Sharpe’s Fortress: The Siege of Gawilghur, December 1803

The clerk shrugged. ‘The Captain tells me. Or the Sergeant tells me.’

‘The Sergeant?’

‘He isn’t here,’ the clerk said. ‘He’s bringing a convoy of oxen north.’

‘What’s the Sergeant’s name?’ Sharpe asked, for he could find no record in the ledger.

‘Hakeswill,’ the cavalry Sergeant said laconically. ‘He’s the bugger we usually deal with, on account of Captain Torrance always being ill.’

‘Bloody hell,’ Sharpe said, and pushed the chair back. Hakeswill! Obadiah bloody Hakeswill! ‘Why wasn’t he sent back to his regiment?’ Sharpe asked. ‘He isn’t supposed to be here at all!’

‘He knows the system,’ the clerk explained. ‘Captain Torrance wanted him to stay, sahib.’

And no bloody wonder, Sharpe thought. Hakeswill had worked himself into the army’s most profitable billet! He was milking the cow, but making sure it was the clerk’s handwriting in the ledger. No flies on Obadiah. ‘How does the system work?’ he asked the clerk.

‘Chitties,’ the clerk said.

‘Chitties?’

‘An ox driver is given a chitty, sahib, and when he has delivered his load the chitty is signed and brought here. Then he is paid. No chitty, no money. It is the rule, sahib. No chitty, no money.’

‘And no bloody horseshoes either,’ put in the lean Sergeant of the 19th.

‘And Sergeant Hakeswill pays the money?’ Sharpe asked.

‘If he is here, sahib,’ the clerk said.

‘That doesn’t get me my damned horseshoes,’ the Company Lieutenant protested.

‘Or my buckets,’ the gunner put in.

‘The bhinjarries have all the essentials,’ the clerk insisted. He made shooing gestures. ‘Go and see the bhinjarries! They have necessaries! This office is closed till tomorrow.’

‘But where did the bhinjarries get their necessaries, eh? Answer me that?’ Sharpe demanded, but the clerk merely shrugged. The bhinjarries were merchants who travelled with the army, contributing their own vast herds of pack oxen and carts. They sold food, liquor, women and luxuries, and now, it seemed, they were offering military supplies as well, which meant that the army would be paying for things that were normally issued free, and doubtless, if bloody Hakeswill had a finger in the pot, things which had been stolen from the army in the first place. ‘Where do I go for horseshoes?’ Sharpe asked the clerk.

The clerk was reluctant to answer, but he finally spread his hands and suggested Sharpe ask in the merchants’ encampment. ‘Someone will tell you, sahib.’

‘You tell me,’ Sharpe said.

‘I don’t know!’

‘So how do you know they have horseshoes?’

‘I hear these things!’ the clerk protested.

Sharpe stood and bullied the clerk back against the wall. ‘You do more than hear things,’ he said, leaning his forearm against the clerk’s neck, ‘you know things. So you bloody well tell me, or I’ll have my Arab boy chop off your goolies for his breakfast. He’s a hungry little bugger.’

The clerk fought for breath against the pressure of Sharpe’s arm. ‘Naig.’ He offered the name plaintively when Sharpe relaxed his arm.

‘Naig?’ Sharpe asked. The name rang a distant bell. A long-ago bell. Naig? Then he remembered a merchant of that name who had followed the army to Seringapatam. ‘Naig?’ Sharpe asked again. ‘A fellow with green tents?’

‘The very one, sahib.’ The clerk nodded. ‘But I did not tell you this thing! These gentlemen are witnesses, I did not tell you!’

‘He runs a brothel!’ Sharpe said, remembering, and he remembered too how Naig had been a friend to Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill four years before. Sharpe had been a private then and Hakeswill had trumped up charges that had fetched Sharpe a flogging. ‘Nasty Naig’ had been the man’s nickname, and back then he had sold pale-skinned whores who travelled in green-curtained wagons. ‘Right!’ Sharpe said. ‘This office is closed!’ The gunner protested and the cavalry Sergeant looked disappointed. ‘We’re going to see Naig,’ Sharpe announced.

‘No!’ the clerk said too loud.

‘No?’ Sharpe asked.

‘He will be angry, sahib.’

‘Why should he be angry?’ Sharpe demanded. ‘I’m a customer, ain’t I? He’s got horseshoes, and we want horseshoes. He should be delighted to see us.’

‘He must be treated with respect, sahib,’ the clerk said nervously. ‘He is a powerful man, Naig. You have money for him?’

‘I just want to look at his horseshoes,’ Sharpe said, ‘and if they’re army issue then I’ll ram one of them down his bloody throat.’

The clerk shook his head. ‘He has guards, sahib. He has jettis!’

‘I think I might let you go on your own,’ the East India Company Lieutenant said, backing away.

‘Jettis?’ The light dragoon Sergeant asked.

‘Strongmen,’ Sharpe explained. ‘Big buggers who kill you by wringing your neck like a chicken.’ He turned back to the clerk. ‘Where did Naig get his jettis? From Seringapatam?’

‘Yes, sahib.’

‘I killed enough of the buggers,’ Sharpe said, ‘so I don’t mind killing a few more. Are you coming?’ he asked the cavalry Sergeant.

‘Why not?’ The man grinned.

‘Anyone else?’ Sharpe asked, but no one else seemed to want a fight that afternoon.

‘Please, sahib,’ the clerk said weakly.

Sharpe ignored him and, followed by Ahmed and the cavalryman, went back into the sunlight. ‘What’s your name?’ Sharpe asked the Sergeant.

‘Lockhart, sir. Eli Lockhart.’

‘I’m Dick Sharpe, Eli, and you don’t have to call me “sir”, I’m not a proper bleeding officer. I was made up at Assaye, and I wish the buggers had left me a sergeant now. They sent me to be a bloody bullock driver, because I’m not fit for anything else.’ He looked at Lockhart’s six troopers who were still waiting. ‘What are they doing here?’

‘Didn’t expect me to carry the bloody horseshoes myself, did you?’ Lockhart said, then gestured at the troopers. ‘Come on, boys. We’re going to have a scrap.’

‘Who said anything about a scrap?’ Sharpe asked.

‘He’s got horseshoes,’ Lockhart explained, ‘but we don’t have money. So there’s only one way to get them off him.’

‘True,’ Sharpe said, and grinned.