Sharpe's Fortress Part 3

"Attack now!" Dodd insisted. Much earlier in the day he had advised against fighting the British at all, but now it seemed that his advice had been wrong, for the British a.s.sault had dissolved in panic long before it reached musket range.

"Attack with everything we've got, sahib," Dodd urged Bappoo.

"If I throw everything forward, Colonel Dodd," Bappoo said in his oddly sibilant voice, 'then my guns will have to cease fire. Let the ;

British walk into the cannon fire, then we shall release the infantry." i Bappoo had lost his front teeth to a lance thrust, and hissed his words so that, to Dodd, he sounded like a snake. He even looked reptilian.

Maybe it was his hooded eyes, or perhaps it was just his air of silent menace. But at least he could fight. Bappoo's brother, the Rajah of Berar, had fled before the battle at a.s.saye, but Bappoo, who had not been present at a.s.saye, was no coward. Indeed, he could bite like a serpent.

"The British walked into the cannon fire at a.s.saye," Dodd growled, 'and there were fewer of them and we had more guns, but still they won."

Bappoo patted his horse which had shied away from the sound of a nearby cannon. It was a big, black Arab stallion, and its saddle was encrusted with silver. Both horse and saddle had been gifts from an Arabian sheik whose tribesmen sailed to India to serve in Bappoo's own regiment. They were mercenaries from the pitiless desert who called themselves the Lions of Allah and they were reckoned to be the most savage regiment in all India. The Lions of Allah were arrayed behind Bappoo: a phalanx of dark-faced, white-robed warriors armed with muskets and long, curved scimitars.

"You truly think we should fight them in front of our guns?" Bappoo asked Dodd.

"Muskets will kill more of them than cannon will," Dodd said. One of the things he liked about Bappoo was that the man was willing to listen to advice.

"Meet them halfway, sahib, thin the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds out with musket fire, then pull back to let the guns finish them with canister.

Better still, sahib, put the guns on the flank to rake them."

"Too late to do that," Bappoo said.

"Aye, well. Mebbe." Dodd sniffed. Why the Indians stubbornly insisted on putting guns in front of infantry, he did not know. Daft idea, it was, but they would do it. He kept telling them to put their cannon between the regiments, so that the gunners could slant their fire across the face of the infantry, but Indian commanders reckoned that the sight of guns directly in front heartened their men.

"But put some infantry out front, sahib," he urged.

Bappoo thought about Dodd's proposal. He did not much like the Englishman who was a tall, ungainly and sullen man with long yellow teeth and a sarcastic manner, but Bappoo suspected his advice was good. The Prince had never fought the British before, but he was aware that they were somehow different from the other enemies he had slaughtered on a score of battlefields across western India. There was, he understood, a stolid indifference to death in those red ranks that let them march calmly into the fiercest cannonade. He had not seen it happen, but he had heard about it from enough men to credit the reports. Even so he found it hard to abandon the tried and tested methods of battle. It would seem unnatural to advance his infantry in front of the guns, and so render the artillery useless. He had thirty-eight cannon, all of them heavier than anything the British had yet deployed, and his gunners were as well trained as any in the world. Thirty-eight heavy cannon could make a fine slaughter of advancing infantry, yet if what Dodd said was true, then the red-coated ranks would stoically endure the punishment and keep coming. Except some had already run, which suggested they were nervous, so perhaps this was the day when the G.o.ds would finally turn against the British.

"I saw two eagles this morning," Bappoo told Dodd, 'outlined against the sun."

So b.l.o.o.d.y what? Dodd thought. The Indians were great ones for auguries, forever staring into pots of oil or consulting holy men or worrying about the errant fall of a trembling leaf, but there was no better augury for victory than the sight of an enemy running away before they even reached the fight.

"I a.s.sume the eagles mean victory?" Dodd asked politely.

"They do," Bappoo agreed. And the augury suggested the victory would be his whatever tactics he used, which inclined him against trying anything new. Besides, though Prince Manu Bappoo had never fought the British, nor had the British ever faced the Lions of Allah in battle.

And the numbers were in Bappoo's favour. He was barring the British advance with forty thousand men, while the redcoats were not even a third of that number.

"We shall wait," Bappoo decided, 'and let the enemy get closer." He would crush them with cannon fire first, then with musketry.

"Perhaps I shall release the Lions of Allah when the British are closer, Colonel," he said to pacify Dodd.

"One regiment won't do it," Dodd said, 'not even your Arabs, sahib.

Throw every man forward. The whole line."

