Sharpe's Triumph

Chapter 11

Colonel McCandless had stayed close to his friend Colonel Wallace, the commander of the brigade which formed the right of Wellesley's line.

Wallace had seen the picquets and his own regiment, the 74th, vanish somewhere to the north, but he had been too busy bringing his two sepoy battalions into the attacking line to worry about Orrock or Swinton.

He did charge an aid to keep watching for Orrock's men, expecting to see them veering back towards him at any moment, then he forgot the errant picquets as his men climbed from the low ground into the fire of the Mahratta gun line. Canister shredded Wallace's ranks, it beat like hail on his men's muskets and it swept the leaves from the scattered trees through which the Madrassi battalions marched, but, just like the 78th, the sepoys did not turn. They walked doggedly on like men pushing into a storm, amid at sixty paces Wallace halted them to pour a vengeful volley into the gunners and McCandless could hear the musket balls clanging off the painted gun barrels. Sevajee was with McCandless and he stared in as the sepoys reloaded and went forward again, this time carrying their bayonets to the gunners. For a moment there was chaotic slaughter as Madrassi sepoys chased Goanese gunners around limbers and guns, but Wallace was already looking ahead and could see this. All the vaunted enemy infantry was wavering, evidently shaken by this easy victory of the 78th, and so the Colonel shouted at his sepoys to ignore the gunners and re-form and push on to attack the infantry. It took a moment to reform the line, then it advanced from the guns. Wallace gave the enemy infantry one volley, then charged, and all along the line the vaunted Mahratta foot fled from the sepoy attack.

McCandless was busy for the next few moments. He knew that the assault had gone nowhere near Dodd's regiment, but nor had he expected it to, and he was anticipating riding northwards with Wallace to find the 74th, the regiment McCandless knew was nearest to his prey, but when the sepoys lost their self-control and broke ranks to pursue the beaten enemy infantry, McCandless helped the other officers round them up and herd them back. Sevajee and his horsemen stayed behind, for there was a possibility that they would be mistaken for enemy cavalry.

For a moment or two there was a real danger that the scattered sepoys would be charged and slaughtered by the mass of enemy cavalry to the west, but its own fleeing infantry was in the cavalry's way, the 78th stood like a fortress on the left flank, and the Scottish guns were skipping balls along the cavalry's face, and the Mahratta horsemen, after a tentative move forward, thought better of the charge. The sepoys took their ranks again, grinning because of their victory.

McCandless, his small chore done, rejoined Sevajee.

"So that's how Mahrattas fight." The Colonel could not resist the provocation.

"Mercenaries, Colonel, mercenaries," Sevajee said, "not Mahrattas."

Five victorious redcoat regiments now stood in ranks on the southern half of the battlefield. To the west the enemy infantry was still disordered, though officers were trying to re-form them, while to the east there was a horror of bodies and blood left on the ground across which the redcoats had advanced. The five regiments had swept through the gun line and chased away the infantry and now formed their ranks some two hundred paces west of where the Mahratta infantry had made their line so that they could look back on the trail of carnage they had caused.

Riderless horses galloped through the thinning skeins of powder smoke where dogs were already gnawing at the dead and birds with monstrous black wings were flapping down to feast on corpses. Beyond the corpses, on the distant ground where the Scots and sepoys had started their advance, there were now Mahratta cavalrymen, and McCandless, gazing through his telescope, saw some of those cavalrymen harnessing British artillery that had been abandoned when its ox teams had been killed by the bombardment that had opened the battle.

"Where's Wellesley?" Colonel Wallace asked McCandless.

"He went northwards."

McCandless was now staring towards the village where a dreadful battle was being fought, but he could see no details for there were just enough trees to obscure the fight, though the mass of powder smoke rising above the leaves was as eloquent as the unending crackle of musketry. McCandless knew his business was to be where that battle was being fought, for Dodd was surely close to the fight if not involved, but in McCandless's path was the stub of the Mahratta defence line, that part of the line which had not been attacked by the Scots or the sepoys, and those men were turning to face southwards. To reach that southern battle McCandless would have to loop wide to the east, but that stretch of country was full of marauding bands of enemy cavalry.

"I should have advanced with Swinton," he said ruefully.

"We'll catch up with him soon enough," Wallace said, though without conviction.

It was clear to both men that Wallace's regiment, the 74th, had marched too far to the north and had become entangled in the thicket of Mahratta defences about Assaye and their commanding officer, removed from them to lead the brigade, was plainly worried.

"Time to turn north, I think," Wallace said, and he shouted at his two sepoy battalions to wheel right. He had no authority over the remaining two sepoy battalions, nor over the 78th, for those were in Harness's brigade, but he was ready to march his two remaining battalions towards the distant village in the hope of rescuing his own regiment.

McCandless watched as Wallace organized the two battalions. This part of the battlefield, which minutes before had been so loud with screaming canister and the hammer of volleys, was now strangely quiet.

Wellesley's attack had been astonishingly successful, and the enemy was regrouping while the attackers, left victorious on the Kaitna's northern bank, drew their breath and looked for the next target.

McCandless thought of using Sevajee's handful of horsemen as an escort to take him safely towards the village, but another rush of Mahratta cavalry galloped up from the low ground. Wellesley and his aides had ridden northwards and they seemed to have survived the milling enemy horsemen, but the General's passing had attracted more horsemen to the area and McCandless had no mind to run the gauntlet of their venom and so he abandoned the idea of a galloping dash northwards. It was just then that he noticed Sergeant Hakeswill, crouching by a dead enemy with the reins of a riderless horse in one hand. A group of redcoats was with him, all from his own regiment, the 33rd. And just as McCandless saw the Sergeant, so Hakeswill looked up and offered the Scotsman a glance of such malevolence that McCandless almost turned away in horror. Instead he spurred his horse across the few yards that separated them.

"What are you doing here, Sergeant?" he asked harshly.

"My duty, sir, as is incumbent on me," Hakeswill said. As ever, when addressed by an officer, he had straightened to attention, his right foot tucked behind his left, his elbows back and his chest thrust out.

