Sharpe's Fortress

by Bernard Cornwell

  The rifle hammered back onto his shoulder. Smoke billowed as Dodd ran to his horse and clambered into the saddle. He slung the rifle, turned the horse and saw that the red-coated officer was on the ground with two of his men kneeling beside him. He grinned. Two hundred paces!

  A wild volley of musketry followed the Mahratta horsemen as they rode westward toward Gawilghur. The balls rattled on rocks or whistled overhead, but none of the cavalrymen was touched. After half a mile Dodd stopped, dismounted and reloaded the rifle. A troop of sepoy cavalry was climbing the last few yards of the road, the men walking as they led their horses around the final steep bend. Dodd found another place to rest the rifle, then waited for the cavalry to approach along the cliff’s edge.

  He kept the sights at two hundred yards. He knew that was very long range, even for a rifle, but if he could hit at two hundred yards then he was confident of killing at a hundred or at fifty.

  “Sahib!” The commander of his escort was worried by the more numerous sepoy cavalry who had now mounted and were trotting toward them.

  “In a minute,” Dodd called back. He picked his target, another officer, and waited for the man to ride into the rifle’s sights. The wind was fitful. It gusted, blowing dust into Dodd’s right eye and making him blink. Sweat trickled down his face. The approaching cavalry had sabres drawn and the blades glittered in the sun. One man carried a dusty pennant on a short staff. They came raggedly, twisting between the rocks and low bushes. Their horses kept their heads low, tired after the effort of climbing the steep hill.

  The officer curbed his horse to let his men catch up. The wind died to nothing and Dodd squeezed the trigger and flinched as the heavy stock slammed into his bruised shoulder.

  “Sahib!”

  “We’re going,” Dodd said, and he put his left foot into the stirrup and heaved himself into the saddle. A glance behind showed a riderless horse and a score of men spurring forward to take revenge. Dodd laughed, slung the rifle, and kicked his horse into a canter. He heard a shout behind as the sepoy cavalry were urged into the pursuit, but Dodd and his escort were mounted on fresh horses and easily outstripped the sepoys.

  Dodd curbed his horse on the neck of rocky land that led to Gawilghur’s Outer Fort. The walls were thick with men who watched the enemy’s approach, and the sight of those spectators gave Dodd an idea. He threw the rifle to the commander of his escort. “Hold it for me!” he ordered, then turned his horse to face the pursuing horsemen. He waved his escort on toward the fortress and drew his sword. It was a beautiful weapon, European made, then sent to India where craftsmen had given it a hilt of gold shaped like an elephant’s head. The escort commander, charged with protecting Dodd’s life, wanted to stay, but Dodd insisted he ride on. “I’ll join you in five minutes,” he promised.

  Dodd barred the road. He glanced behind him once, just to check that the Outer Fort’s ramparts were crowded with men, then he looked back to the approaching cavalry. They slowed as they reached the rock isthmus. They could have kept galloping, and Dodd would then have turned his horse and outrun them, but instead they curbed their sweating horses and just stood watching him from a hundred paces away. They knew what he wanted, but Dodd saluted them with his sword just to make certain they understood his challenge. A havildar urged his horse forward, but then an English voice summoned him back and the man reluctantly turned.

  The English officer drew his sabre. He had lost his hat in the gallop along the edge of the cliff and had long fair hair that was matted with sweat and dirt. He wore a black and scarlet jacket and was mounted on a tall bay gelding that was white with sweat. He saluted Dodd by holding his sabre up, hilt before his face, then he touched the gelding’s flanks with the tips of his spurs and the horse walked forward. Dodd spurred his own horse and the two slowly closed. The Englishman went into a trot, then clapped his heels to drive his horse into a canter and Dodd saw the puffs of dust spurting from the gelding’s hooves. He kept his horse at a walk, only touching it into a trot at the very last second as the Englishman stood in his stirrups to deliver a scything cut with the sabre.

