Sharpe's Fortress Part 75

"Close up!"

Morris reluctantly quickened. The sepoys carrying the ladders were running down the slight slope which led to the narrow s.p.a.ce beside the tank where the enemy's guns were aimed. All along Gawilghur's walls the smoke jetted, the flames spat and the rockets blasted out in gouts of smoke and streams of sparks. Even arrows were being fired. One clattered on a rock near Sharpe, then spun into the gra.s.s.

The Scots were climbing the inner breach now, and a stream of men was vanis.h.i.+ng over the rocky summit of the outer breach. No mines had awaited the attackers, and no cannon had been placed athwart the breach to blast them as they flooded through the wall. Sepoys scrambled up the stones.

"Hurry!" the aides shouted.

"Hurry!"

Sharpe ran down the slope towards the tank. His canteen and haversack thumped on his waist, and sweat poured down his face.

"Slow down!"

Morris shouted at him, but Sharpe ignored the call. The company was breaking apart as the more eager of the men hurried to catch up with Sharpe and the others dallied with Morris.

"Slow down, d.a.m.n you!"

Morris called to Sharpe again.

"Keep going!" Kenny's aides shouted. Two of them had been posted beside the tank and they gestured the men on. The round shot of the breaching batteries hammered above their heads making a noise like great barrels rolling across floorboards, then cracked into the smoke rimmed upper wall. A green and red flag waved there. Sharpe saw an Arab aim a musket, then smoke obscured the sight. A small cannonball struck a sepoy, throwing him back and smearing the stony road with blood and guts. Sharpe leaped the sprawling body and saw he had reached the reservoir. The water was low and sc.u.mmed green. Two Scots and a sepoy lay on the sun-baked mud, their blood seeping into the cracks that crazed the bank. A musket ball hammered into the mud, then a small round shot lashed into the rear of Morris's company and bowled over two men.

"Leave them!" an aide shouted.

"Just leave them!" A rocket smashed close by Sharpe's head, enveloping him in smoke and sparks. A wounded man crawled back beside the road, trailing a shattered leg.

Another, blood oozing from his belly, collapsed on the mud and lapped at the filthy water.

Sharpe half choked on the thick smoke as he stumbled up the rising ground. Big black round shot lay here, left from the cannonade that had made the first breach. Two redcoat bodies had been heaved aside, three others twitched and called for help, but Kenny had posted another aide here to keep the troops moving. Dust spurted where musket b.a.l.l.s lashed into the ground, then Sharpe was on the breach itself, half lost his balance as he climbed the ramp, and then was pushed from behind. Men jostled up the stones, clambered up, hauled themselves up with one hand while the other gripped their musket. Sharpe put his hand on a smear of blood. The dusty rubble was almost too hot to touch, and the ramp was much longer than Sharpe had antic.i.p.ated. Men shouted hoa.r.s.ely as they climbed, and still the bullets thudded down. An arrow struck and quivered in a musket stock. A rocket crashed into the flood of men, parting it momentarily as the carca.s.s flamed madly where it had lodged between a boulder and a cannonball. Someone unceremoniously dumped a dead Scotsman on top of the hissing rocket and the press of men clambered on up over the corpse.

Once at the summit the attackers turned to their left and ran down the inside of the breach to the dry gra.s.s that separated the two walls. A fight was going on in the left-hand breach, and men were bunching behind it, but Sharpe could see the Scots were gradually inching up the slope. By G.o.d, he thought, but they were almost in! The British guns had ceased firing for fear of hitting their own men.

Sharpe turned right, going to the second inner breach that Morris's company was supposed to seal off. High above him, from the fire step of the inner wall, defenders leaned over to fire down into the s.p.a.ce between the ramparts. Sharpe seemed to be running through a hail of bullets that magically did not touch him. Smoke wreathed about him, then he saw the broken stones of the breach in front and he leaped onto them and clambered upwards.

"I'm with you, d.i.c.k!" Tom Garrard shouted just behind, then a man appeared in the smoke above Sharpe and heaved down a baulk of wood.

