Bernard Cornwell - 03 - Sharpe'S Fortress

Sharpe's Fortress [181-011-4.2]

By: Bernard Cornwell

Category: fiction historical

Synopsis:

It is December, 1803, and Richard Sharpe is now an officer in Sir

Arthur Wellesley's army that is seeking to end the Mahratta War.

Sharpe, just risen from the ranks, discovers that his fellow-officials

are not welcoming.

Unsure of his authority and uncomfortable in the mess, he is failing,

and his failure seems assured When he is relegated to a tedious jop in

the baggage train.

There Sharpe discovers a treason has been conjured up by his oldest and

worst enemy, Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill, but in uncovering this Sharpe

finds himself alone and under dreadful threat. He falls back on his

fighting ability to regain his confidence and his treasure, the jewels

of the Tippoo Sultan, which have been stolen from him.

The search for revenge on the men who robbed him takes him to

Gawilghur, the fortress in the sky, the last refuge of a desperate

enemy. Gawilghur has never fallen to assault, and bolstering its de

fences is the renegade Englishman, William Dodd, who escaped from

Sharpe in Sharpe's Triumph. The fortress, poised high above the

Deccan Plain, seems impregnable, and contains a trap for its attackers.

Dodd is confident that no redcoat can reach him, but Sharpe is

desperate and so he joins Wellesley's troops as they surge across the

neck of land that leads to the breaches. There, in the horror of

Gawilghur's ravine, dominated by walls and guns, he will fight as he

has never fought before.

Sharpe's Fortress completes the story of Sharpe in India, following

Ensign Sharpe from the heat-baked battle of Argaum to the carnage at

Gawilghur. It is a stunning successor to Sharpe's Tiger and Sharpe's

Triumph, and leaves Richard Sharp poised to return to Europe apd to

new, even more lethal, enemies.



By the same author The Sharpe novels (in chronological order)

SHARPE'S TIGER

Richard Sharpe and the Siege of Senngapatam, 1799

SHARPE'S RIFLES

Richard Sharpe and the French Invasion of Galicia, "January 1809

SHARPF'S EAGLE

Richard Sharpe and the Talavna Campaign, July 1809

SHARPE'S GOLD

Richard Sharpe and the Destruction ofAlmeida, August 1810

1

SHARPE'S BATTLE

Richard Sharpe and the Battle of Fuentes de Onoro, May 1811

SHARPE'S COMPANY

Richard Sharpe and the Siege of Badajoz.

January to April 1812

SHARPE'S SWORD

Richard Sharpe and the Salamanca Campaign, June and July 1812

SHARPE'S ENEMY

Richard Sharpe and the Defence of Portugal, Christmas 1812

SHARPE'S HONOUR

Richard Sharpe and the lritona Campaign, February to June 1813

SHARPE'S REGIMENT

Richard Sharpe and the Invasion of France, June to November 1813

SHARPE'S SIEGE

Richard Sharpe and the Winter Campaign, 1814

SHARPE'S REVENGE

Richard Sharpe and the Peace of 1814

SHARPE'S WATERLOO

Richard Sharpe and the Waterloo Campaign, 75 June to 18 June 1815

SHARPE'S DEVIL

Richard Sharpe and the Emperor, 1820 -21

The Starbuck Chronicles

REBEL

COPPERHEAD

BATTLE FLAG

THE BLOODY GROUND

SHARPE'S TRIUMPH

Richard Sharpe and the Battle of Assaye, September 1803

HarperColVmsPuhhshers

Harper Collins Publishers 77 - 85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith,

London w6 SJB www.fireandwater.com Published by HarperCollins Publish

1999 Copyright (c) Bernard Cornwell 1999 The Author asserts the moral

right to be identified as the author of this work A catalogue record

2

for this book is available from the British Library ISBN o oo 225930 3

Maps by Ken Lewis Set in Postscript Monotype Baskerville and Linotype

Meridien by Rowland Phototypesetting Ltd, Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Caledonian International Book

publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or

transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,

photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of

the publishers.

