'Fitzgerald!' Morris shouted frantically. 'For Christ's sake, Lieutenant! Where the hell are you?'
'He's gone to hell.' Hakeswill chuckled softly. He was searching the Lieutenant's body for coins. He dared not take anything that might be recognized as the Lieutenant's property, so he left the dead man's sabre and the gilded gorget he had worn about his throat, but he did find a handful of unidentifiable small change which he pushed into his pouch before scrambling a few feet away to make sure no one saw him with his victim.
'Who's that?' Morris called as he heard Hakeswill pushing through the undergrowth.
'Me, sir!' Hakeswill called. 'I'm looking for Lieutenant Fitzgerald, sir.'
'Come here instead!' Morris snapped.
Hakeswill ran the last few yards and dropped down between Morris and a frightened Ensign Hicks. 'I'm worried about Mister Fitzgerald, sir,' Hakeswill said. 'Heard him up in the bushes, and there was heathens there, sir. I know, sir, 'cos I killed a couple of the black bastards.' He flinched as some muskets flamed and banged some yards away, but he could not tell who fired, or at what.
'You think the bastards found Fitzgerald?' Morris asked.
'I reckon so,' Hakeswill said. 'Poor little bastard. I tried to find him, sir, but there was just heathens there.'
'Jesus.' Morris ducked as a volley of bullets flicked through the leaves overhead. 'What about Sergeant Green?'
'Probably skulking, sir. Hiding his precious hide, I don't wonder.'
'We're all bloody skulking,' Morris answered truthfully enough.
'Not me, sir. Not Obadiah Hakeswill, sir. Got me halberd proper wet, sir. Want to feel it, sir?' Hakeswill held out the spear point. 'Heathen blood, sir, still warm.'
Morris shuddered at the thought of touching the spear, but took some comfort in having Hakeswill at his side. The tope was filled with shouts as a group of the Tippoo's troops charged. Muskets hammered. A rocket exploded nearby, while another, this one with a solid shot in its cone, ripped through bushes and crashed into a tree. A man screamed, then the scream was abruptly chopped off. 'Jesus,' Morris cursed uselessly.
'Maybe we should go back?' Ensign Hicks suggested. 'Back across the aqueduct?'
'Can't, sir,' Hakeswill said. 'Buggers are behind us.'
'You're sure?' Morris asked.
'Fought the black buggers there myself, sir. Couldn't hold them. A whole tribe of the bastards, sir. Did my best. Lost some good men.' Hakeswill sniffed with pretended emotion.
'You're a brave man, Hakeswill,' Morris said gruffly.
'Just following your lead, sir,' Hakeswill said, then ducked as another enemy volley whipped overhead. A huge cheer sounded, followed by the screaming roar of rockets as the Tippoo's reinforcements, sent from the city, came shouting and fighting through the trees to drive every last infidel from the tope. 'Bleeding hell,' Hakeswill said. 'But not to worry! I can't die, sir! I can't die!'
Behind him there was another cheer as the rest of the 33rd at last crossed the aqueduct.
'Forward!' a voice shouted from somewhere behind the Light Company's scattered fugitives. 'Forward!'
'Bloody hell!' Morris snapped. 'Who the hell is that?'
'33rd!' the voice shouted. 'To me! To me!'
'Stay where you are!' Morris called to a few eager men, and so they crouched in the warm dark that was loud with the ripping of bullets and filled by the whimpers of dying men and bright with the glare of rockets and foul with the stench of blood that was being spilt in a black place where only chaos and fear prevailed.
Chapter 7
'Sharpe! Sharpe!' It was Colonel Gudin who, at nightfall, burst into the barracks room. 'Come, quick! As you are, hurry!'
'What about me, sir?' Lawford asked. The Lieutenant had been idly reading his Bible as he lay on his cot.
'Come on, Sharpe!' Gudin did not wait to answer Lawford, but just ran across the barracks' courtyard and out into the street which separated the European soldiers' quarters from the Hindu temple. 'Quick, Sharpe!' the Frenchman called back as he hurried past a pile of mud bricks that were stacked at the street corner. Sharpe, dressed in tiger-striped tunic and boots, but with no hat, crossbelt, pouches or musket, ran after the Colonel. He leapt over a half-naked man who was sitting cross-legged beside the temple wall, shoved a cow out of his way, then turned the corner and hurried after Gudin towards the Mysore Gate. Lawford had paused to tug on his boots and by the time he reached the street beside the temple, Sharpe had already vanished.
