Sharpe's Fortress Part 69

"They are djinns," Beny Singh said, and he looked sideways at Obadiah Hakeswill whose face was twitching, and he screamed.

"They are djinnsl' "They are men, as feeble as other men," Bappoo said. He reached out with his free hand and took hold of the white dog by the scruff of its neck. Beny Singh whimpered, but did not resist. The dog struggled in Manu Bappoo's grip.

"If you try to surrender the fortress again," Manu Bappoo said, 'then this will be your fate." He let the dog drop. It yelped as it fell into the pit, then howled piteously as it struck the rock floor.

There was a hiss, a scrabble of paws, a last howl, then silence. Beny Singh uttered a shriek of pity for his dog before babbling that he would rather give his women poison to drink than risk that they should become prey to the terrible besiegers.

Manu Bappoo shook the hapless Killadar.

"Do you understand me?" he demanded.

"I understand!" Beny Singh said desperately.

Manu Bappoo hauled the Killadar safely back from the pit's edge.

"You will go to the palace, Beny Singh," he ordered, 'and you will stay there, and you will send no more messages to the enemy." He pushed the Killadar away, then turned his back on him.

"Colonel Dodd?"

"Sahib?"

"A dozen of your men will make certain that the Killadar sends no messages from the palace. If he does, you may kill the messenger."

Dodd smiled.

"Of course, sahib."

Bappoo went back to the beleaguered Outer Fort while the Killadar slunk back to the hilltop palace above its green-sc.u.mmed lake. Dodd detailed a dozen men to guard the palace's entrance, then went back to the rampart to brood over the ravine. Hakeswill followed him there.

"Why's the Killadar so scared, sir? Does he know something we don't?"

"He's a coward, Sergeant."

But Beny Singh's fear had infected Hakeswill who imagined a vengeful Sharpe come back from the dead to pursue him through the nightmare of a fortress fallen.

"The b.a.s.t.a.r.ds can't get in, sir, can they?" he asked anxiously.

Dodd recognized Hakeswill's fear, the same fear he felt himself, the fear of the ignominy and shame of being recaptured by the British and then condemned by a merciless court. He smiled.

"They will probably take the Outer Fort, Sergeant, because they're very good, and because our old comrades do indeed fight like djinns, but they cannot cross the ravine. Not if all the powers of darkness help them, not if they besiege us for a year, not if they batter down all these walls and destroy the gates and flatten the palace by gunfire, because they will still have to cross the ravine, and it cannot be done. It cannot be done."

And who rules Gawilghur, Dodd thought, reigns in India.

And within a week he would be Rajah here.

Gawilghur's walls, as Stokes had guessed, were rotten. The first breach, in the outer wall, took less than a day to make. In mid-afternoon the wall had still been standing, though a cave had been excavated into the dusty rubble where Stokes had pointed the guns, but quite suddenly the whole rampart collapsed. It slid down the brief slope in a cloud of dust which slowly settled to reveal a steep ramp of jumbled stone leading into the s.p.a.ce between the two walls. A low stub of the wall's rear face still survived, but an hour's work served to throw that remnant down.

The gunners changed their aim, starting the two breaches in the higher inner wall, while the enfilading batteries, which had been gnawing at the embrasures to dismount the enemy's guns, began firing slantwise into the first breach to dissuade the defenders from building obstacles at the head of the ramp. The enemy guns, those which survived, redoubled their efforts to disable the British batteries, but their shots were wasted in the gab ions or overhead. The big gun which had inflicted such slaughter fired three times more, but its b.a.l.l.s cracked uselessly into the cliff face, after which the Mahratta gunners mysteriously gave up.

Next day the two inner breaches were made, and now the big guns concentrated on widening all three gaps in the walls. The eighteen pounder shots slammed into rotten stone, gouging out the wall's fill to add to the ramps. By evening the breaches were clearly big enough and now the gunners aimed their pieces at the enemy's remaining cannon.

One by one they were unseated or their embrasures shattered. A constant shroud of smoke hung over the rocky neck of land. It hung thick and pungent, twitching every time a shot whipped through. The enfilading twelve-pounders fired sh.e.l.ls into the breaches, while the howitzer lobbed more sh.e.l.ls over the walls.

The British guns fired deep into dusk, and minute by minute the enemy response grew feebler as their guns were wrecked or thrown off the fire steps Only as black night dropped did the besiegers' hot guns cease fire, but even now there would be no respite for the enemy. It was at night that the defenders could turn the breaches into deathtraps. They could bury mines in the stony ramps, or dig wide trenches across the breach summits or make new walls behind the raw new openings, but the British kept one heavy gUn firing throughout the darkness. They loaded the eighteen-pounder with canister and, three times an hour, sprayed the area of the breaches with a cloud of musket b.a.l.l.s to deter any Mahratta from risking his life on the rub bled slopes.

Few slept well that night. The cough of the gun seemed unnaturally loud, and even in the British camp men could hear the rattle as the musket b.a.l.l.s whipped against Gawilghur's wounded walls. And in the morning, the soldiers knew, they would be asked to go to those walls and climb the tumbled ramps and fight their way through the shattered stones. And what would wait for them? At the very least, they suspected, the enemy would have mounted guns athwart the breaches to fire across the attack route. They expected blood and pain and death.

"I've never been into a breach," Garrard told Sharpe. The two men met at Syud Sevajee's tents, and Sharpe had given his old friend a bottle of arrack.

"Nor me," Sharpe said.

"They say it's bad."

"They do," Sharpe agreed bleakly. It was supposedly the worst ordeal that any soldier could face.

Garrard drank from the stone bottle, wiped its lip, then handed it to Sharpe. He admired Sharpe's coat in the light of the small campfire.

"Smart bit of cloth, Mister Sharpe."

The coat had been given new white turn backs and cuffs by Clare Wall, and Sharpe had done his best to make the jacket wrinkled and dusty, but it still looked expensive.

"Just an old coat, Tom," he said dismissively.

"Funny, isn't it? Mister Morris lost a coat."

"Did he?" Sharpe asked.

"He should be more careful." He gave Garrard the bottle, then climbed to his feet.

"I've got an errand, Tom." He held out his hand.

"I'll look for you tomorrow."

"I'll look out for you, d.i.c.k."

Sharpe led Ahmed through the camp. Some men sang around their fires, others obsessively honed bayonets that were already razor sharp. A cavalryman had set up a grinding stone and a succession of officers' servants brought swords and sabres to be given a wicked edge. Sparks whipped off the stone. The sappers were doing their last job, making ladders from bamboo that had been carried up from the plain. Major Stokes supervised the job, and his eyes widened in joy as he saw Sharpe approaching through the firelight.

"Richard! Is it you? Dear me, it is!

Well, I never! And I thought you were locked up in the enemy's dungeons! You escaped?"

Sharpe shook Stokes's hand.

"I never got taken to Gawilghur. I was held by some hors.e.m.e.n," he lied, 'but they didn't seem to know what to do with me, so the b.u.g.g.e.rs just let me go."

"I'm delighted, delighted!"

Sharpe turned and looked at the ladders.