by John Wilcox
‘No,’ Simon whispered into his ear. ‘I want to see what they’re going to do first. Don’t fire till I do. Then I’ll take the two in the middle. You shoot the men waiting - they’re the hardest targets.’
‘Oh, thank you very much, I must say,’ mouthed Jenkins. But he carefully took a bead on the most distant Afghan.
As the two men converged on the fire, the watchers saw that they were Pathans: tall, slim men, wearing turbans wrapped precariously like bundles of washing on their heads. They stole in noiselessly on soft sandals, slightly upturned at the toes.
‘Do you think there are more in the trees?’ whispered Jenkins, without taking his eyes off his target.
‘Don’t know. We’ll have to take that chance.’
The Pathans each moved towards what appeared to be a sleeping man. Then they exchanged glances. One nodded, and both men swung their arms up and down in terrifying arcs and plunged their daggers into the sleeping forms.
‘Right,’ hissed Simon, and fired.
Almost simultaneously Jenkins too pulled his trigger. One of the two attackers immediately fell, as did 352’s target on the edge of the trees. Simon and Jenkins quickly grabbed second cartridges from the rock by the side of their rifles and, using their thumbs, pressed them into the depression behind their back-sights and fired again. Despite the fact that he had to swing his rifle round, Jenkins got his shot away before Simon and dropped his second man as the Pathan fired his cumbersome musket. The second attacker, however, had run into the blackness of the trees before Simon could sight on to him.
‘Damn,’ he said. ‘And damn again. Come on. There’s nothing to be gained by hiding now.’
The two men got to their feet and crashed down in a shower of rocks to the campsite, running to where the Pathan had disappeared into the forest. He was, of course, nowhere to be seen. Rifles at their hips, Simon and Jenkins stood back to back for a moment, facing the trees, expecting an attack, or, at the least, a volley of firing from the darkness. But there was nothing. Only silence.
Jenkins looked quickly over his shoulder at Simon. ‘You all right, bach sir?’
‘For God’s sake, yes. Look about you, into the trees. He must be there somewhere.’
His words were interrupted by two reports from the forest, some hundred and twenty yards above them, one from the right, the other from the left. The first ball hit the rock immediately above Simon’s head, causing splinters to fly, before ricocheting down the gorge with a mournful whine. A rock splinter caught Simon above the eye and he felt blood trickle down his face. The other slug whistled through the loose folds of Jenkins’s shirt and thudded into a tree behind him.
‘Quick!’ shouted Simon. ‘Get them before they can reload. You take the left ...’
But Jenkins had already gone. Moving with remarkable agility for such a thickset man, he bounded up the rock face and had disappeared before Simon could finish the sentence. Simon peered into the gloom. Dawn was flooding the gorge with light but the forest remained almost impenetrable. Concentrating hard, however, he thought he saw the remnants of a wisp of smoke lingering by the branch of a fir tree, about a hundred yards above him to his right. He thought quickly: how long did it take to reload a musket? It was a fifty-fifty chance. Heaving himself up by a tree root, he scrambled into the dubious protection of the forest darkness, using his rifle as a lever to push himself upwards and sometimes scraping along on all fours. He could hear no sound save that of his own noisy progress as he crashed through the undergrowth, but concealment was of no importance. The Pathan - God, could there be more than one? - had seen him enter the forest and would either be scrambling away himself or, more likely, thrusting the ball down the long barrel of his jezail and filling his pan with powder.
In fact, when Simon finally saw his man, he was doing neither of those things. He was waiting: his musket perfectly balanced, his head still behind the crude rear sight and his thumb in the act of cocking the flintlock. Simon flung himself to one side as he heard the first, tiny explosion in the priming pan, and then the second, much louder, as the powder in the main charge at the base of the gun was fired. So close was he that he felt the blast of the ball as it missed his right shoulder.
Simon had no time to aim, so he fired from the hip. A dull click was the result. In his anxiety to chase the assassins, he had forgotten to reload - and the Martini-Henry was a single-shot rifle.
