Sharpe's Fortress Part 84

"You're here to number off twenty men who'll give the rest of us covering fire."

Green hesitated, looked at Sharpe's face, then nodded.

"Right you are, sir! Twenty men, covering fire."

"Thank you, Sergeant," Sharpe said. So Morris was conscious again, and probably already making trouble, but Sharpe could not worry about that. He looked at his men. They numbered seventy or eighty now, and still more Scotsmen and sepoys were coming up the cliff and crossing the wall. He waited until they all had loaded muskets and their ramrods were back in their hoops.

"Just follow me, lads, and when we get there kill the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. Now!" He turned and faced east.

"Come on!"

"At the double!" Campbell called to his company.

"Forward!"

The fox was in the henhouse. Feathers would fly.

CHAPTER 11.

The 74th, climbing the road that led from the plain to Gawilghur's Southern Gate, could hear the distant musketry sounding like a burning thorn grove. It crackled, flared up to a crescendo, then faded again. At times it seemed as though it would die altogether and then, just as sweating men decided the battle must be over, it rattled loud and furious once more. There was nothing the 74th could do to help. They were still three hundred feet beneath the fortress and from now on they would be within killing range of the guns mounted on Gawilghur's south-facing ramparts. Those guns had been firing at the 74th for over an hour now, but the range had been long and the downward angle steep, so that not a ball had struck home. If the 74th had had their own artillery, they could have fired back, but the slope was too steep for any gun to fire effectively. The gunners would have had to site their cannon on a steep upwards ramp, and every shot would have threatened to turn the guns over. The 74th could go no farther, not without taking needless casualties, and so Wellesley halted them. If the defenders on the southern wall looked few he might contemplate an escalade, but the sepoys carrying the ladders had fallen far behind the leading troops so no such attack could be contemplated yet. Nor did the General truly expect to try such an a.s.sault, for the 74th's task had always been to keep some of the fort's defenders pinned to their southern walls while the real attack came from the north. That purpose, at least, was being accomplished, for the walls facing the steep southern slope looked thick with defenders.

Sir Arthur Wellesley dismounted from his horse and climbed to a vantage point from which he could stare at the fortress. Colonel Wallace and a handful of aides followed, and the officers settled by some rocks from where they tried to work out what the noise of the battle meant.

"No guns," Wellesley said after c.o.c.king his head to the distant sound.

"No guns, sir?" an aide asked.

"There's no sound of cannon fire," Colonel Wallace explained, 'which surely means the Outer Fort is taken."

"But not the Inner?" the aide asked.

Sir Arthur did not even bother to reply. Of course the Inner Fort was not taken, otherwise the sound of fighting would have died away altogether and fugitives would be streaming from the Southern Gate towards the muskets of the 74th. And somehow, despite his misgivings, Wellesley had dared to hope that Kenny's a.s.sault would wash over both sets of ramparts, and that by the time the 74th reached the road's summit the great Southern Gate would already have been opened by triumphant redcoats. Instead a green and gold flag hung from the gate tower which bristled with the muskets of its defenders.

Wellesley now wished that he had ridden to the plateau and followed Kenny's men through the breaches. What the h.e.l.l was happening? He had no way of reaching the plateau except to ride all the way down to the plain and then back up the newly cut road, a distance of over twenty miles. He could only wait and hope.

"You'll advance your skirmishers, Colonel?" he suggested to Wallace. The 74th's skirmishers could not hope to achieve much, but at least their presence would confirm the threat to the southern walls and so pin those defenders down.

"But spread them out," Wellesley advised, 'spread them well out." By scattering the Light Company across the hot hillside he would protect them from cannon fire.

Beyond the southern ramparts, far beyond, a pillar of smoke smeared the sky grey. The sound of firing rose and fell, muted by the hot air that shimmered over the fort's black walls. Wellesley fidgeted and hoped to G.o.d his gamble would pay off and that his redcoats, G.o.d alone knew how, had found a way into the fort that had never before fallen.

"Give them fire!" Major Stokes roared at the men on the ravine's northern side.

"Give them fire!" Other officers took up the call, and the men who had been watching the fight across the ravine loaded their fire locks and began peppering the gatehouse with musket b.a.l.l.s. Stokes had climbed back up the northern side of the ravine so that he could see across the farther wall, and he now watched as the two small groups of redcoats advanced raggedly over the hillside. A column was farthest away, while the nearer men were in a line, and both advanced on the strongly garrisoned gatehouse which had just repelled yet another British attack through the broken gate. Those defenders would now turn their muskets on the new attackers and so Stokes roared at men to fire across the ravine. The range was terribly long, but any distraction would help. The gunners who had smashed down the gate fired at the parapets, their shots chipping at stone.

"Go, man, go!" Stokes urged Sharpe.

"Go!"

Captain Morris, his mouth swollen and bleeding, and with a bruise blackening one eye and another disfiguring his forehead, staggered up the hillside.

"Major Stokes!" he called petulantly.

"Major Stokes."

Stokes turned to him. His first reaction was that Morris must have been wounded trying to cross the wall, and he decided he must have misjudged the man who was not, after all, such a coward.

"You need a surgeon, Captain?"

"That b.l.o.o.d.y man, Sharpe! He hit me! Hit me! Stole my company. I want charges levelled."

"Hit you?" Stokes asked, bemused.

"Stole my company!" Morris said in outrage.

"I ordered him to go away, and he hit me! I'm telling you, sir, because you're a senior officer.

You can talk to some of my men, sir, and hear their story. Some of them witnessed the a.s.sault, and I shall look for your support, sir, in the proceedings."

Stokes wanted to laugh. So that was how Sharpe had found the men!

"I think you'd better forget bringing charges against Mister Sharpe," the engineer said.

"Forget bringing charges?" Morris exclaimed.

"I will not! I'll break the b.a.s.t.a.r.d!"

"I doubt it," Stokes said.

"He hit me!" Morris protested.

"He a.s.saulted me!"

"Nonsense," Stokes said brusquely.

"You fell over. I saw you do it.

Tripped and tumbled. And that's precisely what I'll allege at any court martial. Not that there'll be a court martial. You simply fell over, man, and now you're suffering from delusions! Maybe it's a touch of the sun, Captain? You should be careful, otherwise you'll end up like poor

Harness. We shall ship you home and you'll end your days in bedlam with chains round your ankles."

"Sir! I protest!" Morris said.

"You protest too much, Captain," Stokes said.

"You tripped, and that's what I shall testify if you're foolish enough to bring charges.

Even my boy saw you trip. Ain't that so, Ahmed?" Stokes turned to get Ahmed's agreement, but he had vanished.