Sharpe’s Triumph: The Battle of Assaye, September 1803. Bernard Cornwell

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      ‘A valued one,’ Wellesley said. ‘Poor Ashton left him to me in his will. You knew Ashton, McCandless?’

      ‘Of course, sir.’ Henry Ashton had been Colonel of the 12th, a Suffolk regiment posted to India, and he had died after taking a bullet in the liver during a duel.

      ‘A damned shame,’ Wellesley said, ‘but a fine gift. Pure Arab blood, McCandless.’

      Most of the pure Arab blood seemed to be on Sharpe, but the General was delighted with the horse’s sudden improvement. Indeed, Sharpe had never seen Wellesley so animated. He grinned as he watched the horse, then he told the orderly to walk Diomed up and down, and he grinned even more widely as he watched the horse move. Then, suddenly aware that the men about him were taking an amused pleasure from his own delight, his face drew back into its accustomed cold mask. ‘Obliged to you, Sharpe,’ he said yet again, then he turned and walked towards his tent. ‘McCandless! Come and give me your news!’

      McCandless and Sevajee followed the General and his aides into the tent, leaving Sharpe trying to wipe the blood from his hands. The dragoon orderly grinned at him. ‘That’s a six-hundred-guinea horse you just bled, Sergeant,’ he said.

      ‘Bloody hell!’ Sharpe said, staring in disbelief at the dragoon. ‘Six hundred!’

      ‘Must be worth that. Best horse in India, Diomed is.’

      ‘And you look after him?’ Sharpe asked.

      The orderly shook his head. ‘He’s got grooms to look after his horses, and the farrier to bleed and shoe them. My job is to follow him into battle, see? And when one horse gets tired I give him another.’

      ‘You drag all those six horses around?’ Sharpe asked, astonished.

      ‘Not all six of them,’ the dragoon said, ‘only two or three. But he shouldn’t have six horses anyway. He only wants five, but he can’t find anyone to buy the spare. You don’t know anyone who wants to buy a horse, do you?’

      ‘Hundreds of the buggers,’ Sharpe said, gesturing at the encampment. ‘Every bleeding infantryman over there for a start.’

      ‘It’s theirs if they’ve got four hundred guineas,’ the orderly said. ‘It’s that bay gelding, see?’ He pointed. ‘Six years old and good as gold.’

      ‘No use looking at me,’ Sharpe said. ‘I hate the bloody things.’

      ‘You do?’

      ‘Lumpy, smelly beasts. I’m happier on my feet.’

      ‘You see the world from a horse’s back,’ the dragoon said, ‘and catch women’s eyes.’

      ‘So they’re not entirely useless,’ Sharpe said and the orderly grinned. He was a happy, round-faced young man with tousled brown hair and a ready smile. ‘How come you’re the General’s orderly?’ Sharpe asked him.

      The dragoon shrugged. ‘He asked my Colonel to give him someone and I was chosen.’

      ‘You don’t mind?’

      ‘He’s all right,’ the orderly said, jerking his head towards Wellesley’s tent. ‘Don’t crack a smile often, leastwise not with the likes of you and me, but he’s a fair man.’

      ‘Good for him.’ Sharpe stuck out his bloodied hand. ‘My name’s Dick Sharpe.’

      ‘Daniel Fletcher,’ the orderly said, ‘from Stoke Poges.’

      ‘Never heard of it,’ Sharpe said. ‘Where can I get a scrub?’

      ‘Cook tent, Sergeant.’

      ‘And riding boots?’ Sharpe asked.

      ‘Find a dead man in Ahmednuggur,’ Fletcher said. ‘It’ll be cheaper than buying them off me.’

      ‘That’s true,’ Sharpe said, then he limped to the cook tent. The limp was caused by the sore muscles from long hours in the saddle. He had purchased a length of cotton cloth in the village where they had spent the night, then torn the cloth into strips that he had wrapped about his calves to protect them from the stirrup leathers, but his calves still hurt. God, he thought, but he hated bloody horses.

      He washed the worst of Diomed’s blood from his hands and face, diluted what was on his uniform, then went back to wait for McCandless. Sevajee’s men still sat on their horses and stared at the distant city that was topped by a smear of smoke. Sharpe could hear the murmur of voices inside the General’s tent, but he paid no attention. It wasn’t his business. He wondered if he could scrounge a tent for his own use, for it had already rained earlier in the day and Sharpe suspected it might rain again, but Colonel McCandless was not a man much given to tents. He derided them as women’s luxuries, preferring to seek shelter with local villagers or, if no peasant house or cattle byre was available, happily sleeping beneath the stars or in the rain. A pint of rum, Sharpe thought, would not go amiss either.

      ‘Sergeant Sharpe!’ Wellesley’s familiar voice broke into his thoughts and Sharpe turned to see his old commanding officer coming from the big tent.

      ‘Sir!’ Sharpe stiffened to attention.

      ‘So Colonel McCandless has borrowed you from Major Stokes?’ Wellesley asked.

      ‘Yes, sir,’ Sharpe said. The General was bareheaded and Sharpe saw that his temples had turned prematurely grey. He seemed to have forgotten Sharpe’s handiwork with his horse, for his long-nosed face was as unfriendly as ever.

      ‘And you saw this man Dodd at Chasalgaon?’

      ‘I did, sir.’

      ‘Repugnant business,’ Wellesley said, ‘repugnant. Did he kill the wounded?’

      ‘All of them, sir. All but me.’

      ‘And why not you?’ Wellesley asked coldly.

      ‘I was covered in blood, sir. Fair drenched in it.’

      ‘You seem to be in that condition much of the time, Sergeant,’ Wellesley said with just a hint of a smile, then he turned back to McCandless. ‘I wish you joy of the hunt, Colonel. I’ll do my best to help you, but I’m short of men, woefully short.’

      ‘Thank you, sir,’ the Scotsman said, then watched as the General went back into his big tent which was crammed with red-coated officers. ‘It seems,’ McCandless said to Sharpe when the General was gone, ‘that we’re not invited to supper.’

      ‘Were you expecting to be, sir?’

      ‘No,’ McCandless said, ‘and I’ve no business in that tent tonight either. They’re planning an assault for first light tomorrow.’

      Sharpe thought for a moment that he must have misheard. He looked northwards at the big city wall. ‘Tomorrow, sir? An assault? But they only got here today and there isn’t a breach!’

      ‘You don’t need a breach for an escalade, Sergeant,’ McCandless said. ‘An escalade is nothing but ladders and murder.’

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