Sharpens Fortress is for Christine Clarke, with many thanks

CHAPTER 1

Richard Sharpe wanted to be a good officer. He truly did. He wanted

it above all other things, but somehow it was just too difficult, like

trying to light a tinderbox in a rain-filled wind. Either the men

disliked him, or they ignored him, or they were over-familiar and he

was unsure how to cope with any of the three attitudes, while the

battalion's other officers plain disapproved of him. You can put a

racing saddle on a cart horse Captain Urquhart had said one night in

the ragged tent which passed for the officers' mess, but that don't

make the beast quick. He had not been talking about Sharpe, not

directly, but all the other officers glanced at him.

The battalion had stopped in the middle of nowhere. It was hot as hell

and no wind alleviated the sodden heat. They were surrounded by tall

crops that hid everything except the sky. A cannon fired somewhere to

the north, but Sharpe had no way of knowing whether it was a British

gun or an enemy cannon.

A dry ditch ran through the tall crops and the men of the company sat

on the ditch lip as they waited for orders. One or two lay back and

slept with their mouths wide open while Sergeant Colquhoun leafed

though his tattered Bible. The Sergeant was short-sighted, so had to

hold the book very close to his nose from which drops of sweat fell

onto the pages. Usually the Sergeant read quietly, mouthing the words

and sometimes frowning when he came across a difficult name, but today

he was just slowly turning the pages with a wetted finger.

"Looking for inspiration, Sergeant?" Sharpe asked.

"I am not, sir," Colquhoun answered respectfully, but somehow managed

to convey that the question was still impertinent. He dabbed a finger

on his tongue and carefully turned another page.

So much for that bloody conversation, Sharpe thought. Somewhere ahead,

beyond the tall plants that grew higher than a man, another cannon

fired. The discharge was muffled by the thick stems. A horse neighed,

but Sharpe could not see the beast. He could see nothing through the

high crops.

"Are you going to read us a story, Sergeant?" Corporal McCallum asked.

He spoke in English instead of Gaelic, which meant that he wanted

Sharpe to hear.

"I am not, John. I am not."

"Go on, Sergeant," McCallum said.

3

"Read us one of those dirty tales about tits."

The men laughed, glancing at Sharpe to see if he was offended.

One of the sleeping men jerked awake and looked about him, startled,

then muttered a curse, slapped at a fly and lay back. The other

soldiers of the company dangled their boots towards the ditch's crazed

mud bed that was decorated with a filigree of dried green scum. A dead

lizard lay in one of the dry fissures. Sharpe wondered how the carrion

birds had missed it.

"The laughter of fools, John McCallum," Sergeant Colquhoun said, 'is

like the crackling of thorns under the pot."

"Away with you, Sergeant!" McCallum said.

"I heard it in the kirk once, when I was a wee kid, all about a woman

whose tits were like bunches of grapes." McCallum twisted to look at

Sharpe.

"Have you ever seen tits like grapes, Mister Sharpe?"

"I never met your mother, Corporal," Sharpe said.

The men laughed again. McCallum scowled. Sergeant Colquhoun lowered

his Bible and peered at the Corporal.

"The Song of Solomon, John McCallum," Colquhoun said, 'likens a woman's

bosom to clusters of grapes, and I have no doubt it refers to the

garments that modest women wore in the Holy Land. Perhaps their

bodices possessed balls of knotted wool as decoration? I cannot see it

is a matter for your merriment." Another cannon fired, and this time a

round shot whipped through the tall plants close to the ditch. The

stems twitched violently, discharging a cloud of dust and small birds

into the cloudless sky. The birds flew about in panic for a few

seconds, then returned to the swaying seed heads

"I knew a woman who had lumpy tits," Private Hollister said. He was a

dark-jawed, violent man who spoke rarely.

"Lumpy like a coal sack, they were." He frowned at the memory, then

shook his head.

"She died."

"This conversation is not seemly," Colquhoun said quietly, and the men

shrugged and fell silent.