"And what are your duties?" McCandless asked.

"Puckalees, sir. In charge of puckalees sir, making sure the scavenging little brutes does their duty, sir, and nothing else, sir. Which they does, sir, on account of me looking after them like a father." He unbent sufficiently to give a swift nod in the direction of the 78th where, sure enough, a group of puckalees was distributing heavy skins of water they had brought from the river.

"Have you written to Colonel Gore yet?" McCandless asked.

"Have I written to Colonel Gore yet, sir?" Hakeswill repeated the question, his face twitching horribly under the shako's peak. He had forgotten that he was supposed to have the warrant reissued, for he was relying instead on McCandless's death to clear the way to Sharpe's arrest.

Not that this was the place to murder McCandless, for there were a thousand witnesses within view.

"I've done everything what ought to be done, sir, like a soldier should," Hakeswill answered evasively.

"I shall write to Colonel Gore myself," McCandless now told Hakeswill, "because I've been thinking about that warrant. You have it?"

"I do, sir."

"Then let me see it again," the Colonel demanded.

Hakeswill unwillingly pulled the grubby paper from his pouch and offered it to the Colonel. McCandless unfolded the warrant, quickly scanned the lines, and suddenly the falsity in the words leaped out at him.

"It says here that Captain Morris was assaulted on the night of August the fifth."

"So he was, sir. Foully assaulted, sir."

"Then it could not have been Sharpe who committed the assault, Sergeant, for on the night of the fifth he was with me. That was the day I collected Sergeant Sharpe from Seringapatam's armoury."

McCandless's face twisted with distaste as he looked down at the Sergeant.

"You say you were a witness to the assault?" he asked Hakeswill.

Hakeswill knew when he was beaten.

"Dark night, sir," the Sergeant said woodenly.

"You're lying, Sergeant," McCandless said icily, "and I know you are lying, and my letter to Colonel Gore will attest to your lying. You have no business here, and I shall so inform Major General Wellesley. If it was up to me then your punishment would take place here, but that is for the General to decide. You will give me that horse."

"This horse, sir? I found it, sir. Wandering, sir."

"Give it here!" McCandless snapped. Sergeants had no business having horses without permission. He snatched the reins from Hakeswill. "And if you do have duties with the puckalees Sergeant, I suggest you attend to them rather than plunder the dead. As for this warrant..."

The Colonel, before Hakeswill's appalled gaze, tore the paper in two.

"Good day, Sergeant," McCandless said and, his small victory complete, turned his horse and spurred away.

Hakeswill watched the Colonel ride away, then stooped and picked up the two halves of the warrant which he carefully stowed in his pouch.

"Scotchman," he spat.

Private Lowry shifted uncomfortably.

"If he's right, Sergeant, and Sharpie wasn't there, then we shouldn't be here."

Hakeswill turned savagely on the private.

"And since when, Private Lowry, did you dispose of soldiery? The Duke of York has made you an officer, has he? His Grace put braid on your coat without telling me, did he? What Sharpie did is no business of yours, Lowry." The Sergeant was in trouble, and he knew it, but he was not broken yet.

He turned and stared at McCandless who had given the horse to a dismounted officer and was now in deep conversation with Colonel Wallace. The two men glanced towards Hakeswill and the Sergeant guessed they were discussing him.

"We follows that Scotchman," Hakeswill said, "and this is for the man who puts him under the sod." He fished a gold coin from his pocket and showed it to his six privates.

The privates stared solemnly at the coin, then, all at once, they ducked as a cannonball screamed low over their heads. Hakeswill swore and dropped flat. Another gun sounded, and this time a barrelful of canister flecked the grass just south of Hakeswill.

Colonel Wallace had been listening to McCandless, but now turned eastwards. Not all the gunners in the Mahratta line had been killed and those who survived, together with the cavalry which had been looking for employment, were now manning their guns again. They had turned the guns to face west instead of east and were now firing at the five regiments who were waiting for the battle to begin again.

Except the gunners had surprised them, and the captured British guns, fetched from the east, now joined the battery to pour their shot, shell and canister into the red-coated infantry. They fired at three hundred paces, point-blank range, and their missiles tore bloodily through the ranks.

For the Mahrattas, it seemed, were not beaten yet.

William Dodd could smell victory. He could almost feel the sheen of the captured silk colours in his hands, and all it would take was two blasts of canister, a mucky slaughter with bayonets, and then the 74th would be destroyed. Horse Guards in London could cross the first battalion of the regiment off the army list, all of it, and mark down that it had been sacrificed to William Dodd's talent. He snarled at his gunners to load their home-made canister, watched as the loaders rammed the missiles home, and then the trumpet sounded.

The British and Company cavalry had been posted in the northern half of the battlefield to guard against enemy horsemen sweeping about the infantry's rear, but now they came to the 74th's rescue. The 78th Dragoons emerged from the gully behind the Highlanders and their charge curved northwards out of the low ground towards the 74th and the village beyond. The troopers were mostly recruits from the English shires, young men brought up to know horses and made strong by farm work, and they all carried the new light cavalry sabre that was warranted never to fail. Nor did it.

They struck the Mahratta horse first. The English riders were outnumbered, but they rode bigger horses and their blades were better made, and they cut through the cavalry with a maniacal savagery. It was hacking work, brutal work, screaming and fast work, and the Mahrattas turned their lighter horses away from the bloody sabres and fled northwards, and once the enemy horsemen were killed or fleeing, the British cavalry raked back their spurs and charged at the Mahratta infantry.

They struck the battalion from Dupont's compoo first, and because those men were not prepared for cavalry, but were still in line, it was more an execution than a fight. The cavalry were mounted on tall horses, and every man had spent hours of sabre drill learning how to cut, thrust and parry, but all they had to do now was slash with their heavy, wide-bladed weapons that were designed for just such butchery.

Slash and hack, scream and spur, then push on through panicking men whose only thought was flight. The sabres made dreadful injuries, the weight of the blade gave the weapons a deep bite and the curve of the steel dragged the newly sharpened edges back through flesh and muscle and bone to lengthen the wound.

