‘That’s the way. Pour it on!’ Hodson fidgeted in the saddle. ‘The rest will run, I’d wager. These damn pandies don’t have the guts for it. Oh, I wish I could be there. Don’t you, Jack?’
Jack smiled for the first time. ‘I am happy enough here, sir. Let the rifles earn their keep.’
Hodson appeared pleased by the remark. He leant across and slapped Jack’s back, whooping with delight. ‘Share the glory around! Why, I never expected that of you, Jack! I rather thought you wanted it all for yourself.’
Jack looked up sharply. Hodson’s voice had hardened as he delivered the second remark.
Hodson turned away and the two officers sat in silence. Jack watched the ground in front of the British column and saw the dark green uniforms of the 60th Rifles moving steadily towards the Flagstaff Tower, formed into two dispersed ranks. Ahead, the tower was smothered in powder smoke as the defenders opened fire on the men advancing up the slope towards them. Here and there a rifleman was knocked to the ground, but the enemy fire was poorly directed and it was having little effect.
The rifles pressed on without pause, ignoring their few casualties, their non-commissioned officers keeping them moving and closing the gaps in the ranks.
Without warning, the rebels took flight. The riflemen were still fifty yards short when Jack spotted the first figures emerge from the tower and flee for the safety of the city. In moments the few became a crowd, the sepoys who had been ordered to repel the attacking column running before their foe had even begun to fight.
The greenjackets’ officers halted the advance. Jack could only applaud their drill as the front rank knelt, the heavy Enfield rifles quickly lifted into position. He was too far away to hear the order, but he saw the puff of powder smoke an instant before the roar of the single volley reached him. At such close range the riflemen could hardly miss. The nearest rebels were cut down, the bullets fired by the Enfields working a dreadful destruction on the tight mass of running solders.
The retreat turned into a rout. The rifles did not waste time reloading and they pressed on, the loud shouts of encouragement coming from their officers propelling them forward. As they reached the tower, the leading companies turned to the right and began to advance down the ridge, heading towards the southern extremity, where the sounds of gunfire told everyone watching that Wilson’s column was making an attack of its own. The rearmost company of the riflemen took control of the tower, establishing the first British foothold on the ridge.
Already the British guns were limbering up, their work, for the moment at least, completed. Ahead of the riflemen, the enemy were in full retreat, abandoning the observatory and the remains of the Pathan mosque without a fight. Jack shook his head. Had the roles been reversed, he was certain the British regiments would have held the ridge, the strength of the defensive position such that even a small force could hold off a much larger attacking army. The British should have been made to pay a high price for taking the ridge. Instead they were being given it for nearly nothing.
For the first time, Jack begun to suspect that Hodson might well be correct. Nothing he had seen demonstrated that the rebels had any desire to go toe to toe with their former masters. Yet it went against everything he knew of the men he had once fought alongside. He had seen the native soldiers stand and battle against impossible odds, holding on and carrying on the fight long after the chance of victory had been lost.
Hodson, and the many others like him, would have declared that the difference was the absence of their British officers, that without their former leaders, the sepoys were no longer an effective fighting force. But Jack could not believe it was that simple. He knew what it was to be an ordinary soldier. He understood better than most that the men, including the proudest British redcoats, fought more for their mates than for even the finest officer. The native infantry were no different. The enemy possessed bravery, determination and pride equal to that of their British counterparts. No matter what had happened that day, he did not believe they would surrender the city so easily.
Hodson flicked his head around, his expression deadpan even in the face of victory. ‘Come. Let us see what awaits us.’
He rode off without waiting to see if Jack would obey.
Jack sighed and followed him towards the cheers of victory. The leading elements of Barnard’s column had sighted the approach of the 75th, who led Brigadier Wilson’s half of the small army. Now the two columns would rejoin. The enemy had been driven back behind the walls of the city and the British now possessed the best defensive terrain from which to launch their assault on Delhi.
The ridge was theirs.
