'No, sir.

Shee paused. It was all so irregular.

'Dismiss the battalion, sir? Bywaters suggested.

Shee nodded, glad to have been given some guidance. 'Dismiss them, Sergeant Major.

'Yes, sir.

Sharpe had survived.

CHAPTER 4

It seemed airless inside General Harris's tent. It was a large tent, as big as a parish marquee, and though both its wide entrances had been brailed back there was no wind to stir the damp air trapped under the high ridge. The light inside the big tent was yellowed by the canvas to the colour of urine and gave the grass underfoot a dank unhealthy look.

Four men waited inside the tent. The youngest and most nervous was William Lawford who, because he was a mere lieutenant and by far the most junior officer present, was sitting far off to one side on a gilt chair of such spindly and fragile construction it seemed a miracle that it had survived its transport on the army's wagons. Lawford scarcely dared move lest he draw attention to himself, and so he sat awkward and uncomfortable as the sweat trickled down his face and dripped onto the crown of his cocked hat which rested on his thighs.

Opposite Lawford, and utterly ignoring the younger man, sat his Colonel, Arthur Wellesley. The Colonel made small talk, but gruffly, as though he resented being forced to wait. Once or twice he pulled a watch from his fob pocket, snapped open the lid, glared at the revealed face, then restored the watch to his pocket without making a comment.

General Harris, the army's commander, sat behind a long table that was spread with maps. The commander of the allied armies was a trim, middle-aged man who possessed an uncommon measure of common sense and a great deal of practical ability, and both were qualities he recognized in his younger deputy, Colonel Wellesley. George Harris was an affable man, but now, waiting in the tent's yellow gloom, he seemed distracted. He stared at the maps, he wiped the sweat from his face with a big blue handkerchief, but he rarely looked up to acknowledge the stilted conversation. Harris was uneasy for, like Wellesley, he did not really approve of what they were about to do. It was not so much the irregularity of the action that concerned the two men, for neither was hidebound, but rather because they suspected that the proposed operation would fail and that two good men, or rather one good man and one bad, would be lost.

The fourth man in the tent refused to sit, but instead strode up and down between the tables and the scatter of flimsy chairs. It was this man who kept alive what little conversation managed to survive the tent's stiff, damp and airless atmosphere. He jollied his companions, he encouraged them, he tried to amuse them, though every now and then his efforts would fail and then he would stride to one of the tent doorways and stoop to peer out. 'Can't be long now, he would say each time and then begin his pacing again. His name was Major General David Baird and he was the senior and older of General Harris's two deputy commanders. Unlike his colleagues he had discarded his uniform coat and waistcoat, stripping down to a dirty, much-darned shirt and letting the braces of his breeches hang down to his knees. His dark hair was damp and tousled, while his broad face was so tanned that, to Lawford's nervous gaze, Baird looked more like a labourer than a general. The resemblance was even more acute because there was nothing delicate or refined about David Baird's appearance. He was a huge Scotsman, tall as a giant, broad shouldered and muscled like a coal-heaver. It had been Baird who had persuaded his two colleagues to act, or rather he had persuaded General Harris to act much against that officer's better judgement, and Baird frankly did not give a tinker's damn whether Colonel Arthur bloody Wellesley approved or not. Baird disliked Wellesley, and bitterly resented the fact that the younger man had been made into his fellow second-in-command. Baird, never a man to let his grudges simmer unspoken, had protested Arthur Wellesley's appointment to Harris. 'If his brother wasn't Governor-General, Harris, you'd never have promoted him.

'Not true, Baird, Harris had answered mildly. 'Wellesley has ability.

'Ability, my arse. He's got family! Baird spat.

'We all have family.

'Not prinking English popinjay families with too much bloody money.

'He was born in Ireland.

'Poor bloody Ireland, then, but he ain't Irish, Harris, and you know it. The man doesn't even drink, for God's sake! A little wine, maybe, but nothing I'd call a proper drink. Have you ever met an Irishman so sober?

'Some, quite a few, a good number, to tell the truth, Harris, a fair-minded man, had answered honesdy, 'but is inebriation such a desirable quality in a military commander?

'Experience is, Baird had growled. 'Hell, man, you and I have seen some service! We've lost blood! And what has Wellesley lost? Money! Nothing but money while he purchased his way up to colonel. Man's never been in a battle!

'He will still make a very good second-in-command, and that's all that matters, Harris had insisted, and indeed Harris had been well pleased with Wellesley's performance. The Colonel's responsibilities lay mainly with the army of the Nizam of Hyderabad, and he had proved adept at persuading that potentate to submit to Harris's suggestions, a task Baird could never have performed even half so well for the Scotsman was notorious for his hatred of all Indians.

That hatred went back to the years Baird had spent in the dungeons of the Tippoo Sultan in Seringapatam. Seventeen years before, in battle against the Tippoo's fierce father, Hyder Ali, the young David Baird had been captured. He and the other prisoners had been marched to Seringapatam and there endured forty-four humiliating months of hot, damp hell in Hyder Ali's cells. For some of those months Baird had been manacled to the wall and now the Scotsman wanted revenge. He dreamed of carrying his Scottish claymore across the city's ramparts and cornering the Tippoo, and then, by Christ, the hell of Seringapatam's cells would be paid back a thousandfold.

It was the memory of that ordeal and the knowledge that his fellow Scotsman, McCandless, was now doomed to endure it, that had persuaded Baird that McCandless must be freed. Colonel McCandless had himself suggested how that release might be achieved for, before setting out on his mission, he had left a letter with David Baird. The letter, which had instructions penned on its cover saying that it should only be opened if McCandless failed to return, suggested that if the Colonel should be captured, and should General Harris feel it was important to make an attempt to release him, then a trusted man should be sent secretly into Seringapatam where he should contact a merchant named Ravi Shekhar. 'If any man has the resources to free me, it is Shekhar, McCandless had written, 'though I trust both you and the General will weigh well the risk of losing such a prized informant against whatever small advantages might be gained from my release.

Baird had no doubts about McCandless's worth. McCandless alone knew the identities of the British agents in the Tippoo's service and no one in the army knew as much of the Tippoo as did McCandless, and Baird was aware that should the Tippoo ever discover McCandless's true responsibilities then McCandless would be given to the tigers. It was Baird who had remembered that McCandless's English nephew, William Lawford, was serving in the army, and Baird who had persuaded Lawford to enter Seringapatam in an effort to free McCandless, and Baird who had then proposed.the mission to General Harris. Harris had initially scorned the idea, though he had unbent sufficiently to suggest that maybe an Indian volunteer could be found who would stand a much greater chance of remaining undetected in the enemy capital, but Baird had vigorously defended his choice. 'This is too important to be left to some blackamoor, Harris, and besides, only McCandless knows which of the bastards can be trusted. Me, I wouldn't trust any damned one of them.