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

Christ, Sharpe thought, but he was to be made bullock master!

‘Not fair to say they don’t have a guiding hand,’ Wallace continued, ‘because they do, but the new fellow don’t have any experience with bullocks. Torrance, he’s called, and I’m sure he’s a good fellow, but things are likely to get a bit more sprightly from now on. Going deeper into enemy territory, see? And there are still lots of their damned horsemen at large, and Torrance says he needs a deputy officer. Someone to help him. Thought you might be just the fellow for the job, Sharpe.’ Wallace smiled as though he was granting Sharpe a huge favour.

‘Don’t know anything about bullocks, sir,’ Sharpe said doggedly.

‘I’m sure you don’t! Who does? And there are dromedaries, and elephants. A regular menagerie, eh? But the experience, Sharpe, will do you good. Think of it as another string to your bow.’

Sharpe knew a further protest would do no good, so he nodded. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said.

‘Good! Good! Splendid.’ Wallace could not hide his relief. ‘It won’t be for long, Sharpe. Scindia’s already suing for peace, and the Rajah of Berar’s bound to follow. We may not even have to fight at Gawilghur, if that’s where the rogues do take refuge. So go and help Torrance, then you can set a course for England, eh? Become a Greenjacket!’

So Ensign Sharpe had failed. Failed utterly. He had been an officer for two months and now he was being booted out of a regiment. Sent to the bullocks and the dromedaries, whatever the hell they were, and after that to the green-coated dregs of the army. Bloody hell fire, he thought, bloody hell fire.

The British and their allied cavalry rode all night, and in the dawn they briefly rested, watered their horses, then hauled themselves into their saddles and rode again. They rode till their horses were reeling with tiredness and white with sweat, and only then did they give up the savage pursuit of the Mahratta fugitives. Their sabre arms were weary, their blades blunted and their appetites slaked. The night had been a wild hunt of victory, a slaughter under the moon that had left the plain reeking with blood, and the sun brought more killing and wide-winged vultures that flapped down to the feast.

The pursuit ended close to a sudden range of hills that marked the northern limit of the Deccan Plain. The hills were steep and thickly wooded, no place for cavalry, and above the hills reared great cliffs, dizzyingly high cliffs that stretched from the eastern to the western horizon like the nightmare ramparts of a tribe of giants. In places there were deep re-entrants cut into the great cliff and some of the British pursuers, gaping at the vast wall of rock that barred their path, supposed that the wooded clefts would provide a path up to the cliff’s summit, though none could see how anyone could reach the highland if an enemy chose to defend it.

Between two of the deep re-entrants a great promontory of rock jutted from the cliff face like the prow of a monstrous stone ship. The summit of the jutting rock was two thousand feet above the horsemen on the plain, and one of them, scrubbing blood from his sabre blade with a handful of grass, glanced up at the high peak and saw a tiny puff of whiteness drifting from its crest. He thought it a small cloud, but then he heard a faint bang of gunfire, and a second later a round shot dropped vertically into a nearby patch of millet. His captain pulled out a telescope and trained it high into the sky. He stared for a long time, then gave a low whistle.

‘What is it, sir?’

‘It’s a fortress,’ the Captain said. He could just see black stone walls, shrunken by distance, poised above the grey-white rock. ‘It’s hell in the bloody sky,’ he said grimly, ‘that’s what it is. It’s Gawilghur.’

More guns fired from the fortress, but they were so high in the air that their shots lost all their forward momentum long before they reached the ground. The balls fell like nightmare rain and the Captain shouted at his men to lead their horses out of range. ‘Their final refuge,’ he said, then laughed, ‘but it’s nothing to do with us, boys! The infantry will have to deal with that big bastard.’

The cavalrymen slowly moved southwards. Some of their horses had lost shoes, which meant they had to be walked home, but their night’s work was well done. They had ravaged a broken army, and now the infantry must cope with the Mahrattas’ final refuge.