Jack and Hodson stood side by side and stared into the abandoned cart. They had been on their way to find General Barnard when they had spotted the flies swarming over the vehicle. The insects had risen up in one dense cloud as the two officers approached. Jack could not recall ever seeing so many in one place. They were like a single monstrous beast, but one made up from a thousand moving and living parts.
The flies had hidden the bodies of four men. There was little left on the remains to identify them, bare skeletons and tattered uniforms the only things left. All trace of flesh was gone, yet the regimental buttons still gleamed, the pride of the fallen officers’ battalions visible even though everything of the men they once were had been consumed.
The stench hit Jack like a punch to the belly, a gut-churning miasma that left him trying not to retch in front of his commander.
‘The poor bastards.’ He turned away, letting the plague of flies return to their gruesome perch. Hodson followed his lead, and the swarm of small black bodies smothered the long-dead corpses once again.
‘The account will be settled.’ Hodson spoke through teeth clenched tight with anger, the bitter words catching in his throat. ‘Not one of the murderous scum shall be left.’ There was no need for anything else to be said. The bodies served to remind the British officers just what they fought against, what price had been paid by the victims of the mutineers’ hate.
They had left their horses with an orderly as they sought out Barnard’s command group. Now they walked quickly towards the sound of raised voices. The most senior officers in the column had gathered together, the hasty conference summoned to plan the army’s next step now that the ridge had been captured.
‘No, no, no, I cannot countenance such an action. We must fight them in the open.’ The statement came from the centre of the group of officers. Jack did not recognise the voice, but it was clear its owner spoke with authority.
‘Sir, I beg you.’ Jack saw an officer wearing the dark green uniform of the Sirmur Gurkhas begin to speak, his voice quelling the hubbub around him. ‘The men are fresh enough. The pandies have yet to stand against us. We must press on.’
‘Major Reid, I thank you for your opinion.’ The reply was icy. Jack reached the outer ring of officers and could now see the tired-looking grey-haired officer who had spoken. He suspected this must be General Barnard, though he looked more like a well-to-do gentleman out for an afternoon’s stroll than the commander of a British army.
‘Major Reid is quite correct in his opinion, sir.’ An officer wearing the uniform of a brigadier smacked the back of his hand into his open palm to emphasise his point. ‘We cannot stop now.’
‘We do not have the men, Wilson.’ Barnard’s voice was tetchy. ‘Need I remind you, gentlemen, that this army is the sole force available to us. We cannot afford to waste our strength. If we throw it away now on a hasty assault, we are handing the enemy a certain victory. I will not allow that to happen.’
‘That is all the more reason to attack, sir.’ Hodson strode into the crowd of officers. Jack could only marvel at his confidence, but it appeared it was well founded. The senior officers parted as he approached, allowing him through even though he ostensibly only held the very junior rank of lieutenant.
‘Ah, Hodson!’ Barnard smiled warmly as the commander of his intelligence department arrived. ‘We have need
of your wise counsel. What say you?’
‘We must attack, sir.’ Hodson preened at being received so well, straightening his spine like an actor striding on stage for his first appearance in a play where he had been billed as the lead turn.
Jack shrank back, merging into the periphery of the group. He had no right to be there, but he did not think anyone arriving with Hodson would be asked to leave. He nodded a friendly greeting to an officer wearing the uniform of the horse artillery, receiving nothing more than a raised eyebrow as the captain acknowledged the arrival of an officer he did not recognise.
‘You are quite right, sir, and you have wisely got to the very nub of the issue in an instant.’
Hodson’s oiled tones silenced the group. Jack noticed he was quick to praise the general, even when offering a contrary opinion.
‘We cannot expect reinforcements for some time, so we must fight with what we have here and now. We cannot sit back and wait, for whilst we shall be starved of fresh manpower, the pandies can expect to receive new men by the day. If we delay, we shall inevitably weaken, whereas the enemy’s strength is bound to grow.’