'Can you ride a horse?' Gudin shouted at Sharpe when the two men reached the gate.
'I did a couple of times,' Sharpe said, not bothering to explain that the beasts had been unsaddled draught horses that had ambled docilely around the inn yard.
'Get on that one!' Gudin said, pointing to a small excited mare that was being held by an Indian infantryman along with Gudin's own horse. 'She belongs to Captain Romet, so for God's sake take care,' Gudin shouted as he swung himself up into the saddle. Captain Romet was one of Gudin's two deputies, but as both the junior French officers spent most of their lives in the city's most expensive brothel, Sharpe had yet to meet either of them. He climbed gingerly onto the mare's back, then kicked back his heels and clung desperately to the horse's mane as she followed Gudin's gelding into the gateway. 'The British are attacking a wood just north of Sultanpetah,' the Colonel explained as he pushed his horse through the crowded archway.
Sharpe could hear the distant fight. Muskets snapped and shells exploded dully to flicker red bursts of light far to the city's west. It was very nearly night in the city. The first house lamps had long been lit and flaming torches smoked in the archway of the Mysore Gate through which a stream of men was hurrying. Some were infantry, others carried rockets. Gudin bellowed at them for passage, used his gelding to force the slower rocket-men aside, and then, once through the gate, he sawed on his reins to turn westwards.
Sharpe followed, more intent on staying on the mare than watching the excitement that seethed around him. A narrow bridge led across the South Cauvery just outside the gate and Gudin shouted at its guards to clear the roadway. Rocket-men shrank back against the balustrades as Sharpe and Gudin hurried between the bridge's small forts and then over the shallow, shrunken river. Once on the far bank they galloped hard across a stretch of muddy grass, then splashed through another small branch of the river. Sharpe clung to the mare's neck as she lurched up out of the stream. Rockets were flaring in the sky ahead which still glowed from the last rays of the invisible sun.
'Your old friends are trying to clear the tope,' Gudin explained, pointing at the thick wood that showed black against the eastern skyline. He had slowed down, for now they were crossing more uneven ground and the Colonel did not want to break a horse's leg by being too reckless. 'I want you to confuse them.'
'Me, sir?' Sharpe slipped half out of the saddle, gripped the pommel desperately and somehow dragged himself upright. He could hear the snapping crack of muskets, and see the small muzzle flames flickering all across the land ahead. It seemed to him like a major attack, especially when a British field gun fired in the distance and its muzzle flame lit the twilight like sheet lightning.
'Shout orders at them, Sharpe,' Gudin said, when the report of the gun had rolled past them. 'Confuse them!'
'Lawford would have done better, sir,' Sharpe said. 'He's got a voice like an officer.'
'Then you'll have to sound like a sergeant,' Gudin said, 'and if you do it right, Sharpe, I'll make you up to corporal.'
'Thank you, sir.'
Gudin had slowed his horse to a walk as they neared the wood. It was too dark to trot now and there was a danger they could lose their way. To Sharpe's north, where the field gun had fired, the musketry was regular, suggesting that the British soldiers or sepoys were steadily taking their objectives, but in the wood in front, there seemed to be nothing but confusion. Muskets crackled irregularly, rockets streaked fire amongst the branches and smoke boiled from small brush fires. Sharpe could hear men shouting, e
ither in fear or triumph. 'I wouldn't mind a gun, sir,' he said to Gudin.
'You don't need one. We're not here to fight, just to mix them up. That's why I came back to get you. Dismount here.' The Colonel tied both horses' reins to an abandoned handcart that must have been used to bring more rockets forward. The two men were a hundred yards short of the tope now and Sharpe could hear officers shouting orders. It was hard to tell who was giving the orders, for the Tippoo's army used English words of command, but as Sharpe and Gudin hurried closer to the fight Sharpe could tell that it was Indian voices that shouted the commands to fire, to advance and to kill. Whatever British or Indian troops were trying to capture the wood were evidently in trouble, and it had been Gudin's inspiration to snatch the first Englishman he could find in the barracks and use him to sow even more confusion among the attackers. Gudin drew a pistol. 'Sergeant Rothiere!' he called.
'Mon Colonel!' The big Sergeant, who had first used Captain Romet's horse to reach the fight, materialized out of the gloom. He gave Sharpe a suspicious glowering look, then cocked his musket.
'Let's enjoy ourselves,' Gudin said in English.
