The Tiger's Prey

by Wilbur Smith

  The dry spell reinvigorated the besiegers. They burned the nearest godown, and used the rubble to make a platform for their guns. Tom tried to blast them out, but they brought up their cannon in the night, and by morning were able to commence a sustained bombardment that kept his men pinned down.

  ‘They mean to come for us,’ he told Francis, some six weeks after the siege had started. ‘Load every musket, and ready your weapons.’

  Under cover of their artillery, the Rani’s troops had begun to advance, digging an entrenchment in the soft sand. Tom watched them through the loophole in the gate, paying special attention to their commander. It was Tungar, no doubt about it. The telescope brought him so close he could almost touch the scar down the middle of his face. He limped along the battle lines, shouting orders at his men: the fall from the palace balcony had hurt him, but not killed him, and he still wore the Neptune sword. He often consulted with the tall man beside him, who Tom recognized as the man who had killed Hicks with his strange, steel whip. The man who had spoken perfect English. Tom wondered how an Englishman had found his way into the Rani’s service. Perhaps another castaway.

  Tom longed to take a shot. But the East India Company’s muskets were inferior weapons, without rifling to spin the ball and make it fly accurately. It would be a waste of powder.

  Behind Tungar, the army was forming up into lines.

  ‘They mean to throw their full strength at us,’ Tom announced. He surveyed his men, paraded in the courtyard. Burned red by the sun, gaunt from short rations, they did not look like warriors. And they were so few.

  ‘Keep low, and do not give them easy targets.’ He was about to say, ‘Sell your lives dearly,’ but thought better of it. They did not want to sell their lives for this scrap of the East India Company’s vanity. They wanted to save themselves.

  ‘Fight for each other, and we will come through this together.’

  He assigned the men their stations. He took the east wall, facing the enemy; the hubladar and Alf Wilson took the north and south respectively.

  ‘You stay in the courtyard and man the gate guns,’ he told Francis. He saw the disappointment on his face.

  ‘If you are trying to protect me, Uncle …’

  ‘I am trying to protect us all. Your platoon is our reserve.’ He shook his head ruefully, filled with admiration and anxiety. Had he been any different at that age? ‘You will get your fight, I promise you that.’

  The enemy cannon had fallen silent. The men ran to the defences. Looking through the loopholes, Tom saw the Rani’s men had come under the fort’s guns, so near that the defenders could not depress the barrels far enough to aim at them. Thinking they were safe, they charged forward, bunching together on the neck of the spit of sand.

  ‘Run out your guns and fire at will,’ he called to Francis.

  The attackers had not seen the gun ports built into the gate. The first they knew of it was the hatches lifting open, and the barrels of the two long nine pounders rolling out.

  ‘Fire,’ Francis shouted.

  Tom had prepared for this. Ana had sewn old rice sacks into small bags, which they had filled with musket balls. Fired from the muzzle of a cannon, the bags disintegrated, fanning the balls out in a lethal arc. The front rank of the men on the beach went down. The second rank, pushed on by the men behind, tripped on their corpses and fell, slowing the attack still more.

  ‘Reload,’ Francis ordered, but his men needed no encouragement. All the weeks of suffering and waiting were over. All their training, working the scorching hot guns until their hands blistered, came into its own. Worm and sponge. Ram the cartridge. Home! Wadding. Shot. Prick the cartridge and prime the hole. No need to aim, because the target was vast and everywhere in front of them.

  ‘Fire.’

  The second volley did more damage than the first. The targets had spread out, giving the balls more space to work their havoc. At the fringes, some of the attackers had waded out into the shallows to get away from the guns. It did not save them. The gentle waves turned red with their blood; some died drowned by the weight of dead men above them.

  But still they came. From the walls, Tom could see Tungar on horseback, his face hidden by the cheek-pieces of his helmet. He urged his men forward, stabbing the Neptune sword towards the fort. A soldier, panicking, tried to flee. He leaned down from the saddle and opened the man’s chest from his shoulder to his hip, then trampled him with his horse. No wonder the men were more frightened of him than the fort’s guns.

