Sharpe's Fortress Part 32

"b.l.o.o.d.y Wellesley will pull my guts out backwards for this."

Hakeswill found the chitties on the table and went to the door, leaving small b.l.o.o.d.y marks on the floor from his opened blister.

"Dilly!

Dilly! You black b.a.s.t.a.r.d heathen swine! Here, take these. On your way!" no

"d.a.m.n!" Torrance said, standing and pacing the small room.

"d.a.m.n, d.a.m.n, d.a.m.n."

"Nothing to worry about, sir," Hakeswill said.

"Easy for you to say, Sergeant."

Hakeswill grinned as his face was distorted by twitches.

"Just blame someone else, sir," he said, 'as is usually done in the army."

"Who? Sharpe? You said yourself he's Wellesley's blue-eyed boy.

I'm supposed to blame him? Or you, perhaps?"

Hakeswill tried to calm the Captain down by giving him his cup of tea.

"Blame Dilly, sir, on account of him being a heathen b.a.s.t.a.r.d as black as my new boots."

"He'll simply deny everything when questioned!" Torrance protested.

Hakeswill smiled.

"Won't be in a position to deny anything, sir, will he? On account of being..." He paused, stuck his tongue out, opened his eyes wide and made a choking noise.

"Good G.o.d, Sergeant," Torrance said, shuddering at the horrid picture suggested by Hakeswill's contorted face.

"Besides, he's a good clerk!

It's d.a.m.ned difficult to replace good men."

"It's easy, sir. Jama will give us a man. Give us a good man." Hakeswill grinned.

"It'll make things much easier, sir, if we can trust the clerk as well as each other."

Torrance flinched at the thought of being in league with Obadiah Hakeswill, yet if he was ever to pay off his debts he needed the Sergeant's cooperation. And Hakeswill was marvellously efficient. He could strip the supplies bare and not leave a trace of his handiwork, always making sure someone else took the blame. And doubtless the Sergeant was right. If Jama could provide a clerk, then the clerk could provide a false set of accounts. And if Dilip was blamed for the late arrival of the pioneers' stores, then Torrance would be off that particularly sharp and nasty hook. As ever, it seemed as though Hakeswill could find his way through the th.o.r.n.i.e.s.t of problems.

Just leave it to me, sir," Hakeswill said.

"I'll look after everything, sir, I will." He bared his teeth at Clare who had brought his mug of tea.

"You're the flower of womanhood," he told her, then watched appreciatively as she scuttled back to the kitchen.

"Her and me, sir, are meant for each other. Says so in the scriptures."

"Not till Sharpe's dead," Torrance said.

"He'll be dead, sir," Hakeswill promised, and the Sergeant shivered in as he antic.i.p.ated the riches that would follow that death. Not just Clare Wall, but the jewels. The jewels! Hakeswill had divined that it had been Sharpe who had killed the Tippoo Sultan in Seringapatam, and Sharpe who must have stripped the ruler's body of its diamonds and emeralds and sapphires and rubies, and Sharpe, Hakeswill reckoned, was still hiding those stones. From far away, dulled by the heat of the day, came the sound of artillery firing. Gawilghur, Hakeswill thought, where Sharpe should not reach, on account of Sharpe being Hakeswill's business, and no one else's. I will be rich, the Sergeant promised himself, I will be rich.

Colonel William Dodd stood on the southernmost battlements of Gawilghur with his back against the parapet so that he was staring down into a palace courtyard where Beny Singh had erected a striped pavilion.