Sharpe wanted to ask the Sergeant about the clusters of grapes, but he

knew such an enquiry would only cause ribaldry among the men and, as an

officer, Sharpe could not risk being made to look a fool. All the

same, it sounded odd to him. Why would anyone say a woman had tits

like a bunch of grapes? Grapes made him think of grapeshot and he

wondered if the bastards up ahead were equipped with canister. Well,

of course they were, but there was no point in wasting canister on a

field of bulrushes. Were they bulrushes? It seemed a strange thing

for a farmer to grow, but India was full of oddities. There were naked

sods who claimed to be holy men, snake-charmers who whistled up hooded

horrors, dancing bears draped in tinkling bells, and contortionists

draped in bugger all, a right bloody circus. And the clowns ahead

4

would have canister. They would wait till they saw the redcoats, then

load up the tin cans that burst like duck shot from the gun barrels.

For what we are about to receive among the bulrushes, Sharpe thought,

may the Lord make us truly thankful.

"I've found it," Colquhoun said gravely.

"Found what?" Sharpe asked.

"I was fairly sure in my mind, sir, that the good book mentioned

millet. And so it does. Ezekiel, the fourth chapter and the ninth

verse."

The Sergeant held the book close to his eyes, squinting at the text. He

had a round face, afflicted with wens, like a suet pudding studded with

currants. '"Take thou also unto thee wheat, and barley," he read

laboriously, '"and beans, and lentils, and millet, and fitches, and put

them in one vessel, and make thee bread thereof" Colquhoun carefully

closed his Bible, wrapped it in a scrap of tarred canvas and stowed it

in his pouch.

"It pleases me, sir," he explained, 'if I can find everyday things in

the scriptures. I like to see things, sir, and imagine my Lord and

Saviour seeing the selfsame things."

"But why millet?" Sharpe asked.

"These crops, sir," Colquhoun said, pointing to the tall stems that

surrounded them, 'are millet. The natives call itjowari, but our name

is millet." He cuffed the sweat from his face with his sleeve. The

red dye of his coat had faded to a dull purple.

"This, of course," he went on, 'is pearl millet, but I doubt the

scriptures mention pearl millet. Not specifically."

"Millet, eh?" Sharpe said. So the tall plants were not bulrushes,

after all. They looked like bulrushes, except they were taller. Nine

or ten feet high.

"Must be a bastard to harvest," he said, but got no response.

Sergeant Colquhoun always tried to ignore swear words.

"What are fitches?" McCallum asked.

"A crop grown in the Holy Land," Colquhoun answered. He plainly did

not know.

"Sounds like a disease, Sergeant," McCallum said.

"A bad dose of the fitches. Leads to a course of mercury." One or two

men sniggered at the reference to syphilis, but Colquhoun ignored the

levity.

"Do you grow millet in Scotland?" Sharpe asked the Sergeant.

"Not that I am aware of, sir," Colquhoun said ponderously, after

reflecting on the question for a few seconds, 'though I daresay it

might be found in the Lowlands. They grow strange things there.

English things." 5

He turned pointedly away.

And sod you too, Sharpe thought. And where the hell was Captain

Urquhart? Where the hell was anybody for that matter? The battalion

had marched long before dawn, and at midday they had expected to make

camp, but then came a rumour that the enemy was waiting ahead and so

General Sir Arthur Wellesley had ordered the baggage to be piled and

the advance to continue. The King's 74th had plunged into the millet,

then ten minutes later the battalion was ordered to halt beside the dry

ditch while Captain Urquhart rode ahead to speak with the battalion

commander, and Sharpe had been left to sweat and wait with the

company.

Where he had damn all to do except sweat. Damn all. It was a good

company, and it did not need Sharpe. Urquhart ran it well, Colquhoun

was a magnificent sergeant, the men were as content as soldiers ever

were, and the last thing the company needed was a brand new officer, an

Englishman at that, who, just two months before, had been a sergeant.

