Cheethoo neither knew nor cared about the Frenchman’s past. Now he had to save his neck. Without hesitation he sprang to the window arch. For a moment he balanced there, while the Frenchmen still crowded the door as if frozen, unable to act. The cobbled courtyard seemed a long way down. He took a deep breath and launched himself into space, as at the door the spell was broken and the Frenchmen surged into the room, murder in their hearts ...
*
Now the assault party was in the middle of the raging Burra, white-capped waves, blown to a fury by the monsoon wind, lap-ping against the sides of the low pontoons, heavily laden with frightened men. Standing upright, their black bodies dripping with flying spume, the boatmen paddled and poled with all their strength. Time and again the river seemed about to snatch them away from their course and take them whirling and powerless into darkness and death. But somehow these simple peasants, who would receive a mere handful of annas for their strength and courage, avoided disaster.
Next to John Sergeant Jones seemed resigned. He prayed in Welsh, apparently totally unconcerned by what was going on all around him.
John wished he had the little NCO’s calm. But he wasn’t afraid. He was too wrapped up in the concerns of his mission. And he did not want to sacrifice the lives of these brave men, white and black, for nothing.
Now the bank of the Burra came even closer. Beyond, through gaps in the waving trees on the shore, he glimpsed the fortress, grim, silent and impressive. Not a light showed, though above the roar of the gunfire now battering its walls further to the right as a feint, he thought he heard the snap and crackle of musket fire. Perhaps some trigger-happy guard firing purposelessly into the night to keep his courage up.
The tug of the current grew less. The boatmen relaxed a little. John could see their strained breathing easing now, as they poled the clumsy pontoons through the floating debris of the river, nudging their way through logs, bundles of thatch and bodies — those of their comrades thrown into the river after death.
The sight increased the urgency of the mission for John. If he didn’t succeed this night, God knew how many other unfortunate wretches would succumb to the miseries of that fever-ridden, starving siege camp.
‘Captain Bold.’ It was Elders, sword already drawn, wan face determined, demented eyes burning like fiery coals — the face of a man committed to death. Instinctively John knew Elders would not survive what was to come.
‘What?’
‘I crave the honour of taking up the first scaling party. I can see where the dead ground is now. I need no further assistance.’
John hesitated. What would the effect be if he discovered Alice, perhaps in the arms of that perverted she-devil? He dismissed the consideration.
‘You shall have that honour, Captain Elders,’ he said as the first pontoon grounded on the bank. ‘But pray remember, sir, our objective is the main gate — nothing else! That was Sir John’s express command.’
‘I will mark it well, Captain Bold,’ Elders lied easily, his mind dwelling on brutal revenge.
‘Good, then let us get to it!’
Happily the green-faced infantry and their equally bilious comrades of Bold’s Horse streamed ashore, clambering up the bank with a will, glad to be rid of that terrible river, undaunted by the prospect of sudden death. Above them loomed the grim battlements of the lower fort, waiting for them to come. The sight worried them naught; they were on dry land once more. They began to advance. Now the actors were in place. The final act could commence ...
TEN
Cheethoo winced with pain. Red-hot darts of sheer agony seared his left leg. He bit his lip until the blood came, dry and coppery. But the searchers were going now. They had failed to find his hiding place under the ornate horse trough to the right of the courtyard. It was understandable; the area stank of horse droppings. Despite the pain, Cheethoo forced a smile. He had been saved on account of a pile of horseshit, he told himself.
He waited until he saw their burning pitch flares disappearing back in the direction of the feringhees’ quarters.
Gingerly he felt his leg. Something was sticking out in his lower calf at an awkward angle, trying to break through the stretched flesh. He touched the spot and bit back his cry of pain just in time. There it was; his leg was broken.
For a few moments he lay there among the horse manure. He knew that his most sensible course of action should be to escape from Burrapore, steal a horse and head for the safety of the Vindhya Mountains to the north. There, a whole army would have difficulty in taking him while he recovered.
There, he would be among his own wild, free mountain robbers, dug in to their hillforts.