Small silver bells that tinkled prettily in the small breeze were hung from the pavilion's fringed hem, while under the canopy a group of musicians played the strange, long-necked stringed instruments which made a music that, to Dodd's ears, sounded like the slow strangulation of cats. Beny Singh and a dozen pretty creatures in saris were playing some form of Blind Man's Buff, and their laughter rose to the ramparts, making Dodd scowl, though if truth were told he was inordinately jealous of Beny Singh. The man was plump, short and timid, yet he seemed to work some magical spell on the ladies, while Dodd, who was tall, hard and scarred to prove his bravery, had to make do with a wh.o.r.e.

d.a.m.n the Killadar. Dodd turned sharply away and stared over the heat-baked plain. Beneath him, and just far enough to the east to be out of range of Gawilghur's largest guns, the edge of the British encampment showed. From this height the rows of dull white tents looked like speckles. To the south, still a long way off, Dodd could see the enemy baggage train trudgiilg towards its new encampment. It was odd, he thought, that they should make the oxen carry their burdens through the hottest part of the day. Usually the baggage marched just after midnight and camped not long after dawn, but today the great herd was stirring the dust into the broiling afternoon air and it looked, Dodd thought, like a migrating tribe. There were thousands of oxen in the army's train, all loaded with round shot, powder, tools, salt beef, arrack, horseshoes, bandages, flints, muskets, spices, rice, and with them came the merchants' beasts and the merchants' families, and the ox herdsmen had their own families and they all needed more beasts to carry their tents, clothes and food. A dozen elephants plodded in the herd's centre, while a score of dromedaries swayed elegantly behind the elephants. Mysore cavalry guarded the great caravan, while beyond the mounted picquets halfnaked gra.s.s-cutters spread into the fields to collect fodder that they stuffed into nets and loaded onto yet more oxen.

Dodd glanced at the sentries who guarded the southern stretch of Gawilghur's walls and he saw the awe on their faces as they watched the enormous herd approach. The dust from the hooves rose to smear the southern skyline like a vast sea fog.

"They're only oxen!" Dodd growled to the men.

"Only oxen! Oxen don't fire guns. Oxen don't climb walls."

None of them understood him, but they grinned dutifully.

Dodd walked eastwards. After a while the wall ended, giving way to the bare lip of a precipice. There was no need for walls around much of the perimeters of Gawilghur's twin forts, for nature had provided the great cliffs that were higher than any rampart a man could make, but Dodd, as he walked to the bluff's edge, noted places here and there where an agile man could, with the help of a rope, scramble down the rock face.

A few men deserted Gawilghur's garrison every day, and Dodd did not doubt that this was how they escaped, but he did not understand why they should want to go. The fort was impregnable! Why would a man not wish to stay with the victors?

He reached a stretch of wall at the fort's southeastern corner and there, high up on a gun platform, he opened his telescope and stared down into the foothills. He searched for a long time, his gla.s.s skittering over trees, shrubs and patches of dry gra.s.s, but at last he saw a group of men standing beside a narrow path. Some of the men were in red coats and one was in blue.

"What are you watching, Colonel?" Prince Manu Bappoo had seen Dodd on the rampart and had climbed to join him.

"British," Dodd said, without taking his eye from the telescope.

"They're surveying a route up to the plateau."

Bappoo shaded his eyes and stared down, but without a telescope he could not see the group of men.

"It will take them months to build a road up to the hills."

"It'll take them two weeks," Dodd said flatly.

"Less. You don't know how their engineers work, sahib, but I do. They'll use powder to break through obstacles and a thousand axe men to widen the tracks. They'll start their work tomorrow and in a fortnight they'll be running guns up to the hills." Dodd collapsed the telescope.

"Let me go down and break the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds," he demanded.

"No," Bappoo said. He had already had this argument with Dodd who wanted to take his Cobras down into the foothills and there hara.s.s the road-makers. Dodd did not want a stand-up fight, a battle of musket line against musket line, but instead wanted to raid, ambush and scare the enemy. He wanted to slow the British work, to dishearten the sappers and, by such delaying tactics, force Wellesley to send forage parties far into the countryside where they would be prey to the Mahratta hors.e.m.e.n who still roamed the Deccan Plain.

Bappoo knew Dodd was right, and that the British road could be slowed by a campaign of hara.s.sment, but he feared to let the white coated Cobras leave the fortress. The garrison was already nervous, awed by the victories of Wellesley's small army, and if they saw the Cobras march out of the fort then many would think they were being abandoned and the trickle of deserters would become a flood.

"We have to slow them!" Dodd snarled.