Far Pavilions (153 page)

‘This is it!’ cried Wally joyously, swinging himself into the saddle, and Zarin, to whom the words had been addressed, caught the import though he did not understand the language, and grinned in acknowledgement as the squadrons formed up four abreast and spurred forward into the shimmering heat of the stone-strewn valley.

They came up with the missing Staff Officers and their escort at a point where the road crossed the sloping ground below a plateau on which the Khugianis were gathering, and the two parties turned back together to join the General, who, hearing what they had to say, halted his infantry where they could not be seen by the enemy, and went forward to assess the position for himself. A brief survey had been enough; for as Wigram had said, Gough needed no one to teach him his business or advise him on how to deal with the situation.

The Khugianis had chosen a perfect defensive position. Their line spanned the rim of the plateau, and the hillside immediately below fell away steeply for a short distance before merging into the long, gentle slope that met the Gandamak road and the comparatively level ground on the far side. Both flanks of their line were protected by steep cliffs, while their front had been further reinforced by massive stone breastworks. Had they been able to mount guns, their position would have been virtually impregnable, and as it was, to attack it head-on would be suicidal, while to detach troops in an attempt to turn it would mean seriously weakening the small British force that was already out-numbered by five to one. The only hope, as Ash had said and the General now saw, was to lure the Khugianis out into the open.

‘We shall have to take a leaf out of William's book,’ observed the General thoughtfully. ‘Nothing else for it…’

‘William, sir?’ inquired a puzzled aide-de-camp blankly.

‘The Conqueror – see Battle of Hastings, 1066. By rights Harold and his Saxons should have come off the victors, and would have done, if William hadn't tempted them to leave their position on the higher ground in order to pursue his supposedly fleeing soldiery. We must do the same and try luring those fellows down. They won't have heard of that battle, and though they don't know the meaning of fear, they don't know the meaning of discipline either, and I think we can safely trade on that.’

Trading on it, he had sent the Guides, the 10th Hussars and the artillery forward with orders to advance to within three quarters of a mile of the enemy, where the cavalry would halt while the gunners would gallop ahead for a further five hundred yards or so, fire a few rounds, and at the first sign of an advance, fall back a short distance before stopping to open fire again.

In the General's opinion, no tribesman would be able to resist the sight of British troops in apparent retreat – any more than Harold's militia had been able to resist the sight of Norman infantry running away in feigned disorder – and it was his hope that the Khugianis would leave the protection of their breastworks and rush out to try to capture the guns of the retiring artillery. Then, if the same manoeuvre was repeated, it should be possible to entice the enemy far enough down the slope to enable the cavalry to charge them: catching them out in the open and with little chance of being able to scramble back into their entrenchments. In the meantime, while their attention was concentrated upon the pusillanimous antics of the artillery below their front, the infantry would be advancing swiftly up a nullah from where, with any luck, they would emerge, unseen and unsuspected, on the enemy's right flank.

‘Told you he wouldn't need any advice,’ grinned Wigram as the Guides moved off. ‘There are no flies on the General.’ He brushed the sweat out of his eyes with the back of his hand and said: ‘
Phew
! but it's hot. Aren't you grateful you're not in the infantry?’

‘By jove yes!’ agreed Wally in heartfelt tones. ‘Faith, will you just think of having to sweat up that divil of a nullah with the sun scorching your back and every blessed rock and stone red hot. It's lucky we are.’

His spirits rose as he spurred away to take up his station at the head of his troop, singing as he went, and wholly oblivious to the fact that the sun was blazing down just as fiercely on the open slope below the plateau as it was on the steep, rocky nullah and the toiling infantry; or that the tunic of his own uniform was already wet through with sweat. He was conscious only of an exhilarating chill compounded of excitement and tense anticipation, as the line of mounted men formed up and galloped forward to face the enemy position.