Some Mahratta cavalry bravely tried to stem the charge, but their light tulwars were no match for Sheffield steel. The 74th were standing and cheering as they watched the English horsemen carve into the enemy who had come so terribly close, and behind the Englishmen rode Company cavalry, Indians on smaller horses, some carrying lances, who spread the attack wider to drive the broken Mahratta horsemen northwards.

Dodd did not panic. He knew he had lost this skirmish, but the helpless mass of Dupont's battalion was protecting his right flank and those doomed men gave Dodd the few seconds he needed.

"Back," he shouted, "back!" and he needed no interpreter now. The Cobras hurried back towards the cactus-thorn hedge. They did not run, they did not break ranks, but stepped swiftly backwards to leave the enemy's horse room to sweep across their front, and, as the horsemen passed, those of Dodd's men who still had loaded muskets fired. Horses stumbled and fell, riders sprawled, and still the Cobras went backwards.

But the regiment was still in line and Dupont's panicked infantry were now pushing their way into Dodd's right-hand companies, and the second rank of dragoons rode in among that chaos to slash their sabres down onto the white-coated men. Dodd shouted at his men to form square, and they obeyed, but the two right-hand companies had been reduced to ragged ruin and their survivors never joined the square which was so hastily made that it was more of a huddle than an ordered formation.

Some of the fugitives from the two doomed companies tried to join their comrades in the square, but the horsemen were among them and Dodd shouted at the square to fire. The volley cut down his own men with the enemy, but it served to drive the horsemen away and so gave Dodd time to send his men back through the hedge and still further back to where they had first waited for the British attack. The Rajah of Berar's infantry, who had been on Dodd's left, had escaped more lightly, but none had stayed to fight. Instead they ran back to Assaye's mud walls. The gunners by the village saw the cavalry coming and fired canister, killing more of their own fugitives than enemy cavalry, but the brief cannonade at least signalled to the dragoons that the village was defended and dangerous.

The storm of cavalry passed northwards, leaving misery in its wake.

The two four-pounder cannon that Joubert had taken forward were abandoned now, their teams killed by the horsemen, and where the 74th had been there was now nothing but an empty enclosure of dead men and horses that had formed the barricade. The survivors of the beleaguered square had withdrawn eastwards, carrying their wounded with them, and it seemed to Dodd that a sudden silence had wrapped about the Cobras.

It was not a true silence, for the guns had started firing again on the southern half of the battlefield, the distant sound of hooves was neverending and the moaning of the nearby wounded was loud, but it did seem quiet.

Dodd spurred his horse southwards in an attempt to make some sense of the battle. Dupont's compoo next to him had lost one regiment to the sabres, but the next three regiments were intact and the Dutchman was now turning those units to face southwards. Dodd could see Pohlmann riding along the back of those wheeling regiments and he suspected that the Hanoverian would now turn his whole line to face south. The British had broken the far end of the line, but they had still not broken the army.

Yet the possibility of annihilation existed. Dodd fidgeted with the elephant hilt of his sword and contemplated what less than an hour before had seemed an impossibility: defeat. God damn Wellesley, he thought, but this was no time for anger, just for calculation. Dodd could not afford to be captured and he had no mind to die for Scindia and so he must secure his line of retreat. He would fight to the end, he decided, then run like the wind.

"Captain Joubert?"

The long-suffering Joubert trotted his horse to Dodd's side.

"Monsieur?"

Dodd did not speak at once, for he was watching Pohlmann come nearer.

It was clear now that the Hanoverian was making a new battle line, and one, moreover, that would lie to the west of Assaye with its back against the river. The regiments to Dodd's right, which had yet to be attacked, were now pulling back and the guns were going with them.

The whole line was being redeployed, and Dodd guessed the Cobras would move from the east side of the mud walls to the west, but that was no matter. The best ford across the Juah ran out of the village itself, and it was that ford Dodd wanted.

"Take two companies, Joubert," he ordered, "and march them into the village to guard this side of the ford."

Joubert frowned.

"The Rajah's troops, surely..." he began to protest.

"The Rajah of Berar's troops are useless!" Dodd snapped. "If we need to use the ford, then I want it secured by our men. You secure it." He jabbed at the Frenchman with a finger. "Is your wife in the village?"

"Out, Monsieur."

"Then now's your chance to impress her, Monsewer Go and protect her. And make sure the damn ford isn't captured or clogged up with fugitives."

Joubert was not unhappy to be sent away from the fighting, but he was dismayed by Dodd's evident defeatism. Nevertheless he took two companies, marched into the village, and posted his men to guard the ford so that if all was lost, there would still be a way out.

Wellesley had ridden north to investigate the furious fighting that had erupted close to the village of Assaye. He rode with a half-dozen aides and with Sharpe trailing behind on the last of the General's horses, the roan mare. It was a furious ride, for the area east of the infantry was infested with Mahratta horsemen, but the General had faith in the size and speed of his big English and Irish horses and the enemy was easily out galloped Wellesley came within sight of the beleaguered 74th just as the dragoons crashed in on their besiegers from the south.

"Well done, Maxwell!" Wellesley shouted aloud, though he was far out of earshot of the cavalry's leader, and then he curbed his horse to watch the dragoons at work.

The mass of the Mahratta horsemen who had been waiting for the 74th's square to collapse, now fled northwards and the British cavalry, having hacked the best part of an enemy infantry regiment into ruin, pursued them. The cavalry's good order was gone now, for the blue coated troopers were spurring their horses to chase their broken enemy across country. Men whooped like fox hunters, closed on their quarry, slashed with sabre, then spurred on to the next victim. The Mahratta horsemen were not even checked by the River Juah, but just plunged in and spurred their horses through the water and up the northern bank. The British and Indian cavalry followed so that the pursuit vanished in the north. The 74th, who had fought so hard to stay alive, now marched out of range of the cannon by the village and Wellesley, who had smelt disaster just a few minutes before, breathed a great sigh of relief.

"I told them to stay clear of the village, did I not?" he demanded of his aides, but before anyone could answer, new cannon fire sounded from the south. "What the devil?" Wellesley said, turning to see what the gunfire meant.

