Sharpe's Triumph

Chapter 7

Dodd called his new gelding Peter.

"Because it's got no balls, Monsewer," he informed Pierre Joubert, and he repeated the poor joke a dozen times in the next two days just to make certain that its insult was understood. Joubert smiled and said nothing, and the Major would launch himself into a panegyric on Peter's merits. His old horse had whistling lungs, while this one could be ridden all day and still had its head up and a spring in its long stride. "A thoroughbred, Captain," he told Joubert, "an English thoroughbred. Not some screw-backed old French nag, but a proper horse."

The men in Dodd's Cobras liked to see their Major on his fine big horse. It was true that one man had died in the beast's acquisition, yet the theft had still been a fine piece of banditry, and the men had laughed to see the English Sergeant searching the camp while all the while Major Dodd's jemadar, Gopal, was hiding the horses a long way to the north.

Colonel Pohlmann was less amused.

"I promised McCandless safe conduct, Major," he growled at Dodd the first time he saw the Englishman on his new gelding.

"Quite right, sir."

"And you've added horse-thieving to your catalogue of crimes?"

"I can't think what you mean, sir," Dodd protested in mock innocence. "I purchased this beast off a horse trader yesterday, sir. Gypsy-looking fellow from Korpalgaon. Took the last of my savings."

"And your jemadar's new horse?" Pohlmann asked, pointing to Gopal who was riding Colonel McCandless's mare.

"He bought her from the same fellow," Dodd said.

"Of course he did, Major," Pohlmann said wearily. The Colonel knew it was pointless to chide a man for theft in an army that was encouraged to steal for its very existence, yet he was offended by Dodd's abuse of the hospitality that had been extended to McCandless.

The Scotsman was right, Pohlmann thought, Dodd was a man without honour, yet the Hanoverian knew that if Scindia employed none but saints then he would have no European officers.

The theft of McCandless's horses only added more reason for Pohlmann to dislike William Dodd. He found the Englishman too dour, too jealous and too humourless, yet still, despite his dislike, he recognized that the Major was a fine soldier. His rescue of his regiment from Ahmednuggur had been an inglorious operation executed superbly, and Pohlmann, at least, understood the achievement, just as he appreciated that Dodd's men liked their new commanding officer. The Hanoverian was not certain why Dodd was popular, for he was not an easy man; he had no small talk, he smiled rarely, and he was punctilious about details that other officers might let pass, yet still the men liked him. Maybe they sensed that he was on their side, wholly on their side, recognizing that nothing is achieved in war by officers without men, and a good deal by men without officers, and for that reason, if no other, they were glad he was their commanding officer. And men who like their commanding officer are more likely to fight well than men who do not, and so Pohlmann was glad that he had William Dodd as a regimental commander even if he did disdain him as little better than a common thief.

Pohlmann's compoo had now joined the rest of Scindia's army, which had already been swollen by the troops of the Rajah of Berar, so that over a hundred thousand men and all their animals now wandered the Deccan Plain in search of grazing, forage and grain. The vast army hugely outnumbered its enemy, but Scindia made no attempt to bring Wellesley to battle. Instead he led his horde in an apparently aimless fashion.

They went south towards the enemy, then withdrew north, they made a lumbering surge to the east and then retraced their steps to the west, and everywhere they marched they stripped the farms, slashed down crops, broke into granaries, slaughtered livestock and rifled humble homes in search of rice, wheat or lentils. Every day a score of cavalry patrols rode south to find the enemy armies, but the Mahratta horsemen rarely came close to the redcoats for the British cavalry counter-patrolled aggressively and each day left dead horses on the plain while Scindia's great host wandered mindlessly on.

"Now that you have such a fine horse," Pohlmann said to Dodd a week after the Major's theft, "perhaps you can lead a cavalry patrol?"

"Gladly, sir."

"Someone has to find out what the British are doing," Pohlmann grumbled.

Dodd rode south with some of Pohlmann's own cavalry and his patrol succeeded where so many others had failed, but only because the Major donned his old red coat so that it would appear as if his score of horsemen were under the command of a British officer, and the ruse worked for Dodd came across a much smaller force of Mysore cavalry who rode unsuspecting into the trap. Six enemy escaped, eight died, and their leader yielded a mass of information before Dodd shot him through the head.

"You might have brought him back to us," Pohlmann remonstrated gently when Dodd returned.

"I could have talked with him myself," the Colonel added, peering down from his green-curtained howdah. The elephant plodded behind a purple-coated horseman who carried Pohlmann's red flag emblazoned with the white horse of Hanover.

There was a girl with Pohlmann, but all Dodd could see of her was a dark languid hand bright with gems hanging over the howdatfs edge.

"So tell me what you learned, Major," Pohlmann ordered.

"The British are back close to the Godavery, sir, but they're still split into two forces and neither has more than six thousand infantry. Wellesley's nearest to us while Stevenson's moving off to the west. I've made a map, sir, with their dispositions." Dodd held the paper up towards the swaying howdah.

"Hoping to pincer us, are they?" Pohlmann asked, reaching down to pluck the map from the Major's hand. "Not now, Liebchen," he added, though not to Dodd.

"I imagine they're staying divided because of the roads, sir," Dodd said.

"Of course," Pohlmann said, wondering why Dodd was teaching him to suck eggs. The British need for decent roads was much greater than the Mahrattas', for the British carried all their foodstuffs in ox wagons and the cumbersome vehicles could not manage any country other than the smoothest grass plains. Which meant that the two enemy armies could only advance where the ground was smooth or the roads adequate. It made their movements clumsy, and it made any attempt to pincer Scindia's army doubly difficult, though by now, Pohlmann reflected, the British commander must be thoroughly confused about Scindia's intentions. So was Scindia, for that matter, for the Maharajah was taking his tactical advice from astrologers rather than from his European officers which meant that the great horde was impelled to its wanderings by the glimmer of stars, the import of dreams and the entrails of goats.

"If we marched south now," Dodd urged Pohlmann, "we could trap Wellesley's men south of Aurungabad. Stevenson's too far away to support him."

"It does sound a good idea," Pohlmann agreed genially, pocketing Dodd's map.

