“Yes, sir.”
“So stay close to me, and I'm staying close to Colonel Wallace's party, so if you lose
me, look for him. That's Wallace there, see him?”
McCandless indicated a tall, bare-headed officer riding at the front of the
74th.
“I see him, sir,” Sharpe said. He was mounted on McCandless's spare horse and the extra
height allowed him to see over the heads of the King's 74th who marched in front of him.
Beyond the Highlanders the city wall looked dark red in the early sun, and on its summit he
could see the occasional glint of a musket showing between the dome-shaped merlons that
topped the wall. Big round bastions stood every hundred yards and those bastions had black
embrasures which Sharpe assumed hid the defenders' cannon. The brightly coloured
statues of a temple's tower showed above the rampart while a slew of flags drooped over the
gate. No one fired yet. The British were within cannon range, but the defenders were
keeping their guns quiet.
Most of the British force now checked a half-mile from the walls while the three assault
parties organized themselves. Two of the attacking groups would escalade the wall, one
to the left of the gate and the other to the right, and both would be led by Scottish
soldiers with sepoys in support. The King's 778th, the kilted regiment, would attack the
wall to the left while their fellow Highlanders of the 74th would assault to the right. The
third attack was in the centre and would be led by the 74th's Colonel, William Wallace, who
was also commander of one of the two infantry brigades and evidently an old friend of
McCandless for, seeing his fellow Scot, Wallace rode back through his regiment's ranks to
greet him with a warm familiarity. Wallace would be leading men of the 74th in an assault
against the gate itself and his plan was to run a six-pounder cannon hard up against the big
timber gates then fire the gun to blast the entrance open.
“None of our gunners have ever done it before,” Wallace told McCandless, 'and they've
insisted on putting a round shot down the gun, but I swear my mother told me you should
never load shot to open gates. A double powder charge, she instructed me, and nothing
else."
“Your mother told you that, Wallace?” McCandless asked.
“Her father was an artilleryman, you see, and he brought her up properly. But I can't
persuade our gunners to leave out the ball. Stubborn fellows, they are. English to a man,
of course. Can't teach them anything.” Wallace offered McCandless his canteen.
“It's cold tea, McCandless, nothing that will send your soul to perdition.”
McCandless took a swig of the tea, then introduced Sharpe.
“He was the fellow who blew the Tippoo's mine in Seringapatam,” he told Wallace.
“I heard about you, Sharpe!” Wallace said.
“A damn fine day's work, Sergeant, well done.” And the Scotsman leaned across to give
Sharpe his hand. He was a middle-aged man, balding, with a pleasant face and a quick
smile.
“I can tempt you to some cold tea, Sharpe?”
“I've got water, sir, thank you,” Sharpe said, patting his canteen which was filled with
rum, a gift from Daniel Hetcher, the General's orderly.
“You'll forgive me if I'm about my business,” Wallace said to McCandless, retrieving
his canteen.
“I'll see you inside the city, McCandless. Joy of the day to you both.” Wallace spurred
back to the head of his column.
“A very good man,” McCandless said warmly, 'a very good man indeed."
Sevajee and his dozen men cantered up to join McCandless. They all wore red jackets,
for they planned to ride into the city with McCandless and none wanted to be mistaken for
the enemy, yet somehow the unbuttoned jackets, which had been borrowed from a sepoy
battalion, made them look more piratical than ever. They all carried naked tulwars,
curved sabres that they had honed to a razor's edge at dawn.
Sevajee reckoned there would be no time for aiming fire locks once they were inside
Ahmednuggur. Ride in, charge whoever still put up a fight and cut down hard.
The two escalade parties started forward. Each had a pair of ladders, and each party
was led by those men who had volunteered to be first up the rungs. The sun was fully above
the horizon now and Sharpe could see the wall more plainly. He reckoned it was twenty foot
high, give or take a few inches, and the glint of guns in every embrasure and loophole
showed that it would be heavily defended.
“Ever seen an escalade, Sharpe?” McCandless asked.
“No, sir.”
“Risky business. Frail things, ladders. Nasty being first up.”
“Very nasty, sir.”
“And if it fails it gives the enemy confidence.”
“So why do it, sir?”
