Sharpe's Fortress by Bernard Cornwell Read Free Book Online

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    force that had broken the troops of Scindia and Berar at Assaye, and the Rajah of Berar

    had summoned his brother to bring his Lions of Allah to claw and kill the invader. This

    was not a task for horsemen, the Rajah had warned Bappoo, but for infantry. It was a task

    for the Arabs.
    But Bappoo knew this was a task for horsemen. His Arabs would win, of that he was sure,

    but they could only break the enemy on the immediate battlefield. He had thought to let

    the British advance right up to his cannon, then release the Arabs, but a whim, an

    intimation of triumph, had decided him to advance the Arabs beyond the guns. Let the

    Lions of Allah loose on the enemy's centre and, when that centre was broken, the rest of

    the British line would scatter and run in panic, and that was when the Mahratta horsemen

    would have their slaughter. It was already early evening, and the sun was sinking in the

    reddened west, but the sky was cloudless and Bappoo was anticipating the joys of a

    moonlit hunt across the flat Deccan Plain.
    “We shall gallop through blood,” he said aloud, then led his aides towards his army's

    right flank so that he could charge past his Arabs when they had finished their fight. He

    would let his victorious Lions of Allah pillage the enemy's camp while he led his

    horsemen on a wild victorious gallop through the moon-touched darkness.
    And the British would run. They would run like goats from the tiger.
    But the tiger was clever. He had only kept a small number of horsemen with the army, a

    mere fifteen thousand, while the greater part of his cavalry had been sent southwards to

    raid the enemy's long supply roads. The British would flee straight into those men's

    sabres.
    Bappoo trotted his horse just behind the right flank of the Lions of Allah. The British

    guns were firing canister and Bappoo saw how the ground beside his Arabs was being

    flecked by the blasts of shot, and he saw the robed men fall, but he saw how the others did

    not hesitate, but hurried on towards the pitifully thin line of redcoats. The Arabs were

    screaming defiance, the guns were hammering, and Bappoo's soul soared with the music.

    There was nothing finer in life, he thought, than this sensation of imminent victory.

    It was like a drug that fired the mind with noble visions.
    He might have spared a moment's thought and wondered why the British did not use their

    muskets. They were holding their fire, waiting until every shot could kill, but the Prince

    was not worrying about such trifles. In his dreams he was scattering a broken army,

    slashing at them with his tulwar, carving a bloody path south. A fast sword, a quick horse

    and a broken enemy. It was the Mahratta paradise, and the Lions of Allah were opening

    its gates so that this night Manu Bappoo, Prince, warrior and dreamer, could ride into

    legend.

CHAPTER 2
    “Fire!” Swinton shouted.
    The two Highland regiments fired together, close to a thousand muskets flaming to

    make an instant hedge of thick smoke in front of the battalions. The Arabs vanished behind

    the smoke as the redcoats reloaded. Men bit into the grease-coated cartridges, tugged

    ramrods that they whirled in the air before rattling them down into the barrels. The

    churning smoke began to thin, revealing small fires where the musket wadding burned in the

    dry grass.
    “Platoon fire!” Major Swinton shouted.
    “From the flanks!”
    “Light Company!” Captain Peters called on the left flank.
    “First platoon, fire!”
    “Kill them! Your mothers are watching!” Colonel Harness shouted. The Colonel of the y8th

    was mad as a hatter and half delirious with a fever, but he had insisted on advancing

    behind his kilted Highlanders. He was being carried in a palanquin and, as the platoon

    fire began, he struggled from the litter tojoin the battle, his only weapon a broken

    riding crop. He had been recently bled, and a stained bandage trailed from a coat

    sleeve.
    “Give