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

Captain Torrance. Good day to you, Ensign.’ Torrance turned on his heel and walked away through the crowd.

      ‘Bastard,’ Sharpe said, for he had suddenly understood why Torrance had been so keen to hang Naig.

      He spat after the departed Captain, then went to find some bullocks and carts. The army had its supplies back, but Sharpe had made a new enemy. As if Hakeswill were not enough, he now had Torrance as well.

      The palace in Gawilghur was a sprawling one-storey building that stood on the highest point within the Inner Fort. To its north was a garden that curled about the largest of the fortress’s lakes. The lake was a tank, a reservoir, but its banks had been planted with flowering trees, and a flight of steps led from the palace to a small stone pavilion on the lake’s northern shore. The pavilion had an arched ceiling on which the reflections of the lake’s small waves should have rippled, but the season had been so dry that the lake had shrunk and the water level was some eight or nine feet lower than usual. The water and the exposed banks were rimed with a green, foul-smelling scum, but Beny Singh, the Killadar of Gawilghur, had arranged for spices to be burned in low, flat braziers so that the dozen men inside the pavilion were not too offended by the lake’s stench.

      ‘If only the Rajah was here,’ Beny Singh said, ‘we should know what to do.’ Beny Singh was a short, plump man with a curling moustache and nervous eyes. He was the fortress commander, but he was a courtier by avocation, not a soldier, and he had always regarded his command of the great fortress as a licence to make his fortune rather than to fight the Rajah’s enemies.

      Prince Manu Bappoo was not surprised that his brother had chosen not to come to Gawilghur, but had instead fled farther into the hills. The Rajah was like Beny Singh, he had no belly for a fight, but Bappoo had watched the first British troops creep across the plain beneath the fort’s high walls and he welcomed their coming. ‘We don’t need my brother here to know what we must do,’ he said. ‘We fight.’ The other men, all commanders of the various troops that had taken refuge in Gawilghur, voiced their agreement.

      ‘The British cannot be stopped by walls,’ Beny Singh said. He was cradling a small white lap dog which had eyes as wide and frightened as its master’s.

      ‘They can, and they will,’ Bappoo insisted.

      Singh shook his head. ‘Were they stopped at Seringapatam? At Ahmednuggur? They crossed those city walls as though they had wings! They are – what is the word your Arabs use? – djinns!’ He looked about the gathered council and saw no one who would support him. ‘They must have the djinns on their side,’ he added weakly.

      ‘So what would you do?’ Bappoo asked.

      ‘Treat with them,’ Beny Singh said. ‘Ask for cowle