Hervey stood and brushed the dust from his overalls, put on his cap and made his excuses. ‘One way or another we’ll have something by morning. I’ll say whatever at first parade. Good night.’
Armstrong rose too. ‘Ay. And I’ll keep my peace, no matter. Though God help us if it ever comes to a fight.’ The imprecation was more than the soldier’s casual profanity. Armstrong had seen Hervey in his determination many a time before, but there was a distinctly new edge to the steel now — an edge he feared might cut both ways.
CHAPTER NINETEEN. FULLY TRAINED
10 November, next day
‘Stand a-a-at … ease! Stand easy.’
Hervey’s command put the half-hundred on muster parade next morning into an attitude at once relaxed and yet full of anticipation. Muster was normally a prompt affair, little more than a count of heads — the serious business of inspections began later with ‘boot and saddle’ — so that the order for standing easy presaged an announcement. It might be good news or bad; it was the practice in the Sixth to announce defaulters’ punishments at muster; or there might be a court circular ‘to be read at the head of all troops’ (Hervey had been dreading the despatch which would give the report of their erstwhile colonel-in-chief’s trial, for the arraignment of Princess Caroline had been long spoken of with very decided views in the regiment). Or it might be that, as this morning, the officer commanding would have some instruction for them which could not be trusted to the written page of routine orders, being either too oppressive without fuller explanation, or else too portentous to be conveyed from the notice-board. There was a buzz of expectancy now, barely audible but a buzz nevertheless.
‘You will have heard talk about the lines these past weeks regarding the warlike antics of King Bagyidaw of Ava,’ began Hervey, glancing from right to left along the front rank and into the rear rank as best he could. All eyes were alert and turned to him. ‘The lieutenant-governor has therefore concluded that it shall be prudent to reinforce the regular patrols along the borders of the Company’s territory, and to obtain reinforcements for the security of Chittagong and the other principal settlements. Accordingly a brigade is being assembled at this moment in Calcutta to augment the garrison, and we have orders to proceed to the border this day.’
Hervey paused to let the announcement take its effect. The earlier buzz returned, even stronger. And it was the sound of approval. Hervey wondered what it might be if he were able to tell them the whole truth. But that would have to wait until they were gone from earshot of any who would retail the intelligence to the Burmans — however impossible the act might seem.
‘The remainder of the morning is to be spent in preparation for taking to the field, in accordance with standing instructions. The troop is to muster at two o’clock in campaign order, and in all respects ready to march. That is all for the present. Carry on, please, Serjeant-Major.’
‘Sir!’ snapped Armstrong, and with a relish that made some of the dragoons shudder. ‘E Troop!’ he barked.
The two ranks snapped back to the braced ‘at ease’.
‘Atte-e-enshun!’
Armstrong’s right hand shot to the peak of his shako as Hervey and his two officers turned away.
‘Don’t ask of me anything more at this time,’ said Hervey when he saw Seton Canning’s mouth open. ‘There’ll be fuller orders when we march. Just keep a close eye on things. They’ll need the jaldi putting into them, that’s for sure, even with the likes of Armstrong and Collins chasing.’
It was strange, thought Hervey, even as he said it, how in a matter only of months they had adopted so much of the Bengal army’s cant.
‘Do you want me to take boot and saddle?’ asked Seton Canning.
‘If you please,’ said Hervey, without a glance. ‘And go to it this morning on the assumption that we’ll see action before the week’s out.’
His lieutenant seemed surprised. ‘Do you really think so, Hervey?’
‘Don’t be a bloody fool, Harry. I’d not say so if I didn’t think it!’
Seton Canning was taken aback. It was the first time Hervey had spoken thus to him. ‘Shall you give us orders before we march?’
‘No,’ said Hervey, keeping up his pace. ‘I’m not trusting myself to say a word. You’ll learn why soon enough.’
The lieutenant could still feel the edge in his captain’s tone, and he decided to withdraw. ‘Anything more, sir?’
‘No,’ replied Hervey briskly, his mind now intent elsewhere. ‘I have to see Skinner’s Horse about something. Carry on.’
