Far Pavilions (154 page)

The solid mass of the enemy had been shattered into fragments by the impact of the cavalry charging headlong into it, and now the Khugianis were fighting in small groups, clinging tenaciously to the grassy, stone-strewn slope and standing their ground with fanatical courage. Wally caught a brief glimpse of Zarin, teeth clenched in a ferocious grin as he drove the point of his sabre into the throat of a shrieking
ghazi,
and of Risaldar Mahmud Khan – his right arm hanging useless and his sabre gone, holding his carbine left-handed and wielding it like a club.

Here and there in the press small whirlpools formed about an unhorsed sowar, defending himself with all the ferocity of a wounded boar against the tribesmen who circled about him, waiting for an opportunity to slash at him with knife or tulwar. One such, Sowar Dowlat Ram, had become entangled with his fallen charger, and the three Khugianis who had brought the horse down rushed in to kill its rider as he struggled to free himself from the dying animal. But Wally had seen him fall and now he charged to the rescue, whirling his blood-stained sabre and shouting ‘
Daro mut
, Dowlat Ram!
Tagra ho jao,
jawan!
Shabash
!’
*

The three Khugianis turned as one to meet the yelling thunderbolt that fell upon them. But Wally had the advantage of being mounted, and he was the better swordsman. His sabre took one man across the eyes and swept on and down to shear through the sword arm of the second; and as the first fell backward, blind and screaming, Dowlat Ram, still trapped by one foot, reached out and caught him by the throat, while Wally parried a wild blow from the third, and with a swift backhand cut, sliced through the man's neck, all but severing it from the crouching body.

‘
Shabash,
Sahib!’ applauded Dowlat Ram, freeing himself with a last frantic kick and scrambling to his feet. ‘That was well done indeed. But for you I would now be a dead man.’ He lifted his hand in salute and Wally said breathlessly: ‘You will be yet, if you aren't careful. Get back to the rear.’

He jerked his revolver from its holster and put a bullet through the head of the thrashing horse, and wheeling Mushki, plunged back into the fray, using the maddened waler as a battering ram and shouting encouragement to his jawans, calling on them to avenge the wounding of Battye-Sahib and dispatch these sons of noseless mothers to Jehanum (hell).

The Khugianis were still holding their ground and fighting fiercely, but there was little shooting now; after the first volley few found time to reload, and in the frenzy and turmoil of battle, firearms had become a liability as it was not possible to ensure that a bullet intended for an enemy would not bring down a friend. Many were using their muskets as clubs, but one man at least, a Khugiani Chief, had taken time to reload.

Wally saw the musket aimed at him and flung himself to one side: and as the bullet whipped past him, he put spurs to Mushki and rode at the man with his dripping sabre. But this time he had met his match. The Khugiani Chief was a skilled fighter and far quicker on his feet than the three tribesmen who had brought down Dowlat Ram. Unable to reload, he stood his ground, ducked the sabre stroke by dropping to his knees, and as the mare plunged past, struck upwards with a long Afghan knife.

The razor-sharp blade sliced through Wally's riding boot, but barely scratched his skin, and he dragged the mare back on her haunches and wheeled to attack again; the same fierce joy of battle in his young face as on the eager bearded one of the hardened fighter who crouched, white teeth showing in a tigerish grin, waiting for him. Once again the Chief dropped to avoid the blow, and as it missed him he sprang to his feet like a coiled spring released and ran in, the knife in one hand and a wicked curved tulwar in the other.

Wally only just managed to swing the mare round in time to parry the attack, and the Chief leapt back and stood ready, poised on his toes, his knees .a little bent and his sinewy body swaying as a king cobra sways before it strikes, alert to duck again, and holding his weapons low so that when his adversary spurred forward he could strike at the easier target of the waler's legs or belly and bring down horse and rider both.

