Sharpe's Triumph

Chapter 6

Colonel McCandless excused himself from Pohlmann's supper, but did not forbid Sharpe to attend. "But don't get drunk," he warned the Sergeant, "and be at my tent at midnight. I want to be back at the River Godavery by dawn."

"Yes, sir," Sharpe said dutifully, then went to Pohlmann's tent where most of the compoo's officers had gathered. Dodd was there, and so were a half-dozen wives of Pohlmann's European officers and among them was Simone Joubert, though there was no sign of her husband.

"He is in charge of the army picquets tonight," Simone explained when Sharpe asked her, "and Colonel Pohlmann invited me to eat."

"He invited me to join his army," Sharpe told her.

"He did?" Her eyes widened as she stared up from her chair. "And will you?"

"It would mean I'd be close to you, Ma'am," Sharpe said, "and that's an inducement."

Simone half smiled at the clumsy gallantry.

"I think you would not be a good soldier if you changed your loyalty for a woman, Sergeant."

"He says I'll be an officer," Sharpe said.

"And is that what you want?"

Sharpe squatted on his heels so that he could be closer to her. The other European wives saw him crouch and pursed their mouths with a disapproval born of envy, but Sharpe was oblivious of their gaze.

"I think I'd like to be an officer, yes. And I can think of one very good reason to be an officer in this army."

Simone blushed.

"I am a married woman, Sergeant. You know that."

"But even married women need friends," Sharpe said, and just then a large hand took unceremonious hold of his clubbed hair and hauled him to his feet.

Sharpe turned belligerently on whoever had manhandled him, then saw that it was a smiling Major Dodd.

"Can't have you stooping to women, Sharpe," Dodd said before offering an ungainly bow to Simone. "Good evening, Madame."

"Major," Simone acknowledged him coldly.

"You will forgive me, Madame, if I steal Sergeant Sharpe from you?" Dodd asked. "I want a word with him. Come on, Sharpe."

He plucked Sharpe's arm, guiding him across the tent. The Major was very slightly drunk and evidently intent on becoming more drunk for he snatched a whole jug of arrack from a servant, then scooped up two beakers from a table.

"Fancy Madame Joubert, do you?" he asked Sharpe.

"I like her well enough, sir."

"She's spoken for, Sergeant. Remember that if you join us, she's spoken for."

"You mean she's married, sir?"

"Married?" Dodd laughed, then poured the arrack and gave one beaker to Sharpe. "How many European officers can you see here? And how many European women? And how many of them are young and pretty like Madame Joubert? Work it out, lad. And you're not jumping the queue." Dodd smiled as he spoke, evidently meaning his tone to be jocular. "But you are joining us, aren't you?"

"I'm thinking about it, sir."

"You'll be in my regiment, Sharpe," Dodd said. "I need European officers. I've only got Joubert and he's no damn use, so I've spoken with Pohlmann and he says you can join my Cobras. I'll give you three companies of your own to look after, and God help you if they're not kept in prime condition. I like to look after the men, because come battle they look after you, but God help any officer who lets me down."

He paused to drink half his arrack and pour some more.

"I'll work you hard, Sharpe, I'll work you damned hard, but there'll be plenty of gold washing round this army once we've thrashed Boy Wellesley. Money's your reward, lad, money."

"Is that why you're here, sir?"

"It's why we're all here, you fool. All except Joubert, who was posted here by his government and is too damned timid to help himself to Scindia's gold. So report to me in the morning. We're marching north tomorrow night, which means you'll have one day to learn my ropes and after that you're Mister Sharpe, gentleman. Come to me tomorrow morning, Sharpe, at dawn, and get rid of that damned red coat." He poked Sharpe's chest hard. "I see a red coat," he went on, "and I want to start killing." He grinned, showing yellow teeth.

"Is that what happened at Chasalgaon, sir?" Sharpe asked.

Dodd's grin vanished.

"Why the hell do you ask that?" he growled.

Sharpe had asked because he had been remembering the massacre, and wondering if he could ever serve under a man who had ordered such a killing, but he said none of that. He shrugged instead.

"I heard tales, sir, but no one ever tells us anything proper. You know that, sir, so I just wondered what happened there."

Dodd considered that answer for a moment, then shrugged.

"I didn't take prisoners, Sharpe, that's what happened. Killed the bastards to the last man."

And to the last boy, Sharpe thought, remembering Davi Lal. He remained impassive, not letting a hint of memory or hate show.

"Why not take prisoners, sir?"

"Because it's war!" Dodd said vehemently. "When men fight me, Sergeant, I want them to fear me, because that way the battle's half won before it's started. It ain't kind, I'm sure, but who ever said war was kind? And in this war, Sergeant," he waved his hand towards the officers clustering about Colonel Pohlmann, "it's dog eat dog. We're all in competition, and you know who'll win? The most ruthless, that's who. So what did I do at Chasalgaon? I made sure of a reputation, Sharpe. Made a name for myself. That's the first rule of war, Sergeant. Make the bastards fear you. And you know what the second rule is?"

"Don't ask questions, sir?"

Dodd grinned.

"No, lad. The second rule is never to reinforce failure, and the third, lad, is to look after your men. You know why I had that goldsmith thrashed? You've heard of that, haven't you? I'll tell you. It wasn't because he'd cheated me, which he did, but because he cheated some of my men. So I looked after them and let them give him a solid kicking, and the bastard died. Which he deserved to do, rich fat bastard that he was."

The Major turned and scowled at the servants bringing dishes from Pohlmann's cook tent.

