Sharpe's Fortress Part 29

We're moving up to Deogaum today. You can ride with us."

Sharpe blushed.

"I've no horse, sir."

"Eli?" Huddlestone looked at Lockhart.

"I've got a horse he can ride, sir."

"Good." Huddlestone blew on his tea.

"Welcome to the cavalry, Sharpe."

Lockhart found two horses, one for Sharpe and the other for Ahmed.

Sharpe, ever uncomfortable on horseback, struggled into the saddle under the cavalry's sardonic gaze, while Ahmed jumped up and kicked back his heels, revelling in being back on a horse.

They went gently northwards, taking care not to tire the horses.

Sharpe, as he rode, found himself thinking about Clare Wall, and that made him feel guilty about Simone Joubert, the young French widow who waited for him in Seringapatam. He had sent her there with a southbound convoy and a letter for his friend Major Stokes, and doubtless Simone was waiting for Sharpe to return when the campaign against the Mahrattas was over, but now he needed to warn her that he was being posted back to England. Would she come with him? Did he want her to come? He was not sure about either question, though he felt obscurely responsible for Simone. He could give her a choice, of course, but whenever Simone was faced by a choice she tended to look limp and wait for someone else to make the decision. He had to warn her, though. Would she even want to go to England? But what else could she do? She had no relatives in India, and the nearest French settlements were miles away.

His thoughts were interrupted at mid-morning when Eli Lockhart spurred alongside his horse.

"See it?"

"See what?"

"Up there!" Lockhart pointed ahead and Sharpe, peering through the dust haze thrown up by the leading squadrons, saw a range of high hills.

The lower slopes were green with trees, but above the timber line there was nothing but brown and grey cliffs that stretched from horizon to horizon. And at the very top of the topmost bluff he could just see a streak of dark wall broken by a gate-tower.

"Gawilghur!" Lockhart said.

"How the h.e.l.l do we attack up there?" Sharpe asked.

The Sergeant laughed.

"We don't! It's a job for the infantry. Reckon you're better off attached to that fellow Torrance."

Sharpe shook his head.

"I have to get in there, Eli."

"Why?"

Sharpe gazed at the distant wall.

"There's a fellow called Dodd in there, and the b.a.s.t.a.r.d killed a friend of mine."

Lockhart thought for a second.

"Seven hundred guineas Dodd?"

"That's the fellow," Sharpe said.

"But I'm not after the reward. I just want to see the b.u.g.g.e.r dead."

"Me too," Lockhart said grimly.

"You?"

"a.s.saye," Lockhart said brusquely.

"What happened?"

"We charged his troops. They were knocking seven kinds of h.e.l.l out of the 74th and we caught the b.u.g.g.e.rs in line. Knocked 'em hard back, but we must have had a dozen troopers unhorsed. We didn't stop, though, we just kept after their cavalry and it wasn't till the battle was over that we found our lads. They'd had their throats cut. All of them."

"That sounds like Dodd," Sharpe said. The renegade Englishman liked to spread terror. Make a man afraid, Dodd had once told Sharpe, and he won't fight you so hard.

"So maybe I'll go into Gawilghur with you," Lockhart said.

"Cavalry?" Sharpe asked.

"They won't let cavalry into a real fight."

Lockhart grinned.

"I couldn't let an ensign go into a fight without help. Poor little b.u.g.g.e.r might get hurt."

Sharpe laughed. The cavalry had swerved off the road to pa.s.s a long column of marching infantry who had set off before dawn on their march to Deogaum. The leading regiment was Sharpe's own, the 74th, and Sharpe moved even farther away from the road so that he would not have to acknowledge the men who had wanted to be rid of him, but Ensign Venables spotted him, leaped the roadside ditch, and ran to his side.

"Going up in the world, Richard?" Venables asked.

"Borrowed glory," Sharpe said.

"The horse belongs to the igth."

Venables looked slightly relieved that Sharpe had not suddenly been able to afford a horse.

"Are you with the pioneers now?" he asked.

"Nothing so grand," Sharpe said, reluctant to admit that he had been reduced to being a bullock guard.

Venables did not really care.

"Because that's what we're doing," he explained, 'escorting the pioneers. It seems they have to make a road."

"Up there?" Sharpe guessed, nodding towards the fortress that dominated the plain.