men who had volunteered to be first up the rungs. The sun was fully above the horizon now and Sharpe could see the wall more plainly. He reckoned it was twenty foot high, give or take a few inches, and the glint of guns in every embrasure and loophole showed that it would be heavily defended. ‘Ever seen an escalade, Sharpe?’ McCandless asked.
‘No, sir.’
‘Risky business. Frail things, ladders. Nasty being first up.’
‘Very nasty, sir.’
‘And if it fails it gives the enemy confidence.’
‘So why do it, sir?’
‘Because if it succeeds, Sharpe, it lowers the enemy’s spirits. It will make us seem invincible. Veni, vidi, vici.’
‘I don’t speak any Indian, sir, not proper.’
‘Latin, Sharpe, Latin. I came, I saw, I conquered. How’s your reading these days?’
‘It’s good, sir, very good,’ Sharpe answered enthusiastically, though in truth he had not read very much in the last four years other than lists of stores and duty rosters and Major Stokes’s repair orders. But it had been Colonel McCandless and his nephew, Lieutenant Lawford, who had first taught Sharpe to read when they shared a cell in the Tippoo Sultan’s prison. That was four years ago now.
‘I shall give you a Bible, Sharpe,’ McCandless said, watching the escalade parties march steadily forward. ‘It’s the one book worth reading.’
‘I’d like that, sir,’ Sharpe said straight-faced, then saw that the picquets of the day were running ahead to make a skirmish line that would pepper the wall with musket fire. Still no one fired from the city wall, though by now both the picquets and the two ladder parties were well inside musket range. ‘If you don’t mind me asking, sir,’ Sharpe said to McCandless, ‘what’s to stop that bugger – sorry, sir – what’s to stop Mister Dodd from escaping out the other side of the city, sir?’
‘They are, Sharpe,’ McCandless said, indicating the cavalry that now galloped off on both sides of the city. The British 19th Dragoons rode in a tight squadron, but the other horsemen were Mahratta allies or else silladars from Hyderabad or Mysore, and they rode in a loose swarm. ‘Their job is to harass anyone leaving the city,’ McCandless went on. ‘Not the civilians, of course, but any troops.’
‘But Dodd’s got a whole regiment, sir.’
McCandless dismissed the problem. ‘I doubt that two whole regiments will serve him. In a minute or two there’ll be sheer panic inside Ahmednuggur, and how’s Dodd to get away? He’ll have to fight his way through a crowd of terrified civilians. No, we’ll find him inside the place if he’s still there.’
‘He is,’ Sevajee put in. He was staring at the wall through a small telescope. ‘I can see the uniforms of his men on the firestep. White jackets.’ He pointed westwards, beyond the stretch of wall that would be attacked by the 78th.
The picquets suddenly opened fire. They were scattered along the southern edge of the city, and their musketry was sporadic and, to Sharpe, futile. Men firing at a city? The musket balls smacked into the red stone of the wall which echoed back the crackle of the gunfire, but the defenders ignored the threat. Not a musket replied, not a cannon fired. The wall was silent. Shreds of smoke drifted from the skirmish line which went on chipping the big red stones with lead.
Colonel Wallace’s assault party was late in starting, while the kilted men of the 78th, who were assaulting the wall to the left of the gate, were now far in advance of the other attackers. They were running across open ground, their two ladders in plain sight of the enemy, but still the defenders ignored them. A regiment of sepoys was wheeling left, going to add their musket fire to the picquet line. A bagpiper was playing, but he must have been running for his instrument kept giving small ignominious hiccups. In truth it all seemed ignominious to Sharpe. The battle, if it could even be called a battle, had begun so casually, and the enemy was not even appearing to regard it as a threat. The skirmishers’ fire was scattered, the assault parties looked under strength and there seemed to be no urgency and no ceremony. There ought to be ceremony, Sharpe considered. A band should be playing, flags should be flying, and the enemy should be visible and threatening, but instead it was ramshackle and almost unreal.
‘This way, Sharpe,’ McCandless said, and swerved away to where Colonel Wallace was chivvying his men into formation. A dozen blue-coated gunners were clustered about a six-pounder cannon, evidently the gun that would be rammed against the city gate, while just beyond them was a battery of four twelve-pounder cannon drawn by elephants and, as Sharpe and McCandless urged their horses towards Wallace, the four mahouts halted their elephants and the gunners hurried to unharness the four guns. Sharpe guessed the battery would spray the wall with canister, though the silence of the defenders seemed to suggest that they had nothing to fear from these impudent attackers. Sir Arthur Wellesley, mounted on Diomed who seemed no worse for his blood-letting, rode up behind the guns and called some instruction to the battery commander who raised a hand in acknowledgement. The General was accompanied by three scarlet-coated aides and two Indians who, from the richness of their robes, had to be commanders of the allied horsemen who had ridden to stop the flight of fugitives from the city’s northern gate.
The attackers from the 78th were just a hundred paces from the wall now. They had no packs, only their weapons. And still the enemy treated them with lordly disdain. Not a gun fired, not a musket flamed, not a single rocket slashed out from the wall.
‘Looks like it will be easy, McCandless!’ Wallace called.
‘I pray as much!’ McCandless said.
‘The enemy has been praying too,’ Sevajee said, but McCandless ignored the remark.
Then, suddenly and appallingly, the silence ended.
The enemy was not ignoring the attack. Instead, from serried loopholes in the wall and from the bastions’ high embrasures and from the merlons along the parapet, a storm of gunfire erupted. One moment the wall had been clear in the morning sun, now it was fogged by a thick screen of powder smoke. A whole city was rimmed white, and the ground about the attacking troops was pitted and churned by the strike of bullets. ‘Ten minutes of seven,’ McCandless shouted over the noise, as though the time was important. Rockets, like those Sharpe had seen at Seringapatam, seared out from the walls to stitch their smoke trails in crazy tangles above the assaulting parties’ heads, yet, despite the volume of fire, the defenders’ opening volley appeared to do little harm. One redcoat was staggering, but the assault parties still went forward, and then a pain-filled squeal made Sharpe look to his right to see that an elephant had been struck by a cannonball. The beast’s mahout was dragging on its tether, but the elephant broke free and, maddened by its wound, charged straight towards Wallace’s men. The Highlanders scattered. The gunners had begun to drag their loaded six-pounder forward, but they were right in the injured beast’s path and now sensibly abandoned the gun to flee from the crazed animal’s charge. The wrinkled skin of the elephant’s left flank was sheeted in red. Wallace shouted incoherently, then spurred his horse out of the way. The elephant, trunk raised and eyes white, thumped past McCandless and Sharpe. ‘Poor girl,’ McCandless said.
‘It’s a she?’ Sharpe asked.
‘All draught animals are female, Sharpe. More docile.’
‘She ain’t docile, sir,’ Sharpe said, watching the elephant burst free of the army’s rear and trample through a field of stubble pursued by her mahout and an excited crowd of small skinny children who had followed the attacking
