'The Colonel spoke to me, sir, while we was going through that pantomime back there in the palace. He says we're to tell General Harris to avoid the west wall. Nothing else, just that.'stared at Sharpe, then glanced across the angle of the city walls towards the western defences, but nothing he could see there looked strange or suspicious. 'You'd better stop calling me "sir",' he said. 'Are you sure about what he said?'
'He said it twice. Avoid the west wall.'bellow from the next cavalier made them turn. Rothiere was pointing south, suggesting that the two Englishmen watch that direction as they were supposed to instead of gaping like yokels towards the west. Sharpe obediently stared southwards, though there was nothing to be seen there except some women carrying loads on their heads and a thin naked boy herding some scrawny cattle along the riverbank. His duty now, Sharpe thought, was to escape this place and get back to the British army, but how in God's name was he ever to do that? If he were to jump off the wall now, Sharpe reckoned, he would stand a half-chance of breaking a leg, and even if he survived the jump he would only land in the glacis ditch, and if he managed to cross the glacis he would merely reach the military encampment that was built hard around the city's southern and eastern walls, and if he was lucky enough to escape the hundreds of soldiers who would converge on him, he would still need to cross the river, and meanwhile every gun on the encampment wall would be hammering at his heels, and once he had crossed the river, if he ever did, the Tippoo's lancers would be waiting on the far bank. The sheer impossibility of escaping the city made him smile. 'God knows how we ever get out of here,' he said to Lawford.
'Maybe at night?' Lawford suggested vaguely.
'If they ever let us stand guard at night,' Sharpe said dubiously, then thought of Mary. Could he leave her in the city?
'So what do we do?' Lawford asked.
'What we always do in the army,' Sharpe said stoically. 'Hurry up and do nothing. Wait for the opportunity. It'll come, it'll come. And in the meantime, maybe we can find out just what the devils are doing in the west of the city, eh?'shuddered. 'I'm glad I brought you, Sharpe.'
'You are?' Sharpe grinned at that compliment. 'I'll tell you when I'll be glad. When you take me back home to the army.' And suddenly, after weeks of thinking about desertion, Sharpe realized that what he had just said was true. He did want to go back to the army, and that knowledge surprised him. The army had bored Richard Sharpe, then done its best to break his spirits. It had even flogged him, but now, standing on Seringapatam's battlements, he missed the army.at heart, as Richard Sharpe had just discovered for himself, he was a soldier.6armies of Britain and Hyderabad reached Seringapatam four days later. The first evidence of their coming was a cloud of dust that thickened and rose to obscure the eastern horizon, a great fog of dust kicked up by thousands of hooves, boots and wheels. The two armies had crossed the river well to the city's east and were now on its southern bank and Sharpe climbed with the rest of Gudin's men to the firestep above the Mysore Gate to watch the first British cavalry patrols appear in the distance. A torrent of lancers clattered out of the gate to challenge the invaders. The Tippoo's men rode with green and scarlet pennants on their lance heads and beneath silk banners showing the golden sun blazoned against a scarlet field. Once the lancers had passed through the gate a succession of painted ox carts squealed and ground their way into the city, each loaded with rice, grain or beans. There was plenty of water inside Seringapatam, for not only did the River Cauvery wash beneath two of the walls, but each street had its own well, and now the Tippoo was making certain that the granaries were filled to overflowing. The city's magazines were already crammed with ammunition. There were guns in every embrasure and, behind the walls, spare guns waited to replace any that were dismounted. Sharpe had never seen so many guns. The Tippoo Sultan had great faith in artillery and he had collected cannon of every shape and size. There were guns with barrels disguised as crouching tigers, and guns inscribed with flowing Arabic letters, and guns supplied from France, some still with the ancient Bourbon cipher incised close to their touchholes. There were huge guns with barrels over twenty feet long that fired stone balls close to fifty pounds in weight and small guns, scarce longer than a musket, that fired individual balls of grape. The Tippoo intended to meet any British assault with a storm of cannon fire.not just cannon fire, for as the two enemy armies marched closer to the city the rocket-men brought their strange weapons to the firesteps. Sharpe had never seen rockets before and he gaped as the missiles were stacked against the parapets. Each was an iron tube some four or five inches wide and about eighteen inches long that was attached by leather thongs to a bamboo stick that stood higher than a man. A crude tin cone tipped the iron cylinder, and inside the cone was either a small solid shot or else an explosive charge that was ignited by the rocket's own gunpowder propellant. The missiles were fired by lighting a twist of paper that emerged from the base of the iron cylinders. Some of the rocket tubes had been wrapped with paper, then painted with either snarling tigers or verses from the Koran. 'There's a man in Ireland working on a similar weapon,' Lawford told Sharpe, 'though I don't think he puts tigers on his rocket heads.'