The Pathan reacted quicker than Simon. Throwing aside his musket, he pulled from the cummerbund at his waist a long curved dagger and threw himself at his assailant. Instinctively, Simon presented his rifle to the Pathan as though it carried a bayonet at the end. The result was almost as effective as if it had done. The muzzle caught the Pathan squarely in the midriff as he hurled himself forward. Just under four feet long, and weighing nine pounds, the Martini-Henry was a most effective longstaff and the blow completely winded the Afghan. Simon had a momentary impression of a face contorted with surprise, the cheeks blown out and black eyes popping above a strong, hooked nose, before he himself was knocked to the ground by the force of the collision.
Together the two men rolled down the hill, crashing from tree to tree as each clawed at the ground for purchase. Simon was brought up sharply at the base of a large deodar, hitting his head on the trunk. Dazed, he was half aware that the Pathan was scrambling back up the slope towards him, knife in hand, when a solitary shot rang through the forest and the Afghan fell, a black bullet hole neatly drilled above his left ear.
Unsteadily, Simon rose to his feet and saw Jenkins twenty yards away, slipping another cartridge into the chamber and lowering the lever behind the trigger guard to cock the rifle.
‘Thanks, 352. I think he would have had me that time.’
‘You’re very welcome, sir bach. I couldn’t shoot earlier because you two was lovin’ yourselves all over the ground, see. But I did see you present the bayonet to ’im, just like you was on the parade ground.’
Simon smiled and looked quickly around. ‘I didn’t hear you shoot before. Did yours get away?’
Jenkins looked offended. ‘Oh no. Like you, in the fuss, like, I didn’t have time to reload. So I used this, see.’ From his belt he drew a knife and scabbard and, slipping off the sheath, showed Simon the blood-stained blade. He nodded to the dead Afghan. ‘Two can play at that game, look you.’
Simon wrinkled his nose. ‘Jenkins, you never fail to amaze me.’
‘Well, I dunno why. I’m good at killin’, you know that.’
Simon looked around. The sun was now penetrating the foliage in bright shards of light, bringing little coils of steam from the wet pine needles and making the rock outbreaks glisten. The tree trunks marched relentlessly above them, climbing vertically from the forty-five-degree slope. But no sound came from them: no birdsong or scuffle of wildlife, and no sight or echo of human activity.
The two men stood quietly, each moving his head slowly to scan the forest and straining to hear a twig snap or a pebble slide. Nothing.
‘Well, if there were more of them, they’ve gone now all right,’ said Jenkins eventually.
‘Hmmmn.’ Simon frowned. ‘I wonder. Damn! The horses. They might have doubled back. Quick.’
The two half ran, half slid down between the trees to the trail below and to the camp under the rock overhang. But the two horses and the donkey were undisturbed, grazing happily on the mossy bank. Simon and Jenkins loaded the donkey and mounted their horses, to resume their ascent along the rocky trail. They now rode with their rifles in their hands, eyes constantly scanning the rocks and trees that climbed above them either side of the fast-flowing water. Each bend in the trail was now approached with great caution, Simon, in the lead, edging round the rock face while Jenkins covered him, rifle at his shoulder.
This, and the fact that the going became steeper as they climbed, made for slow progress, and Simon estimated that they had covered only perhaps a mile and a half in the first hour when they met the army patrol.
The e
ncounter showed how inadequate their precautions would have been if the ambush had been for real. Simon edged round one particularly awkward bend in the trail, where a jagged tooth of a rock made the corner completely blind, and called Jenkins to follow. Immediately, a dozen rifles poked at them from the top of a rocky ledge on the right and a young voice shouted at them in Urdu.
‘Damn,’ breathed Simon. Holding up his hand with the palm towards the cliff face, he cried: ‘Allah kerim. Allah kerim.’ He could see no sign of the speaker; only the rifles pointing down at them, with what appeared to be a brown face behind each one. The voice again shouted either a command or a question in Urdu.
Standing in the stirrups, Simon replied in Pushtu: ‘You must forgive this traveller, but I do not speak the language of the Indus.’
There was another pause, and then the speaker replied, this time with some exasperation, ‘Well, dammit, do you speak English?’ It was a voice from the playing fields of any English public school, high-pitched and querulous.