  Dodd tweaked the rein and his horse swerved to the left, then he was turning it back right, turning it all the way, and the sabre had missed his head by a scant two inches and he had not even bothered to parry with his sword. Now he spurred the horse on, following the officer who was trying to turn back, and the Englishman was still half turned, still tugging on the reins, as Dodd attacked. The sabre made an awkward parry that just managed to deflect the sword’s thrust. Dodd hacked back as he passed, felt the blade thump home, then he hauled on the reins and was turning again, and the Englishman was also turning so that the two horses seemed to curl around each other, nose to tail, and the sabre and sword rang together. Dodd was taller than his opponent, but the young Englishman, who was a lieutenant and scarce looked a day over eighteen, was strong, and Dodd’s blow had hardly broken the weave of his coat. He gritted his teeth as he hacked at Dodd, and Dodd parried, parried again and the two blades locked, hilt against hilt, and Dodd heaved to try and throw the young man off balance.

  “You’re Dodd, aren’t you?” the Lieutenant said.

  “Seven hundred guineas to you, boy.”

  “Traitor,” the young Englishman spat.

  Dodd heaved, then kicked the Lieutenant’s horse so that it moved forward and he tried to slash back with his disengaged sword, but the Lieutenant turned the horse in again. The men were too close to fight properly, close enough to smell each other’s breath. The Lieutenant’s stank of tobacco. They could hit their opponent with their sword hilts, but not use the blades’ lengths. If either horse had been properly schooled they could have been walked sideways away from the impasse, but the horses would only go forward and Dodd was the first to take the risk by using his spurs. He used them savagely, startling his horse so that it leaped ahead, and even so he flinched from the expected slash as the sabre whipped towards his spine, but the Lieutenant was slow and the blow missed.

  Dodd rode twenty paces up the track toward the watching sepoys, then turned again. The Lieutenant was gaining confidence and he grinned as the tall man charged at him. He lowered the sabre, using its point like a spearhead, and urged his weary gelding into a trot. Dodd also had his sword at the lunge, elbow locked, and the two horses closed at frightening speed and then, at the very last second,

  Dodd hauled on his rein and his horse went right, to the Lieutenant’s unguarded side, and he brought the sword back across his body and then cut it forward in one fluid motion so that the blade raked across the Lieutenant’s throat. The sabre was still coming across to the parry when the blood spurted. The Lieutenant faltered and his horse stopped. The young man’s sword arm fell, and Dodd was turning. He came alongside his opponent whose jacket was now dark with blood, and he rammed the sword into the Lieutenant’s neck a second time, this time point first, and the young man seemed to shake like a rat in a terrier’s jaws.

  Dodd hauled his sword free, then scabbarded it. He leaned over and took the sabre from the dying man’s unresisting hand, then pushed the Lieutenant so that he toppled from the horse. One of his feet was trapped in a stirrup, but as Dodd seized the gelding’s rein and hauled it around toward the fortress, the boot fell free and the young man was left sprawling amid his blood on the dusty road as Dodd led his trophy homeward.

  The Indians on the ramparts cheered. The sepoys spurred forward and Dodd hurried ahead of them, but the Madrassi cavalrymen only rode as far as their officer’s body where they dismounted. Dodd rode on, waving the captured sabre aloft.

  A gun fired from the fort and the ball screamed over the rocky isthmus to crash home among the cavalrymen gathered about their officer. A second gun fired, and suddenly the British cavalry and their riderless horses were running away and the cheers on the wall redoubled. Manu Bappoo was on the big buttress close to the gatehouse and he first pointed an admonitory finger at Dodd, chiding him for taking such a risk, then he touched his hands together, in thank
s for Dodd’s victory, and finally raised his arms above his head to salute the hero. Dodd laughed and bowed his head in acknowledgment and saw, to his surprise, that his white coat was red with the Lieutenant’s blood. “Who would have thought the young man had so much blood in him?” he asked the leader of his escort at the fortress gate.

  “Sahib?” the man answered, puzzled.

  “Never mind.” Dodd took the rifle back, then spurred his horse into Gawilghur’s Delhi Gate. The men on the ramparts that edged the paved entranceway cheered him home.

