The Maharajah's General (7 page)

He hesitated as he watched his daughter thrown from the saddle. His hands pulled on his horse’s reins, momentarily slowing its headlong progress, his father’s love making him pause. As he prepared to turn, he spotted the 24th’s new captain scrabble his way towards his daughter’s crumpled body. He saw Isabel move, her head lifting from the ground, the confirmation that she lived sending a surge of relief flooding through him.

Another round of gunfire rang out, the flurry of shots sending bullets crashing around the ears of the small party. Youngsummers felt his terror rebuilding, his stomach twisting as if the devil himself was inside, squirming in his guts, cruelly injecting the fear that consumed his soul.

He abandoned his precious daughter to the care of a stranger and sought escape.

‘Get on, damn you. Get on!’ He heard the fear in his own voice as he kicked his heels callously against his horse’s sides, careless of his cruelty, desperate to get away from the bullets that had torn through the sunburnt air.

He could not die. He could not carry out God’s work as a corpse. The Reverend Youngsummers ran from the danger, reassuring himself that he did God’s will by saving his own skin.

‘Oh dear Lord, save me.’ He pushed himself up in the saddle, leaning his weight forward to urge the tiring horse on, his bowels exploding and farting the moment his backside lifted from the saddle.

The scabby hillside suddenly fell away in front of him, revealing a patch of dead ground he had not seen as he charged up the slope. A hundred yards of barren scrub still separated him from the edge of the village. All that remained between danger and safety.

Yet it might as well have been a thousand.

‘No! Dear God, no.’

Youngsummers had abandoned his only daughter in a desperate bid for safety. Yet his coward’s flight had not secured him the security he craved.

Instead, Reverend Archibald Youngsummers had found the Tiger.

The second British volley crashed out, the sound rippling and echoing down the valley.

‘Rear rank. Reload.’

‘Front rank! Front rank, prepare to fire!’

The havildar strode behind the rear rank, his watchful glare roving over his charges as they reloaded.

Jack flinched as a bullet scored past his head, reacting to the high-pitched sound as it punched through the air despite his best efforts to remain composed in front of his men. He knew the volume of fire was nothing compared to the barrage into which the British had marched with such stoic calm at the Alma. Yet despite all he had experienced, his body still reacted with fear, his trembling hands all the evidence he needed to know that he had not become immune to the proximity of death.

A red-coated sepoy took a glancing wound to his upper arm. The slight, dark-skinned soldier surprised Jack with a stream of foul infective straight from the dockside at Chatham as he staunched the flow of blood, before retaking his place in the line.

The sepoys’ volleys were having the effect Jack had intended. The enemy fire had slackened considerably, the ambushers driven into cover by the British response. Their return fire was sporadic, and Jack counted the puffs of smoke on the hillside, anxious to be able to get his small command away.

He had just opened his mouth to order a final volley when a cheer erupted from in front of where the redcoats stood. It was a visceral snarl, the sound warriors made when released to fight, and was followed by the noise of dozens of armed men moving at once. The scrape of metal on metal as weapons were drawn and readied for use.

Jack looked up the slope and cursed. He realised at once that the gunmen on the hillside had been given one role: to pin the party in place and divert their attention whilst the main force of the ambush manoeuvred into position into the dead ground in front of the stalled column. It was a simple plan, but it was effective.

‘Fix bayonets!’ He did his best to sound calm. The ten redcoats heard the order and reached for the scabbards in their belts that held the long steel bayonets. They were vicious weapons, deadly tools in the hands of a trained redcoat. For centuries, British soldiers had closed with their enemies, using the sharpened steel to win the famous victories of which they were so very proud.

The sepoys clicked the bayonets on to the locking points at the tip of their muskets before wheeling in line so that their two-man-deep formation faced the crest of the slope. It was a pitiful defence, about as formidable as a child’s sandcastle trying to hold back the tide. Yet the redcoats stood their ground, pointing their wicked bayonets forward. Ready for the enemy to appear.

