Sharpe's Fortress Part 57

"Welcome back, Sergeant," Morris said laconically.

"I'm sure the company will be overjoyed at your return."

"I knows they will, sir," Hakeswill said.

"I'm like a father to them, sir, I am," Hakeswill added to Stokes.

Stokes frowned.

"Who do you think killed Captain Torrance, Sergeant?" he asked, and when Hakeswill said nothing, but just stood with his face twitching, the Major became insistent.

"If you know, man, you must speak! This is a crime! You have a duty to speak."

Hakeswill's face wrenched itself.

"It were him, sir." The Sergeant's eyes widened.

"It were Sharpie, sir!"

Stokes laughed.

"Don't be so absurd, man. Poor Sharpe is a prisoner!

He's locked away in the fortress, I've no doubt."

"That's what we all hear, sir," Hakeswill said, 'but I knows better."

"A touch of the sun," Morris explained to Stokes, then waved the Sergeant away.

"Put your kit with the company, Sergeant. And I'm glad you're back."

"Touched by your words, sir," Hakeswill said fervently, 'and I'm glad to be home, sir, back in me own kind where I belong." He saluted again, then swivelled on his heel and marched away.

"Salt of the earth," Morris said.

Major Stokes, from his brief acquaintance with Hakeswill, was not sure of that verdict, but he said nothing. Instead he wandered a few paces northwards to watch the sappers who were busy sc.r.a.ping at the plateau's thin soil to fill gabions that had been newly woven from green bamboo. The gab ions great wicker baskets stuffed with earth, would be stacked as a screen to soak up the enemy gunfire while the battery sites were being levelled. Stokes had already decided to do the initial work at night, for the vulnerable time for making batteries close to a fortress was the first few hours, and at night the enemy gunfire was , likely to be inaccurate.

The Major was making four batteries. Two, the breaching ones, would be constructed far down the isthmus among an outcrop of great black boulders that lay less than a quarter-mile from the fortress. The rocks, with the gab ions would provide the gunners some protection : from the fortress's counter-fire. Sappers, hidden from the fort by the lie of the land, were already driving a road to the proposed site of the breaching guns. Two other batteries would be constructed to the east of the isthmus, on the edge of the plateau, and those guns would enfilade the growing breaches.

There would be three breaches. That decision had been made when Stokes, early in the dawn, had crept as close to the fortress as he had dared and, hidden among the tumbled rocks above the half-filled tank, had examined the Outer Fort's wall through his telescope. He had stared a long time, counting the gun embrasures and trying to estimate how many men were stationed on the bastions and fire steps Those were details that did not really concern him for Stokes's business was confined to breaking the walls, but what he saw encouraged him.

There were two walls, both built on the steep slope which faced the

, plateau. The slope was so steep that the base of the inner wall showed high above the parapet of the outer wall, and that was excellent news, for making a breach depended on being able to batter the base of a wall.

These walls, built so long ago, had never been designed to stop artillery, but to deter men. Stokes knew he could lay his guns so that they would hammer both walls at once, and that when the ancient stonework crumbled, the rubble would spill forward down the slope to make natural ramps up which the attackers could climb.

The masonry seemed to have stayed largely unrepaired since it had been built. Stokes could tell that, for the dark stones were covered with grey lichen and thick with weeds growing from the gaps between the blocks. The walls looked formidable, for they were high and well provided with ma.s.sive bastions that would let the defenders provide flanking fire, but Stokes knew that the dressed stone of the two walls' outer faces merely disguised a thick heart of piled rubble, and once the facing masonry was shattered the rubble would spill out. A few shots would then suffice to break the inner faces. Two days' work, he reckoned. Two days of hard gunnery should bring the walls tumbling down.

Stokes had not made his reconnaissance alone, but had been accompanied by Lieutenant Colonel William Kenny of the East India Company who would lead the a.s.sault on the breaches. Kenny, a lantern jawed and taciturn man, had lain beside Stokes.

"Well?" he had finally asked after Stokes had spent a silent five minutes examining the walls.

"Two days' work, sir," Stokes said. If the Mahrattas had taken the trouble to build a glacis it would have been two weeks' work, but such was their confidence that they had not bothered to protect the base of the outer wall.

Kenny grunted.

"If it's that easy, then give me two holes in the inner wall."

"Not the outer?" Stokes asked.

"One will serve me there," Kenny said, putting an eye to his own telescope.

"A good wide gap in the nearer wall, Stokes, but not too near the main gate."

"We shall avoid that," the Major said. The main gate lay to the left so that the approach to the fortress was faced by high walls and bastions rather than by a gate vulnerable to artillery fire. However, this gate was ma.s.sively defended by bastions and towers, which suggested it would be thick with defenders.

"Straight up the middle," Kenny said, wriggling back from his viewpoint.

"Give me a breach to the right of that main bastion, and two on either side of it through the inner wall, and we'll do the rest."

It would be easy enough to break down the walls, but Stokes still feared for Kenny's men. Their approach was limited by the existence of the great reservoir that lay on the right of the isthmus. The water level was low, and sc.u.mmed green, but the tank still constricted the a.s.sault route so that Kenny's men would be squeezed between the water and the sheer drop to the left. That slender s.p.a.ce, scarce more than fifty feet at its narrowest, would be furious with gunfire, much of it coming from the fire steps above and around the main gate that flanked the approach.

Stokes had already determined that his enfilading batteries should spare some shot for that gate in an attempt to unseat its cannon and unsettle its defenders.

Now, under the midday sun, the Major wandered among the sappers filling the gab ions He tested each one, making certain that the sepoys i, were ramming the earth hard into the wicker baskets, for a loosely filled gabion was no use. The finished gab ions were being stacked on ox carts, while other carts piled with powder and shot waited nearby. All was being done properly, and the Major stared out across the plateau where the newly arrived troops were making their camp. The closest tents, ragged and makes.h.i.+ft, belonged to a troop of Mahratta j hors.e.m.e.n who had allied themselves with the British. Stokes, watching i the robed guards who sat close to the tents, decided it would be best if he locked his valuables away and made sure his servant kept an eye on the trunk. The rest of the Mahratta hors.e.m.e.n had trotted northwards, going to seek springs or wells, for it was dry up here on the plateau. Dry and cooler than on the plain, though it was still d.a.m.ned hot. Dust devils whirled between the farther tent rows where muskets were stacked in neat tripods. Some s.h.i.+rt sleeved officers, presumably from the East India Company battalions, were playing cricket on a smoother stretch of turf, watched by bemused sepoys and men from the Scotch Brigade.

"Not their game, sir, is it, sir?" Hakeswill's voice disturbed Stokes.

The Major turned.

"Eh?"

"Cricket, sir. Too complicated for blackamoors and Scotchmen, sir, on account of it being a game that needs brains, sir."

"Do you play, Sergeant?"

"Me, sir? No, sir. No time for frittering, sir, being as I'm a soldier back to front, sir."

"It does a man good to have a pastime," Stokes said.

"Your Colonel, now, he plays the violin."

"Sir Arthur does, sir?" Hakeswill said, plainly not believing Stokes.

"He's never done it near me, sir."