But Cheethoo, Chief of the Pindarees, was not just a practical man, who had welded a band of robbers and brigands into a military force to be reckoned with; he was also vain and arrogant, a man very conscious of his own honour. And his honour had been assailed by the Ranee of Burrapore: a mere woman, however powerful she might be, who had attempted to have him murdered by her hired foreign killers. No Indian would have dared to lay a hand on him!
As he lay there alone and injured, he considered how he could pay back that perverted woman. In his mind’s eye he saw again the whore’s apartments, high up on the second storey of the upper fort so that the air in them would not be contaminated by the smell of the great kitchens below.
‘The kitchens!’ he mused, speaking aloud in the manner of lonely men. He visualized them, with great open arches to north and south to draw cooling air through. ‘Wood,’ he whispered hoarsely, ignoring the burning pain in his leg as the plan began to uncurl in his mind like some deadly viper preparing to strike. ‘There is plenty of wood.’
There would be no guards. Who would want to guard a kitchen? The men on duty in the upper fort would be posted around the Ranee’s apartments.
He grinned evilly in the darkness, as the cannon pounded away and the first drops of the new rainstorm pattered down. It was about time that the Ranee of Burrapore was taught how to act the role of a good Hindu woman, even though she was a princess; and what better way to teach that lesson than — suttee?
Still grinning, and despite agonizing pain, Cheethoo began to crawl towards the kitchen ...
*
The assault party rushed forward. Behind them they left the dead sentries, strangled silently, ruthlessly, as they stood at their posts along the dark stretch of wall, caught completely off guard.
To their right the cannon still pounded away, deadening any sound they might make as they doubled through the darkness of the inner courtyard for the main gate. Pistol in hand, heart leaping with joy at how easily the infiltration had gone so far, John told himself now that his only problem at present was keeping his party together in the confusion of low buildings and shacks that masked the approach to the gate. When that final assault came, for which Campbell’s men were eagerly waiting outside, he wanted all his strength.
More than once, as they approached ever closer to the gate, he stopped and waved his pistol at little groups of sepoys and sowars wandering off on their own, obviously eager for loot. After all, that was what they had joined the Company’s service for.
They came to a deep ditch filled with sharpened sticks. They were hardly a hindrance, but the ditch was. Its steep and muddy banks sent the soldiers sliding, cursing and falling in the glowing darkness. Anxiously John waited on the far side as they struggled through while Sergeant Jones cursed and chided them in a manner totally foreign to one devoted to ‘the good book’.
Now the main gate was a mere fifty yards away and still their presence had not been discovered. Luck, obviously, was still on their side, though despite the artillery bombardment, the Ranee’s soldiers seemed to have gone to sleep for the night, save the handful on duty.
The last man emerged from the ditch, hurried along by a well-aimed kick from Sergeant Jones’ boot, and they moved on, crouched low and tense, each man wrapped in a cocoon of his own anxious thoughts. The rain was increasing in strengt
h now and for once they were glad of the monsoon, which drowned the sound of their advance on the gate. Now they could hear the howl of cannonballs as they whined off the stout oak of the gate, screeching up into the sky, carrying a trail of angry red sparks behind them. But still the men guarding the entrance to the lower fort did not react. The musket fire John had heard earlier on, must have taken place somewhere else. He dismissed the thought and concentrated on the gate.
With luck they would reach the structure and plant their charges unobserved. If he succeeded in blowing the gate without a fight, he would retire with his men to the group of outhouses to the right, and barricade himself in until Campbell arrived.
‘Jones,’ he whispered urgently.
The sergeant appeared at his side as if by magic. ‘Sir?’
‘Where’s Captain Elders of the native infantry?’ he demanded.
‘Don’t know, sir, exactly. Back of us somewhere, I think.’
John made up his mind. ‘All right. This is what I’m going to do. We’re close enough now. I’m taking half a dozen men to plant the charges — no,’ he added firmly before Jones could protest, ‘I want you to take charge of the sowars with the rissaldar, just in case. And no arguments.’
