In the cavalry barracks troopers collected rations: bags of flour slung from shoulders, barley sacks roped on cantles. Grindstones sprayed sparks from sabres; horses backed and capered. ‘Hurry! Hurry!’ Amaury urged. ‘Get mounted, brothers - you gossip like old women while your enemy rides away!’ Vedvyas on a bay Arabian appeared at Amaury’s shoulder, jewel-hilted scimitar dangling on a strap, a brace of heavy pistols in his belt.
‘You are coming, sirdar sahib?’
‘I am. I do not enjoy chasing shadows; but my horsemen never yet have marched from Hurrondah without me.’ He smiled thinly, and combed fingers in his beard. ‘Remember, Umree Sahib, I still own half the squadron!’
Amaury laughed, and set foot to stirrup. ‘Stand, Hannibal!’ he chided the sidling stallion. He gathered the reins and lifted an arm. ‘Walk... march!’
He rode down the boulder-strewn steep, hooves clattering at his back, gun wheels grinding behind, and kicked Hannibal to a trot when they reached the plain. The native horses cantered, tightly reined, sawing the bits and spraying spume.
Vedvyas promised guidance by the shortest route: a wheel- rutted, hoof-pocked trackway leading north, meandering between trees and scrubby bushes, plunging through valleys breathing sultry heat, climbing ridges, swooping into valleys. ‘We save distance, but the travelling is rough. Small hindrance to horses, but--’ he looked significantly over his shoulder at the gun lumbering in rear.
Amaury set a pace according to the going, cantering on the level, reining perforce to a walk when the path climbed sharply or descended hillsides. The files picked individual routes, opening out and closing again like a loose-knit strand of rope. The protracted drilling had won results, Amaury reflected: the squadron stayed in column, however warped. He had seen irregular cavalry on the move in the Mysore war: a noisy babbling horde like nomad tribes migrating. He heard risaldars and jemadars urging men to close and watch the dressing. Dressing - among mercenary horse!
They had ridden for an hour when Vedvyas touched his arm. ‘We have lost the gun, sahib.’
Amaury wheeled Hannibal from the ranks and stared along the track. The rearmost files climbed a long scrub-raddled slope; nothing showed in the shallow vale behind. ‘Confound it! Has Welladvice fallen asleep?’ He dismounted the column, loosened girths, closed his legs on the charger and cantered back. A mile in rear the teams emerged from a neem copse, horses labouring in the traces, barely raising a trot. Welladvice, awkwardly astride a bony roan, thumped a tricorne hat to pulp and bellowed curses and advice.
‘What has delayed you?’ Amaury said sharply.
Welladvice hurled his hat to the ground. ‘They can’t do it, sir - not at the pace yer goin’.’ He pointed to the lathered teams. ‘We takes what we can get: no-good countrybred trash as yer wouldn’t dream o’ puttin’ in a plough. They ain’t got the bottom, sir; the load’s too heavy.’
‘Nonsense, Mr Welladvice! Country horses draw Madras Artillery gallopers!’
‘A’ course they do. For why? Yer sends officers to the Hyderabad ’oss fairs, who picks the best and strongest, careful o’ their breeding. This lot o’ knock-kneed, spavined runts--!’ He was almost crying with exasperation. ‘We can’t do more’n a trot - an’ that only on the level. Yer got ter remember, sir, there’s twenty-seven hundredweight behind the team!’
Amaury leashed his irritation, forced a smile. ‘You perform miracles, Mr Welladvice - I cannot ask for more. But we must not wait - speed is the essence. I shall detach a section to escort you. Bring on the gun as quickly as you can.’
He returned to the squadron, detailed troopers to accompany the gun, got the column moving. Vedvyas scrutinized the frowning face beneath the crested helmet. ‘We travel fast, Umree Sahib. I warned you the road was rough. I do not find it astonishing your gun is lagging.’
‘A most unwelcome surprise.’ Amaury rubbed his jaw, and meditated aloud in English. ‘ ‘Tis a matter of horseflesh versus weight. Eight-horse teams? Ten-horse? Infamously cumbersome. Then lighter guns, three-pounders. Smaller shot, but carries as far as the six.’ He reverted to Hindi. ‘You have, I believe, three-pounders in your artillery park?’
‘Indeed, sahib. Two excellent brass guns.’
Heat enclosed their bodies like a blast from an open furnace. A moving dust cloud shrouded the column, clogged throats and gritted teeth, soared in the sky and plumed the line of march, blazoning their passage clear as beacons. Amaury unfobbed his watch.
‘Three o’clock. We should be close.’
