Sharpe smiled. 'So come on out here, Obadiah.'

Hakeswill backed all the way to the cell's rear wall. 'Better to stay here, Sharpie,' he said. 'You know what the lads are like when their blood's boiling. Might get hurt out there. Best to stay put a while, let the lads settle it first, eh?'

Sharpe crossed the cell in two strides and gripped Hakeswill's collar. 'You come with me, you bastard,' he said, tugging the whimpering Sergeant forward. 'I should kill you here, you scum, but you don't deserve a soldier's death, Obadiah. You're too rotten for a bullet.'

'No, Sharpie, no!' Hakeswill screamed as Sharpe dragged him out of the cell, across the tiger's carcass and up the stone steps. 'I ain't done nothing to you!'

'Nothing!' Sharpe turned furiously on Hakeswill. 'You had me flogged, you bastard, and then you betrayed us!'

'I never did! Cross my heart and hope to die, Sharpie!'

Sharpe spun Hakeswill up against the bars of the dungeon's outer cage, slamming him against the iron rods, then punched the Sergeant in the chest. 'You're going to die, Obadiah, I promise. Because you did betray us.'

'I didn't do nothing,' Hakeswill said through his laboured breathing. 'On my mother's dying breath, Sharpie, I didn't. The flogging, yes. I did do that to you, and I was wrong!' He tried to fall to his knees, but Sharpe dragged him upright. 'I didn't betray you, Sharpie. I wouldn't do that to another Englishman.'

'You'll still be telling lies when you go through the gates of hell, Obadiah,' Sharpe said as he grabbed the Sergeant's collar again. 'Now come on, you bastard.' He pulled Hakeswill through the dungeon's outer gate, across the courtyard and into the alley which led south towards the palace. A squad of tiger-striped soldiers ran past the mouth of the alley, going to the western walls, but none took any notice of Sharpe. The guard on the northern palace gate did notice him and levelled his musket, but Sharpe snarled the magic words at the man, 'Gudin! Colonel Gudin,' and such was the confidence in Sharpe's voice that the guard lowered the musket and stepped aside.

'Where are you taking me, Sharpie?' Hakeswill panted.

'You'll find out.'

Two more guards were stationed at the inner courtyard gate and they too pointed their muskets, but Sharpe shouted at them and once again Gudin's name was a talisman sufficient to allay their suspicions. Besides, Sharpe had a red-coated prisoner, and the two nervous guards mistook him for one of Gudin's men and so let him pass.

Sharpe lifted the gate's latch and dragged it open. The six tigers, already disturbed by the terrible noises that had been battering about the city, leapt towards the opening gate and their six chains cracked taut. Hakeswill saw the animals and screamed. 'No, Sharpie! No! Mother!'

Sharpe dragged the struggling Hakeswill into the courtyard. 'You reckon you can't die, Obadiah? I reckon different. So when you get to hell, you bastard, tell them it was Sergeant Sharpe who sent you.'

'No, Sharpie! No!' This last word was a yelp of despair as Sharpe pulled Hakeswill into the centre of the courtyard and there spun him around at arm's length. 'No!' the Sergeant wailed as Sharpe spun him faster, then Sharpe suddenly let go of Hakeswill's collar. The Sergeant was unbalanced and out of control. He staggered and flailed his arms, but nothing could stop his momentum. 'No!' he screamed a last time as he fell and slid across the sand to where three tigers waited.

'Goodbye, Obadiah,' Sharpe said, 'you bastard.'

'I cannot die!' Hakeswill screamed, then his cry was cut off as a great yellow-eyed beast growled above him.

'They've got an early supper,' Sharpe told the bemused guards on the gate. 'Hope they've got an appetite.'

The guards, not understanding a word, grinned back. Sharpe took one look behind, spat, and walked away. A debt, he reckoned, was properly paid. Now all he needed to do was hide till the redcoats came. And then he saw the pearl-hung palanquin, and another debt came to mind.

For a time it seemed as if the Tippoo could hold his city. He fought like a tiger himself, knowing that this blaze of violence beneath a smoke-shrouded sun would decide his fate. It would be the tiger throne or the grave.

He did not know what was happening on the southern stretch of the walls, except that the distant fury of constant musket fire told him that fighting continued there; he only knew that he and his men were taking a terrible toll of the attackers on the northern wall. The Tippoo had been forced slowly back by the sheer weight of numbers that poured onto the ramparts, and that bloody retreat had driven him off the western ramparts, back around the corner by the remnants of the north-western bastion and so onto the long stretch of northern wall which faced towards the River Cauvery, but there his retreat had stopped. A cushoon of infantry had been stationed in the Sultan Battery, the largest bastion in the north wall, and that garrison hurried along the walls to reinforce the Tippoo who now possessed enough men to overwhelm the musketry of the attackers on the narrow northern firestep. The Tippoo still led the fight. He was dressed in a white linen tunic and loose chintz drawers with a red silk sash about his waist. He had jewelled armlets, the great ruby glittered on the feathered plume of his helmet, there were pearls and an emerald necklace at his throat and the gold-hilted tiger sword at his side. Those gaudy stones made him a target for every redcoat and sepoy, yet he insisted on staying in the very front rank where he could pour his rifle fire at the stalled attackers, and his charms worked, for though the bullets flicked close none hit him. He was the tiger of Mysore, he could not die, only kill.

The attackers suffered even worse damage from the men on the inner wall. That wall had not been breached, it had not even been attacked, and more and more tiger-striped infantry hurried up its ramps to reinforce the defenders. They fired across the inner ditch and their musket balls flayed at the crowded attackers and their cannon fire cleared whole stretches of the outer wall. Only the blinding powder smoke that hung between the walls protected the attackers, who either endured the terrible flank fire or else crouched behind dismounted cannon and prayed that their ordeal would soon end. They had captured the north-western corner of the outer wall, but it seemed to have gained them nothing but death, for now it was the turn of the Tippoo's men to be the slaughterers.

Baird, heading south from the breach, encountered similar resistance, but Baird was in no mood to be delayed. He caught up and passed the survivors of the Forlorn Hope and, shouting like a demon, led a crazed charge past the ruined gatehouse where the remnants of the Tippoo's mine smoked like the pit of hell. Baird was a major general, but he would gladly have given all the gold lace on his uniform for this one chance to fight like a common soldier. This was revenge, and the great claymore hacked into the Tippoo's men as Baird bellowed his challenge that mingled fury with the agonized memories of his humiliation in this city. He fought like a creature possessed, stepping over the dead and slipping on their blood as he carried the battle down the walls. His men howled with him. They were caught up in Baird's madness. At this hour, under the fire of the sun and emboldened by the arrack and rum they had drunk in their long wait in the trenches, the redcoats and sepoys had become gods of war. They gave death with impunity as they followed a war-maddened Scotsman down an enemy wall that was sticky with blood. Baird would have his city or else he would die in its dust.

Appah Rao's cushoons defended the south-western corner of the city and Appah Rao watched appalled as the hugely tall Scotsman hacked his way towards him. He watched the torrent of redcoats swarming behind the giant, and he heard their shouts and he watched their victims fall off the ramparts. The brigade that defended that stretch of wall was being killed man by man, and those that lived were giving way and some were running rather than face the horror, and Appah Rao's men were next for the slaughter.