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

The troopers reached up and hauled down on the back-board so that the cart tipped like a seesaw on its single axle and, as the troopers pulled down, so the shaft rose into the air. The rope stretched and tightened. Naig screamed, then the cavalryman jumped up to sit on the cart’s back and the shaft jerked higher still and the scream was abruptly choked off. Naig was dangling now, his feet kicking wildly under the lavishly embroidered robe. None of the crowd moved, none protested.

Naig’s face was bulging and his hands were scrabbling uselessly at the noose which was tight about his neck. The cavalry officer watched with a small smile. ‘A pity,’ he said in his elegant voice. ‘The wretched man ran the best brothel I ever found.’

‘We’re not killing his girls, sir,’ Sharpe said.

‘That’s true, Ensign, but will their next owner treat them as well?’ The cavalryman turned to the big tent’s entrance and took off his plumed hat to salute a group of sari-clad girls who now watched wide-eyed as their employer did the gallows dance. ‘I saw Nancy Merrick hang in Madras,’ the cavalryman said, ‘and she did the jig for thirty-seven minutes! Thirty-seven! I’d wagered on sixteen, so lost rather a lot of tin. Don’t think I can watch Naig dance for half an hour. It’s too damned hot. Sergeant? Help his soul to perdition, will you?’

Lockhart crouched beneath the dying man and caught hold of his heels. Then he tugged down hard, swearing when Naig pissed on him. He tugged again, and at last the body went still. ‘Do you see what happens when you steal from us?’ the cavalry Captain shouted at the crowd, then repeated the words in an Indian language. ‘If you steal from us, you will die!’ Again he translated his words, then gave Sharpe a crooked grin. ‘But only, of course, if you’re stupid enough to be caught, and I didn’t think Naig was stupid at all. Rather the reverse. Just how did you happen to discover the supplies, Ensign?’

‘Tent was on fire, sir,’ Sharpe said woodenly. ‘Me and Sergeant Lockhart decided to rescue whatever was inside.’

‘How very public-spirited of you.’ The Captain gave Sharpe a long, speculative look, then turned back to Lockhart. ‘Is he dead, Sergeant?’

‘Near as makes no difference, sir,’ Lockhart called back.

‘Use your pistol to make sure,’ the Captain ordered, then sighed. ‘A shame,’ he said. ‘I rather liked Naig. He was a rogue, of course, but rogues are so much more amusing than honest men.’ He watched as Lockhart lowered the shaft, then stooped over the prostrate body and put a bullet into its skull. ‘I suppose I’ll have to find some carts to fetch these supplies back where they belong,’ the Captain said.

‘I’ll do that, sir,’ Sharpe said.

‘You will?’ The Captain seemed astonished to discover such willingness. ‘Why on earth would you want to do that, Ensign?’

‘It’s my job, sir,’ Sharpe said. ‘I’m Captain Torrance’s assistant.’

‘You poor benighted bastard,’ the Captain said pityingly.

‘Poor, sir? Why?’

‘Because I’m Captain Torrance. Good day to you, Ensign.’ Torrance turned on his heel and walked away through the crowd.

‘Bastard,’ Sharpe said, for he had suddenly understood why Torrance had been so keen to hang Naig.

He spat after the departed Captain, then went to find some bullocks and carts. The army had its supplies back, but Sharpe had made a new enemy. As if Hakeswill were not enough, he now had Torrance as well.

The palace in Gawilghur was a sprawling one-storey building that stood on the highest point within the Inner Fort. To its north was a garden that curled about the largest of the fortress’s lakes. The lake was a tank, a reservoir, but its banks had been planted with flowering trees, and a flight of steps led from the palace to a small stone pavilion on the lake’s northern shore. The pavilion had an arched ceiling on which the reflections of the lake’s small waves should have rippled, but the season had been so dry that the lake had shrunk and the water level was some eight or nine feet lower than usual. The water and the exposed banks were rimed with a green, foul-smelling scum, but Beny Singh, the Killadar of Gawilghur, had arranged for spices to be burned in low, flat braziers so that the dozen men inside the pavilion were not too offended by the lake’s stench.

‘If only the Rajah was here,’ Beny Singh said, ‘we should know what to do.’ Beny Singh was a short, plump man with a curling moustache and nervous eyes. He was the fortress commander, but he was a courtier by avocation, not a soldier, and he had always regarded his command of the great fortress as a licence to make his fortune rather than to fight the Rajah’s enemies.

Prince Manu Bappoo was not surprised that his brother had chosen not to come to Gawilghur, but had instead fled farther into the hills. The Rajah was like Beny Singh, he had no belly for a fight, but Bappoo had watched the first British troops creep across the plain beneath the fort’s high walls and he welcomed their coming. ‘We don’t need my brother here to know what we must do,’ he said. ‘We fight.’ The other men, all commanders of the various troops that had taken refuge in Gawilghur, voiced their agreement.

‘The British cannot be stopped by walls,’ Beny Singh said. He was cradling a small white lap dog which had eyes as wide and frightened as its master’s.

‘They can, and they will,’ Bappoo insisted.

Singh shook his head. ‘Were they stopped at Seringapatam? At Ahmednuggur? They crossed those city walls as though they had wings! They are – what is the word your Arabs use? – djinns!’ He looked about the gathered council and saw no one who would support him. ‘They must have the djinns on their side,’ he added weakly.

‘So what would you do?’ Bappoo asked.

‘Treat with them,’ Beny Singh said. ‘Ask for cowle