Bernard Cornwell - 02 - Sharpe'S Triumph

Sharpe's Triumph [181-011-3.5]

By: Bernard Cornwell

Category: fiction historical

Synopsis:

India, 1803.

siege of Seringapatarh, and four years in which Sharpe seems to have

discovered the easiest billet in the British army. But that comfort is

rudely shattered when he witnesses a murderous act of treachery by an

English officer who has defected from the East India Company to join

the mercenary army of the Mahratta Confederation commanded by the

flamboyant Hanoverian, Anthony Pohlmann.

Sharpe is ordered to join the hunt for the renegade Englishman, a hunt

that will take him deep into the enemy's territory where he will face

temptations more subtle than he has ever dreamed of. And behind him,

relentlessly stalking him, comes his worst enemy, the baleful,

twitching Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill who is determined to break Sharpe

once and for all.

The paths of treachery all lead to the small village of Assaye where

Sir Arthur Wellesley, with a tiny British army, faces the Mahratta

horde. Outnumbered and outgunned, Wellesley decides to fight, and

Sergeant Richard Sharpe is plunged into the white heat of a battle that

will make Wellesley's reputation. It will make Sharpe's name too, but

only if he can survive the carnage and killing frenzy, for it is at

Assaye that he at last realizes his ambition and has a chance to seize

it.

?ckoned to b greatest achievement. It will delight the millions of

readers who have enjoyed Sharpe's.later adventures in the Peninsular

War and at Waterloo.



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

SHARPE'S BATTLE

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

1

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

BERNARD CORN WELL

HarperCollins/Publishers 77-85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London

W6 8JB Published by HarperCollinsPwAfaAeK 1998 Copyright (c) Bernard

Gornwell 1998 The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as

the author of this work A catalogue record for this book is available

from the British Library ISBN o oo 225630 4 Map by Ken Lewis Set in

Postscript Monotype Baskerville and Linotype Meridien by Rowland

Phototvpesetting Ltd, Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk Printed and bound in

Great Britain by Caledonian International Book Manufacturing Ltd,

2

reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form

or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or

otherwise, without the permission of the publishers.

Sharpens Triumph is for Joel Gardner, who walked Ahmednuggur and Assaye

with me

CHAPTER 1

It was not Sergeant Richard Sharpe's fault. He was not in charge. He

was junior to at least a dozen men, including a major, a captain, a sub

adar and two jemadars, yet he still felt responsible. He felt

responsible, angry, hot, bitter and scared. Blood crusted on his face

where a thousand flies crawled. There were even flies in his open

mouth.

But he dared not move.

The humid air stank of blood and of the rotted egg smell made by powder

smoke. The very last thing he remembered doing was thrusting his pack,

haversack and cartridge box into the glowing ashes of a fire, and now

the ammunition from the cartridge box exploded. Each blast of powder

fountained sparks and ashes into the hot air. A couple of men laughed

at the sight. They stopped to watch it for a few seconds, poked at the

nearby bodies with their muskets, then walked on.

Sharpe lay still. A fly crawled on his eyeball and he forced himself

to stay absolutely motionless. There was blood on his face and more

blood had puddled in his right ear, though it was drying now. He

blinked, fearing that the small motion would attract one of the

killers, but no one noticed.

Chasalgaon. That's where he was. Chasalgaon; a miserable, thorn

walled fort on the frontier of Hyderabad, and because the Rajah of

Hyderabad was a British ally the fort had been garrisoned by a hundred

sepoys of the East India Company and fifty mercenary horsemen from

Mysore, only when Sharpe arrived half the sepoys and all of the

horsemen had been out on patrol.

Sharpe had come from Seringapatam, leading a detail of six privates and

carrying a leather bag stuffed with rupees, and he had been greeted by

Major Crosby who commanded at Chasalgaon. The Major proved to be a

plump, red-faced, bilious man who disliked the heat and hated

Chasalgaon, and he had slumped in his canvas chair as he unfolded

Sharpe's orders. He read them, grunted, then read them again.

"Why the hell did they send you?" he finally asked.