"And they're just as bad here, Sharpe. Look at all that food! Enough to feed two regiments there, Sharpe, and the men are going hungry. No proper supply system, see? It costs money, that's why. You don't get issued food in this army, you go out and steal it."

He plainly disapproved.

"I've told Pohlmann, I have. Lay on a commissary, I said, but he won't, because it costs money. Scindia hoards food in his fortresses, but he won't issue it, not unless he's paid, and Pohlmann won't give up a penny of profit, so no food ever comes. It just rots in the warehouses while we have to keep moving, because after a week we've stripped one set of fields bare and have to go on to the next. It's no bloody way to run an army."

"Maybe one day you'll change the system, sir," Sharpe said.

"I will!" Dodd said vigorously. "I bloody will! And if you've any sense, lad, you'll be here helping me. You learn one thing as a miller's son, Sergeant, and that's not just how to grind corn, but that a fool and his money are easily parted. And Scindia's a fool, but given a chance I'll make the bugger into the Emperor of India." He turned as a servant beat a gong with a muffled stick. "Time for our vittles."

It was a strangely subdued supper, though Pohlmann did his best to amuse his company. Sharpe had tried to manoeuvre himself into a seat beside Simone, but Dodd and a Swedish captain beat him to it and Sharpe found himself next to a small Swiss doctor who spent the whole meal quizzing Sharpe about the religious arrangements in British regiments.

"Your chaplains are godly men, yes?"

"Drunken bastards, sir, most of them."

"Surely not!"

"I hauled two of them out of a whorehouse not a month ago, sir. They didn't want to pay, see?"

"You are not telling me the truth!"

"God's honour, sir. The Reverend Mister Cooper was one of them, and it's a rare Sunday that he's sober. He preached a Christmas sermon at Easter, he was that puzzled."

Most of the guests left early, Dodd among them, though a few diehards stayed on to give the Colonel a game of cards. Pohlmann grinned at Sharpe.

"You wager, Sharpe?"

"I'm not rich enough, sir."

Pohlmann shook his head in mock exasperation at the answer. "I will make you rich, Sharpe. You believe me?"

"I do, sir."

"So you've made up your mind? You're joining me?"

"I still want to think a bit, sir."

Pohlmann shrugged.

"You have nothing to think about. You either become a rich man or you die for King George."

Sharpe left the remaining officers at their cards and walked away into the encampment. He really was thinking, or trying to think, and he sought a quiet place, but a crowd of soldiers were wagering on dog fights, and their cheers, as well as the yelps and snarls of the dogs, carried far through the darkness. Sharpe settled on an empty stretch of ground close to the picketed camels that carried Pohlmann's supply of rockets, and there he lay and stared up at the stars through the mist of smoke. A million stars. He had always thought there was an answer to all life's mysteries in the stars, yet whenever he stared at them the answer slipped out of his grasp. He had been whipped in the foundling home for staring at a clear night's sky through the workshop skylight.

"You ain't here to gawp at the dark, boy," the overseer had snapped, "you're here to labour," and the whip had slashed down across his shoulders and he had dutifully looked down at the great tarry lump of hemp rope that had to be picked apart. The old ropes had been twisted and tightened and tarred into vast knots bigger than Sharpe himself, and they had been used as fenders on the London docks, but when the grinding and thumping of the big ships had almost worn the old fenders through they were sent to the foundling home to be picked apart so that the strands could be sold as furniture stuffing or to be mixed into wall plaster.

"Got to learn a trade, boy," the master had told him again and again, and so Sharpe had learned a trade, but it was not hemp-picking.

He learned the killing trade. Load a musket, ram a musket, fire a musket. And he had not done much of it, not yet, but he liked doing it.

He remembered Malavelly, remembered firing the volley at the approaching enemy, and he remembered the sheer exultation as all his unhappiness and anger had been concentrated into his musket's barrel and been gouted out in one explosive rush of flame, smoke and lead.

He did not think of himself as unhappy. Not now. The army had been good to him in these last years, but there was still something wrong in his soul. What that was, he did not know, because Sharpe did not reckon he was any good at thinking. He was good at action, for whenever there was a problem to be solved Sergeant Sharpe could usually find the solution, but he was not much use at simply thinking. But he had to think now, and he stared at the smoke-dimmed stars in the hope that they would help him, but all they did was go on shining.

Lieutenant Sharpe, he thought, and was surprised to realize that he saw nothing very odd in that idea. It was ridiculous, of course. Richard Sharpe, an officer? But somehow he could not shake the idea loose.

It was a laughable idea, he tried to convince himself; at least in the British army it was, but not here. Not in Pohlmann's army, and Pohlmann had once been a sergeant.

"Bloody hell," he said aloud, and a camel belched in answer.

The cheers of the spectators greeted the death of a dog, and, nearer, a soldier was playing one of the strange Indian instruments, plucking its long strings to make a sad, plangent music. In the British camp, Sharpe thought, they would be singing, but no one was singing here.

They were too hungry, though hunger did not stop a man from fighting.

It had never stopped Sharpe. So these hungry men could fight, and they needed officers, and all he had to do was stand up, brush the dirt away and stroll across to Pohlmann's tent and become Lieutenant Sharpe.

Mister Sharpe.

