Sharpe felt he ought to say something more, but he could not think what it was.
"Lost your last horse, sir," he said instead. "Sorry, sir."
Wellesley gazed at him. In all his life he had never seen a man fight like Sergeant Sharpe, though in truth the General could not remember everything that had happened in the last two minutes. He remembered Diomed falling and he remembered trying to loosen his feet from the stirrups, and he remembered a blow on the head that was probably one of Diomed's flailing hooves, and he thought he remembered seeing a bayonet bright in the sky above him and he had known that he must be killed at that moment, and then everything was a dizzy confusion. He recalled Sharpe's voice, using language that shocked even the General, who was not easily offended, and he remembered being thrust back against the gun so that the Sergeant could face the enemy alone, and Wellesley had approved of that decision, not because it spared him the need to fight, but because he had recognized that Sharpe would be hampered by his presence.
Then he had watched Sharpe kill, and he had been astonished by the ferocity, enthusiasm and skill of that killing, and Wellesley knew that his life had been saved, and he knew he must thank Sharpe, but for some reason he could not find the words and so he just stared at the embarrassed Sergeant whose face was spattered with blood and whose long hair had come loose so that he looked like a fiend from the pit.
Wellesley tried to frame the words that would express his gratitude, yet the syllables choked in his throat, but just then a trooper came trotting to the gun with the reins of the roan mare in his hand. The mare had survived unhurt, and now the trooper offered the reins towards Wellesley who, as if in a dream, walked out of the sheltered space inside the gun's tall wheel to step across the bodies Sharpe had put onto the ground. The General suddenly stooped and picked up a stone.
"This is yours, Sergeant," he said to Sharpe, holding out the ruby. "I saw it fall."
"Thank you, sir. Thank you." Sharpe took the ruby.
The General frowned at the ruby. It seemed wrong for a sergeant to have a stone that size, but once Sharpe had closed his fingers about the stone, the General decided it must have been a blood-soaked piece of rock. It surely was not a ruby?
"Are you all right, sir?" Major Blackiston asked anxiously.
"Yes, yes, thank you, Blackiston." The General seemed to shake off his torpor and went to stand beside Campbell who had dismounted to kneel beside Diomed. The horse was shaking and neighing softly. "Can he be saved?" Wellesley asked.
"Don't know, sir," Campbell said. "The pike blade's deep in his lung, poor thing."
"Pull it out, Campbell. Gently. Maybe he'll live." Wellesley looked around him to see that the yth Native Cavalry had scoured the gunners away and driven the remaining Mahratta horsemen off, while Harness's 78th had again marched into canister and round shot to capture the southern part of the Mahratta artillery.
Harness's adjutant now cantered through the bodies scattered around the guns.
"We've nails and mauls if you want us to spike the guns, sir," he said to Wellesley.
"No, no. I think the gunners have learned their lesson, and we might take some of the cannon into our own service," Wellesley said, then saw that he was still holding his sword. He sheathed it. "Pity to spike good guns," he added. It could take hours of hard work to drill a driven nail out of a touch-hole, and so long as the enemy gunners were defeated then the guns would no longer be a danger. The General turned to an Indian trooper who had joined Campbell beside Diomed. "Can you save him?" he asked anxiously.
The Indian very gently pulled at the pike, but it would not move.
"Harder, man, harder," Campbell urged him, and laid his own hands on the pike's bloodied shaft.
The two men tugged at the pike and the fallen horse screamed with pain.
"Careful!" Wellesley snapped.
"You want the pike in or out, sir?" Campbell asked.
"Try and save him," the General said, and Campbell shrugged, took hold of the shaft again, put his boot on the horse's red wet chest, and gave a swift, hard heave. The horse screamed again as the blade left his hide and as a new rush of blood welled down to soak his white hair.
"Nothing more we can do now, sir," Campbell said.
"Look after him," Wellesley ordered the Indian trooper, then he frowned when he saw that his last horse, the roan mare, still had her trooper's saddle and that no one had thought to take his own saddle off Diomed.
