The Lion's Den

by Philip McCutchan

  ‘Evil? What the devil d’you mean?’

  There was a shrug. ‘Oh, a mere figure of speech, General. A pity they’re so essential — that’s what I meant, don’t you know. Long term solutions are seldom brought about by soldiers.’

  ‘I consider that a rather unnecessary remark, Mr. Peabody.’

  ‘Then I apologise.’ Mr. Peabody smiled placatingly, but there was a touch of malice behind the smile.

  ‘I should think so! I suppose you know why I’ve had to send them in, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course I do, General.’

  ‘No, no! I don’t mean the relief of this force under attack. I mean the original basic reason, Mr. Peabody. It was because of the damn meanness of you people in Calcutta — stopping me paying that subsidy. Meanness and crass stupidity, I call it, Mr. Peabody!’

  Peabody’s head went back in angry disapproval, but Fettleworth didn’t give a damn. His breath rasping down his nostrils like that of a war-horse, he made for his headquarters. He was much out of temper; nobody had ever dared call his soldiers evil before and, by God, if ever they did so again, then they had better watch out. Bloody Francis had a nagging suspicion that some of his officers regarded him as something of a dugout, an anachronism; but he would never have it said that he had ever failed to stand like a rock between his combatant troops and the damn clerks from Whitehall and Calcutta!

  TWELVE

  The attack, the outflanking attack on the rock where Ogilvie had been taking cover, was of short enough duration, a counterattack by a number of the sepoys under Gundar Singh had overborne the tribesman who had used the Maxim, but not before he had killed the late British Resident in Kunarja. Gilmour’s body was lying in an attitude of protection across the body of his wife; and his own body was riddled with bullets. Katharine Gilmour, who was untouched, was hysterical. Taggart-Blane, also unharmed, was forced to seize her and hold her arms to her sides. Ogilvie, coming painfully back to consciousness, heard the subaltern’s shaking voice pleading with her to be quiet.

  There was an agonising pain in Ogilvie’s back, to the right of centre and below his ribs. When gingerly he felt beneath his clothing, his fingers contacted a nasty stickiness. He had fairly obviously been knifed; and had it not been for his thick clothing, he guessed he would most probably be dead.

  He called out to Taggart-Blane.

  ‘Oh — James, thank God you’re alive!’ Taggart-Blane’s voice was high, betraying his nerves. ‘I can’t leave Miss Gilmour, she’s like a wild cat.’

  ‘You can talk, anyway. What happened? What’s the state of things?’

  Taggart-Blane told him that Gilmour was dead and so were the two tribesmen who had mounted the sudden foray. ‘One of them came right down on top of you, James, and knocked you out, I think.’

  ‘Who got him off me?’

  ‘I did.’ There was a short pause. ‘I shot him. I shot him dead.’

  Ogilvie said, ‘Thank you, Alan. Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes. How about you?’

  ‘I’ve been knifed and I appear to be losing rather a lot of blood. Otherwise I’m all right.’ He tried to get to his feet, but was overcome by a wave of pain that caused him to sink back dizzily on the lying snow. ‘Damn! I’ll need to lie low for a while, I’m afraid.’

  ‘I’ll see to you when I can. I can’t do anything just now. I daren’t let Miss Gilmour go.’

  Ogilvie said, ‘Give her a hard slap.’

  ‘All right.’ There was a muffled yell from Katharine Gilmour, a sudden oath from Taggart-Blane, and then the sharp sound of two hard slaps across the face. Ogilvie heard the girl cry out ‘Oh!’ and then she started weeping bitterly and he saw her, a vague blur against the snow, move away from Taggart-Blane and sink to the ground.

  Taggart-Blane came over to Ogilvie, and bent close. He asked, ‘Are you going to be fit to continue the march, James?’

  ‘I’ll have to be. Bring me Gilmour’s wallet, will you?’

  ‘His wallet?’

  ‘That’s what I said. He has Jarar Mahommed’s terms written down and signed. Get it off him and bring it to me.’

  ‘Right!’ Taggart-Blane moved off; he came back quickly with the wallet. Opening it, Ogilvie felt for the thick fold of paper, then slid the wallet into his own pocket, feeling the blood welling through his uniform as he did so.

  He said, ‘Gilmour had hoped to make a break-out when the snow started again, and take the terms through to Peshawar. There’s an urgent need of speed now.’

