Sharpe's Tiger (28 page)

“Here!” Morris called irritably. “Hurry, damn you!”

“Back in a minute, Sergeant,” Fitzgerald reassured Green, and headed off through the trees in search of Morris.

He strayed too far north, and suddenly a rocket flared up from the
tope's
eastern edge to lodge with a tearing crash among the tangling branches of a tall tree. For a few seconds the trapped missile thrashed wildly, startling scared birds up into the dark, then it became firmly wedged in the crook of a branch. The exhaust poured an impotent torrent of fire and smoke to illuminate a whole patch of the thick woodland, and
in the sudden blaze Hakeswill saw the Lieutenant stumbling toward him. “Mister Fitzgerald!” Hakeswill called.

“Sergeant Hakeswill?” Fitzgerald asked.

“It's me, sir. Right here, sir. This way, sir.”

“Thank Cod.” Fitzgerald crossed the clearing at a run, his left arm hanging useless at his side. “No one knows what the hell they're doing. Or where they are.”

“I know what I'm doing, sir,” Hakeswill said, and as the fierce crackling fire in the high leaves died away he lunged upward with the halberd's spear point at the Lieutenant's belly. His face twitched as the newly sharpened blade ripped through the Lieutenant's clothes and into his stomach. “It isn't the soldierly thing, sir, to contradict a sergeant in front of his men, sir,” he said respectfully. “You do understand that, sir, don't you, sir?” Hakeswill said, and grinned with joy for the pleasure of the moment. The spear point was deep in Fitzgerald's belly, so deep that Hakeswill was certain he had felt its razor-sharp point lodge against the man's backbone. Fitzgerald was on the ground now and his body was jerking like a gaffed and landed fish. His mouth was opening and closing, but he seemed unable to speak, only to moan as Hakeswill gave the spear a savage twist in an effort to free its blade. “We is talking about proper respect, sir,” Hakeswill hissed at the Lieutenant. “Respect! Sergeants must be supported, sir, says so in the scriptures, sir. Don't worry, sir, won't hurt, sir. Just a prick,” and he jerked the bloodied blade free and thrust it down again, this time into the Lieutenant's throat. “Won't be showing me up again, sir, will you, sir? Not in front of the men. Sorry about that, sir. And good night, sir.”

“Fitzgerald!” Morris shouted frantically. “For Christ's sake, Lieutenant! Where the hell are you?”

“He's gone to hell.” Hakeswill chuckled softly. He was searching the Lieutenant's body for coins. He dared not take
anything that might be recognized as the Lieutenant's property, so he left the dead man's sabre and the gilded gorget he had worn about his throat, but hgorget he had worn aboutgorget he had worn aboute did find a handful of unidentifiable small change which he pushed into his pouch before scrambling a few feet away to make sure no one saw him with his victim.

“Who's that?” Morris called as he heard Hakeswill pushing through the undergrowth.

“Me, sir!” Hakeswill called. “I'm looking for Lieutenant Fitzgerald, sir.”

“Come here instead!” Morris snapped.

Hakeswill ran the last few yards and dropped down between Morris and a frightened Ensign Hicks. “I'm worried about Mister Fitzgerald, sir,” Hakeswill said. “Heard him up in the bushes, and there was heathens there, sir. I know, sir, ‘cos I killed a couple of the black bastards.” He flinched as some muskets flamed and banged some yards away, but he could not tell who fired, or at what.

“You think the bastards found Fitzgerald?” Morris asked.

“I reckon so.” Hakeswill said. “Poor little bastard. I tried to find him, sir, but there was just heathens there.”

“Jesus.” Morris ducked as a volley of bullets flicked through the leaves overhead. “What about Sergeant Green?”

“Probably skulking, sir. Hiding his precious hide, I don't wonder.”

“We're all bloody skulking,” Morris answered truthfully enough.

“Not me, sir. Not Obadiah Hakeswill, sir. Got me halberd proper wet, sir. Want to feel it, sir?” Hakeswill held out the spearpoint. “Heathen blood, sir, still warm.”

Morris shuddered at the thought of touching the spear, but took some comfort in having Hakeswill at his side. The
tope
was filled with shouts as a group of the Tippoo's troops charged. Muskets hammered. A rocket exploded nearby,
while another, this one with a solid shot in its cone, ripped through bushes and crashed into a tree. A man screamed, then the scream was abruptly chopped off. “Jesus,” Morris cursed uselessly.

