Sharpe's Triumph: Richard Sharpe and the Battle of Assaye, September 1803

by Bernard Cornwell

  Sharpe began running.

  “Come back!” McCandless shouted again, and then there was another gunshot and Sharpe heard the Colonel yelp like a whipped dog. A score of men were shouting now. The officers who had been playing cards were running towards McCandless’s tent and Pohlmann’s bodyguards were following them. Sharpe dodged around a fire, leaped a sleeping man, then saw a figure hurrying away from the commotion. The man had a musket in his hand and he was half crouching as if he did not want to be seen, and Sharpe did not hesitate, but just swerved and ran at the man.

  When the fugitive heard Sharpe coming, he quickened his pace, then realized he would be caught and so he turned on his pursuer. The man whipped out a bayonet and screwed it onto the muzzle of his musket. Sharpe saw the glint of moonlight on the long blade, saw the man’s teeth white in the dark, then the bayonet lunged at him, but Sharpe had dropped to the ground and was sliding forward in the dust beneath the blade. He wrapped his arms around the man’s legs, heaved once and the man fell backwards. Sharpe cuffed the musket aside with his left hand, then hammered his right hand down onto the moon-whitened teeth. The man tried to kick Sharpe’s crotch, then clawed at his eyes, but Sharpe caught one of the hooked fingers in his mouth and bit hard. The man screamed in pain, Sharpe kept biting and kept hitting, then he spat the severed fingertip into the man’s face and gave him one last thump with his fist. “Bastard,” Sharpe said, and hauled the man to his feet. Two of Pohlmann’s officers had arrived now, one still with a fan of cards in his hand. “Get his bloody musket,” Sharpe ordered them. The man struggled in Sharpe’s hands, but he was much smaller than Sharpe and a good kick between his legs brought him to order. “Come on, you bastard,” Sharpe said.

  One of the officers had picked up the fallen musket and Sharpe reached over and felt the muzzle. It was hot, showing that the weapon had just been fired. “If you killed my Colonel, you bastard, I’ll kill you,” Sharpe said and dragged the man through the campfires to the knot of officers who had gathered about the Colonel’s tent.

  McCandless’s two horses were gone. Both the mare and the gelding had been stolen, and Sharpe realized it was their hoofbeats he had heard go past him. McCandless, woken by the noise of the horse thieves, had come from the tent and fired his pistol at the men, and one of them had fired back and the bullet had buried itself in the Colonel’s left thigh. He was lying on the ground now, looking horribly pale, and Pohlmann was bellowing for his doctor to come quickly. “Who’s that?” he demanded of Sharpe, and nodding at the prisoner.

  “The bastard who fired at Colonel McCandless, sir. Musket’s still hot.”

  The man proved to be one of Major Dodd’s sepoys, one of the men who had deserted with Dodd from the Company, and he was put into the charge of Pohlmann’s bodyguard. Sharpe knelt beside McCandless who was trying not to cry aloud as the newly arrived doctor, the Swiss man who had sat beside Sharpe at dinner, examined his leg. “I was sleeping!” the Colonel complained. “Thieves, Sharpe, thieves!”

  “We’ll find your horses,” Pohlmann reassured the Scotsman, “and we’ll find the thieves.”

  “You promised me safety!” McCandless complained.

  “The men will be punished,” Pohlmann promised, then he helped Sharpe and two other men lift the wounded Colonel and carry him into the tent where they laid him on the rope cot. The doctor said the bullet had missed the bone, and no major artery was cut, but he still wanted to fetch his probes, forceps and scalpels and try to pull the ball out. “You want some brandy, McCandless?” Pohlmann asked.

  “Of course not. Tell him to get on with it.”

  The doctor called for more lanterns, for water and for his instruments, and then he spent ten excruciating minutes looking for the bullet deep inside McCandless’s upper thigh. The Scotsman uttered not a sound as the probe slid into his lacerated flesh, nor as the long-necked forceps were pushed down to find a purchase on the bullet. The Swiss doctor was sweating, but McCandless just lay with eyes tight shut and teeth clenched. “It comes now,” the doctor said and began to pull, but the flesh had closed on the forceps and he had to use almost all his strength to drag the bullet up from the wound. It came free at last, releasing a spill of bright blood, and McCandless groaned.

  “All done now, sir,” Sharpe told him.

