Sharpe’s Fortress: The Siege of Gawilghur, December 1803. Bernard Cornwell
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‘Where?’
‘To Gawilghur,’ Sevajee said softly, ‘to the sky fort.’
‘Gawilghur?’
‘I grew up there.’ Sevajee spoke softly, still gazing at the hazed northern horizon. ‘My father was Killadar of Gawilghur. It was a post of honour, Sharpe, for it is our greatest stronghold. It is the fortress in the sky, the impregnable refuge, the place that has never fallen to our enemies, and Beny Singh is now its killadar. Somehow we shall have to get inside, you and I. And I shall kill Singh and you will kill Dodd.’
‘That’s why I’m here,’ Sharpe said.
‘No.’ Sevajee gave Sharpe a sour glance. ‘You’re here, Ensign, because you British are greedy.’ He looked at the Arab boy and asked a question. There was a brief conversation, then Sevajee looked at Sharpe again. ‘I have told him he is to be your servant, and that you will beat him to death if he steals from you.’
‘I wouldn’t do that!’ Sharpe protested.
‘I would,’ Sevajee said, ‘and he believes you would, but it still won’t stop him thieving from you. Better to kill him now.’ He grinned, then hauled himself into his saddle. ‘I shall look for you at Gawilghur, Mister Sharpe.’
‘I shall look for you,’ Sharpe said.
Sevajee spurred away and Sharpe crouched to look at his new servant. Ahmed was as thin as a half-drowned cat. He wore dirty robes and a tattered headdress secured by a loop of frayed rope that was stained with blood, evidently where Sharpe’s blow with the musket had caught him during the battle. But he had bright eyes and a defiant face, and though his voice had not yet broken he was braver than many full-grown men. Sharpe unslung his canteen and pushed it into the boy’s hand, first taking away the broken pistol that he tossed away. ‘Drink up, you little bugger,’ Sharpe said, ‘then come for a walk.’
The boy glanced up the hill, but his army was long gone. It had vanished into the evening beyond the crest and was now being pursued by vengeful cavalry. He said something in Arabic, drank what remained of Sharpe’s water, then offered a grudging nod of thanks.
So Sharpe had a servant, a battle had been won, and now he walked south in search of puckalees.
Colonel William Dodd watched the Lions of Allah break, and spat with disgust. It had been foolish to fight here in the first place and now the foolery was turning to disaster. ‘Jemadar!’ he called.
‘Sahib?’
‘We’ll form square. Put our guns in the centre. And the baggage.’
‘Families, sahib?’
‘Families too.’ Dodd watched Manu Bappoo and his aides galloping back from the British advance. The gunners had already fled, which meant that the Mahrattas’ heavy cannon would all be captured, every last piece of it. Dodd was tempted to abandon his regiment’s small battery of five-pounders which were about as much use as pea-shooters, but a soldier’s pride persuaded him to drag the guns from the field. Bappoo might lose all his guns, but it would be a cold day in hell before William Dodd gave up artillery to an enemy.
His Cobras were on the Mahratta right flank and there, for the moment, they were out of the way of the British advance. If the rest of the Mahratta infantry remained firm and fought, then Dodd would stay with them, but he saw that the defeat of the Arabs had demoralized Bappoo’s army. The ranks began to dissolve, the first fugitives began to run north and Dodd knew this army was lost. First Assaye, now this. A goddamn disaster! He turned his horse and smiled at his white-jacketed men. ‘You haven’t lost a battle!’ he shouted to them. ‘You haven’t even fought today, so you’ve lost no pride! But you’ll have to fight now! If you don’t, if you break ranks, you’ll die. If you fight, you’ll live! Jemadar! March!’
The Cobras would now attempt one of the most difficult of all feats of soldiering, a fighting withdrawal. They marched in a loose square, the centre of which gradually filled with their women and children. Some other infantry tried to join the families, but Dodd snarled at his men to beat them away. ‘Fire if they won’t go!’ he shouted. The last thing he wanted was for his men to be infected by panic.
Dodd trailed the square. He heard cavalry trumpets and he twisted in his saddle to see a mass of irregular light horsemen come over the crest. ‘Halt!’ he shouted. ‘Close ranks! Charge bayonets!’
The white-jacketed Cobras sealed the loose square tight. Dodd pushed through the face of the square and turned his horse to watch the cavalrymen approach. He doubted they would come close, not when there were easier pickings to the east and, sure enough, as soon as the leading horsemen saw that the square was waiting with levelled muskets, they sheered away.
Dodd holstered his pistol. ‘March on, Jemadar!’
Twice more Dodd had to halt and form ranks, but both times the threatening horsemen were scared away by the calm discipline of his white-coated soldiers. The red-coated infantry was not pursuing. They had reached the village of Argaum and were content to stay there, leaving the pursuit to the horsemen, and those horsemen chased after the broken rabble that flooded northwards, but none chose to die by charging Dodd’s formed ranks.
Dodd inclined to the west, angling away from the pursuers. By nightfall he was confident enough to form the battalion into a column of companies, and by midnight, under a clear moon, he could no longer even hear the British trumpets. He knew that men would still be dying, ridden down by cavalry and pierced by lances or slashed by sabres, but Dodd had got clean away. His men were tired, but they were safe in a dark countryside of millet fields, drought-emptied irrigation ditches and scattered villages where dogs barked frantically when they caught the scent of the marching column.
Dodd did not trouble the villagers. He had sufficient food, and earlier in the night they had found an irrigation tank that had yielded enough water for men and beasts. ‘Do you know where we are, Jemadar?’ he asked.
‘No, sahib.’ Gopal grinned, his teeth showing white in the darkness.
‘Nor do I. But I know where we’re going.’
‘Where, sahib?’
‘To Gawilghur, Gopal. To Gawilghur.’
‘Then we must march north, sahib.’ Gopal pointed to the mountains that showed as a dark line against the northern stars. ‘It is there, sahib.’
Dodd was marching to the fortress that had never known defeat. To the impregnable fastness on the cliff. To Gawilghur.
Dawn came to the millet fields. Ragged-winged birds flopped down beside corpses. The smell of death was already rank, and would only grow worse as the sun rose to become a furnace in a cloudless sky. Bugles called reveille, and the picquets who had guarded the sleeping army around Argaum cleared their muskets by loosing off shots. The gunfire startled birds up from corpses and made the feasting dogs growl among the human dead.
Regiments dug graves for their own dead. There were few enough to bury, for no more than fifty redcoats had died, but there were hundreds of Mahratta and Arab corpses, and the lascars who did the army’s fetching and carrying began the task of gathering the bodies. Some enemies still lived, though barely, and the luckiest of those were despatched with a blow of a mattock before their robes were rifled. The unlucky were taken to the surgeons’ tents.
The enemy’s captured guns were inspected, and a dozen selected as suitable for British service. They were all well made, forged in Agra by French-trained gunsmiths, but some were the wrong calibre and a few were so overdecorated with writhing gods and goddesses that no self-respecting gunner could abide them. The twenty-six rejected guns would be double-shotted and exploded. ‘A dangerous business,’ Lieutenant Colonel William Wallace remarked to Sharpe.
‘Indeed, sir.’
‘You saw the accident at Assaye?’ Wallace asked. The Colonel took off his cocked hat and fanned his face. The hat’s white plumes were still stained with blood that had dried black.