"No one else to send, sir."

Crosby frowned at the order.

"Why not an officer?"

"No officers to spare, sir."

"Bloody responsible job for a sergeant, wouldn't you say?"

3

"Won't let you down, sir," Sharpe said woodenly, staring at the leprous

yellow of the tent's canvas a few inches above the Major's head.

"You'd bloody well better not let me down," Crosby said, pushing the

orders into a pile of damp papers on his camp table.

"And you look bloody young to be a sergeant."

"I was born late, sir," Sharpe said. He was twenty-six, or thought he

was, and most sergeants were much older.

Crosby, suspecting he was being mocked, stared up at Sharpe, but there

was nothing insolent on the Sergeant's face. A good-looking man,

Crosby thought sourly. Probably had the bibb is of Seringapatam

falling out of their saris, and Crosby, whose wife had died of the

fever ten years before and who consoled himself with a two-rupee

village whore every Thursday night, felt a pang of jealousy.

"And how the devil do you expect to get the ammunition back to

Seringapatam?" he demanded.

"Hire ox carts, sir." Sharpe had long perfected the way to address

unhelpful officers. He gave them precise answers, added nothing

unnecessary and always sounded confident.

"With what? Promises?"

"Money, sir." Sharpe tapped his haversack where he had the bag of

rupees.

"Christ, they trust you with money?"

Sharpe decided not to respond to that question, but just stared

impassively at the canvas. Chasalgaon, he decided, was not a happy

place. It was a small fort built on a bluff above a river that should

have been overflowing its banks, but the monsoon had failed and the

land was cruelly dry. The fort had no ditch, merely a wall made of

cactus thorn with a dozen wooden fighting platforms spaced about its

perimeter. Inside the wall was a beaten-earth parade ground where a

stripped tree served as a flagpole, and the parade ground was

surrounded by three mud-walled barracks thatched with palm, a cook

house tents for the officers and a stone-walled magazine to store the

garrison's ammunition. The sepoys had their families with them, so the

fort was overrun with women and children, but Sharpe had noted how

sullen they were. Crosby, he thought, was one of those crabbed

officers who were only happy when all about them were miserable.

"I suppose you expect me to arrange the ox carts?" Crosby said

indignantly.

"I'll do it myself, sir."

"Speak the language, do you?" Crosby sneered.

"A sergeant, banker and interpreter, are you?"

"Brought an interpreter with me, sir," Sharpe said. Which was over

egging the pudding a bit, because Davi Lal was only thirteen, an urchin

off the streets of Seringapatam. He was a smart, mischievous child

whom Sharpe had found stealing from the armoury cook house and, after

4

giving the starving boy a clout around both ears to teach him respect

for His Britannic Majesty's property, Sharpe had taken him to Lali's

house and given him a proper meal, and Lali had talked to the boy and

learned that his parents were dead, that he had no relatives he knew

of, and that he lived by his wits. He was also covered in lice.

"Get rid of him," she had advised Sharpe, but Sharpe had seen something

of his own childhood in Davi Lal and so he had dragged him down to the

River Cauvery and given him a decent scrubbing.

After that Davi Lal had become Sharpe's errand boy. He learned to pipe

clay belts, blackball boots and speak his own version of English which,

because it came from the lower ranks, was liable to shock the gentler

born.

"You'll need three carts," Crosby said.

"Yes, sir," Sharpe said.

"Thank you, sir." He had known exactly how many carts he would need,

but he also knew it was stupid to pretend to knowledge in the face of

officers like Crosby.

"Find your damn carts," Crosby snapped, 'then let me know when you're

ready to load up."

"Very good, sir. Thank you, sir." Sharpe stiffened to attention,

about turned and marched from the tent to find Davi Lal and the six

privates waiting in the shade of one of the barracks.

"We'll have dinner," Sharpe told them, 'then sort out some carts this

afternoon."

"What's for dinner?" Private Atkins asked.

"Whatever Davi can filch from the cook house Sharpe said, 'but be nippy

about it, all right? I want to be out of this damn place tomorrow

morning."

