would come to his slaughter. And make his wildly ambitious dreams come true.
'The fellow was using a rifle! ' Major Stokes said in wonderment. 'I do declare, a rifle! Can't have been anything else at that range. Two hundred paces if it was an inch, and he fanned my head! A much underestimated weapon, the rifle, don't you think?'
'A toy, ' Captain Morris said.
'Nothing will replace muskets.'
'But the accuracy! ' Stokes declared.
'Soldiers can't use rifles, ' Morris said.
'It would be like giving knives and forks to hogs.' He twisted in the camp chair and gestured at his men, the 33rd's Light Company.
'Look at them! Half of them can't work out which end of a musket is which. Useless buggers. Might as well arm the bastards with pikes.'
'If you say so, ' Stokes said disapprovingly. His road had reached the plateau and now he had to begin the construction of the breaching batteries, and the 33rd's Light Company, which had escorted Stokes north from Mysore, had been charged with the job of protecting the sappers who would build the batteries. Captain Morris had been unhappy with the orders, for he would have much preferred to have been sent back south rather than be camped by the rock isthmus that promised to be such a lively place in these next few days. There was a chance that Gawilghur's garrison might sally out to destroy the batteries, and even if that danger did not materialize, it was a certainty that the Mahratta gunners on the Outer Fort's walls would try to break down the new works with cannon fire.
Sergeant Hakeswill approached Stokes's tent. He looked distracted, so much so that his salute was perfunctory.
'You heard the news, sir?' He spoke to Morris.
Morris squinted up at the Sergeant.
«News,» he said heavily, 'news?
Can't say I have, Sergeant. The enemy has surrendered, perhaps?'
'Nothing so good, sir, nothing so good.'
'You look pale, man! ' Stokes said.
'Are you sickening?'
'Heart-sick, sir, that's what I am in my own self, sir, heart-sick.'
Sergeant Hakeswill sniffed heavily, and even cuffed at a non-existent tear on his twitching cheek.
'Captain Torrance, ' he announced, 'is dead, sir.' The Sergeant took off his shako and held it against his breast.
'Dead, sir.'
'Dead?' Stokes said lightly. He had not met Torrance.
'Took his own life, sir, that's what they do say. He killed his clerk with a knife, then turned his pistol on himself The Sergeant demonstrated the action by pretending to point a pistol at his own head and pulling the trigger. He sniffed again.
'And he was as good an officer as ever I did meet, and I've known many in my time. Officers and gentlemen, like your own good self, sir, ' he said to Morris.
Morris, as unmoved by Torrance's death as Stokes, smirked.
'Killed his clerk, eh? That'll teach the bugger to keep a tidy ledger.'
'They do say, sir, ' Hakeswill lowered his voice, 'that he must have been unnatural.'
'Unnatural?' Stokes asked.
'With his clerk, sir, pardon me for breathing such a filthy thing.
Him and the clerk, sir.
'Cos he was naked, see, the Captain was, and the clerk was a handsome boy, even if he was a blackamoor. He washed a lot, and the Captain liked that.'
'Are you suggesting it was a lovers' tiff?' Morris asked, then laughed.
'No, sir, ' Hakeswill said, turning to stare across the plateau's edge into the immense sky above the Deccan Plain, 'because it weren't. The Captain weren't ever unnatural, not like that. It weren't a lovers' tiff, sir, not even if he was naked as a needle. The Captain, sir, he liked to go naked. Kept him cool, he said, and kept his clothes clean, but there weren't nothing strange in it. Not in him. And he weren't a man to be filthy and unnatural. He liked the bibb is he did. He was a Christian. A Christian gentleman, that's what he was, and he didn't kill himself. I knows who killed him, I do.'
Morris gave Stokes a shrug, as if Hakeswill's maunderings were beyond understanding.
'But the nub of the thing is, sir' — Hakeswill turned back to face Morris and stood to attention 'that I ain't with the bullocks no more, sir. I've got orders, sir, to be back with you where I belongs, sir, seeing as some other officer has got Captain Torrance's duties and he didn't want me no more on account of having his own sergeant.' He replaced his shako, then saluted Morris.
'Under orders, sir! With Privates Kendrick and Lowry, sir. Others have taken over our bullocking duties, sir, and we is back with you like we always wanted to be. Sir!»
'Welcome back, Sergeant, ' Morris said laconically.
'I'm sure the company will be overjoyed at your return.'
'I knows they will, sir, ' Hakeswill said.
'I'm like a father to them, sir, I am, ' Hakeswill added to Stokes.
Stokes frowned.
'Who do you think killed Captain Torrance, Sergeant?' he asked, and when Hakeswill said nothing, but just stood with his face twitching, the Major became insistent.
'If you know, man, you must speak! This is a crime! You have a duty to speak.'
Hakeswill's face wrenched itself.
'It were him, sir.' The Sergeant's eyes widened.
'It were Sharpie, sir!»
Stokes laughed.
'Don't be so absurd, man. Poor Sharpe is a prisoner!
He's locked away in the fortress, I've no doubt.'
'That's what we all hear, sir, ' Hakeswill said, 'but I knows better.'
'A touch of the sun, ' Morris explained to Stokes, then waved the Sergeant away.
'Put your kit with the company, Sergeant. And I'm glad you're back.'
'Touched by your words, sir, ' Hakeswill said fervently, 'and I'm glad to be home, sir, back in me own kind where I belong.' He saluted again, then swivelled on his heel and marched away.
:
'Salt of the earth, ' Morris said.
Major Stokes, from his brief acquaintance with Hakeswill, was not sure of that verdict, but he said nothing. Instead he wandered a few paces northwards to watch the sappers who were busy scraping at the plateau's thin soil to fill gabions that had been newly woven from green bamboo. The gab ions great wicker baskets stuffed with earth, would be stacked as a screen to soak up the enemy gunfire while the battery sites were being levelled. Stokes had already decided to do the initial work at night, for the vulnerable time for making batteries close to a fortress was the first few hours, and at night the enemy gunfire was, likely to be inaccurate.
The Major was making four batteries. Two, the breaching ones, would be constructed far down the isthmus among an outcrop of great black boulders that lay less than a quarter-mile from the fortress. The rocks, with the gab ions would provide the gunners some protection: from the fortress's counter-fire. Sappers, hidden from the fort by the lie of the land, were already driving a road to the proposed site of the breaching guns. Two other batteries would be constructed to the east of the isthmus, on the edge of the plateau, and those guns would enfilade the growing breaches.
There would be three breaches. That decision had been made when Stokes, early in the dawn, had crept as close to the fortress as he had dared and, hidden among the tumbled rocks above the half-filled tank, had examined the Outer Fort's wall through his telescope. He had stared a long time, counting the gun embrasures and trying to estimate how many men were stationed on the bastions and fire steps Those were details that did not
