Seringapatam.'
'And you know Hakeswill?'
'I know bloody Hakeswill. Recruited me, he did, and he's been persecuting me ever since. He shouldn't even be with this army, he's supposed to be with the Havercakes down south, but he came up here with a warrant to arrest me. That didn't work, so he's just stayed, hasn't he? And he's working the bleeding system! You can wager your last shilling that he's the bastard who supplies Naig, and splits the profit.'
Sharpe stopped to look for green tents.
'How come you don't carry your own spare horseshoes?'
'We do. But when they've gone you have to get more from the supplies. That's how the system's supposed to work. And yesterday's pursuit left half the hooves wrecked. We need shoes.'
Sharpe had seen a cluster of faded green tents.
'That's where the bastard is, ' he said, then looked at Lockhart.
'This could get nasty.'
Lockhart grinned. He was as tall as Sharpe and had a face that looked as though it had survived a lifetime of tavern brawls.
'Come this far, ain't I?'
'Is that thing loaded?' Sharpe nodded at the pistol at Lockhart's belt.
A sabre also hung there, just like the one at Sharpe's hip.
'It will be.' Lockhart drew the pistol and Sharpe turned to Ahmed and mimed the actions of loading the musket. Ahmed grinned and pointed to the lock, indicating that his weapon was already charged.
'How many of the buggers will be waiting for us?' Lockhart asked.
'A dozen?' Sharpe guessed.
Lockhart glanced back at his six men.
'We can deal with a dozen buggers.'
«Right,» Sharpe said, 'so let's bloody well make some trouble.' He grinned, because for the first time since he had become an officer he was enjoying himself.
Which meant someone was about to get a thumping.
CHAPTER 3
Major General Sir Arthur Wellesley rode northwards among a cavalcade of officers whose horses kicked up a wide trail of dust that lingered in the air long after the horsemen had passed. Two troops of East India Company cavalry provided the General's escort. Manu Bappoo's army might have been trounced and its survivors sent skeltering back into Gawilghur, but the Deccan Plain was still infested with Mahratta cavalry ready to pounce on supply convoys, wood-cutting parties or the grass-cutters who supplied the army's animals with fodder and so the two troops rode with sabres drawn. Wellesley set a fast pace, revelling in the freedom to ride in the long open country.
'Did you visit Colonel Stevenson this morning?' he called back to an aide.
'I did, sir, and he's no better than he was.'
'But he can get about?'
'On his elephant, sir.'
Wellesley grunted. Stevenson was the commander of his smaller army, but the old Colonel was ailing. So was Harness, the commander of one of Wellesley's two brigades, but there was no point in asking about Harness. It was not just physical disease that assaulted Harness, for the Scotsman's wits were gone as well. The doctors claimed it was the heat that had desiccated his brains, but Wellesley doubted the diagnosis. Heat and rum, maybe, but not the heat alone, though he did not doubt that India's climate was bad for a European's health. Few men lived long without falling prey to some wasting fever, and Wellesley was thinking it was time he left himself. Time to go back home before his health was abraded and, more important, before his existence was forgotten in London. French armies were unsettling all Europe and it could not be long before London despatched an army to fight the old foe, and Wellesley wanted to be a part of it. He was in his middle thirties and he had a reputation to make, but first he had to finish off the Mahrattas, and that meant taking Gawilghur, and to that end he was now riding towards the great rampart of cliffs that sealed off the plain's northern edge.
An hour's ride brought him to the summit of a small rise which offered a view northwards. The plain looked dun, starved of water by the failed monsoon, though here and there patches of millet grew tall. In a good year, Wellesley guessed, the millet would cover the plain from horizon to horizon, a sea of grain bounded by the Gawilghur cliffs. He dismounted on the small knoll and took out a telescope that he settled on his horse's saddle. It was a brand new glass, a gift from the merchants of Madras to mark Wellesley's pacification of Mysore. Trade now moved freely on India's eastern flank, and the telescope, which had been specially ordered from Matthew Berge of London, was a generous token of the merchants' esteem, but Wellesley could not get used to it.
The shape of the eyepiece was less concave than the one he was used to, and after a moment he snapped the new telescope shut and pulled out his old glass which, though lower powered, was more comfortable.
He stared for a long time, gazing at the fort which crowned the rock promontory. The black stone of the fortress walls looked particularly sinister, even in the sunlight.
'Good God, ' the General muttered after a while. Fail up there, he thought, and there would be no point in going home. He could go to London with some victories under his belt, and men would respect him even if the victories had not been against the French, but go with a defeat and they would despise him. Gawilghur, he thought sourly, had the look of a career-breaker.
Colonel Wallace, Wellesley's healthy brigade commander, had also dismounted and was inspecting the fortress through his own glass.
'Devil of a place, Sir Arthur, ' Wallace said 'How high is it, Blackiston?' Wellesley called to one of his aides, an engineer.
'I took a triangulation yesterday, sir, ' Blackiston said, 'and discovered the fortress walls are eighteen hundred feet above the plain.'
'Is there water up there?' Colonel Butters, the chief engineer, asked.
'We hear there is, sir, ' Blackiston said.
'There are tanks in the fort;
huge things like lakes.'
'But the water level must be low this year?' Butters suggested.
'I doubt it's low enough, sir, ' Blackiston murmured, knowing that Butters had been hoping that thirst might defeat the garrison.
'And the rascals will have food, no doubt, ' Wellesley commented.
«Doubtless,» Wallace agreed drily.
'Which means they'll have to be prised out, ' the General said, then bent to the glass again and lowered the lens to look at the foothills below the bluff. Just south of the fort was a conical hill that rose almost halfway up the flank of the great promontory.
'Can we get guns on that near hill?' he asked.
There was a pause while the other officers decided which hill he was referring to. Colonel Butters flinched.
'We can get them up there, sir, but I doubt they'll have the elevation to reach the fort.'
'You'll get nothing bigger than a twelve-pounder up there, ' Wallace said dubiously, then slid the telescope's view up the bluff to the walls.
'And you'll need bigger shot than twelve-pounders to break down that wall.'
'Sir Arthur! ' The warning call came from the officer commanding the East India Company cavalry who was pointing to where a group of Mahratta horsemen had appeared in the south. They had evidently been following the lingering dust cloud left by the General's party and, though the approaching horsemen only numbered about twenty men, the sepoy cavalry wheeled to face them and spread into a line.
'It's all right, ' Wellesley called, 'they're ours. I asked them to meet us here.' He had inspected the
