The fort had no ditch, merely a wall made of cactus thorn with a dozen wooden fighting platforms spaced about its perimeter. Inside the wall was a beaten-earth parade ground where a stripped tree served as a flagpole, and the parade ground was surrounded by three mud-walled barracks thatched with palm, a cook house tents for the officers and a stone-walled magazine to store the garrison's ammunition. The sepoys had their families with them, so the fort was overrun with women and children, but Sharpe had noted how sullen they were. Crosby, he thought, was one of those crabbed officers who were only happy when all about them were miserable.

"I suppose you expect me to arrange the ox carts?" Crosby said indignantly.

"I'll do it myself, sir."

"Speak the language, do you?" Crosby sneered. "A sergeant, banker and interpreter, are you?"

"Brought an interpreter with me, sir," Sharpe said. Which was over egging the pudding a bit, because Davi Lal was only thirteen, an urchin off the streets of Seringapatam. He was a smart, mischievous child whom Sharpe had found stealing from the armoury cook house and, after giving the starving boy a clout around both ears to teach him respect for His Britannic Majesty's property, Sharpe had taken him to Lali's house and given him a proper meal, and Lali had talked to the boy and learned that his parents were dead, that he had no relatives he knew of, and that he lived by his wits. He was also covered in lice.

"Get rid of him," she had advised Sharpe, but Sharpe had seen something of his own childhood in Davi Lal and so he had dragged him down to the River Cauvery and given him a decent scrubbing.

After that Davi Lal had become Sharpe's errand boy. He learned to pipe clay belts, blackball boots and speak his own version of English which, because it came from the lower ranks, was liable to shock the gentler born.

"You'll need three carts," Crosby said.