  ‘You told me what he meant to do.’ Taggart-Blane drew in his breath sharply. ‘Does this mean—’

  ‘I’ll have to go, and leave you in command here. Can you cope?’

  ‘I’ll cope, but you’ll never make it, you know. You need rest and medical attention. This bloody snow’s murder—’ Ogilvie shook his head. ‘It’s absolutely vital—’

  ‘First things first! I’ll get some of the medical supplies sent up.’ Taggart-Blane crawled away out of sight before Ogilvie could stop him. Remembering that Katharine Gilmour had some nursing experience, Ogilvie called out to her; a job to do would be the best thing for her now. As he called, she roused herself, and moved across towards him. She would perhaps massage some warmth into his half-frozen legs while he was immobilised.

  ‘Taggart-Blane’s gone to get some medical stuff. I’d be no end grateful if you’d dress my wound when he gets back, Miss Gilmour.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said. Shivering violently, she knelt down by his side. Her very presence, he found, the presence of any woman really in this outlandish Afghan pass, brought comfort and a touch of happier times. There was even a faint scent still clinging to her, a delicate but pervasive perfume that very nearly brought tears to his eyes; on all previous occasions in his experience the smells of the Khyber had been very, very different. The customary odours along the Khyber were of guns and powder, hot metal, men’s sweat, animals’ dung and the stench of death under hot summer suns when action had meant too long a delay in burial.

  *

  Sporadic firing was kept up throughout the night, a night during which there was no further snow. Ogilvie felt that the firing was designed principally to let the British know the Pathans were still there, and to keep the soldiers in their places. An actual attack might come with the daybreak, or the Pathans might prefer to carry on the process of attrition. When at last dawn came, Ogilvie was able to take stock of their situation. The casualty reports indicated another ten men and some more mules lost to the snipers during the night, and there were more wounded in varying degrees of severity. The dead included Subedar Gundar Singh, a sad loss that reduced the leadership to two officers, one of them — Ogilvie himself far from fit. Katharine Gilmour had attended to the knife-wound, washing the flesh with snow and applying a little of one of the new antiseptic ointments. After this she had placed a lint pad over the wound and then securely bandaged it. In the absence of a medical man, this was the best that could be done and Ogilvie, with the wound cleaned up, felt a good deal easier in his mind if not in his body. All movement of his torso was extremely painful, and tended to start the bleeding going. In consequence he was forced to lie still so far as possible. As the day lightened Taggart-Blane came and squatted beside him.

  ‘It looks as though there’s more snow on the way, James,’ he said, looking up at the overcast sky. The snow-heavy clouds had settled right down on the peaks, half-way to the valleys, giving the whole area a pressed-down feel, a sense of claustrophobic confinement. ‘You said you’d hit the trail, didn’t you, with Gilmour’s despatch, when the snow came.’ He shook his head in doubt. ‘It’s no good, you know. You’ll have to face up to it. You’re on the sick list.’

  ‘I’ve still got to do what I can as soon as I can.’

  Taggart-Blane smiled. ‘Said like a man! No-one doubts your guts, James. But what about the expediency? You’d die from loss of blood on the way. What’d be the point of those terms ending up in a gorge, or under the snowfall somewhere alo
ng the track — or in enemy hands? Don’t you see that?’

  ‘Yes, of course I do—’ Ogilvie broke off as another shaft of pain ran through his side. ‘In war, risks have to be taken. At best the whole thing’s a chance, isn’t it?’

  ‘It needn’t be. It really needn’t be.’

  Frowning, Ogilvie looked hard at Taggart-Blane. ‘What d’you mean, Alan? What are you suggesting?’

  ‘Well, you’re not the only pebble on the beach! I could go, couldn’t I?’

  ‘You?’

  ‘I don’t see why the hell not! I’m assuming it has to be an officer, and British—’

  ‘Yes, that’s true.’

  ‘I’m the only one left to fill that bill. You’re out, you really are.’ Taggart-Blane’s face was anxious; he was trembling, like a pointer waiting for a bird to fall to the guns. ‘You’ll have to accept your own limitations. Besides, I want to go.’

  ‘Why?’

  There was a pause. ‘I thought you’d realise why.’

