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 centre 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 centre 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 grey 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 grey 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