A sergeant shouted from the right flank and the Captain turned westwards to see a column of enemy infantry appearing from a grove of trees just over a mile away. The white-coated battalion still possessed their artillery, but they showed no sign of wanting a fight. A crowd of civilians and several companies of fugitive Mahrattas had joined the regiment, which was heading for a road that twisted into the hills beneath the fort, then zigzagged its way up the face of the rock promontory. If that road was the only way into the fort, the cavalry Captain thought, then God help the redcoats who had to attack Gawilghur. He stared at the infantry through his telescope. The white-coated troops were showing small interest in the British cavalry, but it still seemed prudent to quicken his pace southwards.

A moment later and the cavalry was hidden behind millet fields. The Captain turned a last time and gazed again at the fortress on the soaring cliffs. It seemed to touch the sky, so high it stood above all India. ‘Bastard of a place,’ the Captain said wonderingly, then turned and left. He had done his job, and now the infantry must climb to the clouds to do theirs.

Colonel William Dodd watched the blue-coated cavalrymen walk their tired horses southwards until they vanished beyond a field of standing millet. The subadar in charge of the regiment’s small cannon had wanted to unlimber and open fire on the horsemen, but Dodd had refused his permission. There would have been no point in attacking, for by the time the guns were loaded the cavalrymen would have walked out of range. He watched a last salvo of round shot plummet to earth from the fort’s high guns. Those cannon were of little use, Dodd thought, except to overawe people on the plain.

It took Dodd’s regiment over seven hours to climb to the fort of Gawilghur, and by the time he reached the summit Dodd’s lungs were burning, his muscles aching and his uniform soaked with sweat. He had walked every step of the way, refusing to ride his horse, for the beast was tired and, besides, if he expected his men to walk up the long road, then he would walk it as well. He was a tall, sallow-faced man with a harsh voice and an awkward manner, but William Dodd knew how to earn his men’s admiration. They saw that he walked when he could have ridden, and so they did not complain as the steep climb sapped their breath and stole their strength. The regiment’s families, its baggage and its battery of cannon were still far below on the twisting, treacherous track that, in its last few miles, was little more than a ledge hacked from the cliff.

Dodd formed his Cobras into four ranks as they approached Gawilghur’s southern entrance where the great metal-studded gates were being swung open in welcome. ‘March smartly now!’ Dodd called to his men. ‘You’ve nothing to be ashamed of! You lost no battle!’ He pulled himself up into his saddle and drew his gold-hilted sword to salute the flag of Berar that flapped above the high gate-tower. Then he touched his heels to the mare’s flanks and led his undefeated men into the tower’s long entrance tunnel.

He emerged into the afternoon sun to find himself staring at a small town that was built within the stronghold’s ramparts and on the summit of Gawilghur’s promontory. The alleys of the town were crammed with soldiers, most of them Mahratta cavalrymen who had fled in front of the British pursuit, but, twisting in his saddle, Dodd saw some infantry of Gawilghur’s garrison standing on the firestep. He also saw Manu Bappoo who had outridden the British pursuit and now gestured to Dodd from the gate-tower’s turret.

Dodd told one of his men to hold his horse, then climbed the black walls to the top firestep of the tower where he stopped in awed astonishment at the view. It was like standing at the edge of the world. The plain was so far beneath and the southern horizon so far away that there was nothing in front of his eyes but endless sky. This, Dodd thought, was a god’s view of earth. The eagle’s view. He leaned over the parapet and saw his guns struggling up the narrow road. They would not reach the fort till long after nightfall.

‘You were right, Colonel,’ Manu Bappoo said ruefully.

Dodd straightened to look at the Mahratta prince. ‘It’s dangerous to fight the British in open fields,’ he said, ‘but here …?’ Dodd gestured at the approach road. ‘Here they will die, sahib.’

‘The fort’s main entrance,’ Bappoo said in his sibilant voice, ‘is on the other side. To the north.’

Dodd turned and gazed across the roof of the central palace. He could see little of the great fortress’s northern defences, though a long way away he could see another tower like the one on which he now stood. ‘Is the main entrance as difficult to approach as this one?’ he asked.

‘No, but it isn’t easy. The enemy has to approach along a narrow strip of rock, then fight through the Outer Fort. After that comes a ravine, and then the Inner Fort. I want you to guard the inner gate.’