"There must be some plan," Dodd suggested irritably.

"Must there?" Pohlmann asked airily.

"Higher up, Liebchen, just there! That's good!" The bejewelled hand had vanished inside the howdah. Pohlmann closed his eyes for an instant, then opened them and smiled down on Dodd. "The plan," the Hanoverian said grandly, "is to wait and see whether Holkar will join us." Holkar was the most powerful of all the Mahratta chieftains, but he was biding his time, uncertain whether to join Scindia and the Rajah of Berar or whether to sit out the war with his huge forces intact. "And the next part of the plan," Pohlmann went on, "is to hold a durbar. Have you ever attended a durbar, Dodd?"

"No, sir."

"It is a council, a committee of the old and the wise, or rather of the senile and the talkative. The war will be discussed, as will the position of the stars and the mood of the gods and the failure of the monsoon and, once the durbar is over, if indeed it ever ends, we shall commence our wandering once again, but perhaps a decision of sorts will have been made, though whether that decision will be to retire on Nagpoor, or to advance on Hyderabad, or to choose a battlefield and allow the British to attack us, or simply to march from now until the Day of Judgment, I cannot yet tell you. I shall offer advice, of course, but if Scindia dreams of monkeys on the night before the durbar then not even Alexander the Great could persuade him to fight."

"But Scindia must know better than to let the two British forces unite, sir?" Dodd said.

"He does, he does, indeed he does. Our lord and master is no fool, but he is inscrutable. We are waiting for the omens to be propitious."

"They're propitious now," Dodd protested.

"That is not for you or me to decide. We Europeans can be relied upon to fight, but not to read the messages of the stars or to understand the meaning of dreams. But when it comes to the battle, Major, you can be sure that the stars and the dreams will be ignored and that Scindia will leave all the decisions to me."

Pohlmann smiled benignly at Dodd, then gazed out at the horde of cavalry that covered the plain. There must have been fifty thousand horsemen in view, but Pohlmann would happily have marched with only a thousand. Most of the Mahratta horsemen were only present for the loot they hoped to steal after victory and, though they were all fine riders and brave fighters, they had no conception of picquet duty and none was willing to charge into the face of an infantry unit. They did not understand that a cavalry troop needed to take horrific casualties if it was to break infantry; instead they reckoned Scindia's great guns and his mercenary infantry would do the shattering and they would then pursue the broken enemy like hornets, and until that happy moment they were just so many useless mouths to feed. If they all went away tomorrow it would make no difference to the war's outcome for the victory would still be won by the artillery and the infantry. Pohlmann knew that and he imagined lining his guns wheel to wheel in batteries, with his infantry formed just behind and then watching the redcoats walk into a tumult of fire and iron and death. A flail of fire! A storm of metal whipping the air into a gale of bloody ruin amongst which the British would be chopped into butcher's scraps.

"You're hurting me," the girl said.

"Liebchen, I'm so sorry," Pohlmann said, releasing his grip. "I was thinking."

"Sir?" Dodd asked, thinking the Hanoverian was speaking to him.

"I was thinking, Dodd, that it is no bad thing that we wander so aimlessly."

"It isn't?" Dodd retorted with astonishment.

"Because if we do not know where we are going, then nor will the British, so one day they will march a few miles too far and then we shall pounce on them. Someone will blunder, Dodd, because in war someone always does blunder. It is an immutable rule of war; someone will blunder. We must just have patience."

In truth Pohlmann was just as impatient as Dodd, but the Colonel knew it would not serve any purpose to betray that impatience. In India, he had learned, matters moved at their own pace, as imponderable and unstoppable as an elephant. But soon, Pohlmann reckoned, one of the British forces would make a march too far and find itself so close to the vast Mahratta army that even Scindia could not refuse battle. And even if the two enemy armies joined, what did that matter? Their combined forces were small, the Mahratta horde was vast, and the outcome of their meeting as certain as anything could be in war. And Pohlmann was confident that Scindia would eventually give him command of the army, and Pohlmann would then roll over the enemy like the great Juggernaut of Hindu legend and with that happy prospect he was content.

Dodd looked up to say something more, but the howdah's green curtains had been drawn shut. The girl giggled, while the mahout, seated just in front of the closed howdah, stared impassively ahead. The Mahrattas were on the march, covering the earth like a swarm, just waiting for their enemies to blunder.

Sharpe was tired of being hungry so one day he took his musket and walked in search of game. He reckoned anything would do, even a tiger, but he hoped to find beef. India seemed full of beeves, but that day he saw none, though after four miles he found a herd of goats grazing in a small wood. He drew his bayonet, reckoning it would be easier to cut one of the beast's throats than shoot it and so attract the attention of the herd's vengeful owner, but when he came close to the animals a dog burst out of the trees and attacked him.

He clubbed the dog down with his musket butt, and the brief commotion put the goats to flight and it took him the best part of an hour to find the animals again and by then he could not have cared if he attracted half the population of India and so he aimed and fired, and all he succeeded in doing was wounding one poor beast that started bleating pitifully. He ran to it, cut its throat, which was harder than he had thought, then hoisted the carcass onto his shoulder.

The widow boiled the stringy flesh which tasted foul, but it was still meat and Sharpe wolfed it down as though he had not eaten in months.

The smell of the meat roused Colonel McCandless who sat up in his bed and frowned at the pot.

"I could almost eat that," he said.

"You want some, sir?"

"I haven't eaten meat in eighteen years, Sharpe, I won't start now."

He ran a hand through his lank white hair.

"I do declare I'm feeling better, God be praised."

The Colonel swung his feet onto the floor and tried to stand.

"But I'm weak as a kitten," he said.

"Plate of meat will put some strength in you, sir."

"Get thee behind me, Satan," the Colonel said, then put a hand on one of the posts which held up the roof and hauled himself to his feet. "I might take a walk tomorrow."

"How's the leg, sir?"

"Mending, Sharpe, mending." The Colonel put some weight on his left leg and seemed pleasantly surprised that it did not buckle. "God has preserved me again."

"Thank God for that, sir."

"I do, Sharpe, I do."