Major Reid took a pace forward. Jack caught the faintest trace of dislike on his face as he watched Hodson’s performance, yet he was quick to reinforce his new ally’s opinion. ‘Hodson is correct, sir. If we stop now, the pandies will think they have won. We cannot risk adding to their confidence. We must show a strong hand immediately.’
A second brigadier entered the discussion. Jack knew this was Graves, one of the few officers to have been in Delhi on the day of the mutiny. Like Barnard, he showed his age in his grey beard and weathered face. ‘You speak well, Major Reid, as indeed do you, Hodson, but I ask you both this. If we succeed and take the city – though I am not of the opinion that this is a realistic possibility – can we hold? We cannot hope to slaughter the entire enemy force. If we drive them from the city, we do not possess the means to pursue them. We will suffer grievously in any assault, and this would leave us without the strength to hold what we might win.’
Hodson scowled. ‘If we delay, then we commit ourselves to a siege. We cannot hope to surround the city. The enemy will have free access to reinforcements and supplies, so we cannot hope to starve them out. We will be marooned here on this blasted ridge, without hope of victory, with that fool of an emperor believing he has us at his mercy.’ He spoke with obvious passion. His speech quietened the other officers and a sombre silence fell over them all.
General Barnard stared at the ground. His officers might argue and discuss the merits of each course of action, yet the decision was his and his alone. Jack could sense the weight of responsibility on the man’s shoulders. It was an enormous burden, the lives of thousands of men resting on the next sentence he uttered.
The silence stretched out. Twice Jack saw Hodson open his mouth to carry on the argument for an instant attack, but good sense prevailed and he remained quiet.
After what seemed like several minutes, Barnard raised his eyes and looked at each officer in turn. Jack did his best to meet the general’s stare, fixing his face into a suitably grave expression.
‘The men have fought hard this day and won us two great victories.’ Barnard’s voice was gruff. ‘We cannot ask them to fight for a third time. We must be cautious. Too much depends on this endeavour for us to gamble everything on a single rash escapade.’
He coughed once, then again, his hand lifting to cover his mouth. He cleared his throat noisily before he spoke again.
‘We dig in here. We shall establish a defensive position and assess our options. This is a temporary reprieve, gentlemen, nothing more.’ Barnard looked at Reid, Wilson and Hodson as he gave his orders. ‘We can still look to a quick resolution to this siege. But for today, the men have done enough.’
The general had come to his decision. There would be no assault on the city that day. It was time to take stock and to let the men recover their strength. The Delhi Field Force would rest on what it had won.
Only time would tell if Barnard had made the correct decision. Or if he had just wasted the best opportunity the British would ever have to take Delhi by force.
Jack stood alone. The dark sky was filled with so many stars that they resembled an immense army stretching from one side of the heavens to the other. The numberless battalions cast an eerie light that allowed him to see across to the city, which now lay besieged by the British column. He flapped his hand at a firefly that flitted past his face. Night-time insects had arrived in their thousands to buzz and flicker around the heads of the British soldiers on the ridge.
Still Jack savoured the night air. He closed his eyes and focused on the delicate fragrance of the flowers that covered much of the ridge. The musky scent added a balmy touch to the cooler air, refreshing after hours of being subjected to the stink of overheated and underwashed bodies. Only those who had endured the scorching temperatures of the day could find relief in the heated air of the evening. To a newcomer the night would feel close, a sweaty, humid warmth that did its best to suffocate anyone foolish enough to be up and about. But compared to the sweltering heat of the day, the night was a boon, a respite to be enjoyed, and the soldiers of the British army seized on the hours of darkness to make camp and to study the city they had come so far to take.
Jack looked down on Delhi. It was filled with light, the thousands of fires and torches revealing the life that flourished within. He cocked an ear and listened. He could hear music. The mutineers were celebrating, the drums and tabors sounding throughout the city as the defenders of the new capital of the mighty Mughal Empire raised their voices in praise of the victory that Jack was sure the rebel leaders would be claiming.