Their job was to fetch eighty thousand rounds of prime musket ii

cartridges that had been stolen from the East India Company armoury in

Madras. The cartridges were the best quality in India, and the thieves

who stole them knew exactly who would pay the highest price for the

ammunition. The princedoms of the Mahratta Confederation were forever

at war with each other or else raiding the neighbouring states, but

now, in the summer of 1803, they faced an imminent invasion by British

forces. The threatened invasion had brought two of the biggest

Mahratta rulers into an alliance that now gathered its forces to repel

the British, and those rulers had promised the thieves a king's ransom

in gold for the cartridges, but one of the thieves who had helped break

into the Madras armoury had refused to let his brother join the band

and share in the profit, and so the aggrieved brother had betrayed the

thieves to the Company's spies and, two weeks later, the caravan

carrying the cartridges across India had been ambushed by sepoys not

far from Chasalgaon. The thieves had died or fled, and the recaptured

ammunition had been brought back to the fort's small magazine for

safekeeping. Now the eighty thousand cartridges were to be taken to

the armoury at Seringapatam, three days to the south, from where they

would be issued to the British troops who were readying themselves for

the war against the Mahrattas. A simple job, and Sharpe, who had spent

5

the last four years as a sergeant in the Seringapatam armoury, had been

given the responsibility.

Spoilage, Sharpe was thinking while his men boiled a cauldron of I

river water on a bullock-dung fire. That was the key to the next few

days, spoilage. Say seven thousand cartridges lost to damp? No one in

Seringapatam would argue with that, and Sharpe reckoned he could sell

the seven thousand cartridges on to Vakil Hussein, so long, of course,

as there were eighty thousand cartridges to begin with. Still, Major

Crosby had not quibbled with the figure, but just as Sharpe was

thinking that, so Major Crosby appeared from his tent with a cocked hat

on his head and a sword at his side.

"On your feet!" Sharpe snapped at his lads as the Major headed towards

them.

"Thought you were finding ox carts?" Crosby snarled at Sharpe.

"Dinner first, sir."

"Your food, I hope, and not ours? We don't get rations to feed King's

troops here, Sergeant." Major Crosby was in the service of the East

India Company, and though he wore a red coat like the King's army,

there was little love lost between the two forces.

"Our food, sir," Sharpe said, gesturing at the cauldron in which rice j

and kid meat, both stolen from Crosby's stores, boiled.

"Carried it with us, sir."

A hamldar shouted from the fort gate, demanding Crosby's attention, but

the Major ignored the shout.

"I forgot to mention one thing, Sergeant."

"Sir?"

Crosby looked sheepish for a moment, then remembered he was talking to

a mere sergeant.

"Some of the cartridges were spoiled. Damp got to them."

"I'm sorry to hear that, sir," Sharpe said straight-faced.

"So I had to destroy them," Crosby said.

"Six or seven thousand as I remember."

"Spoilage, sir," Sharpe said.

"Happens all the time, sir."

"Exactly so," Crosby said, unable to hide his relief at Sharpe's easy

acceptance of his tale, 'exactly so," then he turned towards the

gate.

"Humidor?"

"Company troops approaching, sahibV "Where's Captain Leonard? Isn't he

officer of the day?" Crosby demanded. 6

"Here, sir, I'm here." A tall, gangling captain hurried from a tent,

tripped on a guy rope, recovered his hat, then headed for the gate.

Sharpe ran to catch up with Crosby who was also walking towards the

gate.

"You'll give me a note, sir?"

"A note? Why the devil should I give you a note?"

"Spoilage, sir," Sharpe said respectfully.

"I'll have to account for the cartridges, sir."

"Later," Crosby said, 'later."

"Yes, sir," Sharpe said.

"And sod you backwards, you miserable bastard," he added, though too

softly for Crosby to hear.