That was the orderly's job and Wellesley looked for Sharpe, then remembered he had to express his thanks to the Sergeant, but again the words would not come and so Wellesley asked Campbell to change the saddles, and once that was done he climbed onto the mare's back.
Captain Barclay, who had survived his dash across the field, reined in beside the General.
"Wallace's brigade is ready to attack, sir."
"We need to get Harness's fellows into line," Wellesley said. "Any news of Maxwell?"
"Not yet, sir," Barclay said. Colonel Maxwell had led the cavalry in their pursuit across the River Juah.
"Major!" Wellesley shouted at the commander of the Native Cavalry. "Have your men hunt down the gunners here. Make sure none of them live, then guard the guns so they can't be retaken. Gentlemen?" He spoke to his aides. "Let's move on."
Sharpe watched the General ride away into the thinning skein of cannon smoke, then he looked down at the ruby in his hand and saw that it was as red and shiny as the blood that dripped from his sabre tip. He wondered if the ruby had been dipped in the fountain of Zum-Zum along with the Tippoo's helmet. Was that why it had saved his life? It had done bugger all for the Tippoo, but Sharpe was alive when he should have been dead, and so, for that matter, was Major General Sir Arthur Wellesley.
The General had left Sharpe alone by the gun, all but for the dead and dying men and the trooper who was trying to staunch Diomed's wound with a rag. Sharpe laughed suddenly, startling the trooper.
"He didn't even say thank you," Sharpe said aloud.
"What, sahib?" the trooper asked.
"You don't call me sahib," Sharpe said. "I'm just another bloody soldier like you. Good for bloody nothing except fighting other people's battles. And ten to one the buggers won't thank you." He was thirsty so he opened one of the General's canteens and drank from it greedily. "Is that horse going to live?"
The Indian did not seem to understand everything Sharpe said, but the question must have made some sense for he pointed at Diomed's mouth.
The stallion's lips were drawn back to reveal yellow teeth through which a pale pink froth seeped. The Indian shook his head sadly.
"I bled that horse," Sharpe said, "and the General said he was greatly obliged to me. Those were his very words, "greatly obliged". Gave me a bloody coin, he did. But you save his life and he doesn't even say thank you! I should have bled him, not his bloody horse. I should have bled him to bloody death." He drank more of the water and wished it were arrack or rum. "You know what the funny thing is?" he asked the Indian. "I didn't even do it because he was the General. I did it because I like him. Not personally, but I do like him. In a strange sort of way. I wouldn't have done it for you. I'd have done it for Tom Garrard, but he's a friend, see? And I'd have done it for Colonel McCandless, because he's a proper gentleman, but I wouldn't have done it for too many others."
Sharpe sounded drunk, even to himself, but in truth he was stone cold sober in a battlefield that had suddenly gone silent beneath the westering sun. It was almost evening, but there was still enough daylight left to finish the battle, though whether Sharpe would have anything to do with the finishing seemed debatable, for he had lost his job as the General's orderly, had lost his horse, had lost his musket and was stranded with nothing but a dented sabre.
"That ain't really true," he confessed to the uncomprehending Indian, "what I said about liking him. I want him to like me, and that's different, ain't it? I thought the miserable bugger might make me an officer! Sod that for a hope, eh? No sash for me, lad. It'
s back to being a bloody infantryman."
He used the bloody sabre to cut a strip of cloth from the robes of a dead Arab, and he folded the strip into a pad that he pushed under his jacket to staunch the blood from the tulwar wound on his left shoulder.
It was not a serious injury, he decided, for he could feel no broken bones and his left arm was unhindered. He tossed the dented sabre away, found a discarded Mahratta musket, tugged the cartridge box and bayonet off the dead owner's belt, then went to find someone to kill.
* * *
It took half an hour to form the new line from the five battalions that had marched through the Mahratta gunfire and put Pohlmann's right to flight, but now the five battalions faced north towards Pohlmann's new position which rested its left flank on Assaye's mud walls then stretched along the southern bank of the River Juah. The Mahrattas had forty guns remaining, Pohlmann still commanded eight thousand infantry and innumerable cavalry, and the Rajah of Berar's twenty thousand infantrymen still waited behind the village's makeshift ramparts.