‘Yessir.’
‘Now, see those sheds. Get the men over there and tell Captain Elders to do the same. Now then be off with you. We haven’t got all night.’ He grinned suddenly and stuck out his hand. ‘Thank you for everything, just in case, Rum and Fornication Jones!’
Miserably, Jones took it ...
*
Hastily Elders deployed his sepoys as Jones had indicated. He took one last look at their positions and was satisfied with what he saw. He peered towards the gate but couldn’t make out young Bold and his party, creeping through the darkness to lay their charges. Then he dismissed all of them; he had other things to do ...
*
John, chest heaving with the effort, looked down at the sentry, his throat ripped from ear to ear by one of the sowar’s knives, the blood still seeping out of the gaping ragged wound. Then as his sowars, moving in absolute silence, for there were other sentries on the ramparts, heaped the barrels of gunpowder in position, he began laying the trail. He prayed that the rain wouldn’t affect the fuse-line of gunpowder he was dropping on the ground between the barrels and the cover of a stone stable to the left. From within it he could hear the nervous movement of alerted horses and hoped that there were no syces with them to raise the alarm.
Nerves tingling and his breath coming in short sharp gasps, he completed the trail and then went back along it, tamping down the powder with his foot. God, he prayed, please keep the full fury of the monsoon rain away till everything is done!
He finished the tamping and beckoned the sowars, crouching next to the slaughtered sentry, to follow him. They needed no urging. They could hear the cries and calls of the enemy guards above them quite clearly every time the impact of a fresh cannonball angered them. The sentries had only to look down and spot the furtive shapes flitting back and forth in the grey gloom.
Hurriedly they sheltered behind the stable. The horses shuffled and whinnied nervously. John cupped his hand, cursing the raindrops which were growing more frequent now. He struck the match. It failed to ignite. Twenty yards to his front on the ramparts over the gate, a sentry was waving a pitch torch as if examining the area immediately below with the aid of its flickering, purple flame.
John cursed. In a minute the man would spot the heaped-up barrels of gunpowder. He struck the match again. Nothing! He swore. Had the damned rain ruined it? On the battlements, the man swung the torch in the direction of the powder barrels. Desperately John struck the match once more. There was a tiny spurt of blue flame. Hastily John cupped it with his other hand. At that moment it seemed as huge as the beam of Dover lighthouse. He waited a fraction of a second. Now the match was burning brightly. On the rampart the sentry with the torch had ceased moving. He had spotted the barrels!
With fingers that were trembling almost uncontrollably now, John applied the flame to the gunpowder trail. It caught immediately. His heart gave a great leap of joy. Angry red flame started to spurt, popping and spluttering, down the gunpowder trail a swift worm heading straight for the barrels. John held his breath. Next to him his sowars crouched, fingers in ears, waiting for the explosion.
On the ramparts the sentry with the torch cried out — he had spotted that red, fire-spitting serpent. Almost immediately wild firing broke out. Musket balls whined off the stable walls, showering the men with sharp fragments of stone. In a moment, the guards would be tumbling down the stairs from the ramparts, coming in for the attack! The snaking trail of fire grew ever closer to the barrels. There was the sound of running feet. John prayed as he had never prayed before. Dear Lord, let the gunpowder explode ... Please, dear Lord ... ! A musket ball howled off the wall inches above his head. He ducked hastily. The sentries were almost at the bottom of the winding stairs now. After all the effort, they weren’t going to make it. In a moment someone would stamp on that deadly red worm and it would be all over. It was too slow ... too visible.
Then it came, surprising, shaking even those who had placed the trail. It seemed to rock the fortress to its very foundations. A crackle of blinding light. A great shocked hush like some primeval monster drawing in a huge breath of air. The ground trembled beneath the crouching observers’ feet. Next moment the barrels went up totally. A horrendous gout of purple flame shot into the sky. The gate flew apart. In that blinding furious light, a half-stunned John caught a glimpse of the sentries whirling and twisting like dolls in the crazy maelstrom of shocked air.
