Free Lance

by George Shipway

  The havildar squinted at the sun. ‘It is not yet time,’ he said severely, and felt the barrel. ‘Besides, my cannon is still hot from the last discharge.’

  Amaury scanned the town, eight hundred yards away across a scrubby plain. A deep dry ditch and a prickly-pear hedge surrounded the ten-foot wall. Flat rooftops clustered behind the wall; a formidable citadel climbed in tiers four storeys high and flaunted an azure banner. Desultory smoke puffs spouted from embrasures; the balls kicked little dust-spurts from the ground; the range was far too long for matchlock fire. Amaury left the grove and ambled along the lines of leaguer - if the term could be applied to such a negligent investment. Ruffianly natives, variously armed, loitered in the shade and jabbered, dozed or smoked. Occasionally a warrior clambered to his feet, loaded a musket, strolled into the open and fired at the town. No one took much notice of an errant European. When anybody hailed him he cheerily flourished a hand and trotted on.

  A damned peculiar siege, Amaury reflected: better discover who they are and what they are meant to be doing.

  He returned to the cannon. Gunners bustled round it; Number Four - by Madras Artillery reckoning - poured black powder in the vent; a portfire hovered; the crew backed cautiously away. The gun crashed and bucked. Dusty petals blossomed on the wall beside the gate. The artillerymen pranced and cheered; the havildar sent Amaury a jaunty look.

  ‘A very fine shot,’ Amaury said gravely.

  They left the gun run-back, muzzle pointing skywards, hacked firewood from bushes, used a linstock to kindle fires and started cooking. ‘Meal time,’ the havildar explained. ‘For two hours around midday no one shoots on either side.’

  A restful quietude descended on the battlefield. Amaury dismounted; the havildar politely offered him a bowl of rice, which he scooped with his fingers. Between mouthfuls he asked, ‘Whose is this distinguished army? For what purpose are they bent on razing Gopalpore to the ground?’

  ‘Oh, it’s not so bad as that. We are sent by Lord Vedvyas to extract the revenues due to him.’

  ‘A considerable sum, no doubt.’

  ‘Enough. Every year we demand two thousand pagodas; every year they offer two hundred. Then we all fire our guns and matchlocks. In the end, after two or three days, they give us six hundred pagodas, which is what they always do give.’

  ‘A very convenient arrangement.’ Amaury smothered a smile. ‘Is Lord Vedvyas with the force?’

  ‘Oh, no. He would not condescend to trouble himself with such a petty affair.’

  Amaury wiped his fingers and climbed to the saddle. ‘I am privileged to have witnessed so warlike a display - and such artistic gunnery. Farewell, risaldar sahib.’

  He fetched a circuit of the town and confirmed what he suspected: Vedvyas’s soldiers were ranged opposite the main gate alone, leaving the rearward gate and more than half the walls unwatched. He related his adventures to an anxious Marriott, and summarized: ‘A rag-tag rabble roughly fifteen hundred strong. Let us advance the sepoys and send them flying.’

  ‘They outnumber us five to one,’ said Marriott doubtfully, ‘and have artillery.’

  ‘One crooked gun.’

  ‘We cannot run risks. A single reverse and we are done for. Better we should occupy Gopalpore first.’

  ‘I protest you over-cautious, Charles. However, you hold command ; and to enter the town should not be difficult.’

  Over curry and claret they evolved a plan, deciding finally to approach Gopalpore by night. Because it was essential to warn the defenders Amaury asked old Gopal Rao to take a message. The mirasdar refused. ‘I am sworn not to enter Gopalpore while Vedvyas lives. Bid your banian write my son a letter, and send him this.’ He took an amulet threaded on a cord around his neck. ‘Then he will fear no treachery.’

  A peon delivered the missive. Marriott took hircarrahs to reconnoitre a route while daylight lasted, reflecting sadly as he rode on the military aspects of a Junior Merchant’s life. He found an easy track, well concealed by trees and scrub, which circled three miles from the town and then turned inwards on a radius opposite the rearward gate. Todd instructed his native officers, ordered bayonets fixed but muskets carried unloaded - a firelock dropped in the darkness would waken the echoes for miles. An hour before midnight Amaury retraced his earlier route and surveyed cautiously from a distance the besiegers’ lines.

  ‘Snoring in their bivouacs, and sentries half asleep. We could take them unawares and scatter them like sheep.’

  ‘No. Gopalpore must be secured,’ Marriott said firmly.

