Bugles at Dawn

by Charles Whiting

  De Courcy said nothing. But John could see that he was now staring beyond the poor murdered woman, to the hoof-marks of unshod horses in the dust — lots of them. The creatures who had committed this foul atrocity, he told himself, burning with rage now, were not simply locals, crazed with the dope they sometimes smoked, but men of substance: men who owned horses. ‘Pindarees?’

  De Courcy shrugged. ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘But why?’ he cried angrily, as the bugler now called for the rest of the column to close up.

  ‘A half breed, wasn’t she?’ de Courcy said, as if that in itself was explanation enough.

  A few moments later the column began to wend its way past the corpse, the soldiers shivering a little as they saw it. Miss Lanham’s attendant, a pretty little thing of fifteen, cried out loud as they came level and flung up her sari to hide her face. But Miss Lanham’s face did not change when she looked down from her swaying perch. Beneath the swimming green surface of her eyes there was no emotion.

  That night de Courcy and John yawned a little, enjoying the pleasant cool of the evening on the beach, a soft wind stirring the ocean gently, as the men ate their first real meal of the day. A hundred yards away, Miss Lanham and her maid squatted native-fashion and ate by themselves.

  ‘This is a bad country,’ de Courcy said lazily, relaxed for the first time and sipping his chota peg as he sprawled on the cool sand. A little moodily he stared into the campfire. ‘There are perhaps a hundred million natives under the Company’s control, speaking six-hundred-odd languages and dialects, so they say, but I doubt if any one of them in whatever language can describe what motivates this damned place! There is no rhyme or reason to the whole country!’ He took another sip of his whisky. ‘Some of ‘em have religions which forbid them to kill an ant even. Yet they will slaughter their neighbours if they are of a different faith or lower caste without batting an eyelid. You can go into some of their villages to find the natives starving, with literally not a crust of bread to eat. Yet their sacred cows wander around un-touched. They honour their dead excessively, yet some of them put their dead out on the rooftops naked to be picked clean by those damned vultures!’ He shook his head, while John stared into the flames, awed. This, indeed, was a strange country.

  ‘Thank God,’ de Courcy said suddenly with unusual vehemence for him, ‘I’m coming to the end of my time here. I’ve made a couple of lakhs of rupees. They’ll see me out comfortably and I shall be leaving with a whole skin and with my health not totally ruined.’ He leaned forward and nodded towards Miss Lanham and her maid. ‘Take her father’s district, for instance,’ he said. ‘Early this year one of Collector Lanham’s district officers was stabbed to death by one of his Muslim servants, a man who had worked for him for years and whom he had treated well — at least for a niggah. Why? I shall tell you. The native had noticed that the district officer had started to sleep with his feet in the direction of Mecca — quite unwittingly, naturally. But the man took it as a deadly insult to his religion, which had to be avenged by death.’

  John breathed out hard. God, he told himself, his mind still full of the horrors of the afternoon, how much he had to learn about this great continent!

  De Courcy chuckled drily, an unusual sound coming from him, and continued, ‘So you know what Collector Lanham did? You see the Collector is chief judge and magistrate, as well as the Company’s agent for pulling in taxes. Well, after they’d hanged the Muslem, he ordered the cadaver to be sewn up in a pigskin. That meant, as the Muslem’s think the hog unclean, that he would be disdained in his heathen paradise. That sort of settled his hash in the hereafter, what, Bold?’

  ‘Is Mr Lanham a hard man?’ John ventured.

  De Courcy did not respond. He was beginning to relapse into his normal sombre self, but he did glance to Georgina Lanham, and John sensed that de Courcy bore a grudge against her; knew more about that beautiful girl than he would say.

  He yawned and de Courcy finished off the rest of his drink. ‘Crack o’ dawn,’ he said, ‘g’night.’ So saying he rolled himself in his blanket and seemed to go to sleep almost immediately.

  In time John slept too.

  FOUR

  Reveille startled him, cutting into a drugged sleep. Wearily rubbing his eyes, John sat up in his makeshift charpoy, as he had already learned to call his bed. Cursed by the fierce-faced rissaldar the first three mules, their muskets and powder unloaded, were straggling out of the little camp with their syces, heading for the nearest village to buy fodder for the day for the horses.