“Because if it succeeds, Sharpe, it lowers the enemy's spirits. It will make us seem
invincible. Veni, vidi, vici.”
“I don't speak any Indian, sir, not proper.”
“Latin, Sharpe, Latin. I came, I saw, I conquered. How's your reading these days?”
“It's good, sir, very good,” Sharpe answered enthusiastically, though in truth he had
not read very much in the last four years other than lists of stores and duty rosters and
Major Stokes's repair orders. But it had been Colonel McCandless and his nephew,
Lieutenant Lawford, who had first taught Sharpe to read when they shared a cell in the
Tippoo Sultan's prison. That was four years ago now.
“I shall give you a Bible, Sharpe,” McCandless said, watching the escalade parties
march steadily forward.
“It's the one book worth reading.”
“I'd like that, sir,” Sharpe said straight-faced, then saw that the picquets of the day
were running ahead to make a skirmish line that would pepper the wall with musket fire.
Still no one fired from the city wall, though by now both the picquets and the two ladder
parties were well inside musket range.
“If you don't mind me asking, sir,” Sharpe said to McCandless, 'what's to stop that
bugger sorry, sir what's to stop Mister Dodd from escaping out the other side of the
city, sir?"
“They are, Sharpe,” McCandless said, indicating the cavalry that now galloped off on
both sides of the city. The British igth Dragoons rode in a tight squadron, but the other
horsemen were Mahratta allies or else silladars from Hyderabad or Mysore, and they rode
in a loose swarm.
“Their job is to harass anyone leaving the city,” McCandless went on.
“Not the civilians, of course, but any troops.”
“But Dodd's got a whole regiment, sir.”
McCandless dismissed the problem.
“I doubt that two whole regiments will serve him. In a minute or two there'll be sheer
panic inside Ahmednuggur, and how's Dodd to get away? He'll have to fight his way through a
crowd of terrified civilians. No, we'll find him inside the place if he's still there.”
“He is,” Sevajee put in. He was staring at the wall through a small telescope.
“I can see the uniforms of his men on the fire step White jackets.” He pointed
westwards, beyond the stretch of wall that would be attacked by the 778th.
The picquets suddenly opened fire. They were scattered along the southern edge of the
city, and their musketry was sporadic and, to Sharpe, futile. Men firing at a city? The
musket balls smacked into the red stone of the wall which echoed back the crackle of the
gunfire, but the defenders ignored the threat. Not a musket replied, not a cannon fired.
The wall was silent. Shreds of smoke drifted from the skirmish line which went on chipping
the big red stones with lead.
Colonel Wallace's assault party was late in starting, while the kilted men of the
778th, who were assaulting the wall to the left of the gate, were now far in advance of the
other attackers. They were running across open ground, their two ladders in plain sight of
the enemy, but still the defenders ignored them. A regiment of sepoys was wheeling left,
going to add their musket fire to the picquet line. A bagpiper was playing, but he must
have been running for his instrument kept giving small ignominious hiccups. In truth it
all seemed ignominious to Sharpe. The battle, if it could even be called a battle, had
begun so casually, and the enemy was not even appearing to regard it as a threat. The
skirmishers' fire was scattered, the assault parties looked under strength and there
seemed to be no urgency and no ceremony. There ought to be ceremony, Sharpe considered.
A band should be playing, flags should be flying, and the enemy should be visible and
threatening, but instead it was ramshackle and almost unreal.
“This way, Sharpe,” McCandless said, and swerved away to where Colonel Wallace was
chivvying his men into formation. A dozen blue coated gunners were clustered about a
six-pounder cannon, evidently the gun that would be rammed against the city gate, while
just beyond them was a battery of four twelve-pounder cannon drawn by elephants and, as
Sharpe and McCandless urged their horses towards Wallace, the four mahouts halted their
elephants and the gunners hurried to unharness the four guns. Sharpe guessed the battery
would spray the wall with canister, though the silence of the defenders seemed to suggest
that they had nothing to fear from these impudent attackers. Sir Arthur Wellesley,
mounted on Diomed who seemed no worse for his bloodletting, rode up behind the guns and
called some instruction to the battery commander who raised a hand in acknowledgement.