  “Thank God,” McCandless whispered, “thank God.” The Scotsman opened his eyes. The doctor was bandaging the thigh and McCandless looked past him to Pohlmann. “This is treachery, Colonel, treachery! I was your guest!”

  “Your horses will be found, Colonel, I promise you,” Pohlmann said, but though his men made a search of the camp, and though they searched until morning, the two horses were not found. Sharpe was the only man who could identify them, for Colonel McCandless was in no state to walk, but Sharpe saw no horses that resembled the stolen pair, but nor did he expect to for any competent horse thief knew a dozen tricks to disguise his catch. The beast would be clipped, its coat would be dyed with blackball, it would be force-fed an enema so that its head drooped, then it would as likely as not be put among the cavalry mounts where one horse looked much like another. Both McCandless’s horses had been European bred and were larger and of finer quality than most in Pohlmann’s camp, yet even so Sharpe saw no sign of the two animals.

  Colonel Pohlmann went to McCandless’s tent and confessed that the horses had vanished. “I shall pay you their value, of course,” he added.

  “I won’t take it!” McCandless snapped back. The Colonel was still pale, and shivering despite the heat. His wound was bandaged, and the doctor reckoned it should heal swiftly enough, but there was a danger that the Colonel’s recurrent fever might return. “I won’t take my enemy’s gold,” McCandless explained, and Sharpe reckoned it must be the pain speaking for he knew the two missing horses must have cost the Colonel dearly.

  “I shall leave you the money,” Pohlmann insisted anyway, “and this afternoon we shall execute the prisoner.”

  “Do what you must,” McCandless grumbled.

  “Then we shall carry you northwards,” the Hanoverian promised, “for you must stay under Doctor Viedler’s care.”

  McCandless levered himself into a sitting position. “You’ll not take me anywhere!” he insisted angrily. “You leave me here, Pohlmann. I’ll not depend on your care, but on God’s mercy.” He let himself drop back onto the bed and hissed with pain. “And Sergeant Sharpe can tend me.”

  Pohlmann glanced at Sharpe. The Hanoverian seemed about to say that Sharpe might not wish to stay with McCandless, but then he just nodded his acceptance of McCandless’s decision. “If you wish to be abandoned, McCandless, so be it.”

  “I have more faith in God than in a faithless mercenary like you, Pohlmann.”

  “As you wish, Colonel,” Pohlmann said gently, then backed from the tent and gestured for Sharpe to follow. “He’s a stubborn fellow, isn’t he?” The Hanoverian turned and looked at Sharpe. “So, Sergeant? Are you coming with us?”

  “No, sir,” Sharpe said. Last night, he reflected, he had very nearly decided to accept the Hanoverian’s offer, but the theft of the horses and the single shot fired by the sepoy had served to change Sharpe’s mind. He could not leave McCandless to suffer and, to his surprise, he felt no great disappointment in thus having the decision forced on him. Duty dictated he should stay, but so did sentiment, and he had no regret. “Someone has to look after Colonel McCandless, sir,” Sharpe explained, “and he’s looked after me in the past, so it’s my turn now.”

  “I’m sorry,” Pohlmann said, “truly I am. The execution will be in one hour. I think you should see it, so you can assure your Colonel that justice was done.”

  “Justice, sir?” Sharpe asked scornfully. “It ain’t justice, shooting that fellow. He was put up to it by Major Dodd.” Sharpe had no proof of that, but he suspected it strongly. Dodd, he reckoned, had been hurt by McCandless’s insults and must have decided to add horse-thieving to his catalogue of crimes. “You have questioned your prisoner, ha
ven’t you, sir?” Sharpe asked. “Because he must know that Dodd was up to his neck in the business.”

  Pohlmann smiled wearily. “The prisoner told us everything, Sergeant, or I assume he did, but what use is that? Major Dodd denies the man’s story, and a score of sepoys swear the Major was nowhere near McCandless’s tent when the shots were fired. And who would the British army believe? A desperate man or an officer?” Pohlmann shook his head. “So you must be content with the death of one man, Sergeant.”

  Sharpe expected that the captured sepoy would be shot, but there was no sign of any firing squad when the moment arrived for the man’s death. Two companies from each of Pohlmann’s eight battalions were paraded, the sixteen companies making three sides of a hollow square with Pohlmann’s striped marquee forming the fourth side. Most of the other tents had already been struck ready for the move northwards, but the marquee remained and one of its canvas walls had been brailed up so that the compoo’s officers could witness the execution from chairs set in the tent’s shade. Dodd was not there, nor were any of the regiment’s wives, but a score of officers took their places and were served sweetmeats and drink by Pohlmann’s servants.