The men were talking in Gaelic and Sharpe, as ever, wondered if they

were discussing him. Probably not. Most likely they were talking

about the dancing girls in Ferdapoor, where there had been no mere

clusters of grapes, but bloody great naked melons. It had been some

sort of festival and the battalion had marched one way and the

half-naked girls had writhed in the opposite direction and Sergeant

Colquhoun had blushed as scarlet as an unfaded coat and shouted at the

men to keep their eyes front. Which had been a pointless order, when a

score of undressed bibb is were hobbling down the highway with silver

bells tied to their wrists and even the officers were staring at them

like starving men seeing a plate of roast beef. And if the men were

not discussing women, they were probably grumbling about all the

marching they had done in the last weeks, crisscrossing the Mahratta

countryside under a blazing sun without a sight or smell of the enemy.

But whatever they were talking about they were making damn sure that

Ensign Richard Sharpe was left out.

Which was fair enough, Sharpe reckoned. He had marched in the ranks

long enough to know that you did not talk to officers, not unless you

were spoken to or unless you were a slick-bellied crawling bastard

looking for favours. Officers were different, except Sharpe did not

feel different. He just felt excluded. I should have stayed a

sergeant, he thought. He had increasingly thought that in the last few

weeks, wishing he was back in the Seringapatam armoury with Major

Stokes. That had been the life! And Simone Joubert, the Frenchwoman

who had clung to Sharpe after the battle at Assaye, had gone back to

Seringapatam to wait for him. Better to be there as a sergeant, he

reckoned, than here as an unwanted officer.

No guns had fired for a while. Perhaps the enemy had packed up and

gone? Perhaps they had hitched their painted cannon to their ox teams,

stowed the canister in its limbers and buggered off northwards? In

which case it would be a quick about-turn, back to the village where

the baggage was stored, then another awkward evening in the officers'

mess.

Lieutenant Cahill would watch Sharpe like a hawk, adding tuppence to

Sharpe's mess bill for every glass of wine, and Sharpe, as the junior

officer, would have to propose the loyal toast and pretend not to see

when half the bastards wafted their mugs over their canteens. King

6

over the water. Toasting a dead Stuart pretender to the throne who had

died in Roman exile. Jacobites who pretended George III was not the

proper King. Not that any of them were truly disloyal, and the secret

gesture of passing the wine over the water was not even a real secret,

but rather was intended to goad Sharpe into English indignation. Except

Sharpe did not give a fig. Old King Cole could have been King of

Britain for all Sharpe cared.

Colquhoun suddenly barked orders in Gaelic and the men picked up their

muskets, jumped into the irrigation ditch where they formed '3

into four ranks and began trudging northwards. Sharpe, taken by

surprise, meekly followed. He supposed he should have asked Colquhoun

what was happening, but he did not like to display ignorance, and then

he saw that the rest of the battalion was also marching, so plainly

Colquhoun had decided number six company should advance as well.

The Sergeant had made no pretence of asking Sharpe for permission to

move. Why should he? Even if Sharpe did give an order the men

automatically looked for Colquhoun's nod before they obeyed. That was

how the company worked; Urquhart commanded, Colquhoun came next, and

Ensign Sharpe tagged along like one of the scruffy dogs adopted by the

men.

Captain Urquhart spurred his horse back down the ditch.

"Well done, Sergeant," he told Colquhoun, who ignored the praise. The

Captain turned the horse, its hooves breaking through the ditch's crust

to churn up clots of dried mud.

"The rascals are waiting ahead," Urquhart told Sharpe.

"I thought they might have gone," Sharpe said.

"They're formed and ready," Urquhart said, 'formed and ready." ', The

Captain was a fine-looking man with a stern face, straight back | and

steady nerve. The men trusted him. In other days Sharpe would have

been proud to serve a man like Urquhart, but the Captain seemed

irritated by Sharpe's presence.

"We'll be wheeling to the right soon," Urquhart called to Colquhoun,

'forming line on the right in two ranks."

"Aye, sir."

Urquhart glanced up at the sky.

"Three hours of daylight left?" he guessed.

"Enough to do the job. You'll take the left files, Ensign."

' "Yes, sir," Sharpe said, and knew that he would have nothing to do

there. The men understood their duty, the corporals would close the

files and Sharpe would simply walk behind them like a dog tied to a

cart.