The city was just over a mile away from where he stood. The walls stretched to the right and to the left as far as he could see. They looked immense: huge, thick bastions of stone that would surely withstand the efforts of the cannon that the British gunners had been able to bring with them. Jack had never seen a siege before. He recalled the officers in his first regiment talking of the great set-piece sieges that Wellington had conducted against the French in Portugal and Spain. He had not understood then the talk of batteries, ravelins, gabions, fascines and glacis, and his knowledge had not improved in the intervening years. He could not imagine the power that would be needed to force a passage through the walls of Delhi.
Beneath the ridge, the ground was a dense mass of green foliage, a thick forest of trees and gardens laid out all the way up to the city walls. Here and there, the white walls and thatched roofs of buildings peeped out from the tangle of greenery, the pretty homes now destined to be in no-man’s-land, an area sure to be the scene of much fighting in the coming days. Jack tried to fix the image in his mind before the picturesque setting was defiled and ravaged by war.
He looked back to the city, his gaze drawn by a procession of torches that moved along one of the walls. His eyes wandered over the buildings, the light of the moon and stars bright enough for him to be able to see almost across to the far wall. Tall, graceful minarets rose up alongside the proud spires of the Christian churches, and in every direction Hindu temples and Muhammadan mosques vied for his attention. Grander than all of them were the three great white marble domes of the Jama Masjid, the Great Mosque, its two high minarets dwarfing all the other buildings that surrounded it. He could only wonder at the accumulation of such a variety of religious fervour, the different faiths pressed together and existing cheek by jowl. Despite the huge gulf in their beliefs, the followers of the various religions had lived and worked alongside one another until the mutiny had arrived to cast such tolerance aside and replace it with hatred and suspicion.
Jack had never set much store by religion. He had seen little that inspired him to believe in a divine being whose magisterial grace governed the actions of men. He had witnessed too much cruelty and too much death for an easy faith. Yet he would still offer a prayer in the tense moments before battle, that bitter time when death returned
to sit quietly at his shoulder, a spectre that would stay with him until the enemy had been routed and the day was done.
He turned his gaze from the city, the thoughts of the faithful and the godless unsettling, and looked instead at the defensive positions Barnard had started to build on the great ridge. Hindu Rao’s House now formed the foremost of the British defences. It had been entrusted to the ferocious warriors in the dark green uniform of the Sirmur Gurkhas, commanded by the passionate Major Reid, the officer Jack had overheard arguing for an immediate assault on the city. The Gurkhas were the only native troops still trusted to take their place in the British forces. That afternoon, Jack had watched them as they repelled an enemy counter-attack that had come in the first hour of their occupation of the substantial stone house. The Gurkhas had stood firm as the wave of rebel sepoys rushed from the city in an attempt to throw back the newly arrived British forces. It had been an ill-conceived attack, a reaction rather than a premeditated strike, and the mutineers had paid a high price. Their fallen bodies still carpeted the lush slopes that led up the house, the corpses already stripped naked by the horde of camp followers that still clung to the British column. The Gurkhas would surely face many more such assaults if the British army was to remain on the ridge, but Jack was certain the dark-skinned fighters were more than capable of resisting all of the enemy’s attempts to oust them.
Just under two hundred yards behind Hindu Rao’s House, Barnard had established a strong point around the observatory. There he had stationed a strong infantry piquet with an entire battery of his heaviest guns. Another piquet, reinforced with two more field guns, was positioned in the ruined Pathan mosque beyond the observatory. Barnard might have placed his faith in the Gurkhas, but he’d made sure that the next closest positions were heavily defended.
The Flagstaff Tower, which Jack had watched the 60th Rifles capture with such courage, now formed the northernmost bastion of the British line. Two more field guns were positioned outside, with a strong force of infantry placed within the tower itself. If the enemy decided to try to flank the British line, then the troops and guns in the Flagstaff Tower would be ready to fight them off.
The Lone Warrior Page 19