‘Aim low when they come. Hit the bastards in the belly.’ Jack offered the advice through gritted teeth. ‘Aim low.’

He reached down and tugged his regulation sabre from its scabbard. It felt horribly light in his hand. It was a cheap blade, the Calcutta dealer’s assurance that it was made from true English steel now looking as paper-thin as the sword itself. With his other hand he drew his Adams revolver, the sturdy weapon primed and loaded. At least he had one weapon he knew he could rely on.

‘Prepare to charge.’

Ten dark faces turned to face him at once, the same look of horror and shock in each set of eyes. Only the havildar kept his expression neutral. He held Jack’s gaze for a long moment, his eyes betraying nothing.

‘Prepare to charge.’ The native sergeant echoed Jack’s order before taking his place behind the thin red line.

Jack glanced quickly over his shoulder to check that Isabel had stayed where he had left her. There was no time for her to do anything but trust to her escort. The only hope for them all lay in fighting hard and driving off the ambush.

Jack would not wait for the enemy to arrive. He would gamble everything on a single volley followed by a madcap charge. Ten native soldiers, one havildar and one impostor would risk a wild assault against the enemy. Eleven bayonets and a suspect sword against a horde.

The slope stretched away in front of them, the distant tower standing proud against the palest blue sky. A single thin smear of cloud crept leisurely across the view like a steam-powered barge on a gentle afternoon’s cruise. The enemy’s musket fire had died away, so that only the noise of armed men on the move marred the tranquillity.

The redcoats stood silent and steady, waiting for the enemy to appear. The men gripped their muskets tightly, holding them at the ready, the white of their knuckles evidence of the tension that surged through them.

The first figure appeared, silhouetted against the skyline. The single bandit stood alone, his sword lifted high as he contemplated the thin line that barred his path. Then the rest of the mob appeared, surging past the lone figure, their blades raised as they charged the red-coated soldiers who had dared to enter their domain.

There were many more than Jack had imagined. Some were naked save for a langoti around the groin. Their skin glistened with a thick layer of grease, their hands holding anything that could be used to cudgel or hack a man to death. Others were dressed like knights of old, the fierce sunlight reflecting from their polished armour, their gleaming sabres bared and ready to kill. There were flashes of red in the throng, the vivid scarlet of a deserter’s coat bright in the packed ranks. But mainly Jack just saw disaster, his small command no match for the multitude that thundered towards them.

The enemy leader appeared. He was a giant of a man mounted on an enormous warhorse, and he loomed over his men like a vengeful god. He was dressed as finely as a prince, with thick, swirling black robes, his bearing as regal as that of an English duke. His thickly bearded face was creased in a ferocious scowl, his mouth stretched wide as he urged his men up and over the crest, calling for them to kill, to slay those who had strayed near to his lair.

‘Prepare to fire!’

Ten bayonet-tipped muskets were brought to the shoulder at the curt command, the redcoats taking up the slack in the trigger as they readied for the order to fire.

Jack held back the final command. He saw the muzzles waver as the men struggled to hold the unwieldy weapons steady, the seventeen inches of steel making them unbalanced and clumsy. There would be time for a single volley. One chance for the muskets to spit out death before the men would be unleashed and ordered to charge. Jack could not afford to waste it, and he forced himself to stand calm, waiting until the enemy was close enough so that every shot would find a target.

The disordered mob surged forward. Still Jack delayed the order to fire, even though the ambushers were so close that he could see every detail on the faces rushing towards him.

The mob was no more than fifty yards away, just moments from reaching the thin red line that stood with such stoic defiance in their path.

‘Fire!’ Jack bellowed the order, releasing the tension that had gripped him since the first bandit had appeared.

The sepoys obeyed immediately, the sudden thunderclap of sound shocking in its violence as the muskets fired as one.

He had deliberately left the volley late, the front of the mob barely twenty-five yards from the frail British line. At such close range every bullet smacked into an enemy body, flensing those who had rushed to the fore.