Wellesley's infantry numbered fewer than four thousand men, he had only two light guns that were serviceable and scarcely six hundred cavalrymen mounted on horses that were bone weary and parched dry.
"We can hold them!" Pohlmann roared at his men. "We can hold them and beat them! Hold them and beat them."
He was still on horseback, and still in his gaudy silk coat. He had dreamed of riding his elephant across a field strewn with the enemy's dead and piled with the enemy's captured weapons, but instead he was encouraging his men to a last stand beside the river.
"Hold them," he shouted, "hold them and beat them."
The Juah flowed behind his men, while in front of them the shadows stretched long across Assaye's battle-littered farmlands.
Then the pipes sounded again, and Pohlmann turned his horse to look at the right-hand end of his line and he saw the tall black bearskins and the swinging kilts of the damned Scottish regiment coming forward again. The sun caught their white crossbelts and glinted from their bayonets. Beyond them, half hidden by the trees, the British cavalry was threatening, though they seemed to be checked by a battery of cannon on the right of Pohlmann's line. The Hanoverian knew the cavalry was no danger. It was the infantry, the unstoppable red-jacketed infantry, that was going to beat him, and he saw the sepoy battalions starting forward on the Highlanders' flank and he half turned his horse, thinking to ride to where the Scottish regiment would strike his line. It would hit Saleur's compoo, and suddenly Pohlmann could not careless any more. Let Saleur fight his battle, because Pohlmann knew it was lost. He stared at the 78th and he reckoned that no force on earth could stop such men.
"The best damned infantry on earth," he said to one of his aides.
"Sahib?"
"Watch them! You'll not see better fighting men while you live," Pohlmann said bitterly, then sheathed his sword as he gazed at the Scots who were once again being battered by cannon fire, but still their two lines kept marching forward. Pohlmann knew he should go west to encourage Saleur's men, but instead he was thinking of the gold he had left behind in Assaye. These last ten years had been a fine adventure, but the Mahratta Confederation was dying before his eyes and Anthony Pohlmann did not wish to die with it. The rest of the Mahratta princedoms might fight on, but Pohlmann had decided it was time to take his gold and run.
Saleur's compoo was already edging backwards. Some of the men from the rearward ranks were not even waiting for the Scots to arrive, but were running back to the River Juah and wading through its muddy water that came up to their chests. The rest of the regiments began to waver.
Pohlmann watched. He had thought these three compoos were as fine as any infantry in the world, but they had proved to be brittle. The British fired a volley and Pohlmann heard the heavy balls thump into his infantry and he heard the cheer from the redcoats as they charged forward with the bayonet, and suddenly there was no army opposing them, just a mass of men fleeing to the river.
Pohlmann took off his gaudily plumed hat that would mark him as a prize capture and threw it away, then stripped off his sash and coat and tossed them after the hat as he spurred towards Assaye. He had a few minutes, he reckoned, and those minutes should be enough to secure his money and get away. The battle was lost and, for Pohlmann, the war with it. It was time to retire.
Chapter 12
Assaye alone remained in enemy hands for the rest of Pohlmann's army had simply disintegrated. The great majority of the Mahratta horsemen had spent the afternoon as spectators, but now they turned and spurred west towards Borkardan while to the north, beyond the Juah, the remnants of Pohlmann's three compoos fled in panic, pursued by a handful of British and Company cavalry on tired horses. Great banks of gunsmoke lay like fog across the field where men of both armies groaned and died. Diomed gave a great shudder, lifted his head a final time, then rolled his eyes and went still. The sepoy trooper, charged with guarding the horse, stayed at his post and waved the flies away from the dead Diomed's face.
The sun reddened the layers of gunsmoke. There was an hour of daylight left, a few moments of dusk, and then it would be night, and Wellesley used the last of the light to turn his victorious infantry towards the mud walls of Assaye. He summoned gunners and had them haul captured enemy cannon towards the village.
"They won't stand," he told his aides. "A handful of round shot and the sight of some bayonets will send them packing."