And he would do a good job. He knew that. Better than Morris, better than most of the army's junior officers. He was a good sergeant, a bloody good sergeant, and he enjoyed being a sergeant. He got respect, not just because of the stripes on his red sleeves, and not just because he had been the man who blew the mine at Seringapatam, but because he was good and tough. He wasn't frightened of making a decision, and that was the key to it, he reckoned. And he enjoyed making decisions, and he enjoyed the respect that decisiveness brought him, and he realized he had been seeking respect all his life. Christ, he thought, but would it not be a joy to walk back into the foundling home with braid on his coat, gold on his shoulders and a sword at his side? That was the respect he wanted, from the bastards in Brewhouse Lane who had said he would never amount to anything and who had whipped him bloody because he was a bastard off the streets. By Christ, he thought, but going back there would make life perfect! Brewhouse Lane, him in a braided coat and a sword, and with Simone on his arm and a dead king's jewels about her neck, and them all touching their hats and bobbing like ducks in a pond. Perfect, he thought, just perfect, and as he indulged himself in that dream an angry shout came from the tents close to Pohlmann's marquee and an instant later a gun sounded.

There was a moment's pause after the gunshot, as if its violence had checked a drunken fight, then Sharpe heard men laughing and the sound of hoofbeats. He was standing now, staring towards the big marquee.

The horses went by quite close to him, then the noise of their hooves receded into the dark.

"Come back!" a man shouted in English, and Sharpe recognized McCandless's voice.

Sharpe began running.

"Come back!" McCandless shouted again, and then there was another gunshot and Sharpe heard the Colonel yelp like a whipped dog. A score of men were shouting now. The officers who had been playing cards were running towards McCandless's tent and Pohlmann's bodyguards were following them. Sharpe dodged round a fire, leaped a sleeping man, then saw a figure hurrying away from the commotion. The man had a musket in his hand and he was half crouching as if he did not want to be seen, and Sharpe did not hesitate, but just swerved and ran at the man.

When the fugitive heard Sharpe coming, he quickened his pace, then realized he would be caught and so he turned on his pursuer. The man whipped out a bayonet and screwed it onto the muzzle of his musket.

Sharpe saw the glint of moonlight on the long blade, saw the man's teeth white in the dark, then the bayonet lunged at him, but Sharpe had dropped to the ground and was sliding forward in the dust beneath the blade. He wrapped his arms around the man's legs, heaved once and the man fell backwards. Sharpe cuffed the musket aside with his left hand, then hammered his right hand down onto the moon-whitened teeth. The man tried to kick Sharpe's crotch, then clawed at his eyes, but Sharpe caught one of the hooked fingers in his mouth and bit hard. The man screamed in pain, Sharpe kept biting and kept hitting, then he spat the severed fingertip into the man's face and gave him one last thump with his fist.

"Bastard," Sharpe said, and hauled the man to his feet.

Two of Pohlmann's officers had arrived now, one still with a fan of cards in his hand.

"Get his bloody musket," Sharpe ordered them.

The man struggled in Sharpe's hands, but he was much smaller than Sharpe and a good kick between his legs brought him to order.

"Come on, you bastard," Sharpe said.

One of the officers had picked up the fallen musket and Sharpe reached over and felt the muzzle. It was hot, showing that the weapon had just been fired.

"If you killed my Colonel, you bastard, I'll kill you," Sharpe said and dragged the man through the campfires to the knot of officers who had gathered about the Colonel's tent.

McCandless's two horses were gone. Both the mare and the gelding had been stolen, and Sharpe realized it was their hoofbeats he had heard go past him. McCandless, woken by the noise of the horse thieves, had come from the tent and fired his pistol at the men, and one of them had fired back and the bullet had buried itself in the Colonel's left thigh. He was lying on the ground now, looking horribly pale, and Pohlmann was bellowing for his doctor to come quickly.

"Who's that?" he demanded of Sharpe, and nodding at the prisoner.

"The bastard who fired at Colonel McCandless, sir. Musket's still hot."

The man proved to be one of Major Dodd's sepoys, one of the men who had deserted with Dodd from the Company, and he was put into the charge of Pohlmann's bodyguard. Sharpe knelt beside McCandless who was trying not to cry aloud as the newly arrived doctor, the Swiss man who had sat beside Sharpe at dinner, examined his leg.

"I was sleeping!" the Colonel complained. "Thieves, Sharpe, thieves!"

"We'll find your horses," Pohlmann reassured the Scotsman, "and we'll find the thieves."

"You promised me safety!" McCandless complained.

"The men will be punished," Pohlmann promised, then he helped Sharpe and two other men lift the wounded Colonel and carry him into the tent where they laid him on the rope cot.

The doctor said the bullet had missed the bone, and no major artery was cut, but he still wanted to fetch his probes, forceps and scalpels and try to pull the ball out.

"You want some brandy, McCandless?" Pohlmann asked.

"Of course not. Tell him to get on with it."

The doctor called for more lanterns, for water and for his instruments, and then he spent ten excruciating minutes looking for the bullet deep inside McCandless's upper thigh. The Scotsman uttered not a sound as the probe slid into his lacerated flesh, nor as the long-necked forceps were pushed down to find a purchase on the bullet. The Swiss doctor was sweating, but McCandless just lay with eyes tight shut and teeth clenched.

"It comes now," the doctor said and began to pull, but the flesh had closed on the forceps and he had to use almost all his strength to drag the bullet up from the wound. It came free at last, releasing a spill of bright blood, and McCandless groaned.

"All done now, sir," Sharpe told him.

"Thank God," McCandless whispered, "thank God." The Scotsman opened his eyes. The doctor was bandaging the thigh and McCandless looked past him to Pohlmann. "This is treachery, Colonel, treachery! I was your guest!"

