Sharpe's Fortress Part 81

So he spat on his bruised hands, looked up one last time, then started to climb.

The second a.s.sault on the Inner Fort's gatehouse fared no better than the first. A howling ma.s.s of men charged through the wreckage of the shattered gate, stumbled on the dead and dying as they turned up the pa.s.sage, but then the killing began again as a shower of missiles, rockets and musket fire turned the narrow, steep pa.s.sage into a charnel house. An axe man succeeded in reaching the second gate and he stood above Colonel Kenny's scorched body to sink his blade deep into the timber, but he was immediately struck by three musket b.a.l.l.s and dropped back, leaving the axe embedded in the dark, iron-studded wood. No one else went close to the gate, and a major, appalled at the slaughter, called the men back.

"Next time," he shouted at them, 'we designate firing parties to give cover. Sergeant! I want two dozen men."

"We need a cannon, sir," the Sergeant answered with brutal honesty.

"They say one's coming." The aide whom Kenny had sent to fetch a cannon had returned to the a.s.sault party.

"They say it'll take time, though," he added, without explaining that the gunner officer had declared it would take at least two hours to manhandle a gun and ammunition across the ravine.

The Major shook his head.

"We'll try without the gun," he said.

"G.o.d help us," the Sergeant said under his breath.

Colonel Dodd had watched the attackers limp away. He could not help smiling. This was so very simple, just as he had foreseen. Manu Bappoo was dead and the Havildar had returned from the palace with the welcome news of Beny Singh's murder, which meant that Gawilghur had a new commander. He looked down at the dead and dying redcoats who lay among the small flickering blue flames of the spent rockets.

"They've learned their lesson, Gopal," he told his Jemadar, 'so next time they'll try to keep us quiet by firing bigger volleys up at the fire steps

Toss down rockets, that'll spoil their aim."

"Rockets, sahib."

"Lots of rockets," Dodd said. He patted his men on their backs. Their faces were singed by the explosions of the powder in their muskets' pans, they were thirsty and hot, but they were winning, and they knew it.

They were his Cobras, as well trained as any troops in India, and they would be at the heart of the army that Dodd would unleash from this fortress to dominate the lands the British must relinquish when their southern army was broken.

"Why don't they give up?" Gopal asked Dodd. A sentry on the wall had reported that the bloodied attackers were forming to charge again.

"Because they're brave men, Jemadar," Dodd said, 'but also stupid."

The furious musket fire had started again from across the ravine, a sign that a new attack would soon come into the blood-slick gateway.

Dodd drew his pistol, checked it was loaded, and walked back to watch the next failure. Let them come, he thought, for the more who died here, the fewer would remain to trouble him as he pursued the beaten remnant south across the Deccan Plain.

"Get ready!" he called. Slow matches burned on the fire step and his men crouched beside them with rockets, waiting to light the fuses and toss the terrible weapons down into the killing place.

A defiant cheer sounded, and the redcoats came again to the slaughter.

The cliff face was far steeper than Sharpe had antic.i.p.ated, though it was not sheer rock, but rather a series of cracks in which plants had taken root, and he found that he could pull himself up by using stony outcrops and the thick stalks of the bigger shrubs. He needed both hands. Tom Garrard came behind, and more than once Sharpe trod on his friend's hands.

"Sorry, Tom."

"Just keep going," Garrard panted.

It became easier after the first ten feet, for the face now sloped away, and there was even room for two or three men to stand together on a weed-covered ledge. Sharpe called for the ladder and it was pushed up to him by the cavalrymen. The bamboo was light and he hooked the top rung over his right shoulder and climbed on upwards, following a jagged line of rocks and bushes that gave easy footing. A line of redcoats trailed him, muskets slung. There were more bushes to Sharpe's left, shielding him from the ramparts, but after he had climbed twenty feet those bushes ended and he prayed that the defenders would all be staring at the beleaguered gatehouse rather than at the precipice below. He pulled himself up the last few feet, cursing the ladder that seemed to get caught on every protrusion. The sun beat off the stone and the sweat poured down him. He was panting when he reached the top, and now there was nothing but steep, open ground between him and the wall's base. Fifty feet of rough gra.s.s to cross and then he would be at the wall.

He crouched at the edge of the cliff, waiting for the men to catch up.

Still no one had seen him from the walls. Tom Garrard dropped beside him.

"When we go, Tom," Sharpe said, 'we run like b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l. Straight to the wall. Ladder up, climb like rats and jump over the b.l.o.o.d.y top.

Tell the lads to get over fast. b.a.s.t.a.r.ds on the other side are going to try and kill us before we can get reinforced, so we're going to need plenty of muskets to fend the b.u.g.g.e.rs off."

Garrard peered up at the embrasures.

"There's no one there."

"There's a few there," Sharpe said, 'but they ain't taking much notice.

Dozy, they are," he added, and thank G.o.d for that, he thought, for a handful of defenders with loaded muskets could stop him dead. And dead is what he had better be after striking Morris, unless he could cross the ramparts and open the gates. He peered up at the battlements as more men hauled themselves over the edge of the cliff. He guessed the wall was lightly manned by little more than a picquet line, for no one would have antic.i.p.ated that the cliff could be climbed, but he also guessed that once the redcoats appeared the defenders would quickly reinforce the threatened spot.

Garrard grinned at Sharpe.

"Did you thump Morris?"

"What else could I do?"

"He'll have you court-martialed

"Not if we win here," Sharpe said.

"If we get those gates open, Tom, we'll be b.l.o.o.d.y heroes."

"And if we don't?"

"We'll be dead," Sharpe said curtly, then turned to see Eli Lockhart scrambling onto the gra.s.s.

"What the h.e.l.l are you doing here?" Sharpe demanded.

"I got lost," Lockhart said, and hefted a musket he had taken from a soldier below.

"Some of your boys ain't too keen on being heroes, so me and my boys are making up the numbers."

And it was not just Lockhart's cavalrymen who were climbing, but some kilted Highlanders and sepoys who had seen the Light Company scrambling up the cliff and decided to join in too. The more the merrier, Sharpe decided. He counted heads and saw he had thirty men, and more were coming. It was time to go, for the enemy would not stay asleep for long.

"We have to get over the wall fast," he told them all, 'and once we're over, we form two ranks."

He stood and hefted the ladder high over his head, holding it with both hands, then ran up the steep gra.s.s. His boots, which were Syud Sevajee's cast-offs, had smooth soles and slipped on the gra.s.s, but he stumbled on, and went even faster when he heard an aggrieved shout from high above him. He knew what was coming next and he was still thirty feet from the walls, a sitting target, and then he heard the bang of the musket and saw the gra.s.s flatten ahead of him as the gases from the barrel lashed downwards. Smoke eddied around him, but the ball had thumped into one of the ladder's thick uprights, and then another musket fired and he saw a fleck of turf dance up.

"Give them fire!" Major Stokes roared from the bottom of the ravine.

"Give them fire!"

A hundred redcoats and sepoys blasted up at the walls. Sharpe heard the musket shots clatter on the stone, and then he was hard under the rampart and he dropped the leading end of the ladder and rammed it into the turf and swung the other end up and over. A b.l.o.o.d.y escalade, he thought. A breach and an escalade, all in one day, and he pulled the claymore out from his belt and pushed Garrard away from the foot of the ladder.