The village still held a small army. The Rajah of Berar's twenty thousand men were behind its thick walls, and Major Dodd had succeeded in marching his own regiment into the village. He had seen the remainder of the Mahratta line crumple, he had watched Anthony Pohlmann discard his hat and coat as he fled to the village and, rather than let the panic infect his own men, Dodd had turned them eastwards, ordered the regiment's cumbersome guns to be abandoned, then followed his commanding officer into the tangle of Assaye's narrow alleys. Beny Singh, the Rajah of Berar's warlord and the kill adar of the village's garrison, was glad to see the European.
"What do we do?" he asked Dodd.
"Do? We get out, of course. The battle's lost."
Beny Singh blinked at him.
"We just go?"
Dodd dismounted from his horse and steered Beny Singh away from his aides.
"Who are your best troops?" he asked.
"The Arabs."
"Tell them you're going to fetch reinforcements, tell them to defend the village, and promise that if they can hold the place till nightfall then help will come in the morning."
"But it won't," Beny Singh protested.
"But if they hold," Dodd said, "they cover your escape, sahib." He smiled ingratiatingly, knowing that men like Beny Singh could yet play a part in his future. "The British will pounce on any fugitives leaving the village," Dodd explained, "but they won't dare attack men who are well drilled and well commanded. I proved that at Ahmednuggur. So you're most welcome to march north with my men, sahib. I promise they won't be broken like the rest."
He climbed back into his saddle and rode back to his Cobras and ordered them to join Captain Joubert at the ford.
"You're to wait for me there," he told them, then shouted for his own sepoy company to follow him deeper into the village.
The battle might be lost, but Dodd's men had not failed him and he was determined they should have a reward and so he led them to the house where Colonel Pohlmann had stored his treasure. Dodd knew that if he did not give his men gold then they would melt away to find another warlord who would reward them, but if he paid them they would stay under his command while he sought another prince as employer.
He heard the sonorous bang of a great gun being fired beyond the village and he reckoned that the British had begun to pound Assaye's mud wall. Dodd knew that wall could not last long, for every shot would crumble the dried mud bricks and collapse the roof beams of the outermost houses so that in a few minutes there would be a wide breach leading into Assaye's heart. A moment later the re
dcoats would be ordered into the dusty breach and the village's alleys would be clogged by panic and filled with screams and bayonets.
Dodd reached the alley leading to the courtyard where Pohlmann had placed his elephants and he saw, as he had expected, that the big gate was still shut. Pohlmann was undoubtedly inside the courtyard, readying to escape, but Dodd could not wait for the Hanoverian to throw open the gates, so instead he ordered his men to fight their way through the house. He left a dozen men to block the alley, gave one of those men his horse to hold, then led the rest of the sepoys towards the house. Pohlmann's bodyguard saw them coming and fired, but fired too early and Dodd survived the panicked volley and roared his men on.
"Kill them!" he shouted as, sword in hand, he charged through the musket smoke.
He kicked the house door open and plunged into a kitchen crowded with purple-coated men. He lunged with his sword, driving the defenders back, and then his sepoys arrived to carry their bayonets to Pohlmann's men.
"Gopal!" Dodd shouted.
"Sahib?" the Jemadar said, tugging his tulwar from the body of a dead man.
"Find the gold! Make sure it's loaded on the elephants, then open the courtyard gate!" Dodd snapped the orders, then went on killing.
He was consumed with a huge anger. How could any fool have lost this battle? How could a man, given a hundred thousand troops, be beaten by a handful of redcoats? It was Pohlmann's fault, all Pohlmann, and Dodd knew Pohlmann had to be somewhere in the house or courtyard and so he hunted him and vented his rage on Pohlmann's guards, pursuing them from room to room, slaughtering them mercilessly, and all the while the great guns hammered the sky with their noise and the round shot thumped into the village walls.
Most of the Rajah of Berar's infantry fled. Those on the makeshift ramparts could see the redcoats massing beyond the smoke of the big cannon and they did not wait for that infantry to attack, but instead ran northwards. Only the Arab mercenaries stayed, and some of those men decided caution was better than bravery and so joined the other infantry that splashed through the ford where Captain Joubert waited with Dodd's regiment.
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