Sharpe's Fortress Part 22

The palace in Gawilghur was a sprawling one-storey building that stood on the highest point within the Inner Fort. To its north was a garden that curled about the largest of the fortress's lakes. The lake was a tank, a reservoir, but its banks had been planted with flowering trees, and a flight of steps led from the palace to a small stone pavilion on the lake's northern sh.o.r.e. The pavilion had an arched ceiling on which the reflections of the lake's small waves should have rippled, but the season had been so dry that the lake had shrunk and the water level was some eight or nine feet lower than usual. The water and the exposed banks were rimed with a green, foul-smelling sc.u.m, but Beny

Singh, the Killadar of Gawilghur, had arranged for spices to be burned in low, flat braziers so that the dozen men inside the pavilion were not too offended by the lake's stench.

"If only the Rajah was here," Beny Singh said, 'we should know what to do." Beny Singh was a short, plump man with a curling moustache and nervous eyes. He was the fortress commander, but he was a courtier by avocation, not a soldier, and he had always regarded his command of the great fortress as a licence to make his fortune rather than to fight the Rajah's enemies.

Prince Manu Bappoo was not surprised that his brother had chosen not to come to Gawilghur, but had instead fled farther into the hills. The Rajah was like Beny Singh, he had no belly for a fight, but Bappoo had watched the first British troops creep across the plain beneath the fort's high walls and he welcomed their coming.

"We don't need my brother here to know what we must do," he said.

"We fight." The other men, all commanders of the various troops that had taken refuge in Gawilghur, voiced their agreement.

"The British cannot be stopped by walls," Beny Singh said. He was cradling a small white lap dog which had eyes as wide and frightened as its master's.

"They can, and they will," Bappoo insisted.

Singh shook his head.

"Were they stopped at Seringapatam? At Ahmednuggur? They crossed those city walls as though they had wings!

They are what is the word your Arabs use? - djinnsl' He looked about the gathered council and saw no one who would support him.

"They must have the djinns on their side," he added weakly.

"So what would you do?" Bappoo asked.

"Treat with them," Beny !Ungh said.

"Ask for cowle."

"Cowled It was Colonel Dodd who intervened, speaking in his crude, newly learned Marathi.

"I'll tell you what terms Wellesley will offer you. None! He'll march you away as a prisoner, he'll slight these walls and take away the Rajah's treasures."

"There are no treasures here," Beny Singh said, but no one believed him. He was soothing the little dog which had been frightened by the Englishman's harsh voice.

"And he'll give your women to his men as playthings," Dodd added nastily.

Beny Singh shuddered. His wife, his concubines and his children were all in the palace, and they were all dear to him. He pampered them, worshipped them and adored them.

"Perhaps I should remove my people from the fort?" he suggested hesitantly.

"I could take them to Multai?

The British will never reach Multai."

"You'd run away?" Dodd asked in his harsh voice.

"You b.l.o.o.d.y won't!"

He spoke those three words in English, but everyone understood what they meant. He leaned forward.

"If you run away," he said, 'the garrison loses heart. The rest of the soldiers can't take their women away, so why should you? We fight them here, and we stop them here. Stop them dead!"

He stood and walked to the pavilion's edge where he spat onto the green-sc.u.mmed bank before turning back to Beny Singh.

"Your women are safe here, Killadar. I could hold this fortress from now till the world's end with just a hundred men."

"The British are djinns," Beny Singh whispered. The dog in his arms was shivering.

"They are not djinns," Dodd snapped.

"There are no demons! They don't exist!"

"Winged djinns," Beny Singh said in almost a whimper, 'invisible djinnsl In the air!"

Dodd spat again.

"b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l," he said in English, then turned fast towards Beny Singh.

"I'm an English demon. Me! Understand? I'm a djinn, and if you take your women away I'll follow you and I'll come to them at night and fill them with black bile." He bared his yellowed teeth and the Killadar shuddered. The white dog barked shrilly.

Manu Bappoo waved Dodd back to his seat. Dodd was the only European officer left in his forces and, though Bappoo was glad to have the Englishman's services, there were times when Colonel Dodd could be tiresome.

"If there are djinns," Bappoo told Singh, 'they will be on our side." He waited while the Killadar soothed the frightened dog, then he leaned forward.

"Tell me," he demanded of Beny Singh, 'can the British take the fortress by using the roads up the hill?"

Beny Singh thought about those two steep winding roads that twisted up the hill beneath Gawilghur's walls. No man could survive those climbs, not if the defenders were raining round shot and rocks down the precipitous slopes.

"No," he admitted.

"So they can only come one way. Only one way! Across the land bridge. And my men will guard the Outer Fort, and Colonel Dodd's men will defend the Inner Fort."

"And no one," Dodd said harshly, 'no one will get past my Cobras."

He still resented that his well-trained, white-coated soldiers were not defending the Outer Fort, but he had accepted Manu Bappoo's argument that the important thing was to hold the Inner Fort. If, by some chance, the British did capture the Outer Fort, they would never fight past Dodd's men.

"My men," Dodd growled, 'have never been defeated. They never will be."

Manu Bappoo smiled at the nervous Beny Singh.

"You see, Killadar, you will die here of old age."

"Or of too many women," another man put in, provoking laughter.

A cannon sounded from the Outer Fort's northern ramparts, followed a few seconds later by another. No one knew what might have caused the firing and so the dozen men followed Manu Bappoo as he left the pavilion and walked towards the Inner Fort's northern ramparts. Silverfurred monkeys chattered at the soldiers from the high branches.

Arab guards stood at the gate of the Rajah's garden. They were posted to stop any common soldiers of the garrison going to the paths beside the tank where the Killadar's women liked to stroll in the cool of the evening. A hundred paces beyond the garden gate was a steep sided rock pit, about twice as deep as a man stood high, and Dodd paused to look down into its shadowed depths. The sides had been chiselled smooth by stone-workers so that nothing could climb up from the floor that was littered with white bones.