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

  Sharpe nodded a wary greeting. “Sahib,” he said, for there was something about Syud Sevajee that suggested he was a man of rank.

  “The Sergeant has seen Lieutenant Dodd,” McCandless explained. “He’ll make sure we capture the right man.”

  “Kill all the Europeans,” Sevajee suggested, “and you’ll be sure.” The suggestion, it seemed to Sharpe, was not entirely flippant.

  “I want him captured alive,” McCandless said irritably. “Justice must be seen to be done. Or would you rather that your people believe a British officer can beat a man to death without any punishment?”

  “They believe that anyway,” Sevajee said carelessly, “but if you wish to be scrupulous, McCandless, then we shall capture Mister Dodd.” Sevajee’s men, a dozen wild-looking warriors armed with everything from bows and arrows to lances, had fallen in behind McCandless.

  “Syud Sevajee is a Mahratta, Sharpe,” McCandless explained.

  “One of the romantic ones, sir?”

  “Romantic?” Sevajee repeated the word in surprise.

  “He’s on our side, if that’s what you mean,” McCandless said.

  “No,” Sevajee hurried to correct the Colonel. “I am opposed to Beny Singh, and so long as he lives I help the enemies of my enemy.”

  “Why’s this fellow your enemy, sir, if you don’t mind me asking?” Sharpe asked.

  Sevajee touched the hilt of his tulwar as if it was a fetish. “Because he killed my father, Sergeant.”

  “Then I hope you get the bastard, sir.”

  “Sharpe!” McCandless said in reprimand.

  Sevajee laughed. “My father,” he explained to Sharpe, “led one of the Rajah of Berar’s compoos. He was a great warrior, Sergeant, and Beny Singh was his rival. He invited my father to a feast and served him poison. That was three years ago. My mother killed herself, but my younger brother serves Beny Singh and my sister is one of his concubines. They, too, will die.”

  “And you escaped, sir?” Sharpe asked.

  “I was serving in the East India Company cavalry, Sergeant,” Sevajee answered. “My father believed a man should know his enemy, so sent me to Madras.”

  “Where we met,” McCandless said brusquely, “and now Sevajee serves me.”

  “Because in return,” Sevajee explained, “your British bayonets will hand Beny Singh to my revenge. And with him, of course, the reward for Dodd. Four thousand, two hundred rupees, is it not?”

  “So long as he’s taken alive,” McCandless said dourly, “and it might be increased once the Court of Directors hears what he did at Chasalgaon.”

  “And to think I almost caught him,” Sevajee said, and described how he and his few men had visited Ahmednuggur posing as brindarries who were loyal to Scindia.

  “Brindarrie?” Sharpe asked.

  “Like silladars,” McCandless told him. “Freelance horsemen. And you saw Dodd?” he asked Sevajee.

  “I heard him, Colonel, though I never got close. He was lecturing his regiment, telling them how they would chase you British out of India.”

  McCandless scoffed. “He’ll be lucky to escape from Ahmednuggur! Why has he stayed there?”

  “To give Pohlmann a chance to attack?” Sevajee suggested. “His compoo was still close to Ahmednuggur a few days ago.”

  “Just one compoo, sir?” Sharpe suggested. “One compoo won’t beat Wellesley.”

  Sevajee gave him a long, speculative look. “Pohlmann, Sergeant,” he said, “is the best infantry leader in Indian service. He has never lost a battle, and his compoo is probably the finest infantry army in India. It already outnumbers Wellesley’s army, but if Scindia releases his other compoos, then together they will outnumber your Wellesley three to one. And if Scindia waits until Berar’s troops are with him, he’ll outnumber you ten to one.”

  “So why are we attacking, sir?”

  “Because we’re going to win,” McCandless said firmly. “God’s will.”

  “Because, Sergeant,” Sevajee said, “you British think that you are invincible. You believe you cannot be defeated, but you have not fought the Mahrattas. Your little army marches north full of confidence, but you are like mice waking an elephant.”

  “Some mice,” McCandless snorted.

  “Some elephant,” Sevajee said gently. “We are the Mahrattas, and if we did not fight amongst ourselves we would rule all India.”