Hervey walked alone to the native horse lines. He had no clear idea how he would secure his intent, for he had no warrant from the lieutenant-governor, and, moreover, the Skinner’s commandant had yet to return from his long furlough. To Hervey, the other British officer, the adjutant, was a man of uncertain temperament. He was no gentleman, and therefore inclined to some resentment; but he was diligent, the commandant had said, and he had the respect of the native officers. He had dined with E Troop’s officers several times, but none had found him a boon companion, although the hospitality ought at least to make for civility now.
As Hervey approached the Skinner’s lines, the daffadar of the quarter-guard began shouting, and soon sowars in yellow kurtas and fur-edged lungis were doubling from the guardroom, snatching lances from the rack on the verandah and falling into line in front of the yellow-painted bound-stones. The daffadar called them to attention, and a dozen pennants fluttered then fell uniformly to the right side of each vertical lance. He marched up to Hervey, halted and saluted. Then he spoke in a high and melodious voice — Hindoostani, clear and measured, as if he were not a native speaker. So near was it to Urdu that Hervey grasped its purport: the daffadar had sent a runner to inform the orderly jemadar, and the daffadar would conduct him to regimental headquarters.
‘Is the adjutant at orderly room, daffadar?’ asked Hervey, the Urdu simple enough.
‘Yes, sahib.’
‘Very well.’
The daffadar saluted again and turned to lead the captain-sahib to the headquarters. Hervey looked at each sowar as he walked past the guard. They were big men, full-bearded, from the country west of Bengal. He would wish them with him if it ever came to a fight. He had no doubt they would sooner come with him across the border than stay here, but that he could not risk.
At regimental headquarters, the white dressed stone was brilliant in the morning sun, the guttering, downpipes and fittings painted the same yellow as the kurtas and guardroom bound-stones. The hand of the commandant and the presence of the rissaldar-major were at once evident to the visitor — as indeed was the intention.
The adjutant appeared on the verandah, booted and wearing the kurta rather than the regulation King’s pattern short coat. Bareheaded, he pulled his arms to his side and bowed. ‘Good morning, Captain Hervey. Unheralded? Is there some alarm?’
The salutation was friendly, even if it suggested a chiding. Hervey touched the peak of his forage cap, and smiled. ‘Good morning, Captain Pollock. No, no alarm. I am sorry there was no nakib; I have set every last man to work.’
The adjutant smiled. ‘You had better tell me of it then.’ He turned and called inside to his assistant. ‘Woordi-Major-sahib!
Out came the woordi-major, as martial-looking a man as any, but wearing spectacles. ‘Yes, sahib?’ he asked in English, bowing also to Hervey — an English bow rather than namaste.
‘Please have my bearer come to my bungalow with beer and limewater.’
‘Very good, sahib.’ He turned to Hervey and bowed again. ‘Good morning, Captain Hervey sahib.’
‘Good morning, Woordi-Major-sahib,’ replied Hervey, with a smile, touching his peak again.
‘Very well, Hervey: let us be along. Whatever it be, it be better done with iced beer and limewater.’
Hervey would only too gladly concede that that was true in general and not just this morning. ‘I’m afraid you will not like what I have to tell you, and just as
little what I have to ask,’ he warned as they set off for the officers’ lines.
‘You had better begin then,’ replied the adjutant, sounding more curious than troubled. He laid a hand on Hervey’s arm to stay him as a half-rissalah, back from morning exercise, turned into the camp road from the direction of the guardroom, horses and men as sweat-stained as E Troop had been the day before.
Hervey found the sweat reassuring. ‘I’m sorry we’ve not had an opportunity to drill together yet.’
‘You’re not leaving, are you?’
Hervey had already decided that he could not practise any deception on the Skinner’s adjutant, for to do so would be tantamount to practising it on the commandant himself; and that he could never contemplate — not, at least, when he was to ask for men who might have to risk their lives, even if he did not imagine it to be in any degree likely. He therefore told him of the intelligence on which they were to act, and his general design. By the time he was finished, they had reached the adjutant’s bungalow. They sat down in deep cane armchairs on the verandah, and in not many minutes the punkah began to swing and the bearer brought them iced beer and salted limewater.