  At two in the morning they started, moving in comparative quiet, for drovers had removed the animals’ bells and trappings, they themselves forbidden to speak on pain of death. But animals cannot be silenced: camels burbled, an elephant trumpeted, cattle lowed. Marriott shuddered and cursed. Amaury grinned in the dark.

  ‘We are three miles away. The enemy cannot hear,’

  The procession crept slowly through the night, tripping over boulders, sliding into nullahs, sweating in the heat. A hazy moonlight bleached the land and dropped shadows at the feet of men and beasts. Marriott anxiously searched for landmarks he had noted during his reconnaissance: a riven tree trunk, a cairn of stones, a Hindoo tomb. A guide he had posted for the purpose stopped the vanguard at a peepul grove where the track inclined to the town. Whispering and stumbling they shepherded the transport in a vulnerable bunch and left it under the peons’ guard. Todd formed his companies in files and, muskets shouldered, Europeans in the van, padded directly towards the town, a louring bulk on the edge of night.

  They came within musket shot, and every pariah dog in Gopalpore lifted his muzzle and howled alarm to the skies.

  ‘We shall attack after dawn,’ Amaury declared. ‘The enemy don’t know we are here, and will not expect a sally!’

  Srinivas looked doubtful. Gopal Rao’s son was a man in his middle thirties, lean and hawk-faced like his sire, a rat-trap mouth and wary restless eyes. He wore a horsehair-crested helmet and chainmail corselet; a pistol was stuffed in his sash. He said, ‘Undoubtedly you will surprise and rout those coolies; but Vedvyas, enraged, will then bring a proper army to sack my town.’ They conferred in the citadel, in a stone-walled mud-floored chamber, garnished starkly by a table and the druggets on which they sat. Smoky wicks in oil-filled saucers rippled shadows on the walls; a false dawn lightened the loopholes. Srinivas’s retainers lounged on their spears, dark silent men in many-coloured robes, eyes glinting with suspicion in the lamplight.

  The sepoys, finding the gates flung wide, had marched straight in and followed their guides to the citadel. Marriott sent a man running to fetch the transport; the unwieldy throng squeezed noisily through the gate and in darkness and confusion settled down in alleyways, squares and bazars. The tumult disturbed the enemy camp; torches flared and sentries challenged. After a while the agitation faded.

  Amaury wiped a sweating face: the lamps had warmed the room to suffocation. ‘To tempt Vedvyas to battle is our purpose. There will be no peace in Bahrampal till he is gone!’

  Srinivas’s face showed disbelief. ‘You think three hundred sepoys can defeat him? He will bring five thousand warriors on the field!’ His eyes wandered to Todd, perspiring in his scarlet regimentals, and scanned sceptically the youthful face. ‘You do not send children to fight leopards!’

  Todd caught the jibe, and flushed. ‘I warrant my men will thrash a hundred times their weight in disorderly Moors! Have you never heard of Plassey?’

  ‘Moreover,’ Amaury interrupted hastily, ‘we have fifty armed peons and hircarrahs; and I trust your men will also give us help.’

  ‘Perhaps. Perhaps.’ Srinivas thoughtfully stroked his moustache. ‘Does my father approve your purpose? I do not find him in your company.’

  ‘Gopal Rao has promised support - but you remember his oath. He will not enter the town before Vedvyas is dead, so the sooner we kill him the better.’

  ‘I do not like your plan. Vedvyas knows that Gopalpore i
s strong, and hard to take. Rather than risk his soldiers in an expensive escalade he demands a yearly tribute which, since my father’s departure, I have paid. Except for this annual bicker we are left in peace.’

  ‘The Company offers peace not to Gopalpore alone but to every peasant in Bahrampal;’ Amaury said vehemently. He continued arguing, using every persuasion he could muster. Srinivas listened sullenly, and at last agreed to the sepoys making a sally. He would not commit his garrison, hoping thereby, Amaury guessed, that if matters went awry he could plead to his paylord Vedvyas he acted under compulsion and gave no active help. What devious, two-faced devils these natives were!

  Thankfully they left the stifling room for daybreak’s transient coolness. Marriott, inured to the smells of St George’s Fort and the Black Town, sniffed a stronger fetor yet, a native township’s breath: woodsmoke, rancid cooking fat, cowdung, peppers, and the paramount reek of excrement. A hidden sunrise paled the horizon; people stirred in the streets, unshuttered shop fronts, shuffled into corners to relieve their bowels, for Vedvyas’s men forbade the fields, India’s immemorial latrine.

