
must have belonged to shikarees, a broken musket of local manufacture,
and a fine pistol and sword that had been taken from an engineer
officer. No scabbard for the sword, of course, but the two trophies,
so far as Dodd was concerned, were the only evidence that the Mahrattas
had tried to stop the British approach. He pestered Manu Bappoo,
pleading to be allowed to take his Cobras down to where the pioneers
were driving the road, but the Rajah’s brother adamantly refused to let
Dodd’s men leave the fortress.
Dodd himself was allowed to leave, but only to exercise his horse,
which he did each day by riding west along the brink of the plateau. He
did not go far. There was a tempting price on his head, and though no
enemy cavalry had been seen on the plateau since the engineer had made
his reconnaissance, Dodd still feared that he might be captured, and so
he only rode until he could see the British works far beneath him.
Then, protected by a handful of Bappoo’s horsemen, he would stare
through a telescope at the ant-like figures labouring so far below.