At length, the adjutant — the acting commandant — expressed his opinion. ‘I can’t see that you will get one league into those forests.’
Hervey was dismayed. ‘Are they so much worse than elsewhere?’
The adjutant frowned. ‘I have no taste for the jungle, Hervey. I have never seen what was so diverting about collecting tiger skins directly.’
It seemed, thought Hervey, that he himself might be Pollock’s superior in affairs of the forest, though his experience in Chintal had been precious little. ‘There are good tracks, and we shall have guides.’
‘Don’t mistake me, Hervey: your scheme is admirable. It’s only that there are not the troops to execute it.’
‘I don’t follow.’
‘You yourself have said you have a troop in the making. And such a scheme as this would need a made troop for certain.’
Hervey saw no advantage in debating the point. ‘You will not give me a galloper gun?’
‘I didn’t say that. But I do not see what use they would be to you. However good are the tracks they’ll scarcely admit a gun.’
‘I had thought to carry them broken down, chapman-fashion.’
The adjutant was silent. He had evidently not considered it.
‘At least lend me the guns and have your men instruct mine in how to use them.’
Now the adjutant looked dismayed. ‘Hervey, these men would do anything I asked, no matter how perilous — “sahib bolta”, “the sahib says” — but I should not hazard to disarm them!’
Hervey fixed him with a steady look: they were at a fork in the road. ‘Then I must ask if you would have them accompany us.’
The adjutant paused long. ‘Hervey, taking cavalry into the forest is as desperate a scheme as ever I heard. I might say foolhardy.’
Hervey continued to look him in the eye.
‘But without guns it would be madness.’ He paused again, as if to emphasize the narrow margin of sanity. ‘You shall have my best men.’
Hervey nodded in gratitude, the faintest smile upon his lips — a knowing, confiding, grim smile.
‘Come,’ said Pollock, getting up. ‘I’ll turn out the daffadar and his guns. And I’ll tell you of the forest in those parts — what little of it that I know.’
‘Where have you been?’ asked Somervile anxiously. ‘Your groom said you’d left parade not long after seven.’
‘To see the Skinner’s commandant,’ replied Hervey, matter of fact, pouring limewater for himself from a large glass jug.
Somervile’s jaw dropped. ‘You haven’t told him what you’re about?’
Hervey turned with a look like thunder. ‘Somervile, you trust me to embark on a foray which some would call hare-brained, and then you think I would tattle it about the bazaars!’
Somervile was clearly angered by his own ejaculation, though not entirely disposed to remorse. ‘It is a deuced tender time for me too, you know, Hervey.’
That it was, Hervey saw at once: for whereas he risked but his life, Somervile hazarded his reputation. ‘I have told Captain Pollock the design, yes, but let us not quarrel over it. I had a tricky mission with Skinner’s. I wanted their galloper guns — they have two.’
Somervile looked dismayed again, but stayed his protest. ‘Have you got them?’
‘Oh yes. They’re readying them at this moment.’
‘Could you not have had them without letting your intent be known?’
Hervey drained the glass and poured himself more. ‘There was nothing in honour I could say to the adjutant but why I had need of his guns, and that I confided that he would tell no one.’
Somervile looked at him anxiously for further assurance.
‘You need have no fear on that account. I would trust his pledge with my life.’
‘You have indeed done so, by all accounts. Pollock is an efficient officer, but …’
‘You mean he would not have secured a King’s commission.’
‘Just so. And in these circumstances it is hardly something one may overlook with impunity.’
‘I don’t gainsay it, Somervile. But Pollock’s a soldier to his fingertips.’
Somervile raised his eyebrows. ‘And of the “yellow circle”?’
Hervey nodded, with just the degree of mock solemnity that the question had implied. ‘Just so, Somervile. The fellowship of the sabre is felt most keenly.’