Next morning the Colonel felt better still. He ducked out of the hut and blinked in the bright sunlight.

"Have you seen any soldiers these last two weeks?"

"Not a one, sir. Nothing but farmers."

The Colonel scraped a hand across the white bristles on his chin.

"A shave, I think. Would you be so kind as to fetch my box of razors? And perhaps you could heat some water?"

Sharpe dutifully put a pot of water on the fire, then stropped one of the Colonel's razors on a saddle's girth strap. He was just perfecting the edge when McCandless called him from outside the house.

"Sharpe!"

Something in McCandless's voice made Sharpe snatch up his musket, then he heard the beat of hooves as he ducked under the low doorway and he hauled back the musket's cock in expectation of enemies, but McCandless waved the weapon down.

"I said Sevajee would find us!" the Colonel said happily. "Nothing stays secret in this countryside, Sharpe."

Sharpe lowered the musket's flint as he watched Sevajee lead his men towards the widow's house. The young Indian grinned at McCandless's dishevelled condition.

"I heard there was a white devil near here, and I knew it would be you."

"I wish you'd come sooner," McCandless grumbled.

"Why? You were ill. The folks I spoke to said you would die." Sevajee slid out of the saddle and led his horse to the well. "Besides, we've been too busy."

"Following Scindia, I trust?" the Colonel asked.

"Here, there and everywhere." Sevajee hauled up a skin of water and held it under his horse's nose. "They've been south, east, back north again. But now they're going to hold a durbar, Colonel."

"A durbar!" McCandless brightened, and Sharpe wondered what on earth a durbar was.

"They've gone to Borkardan," Sevajee announced happily. "All of them! Scindia, the Rajah of Berar, the whole lot! A sea of enemies."

"Borkardan," McCandless said, summoning a mental map in his head. "Where's that? Two days' march north?"

"One for a horseman, two on foot," Sevajee agreed.

McCandless, his shave forgotten, stared northwards.

"But how long will they stay there?"

"Long enough," Sevajee said gleefully, "and first they have to make a place fit for a prince's durbar and that will take them two or three days, and then they'll talk for another two or three days. And they need to rest their animals too, and in Borkardan they've found plenty of forage."

"How do you know?" McCandless asked.

"Because we met some brindames," Sevajee said with a smile, and turned at the same time to indicate four small, lean and riderless horses that were the trophies of that meeting. "We had a talk with them," Sevajee said airily, and Sharpe wondered how brutal that talk had been. "Forty thousand infantry, sixty thousand cavalry," Sevajee said, "and over a hundred guns."

McCandless limped back into the house to fetch paper and ink from his saddlebag. Then, back in the sunlight, he wrote a despatch and Sevajee detailed six of his horsemen to take the precious news south as fast as they could. They would need to search for Wellesley's army and Sevajee told them to whip their horses bloody because, if the British moved fast, there was a chance to catch the Mahrattas while they were encamped for their durbar and then to attack them before they could form their battle array.

"That would even things up," McCandless announced happily. "A surprise attack!"

"They're not fools," Sevajee warned, "they'll have a host of picquets."

"But it takes time to organize a hundred thousand men, Sevajee, a lot of time! They'll be milling about like sheep while we march into battle!"

The six horsemen rode away with the precious despatch and McCandless, tired again, let Sharpe shave him.

"All we can do now is wait," the Colonel said.

"Wait?" Sharpe asked indignantly, believing that McCandless was implying that they would do nothing while the battle was being fought.

"If Scindia's at Borkardan," the Colonel said, "then our armies will have to march this way to reach him. So we might as well wait for them to come to us. Then we can join up again."

It was time to stop dreaming. It was time to fight.

Wellesley's army had crossed the Godavery and marched towards Aurungabad, then heard that Scindia's forces had gone far to the east before lunging south towards the heartland of Hyderabad, and the report made sense for the old Nizam had just died and left a young son on the throne and a young ruler's state could make for rich pickings, and so Wellesley had turned his small army and hurried back to the Godavery.

They laboriously recrossed the river, swimming the horses, bullocks and elephants to the southern bank, and floating the guns, limbers and wagons across on rafts. The men used boats made from inflated bladders, and it took two whole days to make the crossing and then, after a day's march south towards threatened Hyderabad, more news came that the enemy had turned about and gone back northwards.

"Don't know what they're bleeding doing," Hakeswill declared.

"Captain Mackay says we're looking for the enemy," Private Lowry suggested helpfully.

"Looking for his arse, more like. Bloody Wellesley." Hakeswill was sitting beside the river, watching the bullocks being goaded back into the water to cross once again to the north bank. "In the water, out the water, up one road, down the next, walk in bleeding circles, then back through the bleeding river again." His blue eyes opened wide in indignation and his face twitched. "Arthur Wellesley should never be a general."

"Why not, Sarge?" Private Kendrick asked, knowing that Hakeswill wanted the opportunity to explain.

"Stands to reason, lad, stands to reason." Hakeswill paused to light a clay pipe. "No bleeding experience. You remember that wood outside Seringapatam? Bloody chaos, that's what it was, bloody chaos and who caused it? He did, that's who." He gestured at Wellesley who, mounted on a tall white horse, had come to the bluff above the river. "He's a general," Hakeswill explained, "because his father's an earl and because his elder brother's the Governor General, that's why. If my father had been a bleeding earl, then I'd be a bleeding general, says so in the scriptures. Lord Obadiah Hakeswill, I'd be, and you wouldn't see me buggering about like a dog chasing fleas up its arse. I'd bleeding well get the job done. On your feet, lads, look smart now!"

The General, with nothing to do except wait while his army crossed the river, had turned his horse up the bank and his path brought him close to where Hakeswill had been seated. Wellesley looked across, recognized the Sergeant and seemed about to turn away, but then an innate courtesy overcame his distaste for speaking with the lower ranks.

"Still here, Sergeant?" he asked awkwardly.

"Still here, sir," Hakeswill said. He was quivering at attention, his clay pipe thrust into a pocket and his firelock by his side. "Doing my duty, sir, like a soldier."