  The troopers, too, were already up, shivering in the dawn cool, hawking and spitting with great energy, running water through their nostrils to clean them out, making stomach-churning gurgling noises as they did so. John thought lazily it might well have been a spital back home, filled with consumption patients in the last throes of that terrible, wasting disease.

  ‘Chofa harzi, sahib,’ a soft voice said.

  It was one of the troopers, bearing a tray on which rested a piece of cold chapatti, filled with something or other, and a mug of steaming tea that gave off the odour of wood smoke. Gratefully John accepted the ‘little breakfast’, savouring the last few minutes of ease before another blazing hot day commenced.

  It was while he was crouching, sipping his hot tea alone, that he saw Georgina Lanham coming across the strand, attended by her little native girl carrying a canvas bucket. Miss Lanham was dressed like a native herself, in a green saree, and towelling her blonde ringlets. Obviously she had been down to the ocean to bathe. The saree clung to her beautiful body, revealing every soft curve, the swelling roundness of the breasts, the nipples erect against the thin material with the coldness of the water.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Bold,’ she said, greeting him properly for the first time since they had set out. ‘I trust you slept well?’ She paused above him for a moment, towelling her hair deliberately. From the ocean the breeze moulded the green gown even more tightly around her still-damp body, emphasizing her mound of Venus. He felt a sudden urge of desire.

  ‘Good morning,’ de Courcy’s voice, unnecessarily harsh and urgent, broke in. He touched his hand to his shako to Miss Lanham, face revealing nothing. ‘Morning, Bold,’ he addressed John. ‘Start to look lively. I’ll need you at the rear today. I want the rissalder up front with me.’

  Miss Lanham lowered her towel and looking disdainfully at the stern-faced cavalry officer, said mysteriously (at least to John), ‘Are we getting cold feet — again — Captain de Courcy?’

  ‘Not at all, Miss Lanham. Just a necessary precaution. Now then, Bold, hurry up with that tea.’ And with that he cantered off to where his men were beginning to form up, leaving John to wait awkwardly for Miss Lanham to leave before he could emerge from the blankets.

  By midday John realized that de Courcy was expecting trouble at any moment. Now whenever the column halted for the hourly five-minute break, he posted sentries all along the trail, once even ordering his bugler to shin up a tall palm to spy into the bright green jungle. The rissaldar reappeared, too, with the three mules, but they had found no fodder, and de Courcy and his native officer had a hurried whispered conversation, their faces grave. But it was not only the obvious precautions which made Bold aware that something was amiss. It was the jungle. The hot dry air that shimmered above it in blue waves seemed to exude menace. Even the usual irritating chatter of the monkeys had died away.

  When it did happen, it was sudden. Next to de Courcy at the front of the long column, the bugler had just begun to sound the next rest, when he started to slip sideways from his horse.

  The scarlet which spread rapidly across the small of the bugler’s silver-grey back told all. Urgently de Courcy rose in his stirrups and cried, ‘Dismount ... for God’s sake — dismount!’

  Almost immediately the orders were interrupted by the fierce war cries of horsemen who burst from the trees, sabres flashing.

  De Courcy fired his pistol, and the first of the charging horsemen shrieked and
dropped from the saddle, to be trampled on by the mounts behind.

  Now the troopers had their horses lying on the ground, and were dropping behind them, already aiming their Eliott carbines. A ragged volley struck the attackers. They went down everywhere, crying ‘Maro feringhee!’ De Courcy, cavorting round on his foam-flecked, terrified horse, cried in the same tongue, ‘Pindaree ... don’t snatch ... Pick your man ... aim for his guts … !’

  The troopers steadied. They knew the drill well enough, and were battle-experienced soldiers. As the rissalder, sabre drawn, stood up in full view of the enemy, they began to fire in regular volleys. Fire, twist on their backs to bite the end paper from the next cartridge while enemy balls whizzed over their heads and their panicky steeds twitched wildly, empty the black gunpowder into the carbine, ram home, squirm round, aim and fire again. Now their whole front was thick with smoke as the attackers milled round, taking casualties all the time, shrieking their heathen cries, looking for a break in the foreigners’ line, making little wild dashes forward only to be mown down in that merciless fire.

