'Sixty rounds of ammunition,' Morris said.

'Always carry it, sir! Regulations, sir!'

Morris had drunk the best part of three bottles of wine at luncheon and was in no mood to deal with Hakeswill's equivocations. He swore at the Sergeant, then pointed south to where another rocket was smoking up from the tope. 'Tonight, you idiot, we're cleaning those bastards out of those trees.'

'Us, sir?' Hakeswill was alarmed at the prospect. 'Just us, sir?'

'The whole battalion. Night attack. Inspection at sundown. Any man who looks drunk gets flogged.'

Officers excepted, Hakeswill thought, then quivered as he offered Morris a cracking salute. 'Sir! Inspection at sundown, sir. Permission to carry on, sir?' He did not wait for Morris's permission, but turned back into his tent. 'Boots! Give 'em here! Come on, you black bastard!' He gave Raziv a cuff round the ear and snatched his half-cleaned boots. He tugged them on, then dragged Raziv by the ear to where the halberd was planted like a banner in front of the tent. 'Sharpen!' Hakeswill bawled in the unfortunate boy's bruised ear. 'Sharpen! Understand, you toad-witted heathen? I want it sharp!' Hakeswill gave the boy a parting slap as an encouragement, then stumped off through the lines. 'On your bleeding feet!' he shouted. 'Look lively now! Time to earn your miserable pay. Are you drunk, Garrard? If you're drunk, boy, I'll have your bones given a stroking.'

The battalion paraded at dusk and, to its surprise, found itself being inspected by its Colonel, Arthur Wellesley. There was a feeling of relief in the ranks when Wellesley appeared, for by now every man knew that they were due for a fight and none wished to go into battle under the uncertain leadership of Major Shee who had drunk so much arrack that he was visibly swaying on his horse. Wellesley might be a cold-hearted bastard, but the men knew he was a careful soldier and they even looked cheerful as he trotted down their ranks on his white horse. Each man had to demonstrate possession of sixty cartridges, and those who failed had their names taken for punishment. Two sepoy battalions from the East India Company's forces paraded behind the 33rd and, just as the sun disappeared behind them, all three battalions marched south-eastwards towards the aqueduct. Their colours were flying and Colonel Wellesley led them on horseback. Other King's battalions marched to their left, going to attack the northern stretch of the aqueduct.

'So what are we doing, Lieutenant?' Tom Garrard asked the newly promoted Lieutenant Fitzgerald.

'Silence in the ranks!' Hakeswill bawled.

'He was talking to me, Sergeant,' Fitzgerald said, 'and you will do me the honour of not interfering in my private conversations.' Fitzgerald's retort improved the Irishman's stock with the company twentyfold. He was popular anyway, for he was a cheerful and easy-going young man.

Hakeswill growled. Fitzgerald claimed his brother was the Knight of Kerry, whatever the holy hell that was, but the claim did not impress Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill. Proper officers left discipline to sergeants, they did not curry favour with the men by telling jokes and chatting away like magpies. It was also plain that Brevet-Lieutenant bloody Fitzgerald did not like Sergeant Hakeswill for he took every chance he could to countermand Hakeswill's authority, and Hakeswill was determined to change that. The Sergeant's face twitched. There was nothing he could do at this moment, but Mister Fitzgerald, he told himself, would be taught his lesson, and the sooner it was taught the better.

'You see those trees ahead?' Fitzgerald explained to Garrard. 'We're going to clear the Tippoo's boys out of them.'

'How many of the bastards, sir?'

'Hundreds!' Fitzgerald answered cheerfully. 'And all of them quaking at the knees to think that the Havercakes are coming to give them a thrashing.'

The Tippoo's boys might be quaking, but they could clearly see the three battalions approaching and their rocket-men sent up a fiery barrage in greeting. The missiles climbed through the darkening sky, their exhaust flames unnaturally bright as they spewed volcanoes of sparks into the smoke trails that mingled as the rockets reached their apogee and then plunged towards the British and Indian infantry. 'No breaking ranks!' an officer shouted, and the three battalions marched stolidly on as the opening barrage plunged down to explode all around them. Some jeers greeted the barrage's inaccuracy, but the officers and sergeants shouted for silence. More rockets climbed and fell. Most screamed erratically off course, but a few came close enough to make men duck, and one exploded just a few feet from the 33rd's Light Company so that the sharp-edged scraps of its shattered tin nose cone whistled about their ears. Men laughed at their narrow escape, then someone saw that Lieutenant Fitzgerald was staggering. 'Sir!'

'It's nothing, boys, nothing,' Fitzgerald called. A scrap of the rocket's cylinder had torn open his left arm, and there was a gash on the back of his head that was dripping blood from the ends of his hair, but he shook off any help. 'Takes more than a black man's rocket to knock down an Irishman,' he said happily. 'Ain't that right, O'Reilly?'

'It is, sir,' the Irish Private answered.

'Got skulls like bloody buckets, we have,' Fitzgerald said, and crammed his tattered shako back on his head. His left arm was numb, and blood had soaked his sleeve to the wrist, but he was determined to keep going. He had taken worse injuries on the hunting field and still been in his saddle at the death of the fox.

Hakeswill's resentment of Fitzgerald seethed. How dare a mere lieutenant overrule him? A bloody child! Not nineteen years old yet, and still with the bog water wet behind his ears. Hakeswill slashed at a cactus with his halberd, and the savagery of the gesture dislodged the musket that was slung on his left shoulder. The Sergeant never usually carried a musket, but tonight he was armed with the halberd, the musket, a bayonet and a brace of pistols. Except for the brief fight at Malavelly it had been years since Hakeswill had been in a battle and he was not sure he wanted to fight another this night, but if he did then he would make damned sure that he carried more weapons than any heathen enemy he might meet.

The sun had long gone by the time Wellesley halted the three battalions, though a lambent light still suffused the western sky and, under its pale glow, the 33rd formed line. The two sepoy battalions waited a quarter of a mile behind the 33rd. The rocket trails seemed brighter now as they climbed into a cloudless twilight sky where the first few stars pricked the dark. The missiles hissed as they streaked overhead, their smoke trails made lurid by the spitting flames. Spent rockets lay on the ground with small pale flames flickering feebly from their exhausts. The weapons were spectacular, but so inaccurate that even the inexperienced 33rd no longer feared them, but their relief was tempered by a sudden display of bright sparks at the lip of the aqueduct's embankment. The sparks were instantly extinguished by a cloud of powder smoke, and the sound of musketry followed a few seconds later, but the range was too great and the balls spent themselves harmlessly.

Wellesley galloped his horse to Major Shee's side, spoke briefly, then spurred on. 'Flank companies!' the Colonel shouted. 'Advance in line!'

'That's us, boys,' Fitzgerald said and drew his sabre. His left arm was throbbing now, but he did not need it to fight with a blade. He would keep going.

The Grenadier and Light companies advanced from the two flanks of the battalion. Wellesley halted them, formed them into a line of two ranks and ordered them to load their muskets. Ramrods rattled into barrels. 'Fix bayonets!' the Colonel called and the men drew out their seventeen-inch blades and slotted them onto the musket muzzles. It was full night now, but the heat was still like a wet blanket. The sound of slaps echoed through the ranks as men swatted at mosquitoes. The Colonel curbed his white horse at the front of the two ranks. 'We're going to chase the enemy off the embankment,' he said in his cold, precise voice, 'and once we've cleared them away Major Shee will bring on the rest of the battalion to drive the enemy out of the trees altogether. Captain West?'