A trumpet blared, and obeying the signal the cavalry halted in a cloud of dust. As it settled there was a moment or two of complete silence in which Wally found himself sharply aware of innumerable small details. The way the sun gleamed along the barrels of the limbered guns; the small sharp-edged shadows under every stone, and the way the wide sweep of barren ground that sloped up ahead seemed to reflect the light like snow; the smell of horses and leather and harness oil, of dust, sweat and sunbaked earth; the tiny far-off figures of thousands of tribesmen, clustered thick as swarming bees along the rim of the plateau above, and very high overhead a single watchful lammergeyer gliding in lazy spirals – a lone dark speck in an enormous cloudless arch of blue.

The uniforms of the artillery on the right were a strong note of colour in the sun-bleached desolation of that harsh landscape, and beyond them, almost hidden by the tensely poised gun teams, he could see the khaki helmets of the 10th Hussars who, if the Khugianis could be lured down from those fortified heights, would attack their left flank while the Guides charged their centre.

‘Two hundred jawans –’ thought Wally ‘– and we shall be riding uphill to meet more than ten times that number of fanatical tribesmen who hate our guts and can't wait to get at us.’

The odds were so tremendous that they should have been frightening, but instead he was aware of a curious dreamlike feeling of unreality and no real fear, or any trace of animosity towards those tiny puppet-figures up there, who in a little while would be fighting with him face to face and doing their best to kill him – as he would do his best to kill them. It seemed a little foolish and he knew a fleeting moment of regret, but it was drowned almost instantly in a heady surge of elation in which he could hear the blood begin to sing softly in his ears. He felt light-headed and joyous, and no longer impatient. Time, for the moment, seemed to have stopped still – as once the sun had stopped for Joshua. There was no hurry…

A breath of wind blew down the valley and dispersed the dust, and the brief spell of silence was broken by a curt command from Major Stewart of the Horse Artillery. On the word his waiting gunners sprang to life, and plying whip and spur, swept forward at a gallop, the gun wheels bounding over the stony ground and the dust whirling up behind them.

They raced on for five hundred yards, and then, pulling up, unlimbered the guns and opened fire at extreme range on the serried masses of the enemy on the heights.

The brilliance of the afternoon sunlight dimmed the flash of the explosions to no more than a fractional glitter, but in that hot stillness the smoke formed a wall that looked as white and as solid as cotton wool, and the bare hillsides threw back the sudden crash of sound and sent it reverberating round the valley until the very air seemed to shudder to it. Wally's charger, Mushki, threw up her head and backed a little, snorting. But the tribesmen on the heights jeered as the shells fell short, and fired their muskets in reply, while some, on the right, advanced boldly under cover of a ridge, bearing the red standard with them.

Seeing them move, the gunners instantly limbered up and galloped back to their original position, and the whole line, cavalry and artillery together, retreated a few hundred yards down the slope. It was enough. As the General had surmised, the sight of the small British force in apparent retreat proved too tempting for the undisciplined tribesmen.

Convinced that the sight of their own immensely superior numbers had struck terror into the hearts of this foolhardy handful of
Kafirs,
and seeing both gun-teams and cavalry running away, they threw all caution to the winds, and shouting exultantly, poured out from behind their entrenchments to race down the slope in an enormous, savage tidal wave of yelling humanity, brandishing banners, muskets and tulwars as they came.

Below them a second trumpet-call cut shrilly through the thunder of retreating hoof beats and the triumphant shouts of the racing thousands, and hearing it, the cavalry pulled up and wheeled to face the enemy, while the guns unlimbered again and sprayed the converging hordes with grape-shot.

A moment later a distant rattle of musketry on the far left told that the toiling infantry had reached their objective unseen, and were attacking the enemy's flank. But the yelling Khugianis did not hear it; nor did they slow their pace, though by now they were within range of the guns. Crazed with the lust for battle – or the prospect of Paradise, which is assured to all those who slay an infidel – they paid no heed to grape-shot or carbine bullets, but came on as though each man ran a race with his neighbour for the honour of getting first at the foe.