The remaining infantry of the Mahratta line were pulling back, taking their guns with them, but the artillery which had stood in front of the enemy's defeated right wing, the same guns that had been overrun by the red-coated infantry, were now coming alive again. The weapons had been turned and were crashing back on their trails and jetting smoke from their muzzles, and behind the guns was a mass of enemy cavalry ready to protect the gunners who were flaying the five battalions that had defeated the enemy infantry.

"Barclay?" Wellesley called.

"Sir?" The aide spurred forward.

"Can you reach Colonel Harness?"

The aide looked at the southern part of the battlefield. A moment before it had been thick with Mahratta horsemen, but those men had now withdrawn behind the revived guns and there was a space in front of those guns, a horribly narrow space, but the only area of the battlefield that was now free of enemy cavalry. If Barclay was to reach Harness then he would have to risk that narrow passage and, if he was very lucky, he might even survive the canister. And dead or alive, Barclay thought, he would win the lottery of bullet holes in his coat.

The aide took a deep breath.

"Yes, sir."

"My compliments to Colonel Harness, and ask him to retake the guns with his Highlanders. The rest of his brigade will stay where they are to keep the cavalry at bay." The General was referring to the mass of cavalry that still threatened from the west, none of which had yet entered the battle. "And my compliments to Colonel Wallace," the General went on, "and his sepoy battalions are to move northwards, but are not to engage the enemy until I reach them. Go!" He waved Barclay away, then twisted in his saddle. "Campbell?"

"Sir?"

"Who's that?" The General pointed eastwards to where one single cavalry unit had been left out of the charge that had rescued the 74th, presumably in case the dragoons had galloped into disaster and needed a rescue.

Campbell peered at the distant unit, "yth Native Cavalry, sir."

"Fetch them. Quick now!"

The General drew his sword as Campbell galloped away.

"Well, gentlemen," he said to his remaining aides, "time to earn our keep, I think. Harness can drive the wretches away from the southernmost guns, but we shall have to take care of the nearer ones."

For a moment Sharpe thought the General planned to charge the guns with just the handful of men who remained with him, then he realized Wellesley was waiting for the yth Native Cavalry to arrive. For a few seconds Wellesley had considered summoning the survivors of the 74th, but those men, who had retreated back across the gully, were still recovering from their ordeal. They were collecting their wounded, taking the roll call and reorganizing ten broken companies into six.

The Native Cavalry would have to beat down the guns and Campbell brought them across the battlefield, then led their commanding officer, a red-faced major with a bristling moustache, to Wellesley's side.

"I need to reach our infantry, Major," the General explained, "and you're going to escort me to them, and the quickest way is through their gun line."

The Major gaped at the guns with their crowd of attendant cavalry.

"Yes, sir," he said nervously.

"Two lines, if you please," the General ordered brusquely. "You will command the first line and drive off the cavalry. I shall ride in the second and kill the gunners."

"You'll kill the gunners, sir?" the Major asked, as though he found that idea novel, then he realized his question was dangerously close to insubordination. "Yes, sir," he said hurriedly, "of course, sir."

The Major stared at the gun line again. He would be charging the line's flank, so at least no gun would be pointing at his men. The greater danger was the mass of Mahratta cavalry that had gathered behind the guns and which far outnumbered his troopers, but then, sensing Wellesley's impatience, he spurred his horse back to his men and shouted at his troopers.

"Two lines by the right!" The Major commanded a hundred and eighty men and Sharpe saw them grin as they drew their sabres and spurred their horses into formation.

"Ever been in a cavalry charge, Sergeant?" Campbell asked Sharpe.

"No, sir. Never wanted to be, sir."

"Nor me. Should be interesting." Campbell had his claymore drawn and he gave the huge sword a cut in the air which almost took his horse's ears off. "You might find it more enjoyable, Sergeant," he said helpfully, "if you drew your sabre."

"Of course, sir," Sharpe said, feeling foolish. He had somehow imagined that his first battle would be spent in an infantry battalion, firing and reloading as he had been trained to do, but instead it seemed that he was to fight as a cavalry trooper. He drew the heavy weapon which felt unnatural in his hand, but then this whole battle seemed unnatural.

It swung from moments of bowel-loosening terror to sudden calm, then back to terror again. It also ebbed and flowed, flaring in one part of the field, then dying down as the tide of killing passed to another patch of dun-coloured farmland.

"And our job is to kill the gunners," Campbell explained, "to make sure they don't fire at us again. We'll let the experts look after their cavalry and we just slaughter whatever they leave us. Simple."

Simple? All Sharpe could see was a mass of enemy horsemen behind the huge guns that were bucking and rearing as they crashed out smoke, flame and death, and Campbell thought it was easy? Then he realized that the young Scots officer was just trying to reassure him, and he felt grateful. Campbell was watching Captain Barclay ride through the artillery barrage. It seemed the Captain must be killed, for he went so close to the Mahratta guns that at one point his horse vanished in a cloud of powder smoke, but a moment later he reappeared, low in his saddle, his horse galloping, and Campbell cheered when he saw Barclay swerve away towards Harness's brigade.

"A canteen, Sergeant, if you please?" Wellesley demanded, and Sharpe, who had been watching Barclay, fumbled to loosen one of the canteen straps. He gave the water to the General, then opened his own canteen and drank from it. Sweat was pouring down his face and soaking his shirt. Wellesley drank half the water, stoppered it and gave the canteen back, then trotted his horse into a gap in the right-hand side of the second line of the cavalry. The General drew his slim sword.

The other aides also found places in the line, but there seemed no space for Sharpe and so he positioned himself a few yards behind the General.

"Go!" Wellesley shouted to the Major.

"Forward line, by the centre," the Major shouted. "Walk! March!"

It seemed an odd order, for Sharpe had expected the two lines to start at the gallop, but instead the leading line of horsemen set off at a walk and the second line just waited. Leaving the wide gap made sense to Sharpe, for if the second line was too close to the first then it could get entangled with whatever carnage the leading line made, whereas if there was a good distance between the two lines then there was space for the second to swerve around obstacles, but even so, walking a horse into battle seemed idiocy to Sharpe. He licked his lips, already dry again, then wiped his sweaty hand on his trousers before re gripping the sabre's hilt.