Simon smiled. ‘Yes, dammit, I do. But it would be better if I could see who the hell I’m speaking to.’
At this, a slight figure emerged above the parapet and scrambled down to the road. He was dressed in a tight-fitting uniform of dark green, with a pistol in a black leather holster at his side and a black topi on his head. He might have cut a sinister figure in those hills but for his face, which was cherubically pink and sported a startlingly blond moustache. He could not have been more than twenty-one years of age.
‘Sorry, old boy,’ he said, as he approached Simon. ‘Had to be sure you weren’t a couple of pahari choors.’ He held up his hand. ‘Chambers. Second Lieutenant, 5th Gurkhas.’
‘Glad to see you.’ Simon shook his hand warmly. ‘Fonthill. Captain, Corps of Guides. This is Sergeant Jenkins.’
‘Oh, sorry, sir.’ Chambers briefly stiffened into a formal salute and then nodded cordially to Jenkins. ‘Don’t see many white NCOs in the Guides - if you are white, that is.’
‘This one’s a bit special. How far are we from General Roberts’s camp?’
‘About half a day, if we get a move on.’ The young man turned and shouted an order in Gurkhali. Immediately the rifles disappeared from the ledge and, within seconds, some twenty Gurkha infantrymen appeared on the trail and fell in loose order. Simon looked at them with interest. He had heard about these little mountain men from Nepal. They had a formidable reputation as fighters, yet now they appeared almost childlike in their green uniforms and pillbox hats, which they wore jauntily to one side. They seemed like page boys on a day’s outing from a London gentleman’s club. Yet they carried their rifles with easy grace and every man had a broad-bladed kukri hanging from his belt.
Chambers regarded Simon and Jenkins with an ingenuous smile. ‘I must say, you Guide chaps do go native magnificently,’ he said. ‘You certainly look the proper article. My chaps nearly blew your heads off as you rounded the bend.’
‘Ah, that’s because we’re Welsh, see,’ interjected Jenkins helpfully, his smile cutting a great white gash under his moustache.
‘What? Oh, I see. Yes. Well.’ Chambers looked puzzled for a moment. Then his smile returned. ‘Welsh, eh? So you’re used to the mountains, of course.’
‘Not really,’ said Simon. ‘Don’t you think we’d better get on? We had a bit of trouble back there.’
‘Eh? Oh. Yes, sir. Of course. We thought we heard firing down the pass about an hour ago, so we hurried on down. We were sent out to escort you in, because the Afridis here are a two-faced lot. They profess friendship but they’d as soon cut your throat as shake your hand. This route is supposed to be open back to the border but it needs constant patrolling.’
Simon looked down at the little men with their ageless brown faces. ‘Aren’t the cavalry used for patrolling?’
‘What? Good lord, no. Not here. These chaps are the best in the world in this territory.’ Chambers gazed at his platoon with pride. He seemed like a school prefect out with a party of fourth-formers. ‘Horses are no good here. My chaps are the thing for these rocks. You’ll see.’
He barked a further command, and immediately, two men splashed through the stream and disappeared on the far side, while another two climbed among the trees and went ahead on the right bank. Half of the remainder fell into double file ahead of Simon and the rest behind Jenkins. Then the little column set off, Chambers chatting continuously to Simon as he strode beside him.
Simon soon saw the young man’s point about the Gurkhas. They moved silently and, seemingly, effortlessly along the rocky path, maintaining a far faster pace than the two horsemen had managed. The trail was now very steep, and Simon was happy in the knowledge that flank men were out ahead of the party.
As they neared Kuram, the trail widened and flattened, and they fell in with a company of Punjab Cavalry who had been out on patrol on the plain. They made a fine sight with their lances, coloured turbans and great beards, and Simon felt that Jenkins and he were being escorted into Kuram by the pick of the Indian Army.
The town itself was little more than a handful of huts clustered around the brown mud walls of an Afghan hill fort. The ramshackle fort could not house all Roberts’s men, and the white bell tents of the troops surrounded the fort like a besieging army. Although the sun was still quite high in the sky, it was noticeably colder here, and Simon shivered as they were escorted through the guard lines.