‘
Whoa
, girl!’ exhorted Wally softly, steadying the mare and breathing short as he peered ahead through the dust and smoke, eyes narrowed against the glare, at that awe-inspiring torrent of fierce, eager fighting-men rushing towards the guns. He found himself mentally counting the distance: six hundred yards… five hundred…four…

The sun was fire-hot on his shoulders and he could feel the sweat crawling down his face from under his pith helmet, but an ice-cold shiver tingled down his spine, and the joy of a born fighter burned in his eyes as he began to sing under his breath. ‘Forward into battle, see our banners go!’ crooned Wally joyously.

He glanced away from the on-coming multitude and saw the officer in command of the artillery turn and cup his hands about his mouth to shout to the waiting cavalry: ‘This is my last round at them,’ yelled Major Stewart, ‘and then it's your turn.’

Wigram Battye, who had been sitting relaxed and motionless in the saddle, out in front of his command, transferred the reins to his left hand and laid his right upon the hilt of his sabre. He did so without haste, and his Guides smiled grimly as they followed their Commanding Officer's example, and braced themselves, waiting.

The guns fired again. This time with deadly effect as the shrapnel tore great swathes through the close-packed masses of the enemy. And as the sound died, Wigram's right arm jerked upward, and from the waiting lines behind him came the answering rasp and glitter of steel as his two hundred men drew their sabres. He barked a command, and with a deafening cheer the cavalry charged…

They came at the enemy with the impetus of a four-hundred-yard gallop. Knee to knee, the sunlight flashing on their sabres. And now at last the triumphant Khugianis checked and looked back over their shoulders at the entrenchments behind and above them, realizing too late that it had been a fatal mistake to leave their defences on the plateau and allow themselves to be caught out in the open, since being on foot they had no hope of regaining the safety of their entrenchments before the cavalry overtook them. There was nothing for it but to stay and fight. And they did so: standing fast and firing again and again into the charging phalanx of horsemen.

In every battle the chances are that those most closely involved see only a small part of the whole; and as far as Wally was concerned, this one was no exception.

He knew that somewhere ahead and out of sight the infantry must be in action, for he had heard them firing; and also that the 10th Hussars would have charged at the same moment as the Guides. But the Hussars were on the right of the line, beyond the Horse Artillery; and as he had neither the time nor the attention to spare for anything beyond his own squadron and the enemy ahead, for him the battle, from first to last, was confined to what he himself saw – which in turn was restricted by the dust and the confusion of fighting, struggling, yelling men.

The charge had carried the Guides to within a hundred and fifty yards of the enemy when he heard the vicious crackle of muskets and felt the wind of bullets that sang past him like a swarm of angry bees: and saw his Commanding Officer's charger, stretched at full gallop, come crashing down, shot through the heart.

Wigram pitched over its head, rolled clear and was on his feet in an instant. Only to stumble and fall again as a second musket ball smashed into his thigh.

Instinctively, seeing their leader fall, the Sikhs gave the wailing cry of their race and pulled up, and Wally too reined in savagely, his face suddenly white.

‘What the hell are you stopping for?’ blazed Wigram furiously, struggling to rise. ‘I'm all right. I'll come on directly. Take ‘em on, Walter! – don't mind me.
Take ‘em on, boy
!’

Wally did not pause to argue. He turned in the saddle, and shouting to the squadrons to follow him, flourished his sabre about his head, and with a wild Irish yell spurred forward up the slope towards the waiting enemy, the Guides thundering at his heels and shouting as they rode. The next minute, with the shock of wave meeting wave in a tide-race, the two forces crashed together in a pandemonium of dust and din, and Wally found himself in the thick of the smother, hacking left and right with his sabre as wild-eyed men rushed at him howling war-cries and curses and swinging great curved swords.

He sent one down with half his face cut away, and as the mare stumbled over the fallen body, heard the man's skull crack like an egg-shell; and wrenching Mushki to her feet, urged her forward, singing at the top of his voice and laying about him the while in the manner of a huntsman whipping off hounds. All around him men were shouting and cursing in a fog of dust and smoke that stank of sulphur and sweat and black powder and the cloying scent of fresh blood. Knives and sabres flashed and fell and men fell with them, while wounded horses reared up with flailing hooves, neighing with rage and terror, or bolted riderless through the mêlée, trampling down all who stood in their way.