  “You’ve not faced Scottish infantry yet,” McCandless said confidently, “and Wellesley has two Scottish regiments with him. Besides, you forget that Stevenson has an army, too, and he’s not so very far away.” Two armies, both small, were invading the Mahratta Confederation, though Wellesley, as the senior officer, had control of both. “I reckon the mice will startle you yet,” McCandless said.

  They spent that night in a village. To the north, just beyond the horizon, the sky glowed red from the reflection of flames on the smoke of thousands of campfires, the sign that the British army was just a short march away. McCandless bargained with the headman for food and shelter, then frowned when Sevajee purchased a jar of fierce local arrack. Sevajee ignored the Scotsman’s disapproval, then went to join his men who were gaming in the village’s tavern. McCandless shook his head. “He fights for mercenary reasons, Sharpe, nothing else.”

  “That and vengeance, sir.”

  “Aye, he wants vengeance, I’ll grant him that, but once he’s got it he’ll turn on us like a snake.” The Colonel rubbed his eyes. “He’s a useful man, all the same, but I wish I felt more confident about this whole business.”

  “The war, sir?”

  McCandless shook his head. “We’ll win that. It doesn’t matter by how many they outnumber us, they won’t outfight us. No, Sharpe, I’m worried about Dodd.”

  “We’ll get him, sir,” Sharpe said.

  The Colonel said nothing for a while. An oil lamp flickered on the table, attracting huge winged moths, and in its dull light the Colonel’s thin face looked more cadaverous than ever. McCandless finally grimaced. “I’ve never been one for believing in the supernatural, Sharpe, other than the providences of Almighty God. Some of my countrymen claim they see and hear signs. They tell of foxes howling about the house when a death is imminent, or seals coming ashore when a man’s to be lost at sea, but I never credited such things. It’s mere superstition, Sharpe, pagan superstition, but I can’t chase away my dread about Dodd.” He shook his head slowly. “Maybe it’s age.”

  “You’re not old, sir.”

  McCandless smiled. “I’m sixty-three, Sharpe, and I should have retired ten years ago, except that the good Lord has seen fit to make me useful, but the Company isn’t so sure of my worth now. They’d like to give me a pension, and I can’t blame them. A full colonel’s salary is a heavy item on the Company’s accounts.” McCandless offered Sharpe a rueful look. “You fight for King and country, Sharpe, but I fight and die for the shareholders.”

  “They’d never replace you, sir!” Sharpe said loyally.

  “They already have,” McCandless admitted softly, “or Wellesley has. He has his own head of intelligence now, and the Company knows it, so they tell me I am a ‘supernumerary upon the establishment.’” He shrugged. “They want to put me out to pasture, Sharpe, but they did give me this one last errand, and that’s the apprehension of Lieutenant William Dodd, though I rather think he’s going to be the death of me.”

  “He won’t, sir, not while I’m here.”

  “That’s why you are here, Sharpe,” McCandless said seriously. “He’s younger than I am, he’s fitter than I am and he’s a better swordsman than I am, and that’s why I thought of you. I saw you fight at Seringapatam and I doubt Dodd can stand up to you.”

  “He won’t, sir, he won’t,” Sharpe said grimly. “And I’ll keep you alive, sir.”

  “If God wills it.”

  Sharpe smiled. “Don’t they say God helps those who help themselves, sir? We’ll do the job, sir.”

  “I pray you’re right, Sharpe,” McCandless sa
id, “I pray you’re right.” And they would start at Ahmednuggur, where Dodd waited and where Sharpe’s new war would begin.

  CHAPTER•3

  Colonel McCandless led his small force into Sir Arthur Wellesley’s encampment late the following afternoon. For most of the morning they had been shadowed by a band of enemy horsemen who sometimes galloped close as if inviting Sevajee’s men to ride out and fight, but McCandless kept Sevajee on a tight leash and at midday a patrol of horsemen in blue coats with yellow facings had chased the enemy away. The blue-coated cavalry were from the 19th Light Dragoons and the Captain leading the troop gave McCandless a cheerful wave as he cantered after the enemy who had been prowling the road in hope of finding a laggard supply wagon. Four hours later McCandless topped a gentle rise to see the army’s lines spread across the countryside while, four miles farther north, the red walls of Ahmednuggur stood in the westering sun. From this angle the fort and the city appeared as one continuous building, a vast red rampart studded with bastions. Sharpe cuffed sweat from his face. “Looks like a brute, sir,” he said, nodding at the walls.