By now the duel had drawn a circle of watching tribesmen who, momentarily forgetting the larger issues, stood back, knives in hand, waiting to see their champion slay the
feringhi.
But the Chief made the mistake of repeating a successful manoeuvre once too often, and this time when Wally attacked he made allowance for it: he too aimed lower, striking at the body instead of the head. And when once again the Chief dropped to his knees to avoid the blow, the edge of the heavy cavalry sabre sheared through his left temple and he fell sideways, his bearded face a mask of blood. His tulwar scratched the mare's flank as he fell, and when Mushki reared up, screaming, the tribesmen who had rushed in as they saw him fall – and who would not have given way before that dripping sabre – scattered in the face of those murderous hooves and let horse and rider through.

Minutes later, and without warning, the tide turned.

The massed ranks of the enemy broke and scores of Khugianis turned and ran, racing desperately for the safety of their entrenchments on the plateau. And as the cavalry plunged forward, cutting and slashing as they went, the scores became hundreds, and then thousands: and the battle turned into a rout…

‘Gone away –!’ yelled Wally, hatless and triumphant: ‘
Shabash,
jawans!
Maro
!
Maro
!
Khalsa-ji ki jai
!’ And gathering the scattered squadrons together, he stood up in his stirrups and gave the order: ‘Gallop! –
Hamla Karo
!’

The Guides obeyed, spurring recklessly forward up the long sweep of broken ground, until suddenly Wally saw for the first time something that had been hidden from him by the rise of the ground. And seeing it his heart seemed to stop.

Between the base of the steeper ground that fell sharply away below the rim of the plateau and the spot where the slope began to level out lay a natural obstacle that presented a far worse hazard than the man-made breastworks of loose rock and stone above: a deep gash in the hillside, running parallel to the rim, cut long ago by some mountain torrent that had dried up and left behind a welter of stones at the bottom of a sheer drop of eight or nine feet. On its far side the hill rose steeply, and along the crest stood the entrenchments – now filling again with wild-eyed tribesmen who turned to howl defiance and fire down into the pursuing cavalry.

It was a sight calculated to daunt many a better and more experienced soldier than young Lieutenant Hamilton. But Wally was drunk with the intoxicating frenzy of battle and he did not hesitate. He used his spur on Mushki, who leapt down into the gulf and bounded across the stones. And behind him, in a wild, slithering, shouting confusion, poured the Guides.

Once down they scattered to left and right searching for a possible way up and out, and when they found one, scrambled up in twos and threes and charged straight into the attack: Wally, with his trumpeteer a close second, the first to reach the summit where the long line of breastworks barred the way to the level ground of the plateau. Here the many tribesmen who had managed to scramble back behind these defences turned at bay, firing their muskets as fast as they could load. But the breast-high wall had not checked Mushki. She rose to it with all the ease and grace of a thoroughbred hunter taking a stone wall in Kerry, and by a miracle, and her rider's skill with a sabre, came through the desperate hand-to-hand fighting that followed as she had come through the battle on the slopes below, with no more than a scratch.

There had been no co-ordination in that fight, or any time to wait for the infantry to come up on the flank, or the guns to follow and get into position. The Guides had attacked singly or in small groups, and with a ferocity that drove the undisciplined tribesmen from their entrenchments and back onto the open stretch of the plateau. For though the Khugianis fought stubbornly, most of their Chiefs and all their standard-bearers were dead. And without leaders to rally them, they failed to regroup.

Their entrenchments had been carried in a matter of minutes, and once again they broke and ran, dispersing across the level plateau like fallen leaves in an autumn gale as they fled with bursting lungs and straining muscles for the uncertain refuge of the forts and villages that nestled in the cultivated valleys beyond.

But they were not permitted to go freely. The guns of the artillery were ordered to open fire on any concentration of the tribesmen and the cavalry ordered to pursue; and Guides and Hussars together swept off in the wake of the retreating enemy, cutting down scores of fugitives as they went, and only drawing rein when they were almost under the walls of the Khugiani stronghold of Koja Khel.