Somervile frowned indulgently. ‘You fellows — you feast on Malory, no doubt, fancying yourselves all Sir Gawains.’
Hervey returned the frown. ‘And you civil servants of the Crown have ever need of questing knights for your ambitions.’
A khitmagar brought in a tray of coffee. Somervile gestured towards his guest. ‘Shall not the guns be a hindrance in the forest? Indeed, shall you be able to traverse the country at all with them?’
Hervey took a cup of blisteringly hot coffee, stronger even than Somervile’s normal taste required, then sat down. ‘We shall dismantle them at the forest edge and port them on the horses like woolpacks.’
Somervile nodded at this evidence of Hervey’s ingenuity, but he still wore an air of concern. ‘What then, in general terms, is your intention?’
Hervey sipped at his coffee. ‘The intelligence we have is quite precise, although how reliable we cannot tell. The Burmans are assembling just inside the country, on the river where a road appears to lead all the way from Ava and to the middle of nowhere, though perhaps it is the other way round. Either way it seems curious. Has the road some significance, do you know?’
Somervile answered at once. ‘I think you need not concern yourself on that account. The road leads from there to Ava. The story goes that a great white elephant was found in the forest, and the local zamindar took him as a gift to the king, making the road as he went.’
Hervey was gratified there was no more complicating detail than this. ‘The only difficulty is finding the road on our maps. The river divides near the border, and it’s by no means apparent which is the place. You say the Arakanese know how to get there, and the Chakma guides know the border well, but I prefer to know where I’m about.’
‘It is … what, fourscore miles?’
‘Nearer the hundred, I should say. There’s a diversion of some dozen or more in order to avoid one of the settlements. I intend we march twenty this day, and then make camp, and then strike it well before dawn tomorrow so that we shake off any followers. There’s a good place for such a halt, your Arakanese say — just beyond a fording place on the Karnaphuli, on the Bandarban road. And thence it’s into the hill tracts.’
Somervile looked unsure. ‘I doubt you will find a ford so low on the Karnaphuli, even at this time of year.’
Hervey was not greatly perturbed. ‘The Arakanese said there might be a little way to swim, but this doesn’t trouble me. It’s a torpid stream and t
he horses will know what to do even if half the dragoons don’t. It will be good practice. I would have had them doing it in a month or so in any case had we not been stood-to to this. The Arakanese say it’s called the Bandarban ford, so the chance of our needing to swim seems very low.’
Somervile nodded. ‘So be it. And what are your intentions for the assault?’
‘That I can’t determine until I’ve seen for myself the assembly place. I’m trusting to the intelligence that there will be more boats than fighting men. I shall want to secure the site against surprise, and then set to with the breaking-up of the boats. I’m inclined to think we might fire them, except that I can’t risk setting alight the forest.’
‘No, that would be most hazardous,’ Somervile agreed, nodding with some disquiet. ‘But what shall you do if there are more men than the intelligence suggests?’
Hervey raised his eyebrows. ‘So much depends on their attitude. If they are without much discipline in their security we might yet be able to prevail over them. But if they’re alert we shall give them a fright and make good our escape. You would want me to make a demonstration, failing all else?’
‘Oh yes, indeed. It risks a casus belli, of course, but they are at any rate intent on an attack — of that we are quite sure — and a check such as that might unsteady them a considerable degree. But I do urge that you have a care. I should not ask you to throw away any man’s life in mere speculation, Hervey. I leave to you absolutely how intent you press your attack.’
‘Thank you, Somervile. You may be assured I have a proper regard for the dangers, but I’m grateful to have your trust reposed in such a manner.’ Hervey made to stand. ‘Now, let me show you the difficulties as far as I can discern from this map.’
‘Dodds is absent, Hervey,’ said Seton Canning as they walked to the stables before the two o’clock mustering.
Hervey stopped dead. ‘When? Where?’
‘He didn’t parade for boot and saddle.’
‘I’ll have Dodds hanged if we have to set off without him!’
A Call to Arms mh-4 Page 26