'Aye, sir,' Sharpe said and wondered what the hell he should do now. In the dark, he reckoned, there should be no trouble in slipping away from the Colonel and Rothiere and joining the beleaguered attackers, but how would that leave Lieutenant Lawford? The trick of it, Sharpe decided, was not to make it look as though he was deliberately trying to get back to the British, but rather to make it seem as though he was captured accidentally. That still might make things very awkward for Lawford, but Sharpe knew that his overriding duty was to carry McCandless's warning to General Harris, just as he knew that he might never get another opportunity as good as this one that Gudin had dropped so unexpectedly into his lap.
Gudin paused at the edge of the tope. Rocket-men were enthusiastically blasting their weapons through the trees where the missiles were being deflected off branches to tumble erratically through the leaves. Muskets sounded deep inside the wood. Wounded men lay at the trees' edge, and somewhere not far off a dying man alternately screamed and panted. 'So far,' Gudin said, 'we seem to be beating them. Let's go forward.'
Sharpe followed the two Frenchmen. Off to his right there was a sudden blast of gunfire and the sound of bayonets clashing, and Gudin swerved towards the sound, but the fight was over before they even reached it. The Tippoo's men had encountered a small group of redcoats and had killed one and chased the others deeper into the wood. Gudin saw the redcoat's body in the fast-dying flame light of an exhausted rocket and knelt beside the man. The Colonel took out a tinderbox, struck a spark, blew the charred linen in the box alight, then held the tiny flame down beside the redcoat's chest. The man was not quite dead, but he was unconscious, blood was bubbling slow in his throat and his eyes were closed. 'Recognize the uniform?' Gudin asked Sharpe. The tinderbox's flickering glow revealed that the redcoat's turnbacks and facings were scarlet piped with white.
'Bloody hell,' Sharpe said. 'Excuse me, sir,' he added, then he gently moved Gudin's hand up to the dying man's face. Blood had poured out of the man's mouth to soak his powdered hair, but Sharpe recognized him all the same. It was Jed Mallinson who usually paraded in the rearmost rank of Sharpe's file. 'I know the uniform and the man, sir,' Sharpe told Gudin. 'It's the 33rd, my old battalion. West Riding, Yorkshire.'
'Good.' Gudin snapped the tinderbox shut, extinguishing the small flame. 'And you don't mind confusing them?'
'That's why I'm here, sir,' Sharpe said with a suitable bloodthirstiness.
'I think the British army lost a good man in you, Sharpe,' Gudin said, standing and guiding Sharpe deeper into the trees. 'If you don't want to stay in India you might think of coming home with me.'
'To France, sir?'
Gudin smiled at Sharpe's surprised tone. 'It isn't the devil's country, Sharpe; indeed I suspect it's the most blessed place on God's earth, and in the French army a good man can be very easily raised to officer rank.'
'Me, sir? An officer?' Sharpe laughed. 'Like making a mule into a racehorse.'
'You underestimate yourself.' Gudin paused. There were feet trampling to the right, and a sudden blast of musketry off to the left. The musketry attracted an excited rush of the Tippoo's infantry who blundered through the trees. Sergeant Rothiere bellowed at them in a mix of French and Kanarese, and his sudden authority calmed the men who gathered around Colonel Gudin. Gudin smiled wolfishly. 'Let's see if we can mislead some of your old comrades, Sharpe. Shout at them to come this way.'
'Forward!' Sharpe obediently bellowed into the dark trees. 'Forward!' He paused, listening for an answer. '33rd! To me! To me!'
No one responded. 'Try a name,' Gudin suggested.
Sharpe invented an officer's name. 'Captain Fellows! This way!' He called it a dozen times, but there was no response. 'Hakeswill!' he finally shouted. 'Sergeant Hakeswill!'
Then, from maybe thirty paces away, the hated voice called back, 'Who's that?' The Sergeant sounded suspicious.
'Come here, man!' Sharpe snapped.
Hakeswill ignored the order, but the fact that a man had replied at all cheered Gudin who had quietly formed the stray unit of the Tippoo's infantry into a line that waited to kill whoever came in response to Sharpe's hailing. Chaos reigned ahead. Rockets banged into branches, musket flames flared in the drifting smoke, while bullets thumped into trees or crackled through the thick leaves. A bloodthirsty cheer sounded a long way off, but whether it was Indian or British troops who cheered, Sharpe could not tell.
