Sharpe’s Triumph: The Battle of Assaye, September 1803

‘You see the world from a horse’s back,’ the dragoon said, ‘and catch women’s eyes.’

‘So they’re not entirely useless,’ Sharpe said and the orderly grinned. He was a happy, round-faced young man with tousled brown hair and a ready smile. ‘How come you’re the General’s orderly?’ Sharpe asked him.

The dragoon shrugged. ‘He asked my Colonel to give him someone and I was chosen.’

‘You don’t mind?’

‘He’s all right,’ the orderly said, jerking his head towards Wellesley’s tent. ‘Don’t crack a smile often, leastwise not with the likes of you and me, but he’s a fair man.’

‘Good for him.’ Sharpe stuck out his bloodied hand. ‘My name’s Dick Sharpe.’

‘Daniel Fletcher,’ the orderly said, ‘from Stoke Poges.’

‘Never heard of it,’ Sharpe said. ‘Where can I get a scrub?’

‘Cook tent, Sergeant.’

‘And riding boots?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Find a dead man in Ahmednuggur,’ Fletcher said. ‘It’ll be cheaper than buying them off me.’

‘That’s true,’ Sharpe said, then he limped to the cook tent. The limp was caused by the sore muscles from long hours in the saddle. He had purchased a length of cotton cloth in the village where they had spent the night, then torn the cloth into strips that he had wrapped about his calves to protect them from the stirrup leathers, but his calves still hurt. God, he thought, but he hated bloody horses.

He washed the worst of Diomed’s blood from his hands and face, diluted what was on his uniform, then went back to wait for McCandless. Sevajee’s men still sat on their horses and stared at the distant city that was topped by a smear of smoke. Sharpe could hear the murmur of voices inside the General’s tent, but he paid no attention. It wasn’t his business. He wondered if he could scrounge a tent for his own use, for it had already rained earlier in the day and Sharpe suspected it might rain again, but Colonel McCandless was not a man much given to tents. He derided them as women’s luxuries, preferring to seek shelter with local villagers or, if no peasant house or cattle byre was available, happily sleeping beneath the stars or in the rain. A pint of rum, Sharpe thought, would not go amiss either.

‘Sergeant Sharpe!’ Wellesley’s familiar voice broke into his thoughts and Sharpe turned to see his old commanding officer coming from the big tent.

‘Sir!’ Sharpe stiffened to attention.

‘So Colonel McCandless has borrowed you from Major Stokes?’ Wellesley asked.

‘Yes, sir,’ Sharpe said. The General was bareheaded and Sharpe saw that his temples had turned prematurely grey. He seemed to have forgotten Sharpe’s handiwork with his horse, for his long-nosed face was as unfriendly as ever.

‘And you saw this man Dodd at Chasalgaon?’

‘I did, sir.’

‘Repugnant business,’ Wellesley said, ‘repugnant. Did he kill the wounded?’

‘All of them, sir. All but me.’

‘And why not you?’ Wellesley asked coldly.

‘I was covered in blood, sir. Fair drenched in it.’

‘You seem to be in that condition much of the time, Sergeant,’ Wellesley said with just a hint of a smile, then he turned back to McCandless. ‘I wish you joy of the hunt, Colonel. I’ll do my best to help you, but I’m short of men, woefully short.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ the Scotsman said, then watched as the General went back into his big tent which was crammed with red-coated officers. ‘It seems,’ McCandless said to Sharpe when the General was gone, ‘that we’re not invited to supper.’

‘Were you expecting to be, sir?’

‘No,’ McCandless said, ‘and I’ve no business in that tent tonight either. They’re planning an assault for first light tomorrow.’

Sharpe thought for a moment that he must have misheard. He looked northwards at the big city wall. ‘Tomorrow, sir? An assault? But they only got here today and there isn’t a breach!’

‘You don’t need a breach for an escalade, Sergeant,’ McCandless said. ‘An escalade is nothing but ladders and murder.’

Sharpe frowned. ‘Escalade?’ He had heard the word, but was not really sure he knew what it meant.

‘March straight up to the wall, Sharpe, throw your ladders against the ramparts and climb.’ McCandless shook his head. ‘No artillery to help you, no breach, no trenches to get you close, so you must accept the casualties and fight your way through the defenders. It isn’t pretty, Sharpe, but it can work.’ The Scotsman still sounded disapproving. He was leading Sharpe away from the General’s tent, seeking a place to spread his blanket. Sevajee and his men were following, and Sevajee was walking close enough to listen to McCandless’s words. ‘Escalades can work well against an unsteady enemy,’ the Colonel went on, ‘but I’m not at all convinced the Mahrattas are shaky. I doubt they’re shaky at all, Sharpe. They’re dangerous as snakes and they usually have Arab mercenaries in their ranks.’