  John, to the rear of the stalled column, heard the outbreak of firing and after the first moment of shock felt absolutely calm. Under his command he had five troopers, and three syces with supply mules. None of his troopers understood more than a few words of English, but they were all veterans and they acted automatically, without orders, tugging down their animals at the edge of the trail and levelling their carbines at the jungle.

  But the Pindarees’ attack came from a totally unexpected quarter. Bunched together tightly, thrusting their bare knees into their comrades’ horses to keep them out of the way, tossing their sabres from left hand to right in order to confuse the defenders, they came pelting hell-for-leather down the trail to the rear. As his troopers scrambled to turn and face up to this crazy charge, John urged his own horse forward, already slashing mightily to left and right, screaming wild obscenities.

  With a crash that jarred his bones he smashed his horse into a white Arab. The Arab reared up, flailing with its forelegs, its rider caught off guard. John didn’t give him a chance to recover but thrust home his blade. It scraped along the man’s ribs in a way that made John grit his teeth, before sliding into the soft flesh.

  The Pindaree screamed shrilly. Swiftly John pulled out his sword, the blade suddenly a gleaming red. The Pindaree flew backwards, waving his hands in a crazy hurrah, and slammed to the ground.

  John urged his mount on, slashing to left and right, cutting his way into the stalled, confused mêlée while the troopers began to fire, picking off the attackers on the flanks. The Pindarees thrashed about, waving their sabres and yelling threats, but the steam had gone out of the attack. The men to John’s front, as he hacked away at a circle of dark, hawk-like faces, had the same vacant look which he had seen on the Imperial Guard after that first tremendous volley at Waterloo.

  Slowly, jabbing their naked heels into their horses, bits held rigidly tight to make their horses move backwards so that they were still facing John and his troopers, they began to retreat. At first slowly, defiantly — but as the thunder of hooves up the trail indicated that Captain de Courcy was sending reinforcements, more quickly — until finally with a great yell they broke and raced back pell-mell the way they had come.

  But John knew he and his men would not withstand another charge. There were too few of them. Making his way over the dead, his horse picking up its feet in a kind of nervous tripping dance, he signalled his men to remount. They needed no urging. John gave the nearest donkey a great slap across the rump and they were off, a ragged volley of fire from the jungle speeding them on their way. Five minutes later they had rejoined the main party, accompanied by the gasping troopers de Courcy had dispatched to assist him, and John Bold knew that they were lost, if the Pindarees attacked again.

  A good half of de Courcy’s men lay sprawled dead or dying on the trampled trail, while their wounded mounts, long streamers of blood trickling down their heaving flanks, hobbled around, neighing and whinnying piteously, or licked the faces of their dead masters, as if the beasts felt this might bring them to life again. De Courcy had only just avoided being completely overrun.

  For a moment or two, in the tension which follows a battle, John felt at a loss. What was he supposed to do? He glanced over to Miss Lanham’s shattered conveyance. She knelt there in the dust next to it, staring down at her little maid. A ball had smashed into the centre of her face, causing a great gaping wound. Now she squirmed and writhed in the dust, choking in her own blood, her dark hands grabbing at handfuls of dirt in her death throes; while Miss Lanham stared at her in silence.

  There was no fear on her face and in her right hand she clutched a small lady’s pistol, as if she were determined to use it when the time came. John nodded his approval. This was no silly hysterical female, calling for her sal volatile salts at the first sight of a pinprick of blood. Georgina Lanham was as brave and as fearless as any man present here this bloody day.

  De Courcy came cantering up, his shako gone and his right cheek cleft by a vicious sabre blow. But he seemed unaware of the terrible wound. He sheathed his own sabre, blood-red to the hilt, and cried in sudden alarm, ‘Georgina, are you hurt?’ There was genuine concern in his voice and it was only later that John was to realize that he had used her Christian name.

  She shook her head and stood up as if to show him that it was not her blood splattered over the green saree. At her feet the girl suddenly arched her spine, her hands clawing as if she were climbing an invisible ladder. Next moment she fell back dead.