  ‘Remember the objective — the sole objective: to get the terms through to Peshawar, safely and quickly. That’s vital. Nothing else matters nothing!’

  ‘Yes, I know that. But...I want to prove to myself that I can be a soldier, don’t you see?’

  ‘You’ve done that. You saved my life last night. Isn’t that enough?’

  ‘No. That was a sort of automatic reaction, no more than anybody would do. If I hadn’t killed that native he’d have killed me as well as you. James, I want to go. That’s all!’

  Ogilvie looked at him hard; then, after a moment, he said with a sudden smile, ‘Not quite all.’

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘The desire to go is important, I’ll agree. But the ability is even more important. Are you sure you can make it?’

  The subaltern’s eyes were shining now. ‘Does that mean you’ll send me?’

  Ogilvie temporised. ‘You don’t know the Khyber as well as I do, and even I don’t know it as well as Gilmour, and—’

  ‘Gilmour’s dead, you’re hors de combat, James! I may be bloody awful, but I’m all that’s available as a substitute — and I did come through the Khyber quite recently. I’ll find my bearings all right, don’t worry!’ He paused. ‘Well, James? Is it on?’

  Ogilvie pursed his lips, still basically in doubt; there was truth in all Taggart-Blane had said, but he was so inexperienced, so callow! On the other hand, delay now could be as fatal as total non-delivery of the terms. Really, that had to be the deciding factor. Ogilvie looked up at the sky once again. ‘The snow won’t be long now,’ he said drily. ‘That’ll be your cover. I’ll send a sepoy with you as guide — there’ll be at least one man who knows the Khyber well.’

  *

  When that evening the snow came, it was a blinding blizzard that left men gasping with its viciousness. The likely depth of snow ahead now, between their current position and Jamrud, would be too much for any horse; Taggart-Blane, with the terms thrust into an inner pocket of his uniform beneath greatcoat and layers of blankets, left on foot with the sepoy guide, thrusting manfully into the tearing snow-storm, two whitened figures that were out of sight before they had moved a dozen feet away. Invisible to the British, they would, Ogilvie prayed, also be invisible to the watchful Pathans — who would probably not be at all watchful just in the moment that they were struck by the first lashings of the blizzard.

  At all events, there was no gunfire; the only sound was that of the roaring, funnelling wind.

  Ogilvie lay behind his rock, alone now with Katharine Gilmour and Bandra Negi, and the bodies of Katharine’s parents and of Mulata Din. He found he was avoiding looking at the Gilmours’ commissariat cart with its pathetic burden; he wished, for the girl’s sake, that it could be moved away, but he felt a personal responsibility now for the bodies. For her part, Katharine had insisted on remaining with him, partly, as she said, to keep an eye on his wound and partly because she was finding she could not bear the proximity of natives and had nothing but revulsion for the thought of sharing any other rock alone with them. So there they remained, in the overshadowing presence of the dead.

  After Taggart-Blane had vanished Ogilvie, with his mind on Mulata Din, asked the havildar about the N.C.O. who was still held in arrest — Lal Binodinand.

  ‘He is among the wounded, Sahib.’

  ‘No!’ Ogilvie was filled with horror and self-reproach at the thought of a man, held prisoner at his own order, being wounded whilst unable to fight back. ‘I am sorry to hear this, Bandra Negi! How bad is the wound?’

  ‘Very bad, I think, Sahib. A bullet penetrated, close to the lung.’ Bandra Negi paused. ‘He prays for death to come to him, Sahib.’

  ‘Yes, it would be the better thing, perhaps,’ Ogilvie murmured, half to himself. ‘From now on, there must be no question of an escort. Lal Binodinand must not have that anguish.’

  ‘Sahib, I have already so commanded, knowing it would be your wish, but being then unable to contact you.’

  ‘Good. You did right, Bandra Negi, and I am pleased.’

  There was a silence after this, a silence of men, only shattered by nature, by the appalling racket of the wind. Then the havildar, fingering a beard that was stiff with ice, asked, ‘Sahib, how long are we to remain in this place?’

  ‘Who knows? Until the tribes leave us, which is not likely, or until we can break out with a hope of success. I can say no more than that.’