Vedvyas glanced at the sun, counted on his fingers. ‘Four miles, more or less. If the Pindaris are still lingering we may soon encounter pillagers astray.’
Within minutes, riding over a sun-soaked plain, they crossed the raiders’ trail: a broad swathe churned by hooves, rags of clothing spiked on bushes, here and there a cooking pot, a saddle strap, a broken spearshaft trodden in the dust. Hannibal shied from a crumpled bundle huddled beneath a cactus clump; Amaury, gentling the horse, looked closer and swore aloud. A girl, no more than a child, her throat a scarlet gash.
Vedvyas impassively surveyed the body. ‘Refuse stranded by the tide of pillage. We shall find more.’
He examined the muddled hoof-marks. ‘The Pindaris have come - and gone. Let us see what they left.’
Fields and mango groves girdled the village, a solitary hamlet on the bare infertile plain. A prickly-pear hedge enclosed thatched hovels clustered close, a temple’s whitewashed dome and a small rectangular citadel. They saw no movement anywhere, not a single being nor beast.
‘The gang had word of our approach,’ Vedvyas said, ‘otherwise the village would be burning.’
Mutilated bodies flecked the fields; at the cactus hedge the villagers had fought, and lay in heaps. Amaury posted a cordon, rode Hannibal through a gap. The aftermath of looting glutted the streets: broken boxes, pottery shattered in shards, furniture hacked in pieces, spilt grain and shredded garments. Splintered doors sagged open, holes gaped in earthen floors where robbers had dug for treasure; the walls were splashed with blood. There was a reek of fire and carnage. Amaury spurred Hannibal through the alleys, the stallion shying and swerving from terrible sights and smells. He reached the buzar. Stalls were up-tilted, smashed; tradesmen sprawled inert among the ruins of their wares.
The massacre’s survivors huddled like wolf-run sheep in a gap between a godown and a sowcar’s ransacked house - a score or so all told, men and women and children. Crouched on hands and knees a fat Bengalee money-lender coughed and coughed continuously; spasms racked him from head to heels; the plump flesh shook like a jelly. Gasping for air he raised his face. Nose and lips and chin were scorched and bloodily raw.
‘Red-hot cinders,’ Vedvyas said in answer to Amaury’s look, ‘tied in a bag across his mouth. Then you thump his back and force him to breathe fire. A favourite Pindari torture, sahib, to find where treasure is hidden. The man will certainly die, for the fumes will rot his lungs.’
Amaury’s eyes roved quickly over the group. They were oddly quiet. Numbed by shock and suffering they cradled their hurts and moaned, a whispering of pain like the murmur of leaves in the wind.
Amaury felt sick. He cursed himself for a milksop muff - Seringapatam’s fall to the stormers spawned horrors far worse than these. ‘Find someone among them, sirdar sahib, who can tell us the Pindaris’ strength, how long ago they went, in which direction. I intend to chase.’
Vedvyas threw his hands in the air. ‘A waste of time! Nobody has caught Pindaris on the run!’ He saw Amaury’s expression, rolled his eyes and questioned a stupefied old woman. ‘They attacked at dusk, and went at dawn - a thousand horse, by the tracks they left: a plain enough route to follow. Ten hours’ start - you hunt the wind! Pindari gangs march fifty miles a day, and if pursued will drop their loot and scatter, galloping seventy miles between one sunset and the next.’
‘On the weedy rack-ribbed ponies they ride? I find it hard to believe! They carry booty and drive stolen cattle, which wi
ll curb their speed. Water and feed, and then we move.’
‘So be it. You have a strenuous ride in front of you, Umree Sahib!’
The squadron mustered at the wells. Rahtor troopers - pillagers no less expert than Piadaris - searched houses and godowns for grain the raiders had left, and replenished feedbags. Amaury sat on a well head near the looted temple and watched Hannibal nuzzle his corn. He heard the rumble of wheels, and frowned perplexedly. What to do with the slow six-pounder? Welladvice appeared, sitting his saddle as though the leather burned him, and painfully dismounted.
‘Jig-jog all the bleedin’ way - I’m a’most cut in two,’ he said, eyeing the roan malevolently. ‘Gun, limber an’ wagon present an’ correct, sir.’
‘And devilish late. We are away on a chase, Mr Welladvice, faster than we have ridden yet. The gun must be left.’
The sailor looked despondent. ‘Aye, sir. It ain’t no galloper - that’s plain as the nose on yer face.’ He saw a woman’s body crumpled beside the well. Twin holes pitted a gory smudge where the nose had been. Welladvice winced.