A major on the General’s staff received them in the fort, and here Simon said goodbye to Chambers, who trotted off with his soldiers as though they had all just got out of bed. Here, too, he parted company with Jenkins, who was dispatched to the sergeants’ mess of a British line battalion, there being no unit of Guides in the camp.
‘Now try and behave like a sergeant,’ whispered Simon.
‘Very well, bach sir. I’ll try and find someone to shout at, then.’
Both the General and Colonel Lamb - the latter having only arrived at the camp himself two weeks before - were out on reconnaissance, and Simon was ordered to wait on the General at nine that evening, after dinner. General Roberts, he was told, was anxious to see him as soon as possible.
Simon was allocated a tent and advised that he could eat at the officers’ mess of the Punjab Cavalry. But after washing himself thoroughly in a hand bowl, he chose instead to wander among the huts of the Afridis who lived at Kuram and farmed the surrounding inhospitable plateau. He bought a bowl of goat stew and some coarse Afghan bread, and sat cross-legged in the dust, his back to the wall, feeding himself fastidiously, using his fingers and the bread, impervious to the curious gazes he elicited.
Precisely at nine o’clock, he presented himself at the General’s headquarters. The fort was a gloomy place, built for defence rather than comfort. The walls were about twelve feet thick and enclosed a cramped quadrangle. But they were flaking and crumbling here and there, and Simon estimated that they would be unlikely to withstand even a light artillery bombardment. He was led into a small, stuffy anteroom, lit by rush flares flickering on the walls. It was medieval and primitive; not at all how he imagined the palaces of the Raj to be. In fact, he reflected, Afghanistan was completely unlike India. If the predominant colours of the sub-continent were bright - the yellow of saffron, the silver of silk, the bright blue of the sky - then the land of the Pathans was painted in browns and greys.
The call came quickly, and Simon was ushered into a much bigger room, lit by candles and a large fire, with unglazed windows through which he could glimpse stars and hear the murmur of the camp. Two figures, silhouetted against the fire, rose to greet him. As they did so, Simon almost gasped in disbelief. The two men could have been twins, so similar were they in stature and bearing.
The first figure was that of Colonel Lamb. The second, however, seemed almost a replica of the Colonel: also five foot two, slightly built, flag-staff straight and with Lamb’s direct gaze. Frederick Sleigh Roberts, VC, had been Quartermaster General of the Indian Army when the call had come to le
ad the Kuram Field Force. He had won his Victoria Cross in the Mutiny as a subaltern twenty-five years earlier, but he had seen comparatively little active service and had never commanded in the field until now. His success in the fierce skirmish at Peiwa Kotal had been his first victory as a commander, and it had won him instant fame.
Roberts did not advance to meet Simon, but stood by the fire, his hand extended. As he approached, Simon realised that height and posture were all that the General shared with Lamb. While the Colonel was sunburned and cleanshaven, Roberts’s cheeks were pink and he wore side whiskers which ended in a short, grey-flecked beard. Both men wore comfortable smoking jackets, with loose scarves at their throats. They could have been two English country gentlemen - the squire and the doctor - finishing their port after dining well.
‘You had trouble on the way up, I hear,’ said Roberts. He spoke softly, with nothing of Lamb’s staccato delivery.
‘Yes, a little, I’m afraid. We had to kill four Afridis.’
Roberts gestured to a chair. ‘Tell me about it.’
Simon told the story as briefly as he could. He would have been briefer, in fact, but the General continually interrupted him to ascertain details - ‘At what range did you fire?’ ‘Why do you feel there were no more attackers?’ ‘Describe Jenkins to me; is he as well disguised as you?’
His account finished, Simon was silent. The General looked at him without speaking. Colonel Lamb shifted in his chair, but he too said nothing. Simon began to feel embarrassed.
Eventually, Roberts spoke. ‘I don’t like it,’ he murmured.
‘Sir?’
‘You are supposed to be agents. I didn’t expect that you would thunder into the hills, virtually shooting on sight.’
Simon bristled. ‘With respect, sir, if we had not done so we would both now be dead.’