  The prisoner was fetched onto the makeshift execution ground by four of Pohlmann’s bodyguards. None of the four carried a musket, instead they were equipped with tent pegs, mallets and short lengths of rope. The prisoner, who wore nothing but a strip of cloth around his loins, glanced from side to side as if trying to find an escape route, but, on a nod from Pohlmann, the bodyguards kicked his feet out from beneath him and then knelt beside his sprawling body and pinioned it to the ground by tying the ropes to his wrists and ankles, then fastening the bonds to the tent pegs. The condemned man lay there, spread-eagled, gazing up at the cloudless sky as the mallets banged the eight pegs home.

  Sharpe stood to one side. No one spoke to him, no one even looked at him, and no wonder, he thought, for this was a farce. All the officers must have known that Dodd was the guilty man, yet the sepoy must die. The paraded troops seemed to agree with Sharpe, for there was a sullenness in the ranks. Pohlmann’s compoo might be well armed and superbly trained, but it was not happy.

  The four bodyguards finished tying the prisoner down, then walked away to leave him alone in the center of the execution ground. An Indian officer, resplendent in silk robes and with a lavishly curved tulwar hanging from his belt, made a speech. Sharpe did not understand a word, but he guessed that the watching soldiers were being harangued about the fate which awaited any thief. The officer finished, glanced once at the prisoner, then walked back to the tent and, just as he entered its shade, so Pohlmann’s great elephant with its silver-encased tusks and cascading metal coat was led out from behind the marquee. The mahout guided the beast by tugging on one of its ears, but as soon as the elephant saw the prisoner it needed no guidance, but just plodded across to the spread-eagled man. The victim shouted for mercy, but Pohlmann was deaf to the pleas.

  The Colonel twisted around. “You’re watching, Sharpe?”

  “You’ve got the wrong man, sir. You should have Dodd there.”

  “Justice must be done,” the Colonel said, and turned back to the elephant that was standing quietly beside the victim who twisted in his bonds, thrashed, and even managed to free one hand, but instead of using that free hand to tug at the other three ropes that held him, he flailed uselessly at the elephant’s trunk. A murmur ran through the watching sixteen companies, but the jemadars and havildars shouted and the sullen murmur ceased. Pohlmann watched the prisoner struggle for a few more seconds, then took a deep breath. “Haddah!” he shouted. “Haddah!”

  The prisoner screamed in anticipation as, very slowly, the elephant lifted one ponderous forefoot and moved its body slightly forward. The great foot came down on the prisoner’s chest and seemed to rest there. The man tried to push the foot away, but he might as well have attempted to shove a mountain aside. Pohlmann leaned forward, his mouth open, as, slowly, very slowly, the elephant transferred its weight onto the man’s chest. There was another scream, then the man could not draw breath to scream again, but still he jerked and twitched and still the weight pressed on him, and Sharpe saw his legs try to contract against the bonds at his ankles, and saw his head jerk up, and then he heard the splinter of ribs and saw the blood spill and bubble at the victim’s mouth. He winced, trying to imagine the pain as the elephant pressed on down, crushing bone and lung and spine. The prisoner gave one last jerk, his hair flapping, then his head fell back and a great wash of blood brimmed from his open mouth and puddled beside his corpse.

  There was a last crunching sound, then the elephant stepped back and a sigh sounded gently through the watching ranks. Pohlmann applauded, and the officers joined in. Sharpe turned away. Bastards, he thought, bastards.

  And that night Pohlmann marched north.

  Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill was not an educated man, and he was not even particularly clever unless slyness passed for wits, but he did understand one thing very well, and that was the impression he made on other men. They feared him. It did not matter whether the other man was a raw private, fresh from the recruiting sergeant, or a general whose coat was bright with gold lace and heavy with braid. They all feared him, all but two, and those two frightened Obadiah Hakeswill. One was Sergeant Richard Sharpe, in whom Hakeswill sensed a violence that was equal to his own, while the other was Major General Sir Arthur Wellesley who, when he had been colonel of the 33rd, had always been serenely impervious to Hakeswill’s threats.