  “The wall’s big enough,” the Colonel said, “but there’s no ditch, no glacis and no outworks. It’ll take us no more than three days to punch a hole.”

  “Then pity the poor souls who must go through the hole,” Sevajee commented.

  “It’s what they’re paid to do,” McCandless said brusquely.

  The area about the camp seethed with men and animals. Every cavalry horse in the army needed two lascars to gather forage, and those men were busy with sickles, while nearer to the camp’s center was a vast muddy expanse where the draught bullocks and pack oxen were picketed. Puckalees, the men who carried water for the troops and the animals, were filling their buckets from a tank scummed with green. A thorn hedge surrounded six elephants that belonged to the gunners, while next to the great beasts was the artillery park with its twenty-six cannon, and after that came the sepoys’ lines where children shrieked, dogs yapped and women carried patties of bullock dung on their heads to build the evening fires. The last part of the journey took them through the lines of the 78th, a kilted Highland regiment, and the soldiers saluted McCandless and then looked at the red facings on Sharpe’s coat and called out the inevitable insults. “Come to see how a real man fights, Sergeant?”

  “You ever done any proper fighting?” Sharpe retorted.

  “What’s a Havercake doing here?”

  “Come to teach you boys a lesson.”

  “What in? Cooking?”

  “Where I come from,” Sharpe said, “it’s the ones in skirts what does the cooking.”

  “Enough, Sharpe,” McCandless snapped. The Colonel liked to wear a kilt himself, claiming it was a more suitable garment for India’s heat than trousers. “We must pay our respects to the General,” McCandless said, and turned towards the larger tents in the center of the encampment.

  It had been two years since Sharpe had last seen his old Colonel and he doubted that Major-General Sir Arthur Wellesley would prove any friendlier now than he ever had. Sir Arthur had always been a cold fish, sparing with approval and frightening in his disapproval, and his most casual glance somehow managed to make Sharpe feel both insignificant and inadequate, and so, when McCandless dismounted outside the General’s tent, Sharpe deliberately hung back. The General, still a young man, was standing beside a line of six picketed horses and was evidently in a blazing temper. An orderly, in the blue-and-yellow coat of the 19th Dragoons, was holding a big gray stallion by its bridle and Wellesley was alternately patting the horse and snapping at the half-dozen aides who cowered nearby. A group of senior officers, majors and colonels, stood beside the General’s tent, suggesting that a council of war had been interrupted by the horse’s distress. The gray stallion was certainly suffering. It was shivering, its eyes were rolling white and sweat or spittle was dripping from its drooping head.

  Wellesley turned as McCandless and Sevajee approached. “Can you bleed a horse, McCandless?”

  “I can put a knife in it, sir, if it helps,” the Scotsman answered.

  “It does not help, damn it!” Wellesley retorted savagely. “I don’t want him butchered, I want him bled. Where is the farrier?”

  “We’re looking for him, sir,” an aide replied.

  “Then find him, damn it! Easy, boy, easy!” These last three words were spoken in a soothing tone to the horse which had let out a feeble whinny. “He’s fevered,” Wellesley explained to McCandless, “and if he ain’t bled, he’ll die.”

  A groom hurried to the General’s side carrying a fleam and a blood stick, both of which he mutely offered to Wellesley. “No good giving them to me,” the General snapped, “I can’t bleed a horse.” He looked at his aides, then at the senior officers by the tent. “Someone must know how to do it,” Wellesley pleaded. They were all men who lived with horses and professed to love them, though none knew how to bleed a horse for that was a job left to servants, but finally a Scottish major averred that he had a shrewd idea of how the thing was done, and so he was given the fleam and its hammer. He took off his red coat, chose a fleam blade at random and stepped up to the shivering stallion. He placed the blade on the horse’s neck and drew back the hammer with his right hand.

  “Not like that!” Sharpe blurted out. “You’ll kill him!” A score of men stared at him while the Scottish Major, the blade unhit, looked rather relieved. “You’ve got the blade the wrong way around, sir,” Sharpe explained. “You have to line it up along the vein, sir, not across it.” He was blushing for having spoken out in front of the General and all the army’s senior officers.