"Your duty?" Wellesley asked. "You came to arrest Sergeant Sharpe, isn't that right?"

"Sir!" Hakeswill affirmed.

The General grimaced.

"Let me know if you see him. He's with Colonel McCandless, and they both seem to be missing. Dead, probably." And on that cheerful note the General tugged on his reins and spurred away.

Hakeswill watched him go, then retrieved his clay pipe and sucked the tobacco back to glowing life. Then he spat onto the bank.

"Sharpie ain't dead," he said malevolently. "I'm the one who's going to kill Sharpie. Says so in the scriptures."

Then Captain Mackay arrived and insisted that Hakeswill and his six men help organize the transfer of the bullocks across the river. The animals carried packs loaded with spare round shot for the artillery, and the Captain had been provided with two rafts for that precious ammunition.

"They're to transfer the shot to the rafts, understand? Then swim the beasts over. I don't want chaos, Sergeant. Make them line up decently. And make sure they don't roll the shot into the river to save themselves the bother of reloading it."

"It isn't a soldier's job," Hakeswill complained when the Captain was gone. "Chivvying bullocks? I ain't a bleeding Scotchman. That's all they're good for, chivvying bullocks. Do it all the time, they do, down the green roads to London, but it ain't a job for an Englishman."

But he nevertheless did an effective job, using his bayonet to prod men and animals into the queue which slowly snaked its way down to the water. By nightfall the whole army was over, and next morning, long before dawn, they marched north again. They camped before midday, thus avoiding the worst of the heat, and by mid-afternoon me first enemy cavalry patrols showed in the distance and the army's own cavalry rode out to drive the horsemen away.

They did not move at all for the next two days. Cavalry scouts tried to discover the enemy's intentions, while Company spies spread gold throughout the north country in search of news, but the gold was wasted for every scrap of intelligence was contradicted by another. One said Holkar had joined Scindia, another said Holkar was declaring war on Scindia, then the Mahrattas were said to be marching west, or east, or perhaps north, until Wellesley felt he was playing a slow version of blind man's buff.

Then, at last, some reliable news arrived. Six Mahratta horsemen in the service of Syud Sevajee came to Wellesley's camp with a hastily written despatch from Colonel McCandless. The Colonel regretted his absence and explained that he had taken a wound that had been slow to heal, but he could assure Sir Arthur that he had not abandoned his duty and could thus report, with a fair degree of certainty, that the forces of Dowlut Rao Scindia and the Rajah of Berar had finally ceased their wanderings at Borkardan. They planned to stay there, McCandless wrote, to hold a durbar and to let their animals recover their strength, and he estimated those intentions implied a stay in Borkardan of five or six days. The enemy numbered, he reported, at least eighty thousand men and possessed around a hundred pieces of field artillery, many of inferior calibre, but an appreciable number throwing much heavier shot.

He reckoned, from his own earlier observations in Pohlmann's camp, that only fifteen thousand of the enemy's infantry were trained to Company standards, while the rest were make weights but the guns, he added ominously, were well served and well maintained. The despatch had been written in a hurry, and in a shaky hand, but it was concise, confident and comprehensive.

The Colonel's despatch drove the General to his maps and then to a flurry of orders. The army was readied to march that night, and a galloper went to Colonel Stevenson's force, west of Wellesley's, with orders to march north on a parallel course. The two small armies should combine at Borkardan in four days' time.

"That will give us, what?" Wellesley thought for a second or two. "Eleven thousand prime infantry and forty-eight guns." He jotted the figures on the map, then absentmindedly tapped the numbers with a pencil. "Eleven thousand against eighty," he said dubiously, then grimaced. "It will serve," he concluded, "it will serve very well."

"Eleven against eighty will serve, sir?" Captain Campbell asked with astonishment. Campbell was the young Scottish officer who had thrice climbed the ladder to be the first man into Ahmednuggur and his reward had been a promotion and an appointment as Wellesley's aide.

Now he stared at the General, a man Campbell considered as sensible as any he had ever met, yet the odds that Wellesley was welcoming seemed insane.

"I'd rather have more men," Wellesley admitted, "but we can probably do the job with eleven thousand. You can forget Scindia's cavalry, Campbell, because it won't manage a thing on a battlefield, and the Rajah of Berar's infantry will simply get in everyone else's way, which means we'll be fighting against fifteen thousand good infantry and rather too many well-served guns. The rest don't matter. If we beat the guns and the infantry, the rest of them will run. Depend on it, they'll run."

"Suppose they adopt a defensive position, sir?" Campbell felt impelled to insert a note of caution into the General's hopes. "Suppose they're behind a river, sir? Or behind walls?"

"We can suppose what we like, Campbell" but supposing is only fancy, and if we take fright at fancies then we might as well abandon soldiering. We'll decide how to deal with the rogues once we find them, but the first thing to do is find them." Wellesley rolled up the map. "Can't kill your fox till you've run him down. So let's be about our business."

The army marched that night. Six thousand cavalry, nearly all of them Indian, led the way, and behind them were twenty-two pieces of artillery, four thousand sepoys of the East India Company and two battalions of Scots, while the great clumsy tail of bullocks, wives, children, wagons and merchants brought up the rear. They marched hard, and if any man was daunted by the size of the enemy's army, they showed no sign of it. They were as well trained as any men that had ever worn the red coat in India, they had been promised victory by their long-nosed General, and now they were going for the kill. And, whatever the odds, they believed they would win. So long as no one blundered.

Borkardan was a mere village with no building fit for a prince, and so the great durbar of the Mahratta chiefs was held in an enormous tent that was hastily made by sewing a score of smaller tents together, then lining the canvas with swathes of brightly coloured silk, and it would have made a marvellously impressive structure had the heavens not opened when the durbar began so that the sound of men's voices was half drowned by the beat of rain on stretched canvas and if the hastily made seams had not opened to let the water pour through in streams.

"It's all a waste of time," Pohlmann grumbled to Dodd, "but we have to attend." The Colonel was fixing his newly tied stock with a diamond studded pin. "And it isn't a time for any European opinion except mine, understand?"

"Yours?" Dodd, who had rather hoped to make a case for boldness, asked dourly.

