Free Sharpe's Tiger by Bernard Cornwell Page A

the enemy’s strength and dispositions, and, in particular, to discover just what defenses waited for the allied armies when they reached Seringapatam.
    It was his search for that particular answer that had brought Colonel McCandless to this ancient temple. He had surveyed the temple seven years before, when Lord Cornwallis’s army had marched against Mysore, and back thenMcCandless had admired the extraordinary carvings that covered every inch of the temple’s walls. The Scotsman’s religion had been offended by so much decoration, but he was too honest a man to deny that the old stoneworkers had been marvellous craftsmen, for the sculpture here was as fine, if not finer, than anything produced in medieval Europe. The wan yellow light of his lantern washed across caparisoned elephants, fierce gods, and marching armies, all made of stone.
    He climbed the steps to the central shrine, passed between its vast, squat pillars, and so went into the sanctuary. The roof here, beneath the temple’s high carved tower, was fashioned into lotus blossoms. The idols stared blankly from their niches with flowers and leaves drying at their feet. The Colonel placed the lantern on the flagstone floor, then sat cross-legged and waited. He closed his eyes, letting his ears identify the noises of the night beyond the temple’s walls. McCandless had come to this remote temple with an escort of six Indian lancers, but he had left that escort two miles away in case their presence should have inhibited the man he was hoping to meet. So now he just waited with eyes closed and arms folded, and after a while he heard the thump of a hoof on dry earth, the chink of a snaffle chain, and then, once again, silence. And still he waited with eyes closed.
    â€œIf you were not in that uniform,” a voice said a few moments later, “I would think you were at your prayers.”
    â€œThe uniform does not disqualify me from prayer, any more than does your uniform,” the Colonel answered, opening his eyes. He stood. “Welcome, General.”
    The man who faced McCandless was younger than the Scot, but every inch as tall and lean. Appah Rao was now a general in the forces of the Tippoo Sultan, but once, many years before, he had been an officer in one of McCandless’s sepoy battalions and it was that old acquaintanceship, whichhad verged upon friendship, that had persuaded McCandless it was worth risking his own life to talk to Appall Rao. Appah Rao had served under McCandless’s orders until his father had died, and then, trained as a soldier, he had returned to his native Mysore. Today he had watched from the ridge as the Tippoo’s infantry had been massacred by a single British volley. The experience had made him sour, but he forced a grudging courtesy into his voice. “So you’re still alive. Major?” Appah Rao spoke in Kanarese, the language of the native Mysoreans.
    â€œStill alive, and a full colonel now,” McCandless answered in the same tongue. “Shall we sit?”
    Appall Rao grunted, then sat opposite McCandless. Behind him, beyond the sunken courtyard where they were framed by the temple’s gateway, were two soldiers. They were Appall Rao’s escort and McCandless knew they must be trusted men, for if the Tippoo Sultan were ever to discover that this meeting had taken place then Appah Rao and all his family would be killed. Unless, of course, the Tippoo already knew and was using Appah Rao to make some mischief of his own.
    The Tippoo’s General was dressed in his master’s tiger-striped tunic, but over it he wore a sash of the finest silk and slung across his shoulder was a second silk sash from which hung a gold-hilted sword. His boots were red leather and his hat a coil of watered red silk on which a milky-blue jewel gleamed soft in the lantern’s flickering light. “You were at Malavelly today?” he asked McCandless.
    â€œI was,” McCandless