Lawford gaped at Sharpe. 'So you knew all along the gun wouldn't fire?

'Of course I bloody knew! I wouldn't have pulled the trigger else. You mean you didn't realize that weren't powder?

Lawford turned away. Once again he had been made to look like a fool and he blushed at the realization. 'I'm sorry, he said. He was crestfallen, and again he felt a galling sense of inadequacy compared to this common soldier.

Sharpe stared at a patrol of the Tippoo's lancers who were riding back towards the city. Three of them were wounded and were being supported in their saddles by their comrades, which suggested the British were not so very far away now. Tm sorry, sir, he said very softly, and deliberately using the word 'sir' to mollify Lawford, 'but I'm not trying to be insolent. I'm just trying to keep you and me alive.

'I know. I'm sorry too. I should have known it wasn't powder.

'It was confusing, weren't it? Sharpe said, trying to console his companion. 'What with the Tippoo being there. Fat little bugger, ain't he? But you're doing all right, sir. Sharpe spoke feelingly, knowing that the young Lieutenant desperately needed encouragement. 'And you were clever as hell, sir, saying you wore an apron. I should have splashed some ink on your uniform, shouldn't I? But I never thought of it, but you got us out of that one.

'I was thinking of Private Brookfield, Lawford said, not without some pride at the memory of his inspired lie. 'You know Brookfield?

'The clerk of Mister Stanbridge's company, sir? Fellow who wears spectacles? Does he wear a pinny?

'He says it keeps the ink off him.

'He always was an old woman, Sharpe said scornfully, 'but you did well. And I'll tell you something else. We have to get out of here soon because I know why we came now. We don't have to find your merchant fellow, we just have to get out. Unless you think we ought to rescue your uncle, but if you don't, then we can just run, because I know why we came now.

Lawford gaped at him. "You know?

'The Colonel spoke to me, sir, while we was going through that pantomime back there in the palace. He says we're to tell General Harris to avoid the west wall. Nothing else, just that.

Lawford stared at Sharpe, then glanced across the angle of the city walls towards the western defences, but nothing he could see there looked strange or suspicious. 'You'd better stop calling me «sir», he said. 'Are you sure about what he said?

'He said it twice. Avoid the west wall.

A bellow from the next cavalier made them turn. Rothiere was pointing south, suggesting that the two Englishmen watch that direction as they were supposed to instead of gaping like yokels towards the west. Sharpe obediently stared southwards, though there was nothing to be seen there except some women carrying loads on their heads and a thin naked boy herding some scrawny came along the river bank. His duty now, Sharpe thought, was to escape this place and get back to the British army, but how in God's name was he ever to do that? If he were to jump off the wall now, Sharpe reckoned, he would stand a half-chance of breaking a leg, and even if he survived the jump he would only land in the glacis ditch, and if he managed to cross the glacis he would merely reach the military encampment that was built hard around the city's southern and eastern walls, and if he was lucky enough to escape the hundreds of soldiers who would converge on him, he would still need to cross the river, and meanwhile every gun on the encampment wall would be hammering at his heels, and once he had crossed the river, if he ever did, the Tippoo's lancers would be waiting on the far bank. The sheer impossibility of escaping the city made him smile. 'God knows how we ever get out of here, he said to Lawford.

'Maybe at night? Lawford suggested vaguely.

'If they ever let us stand guard at night, Sharpe said dubiously, then thought of Mary. Could he leave her in the city?

'So what do we do? Lawford asked.

'What we always do in the army, Sharpe said stoically. 'Hurry up and do nothing. Wait for the opportunity. It'll come, it'll come. And in the meantime, maybe we can find out just what the devils are doing in the west of the city, eh?

Lawford shuddered. 'I'm glad I brought you, Sharpe.

'You are? Sharpe grinned at that compliment. 'I'll tell you when I'll be glad. When you take me back home to the army. And suddenly, after weeks of thinking about desertion, Sharpe realized that what he had just said was true. He did want to go back to the army, and that knowledge surprised him. The army had bored Richard Sharpe, then done its best to break his spirits. It had even flogged him, but now, standing on Seringapatam's battlements, he missed the army.

For at heart, as Richard Sharpe had just discovered for himself, he was a soldier.

CHAPTER 6

The armies of Britain and Hyderabad reached Seringapatam four days later. The first evidence of their coming was a cloud of dust that thickened and rose to obscure the eastern horizon, a great fog of dust kicked up by thousands of hooves, boots and wheels. The two armies had crossed the river well to the city's east and were now on its southern bank and Sharpe climbed with the rest of Gudin's men to the firestep above the Mysore Gate to watch the first British cavalry patrols appear in the distance. A torrent of lancers clattered out of the gate to challenge the invaders. The Tippoo's men rode with green and scarlet pennants on their lance heads and beneath silk banners showing the golden sun blazoned against a scarlet field. Once the lancers had passed through the gate a succession of painted ox carts squealed and ground their way into the city, each loaded with rice, grain or beans. There was plenty of water inside Seringapatam, for not only did the River Cauvery wash beneath two of the walls, but each street had its own well, and now the Tippoo was making certain that the granaries were filled to overflowing. The city's magazines were already crammed with ammunition. There were guns in every embrasure and, behind the walls, spare guns waited to replace any that were dismounted. Sharpe had never seen so many guns. The Tippoo Sultan had great faith in artillery and he had collected cannon of every shape and size. There were guns with barrels disguised as crouching tigers, and guns inscribed with flowing Arabic letters, and guns supplied from France, some still with the ancient Bourbon cipher incised close to their touchholes. There were huge guns with barrels over twenty feet long that fired stone balls close to fifty pounds in weight and small guns, scarce longer than a musket, that fired individual balls of grape. The Tippoo intended to meet any British assault with a storm of cannon fire.

And not just cannon fire, for as the two enemy armies marched closer to the city the rocket-men brought their strange weapons to the firesteps. Sharpe had never seen rockets before and he gaped as the missiles were stacked against the parapets. Each was an iron tube some four or five inches wide and about eighteen inches long that was attached by leather thongs to a bamboo stick that stood higher than a man. A crude tin cone tipped the iron cylinder, and inside the cone was either a small solid shot or else an explosive charge that was ignited by the rocket's own gunpowder pro-pellant. The missiles were fired by lighting a twist of paper that emerged from the base of the iron cylinders. Some of the rocket tubes had been wrapped with paper, then painted with either snarling tigers or verses from the Koran. There's a man in Ireland working on a similar weapon, Lawford told Sharpe, 'though I don't think he puts tigers on his rocket heads.

'How do you aim the bloody things? Sharpe asked. Some of the rockets had been placed ready to fire, but there was no gun barrel to direct them, instead they were simply laid on the parapet and pointed in the general direction of the enemy.