Sergeant Green looked at the battered, bleeding Captain, then back to Sharpe.
"Something he ate, sir?"
"Are you a doctor, Sergeant? Wear a black plume on your hat, do you?"
"No, sir."
"Then stop questioning my statements. Have the company paraded, muskets loaded, no bayonets fixed." Green hesitated.
"Do it, Sergeant!»
Sharpe roared, startling the watching men.
"Yes, sir! " Green said hurriedly, backing away.
Sharpe waited until the company was in its four ranks. Many of them looked at him suspiciously, but they were powerless to challenge his authority, not while Sergeant Green had accepted it.
"You're a light company, " Sharpe said, 'and that means you can go where other soldiers can't. It makes you an elite. You know what that means? It means you're the best in the bloody army, and right now the army needs its best men.
It needs you. So in a minute we'll be climbing up there' he pointed to the ravine 'crossing the wall and carrying the fight to the enemy. It'll be hard work for a bit, but not beyond a decent light company." He looked to his left and saw Eli Lockhart leading his men down the side of the ravine with one of the discarded bamboo ladders.
"I'll go first, " he told the company, 'and Sergeant Green will go last. If any man refuses to climb, Sergeant, you're to shoot the bugger."
"I am, sir?" Green asked nervously.
"In the head, " Sharpe said.
Major Stokes had followed Lockhart and now came up to Sharpe.
"I'll arrange for some covering fire, Sharpe, " he said.
"That'll be a help, sir. Not that these men need much help. They're the 33rd's Light Company. Best in the army."
"I'm sure they are, " Stokes said, smiling at the seventy men who, seeing a major with Sharpe, supposed that the Ensign really did have the authority to do what he was proposing.
Lockhart, in his blue and yellow coat, waited with the ladder.
"Where do you want it, Mister Sharpe?"
"Over here, " Sharpe said.
"Just pass it up when we've reached the top.
Sergeant Green! Send the men in ranks! Front rank first! " He walked to the side of the ravine and stared up his chosen route. It looked steeper from here, and much higher than it had seemed when he was staring through the telescope, but he still reckoned it was climbable. He could not see the Inner Fort's wall, but that was good, for neither could the defenders see him. All the same, it was bloody steep. Steep enough to give a mountain goat pause, yet if he failed now then he would be on a charge for striking a superior officer, so he really had no choice but to play the hero.
So he spat on his bruised hands, looked up one last time, then started to climb.
The second assault on the Inner Fort's gatehouse fared no better than the first. A howling mass of men charged through the wreckage of the shattered gate, stumbled on the dead and dying as they turned up the passage, but then the killing began again as a shower of missiles, rockets and musket fire turned the narrow, steep passage into a charnel house. An axe man succeeded in reaching the second gate and he stood above Colonel Kenny's scorched body to sink his blade deep into the timber, but he was immediately struck by three musket balls and dropped back, leaving the axe embedded in the dark, iron-studded wood. No one else went close to the gate, and a major, appalled at the slaughter, called the men back.
"Next time, " he shouted at them, 'we designate firing parties to give cover. Sergeant! I want two dozen men."
"We need a cannon, sir, " the Sergeant answered with brutal honesty.
"They say one's coming." The aide whom Kenny had sent to fetch a cannon had returned to the assault party.
"They say it'll take time, though, " he added, without explaining that the gunner officer had declared it would take at least two hours to manhandle a gun and ammunition across the ravine.
The Major shook his head.
"We'll try without the gun, " he said.
"God help us, " the Sergeant said under his breath.
Colonel Dodd had watched the attackers limp away. He could not help smiling. This was so very simple, just as he had foreseen. Manu Bappoo was dead and the Havildar had returned from the palace with the welcome news of Beny Singh's murder, which meant that Gawilghur had a new commander. He looked down at the dead and dying redcoats who lay among the small flickering blue flames of the spent rockets.
"They've learned their lesson, Gopal, " he told his Jemadar, 'so next time they'll try to keep us quiet by firing bigger volleys up at the fire steps
Toss down rockets, that'll spoil their aim."
"Rockets, sahib."
"Lots of rockets, " Dodd said. He patted his men on their backs. Their faces were singed by the explosions of the powder in their muskets' pans, they were thirsty and hot, but they were winning, and they knew it.
They were his Cobras, as well trained as any troops in India, and they would be at the heart of the army that Dodd would unleash from this fortress to dominate the lands the British must relinquish when their southern army was broken.
"Why don't they give up?" Gopal asked Dodd. A sentry on the wall had reported that the bloodied attackers were forming to charge again.
"Because they're brave men, Jemadar, " Dodd said, 'but also stupid."
The furious musket fire had started again from across the ravine, a sign that a new attack would soon come into the blood-slick gateway.
Dodd drew his pistol, checked it was loaded, and walked back to watch the next failure. Let them come, he thought, for the more who died here, the fewer would remain to trouble him as he pursued the beaten remnant south across the Deccan Plain.
"Get ready! " he called. Slow matches burned on the fire step and his men crouched beside them with rockets, waiting to light the fuses and toss the terrible weapons down into the killing place.
A defiant cheer sounded, and the redcoats came again to the slaughter.
The cliff face was far steeper than Sharpe had anticipated, though it was not sheer rock, but rather a series of cracks in which plants had taken root, and he found that he could pull himself up by using stony outcrops and the thick stalks of the bigger shrubs. He needed both hands. Tom Garrard came behind, and more than once Sharpe trod on his friend's hands.
"Sorry, Tom."
"Just keep going, " Garrard panted.
It became easier after the first ten feet, for the face now sloped away, and there was even room for two or three men to stand together on a weed-covered ledge. Sharpe called for the ladder and it was pushed up to him by the cavalrymen. The bamboo was light and he hooked the top rung over his right shoulder and climbed on upwards, following a jagged line of rocks and bushes that gave easy footing. A line of redcoats trailed him, muskets slung. There were more bushes to Sharpe's left, shielding him from the ramparts, but after he had climbed twenty feet those bushes ended and he prayed that the defenders would all be staring at the beleaguered gatehouse rather than at the precipice below. He pulled himself up the last few feet, cursing the ladder that seemed to get caught on every protrusion. The sun beat off the stone and the sweat poured down him. He was panting when he reached the top, and now there was nothing but steep, open ground between him and the wall's base. Fifty feet of rough grass to cross and then he would be at the wall.
He crouched at the edge of the cliff, waiting for the men to catch up.
Still no one had seen him from the walls. Tom Garrard dropped beside him.
"When we go, Tom, " Sharpe said, 'we run like bloody hell. Straight to the wall. Ladder up, climb like rats and jump over the bloody top.
Tell the lads to get over fast. Bastards on the other side are going to try and kill us before we can get reinforced, so we're going to need plenty of muskets to fend the buggers off."