"Now, gentlemen!" Wellesley said and the second line started forward at the same sedate pace as the first. Curb chains jingled and empty scabbards flapped. After a few seconds the Major in the first line called out an order and the two lines went into the trot. Dust swirled away from the hooves. The troopers' black hats had tall scarlet plumes that tossed prettily, while their curved sabres flashed with reflected sunlight.

Wellesley spoke to Blackiston beside him and Sharpe saw the Major laugh, then the trumpeter beside the Major blew a call and the twin lines went into the canter. Sharpe tried to keep up, but he was a bad rider and the mare kept swerving aside and tossing her head.

"Keep going!" Sharpe snarled at her.

The Mahrattas had seen the attack coming now and the gunners were desperately trying to lever the northernmost gun about to face the threat while a mass of enemy cavalrymen was spurring forward to confront the charge.

"Go!" the Major shouted and his trumpeter sounded the full charge and Sharpe saw the sabres of the leading line drop so that their points were jutting forward like spears. This was more like it, he thought, for the horses were galloping now, their hooves making a furious thunder as they swept on to the enemy.

The leading line crashed into the oncoming enemy cavalry. Sharpe expected to see the line stop, but it hardly seemed to check. Instead there was the flash of blades, an impression of a man and horse falling and then the Major's line was through the cavalry and riding over the first gun. Sabres rose and fell. The second line was swerving to avoid the fallen horses, then they too were among the enemy and closing on the first line which was at last being slowed by the enemy's resistance.

"Keep going!" Wellesley shouted at the foremost riders. "Keep going! Get me to the infantry!"

The cavalry had charged so that their right flank would overrun the guns, while the rest of the attack would face the cavalry to the east of the gun line. Those eastern most men were making good progress, but the right-flank troopers were being held up by the big ammunition limbers that were parked behind the guns. The Indian troopers slashed at the Goanese gunners who dived beneath their cannon for shelter. One gunner swung a rammer and swept a trooper off a horse. Muskets banged, a horse screamed and fell in a tangle of flailing hooves. An arrow flicked towards Sharpe, missing him by a hair's breadth. Sabres slashed and bit.

Sharpe saw one tall trooper standing in his stirrups to give his swing more room. The man screamed as he hacked down, then wrenched his blade free from his victim and spurred on to find another. Sharpe clung desperately to the saddle as the mare swerved to avoid a wounded horse, then he was among the guns himself. Two lines of cavalry had ridden over these weapons, but still some of the gunners lived and Sharpe swung at one man with the sabre, but at the last moment the mare's motion unbalanced him and the blade went far above the enemy's head. It was all bloody chaos now. The cavalry was fighting its way up the line, but some of the enemy horsemen were galloping around the first line's flank to attack the second line, and groups of gunners were fighting back like infantry. The gunners were armed with muskets and pikes, and Sharpe, kicking his horse behind Wellesley, saw a group of them appear from the shelter of a painted eighteen-pounder gun and run towards the General. He tried to shout a warning, but the sound that emerged was more like a scream for help.

Wellesley was isolated. Major Blackiston had wheeled left to chop down at a tall Arab wielding a massive blade, while Campbell was loose on the right where he was racing in pursuit of a fugitive horseman. The Indian troopers were all in front of the General, sabring gunners as they spurred ahead, while Sharpe was ten paces behind. Six men attacked the General, and one of them wielded a long, narrow-bladed pike that he thrust up at Wellesley's horse. The General sawed on Diomed's reins to wheel him out of the man's path, but the big horse was going too fast and ran straight onto the levelled pike.

Sharpe saw the man holding the pike twist aside as the horse's weight wrenched the staff out of his hands. He saw the white stallion falling and sliding, and he saw Wellesley thrown forward onto the horse's neck.

He saw the half-dozen enemy closing in for the kill and suddenly the chaos and terror of the day all vanished. Sharpe knew what he had to do, and knew it as clearly as though his whole life had been spent waiting for just this moment.

He kicked the roan mare straight at the enemy. He could not reach the General, for Wellesley was still in the saddle of the wounded Diomed who was sliding on the ground and trailing the pikestaff from his bleeding chest, and the threat of the horse's weight had driven the enemy aside, three to the left and three to the right. One fired his musket at Wellesley, but the ball flew wide, and then, as Diomed slowed, the Mahrattas closed in and it was then that Sharpe struck them. He used the mare as a battering ram, taking her perilously close to where the General had fallen from the saddle, and he drove her into the three gunners on the right, scattering them, and at the same time he kicked his feet from the stirrups and swung himself off the horse so that he fell just beside the dazed Wellesley. Sharpe stumbled as he fell, but he came up from the ground snarling with the sabre sweeping wide at the three men he had charged, but they had been driven back by the mare's impact, and so Sharpe whipped back to see a gunner standing right over the General with a bayonet raised, ready to strike, and he lunged at the man, screaming at him, and felt the sabre's tip tear through the muscles of the gunner's belly. Sharpe pushed the sabre, toppling the gunner back onto Diomed's blood-flecked flank.

The sabre stuck in the wound. The gunner was thrashing, his musket fallen, and one of his comrades was climbing over Diomed with a tulwar in his hand. Sharpe heaved on the sabre, jerking the dying man, but the blade would not free itself of the flesh's suction and so he stepped over Wellesley, who was still dizzied and on his back, put his left boot on the gunner's groin and heaved again. The man with the tulwar struck down, and Sharpe felt a blow on his left shoulder, but then his own sabre came free and he swung it clumsily at his new attacker. The man stepped back to avoid the blade and tripped on one of Diomed's rear legs. He fell.

Sharpe turned, his sabre sweeping blindly wide with drops of blood flicking from its tip as he sought to drive back any enemies coming from his right. There were none. The General said something, but he was still scarcely conscious of what was happening, and Sharpe knew that he and the General were both going to die here if he did not find some shelter fast.

