Far Pavilions (151 page)

It had been even harder than the Begum feared, and in the course of it they had lost one of the horses, the animal having slipped while being led along a narrow track that was barely more than a ledge of rock, and fallen to its death in a gully some three hundred feet below. Gul Baz had risked his neck climbing down that treacherous, icy slope in the teeth of a gale in order to rescue the saddle-bags, because they could not afford to lose the provisions they contained, and he had had a hard time crawling back with them to safety. Later they had twice been snowbound for several days, but the Begum's prayer had been answered: after more than a fortnight on the road they had reached Kabul safely, and knocking at the door of a house in a quiet street in the shadow of the Bala Hissar, found Ash there.

54

On the twenty-first day of February 1879, Shere Ali died in Mazar-i-Sherif in Afghan Turkestan, and his son Yakoub Khan became Amir in his stead. But the new Amir, far from making overtures to the British, was already hard at work building up and re-organizing the Afghan army.

Cavagnari's spies reported that the fighting-men in Kabul and Ghazi were determined to avenge the capture of Ali Masjid and the Peiwar Kotal, and that they already numbered seven thousand cavalry and twelve thousand infantry, together with sixty guns; though this and similar items of information had been treated with a certain amount of scepticism, as it came from native informers who had a tendency to embroider a good story. But Wigram Battye had received private confirmation of this from someone signing himself ‘Akbar’, the writer also asserting that even those tribes who were regarded as friendly were becoming restless and hostile, and Afridis everywhere were demanding to know why, now that Shere Ali was dead, the Indian Government should continue to keep an army in Afghanistan and to build forts and barracks in their country? Did this mean that the English did not intend to keep the promises made to the people of Afghanistan at the beginning of the war?

‘…and I would strongly advise,’ wrote ‘Akbar’, ‘that you do what you can to persuade those fatheads in authority that this is no time to allow the Survey Department to send out endless small parties to draw maps of the country; it only serves to stir up ill-feeling and confirm a widespread suspicion that the English are plotting to take over the whole of Afghanistan, for as you know, the Pathans have an inveterate hatred of the Surveyor and believe that where the Government sends one, an army will follow. So for God's sake try and get them to stop it.’

Wigram had done his best; but without success.

Mr Scott and his assistants had been savagely attacked while out sketching in the hills, four of their escort being killed and another two wounded; and three weeks later Wally had been involved in a similar incident when he and a troop of the Guides Cavalry, together with a company of the 45th Sikhs, had been ordered to escort yet another survey party. Once again infuriated villagers had attacked the map-makers, and the Sikhs' Company Commander had been mortally wounded.

‘Pity about Barclay,’ said Wigram. ‘He was a good chap.’

‘One of the best,’ agreed Wally. ‘It seems such a waste, somehow. If it had happened in a pukka battle, I suppose one wouldn't have felt so bad about it. But this –!’ He kicked an inoffensive boot-tree across the tent, and after a moment or two added bitterly: ‘You'd have thought that things were tricky enough in these parts without our deliberately antagonizing the locals by turning up in out-of-the-way places armed with drawing-boards, compasses and theodolites, and letting 'em see that we were making detailed maps of their home villages. Ash was right: it's a lunatic thing to do just now. I suppose you haven't heard from him again?’

‘Not since then. I imagine it can't be all that easy for him to send letters. Besides, he must know that each time he does, he runs the risk of being betrayed to the Afghans or blackmailed into paying everything he has in exchange for silence. And anyway, he can have no guarantee that a letter has been delivered.’

‘No, I suppose not. I wish I could see him. It's been such a long time, and I miss him like the devil… I worry about him, too. I keep thinking what it must be like to be alone and on the run in this damnable country, week after week for months on end, knowing that if you put a foot wrong you won't live to repeat the mistake. I don't understand how he can do it. Faith, I know I couldn't!’

‘Nor I,’ said Wigram soberly. ‘God knows I'm no glutton for fighting, but given the choice, I'd rather take part in half-a-dozen full-scale battles than take on the job of spying behind the enemy lines. One can be scared rigid before a battle – I always am – but the other business calls for a different kind of courage: the lonely, cold-blooded kind that most of us don't have. On the other hand, one has to remember that most of us don't happen to be human chameleons, and that Ashton is a freak in that he can think in Pushtu. Or in Hindi, when the occasion arises – it merely seems to depend on where he happens to be at the time. I've sometimes wondered if he ever thinks or dreams in English. Not very often, I imagine.’

Wally turned away to jerk back the tent-flap and stand gazing up at the hills that surrounded Jalalabad, dark now against the darkening sky, while the boisterous March wind tossed his hair into disorder and swirled about the tent, setting the canvas flapping and sending files and papers fluttering to the ground: ‘I wonder if he's somewhere around here, watching us from those hills up there?’

‘I shouldn't think so,’ said Wigram. ‘He's probably in Kabul. Ah! – this sounds like my bath arriving – first I've had in days. The horrors of active service. Well see you at dinner.’

But Wally's surmise had been nearer the mark than Wigram's, for in fact Ash was at that moment in a little village called Fatehabad, less than twenty miles away.

Ever since the outbreak of war, a certain Ghilzai chief, one Azmatulla Khan, had been actively at work fomenting a rising against the British inaders by the inhabitants of the Lagman Valley; and late in February Colonel Jenkins and a small column had dispersed Azmatulla's forces in the valley, but failed to capture him. Now he was known to be back again, and with an even larger following, and on the last day of March Ash had dispatched a further piece of ill news to Jalalabad. The Khugiani tribesmen, whose territory lay barely seventeen miles distant to the south of Fatehabad, were also gathering in great numbers at one of their border fortresses.