"Mine," Pohlmann said forcibly. "I want to twist their tails, and I need every European officer nodding like a demented monkey in agreement with me."

A hundred men had gathered under the dripping silk. Scindia, the Maharajah of Gwalior, and Bhonsla, the Rajah of Berar, sat on musnuds, elegant raised platform-thrones that were draped in brocade and sheltered from the intrusive rain by silk parasols. Their Highnesses were cooled by men waving long-handled fans while the rest of the durbar sweltered in the close, damp heat. The high-class brahmins, all in baggy trousers cut from gold brocade, white tunics and tall white turbans, sat closest to the two thrones, while behind them stood the military officers, Indian and European, who were perspiring in their finest uniforms. Servants moved unobtrusively through the crowd offering silver dishes of almonds, sweetmeats or raisins soaked in arrack. The three senior European officers stood together. Pohlmann, in a purple coat hung with golden braid and loops of chain, towered over Colonel Dupont, a wiry Dutchman who commanded Scindia's second compoo, and over Colonel Saleur, a Frenchman, who led the infantry of the Begum Somroo. Dodd lingered just behind the trio and listened to their private durbar. The three men agreed that their troops would have to take the brunt of the British attack, and that one of them must exercise overall command. It could not be Saleur, for the Begum Somroo was a client ruler of Scindia's, so her commander could hardly take precedence over her feudal overlord's officers, which meant that it had to be either Dupont or Pohlmann, but the Dutchman generously ceded the honour to the Hanoverian.

"Scindia would have chosen you anyway," Dupont said.

"Wisely," Pohlmann said cheerfully, "very wisely. You're content, Saleur?"

"Indeed," the Frenchman said.

He was a tall, dour man with a badly scarred face and a formidable reputation as a disciplinarian. He was also reputed to be the Begum Somroo's lover, a post that evidently accompanied the command of that lady's infantry.

"What are the bastards talking about now?" he asked in English.

Pohlmann listened for a few seconds.

"Discussing whether to retreat to Gawilghur," he said.

Gawilghur was a hill fort that lay north and east of Borkardan and a group of brahmins were urging the army to retire there and let the British break their skulls against its cliffs and high walls.

"Goddamn brahmins," Pohlmann said in disgust. "Don't know a damn thing about soldiering. Know how to talk, but not how to fight."

But then an older brahmin, his white beard reaching to his waist, stood up and declared that the omens were more suitable for battle.

"You have assembled a great army, dread Lord," he addressed Scindia, "and you would lock it away in a citadel?"

"Where did they find him?" Pohlmann muttered. "He's actually talking sense!"

Scindia said little, preferring to let Surjee Rao, his chief minister, do the talking, while he himself sat plump and inscrutable on his throne. He was wearing a rich gown of yellow silk that had emeralds and pearls sewn into patterns of flowers, while a great yellow diamond gleamed from his pale-blue turban.

Another brahmin pleaded for the army to march south on Seringapatam, but he was ignored. The Rajah of Berar, darker-skinned than the pale Scindia, frowned at the durbar in an attempt to look warlike, but said very little.

"He'll run away," Colonel Saleur growled, "as soon as the first gun is fired. He always does."

Beny Singh, the Rajah's warlord, argued for battle.

"I have five hundred camels laden with rockets, I have guns fresh from Agra, I have infantry hungry for enemy blood. Let them loose!"

"God help us if we do," Dupont growled. "Bastards don't have any discipline."

"Is it always like this?" Dodd asked Pohlmann.

"Good God, no!" the Hanoverian said. "This durbar is positively decisive! Usually it's three days of talk and a final decision to delay any decision until the next time."

"You think they'll come to a decision today?" Saleur asked cynically.

"They'll have to," Pohlmann said. "They can't keep this army together for much longer. We're running out of forage! We're stripping the country bare."

The soldiers were still receiving just enough to eat, and the cavalrymen made certain their horses were fed, but the camp followers were near starvation and in a few days the suffering of the women and children would cause the army's morale to plummet. Only that morning Pohlmann had seen a woman sawing at what he had assumed was brown bread, then realized that no Indian would bake a European loaf and that the great lump was actually a piece of elephant dung and that the woman was crumbling it apart in search of undigested grains. They must fight now.

"So if we fight," Saleur asked, "how will you win?"

Pohlmann smiled.

"I think we can give young Wellesley a problem or two," he said cheerfully. "We'll put the Rajah's men behind some strong walls where they can't do any damage, and we three will line our guns wheel to wheel, hammer them hard for their whole approach, then finish them off with some smart volleys. After that we'll let the cavalry loose on their remnants."

"But when?" Dupont asked.

"Soon," Pohlmann said, "soon. Has to be soon. Buggers are eating dung for breakfast these days."

There was a sudden silence in the tent and Pohlmann realized a question had been addressed to him. Surjee Rao, a sinister man whose reputation for cruelty was as widespread as it was deserved, raised an eyebrow to the Hanoverian.

"The rain, Your Serene Excellency," Pohlmann explained, "the rain deafened me so I could not hear your question."

"What my Lord wishes to know," the minister said, "is whether we can destroy the British?"

"Oh, utterly," Pohlmann said as though it was risible to even ask the question.

"They fight hard," Beny Singh pointed out.

"And they die like other men when fought hard in return," Pohlmann said dismissively.

Scindia leaned forward and whispered in Surjee Rao's ear.

"What the Lord of our land and the conqueror of our enemy's lands wishes to know," the minister said, "is how you will beat the British?"

"In the way that His Royal Highness suggested, Excellency, when he gave me his wise advice yesterday," Pohlmann said, and it was true that he had enjoyed a private talk with Scindia the day before, though the advice had all been given by Pohlmann, but if he was to sway this durbar then he knew he must let them think that he was simply repeating Scindia's suggestions.

"Tell us, please," Surjee Rao, who knew full well that his master had no ideas except how to increase the tax yields, asked suavely.

