Sharpe's Fortress Part 64

"The joint gapes a bit, don't it?"

"It does," Stokes said.

The Sergeant grunted. For a while, he reckoned, the battering would drive the stones in, sealing the gap, but there was pressure there and the wall must eventually give way as the battered stones weakened.

"That b.u.g.g.e.r'll burst like an abscess," the Sergeant said happily, straightening from the telescope. He returned to his gun and barked at his men to make some minute adjustments to its trail. He himself heaved on the elevating screw, though as yet the gun was still masked by some half filled gab ions that blocked the embrasure. Every few seconds the Sergeant climbed onto the trail to see over the gab ions then he would demand that the gun was shifted a half-inch left or a finger's breadth to the right as he made another finicky adjustment to the screw. He tossed gra.s.s in the air to gauge the wind, then twisted the elevation again to raise the barrel a tiny amount.

"Stone cold shot," he explained to Stokes, 'so I'm pointing her a bit high. Maybe a half turn more." He hammered the screw with the heel of his hand.

"Perfect," he said.

The pucka lees were bringing water which they poured into great wooden tubs. The water was not just to slake the gunners' thirst and soak the sponges that cleaned out the barrels between shots, but was also intended to cool the great weapons. The sun was climbing, it promised to be a searing hot day, and if the huge guns were not drenched intermittently with water they could overheat and explode the powder charges prematurely. The Sergeant was choosing his shot now, rolling two eighteen-pounder b.a.l.l.s up and down a stretch of bare earth to judge which was the more perfect sphere.

"That one," he said, spitting tobacco juice onto his chosen missile.

Morris's Light Company trailed back up the road, going to the camp where they would sleep. Stokes watched them pa.s.s and thought of Sharpe. Poor Sharpe, but at least, from wherever he was imprisoned inside the fortress, he would hear the siege guns and know that the redcoats were coming. If they got through the breach, Stokes thought gloomily, or if they ever managed to cross the fortress's central ravine.

He tried to suppress his pessimism, telling himself that his job was simply to make the breach, not win the whole victory.

The chosen shot was rolled into the gun's muzzle, then rammed down onto the canvas bags of powder. The Sergeant took a length of wire that hung looped on his belt and rammed it through the cannon's touch-hole, piercing the canvas bag beneath, then selected a priming tube, a reed filled with finely milled powder, and slid it down into the powder charge, but leaving a half-inch of the reed protruding above the touchhole.

"Ready when you are, sir," he told the Major commanding the battery who, in turn, looked at Stokes.

Stokes shrugged.

"I imagine we wait for Colonel Stevenson's permission."

The gunners in the second breaching battery which lay fifty yards west of the first had trained their telescopes over the gab ions to watch where the first shot fell. The scar it left in the wall would be their aiming mark. The two enfilading batteries also watched. Their work would begin properly when the first of the three breaches was made, but till then their twelve-pounders would be aimed at the cannon mounted on Gawilghur's ramparts, trying to dismount them or tumble their embrasures into rubble.

"That wall won't last long," the battery Major, whose name was Plummer, opined. He was staring at the wall through Stokes's telescope.

"We'll have it opened up today," Stokes agreed.

"Thank G.o.d there ain't a glacis," Plummer said.

"Thank G.o.d, indeed," Stokes echoed piously, but he had been thinking about that lack and was not so sure now that it was a blessing. Perhaps the Mahrattas understood that their real defence was the great central ravine, and so were offering nothing but a token defence of the Outer Fort. And how was that ravine to be crossed? Stokes feared that he would be asked for an engineering solution, but what could he do? Fill the thing with soil? That would take months.

Stokes's gloomy presentiments were interrupted by an aide who had been sent by Colonel Stevenson to enquire why the batteries were silent.

"I suspect those are your orders to open fire, Plummer," Stokes said.

"Unmask!" Plummer shouted.

Four gunners clambered up onto the bastion and manhandled the half-filled gab ions out of the cannon's way. The Sergeant squinted down the barrel a last time, nodded to himself, then stepped aside.

The other gunners had their hands over their ears.

"You can fire, Ned!"

Plummer called to the Sergeant, who took a glowing linstock from a protective barrel, reached across the gun's high wheel and touched the fire to the reed.

The cannon hammered back a full five yards as the battery filled with acrid smoke. The ball screamed low across the stony neck of land to crack against the fort's wall. There was a pause. Defenders were running along the ramparts. Stokes was peering through the gla.s.s, waiting for the smoke to thin. It took a full minute, but then he saw that a slab of stone about the size of a soup plate had been chipped from the wall.

"Two inches to the right, Sergeant," he called chidingly.

"Must have been a puff of wind, sir," the Sergeant said, 'puff of b.l.o.o.d.y wind, 'cos there weren't a thing wrong with gun's laying, begging your pardon, sir."

"You did well," Stokes said with a smile, 'very well." He cupped his hands and shouted at the second breaching battery.

"You have your mark! Fire on!" A billow of smoke erupted from the fortress wall, followed by the bang of a gun and a howl as a round shot whipped overhead. Stokes jumped down into the battery, clutching his hat.

"It seems we've woken them up," he remarked as a dozen more Mahratta guns fired. The enemy's shots smacked into the gab ions or ricocheted wildly along the rocky ground. The second British battery fired, the noise of its guns echoing off the cliff face to tell the camp far beneath that the siege of Gawilghur had properly begun.

Private Tom Garrard of the 33rd's Light Company had wandered to the edge of the cliff to watch the bombardment of the fortress. Not that there was much to see other than the constantly replenished cloud of smoke that shrouded the rocky neck of land between the batteries and the fortress, but every now and then a large piece of stone would fall from Gawilghur's wall. The fire from the de fences was furious, but it seemed to Garrard that it was ill aimed. Many of the shots bounced over the batteries, or else buried themselves in the great piles of protective gab ions The British fire, on the other hand, was slow and sure. The eighteen-pound round shots gnawed at the wall and not one was wasted. The sky was cloudless, the sun rising ever higher and the guns were heating so that after every second shot the gunners poured buckets of water on the long barrels. The metal hissed and steamed, and sweating puckakes hurried up the battery road with yet more skins of water to replenish the great vats.

Garrard was sitting by himself, but he had noticed a ragged Indian was watching him. He ignored the man, hoping he would go away, but the Indian edged closer. Garrard picked up a fist-sized stone and tossed it up and down in his right hand as a hint that the man should go away, but the threat of the stone only made the Indian edge closer.

"Sahib!" the Indian hissed.

"b.u.g.g.e.r off," Garrard growled.

"Sahib! Please!"

"I've got nothing worth stealing, I don't want to buy anything, and I don't want to roger your sister."

"I'll roger your sister instead, sahib," the Indian said, and Garrard twisted round, the stone drawn back ready to throw, then he saw that the dirty robed man had pushed back his grubby white head cloth and was grinning at him.

"You ain't supposed to chuck rocks at officers, Tom," Sharpe said.

"Mind you, I always wanted to, so I can't blame you."

"b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l!" Garrard dropped the stone and held out his right hand.

"d.i.c.k Sharpe!" He suddenly checked his outstretched hand.

"Do I have to call you "sir"?"

"Of course you don't," Sharpe said, taking Garrard's hand.

"You and me? Friends from way back, eh? Red sash won't change that, Tom.

How are you?"

"Been worse. Yourself?"

"Been better."

Garrard frowned.