"You're a bright lad, Sajit, ain't you?" he said.
"You might be nothing but a bleeding heathen blackamoor but you've got more than bullock dung for brains, ain't you? Here." He tossed Sajit three of the stones.
"That keeps your tongue quiet, and if it don't, I'll cut it out and have a feed on it. Partial to a plate of tongue, I am. Nice piece of tongue, knob of butter and some gravy.
Proper food, that." He pushed the rest of the stones into his pocket, then stared broodingly at Sharpe's naked trussed body.
"He had more, " Hakeswill said with a frown, "I know he had more." The Sergeant suddenly clicked his fingers.
"What about his pack?"
"What pack?" Lowry asked.
"The bleeding pack he carries, which he shouldn't, being an officer, which he ain't. Where's his pack?"
The privates shrugged. Sajit frowned.
"He had no pack when he came to the Captain's house."
"You're sure?"
"He came on a horse, " Lowry said helpfully.
"It were a grey horse, and he didn't have no pack."
"So where's the horse?" Hakeswill demanded angrily.
"We should look in its saddlebags!»
Lowry frowned, trying to remember.
"A bleeding kid had it, " he said at last.
"So where's the kid?"
"He ran off, " Sajit said.
"Ran off?" Hakeswill said threateningly.
"Why?"
"He saw you hit him, " Sajit said.
"I saw it. He fell out of the tent.
There was blood on his face."
"You shouldn't have hit him till he was right inside the tent, " Kendrick said chidingly.
"45
"Shut your bloody face, " Hakeswill said, then frowned.
"So where did the kid run?"
«Away,» Sajit said.
"I chased him, but he climbed onto the horse."
"Kid don't speak English, " Kendrick said helpfully.
"How the hell do you know that?"
"Cos I talked to him!»
"And who's going to believe a heathen black kid what don't speak English?" Lowry asked.
Hakeswill's face was racked by a quick series of twitches. He suspected he was safe. Lowry was right. Who would believe the kid?
Even so the Sergeant wished that Jama's men were coming earlier to fetch Sharpe. Jama himself had gone away from the camp, reckoning that if he was going to murder a British officer then it was best done a long way from the British army. Hakeswill had warned Jama not to expect Sharpe until the evening, and now he had to guard him until dusk.
"I told you to put a bandage on his eyes, " Hakeswill snapped.
"Don't want him to see us!»
"It don't matter if he does, " Kendrick said.
"He ain't going to see the dawn, is he?"
"Got more lives than a basketful of bleeding cats, that one, " Hakeswill said.
"If I had any sense I'd slit his throat now."
«No!» Sajit said.
"He was promised to my uncle."
"And your uncle's paying us, yes?"
"That too is agreed, " Sajit said.
Hakeswill stood and walked to Sharpe's unconscious body.
"I put those stripes on his back, " he said proudly.
"Lied through my teeth, I did, and had Sharpie flogged. Now I'll have him killed." He remembered how Sharpe had flung him among the tigers and his face twitched as he recalled the elephant trying to crush him to death, and in his sudden rage he kicked at Sharpe and went on kicking until Kendrick hauled him away.
"If you kill him, Sarge, " Kendrick said, 'then the blackies won't pay us, will they?"
Hakeswill let himself be pulled away.
"So how will your uncle kill him?" he asked Sajit.
"His jet tis will do it."
"I've seen them bastards at work, " Hakeswill said in a tone of admiration.
"Just make it slow. Make it slow and make it bleeding painful."
"It will be slow, " Sajit promised, 'and very painful. My uncle is not a merciful man."
"But I am, " Hakeswill said.
"I am. Because I'm letting another man have the pleasure of killing Sharpie." He spat at Sharpe.
"Dead by dawn, Sharpie. You'll be down with Old Nick, where you ought to be!»
He settled against one of the tent poles and trickled jewels from one palm to the other. Flies crawled among the crusting blood in Sharpe's hair. The Ensign would be dead by dawn, and Hakeswill was a rich man. Revenge, the Sergeant decided, was sweet as honey.
Ahmed saw Sharpe fall back from the tent entrance, saw blood bright on his forehead, then watched as hands seized Sharpe and dragged him into the deep shadows.
Then Sajit, the clerk with the pink umbrella, turned towards him.
«Boy,» he snapped, 'come here!»
Ahmed pretended not to understand, though he understood well enough that he was a witness to something deeply wrong. He backed away, tugging Major Stokes's mare with him. He let the musket slip down from his shoulder and Sajit, seeing the threat, suddenly rushed at him, but Ahmed was even faster. He jumped up to sprawl across the saddle and, without bothering to seat himself properly, kicked the horse into motion. The startled mare leaped away as Ahmed hauled himself onto her back. The stirrups were too long for him, but Ahmed had been raised with horses and could have ridden the mare bareback, blindfolded and back to front. He swerved southwards, galloping between tents, fires and grazing bullocks, and leaving Sajit far behind. A woman shouted a protest as he nearly galloped over her children. He slowed the mare as he reached the edge of the encampment and looked back to see that he had left Sajit far behind.
What the hell should he do? He knew no one in the British camp. He looked up at the high summit where Gawilghur just showed. He supposed his old comrades in Manu Bappoo's Lions of Allah were up there, but his uncle, with whom he had travelled from Arabia, was dead and buried in Argaum's black earth. He knew other soldiers in the regiment, but he also feared them. Those other soldiers wanted Ahmed to be their servant, and not just to cook for them and clean their weapons. Sharpe alone had shown him friendliness, and Sharpe now needed help, but Ahmed did not know how to provide it. He thought about the problem as he knotted the stirrup leathers.
The plump, red-faced and white-haired man in the hills had been friendly, but how was Ahmed to talk to him? He decided he ought to try and so he turned the horse, planning to ride her all about the camp perimeter and then back up the road into the hills, but an officer of the camp picquets saw him. The man was riding a horse and he spurred it close to Ahmed and noted the British saddle cloth.
"What are you doing, boy?" he asked. The officer presumed Ahmed was exercising the horse, but Ahmed took fright at the challenge and kicked back.
«Thief!» the officer shouted and gave chase.
"Stop! Thief!»
A sepoy turned with his musket and Ahmed nudged the horse so that she ran the man down. There was a group of houses close by and Ahmed turned towards them, jumped a garden wall, thumped through some beds of vegetables, jumped another wall, ducked under some fruit trees, jumped a hedge and splashed through a muddy pond before kicking the horse up a bank and into some trees. The officer had not dared follow him through the gardens, but Ahmed could hear the hue and cry beyond the houses. He patted the mare's neck as she threaded through the trees, then curbed her at the wood's edge. There was about a half-mile of open country, then more thick woods that promised safety if only the tired mare could make the distance without faltering.
"If Allah wills it, " Ahmed said, then kicked the horse into a gallop.
His pursuers were well behind, but they saw him break cover and now a dozen horsemen were chasing him. Someone fired at him. He heard the musket shot, but the ball went nowhere near him. He leaned over the mane and just let the horse run. He looked back once and saw the pursuers bunching in his path, and then he was in the trees and he twisted northwards, cut back west, then went north again, going ever deeper into the woods until at last he slowed the blowing horse so that the sound of her thumping hooves would not betray him.