Sharpe's Tiger (44 page)

Graham reached the breach's summit. His real goal was the wall to his left, but the summit of the breach felt like triumph enough and he rammed the flagstaff deep into the stones and dust. “Lieutenant Graham now!” he shouted exultingly, and a bullet immediately snatched him off the summit and hurled him back toward his men.

It was just then that the Tippoo's own volunteers struck. Sixty men swarmed up from behind the wall with sabres and muskets to meet the two Forlorn Hopes on the crest of the nibble breach. These were the Tippoo's best men, his tigers, the warriors of Allah who had been promised a favored place in paradise, and they screamed with exultation as they attacked. They fired a musket volley as they climbed, then
threw down the empty guns to attack the redcoats with bright curved swords. Musket barrels parried swords, bayonets lunged and were cut aside. Men swore and killed, swore and died. Some men fought with hands and boots, they gouged and bit each other as they grappled hand to hand on the dusty summit. One Bengali sepoy snatched up a fallen sword and carved a way to the foot of the wall where it climbed up from the breach to the northern ramparts. A Mysorean volunteer sliced at him, the sepoy instinctively parried, then cut down through the man's brass helmet so violently that the blade was buried and trapped in his enemy's skull. The Bengali left it there and, so fevered by battle that he did not realize he was weaponless, tried to scale the broken wall's flank to attack the defenders waiting on the firestep above. A musket shot from the top of the wall hurled him backward and he slid, dying and bleeding, to lodge against the wounded Graham.

Baird was still west of the river. His job was not to die with the Forlorn Hopes, but to lead the main attack up the path they had cleared. That main attack now formed itself into two columns of platoons.

“Forward!” Baird shouted, and led the twin columns toward the river. The ground ahead was being pitted by bullets as if an invisible hail fell. Behind him the drummer boys were sounding the advance while the engineers, laden with their fascines and ladders, walked alongside the platoons. Rockets screamed above Baird, their trails stitching ropes of smoke above the river. Men struggled hand to hand in the breach and the walls of the city spat flame through the churning rill of smoke.

Hell had come to Seringapatam and Baird hurried toward it.

“Jesus Christ!” Sharpe swore, for he could hear the sudden sound of battle swelling just beyond the western walls. Men were dying there. Men were storming a breach and the Tippoo's mine waited for them, its tons of powder cunningly crammed into a stone tunnel and poised to annihilate a whole brigade.

He stopped at a corner of the alley which led to the ancient gateway that had been filled with the explosives. He peered round the corner and saw Sergeant Rothière and two Frenchmen from Gudin's battalion. All three were standing beside a barrel, staring up at the inner ramparts, and around the Europeans was a guard of a half-dozen
jettis
, all armed with muskets and swords. He ducked back and blew the priming out of his musket's pan. “Only nine or ten of the bastards,” he told Lawford. “so let's give them a headache.”

The rockets were stacked nose first on the cart so that their long bamboo tails stuck out toward the cart's handles. Sharpe went to the front of the cart, seized the thin boards that were painted with gods and elephants, and wrenched them off. They came away easily, their nails pulling out of the cart's sides. He beat off the last slivers of wood so that now there was no obstacle in front of the lethal cargo, then he turned the cart so that the rockets' tin cones were pointing toward the alley, though he took care to make sure that the cart and its contents were still hidden from the men waiting beside the mine's fuse.

Lawford said nothing, but just watched as Sharpe tore the fuse paper from one of the rockets. He twisted the paper into a spill, then pushed it into the musket's empty lock, cocked the gun and pulled the trigger. The powder-impregnated paper immediately caught the spark and started burning.