  The Europeans climbed a watch tower beside the gate, surveyed the ground beyond and concocted hurried plans. Fires winked in the coppices, where voices hummed like swarming flies. Todd briefed his native officers. Amaury selected ten of the most reliable hircarrahs and inspected their spears and swords. Marriott sent for his horse, stayed on the tower and brooded. He took a pistol from his waistband, examined flint and priming.

  The sepoys, Todd at the head, debouched from a lane and halted in an open space behind the gate. The ensign barked commands.

  ‘Half-cock... firelocks!’

  ‘Open... pans!’

  ‘Handle... cartridge!’

  Successive orders finished the loading. The companies fixed bayonets, ordered arms. Amaury’s horsemen clip-clopped to the gate. He looked at Todd and grinned, rammed a low-crowned beaver hat more firmly on his head and drew his sabre.

  ‘Ready?’

  Todd licked his lips. ‘Ready!’

  Amaury signalled the men who waited at the heavy wooden doors.

  ‘Open!’

  They drew the bars, the gates swung wide. Hooves hammered the planks that bridged the ditch, sepoys drummed in step behind. The scarlet column snaked from the portal.

  ‘Close to quarter distance on the front division!’

  The enemy woke to life with a noise like thundering surf.

  Amaury spurred his horse. The hircarrahs, yelling shrilly, pounded in his wake. A seething mob in the distance grabbed weapons and poured from the copses. Commanders, screeching orders, tried to hustle them in line. Riders frantically saddled horses, some mounted bareback. Little groups ran here and there and rammed down powder and shot. Sporadic reports and smoke puffs, futile as thrown pebbles - the sepoys were far beyond range.

  Clattering over stones, jumping narrow ditches, Amaury galloped nearer. A party fled across his front, a musket banged, the smell of powder twitched his nostrils. He tugged the rein and swerved, shouting over his shoulder to the hircarrahs streaming behind. Searching the grove ahead, he located the cannon’s wooden wheels and rusty iron muzzle.

  Gunners milled round the piece, striving in one moment both to load and lay. They lifted the heavy trail, traversed the gun on Amaury’s troop. A spongeman pranced at the muzzle, rammed powder bag and ball. Thanks to God, thought Amaury, digging spurs in Hannibal’s flanks, they haven’t the sense to load case. A portfire, feathering smoke, descended on the vent. He crouched lower in the saddle, hunched his shoulders. A tongue of flame, a thunderous boom and grey ballooning smoke. A blast of air tore the hat from his head.

  He burst through the smoke.

  The dark-faced gun commander was backed against a wheel, a terrified grimace baring reddened teeth. He swung a sponge-staff at Hannibal’s legs. ‘My apologies, risaldarjee,’ said Amaury, and sliced him to the breastbone. Hircarrahs closed on the gun; a shouting, swirling melee raged round cannon and limber. It lasted less than a minute; the gun crew broke and ran. Amaury jumped from his horse, grabbed a roundshot from the ground and hammered into the vent a spike he took from his pocket. Swiftly he remounted, snapped an order. The hircarrahs followed him through the trees, scattering enemy followers, stampeding baggage bullocks, breaking through belated footmen hurrying to the fight. They left the coppices and cantered back across the open towards the sepoy line.

  Todd, sword sloped on shoulder, marched in front of his men. Three ranks, ninety yards long: tall black turbans, red cutaway coats, white crossbelts, short blue drawers and brown bare legs. Sunrise glinted on bayonets and the barbs of havildars’ pikes. Since Amaury’s whirlwind charge they had come within random shot. The enemy infantry formed a dense packed line; cavalry curvetted on the flanks, the dawn-wind fluttered pennons on long bamboo lances. A spatter of ragged musketry, and a sepoy crumpled and fell - a scarlet smudge like a bloodstain on the ground.

  Horsemen swept from the wings and drummed across the rock-strewn ground on the companies’ slender line. Above battle- cries and thudding hooves the ensign’s order crackled.

  ‘Prepare to form the square by files!’

  ‘Form the square... march!’

  ‘Face... square!’

  The flanks folded inwards like a carpenter’s rule; the front rank knelt. Faced by a hedge of bayonets the enemy hauled their bits and swept shrieking round the little scarlet island.

  ‘Cock your locks!’

  ‘Rear files... present!’

  ‘Fire!’

  Smoke bellied like a curtain round the square. Horses smashed to the ground, riders hurtled from the saddles.