"As we all know," Pohlmann said, "the British have divided their forces into two parts. By now both those small armies will know that we are here at Borkardan and, because they are fools eager for death, they will both be marching towards us. Both armies lie to our south, but they are separated by some miles. They nevertheless hope to join together, then attack us, but yesterday, in his unparalleled wisdom, His Royal Highness suggested that if we move eastwards we shall draw the enemy's eastern most column towards us and so make them march away from their allies. We can then fight the two armies in turn, defeat them in turn, and then let our dogs chew the flesh from their carcasses. And when the last enemy is dead, Excellency, I shall bring their General to our ruler's tents in chains and send their women to be his slaves."

More to the point, Pohlmann thought, he would capture Wellesley's food supplies, but he dared not say that in case Scindia took the words as a criticism. But Pohlmann's bravado was rewarded by a scatter of applause that was unfortunately spoiled as a whole section of the tent roof collapsed to let in a deluge of rain.

"If the British are doomed," Surjee Rao asked when the commotion had subsided, "why do they advance on us?"

It was a good question, and one that had worried Pohlmann slightly, though he believed he had found an answer.

"Because, Excellency," he said, "they have the confidence of fools. Because they believe that their combined armies will prove sufficient. Because they do not truly understand that our army has been trained to the same level as their own, and because their General is young and inexperienced and too eager for a reputation."

"And you believe, Colonel, that we can keep their two armies apart?"

"If we march tomorrow, yes."

"How big is the British General's army?"

Pohlmann smiled.

"Wellesley has five thousand infantrymen, Excellency, and six thousand cavalry. We could lose as many men as that and not even notice they were gone! He has eleven thousand men, but the only ones he relies on are his five thousand infantry. Five thousand men! Five thousand!" He paused, making sure that everyone in the tent had heard the figure. "And we have eighty thousand men. Five against eighty!"

"He has guns," the minister observed sourly.

"We have five guns for every one of his. Five against one. And our guns are bigger and they are served just as well as his."

Scindia whispered to Surjee Rao who then demanded that the other European officers give their advice, but all had been forewarned by Pohlmann to sing his tune. March east, they said, draw one British army into battle, then turn on the other. The minister thanked the foreign officers for their advice, then pointedly turned back to the brahmins for their comments. Some advised that emissaries should be sent to Holkar, begging his help, but Pohlmann's confidence had worked its magic and another man indignantly demanded to know why Holkar should be offered a share in the glory of victory. The tide of the durbar was turning in Pohlmann's favour, and he said nothing more, but nor did he need to.

The durbar talked all day and no course of action was formally agreed, but at dusk Scindia and the Rajah of Berar conferred briefly, then Scindia took his leave between rows of brahmins who bowed as their ruler passed. He paused in the huge tent's doorway while his servants brought the palanquin that would preserve him from the rain.

Only when the palanquin was ready did he turn and speak loudly enough for all the durbar to hear.

"We march east tomorrow," he said, "then we shall ponder another decision. Colonel Pohlmann will make the arrangements." He stood for a second, looking up at the rain, then ducked under the palanquin's canopy.

"Praise God," Pohlmann said, for he reckoned that the decision to march eastwards was sufficient to bring on battle.

The enemy was closing all the time, and so long as the Mahrattas did not run northwards, the two sides must eventually meet. And if Scindia's men went eastwards then they would meet on Pohlmann's terms. He rammed on his cocked hat and stalked from the tent, followed by all the European officers.

"We'll march east along the Kaitna!" he said excitedly. "That's where we'll march tomorrow, and the river bank will be our killing ground." He whooped like an excited child. "One short march, gentlemen, and we shall be close to Wellesley's men, and in two or three days we'll fight whether our lords and masters want it or not."

The army marched early next morning. It covered the earth like a dark swarm that flowed beneath the clearing clouds alongside the muddy River Kaitna which slowly deepened and widened as the army followed it eastwards. Pohlmann gave them a very short march, a mere six miles, so that the leading horsemen had reached Pohlmann's chosen campsite long before dawn and by nightfall the slowest of the Mahratta infantry had reached a small, mud-walled village that lay just two miles north of the Kaitna. Scindia and the Rajah of Berar pitched their lavish tents just outside the village, while the Rajah's infantry was ordered to barricade the streets and make loopholes in the thick mud walls of the outermost houses.

The village lay on the southern bank of the River Juah, a tributary of the Kaitna, and south of the village stretched two miles of open farmland that ended at the steep bank of the River Kaitna. Pohlmann placed his best infantry, his three compoos of superbly trained killers, south of the village on the high bluff of the Kaitna's northern bank, and in front of them he ranged his eighty best guns.

Wellesley, if he wished to reach Borkardan, must come to the Kaitna and he would find his path blocked by a river, by a fearsome line of heavy guns, by an array of infantry and, behind them, like a fortress, a village crammed with the Rajah of Berar's troops. The trap was laid.

In the fields of a village called Assaye.

The two British armies were close to each other now, close enough for General Wellesley to ride across country to see Colonel Stevenson, the commander of the second army. The General rode with his aides and an escort of Indian cavalry, but they saw no enemy on their way westwards across a long flat plain greened by the previous day's rain. Colonel Stevenson, old enough to be Wellesley's father, was alarmed by his General's high spirits. He had seen such elation in young officers before, and seen it crushed by humiliating defeats brought on by overconfidence.

"Are you sure you're not hurrying too much?" he asked.

"We must hurry, Stevenson, must." Wellesley unrolled a map onto the Colonel's table and pointed to Borkardan. "We hear they're likely to stay there, but they won't stay for ever. If we don't close on them now, they'll slip away."

"If the bastards are that close," Stevenson said, peering at the map, "then maybe we should join forces now?"

"And if we do," the General said, "it will take us twice as long to reach Borkardan."

The two roads on which the armies advanced were narrow and, a few miles south of the River Kaitna, those roads followed passes through a small but steep range of hills. Every wheeled vehicle in both armies would have to be fed through those defiles in the hills, and if the two small armies combined the cumbersome business of negotiating the pass would take a whole day, a day in which the Mahrattas might escape northwards.

Instead the two armies would advance separately and meet at Borkardan.

"Tomorrow night," Wellesley ordered, "'you camp here..." he made a cross on the map at a village called Hussainabad, "...and we'll be here."