"Your horses will be found, Colonel, I promise you," Pohlmann said, but though his men made a search of the camp, and though they searched until morning, the two horses were not found. Sharpe was the only man who could identify them, for Colonel McCandless was in no state to walk, but Sharpe saw no horses that resembled the stolen pair, but nor did he expect to for any competent horse thief knew a dozen tricks to disguise his catch. The beast would be clipped, its coat would be dyed with blackball, it would be force-fed an enema so that its head drooped, then it would as likely as not be put among the cavalry mounts where one horse looked much like another. Both McCandless's horses had been European bred and were larger and officer quality than most in Pohlmann's camp, yet even so Sharpe saw no sign of the two animals.

Colonel Pohlmann went to McCandless's tent and confessed that the horses had vanished.

"I shall pay you their value, of course," he added.

"I won't take it!" McCandless snapped back. The Colonel was still pale, and shivering despite the heat. His wound was bandaged, and the doctor reckoned it should heal swiftly enough, but there was a danger that the Colonel's recurrent fever might return. "I won't take my enemy's gold," McCandless explained, and Sharpe reckoned it must be the pain speaking for he knew the two missing horses must have cost the Colonel dearly.

"I shall leave you the money," Pohlmann insisted anyway, "and this afternoon we shall execute the prisoner."

"Do what you must," McCandless grumbled.

"Then we shall carry you northwards," the Hanoverian promised, "for you must stay under Doctor Viedler's care."

McCandless levered himself into a sitting position.

"You'll not take me anywhere!" he insisted angrily. "You leave me here, Pohlmann. I'll not depend on your care, but on God's mercy." He let himself drop back onto the bed and hissed with pain. "And Sergeant Sharpe can tend me."

Pohlmann glanced at Sharpe. The Hanoverian seemed about to say that Sharpe might not wish to stay with McCandless, but then he just nodded his acceptance of McCandless's decision.

"If you wish to be abandoned, McCandless, so be it."

"I have more faith in God than in a faithless mercenary like you, Pohlmann."

"As you wish, Colonel," Pohlmann said gently, then backed from the tent and gestured for Sharpe to follow. "He's a stubborn fellow, isn't he?" The Hanoverian turned and looked at Sharpe. "So, Sergeant? Are you coming with us?"

"No, sir," Sharpe said. Last night, he reflected, he had very nearly decided to accept the Hanoverian's offer, but the theft of the horses and the single shot fired by the sepoy had served to change Sharpe's mind.

He could not leave McCandless to suffer and, to his surprise, he felt no great disappointment in thus having the decision forced on him. Duty dictated he should stay, but so did sentiment, and he had no regret.

"Someone has to look after Colonel McCandless, sir," Sharpe explained, "and he's looked after me in the past, so it's my turn now."

"I'm sorry," Pohlmann said, "truly I am. The execution will be in one hour. I think you should see it, so you can assure your Colonel that justice was done."

"Justice, sir?" Sharpe asked scornfully. "It ain't justice, shooting that fellow. He was put up to it by Major Dodd."

Sharpe had no proof of that, but he suspected it strongly. Dodd, he reckoned, had been hurt by McCandless's insults and must have decided to add horse-thieving to his catalogue of crimes.

"You have questioned your prisoner, haven't you, sir?" Sharpe asked. "Because he must know that Dodd was up to his neck in the business."

Pohlmann smiled wearily.

"The prisoner told us everything, Sergeant or I assume he did, but what use is that? Major Dodd denies the man's story, and a score of sepoys swear the Major was nowhere near McCandless's tent when the shots were fired. And who would the British army believe? A desperate man or an officer?" Pohlmann shook his head. "So you must be content with the death of one man, Sergeant."

Sharpe expected that the captured sepoy would be shot, but there was no sign of any firing squad when the moment arrived for the man's death.

Two companies from each of Pohlmann's eight battalions were paraded, the sixteen companies making three sides of a hollow square with Pohlmann's striped marquee forming the fourth side. Most of the other tents had already been struck ready for the move northwards, but the marquee remained and one of its canvas walls had been brailed up so that the compoo's officers could witness the execution from chairs set in the tent's shade. Dodd was not there, nor were any of the regiment's wives, but a score of officers took their places and were served sweetmeats and drink by Pohlmann's servants.

The prisoner was fetched onto the makeshift execution ground by four of Pohlmann's bodyguards. None of the four carried a musket, instead they were equipped with tent pegs, mallets and short lengths of rope. The prisoner, who wore nothing but a strip of cloth around his loins, glanced from side to side as if trying to find an escape route, but, on a nod from Pohlmann, the bodyguards kicked his feet out from beneath him and then knelt beside his sprawling body and pinioned it to the ground by tying the ropes to his wrists and ankles, then fastening the bonds to the tent pegs. The condemned man lay there, spreadeagled gazing up at the cloudless sky as the mallets banged the eight pegs home.

Sharpe stood to one side. No one spoke to him, no one even looked at him, and no wonder, he thought, for this was a farce. All the officers must have known that Dodd was the guilty man, yet the sepoy must die.

The paraded troops seemed to agree with Sharpe, for there was a sullenness in the ranks. Pohlmann's compoo might be well armed and superbly trained, but it was not happy.

The four bodyguards finished tying the prisoner down, then walked away to leave him alone in the centre of the execution ground. An Indian officer, resplendent in silk robes and with a lavishly curved tulwar hanging from his belt, made a speech. Sharpe did not understand a word, but he guessed that the watching soldiers were being harangued about the fate which awaited any thief. The officer finished, glanced once at the prisoner, then walked back to the tent and, just as he entered its shade, so Pohlmann's great elephant with its silver-encased tusks and cascading metal coat was led out from behind the marquee. The mahout guided the beast by tugging on one of its ears, but as soon as the elephant saw the prisoner it needed no guidance, but just plodded across to the spreadeagled man. The victim shouted for mercy, but Pohlmann was deaf to the pleas.