The big painted eighteen-pounder gun offered some small safety, and so Sharpe stooped, took hold of Wellesley's collar, and unceremoniously dragged the General towards the cannon. The General was not unconscious, for he clung to his slim straight sword, but he was half stunned and helpless. Two men ran to cut Sharpe off from the gun's sanctuary and he let go of the General's stiff collar and attacked the pair.

"Bastards," he screamed as he fought them.

Bugger the advice about straight arm and parrying, this was a time to kill in sheer rage and he went for the two gunners in a berserk fury. The sabre was a clumsy weapon, but it was sharp and heavy and he almost severed the first man's neck and the subsequent backswing opened the second man's arm to the bone, and Sharpe turned back to Wellesley, who was still not recovered from the impact of his fall, and he saw an Arab lancer spurring his horse straight at the fallen General. Sharpe bellowed an obscenity at the man, then leaped forward and slashed the sabre's heavy blade across the face of the lancer's horse and saw the beast swerve aside. The lance blade jerked up into the air as the Arab tried to control his pain-maddened horse, and Sharpe stooped, took Wellesley's collar again, and hauled the General into the space between the gun's gaudy barrel and one of its gigantic wheels.

"Stay there!" Sharpe snapped to Wellesley, then turned around to see that the Arab had been thrown from his horse, but was now leading a charge of gunners. Sharpe went to meet them. He swept the lance aside with the sabre's blade, then rammed the weapon's bar hilt into the Arab's face. He felt the man's nose break, kicked him in the balls, shoved him back, hacked down with the sabre, then turned to his left and sliced the blade within an inch of a gunner's eyes.

The attackers backed away, leaving Sharpe panting. Wellesley at last stood, steadying himself with one hand on the gun wheel

"Sergeant Sharpe?" Wellesley asked in puzzlement.

"Stay there, sir," Sharpe said, without turning round. He had four men in front of him now, four men with bared teeth and bright weapons.

Their eyes nicked from Sharpe to Wellesley and back to Sharpe. The Mahrattas did not know they had the British General trapped, but they knew the man beside the gun must be a senior officer for his red coat was bright with braid and lace, and they came to capture him, but to reach him they first needed to pass Sharpe. Two men came from the gun's far side, and Wellesley parried a pike blade with his sword, then stepped away from the gun to stand beside Sharpe and immediately a rush of enemy came to seize him.

"Get back!" Sharpe shouted at Wellesley, then stepped into the enemy's charge.

He grabbed a pike that was reaching for the General's belly, tugged it towards him, and met the oncoming gunner with the sabre's tip. Straight into the man's throat, and he twisted the blade free and swung it right and felt the steel jar on a man's skull, but there was no time to assess the damage, just to step left and stab at a third man. His shoulder was bleeding, but there was no pain. He was keening a mad noise as he fought and it seemed to Sharpe at that instant as though he could do nothing wrong. It was as if the enemy had been magically slowed to half speed and he had been quickened. He was much taller than any of them, he was much stronger, and he was suddenly much faster. He was even enjoying the fight, had he known anything of what he felt, but he sensed only the madness of battle, the sublime madness that blots out fear, dulls pain and drives a man close to ecstasy. He was screaming obscenities at the enemy, begging them to come and be killed.

He moved to his right and slashed the blade in a huge downward cut that opened a man's face. The enemy had retreated, and Wellesley again came to Sharpe's side and so invited the attackers to close in again, and Sharpe again pushed the General back into the space between the tall gun wheel and the huge painted barrel of the eighteen-pounder.

"Stay there," he snapped, "and watch under the barrel!" He turned away to face the attackers. "Come on, you bastards! Come on! I want you!"

Two men came, and Sharpe stepped towards them and used both his hands to bring the heavy sabre down in a savage cut that bit through the hat and skull of the nearest enemy. Sharpe screamed a curse at the dying man, for his sabre was trapped in his skull, but he wrenched it free and sliced it right, a grey jelly sliding off its edge, to chase the second man back. That man held up his hands as he retreated, as if to suggest that he did not want to fight after all, and Sharpe cursed him as he slashed the blade's tip through his gullet. He spat on the staggering man and spat dry-mouthed again at the enemies who were watching him.

"Come on! Come on!" he taunted them. "Yellow bastards! Come on!"

There were at last horsemen riding back to help now, but more Mahrattas were closing in on the fight. Two men tried to reach Wellesley across the cannon barrel and the General stabbed one in the face, then slashed at the arm of the other as he reached beneath the gun barrel. Behind him Sharpe was screaming insults at the enemy and one man took up the challenge and ran at Sharpe with a bayonet. Sharpe shouted in what sounded like delight as he parried the lunge and then punched the sabre's hilt into the man's face. Another man was coming from the right and so Sharpe kicked his first assailant's legs out from under him, then slashed at the newcomer. Christ knows how many of the bastards there were, but Sharpe did not care. He had come here to fight and God had given him one screaming hell of a battle. The man parried Sharpe's cut, lunged, and Sharpe stepped past the lunge and hammered the sabre's bar hilt into the man's eye. The man screamed and clutched at Sharpe, who tried to throw him off by punching the hilt into his face again. The other attackers were vanishing now, fleeing from the horsemen who spurred back towards Wellesley.

But one Mahratta officer had been stalking Sharpe and he now saw his opportunity as Sharpe was held by the half-blinded man. The officer came from behind Sharpe and he swung his tulwar at the back of the redcoat's neck.

The stroke was beautifully aimed. It hit Sharpe plumb on the nape of his neck, and it should have cut through his spine and dropped him dead to the bloody ground in an instant, but there was a dead king's ruby hidden in the leather bag around which Sharpe's hair was clubbed and the big ruby stopped the blade dead. The jolt of the blow jerked Sharpe forward, but he kept his feet and the man who had been clutching him at last released his grip and Sharpe could turn. The officer swung again and Sharpe parried so hard that the Sheffield steel slashed clean through the tulwar's light blade and the next stroke cut through the blade's owner.