'How do you aim the bloody things?' Sharpe asked. Some of the rockets had been placed ready to fire, but there was no gun barrel to direct them, instead they were simply laid on the parapet and pointed in the general direction of the enemy.
'You don't really aim them,' Lawford said, 'at least I don't think you do. They're just pointed in the right direction and fired. They are notoriously inaccurate,' he added, 'at least I hope they are.'
'We'll see soon enough,' Sharpe said as another handcart of the strange missiles was heaved up the ramp to the firestep.looked forward to seeing the rockets fired, but then it became apparent that the British and Hyderabad armies were not approaching the city directly and thus bringing themselves into range, but instead planned to march clear around Seringapatam's southern margin. The progress of the two armies was painfully slow. They had appeared at dawn, but by nightfall they had still not completed their half-circuit of the island on which Seringapatam sat. A crowd of spectators thronged the city ramparts to watch the enormous sprawl of herds, battalions, cavalry squadrons, guns, civilians and wagons that filled the southern landscape. Dust surrounded the armies like an English fog. From time to time the fog thickened as a group of the Tippoo's lancers attacked some vulnerable spot, but each time the lancers were met by a counter-charge of allied cavalry and more dust would spew up from the horses' hooves as the riders charged, clashed, circled and fought. One lancer rode back to the city with a British cavalryman's hat held aloft on his spear point and the soldiers on the walls cheered his return, but gradually the greater number of allied cavalry gained the upper hand and the cheers died away as more and more of the Tippoo's horsemen splashed back wounded through the South Cauvery's ford. Some of the enemy, when the Tippoo's cavalry was driven away, ventured closer to the city. Small groups of officers trotted their horses towards the river so that they could examine the city walls, and it was one such group that drew the first rocket fire.watched fascinated as an officer turned one of the long weapons on the flat top of the parapet so that its tin cone pointed directly towards the nearest group of horsemen. The rocket-man waited beside his officer, swinging a length of slow match to keep its burning end bright and hot. The officer fussed with the rocket's alignment, then, satisfied at last, he stepped back and nodded to the rocket-man who grinned and touched his slow match to the twist of paper at the rocket's base.fuse paper, Sharpe guessed, had been soaked in water diluted with gunpowder, then dried, because it immediately caught the glowing fire which ate its way swiftly up the fuse as the rocket-man stepped hurriedly away. The glowing trail vanished into the iron cylinder, there was silence for a second, then the rocket twitched as a bright flame abruptly choked and spat from the tube's base. The twitch of the igniting powder charge threw the heavy rocket out of its careful alignment, but there was no chance to correct the weapon's aim for a jet of flame was spitting fiercely enough from the cylinder to scorch the rocket's quivering bamboo stick, and then, very suddenly, the bright flame roared into a furnace-like intensity with a noise like a huge waterfall, only instead of water it was spewing sparks and smoke, as the rocket began to move. It trembled for an instant, scraped an inch or two across the parapet, then abruptly accelerated away into the air, leaving a thick cloud of smoke and a scorch mark on the parapet's coping. For a few seconds it seemed as if the rocket was having trouble staying aloft, for the long scorched tail wobbled as the fiery tube fought against gravity and as the smoke trail stitched a crazy whorl above the ditch at the foot of the wall, but then at last it gained momentum and raced away across the glacis, the encampment and the river. It spewed a tail of sparks, fire and smoke as it flew, then, as the powder charge began to be exhausted, the rocket fell earthwards. Beneath the missile the group of horsemen had collapsed their spyglasses and were fleeing in every direction as the fire-tailed demon came shrieking out of the sky. The rocket struck the ground, bounced, tumbled, then exploded with a small crack of noise and a burst of flame and white smoke. None of the horsemen had been touched, but their panic delighted the Tippoo's men on the bastions who gave the rocket-men a cheer. Sharpe cheered with them. Farther up the wall a cannon fired at a second group of horsemen. The smoke of the gun billowed out across the encampment beneath the walls and the heavy round shot screamed across the river to disembowel a horse a half-mile away, but no one cheered the gunners. Guns were not so spectacular as rockets.