‘Horrid lot o’ cut-up blacks! Can’t I come with yer, sir? The gun crew can bivouac here, an’ return ter Hurrondah termorrer. I got a trusty havildar in charge.’
‘Certainly - if your saddle sores do not excessively discompose you. I shall detail troopers to escort the gun. Refresh your horse directly. Mr Welladvice - ’twill soon be Boot and Saddle.’
Treading the Pindaris’ tracks, the squadron marched due west. Amaury went at a swinging trot which stretched the countrybred horses to a canter. The sun, blazing in their faces, dropped slowly to a skyline rimmed by hills; shadows stole from the trees and a coppery haze tinged the daylight’s glaring gold. Imperceptibly the way began to climb; scarps like tree-clad ramparts closed upon their shoulders. Flattened grass and trodden bushes marking the raiders’ path drowned gradually in the evening’s creeping dusk.
Vedvyas swung his head from side to side, seeking landmarks and muttering under his breath. He said abruptly. ‘We have crossed Bahrampal’s border, Umree Sahib, and traverse Maratha territory - the dominion called Berer which Raghujee Bhonsla rules. Is this your intention?’
‘The locusts swarmed from Berar, wrought havoc in Company lands, and fly to their breeding ground. Where they go I follow!’
The sky flared green and crimson, waned like a dying fire. Horses stumbled on half-seen hazards, weary riders cursed and jabbed the reins. Amaury heard the tinkle of running water, a stream that sucked the lees of monsoon rain. Reluctantly he halted.
‘Post vedettes, two men each, on front and rear and flanks. Off saddle, water the horses yonder, feed. We camp here tonight.’
The men slept where they willed, littered in the dark like corpses after a battle, horses standing alongside, reins knotted to their wrists. So much yet to teach them, Amaury thought tiredly, easing his head on the saddle: picket pegs and headropes, horse-lines ranged in rows. He slept restlessly, tormented by evil nightmares - mutilated bodies, eyeless, noseless faces, burned lips that gibbered madness. He woke abruptly, dry mouthed and sweating, blundered to the stream, drank and bathed his face. Returning near a vedette, expecting a challenge and hearing none, he found the troopers snoring, dead to the world. Roughly he aroused them, scolded their neglect; and realized while he rated them the night was growing lighter. A pewtery moonlight dimmed the stars and painted ivory slivers on the inky shapes of bushes. Amaury looked at his watch. Two in the morning. He strode about the camp, shook men awake, bellowed Boot and Saddle. Yawning, stretching and grumbling, the troopers tightened girths. Wrangling a way in the moonlight, the column marched.
A little after sunrise they left the hills behind and emerged on a plateau. A grassy plain, sprinkled by thorn scrub and stunted trees, unrolled to a horizon lost in mist. The Pindaris’ hoof-swathe beckoned like a lodestone. Half a mile from the trail a tiny cluster of buildings humped the plain. Amaury pointed. ‘There must be wells, and maybe grain that we can buy. The forage is nearly done.’
Anthills pimpled the ground in front of the hamlet’s hedge - the usual feeble cactus-thorn defences. Vedvyas, scanning churned-up tracks, tightened his lips. ‘Pindaris have forestalled us, sahib - you will find no supplies here.’
They found something else.
Riding to the entrance gap Amaury noticed blobs among the anthills, a dozen or so in a circle, like earthenware pots placed upside down. He came closer, and blasphemed under his breath.
The victims had been buried shoulder-deep, and left to feed the ants: a myriad murrey-coloured insects each as long as a thumbnail. A glistening corruption heaved on faces flayed to the bone. They made faint inhuman noises.
Welladvice gagged and spewed, streaking his horse’s withers. ‘Jesus!’ he mumbled. ‘Ah’t seen nothin’ so horrible, worse’n a gun deck raked by broadsides!’
Amaury spoke harshly to a trooper. ‘Beyond help - kill them quick!’ The man dismounted, drew his sabre. Amaury rode through the entrance, and did not look back.
The miserable houses held no corn, no flour, nothing but gashed bodies. They watered at the wells, fed the last of the horses’ grain; and rode on, cantering fifty minutes in the hour, walking ten, timed by Amaury’s watch. A pitiless sky spilled heat; the plain unrolled beyond sight; trees and bushes brooded their shadows. Creaking leather and thudding hooves thrummed a chorus to the horses’ laboured breathing, the clink and rattle of steel a plangent discord. Hannibal, Amaury noticed, bore no longer on the bit; meagre forage, the pace, the endless miles had subdued his rampant ardour - while the stringy, half-starved countrybreds drove tirelessly onwards. Throughout the march not one had fallen out.
