Gopal, Dodd's second-in-command, greeted the Colonel's return with a rueful look.

"He won't advance?"

"He wants the guns to do the work."

Gopal heard the doubt in Dodd's voice.

"And they won't?"

"They didn't at Assaye, " Dodd said sourly.

"Damn it! We shouldn't be fighting them here at all! Never give redcoats open ground. We should be making the bastards climb walls or cross rivers." Dodd was nervous of defeat, and he had cause to be for the British had put a price on his head. That price was now seven hundred guineas, nearly six thousand rupees, and all of it promised in gold to whoever delivered William Dodd's body, dead or alive, to the East India Company. Dodd had been a lieutenant in the Company's army, but he had encouraged his men to murder a goldsmith and, faced with prosecution, Dodd had deserted and taken over a hundred sepoys with him. That had been enough to put a price on his head, but the price rose after Dodd and his treacherous sepoys murdered the Company's garrison at Chasal-gaon. Now Dodd's body was worth a fortune and William Dodd understood greed well enough to be fearful. If Bappoo's army collapsed today as the Mahratta army had disintegrated at Assaye, then Dodd would be a fugitive on an open plain dominated by enemy cavalry.

"We should fight them in the hills, " he said grimly.

"Then we should fight them at Gawilghur, " Gopal said.

"Gawilghur?" Dodd asked.

"It is the greatest of all the Mahratta fortresses, sahib. Not all the armies of Europe could take Gawilghur." Gopal saw that Dodd was sceptical of the claim.