"Bastard!" Sharpe shouted as he tugged the blade free and he whirled around to kill the next man who came near, but instead it was Captain Campbell who was there, and behind him were a dozen troopers who spurred their horses into the enemy and hacked down with their sabres.

For a second or two Sharpe could scarcely believe that he was alive.

Nor could he believe that the fight was over. He wanted to kill again.

His blood was up, the rage was seething in him, and there was no more enemy and so he contented himself by slashing the sabre down onto the Mahratta officer's head.

"Bastard!" he shouted, then booted the man's face to jolt the blade free. Then, suddenly, he was shaking. He turned and saw that Wellesley was staring at him aghast and Sharpe was certain he must have done something wrong. Then he remembered what it was. "Sorry, sir," he said.

"You're sorry?" Wellesley said, though he seemed scarcely able to speak. The General's face was pale.

"For pushing you, sir," Sharpe said. "Sorry, sir. Didn't mean to, sir."

"I hope you damn well did mean to," Wellesley said forcibly, and Sharpe saw that the General, usually so calm, was shaking too.

Sharpe felt he ought to say something more, but he could not think what it was.

"Lost your last horse, sir," he said instead. "Sorry, sir."

Wellesley gazed at him. In all his life he had never seen a man fight like Sergeant Sharpe, though in truth the General could not remember everything that had happened in the last two minutes. He remembered Diomed falling and he remembered trying to loosen his feet from the stirrups, and he remembered a blow on the head that was probably one of Diomed's flailing hooves, and he thought he remembered seeing a bayonet bright in the sky above him and he had known that he must be killed at that moment, and then everything was a dizzy confusion. He recalled Sharpe's voice, using language that shocked even the General, who was not easily offended, and he remembered being thrust back against the gun so that the Sergeant could face the enemy alone, and Wellesley had approved of that decision, not because it spared him the need to fight, but because he had recognized that Sharpe would be hampered by his presence.

Then he had watched Sharpe kill, and he had been astonished by the ferocity, enthusiasm and skill of that killing, and Wellesley knew that his life had been saved, and he knew he must thank Sharpe, but for some reason he could not find the words and so he just stared at the embarrassed Sergeant whose face was spattered with blood and whose long hair had come loose so that he looked like a fiend from the pit.

Wellesley tried to frame the words that would express his gratitude, yet the syllables choked in his throat, but just then a trooper came trotting to the gun with the reins of the roan mare in his hand. The mare had survived unhurt, and now the trooper offered the reins towards Wellesley who, as if in a dream, walked out of the sheltered space inside the gun's tall wheel to step across the bodies Sharpe had put onto the ground. The General suddenly stooped and picked up a stone.

"This is yours, Sergeant," he said to Sharpe, holding out the ruby. "I saw it fall."

"Thank you, sir. Thank you." Sharpe took the ruby.

The General frowned at the ruby. It seemed wrong for a sergeant to have a stone that size, but once Sharpe had closed his fingers about the stone, the General decided it must have been a blood-soaked piece of rock. It surely was not a ruby?

"Are you all right, sir?" Major Blackiston asked anxiously.

"Yes, yes, thank you, Blackiston." The General seemed to shake off his torpor and went to stand beside Campbell who had dismounted to kneel beside Diomed. The horse was shaking and neighing softly. "Can he be saved?" Wellesley asked.

"Don't know, sir," Campbell said. "The pike blade's deep in his lung, poor thing."

"Pull it out, Campbell. Gently. Maybe he'll live." Wellesley looked around him to see that the yth Native Cavalry had scoured the gunners away and driven the remaining Mahratta horsemen off, while Harness's 78th had again marched into canister and round shot to capture the southern part of the Mahratta artillery.

Harness's adjutant now cantered through the bodies scattered around the guns.

"We've nails and mauls if you want us to spike the guns, sir," he said to Wellesley.

"No, no. I think the gunners have learned their lesson, and we might take some of the cannon into our own service," Wellesley said, then saw that he was still holding his sword. He sheathed it. "Pity to spike good guns," he added. It could take hours of hard work to drill a driven nail out of a touch-hole, and so long as the enemy gunners were defeated then the guns would no longer be a danger. The General turned to an Indian trooper who had joined Campbell beside Diomed. "Can you save him?" he asked anxiously.

The Indian very gently pulled at the pike, but it would not move.

"Harder, man, harder," Campbell urged him, and laid his own hands on the pike's bloodied shaft.

The two men tugged at the pike and the fallen horse screamed with pain.

"Careful!" Wellesley snapped.

"You want the pike in or out, sir?" Campbell asked.

"Try and save him," the General said, and Campbell shrugged, took hold of the shaft again, put his boot on the horse's red wet chest, and gave a swift, hard heave. The horse screamed again as the blade left his hide and as a new rush of blood welled down to soak his white hair.

"Nothing more we can do now, sir," Campbell said.

"Look after him," Wellesley ordered the Indian trooper, then he frowned when he saw that his last horse, the roan mare, still had her trooper's saddle and that no one had thought to take his own saddle off Diomed.

That was the orderly's job and Wellesley looked for Sharpe, then remembered he had to express his thanks to the Sergeant, but again the words would not come and so Wellesley asked Campbell to change the saddles, and once that was done he climbed onto the mare's back.

Captain Barclay, who had survived his dash across the field, reined in beside the General.

"Wallace's brigade is ready to attack, sir."

"We need to get Harness's fellows into line," Wellesley said. "Any news of Maxwell?"

"Not yet, sir," Barclay said. Colonel Maxwell had led the cavalry in their pursuit across the River Juah.

"Major!" Wellesley shouted at the commander of the Native Cavalry. "Have your men hunt down the gunners here. Make sure none of them live, then guard the guns so they can't be retaken. Gentlemen?" He spoke to his aides. "Let's move on."

Sharpe watched the General ride away into the thinning skein of cannon smoke, then he looked down at the ruby in his hand and saw that it was as red and shiny as the blood that dripped from his sabre tip. He wondered if the ruby had been dipped in the fountain of Zum-Zum along with the Tippoo's helmet. Was that why it had saved his life? It had done bugger all for the Tippoo, but Sharpe was alive when he should have been dead, and so, for that matter, was Major General Sir Arthur Wellesley.