For a few moments they could not move. All they could do was to fight for survival as the shock waves slapped them across the face time and time again, whipping their dirty ragged uniforms against their gaunt bodies, ripping the very air from their lungs so that they gasped and choked as if in the death throes of some terrible seizure. Chunks of wood and stone cascaded down all about them. Inside the stable, the horses broke loose and began kicking in complete panic against the doors. The whole world seemed one great moving mass of noise and sudden death.
Then it was over, leaving behind a great echoing silence which seemed to go on for ever until, dimly perceived by the shocked, half-defeated men, still crouching among the falling debris, came the sound of bugles and the urgent rattle of drums. The Army of the Deccan was coming in for the last attack on the Fortress of Burrapore!
Again the bugles outside shrilled their urgent summons, their sweet sound wafting into the fortress. Weakly John Bold sat down, all strength vanished from his young body as if someone had opened a secret tap. ‘Bugles at dawn,’ he whispered softly to himself, while his men crowded forward to get a first view of their comrades marching through the shattered gate. Slowly he began to laugh. ‘Bugles at dawn ... ’ His laughter rose hysterically, as great tears began to trickle down his wan face. ‘Bugles at dawn ... ’
*
Cheethoo hesitated no longer. That great explosion down below and the muted rattle of the drums told him all he needed to know. It was time to be gone, vanishing in the usual confusion of an assault, back to the remote mountain fastnesses of his home. Careful no longer about making noise, he threw the pan of red-hot embers he had taken from an oven in the deserted kitchen. They slammed into the tinder-dry brushwood he had arranged around the logs stacked high against the walls. The kindling caught immediately. In an instant it was sparking and cracking merrily in a cherry-red glare so that he had to back off, dragging his damaged leg painfully behind him.
He picked up the jar of ghee he had prepared for this moment. The clarified butter smelled rancid, but it would serve his purpose. He scooped out a handful of the stuff and, balancing as best he could on one leg, flung it at the logs just above the kindling. There was a fresh burst of flame. The logs caught immediately. He started back, feeling the heat sear his hawk-like face, the ever-rising flames hollowing his features out to a red death’s h
ead.
He hovered, savouring the fire, occasionally throwing another handful of ghee at the logs, but knowing now that the flames had caught. His fire wouldn’t go out now and already it was beginning to spread, the first of the blackened timbers which supported the kitchen roof was starting to smoulder. In a moment, impregnated as it was with the fat grime of centuries of cooking, it would burst into flames.
Cheethoo thought of that unsuspecting she-devil up above. There was only one set of stairs leading from the Ranee’s apartments and they were panelled with ornately carved wood. It should burn like tinder. He grinned evilly. The she-devil would not have a chance. It was highly suitable that she should perish in the flames like the devil she was. The fire leapt higher and higher. He backed off even more, the pain in his leg forgotten for a moment, as he relished his triumph over the would-be murderess.
Abruptly he became aware of running feet, coming from below, where already wild firing had broken out, indicating that the Ranee’s men were attempting to resist. Suddenly he realized his own danger. He had to get out of the kitchen, find a horse and vanish in the mêlée. It wouldn’t be the first time he had done so when one of his Pindaree raids had gone wrong.
Hobbling, gritting his teeth against the excruciating pain in his leg, he fell back from the flames and staggered out into the glowing darkness. Musket flames stabbed the night, cutting to and fro between attackers and defenders, but Cheethoo was abruptly concerned by those running feet. Did they belong to one of the Ranee’s men coming to warn her?
He dropped suddenly, stifling a cry of pain as the broken bone grated. A man in European uniform was running up the rise, a drawn sword in his hand. Cheethoo, crouched, caught a glimpse of a pale, old face and wondered momentarily how a European had survived so long in India. Then the man had passed and Cheethoo knew he could linger no longer. Taking one last look at the rising flames, he awkwardly bent low and gave a ceremonial bow. Voice full of arrogant mockery, he whispered, ‘Goodbye, Ranee of Burrapore.’ A moment later he had vanished.
Bugles at Dawn Page 24