‘Arabs, sir? From Arabia?’

‘That’s where they usually come from,’ McCandless confirmed. ‘Nasty fighters, Sharpe.’

‘Good fighters,’ Sevajee intervened. ‘We hire hundreds of them every year. Hungry men, Sergeant, who come from their bare land with sharp swords and long muskets.’

‘Doesn’t serve to underestimate an Arab,’ McCandless agreed. ‘They fight like demons, but Wellesley’s an impatient man and he wants the business over. He insists they won’t be expecting an escalade and thus won’t be ready for one, and I pray to God he’s right.’

‘So what do we do, sir?’ Sharpe asked.

‘We go in behind the assault, Sharpe, and beseech Almighty God that our ladder parties do get into the city. And once we’re inside we hunt for Dodd. That’s our job.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Sharpe said.

‘And once we have the traitor we take him to Madras, put him on trial and have him hanged,’ McCandless said with satisfaction, as though the job was as good as done. His gloomy forebodings of the previous night seemed to have vanished. He had stopped at a bare patch of ground. ‘This looks like a fair billet. No more rain in the offing, I think, so we should be comfortable.’

Like hell, Sharpe thought. A bare bed, no rum, a fight in the morning, and God only knew what kind of devils waiting across the wall, but he slept anyway.

And woke when it was still dark to see shadowy men straggling past with long ladders across their shoulders. Dawn was near and it was time for an escalade. Time for ladders and murder.

Sanjit Pandee was Killadar of the city, which meant that he commanded Ahmednuggur’s garrison in the name of his master, Dowlut Rao Scindia, Maharajah of Gwalior, and in principle every soldier in the city, though not in the adjacent fortress, was under Pandee’s command. So why had Major Dodd ejected Pandee’s troops from the northern gatehouse and substituted his own men? Pandee had sent no orders, but the deed had been done anyway and no one could explain why, and when Sanjit Pandee sent a message to Major Dodd and demanded an answer, the messenger was told to wait and, so far as the Killadar knew, was still waiting.

Sanjit Pandee finally summoned the courage to confront the Major himself. It was dawn, a time when the Killadar was not usually stirring, and he discovered Dodd and a group of his white-coated officers on the southern wall from where the Major was watching the British camp through a heavy telescope mounted on a tripod. Sanjit Pandee did not like to disturb the tall Dodd who was being forced to stoop awkwardly because the tripod was incapable of raising the glass to the level of his eye. The Killadar cleared his throat, but that had no effect, and then he scraped a foot on the firestep, and still Dodd did not even glance at him, so finally the Killadar demanded his explanation, though in very flowery terms just in case he gave the Englishman offence. Sanjit Pandee had already lost the battle over the city treasury which Dodd had simply commandeered without so much as a by-your-leave, and the Killadar was nervous of the scowling foreigner.

‘Tell the bloody man,’ Dodd told his interpreter without taking his eye from the telescope, ‘that he’s wasting my bloody time. Tell him to go and boil his backside.’

Dodd’s interpreter, who was one of his younger Indian officers, courteously suggested to the Killadar that Major Dodd’s attention was wholly consumed by the approaching enemy, but that as soon as he had a moment of leisure, the Major would be delighted to hold a conversation with the honoured Killadar.

The Killadar gazed southwards. Horsemen, British and Indian, were ranging far ahead of the approaching enemy column. Not that Sanjit Pandee could see the column properly, only a dark smudge among the distant green that he supposed was the enemy. Their feet kicked up no dust, but that was because of the rain that had fallen the day before. ‘Are the enemy truly coming?’ he enquired politely.

‘Of course they’re not bloody coming,’ Dodd said, standing upright and massaging the small of his back. ‘They’re running away in terror.’

‘The enemy are indeed approaching, sahib,’ the interpreter said deferentially.

The Killadar glanced along his defences and was reassured to see the bulk of Dodd’s regiment on the firestep, and alongside them the robed figures of his Arab mercenaries. ‘Your regiment’s guns,’ he said to the interpreter, ‘they are not here?’

‘Tell the interfering little bugger that I’ve sold all the bloody cannon to the enemy,’ Dodd growled.