  ‘Shut your... pans!’

  ‘Ram... cartridge!’

  ‘Front files, present... fire!’

  The second volley rattled. Amaury, hammering heels on Hannibal’s ribs, arrived as the cavalry turned and fled. His hircarrahs had suddenly vanished; pitched battles were not to their taste. He rode inside the square. Marriott sat his horse alongside Todd, who dubiously watched the enemy retreating. Relief dawned in his eyes at Amaury’s arrival.

  ‘What now, sir? Shall I resume the advance?’

  ‘ ‘Tis your battle, Henry,’ Amaury said cheerfully. ‘But pray permit me to remind you that you have not yet brought their infantry within convenient musket shot.’

  The ensign called commands.

  ‘Prepare to reduce the square!’

  ‘From the square form companies... march!’

  The square unfolded into line, paused to perfect the dressing, and marched on. Amaury glanced back at the town. Spectators lined the wall and crowded the citadel’s battlements. ‘Our allies sitting the fence,’ he thought. ‘I’ll wager they’re sick with fright!’ He took position beside Marriott on a flank.

  ‘How do you find it, Charles?’

  ‘Uncommonly dangerous. I shall make it my endeavour to avoid any future battles.’

  ‘Battle? Nothing but a skirmish!’ Amaury pointed his sabre to the close-packed ranks a hundred paces away. ‘We are saved further walking - their foot are about to attack.’

  Matchlocks crackled fitfully, like a spluttering greenwood fire. A havildar shrieked and clutched his face. The enemy line bulged ominously, broke into a charge, warriors running, leaping, shouting, brandishing spears and scimitars.

  The sepoys halted. Firelocks lifted and levelled.

  The volleys rolled continuously, sweeping along the foremost rank from right to left, from left to right in the rear. Powder from bitten cartridges sooted mouths and chins, burnt powder grimed the uniforms’ green facings. Flashes stabbed the smoke-wall which draped the muskets’ muzzles; a high-pitched howling wailed beyond. Through clefts that swirled in the smoke they glimpsed bodies falling in bunches.

  The charge slithered to a stop. In ones and twos the enemy backed and ran; the contagion quickly spread; a slow retreat turned rapidly into a rout. Amaury stood in the stirrups.

  ‘Now, Henry, now! Gi
ve ’em the bayonet!’

  The ensign pointed his sword and yelled; the sepoys advanced at a trot. Within seconds they were stumbling over bodies; officers cursed them on and strove to keep the dressing. Like a snowdrift scorched by sun the opposition melted. The companies reached the coppices, splintered into groups and hunted fugitives among the trees. Marriott pistolled a bearded native who turned and hurled a spear; Amaury, ranging ahead, bloodied his sword to the hilt.

  He reined and surveyed sombrely the disappearing dust plumes which trailed the enemy’s flight.

  ‘This,’ he remarked aloud, ‘is where we need cavalry!’

  He trotted back to Todd, who knelt by a dying sepoy, comforting his passing. ‘I suggest, Henry, you sound Recall. The enemy have gone beyond your reach.’

  A bugle sang. Soldiers collected casualties, filtered from the woods and formed in ranks. Under Amaury’s instructions they yoked bullocks to the gun, and secured from the abandoned camp all horses they could find. There was little else for loot; the force they had defeated was mostly impoverished peasants conscripted under arms. Guarding their scanty gains, the companies marched slowly to the gates of Gopalpore.

  Like wasps swarming on fallen fruit the town’s populace streamed out to pillage the dead and wounded.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘We have sent Vedvyas’s rabble flying, and must now prepare to face his army - a prospect I cannot relish,’ Marriott said.

  ‘You apprehend the danger to be greater than it is.’ Amaury spat neatly through an embrasure, and craned over the wall to watch the globule plop at the citadel’s foot. ‘I have questioned our prisoners - we took some fifty soldiers, apart from followers and coolies. They say Vedvyas, at the most, can muster three thousand foot, two hundred horse and four guns. Srinivas, to discourage us, magnified their strength.’

  ‘Cavalry and guns, and we have neither - except one clumsy cannon. I see nothing to prevent him capturing Gopalpore.’

  ‘If he is permitted to emplace artillery, advance parallels and conduct a formal siege he might indeed. Moreover Srinivas is likely to admit them stealthily inside the walls. Therefore,’ said Amaury firmly, ‘we must not allow Vedvyas anywhere near. I am decidedly of opinion we should march immediately and take him by surprise. What do you say, Henry?’