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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.
    “Not all the armies of the world could take it, sahib,” he added earnestly.
    “It stands on cliffs that touch the sky, and from its walls men are reduced to the size of

    lice.”
    “There's a way in, though,” Dodd said, 'there's always a way in."
    “There is, sahib, but the way into Gawilghur is across a neck of high rock that leads

    only to an outer fortress. A man might fight his way through those outer walls, but then he

    will come to a deep ravine and find the real stronghold lies on the ravine's far side. There

    are more walls, more guns, a narrow path, and vast gates barring the way!” Gopal sighed.
    “I saw it once, years ago, and prayed I would never have to fight an enemy who had taken

    refuge there.”
    Dodd said nothing. He was staring down the gentle slope to where the red-coated

    infantry waited. Every few seconds a puff of dust showed where a round shot struck the

    ground.
    “If things go badly today,” Gopal said quietly, 'then we shall go to Gawilghur and

    there we shall be safe. The British can follow us, but they cannot reach us. They will break

    themselves on Gawilghur's rocks while we take our rest at the edge of the fortress's lakes.

    We shall be in the sky, and they will die beneath us like dogs."
    If Gopal was right then not all the king's horses nor all the king's men could touch

    William Dodd at Gawilghur. But first he had to reach the fortress, and maybe it would not even

    be necessary, for Prince Manu Bappoo might yet beat the redcoats here. Bappoo believed

    there was no infantry in India that could stand against his Arab mercenaries.
    Away on the plain Dodd could see that the two battalions that had fled into the tall

    crops were now being brought back into the line. In a moment, he knew, that line would start

    forward again.
    “Tell our guns to hold their fire,” he ordered Gopal. Dodd's Cobras possessed five small

    cannon of their own, designed to give the regiment close support. Dodd's guns were not in

    front of his white-coated men, but away on the right flank from where they could lash a

    murderous slanting fire across the face of the advancing enemy.
    “Load with canister,” he ordered, 'and wait till they're close." The important thing

    was to win, but if fate decreed otherwise, then Dodd must live to fight again at a place

    where a man could not be beaten.
    At Gawilghur.
    The British line at last advanced. From east to west it stretched for three miles, snaking

    in and out of millet fields, through pastureland and across the wide, dry riverbed. The

    centre of the line was an array of thirteen red-coated infantry battalions, three of

    them Scottish and the rest sepoys, while two regiments of cavalry advanced on the left

    flank and four on the right. Beyond the regular cavalry were two masses of