  De Courcy sighed, as if with relief, and forgot Miss Lanham. ‘Listen, Bold,’ he said urgently. ‘I cannot let the muskets and powder fall into their damned thieving hands. There is no hope of saving them, so I’m going to blow up the lot. You are leaving with Georg — ’ he corrected himself hastily — ‘with Miss Lanham.’

  *

  The yellow bone-dry grass caught fire immediately. John and the girl sprang back, surprised by the sudden intensity of the flames as they hurried, sparked off by the trail of gunpowder, to where the gunpowder kegs and muskets were stacked. In a very few moments, John told himself, as balls hissed through the air lethally all around, there was going to be one devil of an explosion.

  ‘Are you ready?’ he cried to her above the thunder of the muskets. She gave a final wrench at the bottom half of her saree and ripped it off, revealing shapely legs. ‘I can run better this way,’ she explained, her voice unflustered and steady as if she did this sort of thing every day.

  He nodded. The plan de Courcy had worked out for them was simple enough. They were to make a dash on foot for the shelter of the jungle when the gunpowder exploded. The Pindarees would not follow them into the thick jungle where their horses would be useless. ‘And they never would abandon their chargers. The horses are their working capital,’ as de Courcy had explained. ‘To soldier — and loot — they need a mount.’ There they would hide as long as it took de Courcy to extricate what was left of the column from the trap.

  John flashed a glance up the trail. The fiery-faced rissaldar, supporting himself against a bullet-chipped palm, blood jetting from a wounded shoulder, was directing the fire of the main body of survivors. But the Pindarees were becoming bolder, making little sorties, charging along the trail, yelling their war cries, swinging their sabres, bent low over their mounts, only to wither away under the concentrated fire of the troopers. But the outnumbered defence couldn’t last much longer. Even de Courcy had taken up a musket.

  FIVE

  ‘Ready, Miss Lanham?’

  ‘Ready!’

  ‘Now!’

  Then they were running all out for the cover of the thick undergrowth. A cry of rage rose from the Pindarees. Balls began to cut the air around them and stitch spurts of earth at their feet.

  De Courcy, kneeling now, blood spurting from a fresh wound in his side, yelled an urgent order. A ragged volley slammed into a group of Pindarees galloping towards the
two fugitives. They were blasted out of their saddles and hurtled to the earth in a mess of flying limbs and dying horses. But there were others, already dragging their mounts round to intercept the runners. They came springing over their dead and dying comrades, scimitars flashing.

  Then it came. Beneath their flying feet the very earth shook. Behind them a great sheet of flame split the sky as the mass of gunpowder went up. John yelled with pain. It felt as if a horse had kicked him between the shoulders. He was hurtled forward, dragging Georgina Lanham with him, and flung into the jungle ...

  John’s lips formed a silent ‘Quiet!’

  Georgina, her face lathered with dirt and sweat, hair lank, saree ripped by thorns, obeyed instantly. They had been on the run all afternoon in that murderous heat. For a while they had moved parallel to the track. But constant forays by the Pindarees hunting them had forced them deeper and deeper into the jungle. But even here they weren’t safe. Local men, forced by the Pindarees, would be looking for them.

  But now John had had enough of the jungle. He had decided on a bold new plan: to do the unexpected and move back to the track where they might find horses and flee post-haste to the safety of Collector Lanham’s fort.

  But still nature seemed against them. To their front, in a glade just off the track, were just the two horses they needed for their flight, tethered to saplings. For a bold and brave young man it would not be difficult to take them, save for one thing. The glade was bathed in the beautiful but lethal yellow light of the tropical moon; and the two Pindarees who owned the horses, which at this moment John desired with an almost physical longing, were definitely not asleep.

  They squatted on their haunches, chatting in the desultory manner of men forced to stay awake at night. They were obviously guards. John bit his bottom lip and considered the problem.

  After a while he crooked his finger and she silently came closer. He felt the softness of her breast and scented the exciting odour of woman as he placed his mouth tight to her ear. Exhausted as he was, he still controlled himself with difficulty. ‘I shall kill them,’ he whispered. ‘But I can’t use my pistol, that’s for an emergency.’