Sharpe's Fortress Part 78

The parched prisoners threw themselves at the green-sc.u.mmed water and some, seeing that the sepoy guards were few in number, slipped away northwards. They went without weapons, master less fugitives who posed no threat to the British camp, which was guarded by a half battalion of Madra.s.si sepoys.

The northern face of the ravine, which looked towards the unconquered Inner Fort, was now crowded with some three thousand redcoats, most of whom did nothing but sit in whatever small shade they could find and grumble that the pucka lees had not fetched water.

Once in a while a man would fire a musket across the ravine, but the b.a.l.l.s were wild at that long range, and the enemy fire, which had been heavy during the ma.s.sacre on the western road, gradually eased off as both sides waited for the real struggle to begin.

Sharpe was halfway down the ravine, seated beneath a stunted tree on which the remnants of some red blossom hung dry and faded. A tribe of black-faced, silver-furred monkeys had fled the irruption of men into the rocky gorge, and those beasts now gathered behind Sharpe where they gibbered and screamed. Tom Garrard and a dozen men of the 33rd's Light Company had gathered around Sharpe, while the rest of the company was lower down the ravine among some rocks.

"What happens now?" Garrard asked.

"Some poor b.a.s.t.a.r.ds have to get through that gate," Sharpe said.

"Not you?"

"Kenny will call us when he needs us," Sharpe said, nodding towards the lean Colonel who had at last organized an a.s.sault party at the bottom of the track which slanted up towards the gate.

"And he b.l.o.o.d.y will, Tom. It ain't going to be easy getting through that gate." He touched the scorch mark on his cheek.

"That b.l.o.o.d.y hurts!"

Tut some b.u.t.ter on it," Garrard said.

"And where do I get bleeding b.u.t.ter here?" Sharpe asked. He shaded his eyes and peered at the complex ramparts above the big gate, trying to spot either Dodd or Hakeswill, but although he could see the white jackets of the Cobras, he could not see a white man on the ramparts.

"It's going to be a long fight, Tom," he said.

The British gunners had succeeded in bringing an enemy five pounder cannon to the edge of the ravine. The sight of the gun provoked a flurry of fire from the Inner Fort, wreathing its gatehouse in smoke as the round shot screamed across the ravine to plunge all around the threatening gun. Somehow it survived. The gunners rammed it, aimed it, then fired a shot that bounced just beneath the gate, ricocheted up into the woodwork, but fell back.

The defenders kept firing, but their smoke obscured their aim and the small captured cannon had been positioned behind a large low rock that served as a makes.h.i.+ft breastwork. The gunners elevated the barrel a trifle and their next shot struck plumb on the gates, breaking a timber.

Each successive shot splintered more wood and was greeted by an ironic cheer from the redcoats who watched from across the ravine. The gate was being demolished board by board, and at last a round shot cracked into its locking bar and the half-shattered timbers sagged on their hinges.

Colonel Kenny was gathering his a.s.sault troops at the foot of the ravine. They were the same men who had gone first into the breaches of the Outer Fort, and their faces were stained with powder burns, with dust and sweat. They watched the destruction of the outer gate of the Inner Fort and they knew they must climb the path into the enemy's fire as soon as the gun had done its work. Kenny summoned an aide.

"You know Plummer?" he asked the man.

"Gunner Major, sir?"

"Find him," Kenny said, 'or any gunner officer. Tell them we might need a light piece up in the gateway." He pointed with a reddened sword at the Inner Fort's gatehouse.

"The pa.s.sage ain't straight," he explained to the aide.

"Get through the gate and we turn hard left. If our axe men can't deal with the other gates we'll need a gun to blow them in."

The aide climbed back up to the Outer Fort, looking for a gunner.

Kenny talked to his men, explaining that once they were through the shattered gate they would find themselves faced by another and that the infantry were to fire up at the flanking fire steps to protect the axe men who would try to hack their way through the successive obstacles.

"If we put up enough fire," Kenny said, 'the enemy'll take shelter. It won't take long." He looked at his axe men all of them huge sappers, all carrying vast-bladed axes that had been sharpened to wicked edges.

Kenny turned and watched the effect of the five-pounder shots. The gate's locking bar had been struck plumb, but the gate still held. A badly aimed shot cracked into the stone beside the gate, starting up dust, then a correction to the gun sent a ball hammering into the bar again and the thick timber broke and the remnants of the gates fell inwards.

"Forward!"

Kenny shouted.

"Forward!"

Four hundred redcoats followed the Colonel up the narrow track that led to the Inner Fort. They could not run to the a.s.sault, for the hill was too steep; they could only trudge into the fury of Dodd's fusillade.