'He's got thousands of those bloody things,' Sharpe told Lawford, indicating a pile of the rockets.
'They really aren't very accurate,' Lawford said with pedantic disapproval.
'But fire enough at once and you wouldn't know if you were in this world or the next. I wouldn't fancy being on the wrong end of a dozen of those things.'them, from one of the tall white minarets of the city's new mosque, the muezzin was chanting the summons for the evening prayer and the Muslim rocket-men hastened to unroll their small prayer mats and face westwards towards Mecca. Sharpe and Lawford also faced west, not out of any respect for the Tippoo's religion, but because the vanguard of British and Indian cavalry was scouting the flat land beyond the South Cauvery which was plainly visible from the summit of the Mysore Gate. The main body of the two armies was making camp well to the south of the city, but the horsemen had ridden ahead to reconnoitre the western country in preparation for the next day's short march. Sharpe could even see officers pacing out and marking where the lascars would pitch the armies' tents. It seemed that General Harris had decided to attack from the west, the one direction that McCandless had warned against.
'Poor bloody fools,' Sharpe said, though neither he nor Lawford yet knew what was dangerous about the western defences. Nor had they been given the slightest chance to escape from the city. They were never unwatched, they were never allowed to stand guard at night, and Sharpe knew that even the smallest attempt to break away from the city would lead to immediate death, yet they were not otherwise treated badly. They had been accepted well enough by their new comrades, but Sharpe could detect a reserve and he supposed that until he and Lawford proved their reliability there would always be an undercurrent of suspicion. 'It ain't that they don't trust you,' Henry Hickson had explained on their first night, 'but till they've actually seen you bang a few bails off at your old mates, they won't really know whether you're stout.' Hickson was sewing up the frayed edge of his leather thumbstall which protected his hand when a cannon was swabbed out. The gunner had to stop the touchhole so that the rammer could not drive a jet of fresh air down the barrel and so ignite any scraps of remaining powder, and Hickson's old and blackened thumbstall betrayed how long he had been an artilleryman. 'Had this in America,' Hickson said, flourishing the ancient scrap of leather. 'Stitched for me by a little girl in Charleston. Lovely little thing she was.'
'How long have you been in the artillery?' Lawford had asked the grey-haired Hickson.
'Bleeding lifetime, Bill. Joined in '76.' Hickson laughed. 'King and country! Go and save the colonies, eh? And all I did was march up and down like a little lost lamb and only ever fired a dozen shots. I should have stayed there, shouldn't I, when they kicked us out, but, like a fool, I didn't. Went to Gibraltar, polished cannon for a couple of years, then got posted out here.'
'So why did you run?' Lawford asked.
'Money, of course. The Tippoo might be a black heathen bastard, but he pays well for gunners. When he pays at all, of course, which isn't precisely frequent, but all the same he ain't done bad by me. And if I'd stayed in the gunners I wouldn't have met Suni, would I?' He had jerked his calloused thumb towards his Indian woman who was cooking the evening meal with the wives of the other soldiers.
'Don't you ever worry that you'll be recaptured?' Lawford asked him.
'Of course I bloody worry! All the bleeding time!' Hickson held the thumbstall close to his right eye to judge the neatness of his stitching. 'Christ, Bill, I don't want to be stood up against a bleeding post with a dozen bastards staring down their musket barrels at me. I want to die in Suni's bed.' He grinned. 'You do ask the most stupid questions, Bill, but what do you expect of a bleeding clerk! All that reading and writing, mate, it doesn't do a man any bleeding good.' He had shaken his head in despair of Lawford ever seeing sense. Like all of Gudin's soldiers, Hickson was more suspicious of Lawford than of Sharpe. They all understood Sharpe for he was one of them and good at his trade, but Lawford was patently uncomfortable. They put it down to his having come from a comfortable home that had fallen on hard times, and while they were sympathetic to that misfortune they nevertheless expected him to make the best of it. Others in Gudin's small battalion despised Lawford for his clumsiness with weapons, but Sharpe was his friend and so far no man had been willing to risk Sharpe's displeasure by needling Lawford.and Lawford watched the invading armies make their camp well out of cannon range to the south of the city. A few Mysorean cavalrymen still circled the armies, watching for a chance to snap up a fugitive, but most of the Tippoo's men were now back on the city's island. There was an excited buzz in the city, almost a relief that the enemy was in sight and the waiting at last was over. There was also a feeling of confidence, for although the enemy horde looked vast, the Tippoo had formidable defences and plenty of men. Sharpe could detect no lack of enthusiasm among the Hindu troops. Lawford had told him there was bad blood between them and the Muslims, but on that evening, as the Tippoo's men hung more defiant banners above their lime-washed walls, the city seemed united in its defiance.Rothiere shouted at Sharpe and Lawford from the inner wall of the Mysore Gate, pointing to the big bastion at the city's south-western corner. 'Colonel Gudin wants us,' Lawford translated for Sharpe.