Sharpe dropped the musket and began lighting the fuses of the topmost row of rockets. The paper in his hand burned
fiercely, but he managed to light eight of the weapons before he was forced to tear off another fuse and use it to light more. It was difficult to reach between the rocket's bamboo sticks, but he lit another ten while the first few fuses were fizzing and smoking. Lawford, seeing what Sharpe was doing, had taken the single page of the Bible from his pocket and twisted it into a spill that he used to light still more of the missiles. Then the first rocket to be lit suddenly coughed and spat out a gout of smoke and Sharpe immediately snatched up the cart's handles and shoved it around the corner so that the missiles were pointing straight down the alley. He crouched beside it, sheltered from the men in the alley by the corner of the building, and pulled his musket toward him. He used the musket to raise the cart's handles so that the vehicle's bed, and the rockets it contained, were horizontal.

The first rocket shuddered, then streaked away. The second went an instant later, then two more, and suddenly the whole cart was shaking and jerking as the rockets seethed away. A musket bullet hit the cart, another flicked dust from the corner of the building, but then there were no more shots, just shouts of terror as the missiles screamed between the alley's close walls. Some of the rockets had solid shot in their nose cones, others had small charges of black powder, and those now began to explode. A man screamed. More rockets exploded, the sound of their blasts cramming the alley with noise while the missiles' fierce trails filled the small street with smoke and flame. Sharpe waited till the last lit rocket flamed off the cart. “Now's the hard bit,” he warned Lawford. He replaced the priming in his musket with a pinch from a fresh cartridge, then seized the handcart and pushed it in front of him down the alley. At least thirty of the rockets had fired, and the alley was now an inferno of boiling smoke amongst which a handful of live rockets still ricocheted or
spun crazily while the carcasses of the spent weapons burned bright in the gloom. Sharpe charged into that chaos, hoping that the half-loaded cart would serve as a shield if any man still lived in the alley.

Lawford charged with him. At least four men were still on their feet, while another had found shelter in a deep doorway, but they were all dazed by the violence of the rockets and half blinded by the thick smoke. Sharpe gave the cart a huge push to send it clattering toward them. One of t
he
jettis
saw the cart, dodged aside, and charged at Sharpe with a drawn sabre, but Lawford shot him with his musket, taking the huge man in the throat as quickly and cleanly as if he had been a pheasant rising from a brake. The cart struck two of the standing men and sent them reeling. Sharpe stamped on the head of one and kicked the other in the crotch. He slammed the butt of the musket onto the back of a Frenchman's skull, then drove the weapon's muzzle deep into a
jetti'
s, belly and, as the man folded, he rammed the barrel into his face. The
jetti
screamed and staggered away, his hands clutched tight to one eye. Lawford had seized a fallen sword and sliced it savagely across another
jetti's
neck and was so inspired and elated by battle that he did not even feel any revulsion when the man's blood gushed out to hiss in the burning remnants of a rocket. Sergeant Rothière was on the ground with one of his legs broken by the strike of a rocket, but he cocked his musket and aimed the gun at Lawford, then the Sergeant heard Sharpe behind him and tried to swing the musket round. Sharpe was too close and too fast. He felled Rothière with a huge swing of his gun. He felt the butt break the Sergeant's skull. The gun was still loaded, so he reversed it and snarled a challenge as he peered through the choking smoke. He could see no danger now, just wounded men, dead men, and flickering rocket cases. The mine's trail, a snaking length of quick fuse, had somehow
escaped the fire of the rockets and lay discarded beside the toppled barrel in which Rothière had been keeping a lit linstock. Sharpe moved toward the barrel, then heard the click of a gun being cocked.

“That's far enough. Sharpe.” It was Colonel Gudin who spoke. He was behind Sharpe. The Colonel had been waiting for the Tippoo's signal on the inner ramparts just beside the gatehouse, but he had jumped down onto a rooftop and then into the alley and now he aimed his pistol at Sharpe. Lawford, sabre in hand, was a half-dozen paces away, too far to help. Gudin jerked the pistol. “Put the musket down, Sharpe.” Gudin spoke calmly.

Sharpe had turned with the musket at his hip. The Colonel was only three or four paces away. “Put your pistol down, sir,” Sharpe said.