  ‘The men are suffering, Sahib. The cold is eating their bodies and their hearts. In the daytime, some say they have terrible images dancing before their eyes, brought about by looking always into the snow and the wind...some say their very eyes are frozen into balls of ice. Even to touch their equipment means the loss of flesh — even though they wear their mittens. Soon many more men will die, Sahib.’

  ‘I know this, Bandra Negi.’

  ‘Yes, Sahib. But the sepoys...they would much prefer to die fighting.’

  ‘So would I, Bandra Negi, so would I!’

  ‘Then perhaps we can fight, Sahib? Like Taggart Sahib, if we were to attack under the cover of the snow—’

  Ogilvie broke in firmly. ‘No, Bandra Negi. We would never see the enemy. The reason Taggart Sahib was able to get through, was because he could not be seen. That works both ways.’

  ‘Yes, Sahib, I know that you are right, of course. But could we not all do as Taggart Sahib did, and pass through the lines of the tribesmen?’

  ‘I doubt it very strongly, Bandra Negi. We are still too many, and some would blunder into their lines, and then there would be slaughter. Also we are burdened with too many wounded. Say no more now. The responsibility is mine, and I must weigh many things.’

  ‘One of them being the dead, Sahib?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the memsahib?’

  Ogilvie nodded. ‘And the memsahib, Bandra Negi.’

  The havildar shook his head and looked sad. Ogilvie knew only too well that what Bandra Negi had said about the likelihood of more men dying from the general conditions was perfectly true. Ogilvie himself felt at times unable to think, to make the best use of his powers of judgment: his very brain seemed frozen, his blood to run sluggishly in his veins. To move after being still was a nightmare, as frozen clothing met the flesh of neck and wrists. They could scarcely expect to survive much longer. Ogilvie’s thoughts turned towards Taggart-Blane, unhopefully. The subaltern’s sepoy guide, provided on the recommendation of Bandra Negi, might know the Khyber well enough; but it was still a tough assignment for a grass-green subaltern virtually fresh out of Sandhurst! Certainly Taggart-Blane had conducted himself well in such action as he had already seen, and Ogilvie admitted to himself now that in fact this had surprised him; but currently Taggart-Blane was potentially facing a very different sort of action — action in which he would be alone and unsupported, thrown utterly upon his own resources of initiative and courage and decision. If he should fail to get through, if he should give way to the appalling weather
conditions, let alone bandits, then the consequences of the non-delivery of Jarar Mahommed’s terms would be to bring the long darkness of massacre and battle to the North-West Frontier.

  *

  Ogilvie still found any movement painful, though the bleeding from the knife-thrust, Katharine told him when she redressed his two wounds, had stopped.

  ‘It’s going to heal quite nicely, Captain Ogilvie,’ she said. ‘We shall continue with the massage until you’re able to move about. Has it helped?’

  He nodded. ‘I’d have frozen without it! But I wish you’d let Bandra Negi take a turn, or one of the sepoys.’

  ‘No. Nursing you is my job, Captain Ogilvie. It’s the one thing I can do to help.’

  He smiled at her, gratefully. ‘Your father would be proud of you, Miss Gilmour — and the men will bless you for a saint! ‘

  ‘Oh, nonsense,’ she said. Of her own free will she had crawled out from cover, escorted by Bandra Negi, risking the bullets of the Pathans and her own repulsion for the natives, to do what she could for the other wounded behind their various rocks and boulders. As with the dawn the snow had eased, some of the fire had come dangerously close to her; but she had been well covered by the sepoys’ rifles, and by the captured Maxim, and some half-dozen of the ambushing tribesmen had been picked off without further loss to the remnant of the British force.

  ‘How’s Lal Binodinand?’ Ogilvie asked.

  ‘He’s terribly sick, I’m afraid. He feels the slur, the dishonour, very keenly, I can tell you. He rambles on about his innocence.’

  ‘Have any facts emerged?’ He paused, then risked the question: ‘Any names, perhaps — of who else might be guilty?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, nothing like that. He’s not fully conscious, Captain Ogilvie, he’s in delirium most of the time. There’s a good deal of fever, and the wound is septic at the point of entry, though I’ve done what I could.’

  ‘I’m sure you have, Miss Gilmour.’ He hesitated, then reached out a hand to her, impulsively. ‘We’ve come to know one another pretty well the last few days. We’re going to have to go on living fairly intimately for God knows how long, too! Would you think it cheek if I called you Katharine?’