The timber struck Sharpe on the chest, throwing him back onto Garrard who clutched at him as the two men fell on the stones. Sharpe swore as a fusillade of musket fire came down from the breach summit. A handful of men was with him, maybe six or seven, but none seemed to be hit. They crouched behind him, waiting for orders.

"No farther!"

Morris shouted.

"No farther!"

"b.u.g.g.e.r him," Sharpe said, and he picked up his musket. Just then the British guns, seeing that the right-hand breach was still occupied by the Mahrattas, opened fire again and the b.a.l.l.s hammered into the stones just a few feet over Sharpe's head. One defender was caught smack in the belly by an eighteen-pounder shot and it seemed to Sharpe that the man simply disintegrated in a red shower. Sharpe ducked as the blood poured down the stones, trickling past him and Garrard in small torrents.

"Jesus," Sharpe said. Another round shot slammed into the breach, the sound of the ball's strike as loud as thunder. Shards of stone whipped past Sharpe, and he seemed to be breathing nothing but hot dust.

"No farther!" Morris said.

"Here! To me! Rally! Rally!" He was crouched under the inner wall, safe from the defenders on the breach, though high above him, on the undamaged fire step Arab soldiers still leaned out to fire straight down.

"Sharpe! Come here!" Morris ordered.

"Come on!" Sharpe shouted. b.u.g.g.e.r Morris, and b.u.g.g.e.r all the other officers who said you could put a racing saddle on a cart horse but the beast would not go quick.

"Come on!" he shouted again as he clambered up the stones, and suddenly there were more men to his right, but they were Scots, and he saw that the leading men of the second a.s.sault group had reached the fortress. A red-haired lieutenant led them, a claymore in his hand.

The Lieutenant was climbing the centre of the breach, while Sharpe was trying to clamber up the steeper flank. The Highlanders went past

Sharpe, screaming at the enemy, and the sight of their red coats made the British gunners cease fire, and immediately the breach summit filled with robed men who carried curved swords with blades as thick as cleavers. Swords clashed, muskets crashed, and the red-haired Lieutenant shook like a gaffed eel as a scimitar sliced into his belly. He turned and fell towards Sharpe, dropping his claymore. A line of defenders was now firing down the breach, while a huge Arab, who looked seven feet tall to Sharpe, stood in the centre with a reddened scimitar and dared any man to challenge him. Two did, and both he threw back in a shower of blood.

"Light Company!" Sharpe shouted.

"Give those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds fire! Fire!"

Some muskets banged behind him and the row of defenders seemed to stagger back, but they closed up again, rallied by the huge man with the bloodstained scimitar. Sharpe had his left hand on the broken shoulder of the wall and he used it to haul himself up, then twisted aside as the closest Arabs turned and fired at him. The b.a.l.l.s whiplashed past as a naming lump of wadding struck Sharpe on the cheek. He let go of the wall and fell backwards as a grinning man tried to stab him with a bayonet. Dear G.o.d, but the breach was steep! His cheek was burnt and his new coat scorched. The Scots tried again, surging up the centre of the breach to be met by a line of Arab blades. More Arabs came from inside the fortress and poured a volley of musket fire down the face of the ramp. Sharpe aimed his musket at the tall Arab and pulled the trigger. The gun hammered into his shoulder, but when the smoke cleared the big man was still standing and still fighting. The Arabs were winning here, they were pressing down the face of the breach and chanting a blood-curdling war cry as they killed. A man rammed a bayonet at Sharpe, he parried it with his own, but then an enemy grasped Sharpe's musket by the muzzle and tugged it upwards. Sharpe cursed, but held on, then saw a scimitar slas.h.i.+ng towards him and so he let go of the musket and fell back again.

"b.a.s.t.a.r.ds," he swore, then saw the dead Scottish Lieutenant's claymore lying on the stones. He picked it up and swept it at the ankles of the Arabs above him, and the blade bit home and threw one man down, and the Scots were charging up the breach again, climbing over their own dead and screaming a raw shout of hate that was matched by the Arabs' cries of victory.

Sharpe climbed again. He balanced on the steep stones and hacked with the claymore, driving the enemy back. He scrambled up two more feet, wreathed in bitter smoke, and reached the spot where he could grip the wall at the edge of the breach. All he could do now was hold onto the stone with his left hand and thrust and swing with the sword. He drove men back, but then the big Arab saw him and came across the breach, bellowing at his comrades to leave the redcoat's death to his scimitar. He raised the sword high over his head, like an executioner taking aim, and Sharpe was off balance.