The General was accompanied by three scarlet-coated aides and two Indians who, from
the richness of their robes, had to be commanders of the allied horsemen who had ridden
to stop the flight of fugitives from the city's northern gate.
The attackers from the 778th were just a hundred paces from the wall now. They had no
packs, only their weapons. And still the enemy treated them with lordly disdain. Not a gun
fired, not a musket flamed, not a single rocket slashed out from the wall.
“Looks like it will be easy, McCandless!” Wallace called.
“I pray as much!” McCandless said.
“The enemy has been praying too,” Sevajee said, but McCandless ignored the
remark.
Then, suddenly and appallingly, the silence ended.
The enemy was not ignoring the attack. Instead, from serried loopholes in the wall
and from the bastions' high embrasures and from the merlons along the parapet, a storm of
gunfire erupted. One moment the wall had been clear in the morning sun, now it was fogged
by a thick screen of powder smoke. A whole city was rimmed white, and the ground about the
attacking troops was pitted and churned by the strike of bullets.
“Ten minutes of seven,” McCandless shouted over the noise, as though the time was
important. Rockets, like those Sharpe had seen at Seringapatam, seared out from the walls
to stitch their smoke trails in crazy tangles above the assaulting parties' heads, yet,
despite the volume of fire, the defenders' opening volley appeared to do little harm.
One redcoat was staggering, but the assault parties still went forward, and then a
pain-filled squeal made Sharpe look to his right to see that an elephant had been struck by a
cannonball. The beast's mahout was dragging on its tether, but the elephant broke free
and, maddened by its wound, charged straight towards Wallace's men. The Highlanders
scattered. The gunners had begun to drag their loaded six-pounder forward, but they were
right in the injured beast's path and now sensibly abandoned the gun to flee from the
crazed animal's charge. The wrinkled skin of the elephant's left flank was sheeted in red.
Wallace shouted incoherently, then spurred his horse out of the way. The elephant, trunk
raised and eyes white, thumped past McCandless and Sharpe.
“Poor girl,” McCandless said.
“It's a she?” Sharpe asked.
“AD draught animals are female, Sharpe. More docile.”
“She ain't docile, sir,” Sharpe said, watching the elephant burst free of the army's rear
and trample through a field of stubble pursued by her mahout and an excited crowd of
small skinny children who had followed the attacking troops from the encampment and now
whooped shrilly as they enjoyed the chase. Sharpe watched them, then involuntarily ducked
as a musket ball whipped just over his shako and another ricocheted off the six-pounder's
barrel with a surprisingly musical note.
“Not too close now, Sharpe,” McCandless warned, and Sharpe obediently reined in his
mare.
Colonel Wallace was calling his men back into formation.
“Damned animals!” he snarled at McCandless.
“Your mother had no advice on elephants, Wallace?”
“None I'd repeat to a godly man, McCandless,” Wallace said, then spurred his horse
towards the six-pounder's disordered gunners.
“Pick up the traces, you rogues. Hurry!”
The 778th had reached the wall to the left of the gate. They rammed the foot of their two
ladders into the soil, then swung the tops up and over onto the wall's parapet.
“Good boys,” McCandless shouted warmly, though he was far too distant for the
attackers to hear his encouragement.
“Good boys!” The first kilted Highlanders were already scrambling up the rungs, but then
a man was hit by a bullet from the flanking bastion and he stopped, clung to the ladder,
then slowly toppled sideways. A crowd of Highlanders jostled at the bottom of the
ladders to be the next up the rungs. Poor bastards, Sharpe thought, so eager to climb to
death, and he saw that the leading men on both ladders were officers. They had swords. The
men climbed with their bayonet-tipped muskets slung over their shoulders, but the
officers climbed sword in hand. One of them was struck and the man behind
unceremoniously shoved him off the ladder and hurried up to the parapet and there,
inexplicably, he stopped.
His comrades shouted at him to get a bloody move on and scramble
over the wall, but the man did nothing except to unsling his musket, and then he was
hurled backwards in a misting spray of blood. Another man took his place, and the same
happened to him. The officer at the top of the second ladder was crouching on the top
rung, occasionally peering over the coping of the wall between two of the dome-shaped
merlons, but he was making no attempt to cross the parapet.