Cannon, rockets and muskets blasted down the hill to tear gaps in Kenny's ranks.

"Give them fire!" an officer on the ravine's northern side shouted at the watching redcoats, and the men loaded their muskets and fired at the smoke-masked gatehouse. If nothing else, the wild fire might keep the defenders' heads down. Another cannon had been fetched from the Outer Fort, and now added its small round shots to the fury that beat audibly on the gatehouse ramparts. Those ramparts were thick with the powder smoke gouted by the defenders' cannon and muskets and it was that smoke which protected Kenny's men as they hurried up the last few yards to the broken gate.

"Protect the sappers!" Kenny shouted and then, his sword in his hand, he clambered over the broken timbers and led his attackers into the entrance pa.s.sage.

Facing Kenny was a stone wall. He had expected it, but even so he was astonished by the narrowness of the pa.s.sage that turned sharply to his left and then climbed steeply to the second unbroken gate.

"There it is!" he shouted, and led a surge of men up the cobbled road towards the iron-studded timbers.

And h.e.l.l was loosed.

The fire steps above the gateway pa.s.sage were protected by the outer wall's high rampart, and Dodd's men, though they could hear the musket b.a.l.l.s beating against the stones, were safe from the wild fire that lashed across the deep ravine. But the redcoats beneath them, the men following Colonel Kenny into the pa.s.sage, had no protection. Musket fire, stones and rockets slashed into a narrow s.p.a.ce just twenty-five paces long and eight wide. The leading axe men were among the first to die, beaten down by bullets. Their blood splashed high on the walls. Colonel Kenny somehow survived the opening salvo, then he was struck on the shoulder by a lump of stone and driven to the ground. A rocket slashed past his face, scorching his cheek, but he picked himself up and, sword in numbed hand, shouted at his men to keep going. No one could hear him. The narrow s.p.a.ce was filled with noise, choking with smoke in which men died and rockets flared. A musket ball struck Kenny in the hip and he twisted, half fell, but forced himself to stand and, with blood pouring down his white breeches, limped on. Then another musket ball scored down his back and threw him forward. He crawled on bloodslicked stones, sword still in his hand, and shuddered as a third ball hit him in the back. He still managed to reach the second gate and reared up to strike it with his sword, and then a last musket ball split his skull and left him dead at the head of his men. More bullets plucked at his corpse.

Kenny's surviving men tried to brave the fire. They tried to climb the slope to the second gate, but the murderous fire did not cease, and the dead made a barrier to the living. Some men attempted to fire up at their tormentors on the fire step but the sun was high now and they aimed into a blinding glare, and soon the redcoats began to back down the pa.s.sage. The weltering fire from above did not let up. It flayed the Scotsmen, ricocheted between the walls, struck dead and dying and living, while the rockets, lit and tossed down, seared like great comets between the stone walls and filled the s.p.a.ce with a sickening smoke.

The dead were burned by rocket flames which exploded their cartridge boxes to pulse gouts of blood against the black walls, but the smoke hid the survivors who, under its cover, stumbled back to the hill outside the fortress. They left a stone-walled pa.s.sage filled with the dying and the dead, trickling with blood, foul with smoke and echoing with the moans of the wounded.

"Cease fire!" Colonel Dodd shouted.

"Cease fire!"

The smoke cleared slowly and Dodd stared down at a pit of carnage in which a few bodies twitched.

"They'll come again soon," Dodd warned his Cobras.

"Fetch more stones, make sure your muskets are loaded. More rockets!" He patted his men on the shoulders, congratulating them. They grinned at him, pleased with their work. It was like killing rats in a barrel. Not one Cobra had been hit, the first enemy a.s.sault had failed and the others, Dodd was certain, would end in just the same way. The Lord of Gawilghur was winning his first victory.

Major Stokes had found Sharpe shortly before Kenny made his a.s.sault, and the two men had been joined first by Syud Sevajee and his followers, then by the dozen cavalrymen who accompanied Eli Lockhart.

All of them, Stokes, Sevajee and Lockhart, had entered the Outer Fort after the fight for the breaches was finished, and now they stood watching the failure of Kenny's a.s.sault. The survivors of the attack were crouching just yards from the broken entrance that boiled with smoke, and Sharpe knew they were summoning the courage to charge again.

"Poor b.a.s.t.a.r.ds," he said.

"No choice in the matter," Stokes said bleakly.

"No other way in."

"That ain't a way in, sir," Sharpe said dourly, 'that's a fast road to a shallow grave."