‘Charge! Charge!’

Jack felt his fear released. Nothing mattered now. Nothing except the need to fight, to take his sword and hack at the enemy. This was the intoxicating madness that he had half forgotten. The soul-searing surge of hate and anger that combined with his fear to drive him willingly into the dreadful cauldron of battle.

He tore out of the cloud of smoke created by the discharging muskets. The ambush had been bludgeoned to a halt. Bloodied, crumpled bodies formed a grotesque barrier and tangled around the feet of those nearest to them, the impetus of the bandits’ charge broken by the brutal volley.

He heard a roar behind him as the sepoys followed his lead, their sudden scream a horrific contrast to the stoic silence with which they had watched the enemy close on them. The men in red coats were unleashed to do what they had been trained to do.

It was time to kill.

Jack rushed at the stalled mob, the last few yards disappearing in a blur of movement as he led his men forward. He ducked under a farmer’s sickle wielded by a man dressed in nothing more than a simple loincloth. The curving blade flashed past, missing his neck by no more than an inch. He was on the man in a heartbeat, the narrow escape meaning nothing as the madness of battle surged through him. There was time to see terror ripple through the man’s greased body before Jack rammed his sword into his throat.

As he tore his blade from the gruesome wound, his victim fell to the ground, his hands clasped around the dreadful ruin of his neck. Jack was forced to step swiftly to his left to avoid a spear-thrust aimed at his side, the speed of the melee leaving no time for thought. He back-swung his sword, using the sharpened rear edge to gouge across the face of the white-robed man who had just attempted to kill him. Another spear-thrust from the mass that swirled around him tore through his red coat, missing his flesh by inches. Jack spun as he felt the impact, slashing upwards, releasing a howl of frustration as it bounced off the heavy robes of his assailant, the thin edge of the cheap sword already too dull to cut through the thickly bound cloth. But the blow drove the attacker back, giving Jack enough time to raise his revolver.

The barrel of the weapon was no more than six inches from the nearest attacker in the press of bodies. He pulled the trigger, aiming at the snarling face of a heavily armoured man who was lifting a thick talwar above his head, readying himself for a blow that would shatter Jack’s skull with a single strike. The bullet punched into the man’s face, blood and scraps of flesh flung wide as it smashed through skin and bone. The man fell and Jack felt nothing, already searching for his next target, his soul emptied of all emotion save the need to kill.

He aimed into the whirl of bodies, pulling the trigger again and again, each shot knocking another one of the enemy from their feet, the pistol deadly in the bloody close-quarters fight. His fusillade drove the ambushers away from him as he cut a dreadful swathe of death through their ranks. It gave his sepoys an opening, and they threw themselves into the gap he had created, their bayonets reaching for the enemy, their shrill banshee cries the last sound many of the ambushers would ever hear. They thrust into the mass of bodies, wielding their bayonets in the short, professional jabs they had learnt on the drill square. The ground under their feet was littered with the dead and the dying, the hideous stench of blood and opened bowels filling their nostrils as they surged forward, seeking the next victim for their blades. It would have taken a brave man or a fool to stand in their way, and the disparate horde recoiled from the disciplined charge.

Jack let his men push past him. His blood thundered with the need to throw himself back into the melee, but he forced himself to still the urge, his need for knowledge overriding the visceral instinct to fight. The sepoys’ thrust into the enemy’s ranks gave him a few precious seconds to try to make sense of the desperate struggle. Seconds he could not afford to waste if he was to defy the gods and snatch a bloody victory from the gaping jaws of defeat.

The ambushers were giving ground, melting away from the horror of the sepoys’ volley and their merciless bayonets. Yet despite their bravery and brutal efficiency, the red-coated soldiers were still outnumbered. The mob might have been giving ground in front of the assault, but more and more were moving to the flanks, swarming around the handful of British soldiers.

When they rediscovered their courage, Jack’s command would be overwhelmed.