" There was a sudden crash of guns as a whole battery of enemy cannon

opened fire. Sharpe heard the round shots whipping through the millet,

but none of the missiles came near the 74th. The battalion's pipers

had started playing and the men picked up their feet and hefted their

7

muskets in preparation for the grim work ahead. Two more guns fired,

and this time Sharpe saw a wisp of smoke above the seed heads and he

knew that a shell had gone overhead. The smoke trail from the burning

fuse wavered in the windless heat as Sharpe waited for the explosion,

but none sounded.

"Cut his fuse too long," Urquhart said. His horse was nervous, or

perhaps it disliked the treacherous footing in the bottom of the

ditch.

Urquhart spurred the horse up the bank where it trampled the millet.

"What is this stuff?" he asked Sharpe.

"Maize?"

"Colquhoun says it's millet," Sharpe said, 'pearl millet."

Urquhart grunted, then kicked his horse on towards the front of the

company. Sharpe cuffed sweat from his eyes. He wore an officer's red

tail coat with the white facings of the 74th. The coat had belonged to

a Lieutenant Blaine who had died at Assaye and Sharpe had purchased the

coat for a shilling in the auction of dead officers' effects, then he

had clumsily sewn up the bullet hole in the left breast, but no amount

of scrubbing had rid the coat of Blaine's blood which stained the faded

red weave black. He wore his old trousers, the ones issued to him when

he was a sergeant, red leather riding boots that he had taken from an

Arab corpse in Ahmednuggur, and a tasselled red officer's sash that he

had pulled off a corpse at Assaye. For a sword he wore a light cavalry

sabre, the same weapon he had used to save Wellesley's life at the

battle of Assaye. He did not like the sabre much. It was clumsy, and

the curved blade was never where you thought it was. You struck with

the sword, and just when you thought it would bite home, you found that

the blade still had six inches to travel. The other officers carried

claymores, big, straight-bladed, heavy and lethal, and Sharpe should

have equipped himself with one, but he had baulked at the auction

prices.

He could have bought every claymore in the auction if he had wished,

but he had not wanted to give the impression of being wealthy. Which

he was. But a man like Sharpe was not supposed to have money. He was

up from the ranks, a common soldier, gutter-born and gutter-bred, but

he had hacked down a half-dozen men to save Wellesley's life and the

General had rewarded Sergeant Sharpe by making him into an officer, and

Ensign Sharpe was too canny to let his new battalion know that he

possessed a king's fortune. A dead king's fortune: the jewels he had

taken from the Tippoo Sultan in the blood and smoke-stinking Water Gate

at Seringapatam.

Would he be more popular if it was known he was rich? He doubted it.

Wealth did not give respectability, not unless it was inherited.

Besides, it was not poverty that excluded Sharpe from both the

officers' mess and the ranks alike, but rather that he was a stranger.

The 74th had taken a beating at Assaye. Not an officer had been left

unwounded, and companies that had paraded seventy or eighty strong

before the battle now had only forty to fifty men. The battalion had

been ripped through hell and back, and its survivors now clung to each

other. Sharpe might have been at Assaye, he might even have

distinguished himself on the battlefield, but he had not been through

8

the murderous ordeal of the 74th and so he was an outsider.

"Line to the right!" Sergeant Colquhoun shouted, and the company

wheeled right and shook itself into a line of two ranks. The ditch had

emerged from the millet to join a wide, dry riverbed, and Sharpe looked

northwards to see a rill of dirty white gunsmoke on the horizon.

Mahratta guns. But a long way away. Now that the battalion was free

of the tall crops Sharpe could just detect a small wind. It was not

strong enough to cool the heat, but it would waft the gunsmoke slowly

away.

"Halt!" Urquhart called.

"Face front!"

The enemy cannon might be far off, but it seemed that the battalion

would march straight up the riverbed into the mouths of those guns. But

at least the 74th was not alone. The 78th, another Highland battalion,

was on their right, and on either side of those two Scottish battalions

were long lines of Madrassi sepoys.

Urquhart rode back to Sharpe.

