"Yes, sir," Lowry acknowledged nervously.
"See anything?"
"Nothing, sir," Lowry said, then gasped as he felt a blade at his throat.
"Where"s Hakeswill?" the voice hissed in his ear, and Lowry suddenly knew this was not Colonel Kenny who had him in a tight grip.
"Dunno, sir," Lowry said, then began to cry out, but the cry was cut off as the blade sawed deep into his gullet.
A ball, fired low, struck plumb on the great boulder that sheltered Hakeswill and the Sergeant whimpered as he tried to wriggle deeper into the cleft. A rocket landed thirty paces behind him and began to chase its tail, whirling about on the turf, scattering sparks, until it finally lodged against a rock and burned itself out in a display of small blue flames. Another round shot hammered into the gab ions but now they were well stacked and the ball"s impact was soaked up by the tight packed soil.
A whistle blew from the battery site, then blew twice more. Morris, relieved by the sound, called to the men to his right.
"Back to the road!
Pa.s.s it on! Back to the road!" Thank G.o.d the worst of the ordeal was over! Now he was supposed to withdraw to the battery, ready to protect it through the remaining hours of the dark night, but Morris knew he would feel a good deal safer once he was behind the gab ions just as he knew that the cessation of the work would probably persuade the Mahrattas to cease fire.
"Close on me!" he called to his company.
"Hurry!"
The message was pa.s.sed along the picquet line and the men ran at a crouch back to where Morris waited. They b.u.mped into each other as they gathered, then squatted as Morris called for Hakeswill.
"Not here, sir," Sergeant Green finally decided.
"Count the men, Sergeant," Morris ordered.
Sergeant Green numbered the men off.
"Three missing, sir," he reported.
"Hakeswill, Lowry and Kendrick."
"d.a.m.n them," Morris said. A rocket hissed up from the gatehouse, twisted in the night to leave a crazy trail of flame-edged smoke, then dived down to the left, far down, plunging into the ravine that edged the isthmus. The light of the exhaust flashed down the steep cliffs, finally vanishing a thousand feet below Morris. Two guns fired together, their b.a.l.l.s hammering towards the fake lanterns. The battery lanterns had vanished, evidence that the sappers had finished their work.
"Take the men to the battery," Morris ordered Green.
"Garrard? You stay with me."
Morris did not want to do anything heroic, but he knew he could not report that he had simply lost three men, so he took Private Tom Garrard west across the tumbled ground where the picquet line had been stretched. They called out the names of the missing men, but no reply came.
It was Garrard who stumbled over the first body.
"Don"t know who it is, sir, but he"s dead. b.l.o.o.d.y mess, he is."
Morris swore and crouched beside the body. A rocket"s bright pa.s.sage showed him a slit throat and a spill of blood. It also revealed that the man had been stripped of his coat which lay discarded beside the corpse. The sight of the gaping throat made Morris gag.
"There"s another here, sir," Garrard called from a few paces away.
"Jesus!" Morris twisted aside, willing himself not to throw up, but the bile was sour in his throat. He shuddered, then managed to take a deep breath.
"We"re going."
"You want me to look for the other fellow, sir?" Garrard asked.
"Come on!" Morris fled, not wanting to stay in this dark charnel house.
Garrard followed.
The gunfire died. A last rocket st.i.tched sparks across the stars, then Gawilghur was silent again.
Hakeswill cowered in his hiding place, shuddering as the occasional flare of an exploding sh.e.l.l or pa.s.sing rocket cast lurid shadows into the narrow cleft. He thought he heard Lowry call aloud, but the sound was so unexpected, and so quickly over, he decided it was his nerves. Then, blessedly, he heard the whistle that signalled that the sappers were done with their work, and a moment later he heard the message being called along the line.
"Back to the road! Back to the road!"
The rockets and guns were still battering the night, so Hakeswill stayed where he was until he sensed that the fury of the fire was diminishing, then he crept out of his cleft and, still keeping low, scuttled eastwards.
"Hakeswill!" a voice called nearby.
He froze.
"Hakeswill?" The voice was insistent.
Some instinct told the Sergeant that there was mischief in the dark, and so Hakeswill crouched lower still. He heard something moving in the night, the sc.r.a.pe of leather on stone, the sound of breathing, but the man did not come close to Hakeswill who, petrified, edged on another pace. His hand, feeling the ground ahead of him, suddenly found something wet and sticky. He flinched, brought his fingers to his nose and smelt blood.
"Jesus," he swore under his breath. He groped again, and this time found a corpse. His hands explored the face, the open mouth, then found the gaping wound in the neck. He jerked his hand back.
It had to be Lowry or Kendrick, for this was about where he had left the two privates, and if they were dead, or even if only one of them was dead, then it meant that Captain Torrance"s death had been no lovers" tiff. Not that Hakeswill had ever believed it was. He knew who it was. b.l.o.o.d.y Sharpe was alive. b.l.o.o.d.y Sharpe was hunting his enemies, and three, maybe four, were already dead. And Hakeswill knew he would be next.
"Hakeswill!" the voice hissed, but farther away now.
A gun fired from the fort and in its flash Hakeswill saw a cloaked shape to his north. The man was crossing the skyline, not far from Hakeswill, but at least he was going away. Sharpe! It had to be Sharpe!
And a terror grew in Hakeswill so that his face twitched and his hands shook.
"Think, you b.u.g.g.e.r," he told himself, "think!"
And the answer came, a sweet answer, so obvious that he wondered why he had taken so long to find it.
Sharpe was alive, he was not a prisoner in Gawilghur, but haunting the British camp, which meant that there was one place that would be utterly safe for Hakeswill to go. He could go to the fortress, and Sharpe would never reach him there for the rumour in the camp was that the a.s.sault on Gawilghur was likely to be a desperate and b.l.o.o.d.y business.
Likely to fail, some men said, and even if it did not, Hakeswill could always pretend he had been taken prisoner. All he wanted at this moment was to be away from Sharpe and so he sidled southwards, down the hill, and once he reached the flatter ground, he ran towards the now dark walls of the fort through the drifting skeins of foul-smelling powder smoke.
He ran past the tank, along the approach road, and round to the left where the great gatehouse loomed above him in the dark. And once there he pounded on the ma.s.sive, iron-studded doors.
No one responded.
He pounded again, using the b.u.t.t of his musket, scared witless that the sound would bring an avenging horror from the dark behind, and suddenly a small wicket gate in the larger door was pulled open to flood flame light into the night.