  Wellesley scowled at Sharpe. “Can you bleed a horse?”

  “I can’t ride the things, sir, but I do know how to bleed them. I worked in an inn yard,” Sharpe added as though that was explanation enough.

  “Have you actually bled a horse?” Wellesley demanded. He showed not the slightest surprise at seeing a man from his old battalion in the camp, but in truth he was far too distracted by his stallion’s distress to worry about mere men.

  “I’ve bled dozens, sir,” Sharpe said, which was true, but those horses had been big heavy carriage beasts, and this white stallion was plainly a thoroughbred.

  “Then do it, damn it,” the General said. “Don’t just stand there, do it!”

  Sharpe took the fleam and the blood stick from the Major. The fleam looked like a misshapen penknife, and inside its brass case were folded a dozen blades. Two of the blades were shaped as hooks, while the rest were spoon-shaped. He selected a middle-sized spoon, checked that its edge was keen, folded the other blades away and then approached the horse. “You’ll have to hold him hard,” he told the dragoon orderly.

  “He can be lively, Sergeant,” the orderly warned in a low voice, anxious not to provoke another outburst from Wellesley.

  “Then hang on hard,” Sharpe said to the orderly, then he stroked the horse’s neck, feeling for the jugular.

  “How much are you going to let out?” Wellesley asked.

  “Much as it takes, sir,” Sharpe said, who really had no idea how much blood he should spill. Enough to make it look good, he reckoned. The horse was nervous and tried to pull away from the orderly. “Give him a stroke, sir,” Sharpe said to the General. “Let him know it ain’t the end of the world.”

  Wellesley took the stallion’s head from the orderly and gave the beast’s nose a fondling. “It’s all right, Diomed,” he said, “we’re going to make you better. Get on with it, Sharpe.”

  Sharpe had found the jugular and now placed the sharp curve of the spoon-blade over the vein. He held the knife in his left hand and the blood stick in his right. The stick was a small wooden club that was needed to drive the fleam’s blade through a horse’s thick skin. “All right, boy,” he murmured to the horse, “just a prick, nothing bad,” and then he struck the blade hard with the stick’s blunt head.

  The fleam sliced through hair and skin and flesh straight into the vein, and t
he horse reared up, but Sharpe, expecting the reaction, held the fleam in place as warm blood spurted out over his shako. “Hold him!” he snapped at Wellesley, and the General seemed to find nothing odd in being ordered about by a sergeant and he obediently hauled Diomed’s head down. “That’s good,” Sharpe said, “that’s good, just keep him there, sir, keep him there,” and he skewed the blade slightly to open the slit in the vein and so let the blood pulse out. It ran red down the white horse’s flank, it soaked Sharpe’s red coat and puddled at his feet.

  The horse shivered, but Sharpe sensed that the stallion was calming. By relaxing the pressure on the fleam he could lessen the blood flow and after a while he slowed it to a trickle and then, when the horse had stopped shivering, Sharpe pulled the blade free. His right hand and arm were drenched in blood.

  He spat on his clean left hand, then wiped the small wound. “I reckon he’ll live, sir,” he told the General, “but a bit of ginger in his feed might help.” That was another trick he had learned at the coaching tavern.

  Wellesley stroked Diomed’s nose and the horse, suddenly unconcerned by the fuss all about him, lowered his head and cropped at a miserable tuft of grass. The General smiled, his bad mood gone. “I’m greatly obliged to you, Sharpe,” Wellesley said, relinquishing the bridle into the orderly’s grasp. “’Pon my soul, I’m greatly obliged to you,” he repeated enthusiastically. “As neat a blood-letting as ever I did see.” He put a hand into his pocket and brought out a haideri that he offered to Sharpe. “Well done, Sergeant.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Sharpe said, taking the gold coin. It was a generous reward.

  “Good as new, eh?” Wellesley said, admiring the horse. “He was a gift.”

  “An expensive one,” McCandless observed dryly.

  “A valued one,” Wellesley said. “Poor Ashton left him to me in his will. You knew Ashton, McCandless?”

  “Of course, sir.” Henry Ashton had been Colonel of the 12th, a Suffolk regiment posted to India, and he had died after taking a bullet in the liver during a duel.