Sharpe's Fortress

"Smack on the joint, sir?" the Sergeant asked in a Northumbrian accent so pronounced that Stokes did not at first understand him.

"Low on the joint, " Stokes said.

"Low it is, sir, " the Sergeant said, and stooped to squint through the glass once more.

"The joint gapes a bit, don't it?"

"It does, " Stokes said.

The Sergeant grunted. For a while, he reckoned, the battering would drive the stones in, sealing the gap, but there was pressure there and the wall must eventually give way as the battered stones weakened.

"That bugger'll burst like an abscess, " the Sergeant said happily, straightening from the telescope. He returned to his gun and barked at his men to make some minute adjustments to its trail. He himself heaved on the elevating screw, though as yet the gun was still masked by some half filled gab ions that blocked the embrasure. Every few seconds the Sergeant climbed onto the trail to see over the gab ions then he would demand that the gun was shifted a half-inch left or a finger's breadth to the right as he made another finicky adjustment to the screw. He tossed grass in the air to gauge the wind, then twisted the elevation again to raise the barrel a tiny amount.

"Stone cold shot, " he explained to Stokes, 'so I'm pointing her a bit high. Maybe a half turn more." He hammered the screw with the heel of his hand.

«Perfect,» he said.

The pucka lees were bringing water which they poured into great wooden tubs. The water was not just to slake the gu

"That one, " he said, spitting tobacco juice onto his chosen missile.

Morris's Light Company trailed back up the road, going to the camp where they would sleep. Stokes watched them pass and thought of Sharpe. Poor Sharpe, but at least, from wherever he was imprisoned inside the fortress, he would hear the siege guns and know that the redcoats were coming. If they got through the breach, Stokes thought gloomily, or if they ever managed to cross the fortress's central ravine.

He tried to suppress his pessimism, telling himself that his job was simply to make the breach, not win the whole victory.

The chosen shot was rolled into the gun's muzzle, then rammed down onto the canvas bags of powder. The Sergeant took a length of wire that hung looped on his belt and rammed it through the ca

"Ready when you are, sir, " he told the Major commanding the battery who, in turn, looked at Stokes.

Stokes shrugged.

"I imagine we wait for Colonel Stevenson's permission."

The gu

"That wall won't last long, " the battery Major, whose name was Plummer, opined. He was staring at the wall through Stokes's telescope.

"We'll have it opened up today, " Stokes agreed.

"Thank God there ain't a glacis, " Plummer said.

"Thank God, indeed, " Stokes echoed piously, but he had been thinking about that lack and was not so sure now that it was a blessing. Perhaps the Mahrattas understood that their real defence was the great central ravine, and so were offering nothing but a token defence of the Outer Fort. And how was that ravine to be crossed? Stokes feared that he would be asked for an engineering solution, but what could he do? Fill the thing with soil? That would take months.

Stokes's gloomy presentiments were interrupted by an aide who had been sent by Colonel Stevenson to enquire why the batteries were silent.

"I suspect those are your orders to open fire, Plummer, " Stokes said.

«Unmask!» Plummer shouted.

Four gu

The other gu

"You can fire, Ned!»

Plummer called to the Sergeant, who took a glowing linstock from a protective barrel, reached across the gun's high wheel and touched the fire to the reed.

The ca

"Two inches to the right, Sergeant, " he called chidingly.

"Must have been a puff of wind, sir, " the Sergeant said, 'puff of bloody wind, 'cos there weren't a thing wrong with gun's laying, begging your pardon, sir."

"You did well, " Stokes said with a smile, 'very well." He cupped his hands and shouted at the second breaching battery.

"You have your mark! Fire on! " A billow of smoke erupted from the fortress wall, followed by the bang of a gun and a howl as a round shot whipped overhead. Stokes jumped down into the battery, clutching his hat.

"It seems we've woken them up, " he remarked as a dozen more Mahratta guns fired. The enemy's shots smacked into the gab ions or ricocheted wildly along the rocky ground. The second British battery fired, the noise of its guns echoing off the cliff face to tell the camp far beneath that the siege of Gawilghur had properly begun.

Private Tom Garrard of the 33rd's Light Company had wandered to the edge of the cliff to watch the bombardment of the fortress. Not that there was much to see other than the constantly replenished cloud of smoke that shrouded the rocky neck of land between the batteries and the fortress, but every now and then a large piece of stone would fall from Gawilghur's wall. The fire from the de fences was furious, but it seemed to Garrard that it was ill aimed. Many of the shots bounced over the batteries, or else buried themselves in the great piles of protective gab ions The British fire, on the other hand, was slow and sure. The eighteen-pound round shots gnawed at the wall and not one was wasted. The sky was cloudless, the sun rising ever higher and the guns were heating so that after every second shot the gu

Garrard was sitting by himself, but he had noticed a ragged Indian was watching him. He ignored the man, hoping he would go away, but the Indian edged closer. Garrard picked up a fist-sized stone and tossed it up and down in his right hand as a hint that the man should go away, but the threat of the stone only made the Indian edge closer.

«Sahib!» the Indian hissed.

"Bugger off, " Garrard growled.

"Sahib! Please!»

"I've got nothing worth stealing, I don't want to buy anything, and I don't want to roger your sister."