The Colonel twisted round.

"You're watching, Sharpe?"

"You've got the wrong man, sir. You should have Dodd there."

"Justice must be done," the Colonel said, and turned back to the elephant that was standing quietly beside the victim who twisted in his bonds, thrashed, and even managed to free one hand, but instead of using that free hand to tug at the other three ropes that held him, he flailed uselessly at the elephant's trunk.

A murmur ran through the watching sixteen companies, but the jemadars and havildars shouted and the sullen murmur ceased. Pohlmann watched the prisoner struggle for a few more seconds, then took a deep breath.

"Haddah!" he shouted. "Haddah!"

The prisoner screamed in anticipation as, very slowly, the elephant lifted one ponderous forefoot and moved its body slightly forward. The great foot came down on the prisoner's chest and seemed to rest there.

The man tried to push the foot away, but he might as well have attempted to shove a mountain aside. Pohlmann leaned forward, his mouth open, as, slowly, very slowly, the elephant transferred its weight onto the man's chest. There was another scream, then the man could not draw breath to scream again, but still he jerked and twitched and still the weight pressed on him, and Sharpe saw his legs try to contract against the bonds at his ankles, and saw his head jerk up, and then he heard the splinter of ribs and saw the blood spill and bubble at the victim's mouth.

He winced, trying to imagine the pain as the elephant pressed on down, crushing bone and lung and spine. The prisoner gave one last jerk, his hair flapping, then his head fell back and a great wash of blood brimmed from his open mouth and puddled beside his corpse.

There was a last crunching sound, then the elephant stepped back and a sigh sounded gently through the watching ranks. Pohlmann applauded, and the officers joined in. Sharpe turned away. Bastards, he thought, bastards.

And that night Pohlmann marched north.

Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill was not an educated man, and he was not even particularly clever unless slyness passed for wits, but he did understand one thing very well, and that was the impression he made on other men. They feared him. It did not matter whether the other man was a raw private, fresh from the recruiting sergeant, or a general whose coat was bright with gold lace and heavy with braid. They all feared him, all but two, and those two frightened Obadiah Hakeswill.

One was Sergeant Richard Sharpe, in whom Hakeswill sensed a violence that was equal to his own, while the other was Major General Sir Arthur Wellesley who, when he had been colonel of the 33rd, had always been serenely impervious to Hakeswill's threats.

So Sergeant Hakeswill would have much preferred not to confront General Wellesley, but when his convoy reached Ahmednuggur his enquiries established that Colonel McCandless had ridden north and had taken Sharpe with him, and the Sergeant had known he could do nothing further without Wellesley's permission and so he had gone to the General's tent where he announced himself to an orderly who had informed an aide who had commanded the Sergeant to wait in the shade of a banyan tree.

He waited the best part of a morning while the army readied itself to leave Ahmednuggur. Guns were being attached to limbers, oxen harnessed to carts and tents being struck by lascars. The fortress of Ahmednuggur, fearing the same fate as the city, had meekly surrendered after a few cannon shots and, with both the city and its fort safe in his hands, Wellesley was now planning to march north, cross the Godavery and seek out the enemy army. Sergeant Hakeswill had no great wish to take part in that adventure, but he could see no other way of catching up with Sharpe and so he was resigned to his fate.

"Sergeant Hakeswill?" An aide came from the General's big tent.

"Sir!" Hakeswill scrambled to his feet and stiffened to attention.

"Sir Arthur will see you now, Sergeant."

Hakeswill marched into the tent, snatched off his shako, turned smartly to the left, quick-marched three short paces, then slammed to a halt in front of the camp table where the General was doing paperwork.

Hakeswill stood quivering at attention. His face shuddered.

"At ease, Sergeant," Wellesley, bare-headed, had barely glanced up from his papers as the Sergeant entered.

"Sir!" Hakeswill allowed his muscles to relax slightly. "Papers for you, sir!" He pulled the warrant for Sharpe's arrest from his pouch and offered it to the General.

Wellesley made no move to accept the warrant. Instead he leaned back in his chair and examined Hakeswill as though he had never seen the Sergeant before. Hakeswill stood rigid, his eyes staring at the tent's brown wall above the General's head. Wellesley sighed and leaned forward again, still ignoring the warrant.

"Just tell me, Sergeant," he said, his attention already returned to the documents on his desk. An aide was taking whatever sheets the General signed, sprinkling sand on the signatures, then placing more papers on the table.

"I'm ordered here by Lieutenant Colonel Gore, sir. To apprehend Sergeant Sharpe, sir."

Wellesley looked up again and Hakeswill almost quailed before the cold eyes. He sensed that Wellesley could see right through him, and the sensation made his face quiver in a series of uncontrollable twitches.

Wellesley waited for the spasms to end.

"On your own, are you, Sergeant?" the General asked casually.

"Detail of six men, sir."

"Seven of you! To arrest one man?"

"Dangerous man, sir. I'm ordered to take him back to Hurryhur, sir, so he can..."

"Spare me the details," Wellesley said, looking back to the next paper needing his signature. He tallied up a list of figures. "Since when did four twelves and eighteen yield a sum of sixty-eight?" he asked no one in particular, then corrected the calculation before signing the paper. "And since when did Captain Lampert dispose of the artillery train?"

The aide wielding the sand-sprinkler blushed.

"Colonel Eldredge, sir, is indisposed." Drunk, if the truth was known, which it was, but it was impolitic to say that a colonel was drunk in front of a sergeant.