"Maybe," Bappoo said vaguely, though he had no intention of advancing all his infantry in front of the precious guns. He had no need to. The vision of eagles had persuaded him that he would see victory, and he believed the gunners would make that victory. He imagined dead red-coated bodies among the crops. He would avenge a.s.saye and prove that redcoats could die like any other enemy.

"To your men, Colonel Dodd," he said sternly.

Dodd wheeled his horse and spurred towards the right of the line where his Cobras waited in four ranks. It was a fine regiment, splendidly trained, which Dodd had extricated from the siege of Ahmednuggur and then from the panicked chaos of the defeat at a.s.saye. Two disasters, yet Dodd's men had never flinched. The regiment had been a part of Scindia's army, but after a.s.saye the Cobras had retreated with the Rajah of Berar's infantry, and Prince Manu Bappoo, summoned from the north country to take command of Berar's shattered forces, had persuaded Dodd to change his allegiance from Scindia to the Rajah of Berar. Dodd would have changed allegiance anyway, for the dispirited Scindia was seeking to make peace with the British, but Bappoo had added the inducement of gold, silver and a promotion to colonel. Dodd's men, mercenaries all, did not care which master they served so long as his purse was deep.

Gopal, Dodd's second-in-command, greeted the Colonel's return with a rueful look.

"He won't advance?"

"He wants the guns to do the work."

Gopal heard the doubt in Dodd's voice.

"And they won't?"

"They didn't at a.s.saye," Dodd said sourly.

"d.a.m.n it! We shouldn't be fighting them here at all! Never give redcoats open ground. We should be making the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds climb walls or cross rivers." Dodd was nervous of defeat, and he had cause to be for the British had put a price on his head. That price was now seven hundred guineas, nearly six thousand rupees, and all of it promised in gold to whoever delivered William Dodd's body, dead or alive, to the East India Company. Dodd had been a lieutenant in the Company's army, but he had encouraged his men to murder a goldsmith and, faced with prosecution, Dodd had deserted and taken over a hundred sepoys with him. That had been enough to put a price on his head, but the price rose after Dodd and his treacherous sepoys murdered the Company's garrison at Chasal-gaon. Now Dodd's body was worth a fortune and William Dodd understood greed well enough to be fearful. If Bappoo's army collapsed today as the Mahratta army had disintegrated at a.s.saye, then Dodd would be a fugitive on an open plain dominated by enemy cavalry.

"We should fight them in the hills," he said grimly.

"Then we should fight them at Gawilghur," Gopal said.

"Gawilghur?" Dodd asked.

"It is the greatest of all the Mahratta fortresses, sahib. Not all the armies of Europe could take Gawilghur." Gopal saw that Dodd was sceptical of the claim.

"Not all the armies of the world could take it, sahib," he added earnestly.

"It stands on cliffs that touch the sky, and from its walls men are reduced to the size of lice."

"There's a way in, though," Dodd said, 'there's always a way in."

"There is, sahib, but the way into Gawilghur is across a neck of high rock that leads only to an outer fortress. A man might fight his way through those outer walls, but then he will come to a deep ravine and find the real stronghold lies on the ravine's far side. There are more walls, more guns, a narrow path, and vast gates barring the way!" Gopal sighed.

"I saw it once, years ago, and prayed I would never have to fight an enemy who had taken refuge there."

Dodd said nothing. He was staring down the gentle slope to where the red-coated infantry waited. Every few seconds a puff of dust showed where a round shot struck the ground.

"If things go badly today," Gopal said quietly, 'then we shall go to Gawilghur and there we shall be safe. The British can follow us, but they cannot reach us. They will break themselves on Gawilghur's rocks while we take our rest at the edge of the fortress's lakes. We shall be in the sky, and they will die beneath us like dogs."

If Gopal was right then not all the king's horses nor all the king's men could touch William Dodd at Gawilghur. But first he had to reach the fortress, and maybe it would not even be necessary, for Prince Manu Bappoo might yet beat the redcoats here. Bappoo believed there was no infantry in India that could stand against his Arab mercenaries.

Away on the plain Dodd could see that the two battalions that had fled into the tall crops were now being brought back into the line. In a moment, he knew, that line would start forward again.

"Tell our guns to hold their fire," he ordered Gopal. Dodd's Cobras possessed five small cannon of their own, designed to give the regiment close support. Dodd's guns were not in front of his white-coated men, but away on the right flank from where they could lash a murderous slanting fire across the face of the advancing enemy.

"Load with canister," he ordered, 'and wait till they're close." The important thing was to win, but if fate decreed otherwise, then Dodd must live to fight again at a place where a man could not be beaten.

At Gawilghur.