Captain Leonard clambered up to the platform beside the gate where

Crosby joined him. The Major took a telescope from his tail pocket and

slid the tubes open. The platform overlooked the small river that

should have been swollen by the seasonal rains into a flood, but the

failure of the monsoon had left only a trickle of water between the

flat grey rocks. Beyond the shrunken river, up on the skyline behind a

grove of trees, Crosby could see red-coated troops led by a European

officer mounted on a black horse, and his first thought was that it

must be Captain Roberts returning from patrol, but Roberts had a

piebald horse and, besides, he had only taken fifty sepoys whereas this

horse man led a company almost twice that size.

"Open the gate," Crosby ordered, and wondered who the devil it was. He

decided it was probably Captain Sullivan from the Company's post at

Milladar, another frontier fort like Chasalgaon, but what the hell was

Sullivan doing here? Maybe he was marching some new recruits to

toughen the bastards, not that the skinny little brutes needed any

toughening, but it was uncivil of Sullivan not to warn Crosby of his

coming.

"Jemadar," Crosby shouted, 'turn out the guard!"

"Sahibl' The Jemadar acknowledged the order. Other sepoys were

dragging the thorn gates open.

He'll want dinner, Crosby thought sourly, and wondered what his

servants were cooking for the midday meal. Kid, probably, in boiled

rice.

Well, Sullivan would just have to endure the stringy meat as a price

for not sending any warning, and damn the man if he expected Crosby to

feed his sepoys as well. Chasalgaon's cooks had not expected visitors

and would not have enough rations for a hundred more hungry sepoys.

"Is that Sullivan?" he asked Leonard, handing the Captain the

telescope.

Leonard stared for a long time at the approaching horseman.

7

"I've never met Sullivan," he finally said, "so I couldn't say."

Crosby snatched back the telescope.

"Give the bastard a salute when he arrives," Crosby ordered Leonard,

'then tell him he can join me for dinner." He paused.

"You too, he added grudgingly.

Crosby went back to his tent. It was better, he decided, to let

Leonard welcome the stranger, rather than look too eager himself. Damn

Sullivan, he thought, for not sending warning, though there was a

bright side, inasmuch as Sullivan might have brought news. The tall,

good-looking Sergeant from Seringapatam doubtless could have told

Crosby the latest rumours from Mysore, but it would be a chill day in

hell before Crosby sought news from a sergeant. But undoubtedly

something was changing in the wider world, for it had been nine weeks

since Crosby last saw a Mahratta raider, and that was decidedly odd.

The purpose of the fort at Chasalgaon was to keep the Mahratta horse

raiders out of the Rajah of Hyderabad's wealthy territory, and Crosby

fancied he had done his job well, but even so he found the absence of

any enemy marauders oddly worrying. What were the bastards up to? He

sat behind his table and shouted for his clerk. He would write the

damned armoury Sergeant a note explaining that the loss of seven

thousand cartridges was due to a leak in the stone roof of Chasalgaon's

magazine. He certainly could not admit that he had sold the ammunition

to a merchant.

"What the bastard did," Sharpe was saying to his men, 'was sell the

bloody stuff to some heathen bastard."

"That's what you were going to do, Sergeant," Private Phillips said.

"Never you bleeding mind what I was going to do," Sharpe said.

"Ain't that food ready?"

"Five minutes," Davi Lal promised.

"A bloody camel could do it faster," Sharpe grumbled, then hoisted his

pack and haversack.

"I'm going for a piss."

"He never goes anywhere without his bleeding pack," Atkins commented.

"Doesn't want you thieving his spare shirt," Phillips answered.

"He's got more than a shirt in that pack. Hiding something he is."

Atkins twisted round.

"Hey. Hedgehog!" They all called Davi Lal "Hedgehog' because his hair

stuck up in spikes; no matter how greasy it was or how short it was

cut, it still stuck up in unruly spikes.

"What does Sharpie keep in the pack?"

Davi Lal rolled his eyes. 8

"Jewels! Gold. Rubies, diamonds, emeralds, sapphires and pearls."

"Like sod he does."