"Then invite Captain Lampert to supper. We must feed him some arithmetic along with a measure of common sense," Sir Arthur said.

He signed another paper, then rested his pen on a small silver stand before leaning back and looking at Hakeswill. He resented the Sergeant's presence, not because he disliked Sergeant Hakeswill, though he did, but rather because Wellesley had long ago left behind the cares of being the commander of the 33rd and he did not want to be reminded of those duties now. Nor did he want to be in a position to approve or disapprove of his successor's orders for that would be an impertinence.

"Sergeant Sharpe is not here," he said coldly.

"So I hear, sir. But he was, sir?"

"Nor am I the person you should be troubling with this matter, Sergeant," Wellesley went on, ignoring Hakeswill's question. He took up the pen again, dipped it in ink, and crossed a name from a list before adding his signature. "In a few days," he continued, "Colonel McCandless will return to the army and you will report to him with your warrant and I've no doubt he will give the matter its due attention. Till then I shall employ you usefully. I won't have seven men idling while the rest of the army works." Wellesley turned to the aide. "Where do we lack men, Barclay?"

The aide considered for a moment.

"Captain Mackay could certainly use some assistance, sir."

"Very well." Wellesley pointed the pen's steel nib at Hakeswill. "You'll attach yourself to Captain Mackay. Captain Mackay commands our bullock train and you will do whatever he desires until Colonel McCandless relieves you of that duty. Dismissed."

"Sir!" Hakeswill said dutifully, but inwardly he was furious that the General had not shared his indignation about Sharpe.

He about-turned, stamped from the tent, and went to find his men.

"Going to the dogs," he said bitterly.

"Sergeant?" Flaherty asked.

"The dogs. Time was in this army when even a general officer respected sergeants. Now we're to be bullock guards. Pick up your bleeding fire locks."

"Sharpe ain't here, Sergeant?"

"Of course he ain't here! If he was here we wouldn't be ordered to wipe bullocks' arses, would we? But he's coming back. General's word on it. Just a few days, lads, just a few days and he'll be back with all his glittering stones hidden away."

Hakeswill's fury was abating. At least he had not been ordered to attach himself to a fighting battalion, and he was beginning to realize that any duty attached to the baggage animals would give him a fine chance to fillet the army stores. Pickings were to be made there, and more than just the pickings of stores, for the baggage always travelled with the army's tail of women and that meant more opportunity. It could be worse, Hakeswill thought, so long as this Captain Mackay was no martinet.

"You know what the trouble is with this army?" Hakeswill demanded.

"What?" Lowry asked.

"Full of bleeding Scotchmen." Hakeswill glowered. "I hates Scotchmen. Not English, are they? Peasant bleeding Scotchmen. Sawney creatures, they are, sawney! Should have killed them all when we had the chance, but we takes pity on them instead. Scorpions in our bosoms, that's what they are. Says so in the scriptures. Now get a bleeding move on!"

But it would only be a few days, the Sergeant consoled himself, only a few days, and Sharpe would be finished.

Colonel Pohlmann's bodyguard carried McCandless to a small house that lay at the edge of the encampment. A widow and three children lived there, and the woman shrank away from the Mahratta soldiers who had raped her, stolen all her food and fouled her well with their sewage.

The Swiss doctor left Sharpe with strict instructions that the dressing on the Colonel's leg was to be kept damp.

"I'd give you some medicine for his fever, but I have none," the doctor said, "so if the fever gets worse just keep him warm and make him sweat." The doctor shrugged. "It might help."

Pohlmann left food and a leather bag of silver coins.

"Tell McCandless that's for his horses," he told Sharpe.

"Yes, sir."

"The widow will look after you," Pohlmann said, "and when the Colonel's well enough you can move him to Aurungabad. And if you change your mind, Sharpe, you know I'll welcome you."

The Colonel shook Sharpe's hand, then mounted the silver steps to his howdah. A horseman unfurled his banner of the white horse of Hanover.

"I'll spread word that you're not to be molested," Pohlmann called back, then his mahout tapped the elephant's skull and the great beast set off northwards.

Simone Joubert was the last to say farewell.

"I wish you were staying with us," she said unhappily.

"I can't."

"I know, and maybe it's for the best." She looked left and right to make certain no one was watching, then leaned swiftly forward and kissed Sharpe on the cheek. "Au revoir, Richard."

He watched her ride away, then went back into the hovel which was nothing but a palm thatch roof set above walls made of decayed reed mats. The interior of the hut was blackened by years of smoke, and its only furniture was the rope cot on which McCandless lay.

"She's an outcast," the Colonel told Sharpe, indicating the woman. "She refused to jump onto her husband's funeral fire, so her family sent her away." The Colonel flinched as a stab of pain scythed through his thigh. "Give her the food, Sergeant, and some cash out of that bag. How much did Pohlmann leave us?"

The coins in Pohlmann's bag were of silver and copper, and Sharpe sorted and counted each different denomination, and McCandless then translated their rough worth into pounds.

"Sixty!" He announced the total bitterly. "That might just buy one cavalry hack, but it won't buy a horse that can stay over country for days on end."

"How much did your gelding cost, sir?" Sharpe asked.

"Five hundred and twenty guineas," McCandless said ruefully. "I bought him four years ago, when you and I were released from Seringapatam, and I prayed he'd be the last horse I'd ever buy. Except for the mare, of course, but she was just a remount. Even so she cost me a hundred and forty guineas. A bargain, too! I bought her in Madras, fresh off the boat and she was just skin and bones then, but two months of pasture put some muscle on her."

