"Prepare to charge! " he shouted. His men were pushing their ramrods back into their musket hoops, and now they pulled out their bayonets and twisted them onto blackened muzzles. Eli Lockhart's cavalrymen, some of whom only had pistols, drew their sabres.

«Present!» Sharpe called, and the muskets went up into the shoulders again. Now he did look at the enemy and saw that most of them were still ramming.

«Fire!» The muskets flamed and the scraps of wadding spat out after the bullets to flicker their small flames in the grass.

«Charge!» Sharpe shouted, and he led the way from the right flank, the claymore in his hand.

«Charge!» he shouted again and his small company, sensing that they had only seconds before the enemy's muskets were loaded, ran with him.

Then a blast of musketry sounded to Sharpe's right and he saw that the Scottish Captain had formed a score of men on the flank and had poured in a volley that struck the Cobras just before Sharpe's charge closed the gap.

"Kill them! " Sharpe raged. Fear was whipping inside him, the fear that he had mistimed this charge and that the enemy would have a volley ready just yards before the redcoats struck home, but he was committed now, and he ran as hard as he could to break into the white-coated ranks before the volley came.

The Havildar commanding the Cobra company had been appalled to see the redcoats charging. He should have fired, but instead he ordered his men to fix their own bayonets and so the enemy was still twisting the blades onto their muskets when the leading redcoats burst through the smoke. Sharpe hacked his heavy sword at the front rank, felt it bite and slide against bone, twisted it free, lunged, kicked at a man, and suddenly Eli Lockhart was beside him, his sabre slashing down, and two Highlanders were stabbing with bayonets. Sharpe hacked with the sword two-handed, fighting in a red rage that had come from the nervousness that had assailed him during the charge. A sepoy trapped the Cobras' Havildar, feinted with the bayonet, parried the tulwar's counter-lunge, then stabbed the enemy in the belly. The white coats were running now, fleeing back towards the smoke that boiled up from the gatehouse which lay beyond the bulge of the hill. Tom Garrard, his bayonet bloodied to the hilt, kicked at a wounded man who was trying to aim his musket. Other men stooped to search the dead and dying.

The Scottish Captain came in from the flank. He had the winged epaulettes of a light company.

"I didn't know the 74th were up here, " he greeted Sharpe, 'or is it the 33rd?" He peered at Sharpe's coat, and Sharpe saw that Clare's newly sewn facings had been torn in the climb, revealing the old red material beneath.

"I'm a lost sheep, sir, " Sharpe said.

"A very welcome lost sheep, " the Captain said, holding out his hand.

"Archibald Campbell, Scotch Brigade. Brought my company up here, just in case they got bored."

"Richard Sharpe, 74th, " Sharpe said, shaking Campbell's hand, 'and bloody glad to see you, sir." Sharpe suddenly wanted to laugh. His force, which had pierced the Inner Fort's de fences was a ragged mix of Indians and British, cavalrymen and infantry. There were kilted Highlanders from the 78th, some of Campbell's men from the 94th, maybe half of the 33rd's Light Company, and a good number of sepoys.

Campbell had climbed one of the low timber platforms that had let the defenders peer over the fire step and from its vantage point he stared at the gatehouse which lay a quarter-mile eastwards.

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking, Mister Sharpe?" he asked.

"I'm thinking we should take the gatehouse, " Sharpe said, 'and open the gates."

"Me too." He shifted to make room for Sharpe on the small platform.

"They'll no doubt be trying to evict us soon, eh? We'd best make haste."

Sharpe stared at the gatehouse where a great smear of smoke showed above the ramparts that were thick with white-coated Cobras. A shallow flight of stone stairs led from inside the fortress to the fire step and the gates could not be opened until that fire step was cleared of the enemy.

"If I take the fire step he suggested to Campbell, 'you can open the gates?"

"That seems a fair division of labour, " Campbell said, jumping down from the platform. He had lost his hat and a shock of curly black hair hung over his narrow face. He grinned at Sharpe.

"I'll take my company and you can have the rest, eh?" Campbell strode up the hill, shouting for his own Light Company to form in a column of three ranks.

Sharpe followed Campbell off the platform and summoned the remaining men into line.

"Captain Campbell's going to open the gates from the inside, " he told them, 'and we're going to make it possible by clearing the parapets of the bastards. It's a fair distance to the gate, but we've got to get there fast. And when we get there, the first thing we do is fire a volley up at the fire step Clean some of the buggers off before we go up there. Load your muskets now. Sergeant Green!»

Green, red-faced from the effort of climbing up the ravine and running to join Sharpe, stepped forward.

"I'm here, sir, and sir- "Number off twenty men, Green, " Sharpe ordered the panting Sergeant.

"You'll stay down below and provide covering fire while we climb the steps, understand?"

"Twenty men, sir? Yes, sir, I will, sir, only it's Mister Morris, sir."

Green sounded embarrassed.

"What about him?" Sharpe asked.

"He's recovered, sir. His tummy, sir, it got better' Green managed to keep a straight face as he delivered that news 'and he said no one else was to climb the cliff, sir, and he sent me to fetch the men what had climbed it back down again. That's why I'm here, sir."

"No, you're not, " Sharpe said.

"You're here to number off twenty men who'll give the rest of us covering fire."

Green hesitated, looked at Sharpe's face, then nodded.

"Right you are, sir! Twenty men, covering fire."

"Thank you, Sergeant, " Sharpe said. So Morris was conscious again, and probably already making trouble, but Sharpe could not worry about that. He looked at his men. They numbered seventy or eighty now, and still more Scotsmen and sepoys were coming up the cliff and crossing the wall. He waited until they all had loaded muskets and their ramrods were back in their hoops.

"Just follow me, lads, and when we get there kill the bastards. Now! " He turned and faced east.

"Come on!»

"At the double! " Campbell called to his company.

"Forward!»

The fox was in the henhouse. Feathers would fly.

CHAPTER 11

The 74th, climbing the road that led from the plain to Gawilghur's Southern Gate, could hear the distant musketry sounding like a burning thorn grove. It crackled, flared up to a crescendo, then faded again. At times it seemed as though it would die altogether and then, just as sweating men decided the battle must be over, it rattled loud and furious once more. There was nothing the 74th could do to help. They were still three hundred feet beneath the fortress and from now on they would be within killing range of the guns mounted on Gawilghur's south-facing ramparts. Those guns had been firing at the 74th for over an hour now, but the range had been long and the downward angle steep, so that not a ball had struck home. If the 74th had had their own artillery, they could have fired back, but the slope was too steep for any gun to fire effectively. The gunners would have had to site their cannon on a steep upwards ramp, and every shot would have threatened to turn the guns over. The 74th could go no farther, not without taking needless casualties, and so Wellesley halted them. If the defenders on the southern wall looked few he might contemplate an escalade, but the sepoys carrying the ladders had fallen far behind the leading troops so no such attack could be contemplated yet. Nor did the General truly expect to try such an assault, for the 74th's task had always been to keep some of the fort's defenders pinned to their southern walls while the real attack came from the north. That purpose, at least, was being accomplished, for the walls facing the steep southern slope looked thick with defenders.