The pencil made another cross at a village called Naulniah which lay four miles south of the River Kaitna. The villages were ten miles apart, and both about the same distance south of Borkardan.

"On the twenty-fourth," Wellesley said, "we march and join here." He dashed a circle about the village of Borkardan. "There!" he added, jabbing the pencil down and breaking its point.

Stevenson hesitated. He was a good soldier with a long experience of India, but he was cautious by nature and it seemed to him that Wellesley was being headstrong and foolish. The Mahratta army was vast, the British armies small, yet Wellesley was rushing into battle.

There was a dangerous excitement in the usually cool-headed Wellesley, and Stevenson now tried to rein it in.

"We could meet at Naulniah," he suggested, thinking it better if the armies combined the day before the battle rather than attempt to make their junction under fire.

"We have no time," Wellesley declared, "no time!" He swept aside the weights holding down the map's corners so that the big sheet rolled up with a snap. "Providence has put their army within striking distance, so let us strike!"

He tossed the map to his aide, Campbell, then ducked out of the tent into the day's late sunlight and there found himself staring at Colonel McCandless who was mounted on a small, bony horse.

"You!" Wellesley said with surprise. "I thought you were wounded, McCandless?"

"I am, sir, but it's healing." The Scotsman patted his left thigh.

"So what are you doing here?"

"Seeking you, sir," McCandless answered, though in truth he had come to Stevenson's army by mistake. One of Sevajee's men, scouting the area, had seen the redcoats and McCandless had thought it must be Wellesley's men.

"And what on earth are you riding?" Wellesley asked, pulling himself onto Diomed's back. "Looks like a gypsy nag, McCandless. I've seen ponies that are bigger."

McCandless patted the captured Mahratta horse.

"She's the best I can do, sir. I lost my own gelding."

"For four hundred guineas you can have my spare. Give me a note, McCandless, and he's all yours. Aeolus, he's called, a six-year-old gelding out of County Meath. Good lungs, got a capped hock, but it don't stop him. I'll see you in two days, Colonel," Wellesley now addressed Stevenson. "Two days! We'll test our Mahrattas, eh? See if their vaunted infantry can stand some pounding. Good day, Stevenson! Are you coming, McCandless?"

"I am, sir, I am."

Sharpe fell in beside Daniel Fletcher, the General's orderly.

"I've never seen the General so happy," Sharpe said to Fletcher.

"Got the bit between his teeth," Fletcher said. "He reckons we're going to surprise the enemy."

"He ain't worried? There are thousands of the buggers."

"He ain't showing nothing if he is frightened," Fletcher said. "Up and at them, that's his mood."

"Then God help the rest of us," Sharpe said.

The General talked with McCandless on his way back, but nothing the Scotsman said diminished Wellesley's eagerness, even though McCandless warned him of the effectiveness of the Mahratta artillery and the efficiency of the infantry.

"We knew all that when we declared war," Wellesley said testily, "and if it didn't deter us then, why should it now?"

"Don't underestimate them, sir," McCandless said grimly.

"I rather hope they'll underestimate me!" Wellesley said. "You want that gelding of mine?"

"I don't have the money, sir."

"Oh come, McCandless! You on a Company colonel's salary! You must have a fortune stacked away!"

"I've some savings, sir, for my retirement, which is not far off."

"I'll make it three hundred and eighty guineas, seeing as it's you, and in a couple of years you can sell him for four hundred. You can't go into battle on that thing." He gestured at the Mahratta horse.

"I'll think on it, sir, I'll think on it," McCandless said gloomily. He prayed that the good Lord would restore his own horse to him, along with Lieutenant Dodd, but if that did not happen soon then he knew he would have to buy a decent horse, though the prospect of spending such a vast sum grieved him.

"You'll take supper with me tonight, McCandless?" Wellesley asked. "We have a fine leg of mutton. A rare leg!"

"I eschew meat, sir," the Scotsman answered.

"You eschew meat? And chew vegetables?" The General decided this was a splendid joke and frightened his horse by uttering a fierce neigh of a laugh. "That's droll! Very. You eschew meat to chew vegetables. Never mind, McCandless, we shall find you some chewable shrubs."

McCandless chewed his vegetables that night, and afterwards, excusing himself, went to the tent that Wellesley had lent to him. He was tired, his leg was throbbing, but there had been no sign of the fever all day and for that he was grateful. He read his Bible, knelt in prayer beside the cot, then blew out the lantern to sleep. An hour later he was woken by the thump of hooves, the sound of suppressed voices, a giggle, and the brush of someone half falling against the tent.

"Who is it?" McCandless demanded angrily.

"Colonel?" Sharpe's voice answered. "Me, sir. Sorry, sir. Lost my footing, sir."

"I was sleeping, man."

"Didn't mean to wake you, sir, sorry, sir. Stand still, you bugger! Not you, sir, sorry, sir."

McCandless, dressed in shirt and breeches, snatched the tent flap open.

"Are you drunk?" he demanded, then fell silent as he gazed at the horse Sharpe was holding. The horse was a gelding, a splendid bay gelding with pricked ears and a quick, nervous energy.

"He's six years old, sir," Sharpe said.

Daniel Fletcher was trying to hammer in the picket and doing a very bad job because of the drink inside him.

"He's got a capped hock, sir, whatever that is, but nothing that'll stop him. Comes from Ireland, he does. All that green grass, sir, makes a good horse. Aeolus, he's called."

"Aeolus," McCandless said, "the god of the wind."

"Is he one of those Indian idols, sir? All arms and snake heads?"

"No, Sharpe, Aeolus is Greek." McCandless took the reins from Sharpe and stroked the gelding's nose.

"Is Wellesley lending him to me?"

"Oh no, sir." Sharpe had taken the mallet from the half-drunk Fletcher and now banged the picket firmly into the soil. "He's yours, sir, all yours."

"But..." McCandless said, then stopped, not understanding the situation at all.

"He's paid for, sir," Sharpe said.

"Paid for by whom?" McCandless demanded sternly.

"Just paid for, sir."

"You're blithering, Sharpe!"

