'Women, music, luxury. We really do not need him here.'
Dodd shook his head.
'If you let him go, sahib, then half the damned garrison will want to run away. And if you let the women go, what will the men fight for? Besides, do you really think there's any danger?'
«None,» Bappoo admitted. He had led the officers up a steep rock stairway to a natural bastion where a vast iron gun was trained across the chasm towards the distant cliffs of the high plateau. From here the far cliffs were almost a mile away, but Dodd could just see a group of horsemen clustered at the chasm's edge. It was those horsemen, all in native robes, who had prompted the Outer Fort's gunners to open fire, but the gunners, seeing their shots fall well short of the target, had given up.
Dodd drew out his telescope, trained it, and saw a man in the uniform of the Royal Engineers sitting on the ground a few paces from his companions. The engineer was sketching. The horsemen were all Indians.
Dodd lowered the telescope and looked at the huge iron gun.
'Is it loaded?' he asked the gunners.
'Yes, sahib.'
'A haideri apiece if you can kill the man in the dark uniform. The one sitting at the cliff's edge.'
The gunners laughed. Their gun was over twenty feet long and its wrought-iron barrel was cast with decorations that had been painted green, white and red. A pile of round shot, each over a foot in diameter, stood beside the massive carriage that was made from giant baulks of teak. The gun captain fussed over his aim, shouting at his men to lever the vast carriage a thumb's width to the right, then a finger's breadth back, until at last he was satisfied. He squinted along the barrel for a second, waved the officers who had followed Bappoo to move away from the great gun, then leaned over the breach to dab his glowing port fire onto the gun's touch- hole.
The reed glowed and smoked for a second as the fire dashed down to the charge, then the vast cannon crashed back, the teak runners sliding up the timber ramp that formed the lower half of the carriage.
Smoke jetted out into the chasm as a hundred startled birds flapped from their nests on the rock faces and circled in the warm air.
Dodd had been standing to one side, watching the engineer through his glass. For a second he actually saw the great round shot as a flicker of grey in the lower right quadrant of his lens, then he saw a boulder close to the engineer shatter into scraps. The engineer fell sideways, his sketch pad falling, but then he picked himself up and scrambled up the slope to where his horse was being guarded by the cavalrymen.
Dodd took a single gold coin from his pouch and tossed it to the gunner.
'You missed, ' he said, 'but it was damned fine shooting.'
'Thank you, sahib.'
A whimper made Dodd turn. Beny Singh had handed his dog to a servant and was staring through an ivory- barrelled telescope at the enemy horsemen.
'What is it?' Bappoo asked him.
'Syud Sevajee, ' Singh said in a small voice.
'Who's Syud Sevajee?' Dodd asked.
Bappoo grinned.
'His father was once kill adar here, but he died.
Was it poison?' he asked Beny Singh.
'He just died, ' Singh said.
'He just died!»
'Murdered, probably, ' Bappoo said with amusement, 'and Beny Singh became kill adar and took the dead man's daughter as his concubine.'
Dodd turned to see the enemy horsemen vanishing among the trees beyond the far cliff.
'Come for revenge, has he? You still want to leave?' he demanded of Beny Singh.
'Because that fellow will be waiting for you. He'll track you through the hills, Killadar, and slit your throat in the night's darkness.'
'We shall stay here and fight, ' Beny Singh declared, retrieving the dog from his servant.
'Fight and win, ' Dodd said, and he imagined the British breaching batteries on that far cliff, and he imagined the slaughter that would be made among the crews by this one vast gun. And there were fifty other heavy guns waiting to greet the British approach, and hundreds of lighter pieces that fired smaller missiles. Guns, rockets, canister, muskets and cliffs, those were Gawilghur's de fences and Dodd reckoned the British stood no chance. No chance at all. The big gun's smoke drifted away in the small breeze.
'They will die here, ' Dodd said, 'and we shall chase the survivors south and cut them down like dogs.' He turned and looked at Beny Singh.
'You see the chasm? That is where their demons will die. Their wings will be scorched, they will fall like burning stones to their deaths, and their screams will lull your children to a dreamless sleep.' He knew he spoke true, for Gawilghur was impregnable.
'I take pleasure, no, Dilip, make that I take humble pleasure in reporting the recovery of a quantity of stolen stores.' Captain Torrance paused. Night had just fallen and Torrance uncorked a bottle of arrack and took a sip.
'Am I going too fast for you?'
'Yes, sahib, ' Dilip, the middle-aged clerk, answered.
'Humble pleasure, ' he said aloud as his pen moved laboriously over the paper, 'in reporting the recovery of a quantity of stolen stores.'
'Add a list of the stores, ' Torrance ordered.
'You can do that later.
Just leave a space, man.'
'Yes, sahib, ' Dilip said.
'I had suspected for some time, ' Torrance intoned, then scowled as someone knocked on the door.
«Come,» he shouted, 'if you must.'
Sharpe opened the door and was immediately entangled in the muslin. He fought his way past its folds.
'It's you, ' Torrance said unpleasantly.
'Me, sir.'
'You let some moths in, ' Torrance complained.
'Sorry, sir.'
'That is why the muslin is there, Sharpe, to keep out moths, ensigns and other insignificant nuisances. Kill the moths, Dilip.'
The clerk dutifully chased the moths about the room, swatting them with a roll of paper. The windows, like the door, were closely screened with muslin on the outside of which moths clustered, attracted by the candles that were set in silver sticks on Torrance's table. Dilip's work was spread on the table, while Captain Torrance lay in a wide hammock slung from the roof beams. He was naked.
'Do I offend you, Sharpe?'
'Offend me, sir?'
'I am naked, or had you not noticed?'
'Doesn't bother me, sir.'
'Nudity keeps clothes clean. You should try it. Is the last of the enemy dead, Dilip?'
'The moths are all deceased, sahib.'
'Then we shall continue. Where were we?'
' 'I had suspected for some time, ' Dilip read back the report.
'Surmised is better, I think. I had surmised for some time.' Torrance paused to draw on the mouthpiece of a silver-bellied hookah.
'What are you doing here, Sharpe?'
'Come to get orders, sir.'
'How very assiduous of you. I had surmised for some time that depredations I can spell it if you cannot, Dilip were being made upon the stores entrusted to my command. What the devil were you doing, Sharpe, poking about Naig's tents?'