'Vite!' Rothiere bellowed.
'Now,' Lawford said nervously.two men threaded their way through the spectators who crowded the parapets until they found Colonel Gudin in a cavalier that jutted south from the huge square bastion. 'How's your back?' the Frenchman greeted Sharpe.
'Mending wonderfully, sir.'smiled, pleased at the news. 'It's Indian medicine, Sharpe. If I ever go back to France I've a mind to take a native doctor with me. Much better than ours. All a French doctor would do is bleed you dry, then console your widow.' The Colonel turned and gestured south across the river. 'Your old friends,' he said, indicating where the British and Indian cavalry were exploring the land between the army's encampment and the city. Most were staying well out of range of Seringapatam's cannon, but a few braver souls were galloping closer to the city, either to tempt the Tippoo's cavalry to come out and dare single combat, or else to provoke the gunners on the city wall. One especially flamboyant group was shouting towards the city, and even waving, as though inviting cannon fire, and every now and then a cannon would boom or a rocket scream across the river, though somehow the jeering cavalrymen always remained untouched. 'They're distracting us,' Gudin explained, 'drawing attention away from some others. There, see? Some bushes. Beside the cistern.' He was pointing across the river. 'There are some scouts there. On foot. They are trying to see what defences we have close to the river. You see them? Look in the bushes under the two palm trees.'stared, but could see nothing. 'You want us to go and get them, sir?' he offered.
'I want you to shoot them,' Gudin said.bushes under the twin palms were nearly quarter of a mile away. 'Long bloody range for a musket, sir,' Sharpe said dubiously.
'Try this, then,' Gudin said and held out a gun. It must have been one of the Tippoo's own weapons, for its stock was decorated with ivory, its tiger-head lock was chased with gold and its barrel engraved with Arabic writing.took and hefted the gun. 'Might be pretty, sir,' he said, 'but no amount of fancy work on the outside will make it more accurate than that plain old thing.' He patted his heavy French musket.
'You're wrong,' Gudin said. 'That's a rifle.'
'A rifle!' Sharpe had heard of such weapons, but he had never handled one, and now he peered inside the muzzle and saw that the barrel was indeed cut in a pattern of spiralling grooves. He had heard that the grooves spun the bullet which somehow made a rifle far more accurate than a shot from a smoothbore musket. Why that should be the case he had not the slightest idea, but every man he had ever spoken to about rifles had sworn it was true. 'Still,' he said dubiously, 'near a quarter-mile? Long ways for a bullet, sir, even if it is spinning.'
'That rifle can kill at four hundred paces, Sharpe,' Gudin said confidently. 'It's loaded, by the way,' the Colonel added, and Sharpe, who had been peering down the muzzle again, jerked back. Gudin laughed. 'Loaded with the best powder and with its bullet wrapped in oiled leather. I want to see how good a shot you are.'
'No, you don't, sir,' Sharpe said, 'you want to see if I'm willing to kill my own countrymen.'
'That too, of course,' Gudin agreed placidly, and laughed at having had his small ploy discovered. 'At that range you should aim about six or seven feet above your target. I have another rifle for you, Lawford, but I don't suppose we can expect a clerk to be as accurate as a skirmisher like Sharpe?'
'I'll do my best, sir,' Lawford said and took the second rifle from Gudin. Lawford might be clumsy at loading a gun, but he was a practised shot in the hunting field and had been firing rifled fowling pieces since he was eight years old.
'Some men find it hard to shoot at their old comrades,' Gudin told Lawford mildly, 'and I want to make sure you're not among them.'
