Sharpe’s Fortress: The Siege of Gawilghur, December 1803. Bernard Cornwell

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      He emerged into the afternoon sun to find himself staring at a small town that was built within the stronghold’s ramparts and on the summit of Gawilghur’s promontory. The alleys of the town were crammed with soldiers, most of them Mahratta cavalrymen who had fled in front of the British pursuit, but, twisting in his saddle, Dodd saw some infantry of Gawilghur’s garrison standing on the firestep. He also saw Manu Bappoo who had outridden the British pursuit and now gestured to Dodd from the gate-tower’s turret.

      Dodd told one of his men to hold his horse, then climbed the black walls to the top firestep of the tower where he stopped in awed astonishment at the view. It was like standing at the edge of the world. The plain was so far beneath and the southern horizon so far away that there was nothing in front of his eyes but endless sky. This, Dodd thought, was a god’s view of earth. The eagle’s view. He leaned over the parapet and saw his guns struggling up the narrow road. They would not reach the fort till long after nightfall.

      ‘You were right, Colonel,’ Manu Bappoo said ruefully.

      Dodd straightened to look at the Mahratta prince. ‘It’s dangerous to fight the British in open fields,’ he said, ‘but here …?’ Dodd gestured at the approach road. ‘Here they will die, sahib.’

      ‘The fort’s main entrance,’ Bappoo said in his sibilant voice, ‘is on the other side. To the north.’

      Dodd turned and gazed across the roof of the central palace. He could see little of the great fortress’s northern defences, though a long way away he could see another tower like the one on which he now stood. ‘Is the main entrance as difficult to approach as this one?’ he asked.

      ‘No, but it isn’t easy. The enemy has to approach along a narrow strip of rock, then fight through the Outer Fort. After that comes a ravine, and then the Inner Fort. I want you to guard the inner gate.’

      Dodd looked suspiciously at Bappoo. ‘Not the Outer Fort?’ Dodd reckoned his Cobras should guard the place where the British would attack. That way the British would be defeated.

      ‘The Outer Fort is a trap,’ Bappoo explained. He looked tired, but the defeat at Argaum had not destroyed his spirit, merely sharpened his appetite for revenge. ‘If the British capture the Outer Fort they will think they have won. They won’t know that an even worse barrier waits beyond the ravine. That barrier has to be held. I don’t care if the Outer Fort falls, but we must hold the Inner. That means our best troops must be there.’

      ‘It will be held,’ Dodd said.

      Bappoo turned and stared southwards. Somewhere in the heat-hazed distance the British forces were readying to march on Gawilghur. ‘I thought we could stop them at Argaum,’ he admitted softly.

      Dodd, who had advised against fighting at Argaum, said nothing.

      ‘But here,’ Bappoo went on, ‘they will be stopped.’

      Here, Dodd thought, they would have to be stopped. He had deserted from the East India Company’s army because he faced trial and execution, but also because he believed he could make a fortune as a mercenary serving the Mahrattas. So far he had endured three defeats, and each time he had led his men safe out of the disaster, but from Gawilghur there would be no escape. The British would block every approach, so the British must be stopped. They must fail in this high place, and so they would, Dodd consoled himself. For nothing imaginable could take this fort. He was on the world’s edge, lifted into the sky, and for the redcoats it would be like scaling the very heights of heaven.

      So here, at last, deep inside India, the redcoats would be beaten.

      Six cavalrymen in the blue and yellow coats of the 19th Light Dragoons waited outside the house where Captain Torrance was said to be billeted. They were under the command of a long-legged sergeant who was lounging on a bench beside the door. The Sergeant glanced up as Sharpe approached. ‘I hope you don’t want anything useful out of the bastards,’ he said acidly, then saw that the shabby-uniformed Sharpe, despite wearing a pack like any common soldier, also had a sash and a sabre. He scrambled to his feet. ‘Sorry, sir.’

      Sharpe waved him back down onto the bench. ‘Useful?’ he asked.

      ‘Horseshoes, sir, that’s all we bleeding want. Horseshoes! Supposed to be four thousand in store, but can they find them?’ The Sergeant spat. ‘Tells me they’re lost! I’m to go to the bhinjarries and buy them! I’m supposed to tell my captain that? So now we have to sit here till Captain Torrance gets back. Maybe he knows where they are. That monkey in there’ – he jerked his thumb at the house’s front door – ‘doesn’t know a bloody thing.’

      Sharpe pushed open the door to find himself in a large room where a half-dozen men argued with a harried clerk. The clerk, an Indian, sat behind a table covered with curling ledgers. ‘Captain Torrance is ill!’ the clerk snapped at Sharpe without waiting to discover the newcomer’s business. ‘And take that dirty Arab boy outside,’ the clerk added, jerking his chin at Ahmed who, armed with a musket he had taken from a corpse on the battlefield, had followed Sharpe into the house.

      ‘Muskets!’ A man tried to attract the clerk’s attention.

      ‘Horseshoes!’ an East India Company lieutenant shouted.

      ‘Buckets,’ a gunner said.

      ‘Come back tomorrow,’ the clerk said. ‘Tomorrow!’

      ‘You said that yesterday,’ the gunner said, ‘and I’m back.’

      ‘Where’s Captain Torrance?’ Sharpe asked.

      ‘He’s ill,’ the clerk said disapprovingly, as though Sharpe had risked the Captain’s fragile health even by asking the question. ‘He cannot be disturbed. And why is that boy here? He is an Arab!’

      ‘Because I told him to be here,’ Sharpe said. He walked round the table and stared down at the ledgers. ‘What a bleeding mess!’

      ‘Sahib!’ The clerk had now realized Sharpe was an officer. ‘Other side of the table, sahib, please, sahib! There is a system here, sahib. I stay this side of the table and you remain on the other. Please, sahib.’

      ‘What’s your name?’ Sharpe asked.

      The clerk seemed affronted at the question. ‘I am Captain Torrance’s assistant,’ he said grandly.

      ‘And Torrance is ill?’

      ‘The Captain is very sick.’

      ‘So who’s in charge?’

      ‘I am,’ the clerk said.

      ‘Not any longer,’ Sharpe said. He looked up at the East India Company lieutenant. ‘What did you want?’

      ‘Horseshoes.’

      ‘So where are the bleeding horseshoes?’ Sharpe asked the clerk.

      ‘I have explained, sahib, I have explained,’ the clerk said. He was a middle-aged man with a lugubrious face and pudgy ink-stained fingers that now hastily tried to close all the ledgers so that Sharpe could not read them. ‘Now please, sahib, join the queue.’

      ‘Where are the horseshoes?’ Sharpe insisted, leaning closer to the sweating clerk.

      ‘This office is closed!’ the clerk shouted. ‘Closed till tomorrow! All business will be conducted tomorrow. Captain Torrance’s orders!’

      ‘Ahmed!’ Sharpe said. ‘Shoot the bugger.’

      Ahmed spoke no English, but the clerk did not know that. He held his hands out. ‘I am closing the office! Work cannot be done like this! I shall complain to Captain Torrance! There will be trouble! Big trouble!’ The clerk glanced at a door that led to the inner part of the house.

      ‘Is that where Torrance is?’ Sharpe asked, gesturing at the door.

      ‘No, sahib, and you cannot go in there. The Captain is sick.’

      Sharpe