  Smoke blew over and hid the commander from view, before Tom could attempt a shot. And now he had trouble nearer at hand. Even with all their training, Francis’s men could not reload fast enough. The Rani’s men had almost reached the walls – and the closer they came, the narrower the cannon’s field of fire. They did not approach the gate, but spread around the walls like waves breaking on a rock. Among them, Tom saw men carrying long bamboo scaling ladders.

  ‘Stay with the guns,’ he called to Francis. Though the big guns could not touch the men around the walls, they still commanded the little isthmus which any reinforcements would have to cross.

  The attacking army surged around the walls on three sides of the fort. The top of a ladder appeared at one of the embrasures. Tom reached out, fired his pistol blind straight down, then pushed the ladder back. Screams sounded as the ladder toppled, and as it landed in the mass of besiegers Tom and his platoon rose from behind the battlements and fired down into their midst.

  He threw the spent musket to one of the boys and took a fresh one. But when he stood to fire, a hail of shot came back at him, chipping the parapet and flying about his ears. He ducked quickly back.

  ‘They will not give up easily,’ he muttered. As if to prove his words, another ladder rose up and slammed against the top of the wall. This time, Tom let the attackers come. A bare head appeared; two dark hands reached for the parapet. Before the man could get a purchase, Tom grabbed him by the throat and lifted him off the ladder, holding him up as a human shield. The body twitched as musket fire from below struck him. Tom’s platoon rose and fired a volley down among the attackers.

  Tom threw the riddled corpse to the ground. The next man on the ladder tried to gain the walls, but one of the boys reached through with a pike and stabbed him through the heart. Tom pushed the ladder back again but could not move it: this time, the men at the bottom threw themselves against it to weight it in place.

  Along the inside of the parapet, together with the piles of weapons and powder and shot, stood a dozen of Foy’s wine bottles. They had been emptied, then refilled with powder, nails, and all the scrap metal that could be scavenged in the fort. A rag, soaked in spirits, protruded from the neck.

  Tom cocked his empty pistol, held it next to the bottle and pulled the trigger. The flint struck sparks from the frizzen, which showered onto the rag and set it alight. Tom lobbed the bottle over the wall. It landed at the foot of the ladder and exploded among the men holding it. A cloud of steel splinters tore through them, ripping off eyes and ears and fingers. The ladder fell.

  The attackers retreated from the walls. That made them easier targets for the men at the top, who poured volley after volley into them, driving them still further back to where they came in range of the cannon at the gate.

  Tom looked about. Through the clouds of smoke that gusted about the fort, he saw the hubladar’s men on the south wall. They seemed to be holding their own. But on the north wall, Alf Wilson was waving frantically, shouting for help.

  Crouched low, Tom ran around the rampart. Without having to ask, he saw the danger at once. A small stone cottage stood opposite, about twenty yards from the fort, and from its windows there came an unremitting fusillade of musket fire peppering the wall.

  ‘We must dislodge them,’ Tom shouted. ‘If they hold that house, they will have perfect cover for an assault.’ With their greater accuracy and range, the Indian muskets would be able to sweep the walls clear, allowing the besiegers to raise their sc
aling ladders unopposed.

  This was what he had feared. His men were stretched so thin, there was nowhere he could take reinforcements without risking disaster.

  He yelled down to the courtyard to get Francis’ attention. He raised four fingers, indicating four men, and beckoned Francis to him. That left enough men to serve one of the guns – enough, he hoped, to make the attackers think twice before trying the gate.

  Francis and his men came up to the rampart and crouched beside him. Musket balls rattled on the stonework and whistled overhead. Tom explained what was needed.

  ‘But how can we get down?’ Francis asked.

  ‘Ropes.’

  ‘And up again?’

  ‘I will solve that problem when I face it.’

  ‘You mean “we”?’

  ‘Not you,’ said Tom. ‘You will stay on the wall to provide covering fire.’

  He saw the hurt on Francis’ face, the refusal coming to his lips. ‘There is no time. If anything happens to me, the men will look to you for leadership.’ For an instant, he remembered another siege at another fort, on the far side of this same ocean. Tom had taken command when his father’s legs were blown off by the force of an exploding mine.