"Push me, Tom!" he shouted, and Garrard put a hand on Sharpe's a.r.s.e and shoved him hard upwards just as the scimitar started downwards, but Sharpe had let go of the wall and reached out to hook his left hand behind the tall man's ankle. He tugged hard and the man shouted in alarm as his feet slid out from under him and as he b.u.mped down the breach's flank.

"Now kill him!" Sharpe bellowed and a half-dozen redcoats attacked the fallen man with bayonets as Sharpe hacked at the Arabs coming to the big man's rescue.

His claymore clashed with scimitars, the blades ringing like blacksmith's hammers on anvils. The big man was twisting and twitching as the bayonets stabbed again and again through his robes. The Scots were back, thrusting and snarling up the centre, and Sharpe forced himself up another step. Garrard was beside him now, and the two were only a step from the summit of the breach.

"b.a.s.t.a.r.ds! b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!" Sharpe was panting as he hacked and lunged, but the Arabs' robes seemed to soak up the blows, then suddenly, almost miraculously, they backed away from him.

A musket fired from inside the fortress and one of the Arabs crumpled down onto the breach's inner ramp, and Sharpe realized that the men who had fought their way through the left-hand breach must have turned and come to attack this breach from the inside.

"Come on!" he roared, and he was on the summit at last and there were Scots and Light Company men all about him as they spilt down into the Outer Fortress where a company of the Scotch Brigade waited to welcome them. The defenders were fleeing to the southern gate which would lead them to the refuge of the Inner Fort.

"Jesus," Tom Garrard said, leaning over to catch his breath.

"Are you hurt?" Sharpe asked.

Garrard shook his head.

"Jesus," he said again. Some enemy gunners, who had stayed with their weapons till the last minute, jumped down from the fire step dodged past the tired redcoats scattered inside the wall and fled southwards. Most of the Scots and sepoys were too 25' breathless to pursue them and contented themselves with some musket shots. A dog barked madly until a sepoy kicked the beast into silence.

Sharpe stopped. It seemed suddenly quiet, for the big guns were silent at last and the only muskets firing were from the Mahrattas defending the gatehouse. A few small cannon were firing to the south, but Sharpe could not see them, nor guess what their target was. The highest part of the fort lay to his right, and there was nothing on the low summit but dry gra.s.sland and a few th.o.r.n.y trees. No defenders gathered there. To his left he could see Kenny's men a.s.saulting the gatehouse. They were storming the steps to the parapet where a handful of Arabs were making a stand, though they stood no chance, for over a hundred redcoats now gathered under the wall and were firing up at the fire step The defenders' robes turned red. They were trapped now between the musket b.a.l.l.s and the bayonets of the men climbing the steps, and though some tried to surrender, they were all killed. The other Mahrattas had fled, gone over the high ground in the centre of the Outer Fort to the ravine and to the larger fort beyond.

A vat stood in an embrasure of the wall and Sharpe heaved himself up and found, as he had hoped, that the barrel contained water for the abandoned guns. They were very small cannon, mostly mounted on iron tripods, but they had inflicted a hard punishment on the men crammed along the fort's approach. The dead and wounded had been pushed aside to make way for the stream of men approaching the breaches. Major Stokes was among them, Ahmed at his side, and Sharpe waved to them, though they did not see him. He dipped his hands in the water, slung it over his face and hair, then stooped and drank. It was filthy stuff, stagnant and bitter with powder debris, but he was desperately thirsty.

A cheer sounded as Colonel Kenny's men hoisted the British flag above the captured Delhi Gate. Manu Bappoo's flag was being folded by an aide, to be carried back to Britain. A squad of Scotsmen unbarred the big inner gate, then the outer one, to let even more redcoats into the fort that had fallen so quickly. Exhausted men slumped in the wall's shade, but Kenny's officers were shouting at them to find their units, to load their muskets and move on south.

"I think our orders are to guard the breach," Morris suggested as Sharpe jumped down from the fire step