'Let's hope the bastards are officers,' Sharpe said, 'begging your presence, sir.'
'There they are!' Gudin said, and, sure enough, just beside the cistern beneath the two palm trees across the river, were a pair of red coats. The men were examining the city walls through telescopes. Their horses were picketed behind them.knelt in a gun embrasure. He instinctively felt that the range was much too long for any firearm, but he had heard about the miracle of rifles and he was curious to see if the rumours were true. 'You take the one on the left, Bill,' he said, 'and fire just after me.' He glanced at Gudin and saw that the Colonel had moved a few feet down the cavalier to watch the effect of the shots from a place where the rifles' smoke would not obscure his glass. 'And aim well, Bill,' Sharpe said in a low voice. 'They're probably only bloody cavalrymen, so who cares if we plug them with a pair of bloody goolies.' He crouched behind the rifle and aligned its well-defined sights that were so much more impressive than the rudimentary stub that served a musket as a foresight. A man could stand fifty feet in front of a well-aimed musket and still stand a better than even chance of walking away unscathed, but the delicacy of the rifle's sights seemed to confirm what everyone had told Sharpe. This was a long-range killer.settled himself firmly, keeping the sights lined on the distant man, then gently raised the barrel so that the rifle's muzzle obscured his target but would give the ball the needed trajectory. There was no wind to speak of, so he had no need to offset his aim. He had never fired a rifle, but it was just common sense really. Nor was he unduly worried about killing one of his own side. It was a sad necessity, something that needed to be done if he was to earn Gudin's trust and thus the freedom that might let him escape from the city. He took a breath, half let it out, then pulled the trigger. The gun banged into his shoulder, its recoil much harder than an ordinary musket's blow. Lawford fired a half-second later, the smoke of his gun joining the dense cloud pumped out by Sharpe's rifle.
'The clerk wins!' Gudin exclaimed in astonishment. He lowered his spyglass. 'Yours went six inches past the man's head, Sharpe, but I think you killed your man, Lawford. Well done! Well done indeed!'reddened, but said nothing. He looked very troubled and Gudin put his evident confusion down to a natural shyness. 'Is that the first man you've ever killed?' he asked gently.
'Yes, sir,' Lawford said, truthfully enough.
'You deserve to be better than a clerk. Well done. Well done both of you.' He took the rifles from them and laughed at Sharpe's rueful expression. 'You expected to do better, Sharpe?'
'Yes, sir.'
'You will. Six inches off at that distance is very good shooting. Very good indeed.' Gudin turned to watch as the uninjured redcoat dragged his companion back towards the horses. 'I think, maybe,' Gudin went on, 'that you have a natural talent, Lawford. I congratulate you.' The Colonel fished in his pouch and brought out a handful of coins. 'An advance on your arrears of pay. Well done! Off you go, now!'glanced behind him, hoping to see what devilment the western walls held, but he could see nothing strange there and so he turned and followed Lawford down the ramp. Lawford was shaking. 'I didn't mean to kill him!' the Lieutenant said when he was out of Gudin's earshot.
'I did,' Sharpe muttered.
'God, what have I done? I was aiming left!'
'Don't be a bloody fool,' Sharpe said, 'what you've done is earned our freedom. You did bloody well.' He dragged Lawford into a tavern. The Tippoo might be a Muslim, and the Muslims might preach an extraordinary hatred of alcohol, but most of the city was Hindu and the Tippoo was sensible enough to keep the taverns open. This one, close to Gudin's barracks, was a big room, open to the street, with a dozen tables where old men played chess and young men boasted of the slaughter they would inflict on the besiegers. The tavern-keeper, a big woman with hard eyes, sold a variety of strange drinks: wine and arrack mostly, but she also kept a weird-tasting beer. Sharpe could still hardly speak a word of the local language, but he pointed to the arrack barrel and held up two fingers. Now that he and Lawford were dressed in the tiger-striped tunics and carried muskets they attracted little attention in the city and no hostility. 'Here.' He put the arrack in front of Lawford. 'Drink that.'drank it in one go. 'That was the first man I've killed,' he said, blinking from the harshness of the liquor.
'Worry you?'
'Of course it does! He was British!'
'Can't skin a cat without making a bloody mess,' Sharpe said comfortingly.
'Jesus!' Lawford said angrily.poured half his liquor into Lawford's glass, then beckoned to one of the serving girls who circled the tables refilling glasses. 'You had to do it,' he said.