The figures were almost incomprehensible to Sharpe. Five hundred and twenty guineas for a horse? A man could live his whole life on five hundred and forty-six pounds, and live well. Ale every day.

"Won't the Company replace the horses, sir?" he asked.

McCandless smiled sadly.

"They might, Sharpe, but I doubt it. I doubt it very much."

"Why not, sir?"

"I'm an old man," the Scotsman said, "and my salary is a heavy impost on the Company's debit column. I told you they'd like me to retire, Sharpe, and if I indent for the value of two horses they might well insist on my retirement." He sighed. "I knew this pursuit of Dodd was doomed. I felt it in my bones."

"We'll get you another horse, sir," Sharpe said.

McCandless grimaced.

"How, pray?"

"We can't have you walking, sir. Not a full colonel. Besides, it was my fault, really."

"Your fault? Don't be absurd, Sharpe."

"I should have been with you, sir. But I wasn't. I was off thinking."

The Colonel looked at him steadily for what seemed a long while.

"I should imagine, Sergeant," he said at last, "that you had a lot to think about. How was your elephant ride with Colonel Pohlmann?"

"He showed me Aurungabad, sir."

"I think he took you to the mountain top and showed you the kingdoms of this world," the Colonel said. "What did he offer you? A lieutenancy?"

"Yes, sir." Sharpe blushed to admit as much, but it was dark inside the widow's hovel and the Colonel did not see.

"He told you of Benoit de Boigne," McCandless asked, "and of that rogue George Thomas? And he said you could be a rich man in two or three years, aren't I right?"

"Something like that, sir."

McCandless shrugged.

"I won't deceive you, Sharpe, he's right. Everything he told you is true. Out there..." he waved towards the setting sun which glinted through the chinks in the reed-mat walls, "...is a lawless society that for years has rewarded the soldier with gold. The soldier, mark me, not the honest farmer or the hard-working merchant. The princedoms grow fat, Sharpe, and the people grow lean, but there is nothing to stop you serving those princes. Nothing but the oath you took to serve your King."

"I'm still here, sir, aren't I?" Sharpe said indignantly.

"Yes, Sharpe, you are," McCandless said, then he closed his eyes and groaned. "I fear the fever is going to come. Maybe not."

"So what do we do, sir?"

"Do? Nothing. Nothing helps the fever except a week of shivering in the heat."

"I meant about getting you back to the army, sir. I could go to Aurungabad and see if I can find someone to take a message."

"Not unless you speak their language, you won't," McCandless said, then he lay for a while in silence. "Sevajee will find us," he went on eventually. "News carries far in this countryside, and Sevajee will smell us out in the end."

Again he fell silent, and Sharpe thought he had fallen asleep, but then he saw the Colonel shake his head.

"Doomed," the Colonel said. "Lieutenant Dodd is going to be the end of me."

"We'll capture Dodd, sir, I promise."

"I pray so, I pray so." The Colonel pointed to his saddlebags in the corner of the hut. "Would you find my Bible, Sharpe? And perhaps you'd read to me while there's still a little light? Something from the Book of Job, I think."

McCandless fell into days of fever and Sharpe into days of isolation.

For all he knew the war might have been won or lost, for he saw no one and no news came to the thatched hovel under its thin-leaved trees. To keep himself busy he cleared out an old irrigation ditch that ran northwards across the woman's land, and he hacked at the brush, killed snakes and shovelled earth until he was rewarded by a trickle of water.

That done, he tackled the hovel's roof, laying new palm thatch on the old and binding it in place with twists of frond. He went hungry, for the woman had little food other than the grain Pohlmann had left and some dried beans. Sharpe stripped to the waist when he worked and his skin went as brown as the stock of his musket. In the evenings he played with the woman's three children, making forts out of the red soil that they bombarded with stones and, in one memorable twilight, when a toy rampart proved impregnable to thrown pebbles, Sharpe laid a fuse of powder and blew a breach with three of his musket cartridges.

He did his best to tend McCandless, washing the Colonel's face, reading him the scriptures and feeding him spoonfuls of bitter gunpowder diluted in water. He was not sure that the powder helped, but every soldier swore that it was the best medicine for the fever, and so Sharpe forced spoonfuls of the salty mixture down the Colonel's throat.

He worried about the bullet wound in McCandless's thigh, for the widow had shyly pushed him aside one day when he was dampening the dressing and had insisted on untying the bandage and putting a poultice of her own making onto the raw wound. There were moss and cobwebs in the poultice, and Sharpe wondered if he had done the right thing by letting her apply the mixture, but as the first week passed the wound did not seem to worsen and, in his more lucid moments, the Colonel claimed the pain was lessening.

Once the irrigation ditch was cleared Sharpe tackled the widow's well.

He devised a dredge out of a broken wooden bucket and used it to scoop out handfuls of foul-smelling mud from the base of the well, and all the while he thought about his future. He knew Major Stokes would welcome him back to the Seringapatam armoury, but after a time the regiment would surely remember his existence and want him back and that would mean rejoining the Light Company with Captain Morris and Sergeant Hakeswill, and Sharpe shuddered at that thought. Maybe Colonel Gore would transfer him? The lads said that Gore was a decent fellow, not as chilling as Wellesley, and that was good news, yet even so Sharpe often wondered whether he should have accepted Pohlmann's offer.

Lieutenant Sharpe, he muttered it aloud, Lieutenant Sharpe. Why not?