Davi Lal laughed, then turned back to the cauldron. Out by the fort's

gate Captain Leonard was greeting the visitors. The guard presented

arms as the officer leading the sepoys rode through the gate. The

visitor returned the salute by touching a riding crop to the brim of

his cocked hat which, worn fore and aft, shadowed his face. He was a

tall man, uncommonly tall, and he wore his stirrups long so that he

looked much too big for his horse, which was a sorry, sway-backed beast

with a mangy hide, though there was nothing odd in that. Good horses

were a luxury in India, and most Company officers rode decrepit nags.

"Welcome to Chasalgaon, sir," Leonard said. He was not certain he

ought to call the stranger 'sir', for the man wore no visible badge of

rank on his red coat, but he carried himself like a senior officer and

he reacted to Leonard's greeting with a lordly nonchalance.

"You're invited to dine with us, sir," Leonard added, hurrying after

the horseman who, having tucked his riding crop under his belt, now led

his sepoys straight onto the parade ground. He stopped his horse under

the flagpole from which the British flag drooped in the windless air,

then waited as his company of red-coated sepoys divided into two units

of two ranks each that marched either side of the flagpole. Crosby

watched from inside his tent. It was a flamboyant entrance, the Major

decided.

"Halt!" the strange officer shouted when his company was in the very

centre of the fort. The sepoys halted.

"Outwards turn! Ground fire locks

Good morning!" He at last looked down at Captain Leonard.

"Are you Crosby?"

"No, sir. I'm Captain Leonard, sir. And you, sir?" The tall man

ignored the question. He scowled about Chasalgaon's fort as though he

disapproved of everything he saw. What the hell was this? Leonard

wondered. A surprise inspection?

"Shall I have your horse watered, sir?"

Leonard offered.

"In good time, Cartfain, all in good time," the mysterious officer

said, then he twisted in, his saddle and growled an order to his

company.

"Fix bayonets!" The sepoys pulled out their seventeen-inch blades and

slotted them onto the muzzles of their muskets.

"I like to offer a proper salute to a fellow Englishman," the tall man

explained to Leonard.

"You are English, aren't you?"

"Yes, sir." 9

"Too many damned Scots in the Company," the tall man grumbled.

"Have you ever noticed that, Leonard? Too many Scots and Irish. Glib

sorts of fellow, they are, but they ain't English. Not English at

all." The visitor drew his sword, then took a deep breath.

"Company!" he shouted.

"Level arms!"

The sepoys brought their muskets to their shoulders and Leonard saw,

much too late, that the guns were aimed at the troops of the

garrison.

"No!" he said, but not loudly, for he still did not believe what he

saw.

"Fire!" the officer shouted, and the parade ground air was murdered by

the double ripple of musket shots, heavy coughing explosions that

blossomed smoke across the sun-crazed mud and slammed lead balls into

the unsuspecting garrison.

"Hunt them now!" the tall officer called.

"Hunt them! Fast, fast, fast!"

He spurred his horse close to Captain Leonard and, almost casually,

slashed down with his sword, ripping the blade hard back once it had

bitten into the Captain's neck so that its edge sawed fast and deep

through the sinew, muscle and flesh.

"Hunt them! Hunt them!" the officer shouted as Leonard fell. He drew

a pistol from his saddle holster and rode towards the officers' tents.

His men were screaming their war cries as they spread through the small

fort to chase down every last sepoy of Chasalgaon's garrison. They had

been ordered to leave the women and children to the last and hunt down

the men first.

Crosby had been staring in horror and disbelief, and now, with shaking

hands, he started to load one of his pistols, but suddenly the door of

his tent darkened and he saw that the tall officer had dismounted from

his horse.

"Are you Crosby?" the officer demanded.

Crosby found he could not speak. His hands quivered. Sweat was

pouring down his face.

"Are you Crosby?" the man asked again in an irritated voice.

"Yes," Crosby managed to say.

"And who the devil are you?"

"Dodd," the tall man said, "Major William Dodd, at your service." And

Dodd raised his big pistol so that it pointed at Crosby's face.

"No!" Crosby shouted.

10

Bernard Cornwell - 02 - Sharpe'S Triumph

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