  He did not pause to speak to Manu, Bappoo, but instead rode through the Outer Fortress and out of its southern gate, then led his captured horse down the steep path which slanted across the face of the ravine. At the bottom the path turned sharply to the left before climbing to the Inner Fort’s massive gateway. The four heavy gates that barred the entranceway were all opened for him, and the hooves of his two horses echoed from the high walls as he clattered up the winding passage. One by one the gates crashed shut behind and the thick locking bars were dropped into their brackets.

  His groom waited beyond the last gate. Dodd swung down from his horse and gave both reins to the man, ordering him to water the captured horse before he rubbed it down. He handed his sword to his servant and told him to clean the blood from the blade and only then did he turn to face Beny Singh who had come waddling from the palace garden. The Killadar was dressed in a green silk robe and was attended by two servants, one to hold a parasol above Beny Singh’s perfumed head and the other clasping the Killadar’s small white lap-dog. “The cheering,” Beny Singh asked anxiously, “what was it? The guns were firing?” He stared in horror at the blood soaked into Dodd’s coat. “You’re wounded, Colonel?”

  “There was a fight,” Dodd said, and waited while one of the servants translated for the Killadar. Dodd spoke a crude Marathi, but it was easier to use interpreters.

  “The djinns are here!” Beny Singh wailed. The dog whimpered and the two servants looked nervous.

  “I killed a djinn,” Dodd snarled. He reached out and took hold of Beny Singh’s plump hand and forced it against his wet coat. “It isn’t my blood. But it is fresh.” He rubbed the Killadar’s hand into the gory patch, then raised the plump fingers to his mouth. Keeping his eyes on Beny Singh’s eyes, he licked the blood from the Killadar’s hand. “I am a djinn, Killadar,” Dodd said, letting go of the hand, “and I lap the blood of my enemies.”

  Beny Singh recoiled from the clammy touch of the blood. He shuddered, then wiped his hand on his silk robe. “When will they assault?”

  “A week?” Dodd guessed. “And then they will be defeated.”

  “But what if they get in?” Beny Singh asked anxiously.

  “Then they will kill you,” Dodd said, “and afterwards rape your wife, your concubines and your daughters. They’ll line up for the pleasure, Killadar. They’ll rut like hogs,” and Dodd grunted like a pig and jerked his groin forward, driving Beny Singh back.

  “They won’t!” the Killadar declared.

  “Because they won’t get in,” Dodd said, “because some of us are men, and we will fight.”

  “I have poison!” Beny Singh said, not comprehending Dodd’s last words. “If they look like winning, Colonel, you’ll send me word?”

  Dodd smiled. “You have my promise, sahib,” he said with a pretended humility.

  “Better my women should die,” Beny Singh insisted.

  “Better that you should die,” Dodd said, “unless you want to be forced to watch the white djinns take their pleasure on your dying women.”

  “They wouldn’t!”

  “What else do they want in here?” Dodd asked. “Have they not heard of the beauty of your women? Each night they talk of them around their fires, and every day they dream of their thighs and their breasts. They can’t wait, Killadar. The pleasures of your women pull the redcoats towards us.”

  Beny Singh fled from the horrid words and Dodd smiled. He had come to realize that only one man could command here. Beny Singh was the fortress commander and though he was a despicable coward he was also a friend of the Rajah’s, and that friendship ensured the loyalty of much of Gawilghur’s standing garrison. The rest of the fortress defenders were divided into two camps. There were Manu Bappoo’s soldiers, led by the remnants of the Lions of Allah and loyal to the Prince, and Dodd’s Cobras. But if only one of the three leaders was left, then that man would rule Gawilghur, and whoever ruled Gawilghur could rule all India.

  Dodd touched the stock of the rifle. That would help, and Beny Singh’s abject terror would render the Killadar harmless. Dodd smiled and climbed to the ramparts from where, with a telescope, he watched the British heave the first gun up to the edge of the plateau. A week, he thought, maybe a day more, and then the British 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?”

  “Heartsick, sir, that’s what I am in my own self, sir, heartsick.” Sergeant Hakeswill sniffed heavily, and even cuffed at a nonexistent 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 bibbis, 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!”