And in those moments he would daydream of the joy of going back to the foundling home in Brewhouse Lane. He would wear a sword and a cocked hat, have braid on his jacket and spurs at his heels, and for every lash the bastards had ever laid on small Richard Sharpe he would pay them back tenfold. He felt a terrible anger when he remembered those beatings and he would haul at his makeshift dredge as if he could slake the anger with hard work.

But in all those daydreams he never once returned to Brewhouse Lane in a white coat, or in a purple coat, or in any other coat except a red one.

No one in Britain had ever heard of Anthony Pohlmann, and why should they care that a child had gone from the gutters of Wapping to a commission in the Maharajah of Gwalior's army? A man might as well claim to be Colonel of the Moon for all anyone would care. Unless it was a red coat, they would condemn him as a flash bastard, and be done with him, but if he walked back in Britain's scarlet coat then they would take him seriously and that meant he had to become an officer in his own army.

So one night, when the rain was beating on the widow's repaired thatch and the Colonel was sitting on the rope bed declaring that his fever was abating, Sharpe asked McCandless how a man became an officer in Britain's army.

"I mean I know it can be done, sir," he said awkwardly, "because we had a Mister Devlin back in England and he came up from the ranks. He'd been a shepherd's boy on the dales before he took the shilling, but he was Lieutenant Devlin when I knew him."

And was most likely to die as an old and embittered Lieutenant Devlin, McCandless thought, but he did not say as much. Instead he paused before saying anything. He was even tempted to evade the question altogether by pretending that his fever had suddenly taken a turn for the worse for he understood only too well what lay behind Sharpe's question. Most officers would have mocked the ambition, but Hector McCandless was not a mocker. But he also knew that for a man to aspire to rise from the ranks to the officers' mess was to risk two disappointments: the disappointments of both failure and success. The most likely outcome was failure, for such promotions were as scarce as hens' teeth, but a few men did make the leap and their success inevitably led to unhappiness. They lacked the education of the other officers, they lacked their manners and they lacked their confidence.

They were generally disdained by the other officers, and set to work as quartermasters in the belief that they could not be trusted to lead men in battle. And there was even some truth to that belief, for the men themselves did not like their officers to have come from the ranks, but McCandless decided Sharpe knew all that for himself and so he spared him the need to listen to it all over again.

"There are two ways, Sharpe," McCandless said. "First you can buy a commission. The rank of ensign will cost you four hundred pounds, but you'll need another hundred and fifty to equip yourself, and even that will only buy a barely adequate horse, a four-guinea sword and a serviceable uniform, and you'll still need a private income to cover your mess bills. An ensign earns close to ninety-five pounds a year, but the army stops some of that for expenses and more for the income tax. Have you heard of that new tax, Sharpe?"

"No, sir."

"A pernicious thing. Taking from a man what he has honestly earned! It's thievery, Sharpe, disguised as government." The Colonel scowled. "So an ensign is lucky to see seventy pounds out of his salary, and even if he lives frugal that won't cover his mess bills. Most regiments charge an officer two shillings for dinner every day, a shilling for wine, though of course you could go without wine well enough and water's free, but there's sixpence a day for the mess servant, another sixpence for breakfast and sixpence for washing and mending. You can't live as an officer without at least a hundred pounds a year on top of your salary. Have you got the money?"

"No, sir," Sharpe lied. In truth he had enough jewels sewn into his red coat to buy himself a majority, but he did not want McCandless to know that.

"Good," McCandless said, "because that isn't the best way. Most regiments won't look at a man buying himself out of the ranks. Why should they? They've got plenty of young hopefuls coming from the shires with their parents' cash hot in their purses, so the last thing they need is some half-educated ranker who can't meet his mess bills. I'm not saying it's impossible. Any regiment posted to the West Indies will sell you an ensign's post cheap, but that's because they can't get anyone else on account of the yellow fever. A posting to the West Indies is a death sentence. But if a man wants to get into anything other than a West Indies-bound regiment, Sharpe, then he must hope for the second route. He must be a sergeant and he must be able to read and write, but there's a third requirement too. The fellow must perform a quite impossibly gallant act. Leading a Forlorn Hope will do the trick, but any act, so long as it's suicidal, will serve, though of course he must do it under the General's eye or else it's all a waste of time."

Sharpe sat in silence for a while, daunted by the obstacles that lay in the way of his daydream's fulfilment.

"Do they give him a test, sir?" he asked. "In reading?" That thought worried him for, although his reading was improving night by night, he still stumbled over quite simple words. He claimed that the Bible's print was too small, and McCandless was kind enough to believe the excuse.

"A test in reading? Good Lord, no! For an officer!" McCandless smiled tiredly. "They take his word, of course." The Colonel paused for a second. "But I've often wondered, Sharpe," he went on, "why a man from the ranks would want to be an officer?"

So he could go back to Brewhouse Lane, Sharpe thought, and kick some teeth in.

"I was just wondering about it, sir," he said instead. "Just thinking, sir."

"Because in many ways," McCandless said, "sergeants have more influence with the men. Less formal prestige, perhaps, but certainly more influence than any junior officer. Ensigns and lieutenants, Sharpe, are very insignificant creatures. They're really of very little use most of the time. It's not till a man reaches his captaincy that he begins to be valuable."

"I'm sure you're right, sir," Sharpe said lamely. "I was just thinking."

That night the Colonel relapsed into fever, and Sharpe sat in the hut doorway and listened to the rain beat on the land. He could not shake the daydream, could not drive away the picture of him ducking through the gate in Brewhouse Lane and seeing the faces he hated. He wanted it, he wanted it terribly, and so he dreamed on, dreaming the impossible, but unable to check the dream. He did not know how, but he would somehow make the leap. Or else die in the attempt.