"Ready when you are, sir, " he told the Major commanding the battery who, in turn, looked at Stokes.
Stokes shrugged.
"I imagine we wait for Colonel Stevenson's permission."
The gunners in the second breaching battery which lay fifty yards west of the first had trained their telescopes over the gab ions to watch where the first shot fell. The scar it left in the wall would be their aiming mark. The two enfilading batteries also watched. Their work would begin properly when the first of the three breaches was made, but till then their twelve-pounders would be aimed at the cannon mounted on Gawilghur's ramparts, trying to dismount them or tumble their embrasures into rubble.
"That wall won't last long, " the battery Major, whose name was Plummer, opined. He was staring at the wall through Stokes's telescope.
"We'll have it opened up today, " Stokes agreed.
"Thank God there ain't a glacis, " Plummer said.
"Thank God, indeed, " Stokes echoed piously, but he had been thinking about that lack and was not so sure now that it was a blessing. Perhaps the Mahrattas understood that their real defence was the great central ravine, and so were offering nothing but a token defence of the Outer Fort. And how was that ravine to be crossed? Stokes feared that he would be asked for an engineering solution, but what could he do? Fill the thing with soil? That would take months.
Stokes's gloomy presentiments were interrupted by an aide who had been sent by Colonel Stevenson to enquire why the batteries were silent.
"I suspect those are your orders to open fire, Plummer, " Stokes said.
«Unmask!» Plummer shouted.
Four gunners clambered up onto the bastion and manhandled the half-filled gab ions out of the cannon's way. The Sergeant squinted down the barrel a last time, nodded to himself, then stepped aside.
The other gunners had their hands over their ears.
"You can fire, Ned!»
Plummer called to the Sergeant, who took a glowing linstock from a protective barrel, reached across the gun's high wheel and touched the fire to the reed.
The cannon hammered back a full five yards as the battery filled with acrid smoke. The ball screamed low across the stony neck of land to crack against the fort's wall. There was a pause. Defenders were running along the ramparts. Stokes was peering through the glass, waiting for the smoke to thin. It took a full minute, but then he saw that a slab of stone about the size of a soup plate had been chipped from the wall.
"Two inches to the right, Sergeant, " he called chidingly.
"Must have been a puff of wind, sir, " the Sergeant said, 'puff of bloody wind, 'cos there weren't a thing wrong with gun's laying, begging your pardon, sir."
"You did well, " Stokes said with a smile, 'very well." He cupped his hands and shouted at the second breaching battery.
"You have your mark! Fire on! " A billow of smoke erupted from the fortress wall, followed by the bang of a gun and a howl as a round shot whipped overhead. Stokes jumped down into the battery, clutching his hat.
"It seems we've woken them up, " he remarked as a dozen more Mahratta guns fired. The enemy's shots smacked into the gab ions or ricocheted wildly along the rocky ground. The second British battery fired, the noise of its guns echoing off the cliff face to tell the camp far beneath that the siege of Gawilghur had properly begun.
Private Tom Garrard of the 33rd's Light Company had wandered to the edge of the cliff to watch the bombardment of the fortress. Not that there was much to see other than the constantly replenished cloud of smoke that shrouded the rocky neck of land between the batteries and the fortress, but every now and then a large piece of stone would fall from Gawilghur's wall. The fire from the de fences was furious, but it seemed to Garrard that it was ill aimed. Many of the shots bounced over the batteries, or else buried themselves in the great piles of protective gab ions The British fire, on the other hand, was slow and sure. The eighteen-pound round shots gnawed at the wall and not one was wasted. The sky was cloudless, the sun rising ever higher and the guns were heating so that after every second shot the gunners poured buckets of water on the long barrels. The metal hissed and steamed, and sweating puckakes hurried up the battery road with yet more skins of water to replenish the great vats.
Garrard was sitting by himself, but he had noticed a ragged Indian was watching him. He ignored the man, hoping he would go away, but the Indian edged closer. Garrard picked up a fist-sized stone and tossed it up and down in his right hand as a hint that the man should go away, but the threat of the stone only made the Indian edge closer.
«Sahib!» the Indian hissed.
"Bugger off, " Garrard growled.
"Sahib! Please!»
"I've got nothing worth stealing, I don't want to buy anything, and I don't want to roger your sister."
"I'll roger your sister instead, sahib, " the Indian said, and Garrard twisted round, the stone drawn back ready to throw, then he saw that the dirty robed man had pushed back his grubby white head cloth and was grinning at him.
"You ain't supposed to chuck rocks at officers, Tom, " Sharpe said.
"Mind you, I always wanted to, so I can't blame you."
"Bloody hell! " Garrard dropped the stone and held out his right hand.
"Dick Sharpe! " He suddenly checked his outstretched hand.
"Do I have to call you "sir"?"
"Of course you don't, " Sharpe said, taking Garrard's hand.
"You and me? Friends from way back, eh? Red sash won't change that, Tom.
How are you?"
"Been worse. Yourself?"
"Been better."
Garrard frowned.
"Didn't I hear that you'd been captured?"
"Got away, I did. Ain't a bugger born who can hold me, Tom. Nor you." Sharpe sat next to his friend, a man with whom he had marched in the ranks for six years.
"Here." He gave Garrard a strip of dried meat.
"What is it?"
"Goat. Tastes all right, though."
The two sat and watched the gunners at work. The closest guns were in the two enfilading batteries, and the gunners were using their twelve pounders to systematically bring down the parapets of the ramparts above Gawilghur's gate. They had already unseated a pair of enemy guns and were now working on the next two embrasures. An ox-drawn limber had just delivered more ammunition, but, on leaving the battery, the limber's wheel had loosened and five men were now standing about the canted wheel arguing how best to mend it. Garrard pulled a piece of stringy meat from between his teeth.
"Pull the broken wheel off and put on a new one, " he said scornfully.
"It don't take a major and two lieutenants to work that out."
"They're officers, Tom, " Sharpe said chidingly, 'only half brained."
"You should know." Garrard grinned.
"Buggers make an inviting target, though." He pointed across the plunging chasm which separated the plateau from the Inner Fort.
"There's a bloody great gun over there.
Size of a bloody hay wain, it is. Buggers have been fussing about it for a half-hour now."
Sharpe stared past the beleaguered Outer Fort to the distant cliffs.
He thought he could see a wall where a gun might be mounted, but he was not sure.
"I need a bloody telescope."
"You need a bloody uniform."
"I'm doing something about that, " Sharpe said mysteriously.
Garrard slapped at a fly.
"What's it like then?"
"What's what like?"
"Being a Jack-pudding?"
Sharpe shrugged, thought for a while, then shrugged again.
"Don't seem real. Well, it does. I dunno." He sighed.
"I mean I wanted it, Tom, I wanted it real bad, but I should have known the bastards wouldn't want me. Some are all right. Major Stokes, he's a fine fellow, and there are others. But most of them? God knows. They don't like me, anyway."