One thing was plain to Sharpe. The 33rd was in trouble. Poor Jed Mallinson should never have been abandoned to die, and that sad death, along with the scattered sounds of firing, suggested that the Tippoo's men had succeeded in splitting the attacking force and was now picking it off piece by piece. It was now or never, Sharpe reckoned. He had to get away from Gudin and somehow rejoin his battalion. 'I need to get closer, sir,' he told the Colonel and, without waiting for Gudin's consent, he ran deeper into the trees. 'Sergeant Hakeswill!' he shouted as he ran. 'To me, now! Now! Come on, you miserable bastard! Move your bloody self! Come on!' He could hear Gudin following him, so Sharpe fell silent and, suddenly deep in shadow, dodged off to his right.
'Sharpe!' Gudin hissed, but Sharpe was well away from the Colonel now and he reckoned he had done it without looking like a deserter.
'Sergeant Hakeswill!' Sharpe bellowed, then ran on again. There was a danger that by shouting he would keep Gudin on his heels, but it was a greater danger to let the Frenchman think that he was deliberately trying to rejoin the British, for then Lawford might suffer, and so Sharpe ran the risk as he worked his way still farther into the dense trees. 'Hakeswill! To me! To me!' He pushed through thick foliage, tripped over a bush, picked himself up and ran on into a clearing. 'Hakeswill!' he shouted.
A rocket crashed into a branch high above Sharpe and slashed straight down into the clearing ahead of him. Once on the ground the missile circled furiously like a mad dog chasing its own tail and the brilliant light of the exhaust lit the trees all around. Sharpe flinched away from the lash of the fiery tail and almost ran straight into Sergeant Hakeswill who had suddenly appeared from the bushes to his left.
'Sharpie!' Hakeswill shouted. 'You bastard!' He slashed wildly at Sharpe with his bloody halberd. Morris, hearing Hakeswill's name shouted, had ordered the Sergeant to find whoever was summoning him and Hakeswill had unwillingly obeyed. Now, suddenly, Hakeswill was alone with Sharpe and the Sergeant slammed the spear forward again. 'Traitorous little bastard!' Hakeswill said.
'For Christ's sake, drop it!' Sharpe shouted, retreating before the quick lunges of the spear head.
'Running off to the enemy, Sharpie?' Hakeswill said. 'I should take you in, shouldn't I? It'll be another court martial and a firing party this time. But I won't risk that. I'm going to put your gizzards on a skewer, Sharpie, and send you back to your maker. And wearing a frock, too?' The Sergeant stabbed again, and Sharpe leapt back once
more, but then the dying rocket fizzed across the clearing and its long bamboo stick tangled Sharpe's legs. He fell backwards and Hakeswill gave a shout of triumph as he sprang towards him with the halberd poised ready to lunge downwards.
Sharpe felt the rocket's iron tube under his right hand, gripped it and threw it up at Hakeswill's face. The rocket's gunpowder fuel was almost gone, but there was just enough left to spurt one last sudden flame that licked across Hakeswill's blue-eyed face. The Sergeant screamed, dropped the halberd and clapped his hands to his eyes. To his surprise he discovered he could still see and that his face was not badly burned, but in his panic he had stumbled past Sharpe and so now he turned back and, as he did so, he dragged a pistol out of his belt.
Just then a squad of redcoats burst into the clearing. The burning carcass of the rocket showed that they were men from the 33rd's Grenadier Company who were as lost as every other redcoat on this night of chaos. One of the grenadiers saw Sharpe who, in his tiger-striped tunic, was scrambling to his feet. The grenadier raised his gun. 'Leave the bastard!' Hakeswill screamed. 'He's mine!'
Then a volley of musketry flamed from the trees and half of the grenadiers spun round or were hurled backwards. Blood hissed in the fiery remnants of the rocket as a company of tiger-striped troops burst out of the trees. Colonel Gudin and Sergeant Rothiere led them. Hakeswill turned to run at the sight of the enemy, but one of the Tippoo's men lunged forward with a bayonet-tipped musket and succeeded in driving the Sergeant down to the ground where he first twisted frantically aside, then screamed for mercy. Gudin ran past the fallen Hakeswill. 'Well done, Sharpe,' Gudin called. 'Well done! Stop that! Stop that!' These last orders were to the Tippoo's men who had enthusiastically begun to bayonet the surviving grenadiers. 'We take prisoners!' Gudin roared. 'Prisoners!' Rothiere knocked a bayonet aside to stop the soldier from slaughtering Hakeswill.