A slight look of regret crossed the Colonel's face as he straightened his arm to take more careful aim. Sharpe fired as soon as he saw the small movement and though he had not aimed the musket, but fired it from the hip, his bullet struck the Colonel high on his right shoulder so that Gudin's pistol arm flew into the air. “Sorry, sir,” Sharpe said, and then he ran to where one of the spent rockets still had weak flames burning from its exhaust. He carried the flaming carcass to the end of the quick fuse and there paused to listen. He could hear cannons firing, and knew they must be the Tippoo's guns, for no British artilleryman would dare fire now for fear of hitting the assaulting troops. He could hear musket fire, but he could not hear the massive, deep-throated roar of men coming into the breach. The Forlorn Hope alone must be fighting, and that meant the space between the walls must still be clear of British soldiers. He stooped to put the rocket's feeble flames to the waiting fuse, but Lawford pushed his arm aside. Sharpe looked up at the Lieutenant. “Sir?”

“Best to leave the mine alone, I think, Sharpe. Our men might be too close.”

Sharpe still held the burning tube. “Just you and me, sir, eh?”

“You and me, Sharpe?” Lawford asked, puzzled.

“In five minutes, sir, when the Tippoo wonders why his fireworks aren't going off? And he sends a dozen men to find out what's happening. You and me? We're going to fight all those buggers off alone?”

Lawford hesitated. “I don't know,” he said uncertainly.

“I do, sir,” Sharpe said, and he pushed the burning rocket onto the fuse and immediately a quick and bitter fire began to fizzle and spark down the powder-impregnated rope. Gudin tried to stub it out with his foot, but Sharpe unceremoniously shoved the Frenchman aside. “Are you hurt bad, sir?” he asked Gudin.

“Broken shoulder, Sharpe.” Gudin looked close to tears, not because of his wound, but because he had failed in his duty. “I've no doubt Doctor Venkatesh will mend it. How did you escape?”

“Killed a tiger, sir, and some more of those
jetti
buggers.”

Gudin smiled sadly “The Tippoo should have killed yon when he had the chance.”

“We all make mistakes, sir,” Sharpe said as he watched the fire burn through the stone barricade that had been piled up in front of the ancient archway's gates. “I reckon we'd better get you into cover, sir,” he said, and he pulled an unwilling Gudin into a doorway where Lawford was already crouching. The smoke was thinning from the alley. A wounded
jetti
was crawling blindly against the farther wall, another was vomiting, and Sergeant Rothière was groaning. There was blood bubbling at the Sergeant's nostrils, and the back of his head was black with gore.

“I reckon you've just made Sergeant, Sharpe,” Lawford said.

Sharpe smiled. “I reckon I have, sir.”

“Well done, Sergeant Sharpe.” Lawford held out a hand. “A good day's work.”

Sharpe shook his officer's hand. “But the day's work ain't done yet, sir.”

“It isn't?” Lawford asked. “For God's sake, man, what else are you planning?”

But Lawford never heard what Sergeant Sharpe answered, for at that moment the mine blew.

T
he Tippoo's engineers had done their work well. Not all the mine's force was directed northwards, but the greater part of it was, and that part was devastating. The explosion scoured the space between the inner and outer walls, a space that should have been packed with British soldiers.

To Sharpe, peering around the doorway, it at first looked as though the whole squat gatehouse disintegrated; not into nibble and dust, but into its constituent stones, for the dressed granite blocks all jarred slightly apart as the ancient building bulged from the terrible pressure of the fire within. Dust sprang from every opened crevice as the big stones separated cleanly along their mortared joints, then Sharpe lost sight of the collapsing gatehouse because there was suddenly nothing but dust, smoke, flame, and noise. He jerked back into shelter and covered his head with his arms when the noise boomed past him just an instant after he had seen the dust whip past the doorway as the gases escaped from the expanding fire.