The General had left Sharpe alone by the gun, all but for the dead and dying men and the trooper who was trying to staunch Diomed's wound with a rag. Sharpe laughed suddenly, startling the trooper.

"He didn't even say thank you," Sharpe said aloud.

"What, sahib?" the trooper asked.

"You don't call me sahib," Sharpe said. "I'm just another bloody soldier like you. Good for bloody nothing except fighting other people's battles. And ten to one the buggers won't thank you." He was thirsty so he opened one of the General's canteens and drank from it greedily. "Is that horse going to live?"

The Indian did not seem to understand everything Sharpe said, but the question must have made some sense for he pointed at Diomed's mouth.

The stallion's lips were drawn back to reveal yellow teeth through which a pale pink froth seeped. The Indian shook his head sadly.

"I bled that horse," Sharpe said, "and the General said he was greatly obliged to me. Those were his very words, "greatly obliged". Gave me a bloody coin, he did. But you save his life and he doesn't even say thank you! I should have bled him, not his bloody horse. I should have bled him to bloody death." He drank more of the water and wished it were arrack or rum. "You know what the funny thing is?" he asked the Indian. "I didn't even do it because he was the General. I did it because I like him. Not personally, but I do like him. In a strange sort of way. I wouldn't have done it for you. I'd have done it for Tom Garrard, but he's a friend, see? And I'd have done it for Colonel McCandless, because he's a proper gentleman, but I wouldn't have done it for too many others."

Sharpe sounded drunk, even to himself, but in truth he was stone cold sober in a battlefield that had suddenly gone silent beneath the westering sun. It was almost evening, but there was still enough daylight left to finish the battle, though whether Sharpe would have anything to do with the finishing seemed debatable, for he had lost his job as the General's orderly, had lost his horse, had lost his musket and was stranded with nothing but a dented sabre.

"That ain't really true," he confessed to the uncomprehending Indian, "what I said about liking him. I want him to like me, and that's different, ain't it? I thought the miserable bugger might make me an officer! Sod that for a hope, eh? No sash for me, lad. It's back to being a bloody infantryman."

He used the bloody sabre to cut a strip of cloth from the robes of a dead Arab, and he folded the strip into a pad that he pushed under his jacket to staunch the blood from the tulwar wound on his left shoulder.

It was not a serious injury, he decided, for he could feel no broken bones and his left arm was unhindered. He tossed the dented sabre away, found a discarded Mahratta musket, tugged the cartridge box and bayonet off the dead owner's belt, then went to find someone to kill.

It took half an hour to form the new line from the five battalions that had marched through the Mahratta gunfire and put Pohlmann's right to flight, but now the five battalions faced north towards Pohlmann's new position which rested its left flank on Assaye's mud walls then stretched along the southern bank of the River Juah. The Mahrattas had forty guns remaining, Pohlmann still commanded eight thousand infantry and innumerable cavalry, and the Rajah of Berar's twenty thousand infantrymen still waited behind the village's makeshift ramparts.

Wellesley's infantry numbered fewer than four thousand men, he had only two light guns that were serviceable and scarcely six hundred cavalrymen mounted on horses that were bone weary and parched dry.

"We can hold them!" Pohlmann roared at his men. "We can hold them and beat them! Hold them and beat them."

He was still on horseback, and still in his gaudy silk coat. He had dreamed of riding his elephant across a field strewn with the enemy's dead and piled with the enemy's captured weapons, but instead he was encouraging his men to a last stand beside the river.

"Hold them," he shouted, "hold them and beat them."

The Juah flowed behind his men, while in front of them the shadows stretched long across Assaye's battle-littered farmlands.

Then the pipes sounded again, and Pohlmann turned his horse to look at the right-hand end of his line and he saw the tall black bearskins and the swinging kilts of the damned Scottish regiment coming forward again. The sun caught their white crossbelts and glinted from their bayonets. Beyond them, half hidden by the trees, the British cavalry was threatening, though they seemed to be checked by a battery of cannon on the right of Pohlmann's line. The Hanoverian knew the cavalry was no danger. It was the infantry, the unstoppable red-jacketed infantry, that was going to beat him, and he saw the sepoy battalions starting forward on the Highlanders' flank and he half turned his horse, thinking to ride to where the Scottish regiment would strike his line. It would hit Saleur's compoo, and suddenly Pohlmann could not careless any more. Let Saleur fight his battle, because Pohlmann knew it was lost. He stared at the 78th and he reckoned that no force on earth could stop such men.

"The best damned infantry on earth," he said to one of his aides.

"Sahib?"

"Watch them! You'll not see better fighting men while you live," Pohlmann said bitterly, then sheathed his sword as he gazed at the Scots who were once again being battered by cannon fire, but still their two lines kept marching forward. Pohlmann knew he should go west to encourage Saleur's men, but instead he was thinking of the gold he had left behind in Assaye. These last ten years had been a fine adventure, but the Mahratta Confederation was dying before his eyes and Anthony Pohlmann did not wish to die with it. The rest of the Mahratta princedoms might fight on, but Pohlmann had decided it was time to take his gold and run.

Saleur's compoo was already edging backwards. Some of the men from the rearward ranks were not even waiting for the Scots to arrive, but were running back to the River Juah and wading through its muddy water that came up to their chests. The rest of the regiments began to waver.

Pohlmann watched. He had thought these three compoos were as fine as any infantry in the world, but they had proved to be brittle. The British fired a volley and Pohlmann heard the heavy balls thump into his infantry and he heard the cheer from the redcoats as they charged forward with the bayonet, and suddenly there was no army opposing them, just a mass of men fleeing to the river.

Pohlmann took off his gaudily plumed hat that would mark him as a prize capture and threw it away, then stripped off his sash and coat and tossed them after the hat as he spurred towards Assaye. He had a few minutes, he reckoned, and those minutes should be enough to secure his money and get away. The battle was lost and, for Pohlmann, the war with it. It was time to retire.