None of them understood him, but they grinned dutifully.
Dodd walked eastwards. After a while the wall ended, giving way to the bare lip of a precipice. There was no need for walls around much of the perimeters of Gawilghur's twin forts, for nature had provided the great cliffs that were higher than any rampart a man could make, but Dodd, as he walked to the bluff's edge, noted places here and there where an agile man could, with the help of a rope, scramble down the rock face.
A few men deserted Gawilghur's garrison every day, and Dodd did not doubt that this was how they escaped, but he did not understand why they should want to go. The fort was impregnable! Why would a man not wish to stay with the victors?
He reached a stretch of wall at the fort's southeastern corner and there, high up on a gun platform, he opened his telescope and stared down into the foothills. He searched for a long time, his glass skittering over trees, shrubs and patches of dry grass, but at last he saw a group of men standing beside a narrow path. Some of the men were in red coats and one was in blue.
'What are you watching, Colonel?' Prince Manu Bappoo had seen Dodd on the rampart and had climbed to join him.
«British,» Dodd said, without taking his eye from the telescope.
'They're surveying a route up to the plateau.'
Bappoo shaded his eyes and stared down, but without a telescope he could not see the group of men.
'It will take them months to build a road up to the hills.'
'It'll take them two weeks, ' Dodd said flatly.
'Less. You don't know how their engineers work, sahib, but I do. They'll use powder to break through obstacles and a thousand axe men to widen the tracks. They'll start their work tomorrow and in a fortnight they'll be running guns up to the hills.' Dodd collapsed the telescope.
'Let me go down and break the bastards, ' he demanded.
«No,» Bappoo said. He had already had this argument with Dodd who wanted to take his Cobras down into the foothills and there harass the road-makers. Dodd did not want a stand-up fight, a battle of musket line against musket line, but instead wanted to raid, ambush and scare the enemy. He wanted to slow the British work, to dishearten the sappers and, by such delaying tactics, force Wellesley to send forage parties far into the countryside where they would be prey to the Mahratta horsemen who still roamed the Deccan Plain.
Bappoo knew Dodd was right, and that the British road could be slowed by a campaign of harassment, but he feared to let the white coated Cobras leave the fortress. The garrison was already nervous, awed by the victories of Wellesley's small army, and if they saw the Cobras march out of the fort then many would think they were being abandoned and the trickle of deserters would become a flood.
'We have to slow them! ' Dodd snarled.
'We shall, ' Bappoo said.
'I shall send silladars, Colonel, and reward them for every weapon they bring back to the fort. But you will stay here, and help prepare the de fences He spoke firmly, showing that the subject was beyond discussion, then offered Dodd a gap-toothed smile and gestured towards the palace at the centre of the Inner Fort.
'Come, Colonel, I want to show you something.'
The two men walked through the small houses that surrounded the palace, past an Arab sentry who protected the palace precincts, then through some flowering trees where monkeys crouched. Dodd could hear the tinkle of the bells where Beny Singh was playing with his women, but that sound faded as the path twisted deeper into the trees.
The path ended at a rock face that was pierced by an arched wooden door. Dodd looked up while Bappoo unlocked the door and saw that the great rock slab formed the palace foundations and, when Bappoo thrust back the creaking door, he understood that it led into the palace cellars.
A lantern stood on a shelf just inside the door and there was a pause while Bappoo lit its wick.
«Come,» Bappoo said, and led Dodd into the marvelous coolness of the huge low cellar.
'It is rumoured, ' Bappoo said, 'that we store the treasures of Berar in here, and in one sense it is true, but they are not the treasures that men usually dream of.' He stopped by a row of barrels and casually knocked off their lids, revealing that the tubs were filled with copper coins.
'No gold or silver, ' Bappoo said, 'but money all the same. Money to hire new mercenaries, to buy new weapons and to make a new army.' Bappoo trickled a stream of the newly minted coins through his fingers.
'We have been lax in paying our men, ' he confessed.
'My brother, for all his virtues, is not generous with his treasury.'
Dodd grunted. He was not sure what virtues the Rajah of Berar did possess. Certainly not valour, nor generosity, but the Rajah was fortunate in his brother, for Bappoo was loyal and evidently determined to make up for the Rajah's shortcomings.
'Gold and silver, ' Dodd said, 'would buy better arms and more men.'
'My brother will not give me gold or silver, only copper. And we must work with what we have, not with what we dream of.' Bappoo put the lids back onto the barrels, then edged between them to where rack after rack of muskets stood.
'These, Colonel, ' he said, 'are the weapons for that new army.'
There were thousands of muskets, all brand new, and all equipped with bayonets and cartridge boxes. Some of the guns were locally made copies of French muskets, but several hundred looked to Dodd to be of British make. He lifted one from the racks and saw the Tower mark on its lock.
'How did you get these?' he asked, surprised.
Bappoo shrugged.
'We have agents in the British camp. They arrange it. We meet some of their supply convoys well to the south and pay for their contents. It seems there are traitors in the British army who would rather make money than seek victory.'
'You buy guns with copper?' Dodd asked scathingly. He could not imagine any man selling a Tower musket for a handful of copper.
«No,» Bappoo confessed.
'To buy the weapons and the cartridges we need gold, so I use my own. My brother, I trust, will repay me one day.'
Dodd frowned at the hawk-faced Bappoo.
'You're using your money to keep your brother on the throne?' he asked and, though he waited for an answer, none came. Dodd shook his head, implying that '5
Bappoo's nobility was beyond understanding, then he cocked and fired the unloaded musket. The spark of the flint flashed a sparkle of red light against the stone ceiling.
'A musket in its rack kills no one, ' he said.
'True. But as yet we don't have the men to carry these muskets. But we will, Colonel. Once we have defeated the British the other kingdoms will join us.' That, Dodd reflected, was true enough. Scindia, Dodd's erstwhile employer, was suing for peace, while Holkar, the most formidable of the Mahratta monarchs, was staying aloof from the contest, but if Bappoo did win his victory, those chieftains would be eager to share future spoils.
'And not just the other kingdoms, ' Bappoo went on, 'but warriors from all India will come to our banner. I intend to raise a compoo armed with the best weapons and trained to the very highest standard. Many, I suspect, will be sepoys from Wellesley's defeated army and they will need a new master when he is dead. I thought perhaps you would lead them?'
Dodd returned the musket to its rack.
'You'll not pay me with copper, Bappoo.'
Bappoo smiled.
'You will pay me with victory, Colonel, and I shall reward you with gold.'
Dodd saw some unfamiliar weapons farther down the rack. He lifted one and saw it was a hunting rifle. The lock was British, but the filigree decoration on the stock and barrel was Indian.
'You're buying rifles?'
he asked.
'No better weapon for skirmishing, ' Bappoo said.
