Sharpe climbed again. He balanced on the steep stones and hacked with the claymore, driving the enemy back. He scrambled up two more feet, wreathed in bitter smoke, and reached the spot where he could grip the wall at the edge of the breach. All he could do now was hold onto the stone with his left hand and thrust and swing with the sword. He drove men back, but then the big Arab saw him and came across the breach, bellowing at his comrades to leave the redcoat's death to his scimitar. He raised the sword high over his head, like an executioner taking aim, and Sharpe was off balance.

"Push me, Tom! " he shouted, and Garrard put a hand on Sharpe's arse and shoved him hard upwards just as the scimitar started downwards, but Sharpe had let go of the wall and reached out to hook his left hand behind the tall man's ankle. He tugged hard and the man shouted in alarm as his feet slid out from under him and as he bumped down the breach's flank.

"Now kill him! " Sharpe bellowed and a half-dozen redcoats attacked the fallen man with bayonets as Sharpe hacked at the Arabs coming to the big man's rescue.

His claymore clashed with scimitars, the blades ringing like blacksmith's hammers on anvils. The big man was twisting and twitching as the bayonets stabbed again and again through his robes. The Scots were back, thrusting and snarling up the centre, and Sharpe forced himself up another step. Garrard was beside him now, and the two were only a step from the summit of the breach.

"Bastards! Bastards! " Sharpe was panting as he hacked and lunged, but the Arabs' robes seemed to soak up the blows, then suddenly, almost miraculously, they backed away from him.

A musket fired from inside the fortress and one of the Arabs crumpled down onto the breach's inner ramp, and Sharpe realized that the men who had fought their way through the left-hand breach must have turned and come to attack this breach from the inside.

"Come on! " he roared, and he was on the summit at last and there were Scots and Light Company men all about him as they spilt down into the Outer Fortress where a company of the Scotch Brigade waited to welcome them. The defenders were fleeing to the southern gate which would lead them to the refuge of the Inner Fort.

«Jesus,» Tom Garrard said, leaning over to catch his breath.

"Are you hurt?" Sharpe asked.

Garrard shook his head.

«Jesus,» he said again. Some enemy gunners, who had stayed with their weapons till the last minute, jumped down from the fire step dodged past the tired redcoats scattered inside the wall and fled southwards. Most of the Scots and sepoys were too 25

breathless to pursue them and contented themselves with some musket shots. A dog barked madly until a sepoy kicked the beast into silence.

Sharpe stopped. It seemed suddenly quiet, for the big guns were silent at last and the only muskets firing were from the Mahrattas defending the gatehouse. A few small cannon were firing to the south, but Sharpe could not see them, nor guess what their target was. The highest part of the fort lay to his right, and there was nothing on the low summit but dry grassland and a few thorny trees. No defenders gathered there. To his left he could see Kenny's men assaulting the gatehouse. They were storming the steps to the parapet where a handful of Arabs were making a stand, though they stood no chance, for over a hundred redcoats now gathered under the wall and were firing up at the fire step The defenders' robes turned red. They were trapped now between the musket balls and the bayonets of the men climbing the steps, and though some tried to surrender, they were all killed. The other Mahrattas had fled, gone over the high ground in the centre of the Outer Fort to the ravine and to the larger fort beyond.

A vat stood in an embrasure of the wall and Sharpe heaved himself up and found, as he had hoped, that the barrel contained water for the abandoned guns. They were very small cannon, mostly mounted on iron tripods, but they had inflicted a hard punishment on the men crammed along the fort's approach. The dead and wounded had been pushed aside to make way for the stream of men approaching the breaches. Major Stokes was among them, Ahmed at his side, and Sharpe waved to them, though they did not see him. He dipped his hands in the water, slung it over his face and hair, then stooped and drank. It was filthy stuff, stagnant and bitter with powder debris, but he was desperately thirsty.

A cheer sounded as Colonel Kenny's men hoisted the British flag above the captured Delhi Gate. Manu Bappoo's flag was being folded by an aide, to be carried back to Britain. A squad of Scotsmen unbarred the big inner gate, then the outer one, to let even more redcoats into the fort that had fallen so quickly. Exhausted men slumped in the wall's shade, but Kenny's officers were shouting at them to find their units, to load their muskets and move on south.

"I think our orders are to guard the breach, " Morris suggested as Sharpe jumped down from the fire step

"We go on, " Sharpe said savagely.

"We "We go on, sir, " Sharpe said, investing the 'sir' with a savage scorn.

"Move, move, move! " a major shouted at Morris.

"The job ain't done yet! Move on! " He waved southwards.

"Sergeant Green, " Morris said reluct andy 'gather the men."

Sharpe walked up the hill, going to the high spot in the fort, and once there he stared southwards. Beneath him the ground fell away, gently at first, then steeply until it disappeared in a rocky ravine that was deep in shadow. But the far slope was sunlit, and that slope was a precipitous climb to an unbreached wall, and at the wall's eastern end was a massive gatehouse, far bigger than the one that had just been captured, and that far gatehouse was thick with soldiers. Some had white coats, and Sharpe knew those men. He had fought them before.

"Bloody hell, " he said softly.

"What is it?"

Sharpe turned and saw Garrard had followed him.

"Looks bloody nasty to me, Tom."

Garrard stared at the Inner Fort. From here he could see the palace, the gardens and the de fences and suddenly those de fences were blotted out by smoke as the guns across the ravine opened fire on the redcoats who now spread across the Outer Fort. The round shot screamed past Sharpe and Garrard.

"Bloody hell, " Sharpe said again. He had just fought his way through a breach to help capture a fort, only to find that the day's real work had scarcely begun.

Manu Bappoo had hoped to defend the breaches by concentrating his best fighters, the Lions of Allah, at their summits, but that hope had been defeated by the British guns that had continued to fire at the breaches until the redcoats were almost at the top of the ramps. No defender could stand in the breach and hope to live, not until the guns ceased fire, and by then the leading attackers were almost at the summit and so the Lions of Allah had been denied the advantage of higher ground.

The attackers and defenders had clashed amidst the dust and smoke at the top of the breach and there the greater height and strength of the Scotsmen had prevailed. Manu Bappoo had raged at his men, he had fought in their front rank and taken a wound in his shoulder, but his Arabs had retreated. They had gone back to the upper breaches, and there the redcoats, helped by their remorseless cannon, had prevailed again, and Bappoo knew the Outer Fort was lost. In itself that was no great loss. Nothing precious was stored in the Outer Fort, it was merely an elaborate defence to slow an attacker as he approached the ravine, but Bappoo was galled by the swiftness of the British victory. For a while he swore at the redcoats and tried to rally his men to defend the gatehouse, but the British were now swarming over the breaches, the gunners on the walls were abandoning their weapons, and Bappoo knew it was time to pull back into the stronghold of the Inner Fort.