  Dear God, let that not be my fate, he prayed.

  They fetched ropes and fastened them to the iron rings which studded the parapet. Tom carried two pistols in holsters in his cross belts, two more on his belt, and a musket slung over his shoulder. He gathered up half a dozen of the wine-bottle grenadoes and put them in a sack.

  ‘Ready your men,’ he called to Francis. ‘Now.’

  The men fired in unison, a sharp volley that deafened his ears and almost blinded him. The smoke was more protection than the musket balls. Clouding the parapet, it hid them for those vital seconds when they stood exposed atop the rampart. Then they leaped.

  The men he had picked were all sailors from the Kestrel: they could burn a backstay in their sleep. They slid down the ropes before the attackers even saw them. Tom landed in the sand, rolled away and scrambled to his feet. A furious fusillade erupted over his head as Francis’ men fired another volley, pinning the attackers down.

  Tom drew his sword and started cutting his way towards the house. Alf Wilson fought beside him, wielding an axe he had fashioned by cutting down one of the sepoys’ halberds. The Rani’s troops, surprised by this sudden counter attack, fell back.

  But the marksmen lodged in the building held their nerve. Through the melee, Tom saw smoke blossoming from the windows as they fired without care for their own men. Tom saw a tall Indian swordsman felled when a musket ball took off the back of his head. But not all the shots went awry. One of Tom’s men was hit in the arm; another was dropped by a clean shot between the eyes.

  In front of them, the beach sank into a low gully where the wind had been funnelled between the fort and the house, and scoured away the sand. Tom threw himself down into it and gestured his men to do likewise. If they pressed themselves into the ground, the rise offered just enough cover to protect them against the musket balls whistling over their heads. Behind, Francis’ men maintained a steady fire from the walls, keeping the enemy at bay.

  Tom pulled three of the wine bottles from the sack. He pointed to one of the sailors, a Cornishman named Penrose. ‘As soon as these grenadoes go off, you follow me. Alf, maintain a steady fire.’ He handed him two of his pistols. ‘Ready?’

  He struck a spark. The cloth fuses in the bottle necks flared into life. Keeping as low as he could, Tom lobbed them towards the house. One landed short and went out on the sand; the second struck the cottage wall and shattered. He cursed. No alternative: he would have to risk it.

  Alf saw what he intended and nodded. He raised his musket and fired. At the same instant, Tom popped his head up from the shelter of the gully, sighted himself on the nearest window and hurled the bottle. He threw himself back to the ground, as half a dozen musket balls tore the air where his head had been.

  The bottle sailed through the open window. Lying in the gully, he did not see it enter, but he knew he had aimed true by the muffled sound of the explosion. In fact, he had timed it perfectly. It exploded just before it struck the floor, spraying its lethal contents around the small room.

  A heavy weight struck Tom’s shoulder. For a moment, he feared he’d been hit. But it was Alf Wilson. He had been a fraction of a second slower than Tom getting down, and had paid the price. He lolled against Tom, blood flowing from a wound on his collarbone.

  Tom had no time to tend him. The Rani’s men would already be regrouping. He cut a sleeve off Alf’s shirt and stuffed it into the bullet hole to staunch the bleeding. That was all he could afford. They could not defend the gully for long. If they got trapped there, they would all die.

  Tom rose and ran forward. Penrose followed, while the last of the Kestrel’s men stayed with Alf and kept up a rapid fire. Again, the smoke hid them from their enemies. Tom weaved across the beach, cutting down any man who resisted, judging his course through the fog by the steady report of musket fire ahead and to his right. His grenadoe had not emptied all the defenders from the house.

  The smoke cloud around the house was so thick Tom almost ran straight into it. He had come around its end, where an oak door opened inside. Half a dozen of the Rani’s guards were gathered there. Tom shot two of them with his pistols. A third ran at him with his musket. Tom sidestepped, wrestled the weapon from his hands and clubbed him over the head with it. As the man dropped, he reversed his grip and swung the musket like a bat into the next man’s throat, breaking his neck.