'If I'd have missed like you,' Lawford said ruefully, 'Gudin would have been just as impressed. That was a fine shot of yours.'
'I was aiming to kill the bugger.'
'You were?' Lawford was shocked.
'Jesus Christ, Bill! We have to convince these buggers!' Sharpe smiled as the girl poured more liquor, then he tipped a handful of small brass coins into a wooden bowl on the table. Another bowl held a strange spice which the other drinkers nibbled between sips, but Sharpe found the stuff too pungent. Once the girl was gone he looked at the troubled Lieutenant. 'Did you think this was going to be easy?'was silent for a few seconds, then gave a shrug. 'In truth I thought it would be impossible.'
'So why did you come?'cradled the glass in both hands and stared at Sharpe as if weighing up whether or not to answer. 'To get away from Morris,' he finally confessed, 'and for the excitement.' He seemed embarrassed to admit as much.
'Morris is a bastard,' Sharpe said feelingly.frowned at the criticism. 'He's bored,' he said chidingly, then he steered the conversation away from the danger area of criticizing a superior officer. 'And I also came because I owe gratitude to my uncle.'
'And because it would get you noticed?'looked up with some surprise on his face, then he nodded. 'That too.'
'Same as me then,' Sharpe said. 'Exact same as me. Except till the General said you was coming with me I had half a mind to run proper.'was shocked by the admission. 'You really wanted to desert?'
'For Christ's sake! What do you think it's like in the ranks if you've got an officer like Morris and a sergeant like Hakeswill? Those bastards think we're just bleeding cattle, but we're not. Most of us want to do a decent job. Not too decent, maybe. We want a bit of money and a bibbi from time to time, but we don't actually enjoy being flogged. And we can fight like the bloody devil. If you bastard lot started trusting us instead of treating us like the enemy, you'd be bloody amazed what we could do.'said nothing.
'You've got some good men in the company,' Sharpe insisted. 'Tom Garrard is a better soldier than half the officers in the battalion, but you don't even notice him. If a man can't read and doesn't speak like a bleeding choirboy you think he can't be trusted.'
'The army's changing,' Lawford said defensively.
'Like hell it is. Why do you make us powder our hair like bleeding women? Or wear that bloody stock?'
'Change takes time,' Lawford said weakly.
'Too much bloody time!' Sharpe said fervently, then leaned against the wall and eyed the girls who were cooking at the tavern's far end. Were they whores, he wondered? Hickson and Blake had told him they knew where the best whores were, then he remembered Mary and suddenly felt guilty. He had not seen her once since their arrival in Seringapatam, but nor had he thought that much about her. In truth he was having too good a time here; the food was good, the liquor cheap and the company acceptable, and to that was added the heady spice of danger. 'After that brilliant piece of sharpshooting,' he encouraged Lawford, 'we're going to be all right. We'll have a chance to get out of here.'
'What about Mrs. Bickerstaff?' Lawford asked.
'I was just thinking of her. And maybe you were right. Maybe I shouldn't have brought her. Couldn't leave her with the army though, could I? Not with Hakeswill planning to sell her to a kin.'
'A kin?'
'A pimp.'
'He really planned that?' Lawford asked.
'Him and Morris. In it together, they were. Bloody Hakeswill told me as much, the night he got me to hit him. And Morris was there with that little bastard Hicks, just waiting for me to do it. I was a bloody fool to fall for it, but there it is.'
'Can you prove it?'
'Prove it!' Sharpe asked derisively. 'Of course I can't prove it, but it's true.' He blew out a rueful breath. 'Just what am I going to do with Mary?'
'Take her with you, of course,' Lawford said sternly.
'Might not have a chance,' Sharpe said.stared at him for a few seconds. 'God, you're ruthless,' he finally said.
'I'm a soldier. It fits.' Sharpe said it proudly, but he was not proud, merely defiant. What was he to do with Mary? And where was she? He drank the rest of his arrack and clapped his hands for more. 'You want to find a bibbi tonight?' he asked Lawford.
'A whore?' Lawford asked in horror.
'I don't suppose a respectable woman will help us out much. Not unless you want a spot of polite conversation.'stared aghast at Sharpe. 'What we should do,' the Lieutenant said softly, 'is find this man Ravi Shekhar. He may have a way of getting news out of the city.'
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