The man sprang aside as Sharpe jerked up the handles. There must have been fifty rockets in the cart, more than enough for Sharpe's purpose. Two other men shouted protests at Sharpe, but Lawford waved them down. 'Colonel Gudin sent us. Understand?' Lawford said. 'Colonel Gudin. He sent us.' The Lieutenant followed Sharpe down the street leading south from the square. 'Those two men are coming after us,' he said nervously.

'Shout at the buggers, sir. You're an officer!'

'Back!' Lawford shouted. 'To your duties! Go on! Now! Do as I say, damn your eyes! Go!' He paused, then gave a delighted chuckle. 'Good God, Sharpe, it worked.'

'Works with us, sir, should work with them,' Sharpe said. He turned a corner and saw the towering sculptures of the big Hindu temple. He recognized where he was now and he knew the alley leading to the mine was only a few yards away. It would be filled with guards, but Sharpe now had a whole arsenal of his own.

'We can't do anything if there isn't an attack,' Lawford said.

'I know that, sir.'

'So what do we do if there isn't an assault?'

'Hide, sir.'

'Where, for God's sake?'

'Lali will take us in, sir. You remember Lali, don't you, sir?'

Lawford blushed at the memory of his introduction to Seringapatam's brothels. 'You really believe she'll hide us?'

'She thinks you're sweet, sir.' Sharpe grinned. 'I've seen her a couple of times since that first night, sir, and she always asks after you. I reckon you made a conquest there, sir.'

'Good God, Sharpe, you won't tell anyone?'

'Me, sir?' Sharpe pretended to be shocked. 'Not a word, sir.'

Then, very suddenly, and far off, muffled by distance so that it was thin and wavering, a trumpet sounded.

And every gun in creation seemed to fire at once.

Baird clambered up the trench wall, climbed over the sandbags and turned to face his men. 'Now, my brave fellows,' he shouted in his broad Scottish accent, waving his sword towards the city, 'follow me and prove yourselves worthy of the name British soldiers!'

The Forlorn Hopes were already on their way. The moment Baird had climbed out of the trench the seventy-six men of the two Hopes had scrambled over the lip and began running. They splashed through the Little Cauvery, then sprinted towards the larger river. The air about them churned with noise. Every siege gun had fired at almost the same instant and the breach was a boiling mass of dust, while the huge sound of the guns was echoing back from the walls. The banners of Britain streamed as the leading men ran into the South Cauvery. The first bullets plucked at the water, throwing up small fountains, but the Forlorn Hopes did not notice the firing. They were screaming their challenge and racing each other to be first up the breach.

'Fire!' the Tippoo shouted, and the walls of the city were rimmed with flame and smoke as a thousand muskets poured lead down into the South Cauvery and out towards the trenches. Rockets hissed off the walls, their trails twisting madly as they tangled in the hot air. The trumpet was still sounding. The musketry of the defenders was unending as men simply dropped their empty guns, snatched up loaded ones and fired into the smoke cloud that edged the city. The sound of their guns was like a giant fire crackling, the river was foaming with bullets and a handful of redcoats and sepoys were jerking and thrashing as they drowned or bled to death.

'Come on!' Sergeant Graham roared as he stumbled over the remains of the mud wall that had penned in the water behind the glacis. A foot of muddy water still lay in the old ditch, but Graham ran through it as though he had wings. A bullet plucked at the flag in his left hand. 'Come on, you bastards!' he shouted. He was on the lower slope of the breach now, and his whole world was nothing but noise and smoke and whipsawing bullets. It was a tiny place, that world, a hell of dust and fire above a rubble slope. He could see no enemy, for those above him were hidden by their own musket smoke, but then the defenders on the inner wall, who could stare straight down the throat of the breach in the outer wall, saw the redcoats clambering up the ramp and opened fire. A man behind Graham collapsed backwards with blood gurgling from his throat. Another pitched forward with a shattered knee.

Graham reached the breach's summit. His real goal was the wall to his left, but the summit of the breach felt like triumph enough and he rammed the flagstaff deep into the stones and dust. 'Lieutenant Graham now!' he shouted exultingly, and a bullet immediately snatched him off the summit and hurled him back towards his men.

It was just then that the Tippoo's own volunteers struck. Sixty men swarmed up from behind the wall with sabres and muskets to meet the two Forlorn Hopes on the crest of the rubble breach. These were the Tippoo's best men, his tigers, the warriors of Allah who had been promised a favoured place in paradise, and they screamed with exultation as they attacked. They fired a musket volley as they climbed, then threw down the empty guns to attack the redcoats with bright curved swords. Musket barrels parried swords, bayonets lunged and were cut aside. Men swore and killed, swore and died. Some men fought with hands and boots, they gouged and bit each other as they grappled hand to hand on the dusty summit. One Bengali sepoy snatched up a fallen sword and carved a way to the foot of the wall where it climbed up from the breach to the northern ramparts. A Mysorean volunteer sliced at him, the sepoy instinctively parried, then cut down through the man's brass helmet so violently that the blade was buried and trapped in his enemy's skull. The Bengali left it there and, so fevered by battle that he did not realize he was weaponless, tried to scale the broken wall's flank to attack the defenders waiting on the firestep above. A musket shot from the top of the wall hurled him backwards and he slid, dying and bleeding, to lodge against the wounded Graham.

Baird was still west of the river. His job was not to die with the Forlorn Hopes, but to lead the main attack up the path they had cleared. That main attack now formed itself into two columns of platoons.

'Forward!' Baird shouted, and led the twin columns towards the river. The ground ahead was being pitted by bullets as if an invisible hail fell. Behind him the drummer boys were sounding the advance while the engineers, laden with their fascines and ladders, walked alongside the platoons. Rockets screamed above Baird, their trails stitching ropes of smoke above the river. Men struggled hand to hand in the breach and the walls of the city spat flame through the churning rill of smoke.

Hell had come to Seringapatam and Baird hurried towards it.

'Jesus Christ!' Sharpe swore, for he could hear the sudden sound of battle swelling just beyond the western walls. Men were dying there. Men were storming a breach and the Tippoo's mine waited for them, its tons of powder cunningly crammed into a stone tunnel and poised to annihilate a whole brigade.

He stopped at a corner of the alley which led to the ancient gateway that had been filled with the explosives. He peered round the corner and saw Sergeant Rothiere and two Frenchmen from Gudin's battalion. All three were standing beside a barrel, staring up at the inner ramparts, and around the Europeans was a guard of a half-dozen jettis, all armed with muskets and swords. He ducked back and blew the priming out of his musket's pan. 'Only nine or ten of the bastards,' he told Lawford, 'so let's give them a headache.'

The rockets were stacked nose-first on the cart so that their long bamboo tails stuck out towards the cart's handles. Sharpe went to the front of the cart, seized the thin boards that were painted with gods and elephants, and wrenched them off. They came away easily, their nails pulling out of the cart's sides. He beat off the last slivers of wood so that now there was no obstacle in front of the lethal cargo, then he turned the cart so that the rockets' tin cones were pointing towards the alley, though he took care to make sure that the cart and its contents were still hidden from the men waiting beside the mine's fuse.