  Penrose had dispatched the other two. Tom kicked in the door and leaped through, sword in hand. This was where the grenado had done its work. Three men lay dead on the floor, their gore splashed high up the walls. A second doorway led through to another, longer room, which echoed with gunfire, the rattle of ramrods and the thud of the butts as they reloaded.

  If he had brought one more grenado, he might have cleared them out in a single blast. But he only had his sword, and the empty musket he had taken. The fire coming from the fort had slackened. Francis’ men must have been picked off, or else run out of ammunition. If the attackers could make themselves secure here, and regroup, they would overrun the fort in minutes.

  More men than he could count were squeezed into the room. Some firing, others reloading, others bringing fresh powder and shot. Impossible odds, but he had no choice. He nodded to Penrose.

  The two of them burst into the room, closing so fast none of the marksmen had space to bring a musket to bear. Tom slashed and thrust with his sabre, while Penrose swung Alf Wilson’s boarding axe to bloody effect in the confined space. Soon, even those proved too unwieldy. The press of bodies became a scrum, nothing more than men grappling and pushing each other.

  This was a fight they could not hope to win. Tom was wrestled back. Penrose took a knife to his belly, fell and was trampled beneath the Rani’s soldiers’ feet. Before Tom could help him, the surge of battle pushed him away.

  He took another step backwards – and felt hard stone against his back. He was trapped. The Rani’s troops made a semi-circle around him. Their captain, a huge man with a black turban stepped forward. He took a long-barrelled pistol from his orange sash and aimed it at Tom’s face.

  Tom flinched as he heard the shot, but he kept his eyes open. The cock on the pistol had not moved, but the captain’s face dissolved in a mask of blood and bone.

  Francis stood in the doorway, a pistol in each hand and with two men from the fort flanking him with bayonet-tipped muskets. Before the Rani’s stunned soldiers could respond, Francis’ men charged in, stabbing with the well-practised movements Tom had drilled into them over the past weeks. Stunned by the reversal, the soldiers hardly resisted. They fled the building, diving out through the windows and abandoning their arms in their haste.

  ‘I told you not to come,’ Tom said to Francis. ‘But thank God you did. Now let us finish our business. We are not safe yet.’

&nb
sp; The Rani’s troops had prepared the house for a long siege. Around the back, Tom and Francis found a hoard of powder kegs.

  ‘This is more than any musketeer would need,’ said Tom. ‘They meant to bring their big guns up. Now we shall use their arms against them.’

  They piled the kegs inside the house and laid a fuse. From the east side of the fort, Tom could hear blasts of gunfire, but here on the north side the Rani’s men had given up the fight. Tom lit the powder trail, and they all ran for the walls. Crossing the little gully, Tom saw the impressions in the sand where he had taken cover, and the blood where Alf Wilson had fallen.

  Now the gully was empty. ‘Did you rescue Alf?’ Tom asked Francis. ‘I left him here.’

  Francis shook his head. ‘There were none here when I came.’

  Before Tom could think any more of it, the house exploded. Stone debris rained down on the beach. Some travelled as far as the fort, rattling off the walls. When the smoke cleared, Tom saw the house had been flattened to its foundations.

  ‘They will not lodge any guns there again,’ said Tom with grim satisfaction.

  The explosion had broken the attackers’ last will to fight. Beyond the corner of the fort, Tom saw them streaming back across the narrow isthmus towards their camp on the mainland. A couple of parting shots from the guns at the gate hastened them on their way: the men in the fort had not lost their taste for battle.

  Tom leaned on the musket he was carrying. He ached: he was not as young as he had once been. He looked at Francis: hair tousled, face black as a powder monkey, shirt torn and drenched with sweat. He felt as proud as if he had been the boy’s father.

  ‘You should not have come to rescue me,’ he muttered.

  ‘I didn’t,’ retorted Francis. ‘I thought you were dead. I was going to finish the job you had started.’

  Tom put his arm around the boy, and together they picked their way among the corpses to the gate.

  ‘You did well,’ he said. ‘But we have only won a single battle. No doubt, they will try again soon. We had best be ready for them. Now, where is Alf Wilson?’