The Battle of Fatehabad was over and won, and the weary victors turned and rode back across the blood-soaked plateau, past the tragic debris of war: the mutilated bodies of dead and dying men, the discarded weapons, broken standards,
chupplis,
turbans and empty cartridge-belts…

General Gough's column had left Jalalabad with orders to ‘disperse the Khugianis’; and they had done so. But it had been a terrible slaughter, for the Khugianis were brave men, and as Ash had warned, they had fought like tigers. Even when they broke and ran, groups of them had turned to fire on their pursuers, or attack them, sword in hand. Over three hundred of them had been killed, and more than three times that number wounded; but they had taken a grim toll. Gough's small force had lost nine men killed and forty wounded, and of the latter – one of whom died later of his wounds – twenty-seven were Guides: as also were seven of the dead – among them Wigram Battye and Risaldar Mahmud Khan…

Wally, having seen Wigram fall, had supposed that he had been carried back to the rear and out of danger. But his Destiny had been waiting for Wigram that day and he had not been permitted to escape it. He had ordered Wally, the only other British officer, to take the squadrons forward; and the boy had obeyed him – charging into the thick of the fight and coming through unscathed, with no mark on him except for a faint scratch and a slashed riding boot. But Wigram, following slowly and painfully on foot with the aid of one of his sowars, had been hit again in the hip.

As he fell for the third time a group of tribesmen, rushing in for the kill, had been beaten off, for the sowar carried a carbine as well as a cavalry sabre, and Wigram had his revolver. Five of the attackers fell and the rest drew back, but Wigram was losing blood fast. He reloaded the revolver and with an enormous effort of will managed to raise himself on one knee. But as he did so, a stray bullet fired by someone in the mêlée further up the slope struck him full in the chest and he fell forward and died without a word.

An exultant shout went up from his surviving assailants, and they rushed forward again to hack at his body, for to an Afghan the corpse of a dead enemy merits mutilation – and never more so than when the enemy is a
feringhi
and an Infidel. But they had reckoned without Jiwan Singh, Sowar.

Jiwan Singh had snatched up the revolver, and standing astride his dead Commander, fought them off with bullet and sabre. He had stood there for more than an hour, protecting Wigram's body against all comers, and when the battle was over and the surviving Guides came back from the plateau to count their dead and wounded, they found him still on guard; and around him in a circle the bodies of no less than eleven dead Khugianis.

Later, when all the official reports had been sent in, the praise and blame apportioned and decorations awarded – and when the critics who had not been present had pointed out errors of judgement and explained how much better they themselves would have handled the affair – Sowar Jiwan Singh was awarded the Order of Merit. But to Wigram Battye there fell a greater honour…

When the wounded had been taken away and the stretcher-bearers came for his body to carry it back to Jalalabad (as any grave near the battle-field would certainly be dug up and desecrated as soon as the column had gone) his sowars had refused to let the ambulance men touch it. ‘It is not fitting that such a one as Battye-Sahib should be borne by strangers,’ said their Sikh spokesman. ‘We ourselves will carry him.’ And they had done so.

Most of them had been in the saddle since dawn, and all, in the heat of the day, had ridden in two charges and fought a desperate hour-long battle against tremendous odds. They were weary to the verge of exhaustion and Jalalabad was more than twenty long miles away over a road that was little more than a track over stony ground. But all through that warm April night, relays of his men plodded forward, carrying Wigram's body shoulder high. Not upon a hospital litter, but laid upon cavalry lances.

Zarin had taken his turn at that sad task, and so for a mile or two had Wally. And once a man who was not a sowar, but from his dress appeared to be a Shinwari, came out of the darkness and took the place of one of the pallbearers. Strangely enough, no one had made any move to prevent him or questioned his right to be there, and it almost seemed as though he was known to them and had been expected; though he spoke only once, very briefly and in an undertone to Zarin, whose reply was equally brief and inaudible. Only Wally, stumbling tiredly in the rear, his mind blurred by fatigue and grief and the sour aftermath of battle, did not notice the presence of a stranger in the cortège. And at the next stop the man vanished as swiftly and unobtrusively as he had come.

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