“Maybe we should go back?” Ensign Hicks suggested. “Back across the aqueduct?”

“Can't, sir,” Hakeswill said. “Buggers are behind us.”

“You're sure?” Morris asked.

“Fought the black buggers there myself, sir. Couldn't hold them. A whole tribe of the bastards, sir. Did my best. Lost some good men.” Hakeswill sniffed with pretended emotion.

“You're a brave man, Hakeswill,” Morris said gruffly.

“Just following your lead, sir,” Hakeswill said, then ducked as another enemy volley whipped overhead. A huge cheer sounded, followed by the screaming roar of rockets as the Tippoo's reinforcements, sent from the city, came shouting and fighting through the trees to drive every last infidel from the
tope
. “Bleeding hell,” Hakeswill said. “But not to worry! I can't die, sir! I can't die!”

Behind him there was another cheer as the rest of the 33rd at last crossed the aqueduct.

“Forward!” a voice shouted from somewhere behind the Light Company's scattered fugitives. “Forward!”

“Bloody hell!” Morris snapped. “Who the hell is that?”

“33rd!” the voice shouted. “To me! To me!”

“Stay where you are!” Morris called to a few eager men, and so they crouched in the warm dark that was loud with the ripping of bullets and filled by the whimpers of dying men and bright with the glare of rockets and foul with the stench of blood that was being spilt in a black place where only chaos and fear prevailed.

S
harpe! Sharpe!” It was Colonel Gudin who, at nightfall, burst into the barracks room. “Come, quick! As you are, hurry!”

“What about me, sir?” Lawford asked. The Lieutenant had been idly reading his Bible as he lay on his cot.

“Come on, Sharpe!” Gudin did not wait to answer Lawford, but just ran across the barracks' courtyard and out into the street which separated the European soldiers' quarters from the Hindu temple. “Quick, Sharpe!” the Frenchman called back as he hurried past a pile of mud bricks that were stacked at the street corner. Sharpe, dressed in tiger-striped tunic and boots, but with no hat, crossbelt, pouches, or musket, ran after the Colonel. He leapt over a half-naked man who was sitting cross-legged beside the temple wall, shoved a cow out of his way, then turned the corner and hurried after Gudin toward the Mysore Gate. Lawford had paused to tug on his boots and by the time he reached the street beside the temple, Sharpe had already vanished.

“Can you ride a horse?” Gudin shouted at Sharpe when the two men reached the gate.

“I did a couple of times,” Sharpe said, not bothering to explain that the beasts had been unsaddled draught horses that had ambled docilely around the inn yard.

“Get on that one!” Gudin said, pointing to a small excited mare that was being held by an Indian infantryman along
with Gudin's own horse. “She belongs to Captain Romet, so for God's sake take care,” Gudin shouted as he swung himself up into the saddle. Captain Romet was one of Gudin's two deputies, but as both the junior French officers spent most of their lives in the city's most expensive brothel, Sharpe had yet to meet either of them. He climbed gingerly onto the mare's back, then kicked back his heels and clung desperately to the horse's mane as she followed Gudin's gelding into the gateway. “The British are attacking a wood just north of Sultanpetah,” the Colonel explained as he pushed his horse through the crowded archway.

Sharpe could hear the distant fight. Muskets snapped and shells exploded dully to flicker red bursts of light far to the city's west. It was very nearly night in the city. The first house lamps had long been lit and (laming torches smoked in the archway of the Mysore Gate through which a stream of men was hurrying. Some were infantry, others carried rockets. Gudin bellowed at them for passage, used his gelding to force the slower rocketmen aside, and then, once through the gate, he sawed on his reins to turn westward.

Sharpe followed, more intent on staying on the mare than watching the excitement that seethed around him. A narrow bridge led across the South Cauvery just outside the gate and Gudin shouted at its guards to clear the roadway. Rocketmen shrank back against the balustrades as Sharpe and Gudin hurried between the bridge's small forts and then over the shallow, shrunken river. Once on the far bank they galloped hard across a stretch of muddy grass, then splashed through another small branch of the river. Sharpe clung to the mare's neck as she lurched up out of the stream. Rockets were flaring in the sky ahead which still glowed from the last rays of the invisible sun.