"Sorry, sir."

"Explain yourself!" the Colonel demanded.

General Wellesley had said much the same thing when, just forty minutes before, an aide had told him that Sergeant Sharpe was begging to see him and the General, who was just bidding goodnight to the last of his supper guests, had reluctantly agreed.

"Make it quick, Sergeant," he had said, his fine mood disguised by his usual coldness.

"It's Colonel McCandless, sir," Sharpe said woodenly. "He's decided to buy your horse, sir, and he sent me with the money."

He stepped forward and tipped a bag of gold onto the General's map table. The gold was Indian, from every state and princedom, but it was real gold and it lay shining like butter in the candle flames.

Wellesley gazed in astonishment at the treasure.

"He said he didn't have the money!"

"He's a Scotsman, sir, the Colonel," Sharpe had said, as though that explained everything, "and he's sorry it ain't real money, sir. Guineas. But it's the full price, sir. Four hundred."

"Three hundred and eighty," Wellesley said. "Tell the Colonel I'll return some to him. But a note would have done just as well! I'm supposed to carry gold on me?"

"Sorry, sir," Sharpe had said lamely, but he could never have provided a note for the General, so instead he had sought out one of the bhinjanies who followed the army, and that merchant had exchanged emeralds for gold. Sharpe suspected he had been cheated, but he had wanted to give the Colonel the pleasure of owning a fine horse and so he had accepted the bhinjarrie's price.

"Is it all right, sir?" he had asked Wellesley anxiously.

"Extraordinary way to do business," Wellesley had said, but he had nodded his agreement. "A fair sale, Sergeant," he said, and he had almost held out his hand to shake Sharpe's as a man always shook hands on the sale of a horse, then he remembered that Sharpe was a sergeant and so he had hastily converted his gesture into a vague wave.

And after Sharpe had gone and while he was scooping the coins into their bag, the General also remembered Sergeant Hakeswill. Not that it was any of his business, so perhaps it had been sensible not to mention the Sergeant's presence to Sharpe.

McCandless now admired the gelding.

"Who paid for it?"

"Good-looking horse, ain't he, sir?" Sharpe said. "Good as your other, I'd say."

"Sharpe! You're blithering again. Who paid for it?"

Sharpe hesitated, but knew he was not going to be spared the interrogation.

"In a manner of speaking, sir," he said, "the Tippoo did."

"The Tippoo? Are you mad?"

Sharpe blushed.

"The fellow that killed the Tippoo, sir, he took some jewels off him."

"A king's ransom, I should imagine," McCandless snorted.

"So I persuaded the fellow to buy the horse, sir. As a gift for you, sir."

McCandless stared at Sharpe.

"It was you."

"It was me who did what, sir?"

"You killed the Tippoo." It was almost an accusation.

"Me, sir?" Sharpe asked innocently. "No, sir."

McCandless stared at the gelding.

"I can't possibly accept, Sergeant."

"He's no good to me, sir. A sergeant can't own a horse. Not a proper horse from Ireland, sir. And if I hadn't been day-dreaming in Pohlmann's camp, sir, I might have stopped those thieves, so it's only fair that you should let me get you another."

"You can't do this, Sharpe!" McCandless protested, embarrassed by the generosity of the gift. "Besides, in a day or two I hope to get my own horse back along with Mister Dodd."

Sharpe had not thought of that, and for a second he cursed himself for throwing away his money. Then he shrugged.

"It's done anyway, sir. General's got the money and you've got the horse. Besides, sir, you've always been fair to me, so I wanted to do something for you."

"It's intolerable!" McCandless protested. "Uncalled for. I shall have to repay you."

"Four hundred guineas?" Sharpe asked. "That's the price of an ensign's commission, sir."

"So?" McCandless stared fiercely at Sharpe.

"So we're going into battle, sir. You on that horse, and me on a Mahratta pony. It's a chance, sir, a chance, but if I do well, sir, real well, I'll need you to talk to the General." Sharpe blushed as he spoke, amazed at his own temerity. "That's how you repay me, sir, but that's not why I bought him. I just wanted you to have a proper horse, sir. Colonel like you shouldn't be sitting on a scabby native pony, sir."

McCandless, appalled at Sharpe's ambition, did not know what to say.

He stroked the gelding, felt tears in his eyes and could not tell whether they were for Sharpe's impossible dreams or because he had been so touched by the Sergeant's gift.

"If you do well, Sharpe," he promised, "I'll talk to Colonel Wallace. He's a good friend. It's possible he'll have a vacant ensign's post, but don't raise your hopes too high!" He paused, wondering if emotion had driven him to promise far too much. "How did the Tippoo die?" he asked after a while. "And don't lie to me, Sharpe, it must have been you who killed him."

"Like a man, sir. Bravely. Facing front, he was. Never gave up."

"He was a good soldier," McCandless said, reflecting that the Tippoo had been beaten by a better one. "I trust you've still got some of his jewels?"

"Jewels, sir?" Sharpe asked. "I don't know about jewels, sir."

"Of course not," McCandless said. If the Company ever heard that Sharpe was carrying the Tippoo's gems their prize agents would descend on the Sergeant like locusts. "Thank you, Sharpe," McCandless said fulsomely, "thank you very much. I shall repay you, of course, but you've touched me. 'Pon my soul, you have touched me." He insisted upon shaking Sharpe's hand, then watched the Sergeant walk away with the General's orderly.

So much sin there, McCandless thought, and so much goodness. But why had Pohlmann ever put the idea of a commission into Sharpe's head? It was an impossible dream, doomed to disappointment.

Another man also watched Sharpe walk away. It was Private Lowry, of the King's 33rd, who now hurried back to the baggage camp. "It was him, Sergeant," he told Hakeswill.

"You sure?"

"Large as life."

"God bless you, Lowry, God bless you."

And God, Hakeswill thought, had certainly blessed him. He had feared that he would have to endure a battle, but now Sharpe had come and Hakeswill could produce his precious warrant and be on his way south. Let the army fight its battle, and let it win or lose, Hakeswill did not care, for Sergeant Hakeswill had what he wanted and he would be rich.