"Luckily for you, Ensign, " the Indian said, "I recognized him."
"Which is why you sent for help, isn't it?" Sharpe asked sarcastically.
"It's why you fetched some redcoats to get me out of that bloody tent."
"Your gratitude touches me deeply, " Sevajee said with a smile.
"It took us a long time to make sense of what your boy was saying, and I confess we didn't wholly believe him even then, and by the time we thought to take him seriously, you were already being carried away.
So we followed. I thought we might fetch some entertainment from the evening, and so we did."
"Glad to be of service, sahib, " Sharpe said.
"I knew you could beat ajetti in a fair fight."
"I beat three at once in Seringapatam, " Sharpe said, 'but I don't know as it was a fair fight. I'm not much in favour of fair fights. I like them to be unfair. Fair fights are for gentlemen who don't know any better."
"Which is why you gave the sword to the jetti, " Sevajee observed drily.
"I knew he'd make a bollocks of it, " Sharpe said. He was tired suddenly, and all the aches and throbs and agony had come back.
Above him the sky was brilliant with stars, while a thin sickle moon hung just above the faraway fortress. Dodd was up there, Sharpe thought, another life to take. Dodd and Torrance, Hakeswill and his two men. A debt to be paid by sending all the bastards to hell.
"Where shall I take you?" Sevajee asked.
"Take me?"
"You want to go to the General?"
"Christ, no." Sharpe could not imagine complaining to Wellesley. The cold bugger would probably blame Sharpe for getting into trouble.
Stokes, maybe? Or the cavalry? Sergeant Lockhart would doubtless welcome him, but then he had a better idea.
"Take me to wherever you're camped, " he told Sevajee.
"And in the morning?"
"You've got a new recruit, " Sharpe said.
"I'm one of your men for now."
Sevajee looked amused.
"Why?"
"Why do you think? I want to hide."
"But why?"
Sharpe sighed.
"D'you think Wellesley will believe me? If I go to Wellesley he'll think I've got sunstroke, or he'll reckon I'm drunk. And Torrance will stand there with a plum in his bloody mouth and deny everything, or else he'll blame Hakeswill."
"Hakeswill?" Sevajee asked.
"A bastard I'm going to kill, " Sharpe said.
"And it'll be easier if he doesn't know I'm still alive." And this time, Sharpe vowed, he would make sure of the bastard.
"My only worry, " he told Sevajee, 'is Major Stokes's horse. He's a good man, Stokes."
"That horse?" Sevajee asked, nodding at the grey mare.
"You reckon a couple of your fellows could return it to him in the morning?"
"Of course."
"Tell him I got thrown from the saddle and snatched up by the enemy, " Sharpe said.
"Let him think I'm a prisoner in Gawilghur."
"And meanwhile you'll be one of us?" Sevajee asked.
"I've just become a Mahratta, " Sharpe said.
«Welcome,» said Sevajee.
"And what you need now, Sharpe, is some rest."
"I've had plenty of rest, " Sharpe said.
"What I need now are some clothes, and some darkness."
"You need food too, " Sevajee insisted. He glanced up at the sliver of moon above the fort. It was waning.
"Tomorrow night will be darker, " he promised, and Sharpe nodded. He wanted a deep darkness, a shadowed blackness, in which a living ghost could hunt.
Major Stokes was grateful for the return of his horse, but saddened over Sharpe's fate.
«Captured!» he told Sir Arthur Wellesley.
"And my own fault too."
"Can't see how that can be, Stokes."
"I should never have let him ride off on his own. Should have made him wait till a group went back."
"Won't be the first prison cell he's seen, " Wellesley said, 'and I daresay it won't be the last."
"I shall miss him, " Stokes said, 'miss him deeply. A good man."
Wellesley grunted. He had ridden up the improved road to judge its progress for himself and he was impressed, though he took care not to show his approval. The road now snaked up into the hills and one more day's work would see it reach the edge of the escarpment. Half the necessary siege guns were already high on the road, parked in an upland meadow, while bullocks were trudging up the lower slopes with their heavy burdens of round shot that would be needed to break open Gawilghur's walls. The Mahrattas had virtually ceased their raids on the road-makers ever since Wellesley had sent two battalions of sepoys up into the hills to hunt the enemy down. Every once in a while a musket shot would be fired from a long distance, but the balls were usually spent before they reached a target.
"Your work won't end with the road, " Wellesley told Stokes, as the General and his staff followed the engineer on foot towards some higher ground from where they could inspect the fortress.
"I doubted it would, sir."^ "You know Stevenson?"
"I've dined with the Colonel."
"I'm sending him up here. His troops will make the assault. My men will stay below and climb the two roads." Wellesley spoke curtly, almost offhandedly. He was proposing to divide his army into two again, just as it had been split for most of the war against the Mahrattas. Stevenson's part of the army would climb to the plateau and make the main assault on the fortress. That attack would swarm across the narrow neck of land to climb the breaches, but to stop the enemy from throwing all their strength into the defence of the broken wall Wellesley proposed sending two columns of his own men up the steep tracks that led directly to the fortress. Those men would have to approach unbroken walls up slopes too steep to permit artillery to be deployed, and Wellesley knew those columns could never hope to break into Gawilghur. Their job was to spread the defenders thin, and to block off the garrison's escape routes while Colonel Stevenson's men did the bloody work.
"You'll have to establish Stevenson's batteries, " Wellesley told Stokes.
"Major Blackiston's seen the ground' he indicated his aide 'and he reckons two eighteens and three iron twelves should suffice. Major Blackiston, of course, will give you whatever advice he can."
"No glacis?" Stokes directed the question to Blackiston.
"Not when I was there, " Blackiston said, 'though of course they could have made one since. I just saw curtain walls with a few bastions.
Ancient work, by the look of it."
"Fifteenth-century work, " Wellesley put in and, when he saw that the two engineers were impressed by his knowledge, he shrugged.
"Syud Sevajee claims as much, anyway."
"Old walls break fastest, " Stokes said cheerfully. The two big guns, with the three smaller cannon, would batter the wall head on to crumble the ancient stone that was probably unprotected by a glacis of embanked earth to soak up the force of the bombardment, and the Major had yet to find a fortress wall in India that could resist the strike of an eighteen-pounder shot travelling half a mile every two seconds.
"But you'll want some enfilading fire, " he warned Wellesley.
"I'll send you some more twelves, " Wellesley promised.
"A battery of twelves and an howitzer, " Stokes suggested.
"I'd like to drop some nasties over the wall. There's nothing like an howitzer for spreading gloom."
"I'll send an howitzer, " Wellesley promised. The enfilading batteries would fire at an angle through the growing breaches to keep the enemy from making repairs, and the howitzer, which fired high in the air so that its shells dropped steeply down, could bombard the repair parties behind the fortress ramparts.