  So Sergeant Hakeswill would have much preferred not to confront General Wellesley, but when his convoy reached Ahmednuggur his inquiries established that Colonel McCandless had ridden north and had taken Sharpe with him, and the Sergeant had known he could do nothing further without Wellesley’s permission and so he had gone to the General’s tent where he announced himself to an orderly who had informed an aide who had commanded the Sergeant to wait in the shade of a banyan tree.

  He waited the best part of a morning while the army readied itself to leave Ahmednuggur. Guns were being attached to limbers, oxen harnessed to carts and tents being struck by lascars. The fortress of Ahmednuggur, fearing the same fate as the city, had meekly surrendered after a few cannon shots and, with both the city and its fort safe in his hands, Wellesley was now planning to march north, cross the Godavery and seek out the enemy army. Sergeant Hakeswill had no great wish to take part in that adventure, but he could see no other way of catching up with Sharpe and so he was resigned to his fate.

  “Sergeant Hakeswill?” An aide came from the General’s big tent.

  “Sir!” Hakeswill scrambled to his feet and stiffened to attention.

  “Sir Arthur will see you now, Sergeant.”

  Hakeswill marched into the tent, snatched off his shako, turned smartly to the left, quick-marched three short paces, then slammed to a halt in front of the camp table where the General was doing paperwork. Hakeswill stood quivering at attention. His face shuddered.

  “At ease, Sergeant,” Wellesley, bare-headed, had barely glanced up from his papers as the Sergeant entered.

  “Sir!” Hakeswill allowed his muscles to relax slightly. “Papers for you, sir!” He pulled the warrant for Sharpe’s arrest from his pouch and offered it to the General.

  Wellesley made no move to accept the warrant. Instead he leaned back in his chair and examined Hakeswill as though he had never seen the Sergeant before. Hakeswill stood rigid, his eyes staring at the tent’s brown wall above the General’s head. Wellesley sighed and leaned forward again, still ignoring the warrant. “Just tell me, Sergeant,” he said, his attention already returned to the documents on his desk. An aide was taking whatever sheets the General signed, sprinkling sand on the signatures, then placing more papers on the table.

  “I’m ordered here by Lieutenant Colonel Gore, sir. To apprehend Sergeant Sharpe, sir.”

  Wellesley looked up again and Hakeswill almost quailed before the cold eyes. He sensed that Wellesley could see rig
ht through him, and the sensation made his face quiver in a series of uncontrollable twitches. Wellesley waited for the spasms to end. “On your own, are you, Sergeant?” the General asked casually.

  “Detail of six men, sir.”

  “Seven of you! To arrest one man?”

  “Dangerous man, sir. I’m ordered to take him back to Hurryhur, sir, so he can . . .”

  “Spare me the details,” Wellesley said, looking back to the next paper needing his signature. He tallied up a list of figures. “Since when did four twelves and eighteen yield a sum of sixty-eight?” he asked no one in particular, then corrected the calculation before signing the paper. “And since when did Captain Lampert dispose of the artillery train?”

  The aide wielding the sand-sprinkler blushed. “Colonel Eldredge, sir, is indisposed.” Drunk, if the truth was known, which it was, but it was impolitic to say that a colonel was drunk in front of a sergeant.

  “Then invite Captain Lampert to supper. We must feed him some arithmetic along with a measure of common sense,” Sir Arthur said. He signed another paper, then rested his pen on a small silver stand before leaning back and looking at Hakeswill. He resented the Sergeant’s presence, not because he disliked Sergeant Hakeswill, though he did, but rather because Wellesley had long ago left behind the cares of being the commander of the 33rd and he did not want to be reminded of those duties now. Nor did he want to be in a position to approve or disapprove of his successor’s orders for that would be an impertinence. “Sergeant Sharpe is not here,” he said coldly.

  “So I hear, sir. But he was, sir?”

  “Nor am I the person you should be troubling with this matter, Sergeant,” Wellesley went on, ignoring Hakeswill’s question. He took up the pen again, dipped it in ink, and crossed a name from a list before adding his signature. “In a few days,” he continued, “Colonel McCandless will return to the army and you will report to him with your warrant and I’ve no doubt he will give the matter its due attention. Till then I shall employ you usefully. I won’t have seven men idling while the rest of the army works.” Wellesley turned to the aide. “Where do we lack men, Barclay?”