“Your old friends are trying to clear the
tope,”
Gudin explained, pointing at the thick wood that showed black
against the eastern skyline. He had slowed down, for now they were crossing more uneven ground and the Colonel did not want to break a horse's leg by being too reckless. “I want you to confuse them.”

“Me, sir?” Sharpe slipped half out of the saddle, gripped the pommel desperately, and somehow dragged himself upright. He could hear the snapping crack of muskets, and see the small muzzle flames flickering all across the land ahead. It seemed to him like a major attack, especially when a British field gun fired in the distance and its muzzle flame lit the twilight like sheet lightning.

“Shout orders at them, Sharpe,” Gudin said, when the report of the gun had rolled past them. “Confuse them!”

“Lawford would have done better, sir,” Sharpe said. “He's got a voice like an officer.”

“Then you'll have to sound like a sergeant,” Gudin said, “and if you do it right, Sharpe, I'll make you up to corporal.”‘

“Thank you, sir.”

Gudin had slowed his horse to a walk as they neared the wood. It was too dark to trot now and there was a danger they could lose their way. To Sharpe's north, where the field gun had fired, the musketry was regular, suggesting that the British soldiers or sepoys were steadily taking their objectives, but in the wood in front, there seemed to be nothing but confusion. Muskets crackled irregularly, rockets streaked fire amongst the branches, and smoke boiled from small brush fires. Sharpe could hear men shouting, either in fear or triumph. “I wouldn't mind a gun, sir,” he said to Gudin.

“You don't need one. We're not here to fight, just to mix them up. That's why I came back to get you. Dismount here.” The Colonel tied both horses' reins to an abandoned handcart that must have been used to bring more rockets forward. The two men were a hundred yards short of the
tope
now and Sharpe could hear officers shouting orders. It
was hard to tell who was giving the orders, for the Tippoo's army used English words of command, but as Sharpe and Gudin hurried closer to the fight Sharpe could tell that it was Indian voices that shouted the commands to fire, to advance, and to kill. Whatever British or Indian troops were trying to capture the wood were evidently in trouble, and it had been Gudin's inspiration to snatch the first Englishman he could find in the barracks and use him to sow even more confusion among the attackers. Gudin drew a pistol. “Sergeant Rothière!” he called.

“Mon Colonel!”
The big Sergeant, who had first used Captain Romet's horse to reach the fight, materialized out of the gloom. He gave Sharpe a suspicious glowering look, then cocked his musket.

“Let's enjoy ourselves,” Gudin said in English.

“Aye, sir,” Sharpe said and wondered what the hell he should do now. In the dark, he reckoned, there should be no trouble in slipping away from the Colonel and Rothière and joining the beleaguered attackers, but how would that leave Lieutenant Lawford? The trick of it, Sharpe decided, was not to make it look as though he was deliberately trying to get back to the British, but rather to make it seem as though he was captured accidentally. That still might make things very awkward for Lawford, but Sharpe knew that his overriding duty was to carry McCandless's warning to General Harris, just as he knew that he might never get another opportunity as good as this one that Gudin had dropped so unexpectedly into his lap.

Gudin paused at the edge of the
tope
. Rocketmen were enthusiastically blasting their weapons through the trees where the missiles were being deflected off branches to tumble erratically through the leaves. Muskets sounded deep inside the wood. Wounded men lay at the trees' edge, and somewhere not far off a dying man alternately screamed and
panted. “So far,” Gudin said, “we seem to be beating them. Let's go forward.”

Sharpe followed the two Frenchmen. Off to his right there was a sudden blast of gunfire and the sound of bayonets clashing, and Gudin swerved toward the sound, but the fight was over before they ever reached it. The Tippoo's men had encountered a small group of redcoats and had killed one and chased the others deeper into the wood. Gudin saw the redcoat's body in the fast-dying flame light of an exhausted rocket and knelt beside the man. The Colonel took out a tinderbox, struck a spark, blew the charred linen in the box alight, then held the tiny flame down beside the redcoat's chest. The man was not quite dead, but he was unconscious, blood was bubbling slow in his throat, and his eves were closed. “Recognize the uniform?” Gudin asked Sharpe. The tinderbox's flickering glow revealed that the redcoat's turn-backs and facings were scarlet piped with white.