Bernard Cornwell - Sharpe's Triumph

"Halt!" the strange officer shouted when his company was in the very centre of the fort. The sepoys halted. "Outwards turn! Ground fire locks! Good morning!" He at last looked down at Captain Leonard. "Are you Crosby?"

"No, sir. I'm Captain Leonard, sir. And you, sir?"

The tall man ignored the question. He scowled about Chasalgaon's fort as though he disapproved of everything he saw. What the hell was this? Leonard wondered. A surprise inspection?

"Shall I have your horse watered, sir?" Leonard offered.

"In good time, Captain, all in good time," the mysterious officer said, then he twisted in, his saddle and growled an order to his company. "Fix bayonets!"

The sepoys pulled out their seventeen-inch blades and slotted them onto the muzzles of their muskets.

"I like to offer a proper salute to a fellow Englishman," the tall man explained to Leonard. "You are English, aren't you?"

"Yes, sir."

"Too many damned Scots in the Company," the tall man grumbled. "Have you ever noticed that, Leonard? Too many Scots and Irish. Glib sorts of fellow, they are, but they ain't English. Not English at all."

The visitor drew his sword, then took a deep breath.

"Company!" he shouted. "Level arms!"

The sepoys brought their muskets to their shoulders and Leonard saw, much too late, that the guns were aimed at the troops of the garrison.

"No!" he said, but not loudly, for he still did not believe what he saw.

"Fire!" the officer shouted, and the parade ground air was murdered by the double ripple of musket shots, heavy coughing explosions that blossomed smoke across the sun-crazed mud and slammed lead balls into the unsuspecting garrison. "Hunt them now!" the tall officer called. "Hunt them! Fast, fast, fast!"

He spurred his horse close to Captain Leonard and, almost casually, slashed down with his sword, ripping the blade hard back once it had bitten into the Captain's neck so that its edge sawed fast and deep through the sinew, muscle and flesh.

"Hunt them! Hunt them!" the officer shouted as Leonard fell. He drew a pistol from his saddle holster and rode towards the officers' tents.

His men were screaming their war cries as they spread through the small fort to chase down every last sepoy of Chasalgaon's garrison. They had been ordered to leave the women and children to the last and hunt down the men first.

Crosby had been staring in horror and disbelief, and now, with shaking hands, he started to load one of his pistols, but suddenly the door of his tent darkened and he saw that the tall officer had dismounted from his horse.

"Are you Crosby?" the officer demanded.

Crosby found he could not speak. His hands quivered. Sweat was pouring down his face.

"Are you Crosby?" the man asked again in an irritated voice.

"Yes," Crosby managed to say. "And who the devil are you?"

"Dodd," the tall man said, "Major William Dodd, at your service." And Dodd raised his big pistol so that it pointed at Crosby's face.

"No!" Crosby shouted.

Dodd smiled.

"I assume you're surrendering the fort to me, Crosby?"

"Damn you," Crosby riposted feebly.

"You drink too much, Major," Dodd said. "The whole Company knows you're a sot. Didn't put up much of a fight, did you?"

He pulled the trigger and Crosby's head was snatched back in a mist of blood that spattered onto the canvas.

"Pity you're English," Dodd said. "I'd much rather shoot a Scotsman."

The dying Major made a terrible gurgling sound, then his body jerked uncontrollably and was finally still.

"Praise the Lord, pull down the flag and find the pay chest," Dodd said to himself, then he stepped over the Major's corpse to see that the pay chest was where he expected it to be, under the bed.

"Subadar?"

"Sahib?"

"Two men here to guard the pay chest."

"Sahib!"

Major Dodd hurried back onto the parade ground where a small group of redcoats, British redcoats, were offering defiance, and he wanted to make sure that his sepoys took care of them, but a havildar had anticipated Dodd's orders and was leading a squad of men against the half-dozen soldiers.

"Put the blades in!" Dodd encouraged them. "Hard in! Twist them in! That's the way! Watch your left! Left!" His voice was urgent for a tall sergeant had suddenly appeared from behind the cook house — a white man with a musket and bayonet in his hands, but one of the sepoys still had a loaded musket of his own and he twisted, aimed and fired and Dodd saw another mist of bright blood sparkle in the sunlight. The sergeant had been hit in the head. He stopped, looked surprised as the musket fell from his hands and as blood streamed down his face, then he fell backwards and was still.

"Search for the rest of the bastards!" Dodd ordered, knowing that there must still be a score of the garrison hidden in the barracks.

Some of the men had escaped over the thorn wall, but they would be hunted down by the Mahratta horsemen who were Dodd's allies and who should by now have spread either side of the fort.

"Search hard!" He himself went to look at the horses of the garrison's officers and decided that one of them was marginally better than his own. He moved his saddle to the better horse, then led it into the sunlight and picketed it to the flagpole. A woman ran past him, screaming as she fled from the red-coated killers, but a sepoy caught and tripped her and another pulled the said off her shoulder. Dodd was about to order them away from the woman, then he reckoned that the enemy was well beaten and so his men could take their pleasure in safety.

"Subadar?" he shouted.

"Sahib?"

"One squad to make sure everyone's dead. Another to open the armoury. And there are a couple of horses in the stable. Pick one for yourself, and we'll take the other back to Pohlmann. And well done, Gopal."

"Thank you, sahib," Subadar Gopal said.

Dodd wiped the blood from his sword, then reloaded his pistol. One of the fallen redcoats was trying to turn himself over, so Dodd crossed to the wounded man, watched his feeble efforts for a moment, then put a bullet into the man's head. The man jerked in spasm, then was still.

Major Dodd scowled at the blood that had sprayed his boots, but he spat, stooped and wiped the blood away.

Sharpe watched the tall officer from the corner of his eye. He felt responsible, angry, hot, bitter and scared.

The blood had poured from the wound in his scalp. He was dizzy, his head throbbed, but he was alive. There were flies in his mouth. And then his ammunition began to explode and the tall officer whipped round, thinking it was trouble, and a couple of men laughed at the sight of the ashes bursting into the air with each small crack of powder.

Sharpe dared not move. He listened to women screaming and children crying, then heard hooves and he waited until some horsemen came into view. They were Indians, of course, and all wild-looking men with sabres, matchlocks, spears, lances and even bows and arrows. They slid out of their saddles and joined the hunt for loot.

Sharpe lay like the dead. The crusting blood was thick on his face.

The blow of the musket ball had stunned him, so that he did not remember dropping his own musket or falling to the ground, but he sensed that the blow was not deadly. Not even deep. He had a headache, and the skin of his face felt taut with the crusted blood, but he knew head wounds always bled profusely. He tried to make his breathing shallow, left his mouth open and did not even gag when a fly crawled down to the root of his tongue, and then he could smell tobacco, arrack, leather and sweat and a horseman was bending over him with a horrid-looking curved knife with a rusty blade and Sharpe feared his throat was about to be cut, but instead the horseman began slashing at the pockets of Sharpe's uniform.