Dodd looked suspiciously at Bappoo. ‘Not the Outer Fort?’ Dodd reckoned his Cobras should guard the place where the British would attack. That way the British would be defeated.

‘The Outer Fort is a trap,’ Bappoo explained. He looked tired, but the defeat at Argaum had not destroyed his spirit, merely sharpened his appetite for revenge. ‘If the British capture the Outer Fort they will think they have won. They won’t know that an even worse barrier waits beyond the ravine. That barrier has to be held. I don’t care if the Outer Fort falls, but we must hold the Inner. That means our best troops must be there.’

‘It will be held,’ Dodd said.

Bappoo turned and stared southwards. Somewhere in the heat-hazed distance the British forces were readying to march on Gawilghur. ‘I thought we could stop them at Argaum,’ he admitted softly.

Dodd, who had advised against fighting at Argaum, said nothing.

‘But here,’ Bappoo went on, ‘they will be stopped.’

Here, Dodd thought, they would have to be stopped. He had deserted from the East India Company’s army because he faced trial and execution, but also because he believed he could make a fortune as a mercenary serving the Mahrattas. So far he had endured three defeats, and each time he had led his men safe out of the disaster, but from Gawilghur there would be no escape. The British would block every approach, so the British must be stopped. They must fail in this high place, and so they would, Dodd consoled himself. For nothing imaginable could take this fort. He was on the world’s edge, lifted into the sky, and for the redcoats it would be like scaling the very heights of heaven.

So here, at last, deep inside India, the redcoats would be beaten.

Six cavalrymen in the blue and yellow coats of the 19th Light Dragoons waited outside the house where Captain Torrance was said to be billeted. They were under the command of a long-legged sergeant who was lounging on a bench beside the door. The Sergeant glanced up as Sharpe approached. ‘I hope you don’t want anything useful out of the bastards,’ he said acidly, then saw that the shabby-uniformed Sharpe, despite wearing a pack like any common soldier, also had a sash and a sabre. He scrambled to his feet. ‘Sorry, sir.’

Sharpe waved him back down onto the bench. ‘Useful?’ he asked.

‘Horseshoes, sir, that’s all we bleeding want. Horseshoes! Supposed to be four thousand in store, but can they find them?’ The Sergeant spat. ‘Tells me they’re lost! I’m to go to the bhinjarries and buy them! I’m supposed to tell my captain that? So now we have to sit here till Captain Torrance gets back. Maybe he knows where they are. That monkey in there’ – he jerked his thumb at the house’s front door – ‘doesn’t know a bloody thing.’

Sharpe pushed open the door to find himself in a large room where a half-dozen men argued with a harried clerk. The clerk, an Indian, sat behind a table covered with curling ledgers. ‘Captain Torrance is ill!’ the clerk snapped at Sharpe without waiting to discover the newcomer’s business. ‘And take that dirty Arab boy outside,’ the clerk added, jerking his chin at Ahmed who, armed with a musket he had taken from a corpse on the battlefield, had followed Sharpe into the house.

‘Muskets!’ A man tried to attract the clerk’s attention.

‘Horseshoes!’ an East India Company lieutenant shouted.

‘Buckets,’ a gunner said.

‘Come back tomorrow,’ the clerk said. ‘Tomorrow!’

‘You said that yesterday,’ the gunner said, ‘and I’m back.’

‘Where’s Captain Torrance?’ Sharpe asked.

‘He’s ill,’ the clerk said disapprovingly, as though Sharpe had risked the Captain’s fragile health even by asking the question. ‘He cannot be disturbed. And why is that boy here? He is an Arab!’

‘Because I told him to be here,’ Sharpe said. He walked round the table and stared down at the ledgers. ‘What a bleeding mess!’

‘Sahib!’ The clerk had now realized Sharpe was an officer. ‘Other side of the table, sahib, please, sahib! There is a system here, sahib. I stay this side of the table and you remain on the other. Please, sahib.’

‘What’s your name?’ Sharpe asked.

The clerk seemed affronted at the question. ‘I am Captain Torrance’s assistant,’ he said grandly.

‘And Torrance is ill?’