"Stevenson's joined." The Captain spoke loud enough for the rest of

the company to hear. Urquhart was encouraging them by letting them

know that the two small British armies had combined. General Wellesley

commanded both, but for most of the time he split his forces into two

parts, the smaller under Colonel Stevenson, but today the two small

parts had combined so that twelve thousand infantry could attack

together. But against how many?

Sharpe could not see the Mahratta army beyond their guns, but doubtless

the bastards were there in force.

"Which means the 94th's off to our left somewhere," Urquhart added

loudly, and some of the men muttered their approval of the news. The

94th was another Scottish regiment, so today there were three Scottish

battalions attacking the Mahrattas. Three Scottish and ten sepoy

battalions, and most of the Scots reckoned that they could have done

the job by themselves. Sharpe reckoned they could too. They may not

have liked him much, but he knew they were good soldiers. Tough

bastards. He sometimes tried to imagine what it must be like for the

Mahrattas to fight against the Scots. Hell, he guessed. Absolute

hell.

"The thing is," Colonel McCandless had once told Sharpe, 'it takes

twice as much to kill a Scot as it does to finish off an Englishman."

Poor McCandless. He had been finished off, shot in the dying moments

of Assaye. Any of the enemy might have killed the Colonel, but Sharpe

had convinced himself that the traitorous Englishman, William Dodd, had

fired the fatal shot. And Dodd was still free, still fighting for the

Mahrattas, and Sharpe had sworn over McCandless's grave that he would

take vengeance on the Scotsman's behalf. He had made the oath as he

had dug the Colonel's grave, getting blisters as he had hacked into the

dry soil. McCandless had been a good friend to Sharpe and now, with

the Colonel deep buried so that no bird or beast could feast on his

corpse, Sharpe felt friendless in this army.

"Guns!" A shout sounded behind the 74th. 9

"Make way!"

Two batteries of six-pounder galloper guns were being hauled up the dry

riverbed to form an artillery line ahead of the infantry. The guns

were called gallopers because they were light and were usually hauled

by horses, but now they were all harnessed to teams of ten oxen so they

plodded rather than galloped. The oxen had painted horns and some had

bells about their necks. The heavy guns were all back on the road

somewhere, so far back that they would probably be too late to join

this day's party.

The land was more open now. There were a few patches of tall millet

ahead, but off to the east there were arable fields and Sharpe watched

as the guns headed for that dry grassland. The enemy was watching too,

and the first round shots bounced on the grass and ricocheted over the

British guns.

"A few minutes before the gunners bother themselves with us, I fancy,"

Urquhart said, then kicked his right foot out of its stirrup and slid

down beside Sharpe.

"Jock!" He called a soldier.

"Hold onto my horse, will you?" The soldier led the horse off to a

patch of grass, and Urquhart jerked his head, inviting Sharpe to follow

him out of the company's earshot. The Captain seemed embarrassed, as

was Sharpe, who was not accustomed to such intimacy with Urquhart.

"D'you use a cigar, Sharpe?"

the Captain asked.

"Sometimes, sir."

"Here." Urquhart offered Sharpe a roughly rolled cigar, then struck a

light in his tinderbox. He lit his own cigar first, then held the box

with its flickering flame to Sharpe.

"The Major tells me a new draft has arrived in Madras."

"That's good, sir."

"It won't restore our strength, of course, but it'll help," Urquhart

said.

He was not looking at Sharpe, but staring at the British guns that

steadily advanced across the grassland. There were only a dozen of the

cannon, far fewer than the Mahratta guns. A shell exploded by one of

the ox teams, blasting the beasts with smoke and scraps of turf, and

Sharpe expected to see the gun stop as the dying beasts tangled the

traces, but the oxen trudged on, miraculously unhurt by the shell's

violence.

"If they advance too far," Urquhart murmured, 'they'll become so much

scrap metal. Are you happy here, Sharpe?"

"Happy, sir?" Sharpe was taken aback by the sudden question.

Urquhart frowned as if he found Sharpe's response unhelpful.

10

Bernard Cornwell - 03 - Sharpe'S Fortress

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