Sharpe's Fortress by Bernard Cornwell Page A

claimed it was

    the heat that had desiccated his brains, but Wellesley doubted the diagnosis. Heat and

    rum, maybe, but not the heat alone, though he did not doubt that India's climate was bad for

    a European's health. Few men lived long without falling prey to some wasting fever, and

    Wellesley was thinking it was time he left himself. Time to go back home before his health

    was abraded and, more important, before his existence was forgotten in London. French

    armies were unsettling all Europe and it could not be long before London despatched an

    army to fight the old foe, and Wellesley wanted to be a part of it. He was in his middle

    thirties and he had a reputation to make, but first he had to finish off the Mahrattas,

    and that meant taking Gawilghur, and to that end he was now riding towards the great

    rampart of cliffs that sealed off the plain's northern edge.
    An hour's ride brought him to the summit of a small rise which offered a view northwards.

    The plain looked dun, starved of water by the failed monsoon, though here and there patches

    of millet grew tall. In a good year, Wellesley guessed, the millet would cover the plain

    from horizon to horizon, a sea of grain bounded by the Gawilghur cliffs. He dismounted on

    the small knoll and took out a telescope that he settled on his horse's saddle. It was a

    brand new glass, a gift from the merchants of Madras to mark Wellesley's pacification of

    Mysore. Trade now moved freely on India's eastern flank, and the telescope, which had been

    specially ordered from Matthew Berge of London, was a generous token of the merchants'

    esteem, but Wellesley could not get used to it.
    The shape of the eyepiece was less concave than the one he was used to, and after a

    moment he snapped the new telescope shut and pulled out his old glass which, though lower

    powered, was more comfortable.
    He stared for a long time, gazing at the fort which crowned the rock promontory. The

    black stone of the fortress walls looked particularly sinister, even in the sunlight.
    “Good God,” the General muttered after a while. Fail up there, he thought, and there

    would be no point in going home. He could go to London with some victories under his belt,

    and men would respect him even if the victories had not been against the French, but go with

    a defeat and they would despise him. Gawilghur, he thought sourly, had the look of a

    career-breaker.
    Colonel Wallace, Wellesley's healthy brigade commander, had also dismounted and was

    inspecting the fortress through his own glass.
    “Devil of a place, Sir Arthur,” Wallace said “How high is it, Blackiston?” Wellesley

    called to one of his aides, an engineer.
    “I took a triangulation yesterday, sir,” Blackiston said, 'and discovered the

    fortress walls are eighteen hundred feet above the plain."
    “Is there water up there?” Colonel Butters, the chief engineer, asked.
    “We hear there is, sir,” Blackiston said.
    "There are tanks in the fort;
    huge things like lakes."
    “But the water level must be low this year?” Butters suggested.
    “I doubt it's low enough, sir,” Blackiston murmured, knowing that Butters had been

    hoping that thirst might defeat the garrison.
    “And the rascals will have food, no doubt,” Wellesley commented.
    “Doubtless,” Wallace agreed drily.
    “Which means they'll have to be prised out,” the General said, then bent to the glass

    again and lowered the lens to look at the foothills below the bluff. Just south of the fort

    was a conical hill that rose almost halfway up the flank of the great promontory.
    “Can we get guns on that near hill?” he asked.
    There was a pause while the other officers decided which hill he was referring to.

    Colonel Butters flinched.
    “We can get them up there, sir, but I doubt they'll have the elevation to reach the

    fort.”
    “You'll get nothing bigger than a twelve-pounder up there,” Wallace said dubiously,

    then slid the telescope's