Wellesley leaned back in his chair. A flicker of distaste showed on his face as he recalled the terrible moment when he had been unhorsed at Assaye. He did not remember much of the incident for he had been dazed, but he did recall watching Sharpe kill with a savagery that had astonished him. He disliked being beholden to such a man, but the General knew he would not be alive if Sharpe had not risked his own life.
"I should never have given Sharpe a commission, " he said ruefully.
"A
man like that would have been quite content with a fiscal reward. A fungible reward. That's what our men want, Campbell, something that can be turned into rum or arrack."
"He appears to be a sober man, sir, " Campbell said.
"Probably because he can't afford the drink! Officers' messes are damned expensive places, Campbell, as you well know. I reward Sharpe by plunging him into debt, eh? And God knows if the Rifles are any cheaper. I can't imagine they will be. He needs something fungible, Campbell, something fungible." Wellesley turned and rummaged in the saddlebags that were piled behind his chair. He brought out the new telescope with the shallow eyepiece that had been a gift from the merchants of Madras.
"Find a goldsmith in the camp followers, Campbell, and see if the fellow can replace that brass plate."
"With what, sir?"
Nothing too flowery, the General thought, because the glass was only going to be pawned to pay mess bills or buy gin.
"In gratitude, AW, " he said, 'and add the date of Assaye. Then give it to Sharpe with my compliments."
"It's very generous of you, sir, " Campbell said, taking the glass, 'but perhaps it would be better if you presented it to him?"
"Maybe, maybe. Blackiston! Where do we site guns?" The General unrolled the sketches.
«Candles,» he ordered, for the light was fading fast.
The shadows stretched and joined and turned to night around the British camp. Candles were lit, lanterns hung from ridge-poles and fires fed with bullock dung. The picquets stared at shadows in the darkness, but some, lifting their gaze, saw that high above them the tops of the cliffs were still in daylight and there, like the home of the gods, the walls of a fortress showed deadly black where Gawilghur waited their coming.
CHAPTER 5
The first part of the road was easy enough to build, for the existing track wound up the gender slopes of the foothills, but even on the first day Major Elliott was filled with gloom.
"Can't do it in a week! " the engineer grumbled.
"Man's mad! Expects miracles. Jacob's ladder, that's what he wants." He cast a morbid eye over Sharpe's bullocks, all of them prime Mysore beasts with brightly painted horns from which tassels and small bells hung.
"Never did like working with oxen, " Elliott complained.
"Bring any elephants?"
"I can ask for them, sir."
"Nothing like an elephant. Right, Sharpe, load the beasts with small stones and keep following the track till you catch up with me. Got that?"
Elliott hauled himself onto his horse and settled his feet in the stirrups.
"Bloody miracles, that's what he wants, " the Major growled, then spurred onto the track.
«Elliott!» Major Simons, who commanded the half-battalion of sepoys who guarded the pioneers building the road, called in alarm.
"I haven't reconnoitred beyond the small hillock! The one with the two trees."
"Can't wait for your fellows to wake up, Simons. Got a road to build in a week. Can't be done, of course, but we must look willing. Pinckney! I need a havildar and some stout fellows to carry pegs. Tell 'em to follow me."
Captain Pinckney, the officer in charge of the East India Company pioneers, spat onto the verge.
"Waste of bloody time."
"What is?" Sharpe asked.
"Pegging out the route! We follow the footpath, of course. Bloody natives have been scurrying up and down these hills for centuries." He turned and shouted at a havildar to organize a party to follow Elliott up the hill, then set the rest of his men to loading the oxen's panniers with small stones.
The road made good progress, despite Elliott's misgivings, and three days after they had begun the pioneers cleared a space among the trees to establish a makeshift artillery park where the siege guns could wait while the rest of the road was forged. Sharpe was busy and, because of that, happy. He liked Simons and Pinckney, and even Elliott proved affable. The Major had taken Wellesley's demands that the road be made in a week as a challenge, and he pressed the pioneers hard.
The enemy seemed to be asleep. Elliott would ride far ahead to reconnoitre the route and never once saw a Mahratta.
"Stupid fools, " Elliott said one night beside the fire, 'they could hold us here for months!»
"You still shouldn't ride so far ahead of my picquets, " Simons reproved the Major.
"Stop fussing, man, " Elliott said, and next morning, as usual, he rode out in front to survey the day's work.
Sharpe was again bringing stones up the road that morning. He was walking at the head of his ox train on the wooded stretch above the newly made artillery park. The day's heat was growing and there was little wind in the thick woods of teak and cork trees that covered the low hills. Groups of pioneers felled trees where they might obstruct a gun carriage's progress, and here and there Sharpe saw a whitewashed peg showing where Elliott had marked the track. Shots sounded ahead, but Sharpe took no notice. The upland valleys had become a favourite hunting ground for the shikarees who used nets, snares and ancient matchlocks to kill hares, wild pigs, deer, quail and partridge that they sold to the officers, and Sharpe assumed a party of the hunters was close to the track, but after a few seconds the firing intensified. The musketry was muffled by the thick leaves, but for a moment the sound was constant, almost at battle pitch, before, as suddenly as it had erupted, it stopped.
His bullock drivers had halted, made nervous by the firing.
"Come on! " Sharpe encouraged them. None of them spoke English, and Sharpe had no idea which language they did speak, but they were good-natured men, eager to please, and they prodded their heavily laden bullocks onwards. Ahmed had unslung his musket and was peering ahead. He suddenly raised the gun to his shoulder, and Sharpe pushed it down before the boy could pull the trigger.
"They're ours, " he told the lad.
"Sepoys."
A dozen sepoys hurried back through the trees. Major Simons was with them and, as they came closer, Sharpe saw the men were carrying a makeshift stretcher made from tree branches and jackets.
"It's Elliott."
Simons paused by Sharpe as his men hurried ahead.
"Bloody fool got a chest wound. He won't live. Stupid man was too far forward. I told him not to get ahead of the picquets." Simons took a ragged red handkerchief from his sleeve and wiped the sweat from his face.
"One less engineer."
Sharpe peered at Elliott who was blessedly unconscious. His face had gone pale, and pinkish blood was bubbling at his lips with every laboured breath.
"He won't last the day, " Simons said brutally, 'but I suppose we should get him back to the surgeons."
"Where are the enemy?" Sharpe asked.
"They ran, " Simons said.
"Half a dozen of the bastards were waiting in ambush. They shot Elliott, took his weapons, but ran off when they saw us."
Three shikarees died that afternoon, ambushed in the high woods, and that night, when the road-builders camped in one of the grassy upland valleys, some shots were fired from a neighbouring wood. The bullets hissed overhead, but none found a target. The picquets blazed back until a havildar shouted at them to hold their fire. Captain Pinck-they shook his head.
"I thought it was too good to last, " he said gloomily.