At a stagnant pond they rested for an hour, watered the horses and let them graze. Vedvyas leaned on his scimitar, hands crossed on the pommel, and said heavily, ‘The men’s rations are finished, the feedbags empty. The Pindaris we are chasing scour every morsel from our path. Do we exist on air, or eat grass like our animals? How much further, sahib, will you pursue this useless hunt?’
Amaury groped in a saddlebag, found and broke a crust, tossed half to Welladvice. ‘Make the most of it, sir - ’tis all I have.’ To Vedvyas he said curtly, ‘We go on till we drop, or catch our prey. So long as we find grass the horses can last. As for the men - is Rathor courage quelled by empty bellies?’ He rose, slapped dust from his scarlet coat. ‘I shall speak to them.’
Amaury strolled among the troopers sitting on the ground and holding grazing horses. He hailed them cheerfully, man after man by name, hand on shoulder, jesting, smiling broadly, praising their exertions, tickling their pride. Sulky faces lightened, drooping shoulders straightened.
Vedvyas watched him, brooding.
‘A heaven-born commander. He has a gift, that sahib, a sympathetic leadership that draws men to the heights.’
‘What say?’ grunted Welladvice, chewing his bread. ‘Can’t understand yer. Gawd, me arse is sore - raw as an underdone steak. Now why in hell must I think o’ that wi’ me stummick flappin’ empty as a mizzen sail aback?’
They rode through a blistering afternoon, and camped at dusk near a devastated village. Here fortune smiled. Troopers hunting desperately for food in ransacked huts found beneath a godown floor a cache the Pindaris had missed: flour and barley enough to feed the squadron once and leave a small reserve. They slept heavily, stomachs rumbling, saddled at moonrise and marched.
At midday Vedvyas, closely examining hoofmarks rippling the dust, swore to himself and cantered afar to left and right. He returned scowling. ‘The Pindaris are scattering, sahib - always their habit when pursuit is close.’
‘What should we do?’
‘A question I cannot answer, because I do not know the country. In three days we have ridden, by my reckoning, nine-score miles and more from Bahrampal.’ Vedvyas gestured helplessly, stared about. ‘Some have gone this way, some fled that. They will gather, days ahead, at a rendezvous appointed. As well chase a wisp of snipe.’
Am
aury smiled reassurance; ‘Cast around, sirdarjee. Find the tracks of the largest party. Those we follow.’
Vedvyas hunted widely, retracing and criss-crossing his tracks. The squadron dismounted, eased girths and watched his search. He beckoned Amaury, indicated the traces of a hoof-marked trail. ‘About two hundred went this way, taking the bulk of the booty. See - the marks of cattle, driven fast, and parallel tracks of riders leading packhorses. The edge of their speed will be blunted; this is the game you should stalk!’
‘Lead on!’
All afternoon the spoor led them across a flat tree-tufted wilderness that stretched endlessly ahead. They halted once to feed a little grain; Amaury, feeding Hannibal from his hand, shaded his eyes and stared into the distance. Perched on the horizon a huge isolated crag jutted from the heat haze like a mirage. A westering sun washed the shape pale amber, streaked by purple clefts.
He took a spyglass from his pocket, focused on the rock. ‘Walls and towers, I think; a fortress by its looks. Do you know it?’ Vedvyas shook husks from a nosebag. ‘How should I recognize a fort two hundred miles from home? Marathas plant forts on their lands as sowers sprinkle seed corn!’
Amaury adjusted the glass. The muscles on his jawbone bulged like walnuts. ‘A dust cloud flying between us and the crag. We have found them!’ He snapped the spyglass shut. ‘Mount! Brothers,’ he told the troopers, ‘the enemy is three miles on, fleeting the fangs of your swords! Canter-r-r!’
In column six abreast :hey thrashed the flagging mounts - a final spurt that finished several horses, which tottered to a halt, heads hanging, legs astraddle, flanks heaving like a bellows. Amaury collected Hannibal, forced him up to his bit; Vedvyas’s Arabian, his stamina unplumbed, loped at an easy canter; Welladvice bounced in the saddle, flogging the roan’s lean ribs. The dust cloud crept towards them: soon they could distinguish the individual spirals which climbed to a drifting umbel, and specks that moved at the roots. The squadron galloped closer, swerving between the bushes, hoofbeats pounding, horses panting, bits and scabbards clashing like the music of a storm. Amaury saw the glint of steel, and horsemen flitting ghostlike in the murk.
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