On receipt of this information, the Divisional Commander had given orders that certain units were to set out with all speed to stamp out this new unrest before it gathered strength. They would march that very night, taking no tents or heavy baggage with them, and the force would be divided into three columns: one of infantry, another to consist of two squadrons of cavalry (drawn respectively from the Bengal Lancers and the 10th Hussars), and the third of infantry and cavalry combined. This last, which was under the command of General Gough and included two squadrons of Guides, would march on Fatehabad and disperse the Khugianis. Of the other two columns, one would move against Azmatulla Khan and his bravos, while the other crossed the heights of the Siah Koh to cut off the enemy's retreat.

The speed with which the operation was planned and put into execution, and the fact that the columns would move off after dark, would, the General hoped, result in Azmatulla Khan and the Khugianis being taken by surprise; though he should have known better, for Jalalabad was full of Afghan spies – there were probably scores of them in the town and as many others keeping watch by the Kabul River, and not a sabre could have stirred without it being known within the hour. Then, too, following the occupation of the town, Colonel Jenkins – now Brigadier-General Jenkins – had inspected the ford by which the ioth Hussars and the Bengal Lancers would have to cross the river
en route
to the Lagman Valley, and not only condemned it as unsafe, but advised that it should never be attempted by night even at a time when the river was low. But his report had either been pigeon-holed or lost, for though the river was at present in spate, the plan was not altered…

The moon was still up when the two squadrons of Hussars and Lancers left camp, but it was sinking fast, and by the time the ford was reached it had been lost to sight behind the near hills, and the valley lay deep in shadow. The river here ran a full three quarters of a mile wide, divided into two channels by a stony island in midstream, and as the trestle bridge had suffered its annual removal some weeks earlier, in order to prevent its being washed away and lost (a major disaster in an area where timber was not easily come by), the only way to cross was by the ford: a wide bar of boulder-strewn gravel that spanned the river between dangerous rapids.

The valley reverberated with the voice of the swollen river, and as the squadrons formed up in half sections, four abreast on the stony bank, even the clash and jingle of accoutrements and the clatter of the chargers' hooves could barely be heard above the roar of the rapids. But the local guide stepped confidently into the water and waded across, followed by the Bengal Lancers whose men, accustomed from childhood to the treacherous Indian rivers had reached the far side in safety. But inevitably, the pull of the current had forced the long column to give ground before it, so that by the time the ammunition mules and their drivers entered the river on the Lancers' heels they found themselves stepping off into deep water, and missing the ford, were snatched away into the rapids.

Their cries were lost in the roar of the river, and the darkness prevented the 10th Hussars – pressing too closely behind them – from seeing what had happened. Captain Spottiswood of the Hussars, at their head, urged his horse forward, felt it lose its footing, recover, and then lose it again. And within minutes the river was full of desperate men and frenzied horses, fighting for dear life as they rolled over and over in the icy grip of the foaming, furious rapids.

Some, including the Captain, survived. But many did not. Numbed by the bitter cold and hampered by sodden uniforms and cumbersome boots, those who escaped being kicked to death by their struggling chargers were dragged under by the weight of sabres, belts and ammunition pouches, and carried downward, battered and helpless among the unseen boulders, to drown in the deep water.

Forty-two troopers, an officer and three non-commissioned officers died that night – out of a squadron that barely half-an-hour earlier had ridden out from camp seventy-five strong. The news of the disaster had been brought by dripping, riderless horses careering through the lines of the Horse Artillery, making for their own lines beyond; and all that night, by the light of bonfires and torches, men searched and called along the banks of the river.

When dawn broke, the bodies of the officer and eighteen of the rank and file were found wedged among the rocks or drifting face-downward in the eddies under the banks. The rest had been swept down on the flood and were never seen again. As for Azmatulla Khan, his spies having warned him of what was in the wind, he had promptly removed from the Lagman Valley, and the two columns that had been sent to take him had returned empty-handed.

The Khugianis also forewarned had shown less caution.

The mixed column whose task was to deal with that tribe had, as planned, been the last to move off. But their departure having been further delayed by the disaster at the ford, midnight had come and gone before they left, and it was was close on one o'clock by the time they marched – seeing as they went the distant gleam of bonfires and flares along the river, where the frantic search for survivors continued.

‘I said this was an ill-omened year,’ muttered Zarin to Risaldar Mahmud Khan of the Guides as the squadrons moved off in the darkness, and Mahmud Khan had replied grimly: ‘And it is not yet old. Let us hope that for many of these Khugianis it will grow no older after tomorrow – and that we ourselves will live to see Mardan again and draw our pensions and watch our children's children become Jemadars and Risaldars in their turn.’

‘
Ameen!
’ murmured Zarin devoutly.

Despite the darkness and the difficulty of keeping to a track that even by daylight was barely distinguishable from the rough and stony ground that stretched away on either hand, the long column of infantry, cavalry and artillery had made good progress, and it was still dark when the cavalry, riding ahead, were halted within a mile of the village of Fatehabad and ordered to wait there until the rest of the column caught up with them. By then there was not much of the night left, but Wigram and his two squadrons, old hands at this sort of campaigning, selected a spot under some trees and made themselves tolerably comfortable for what little remained of it.

The village was reported to be friendly, but when the dawn broke it was seen that no smoke rose from it, and a scouting party sent to investigate found that it was deserted. The villagers had taken all their foodstuffs and livestock with them, and except for a few pariah dogs and a gaunt cat who spat at the sowars from the doorway of an empty house, nothing moved. ‘So much for our intelligence,’ observed Wigram, eating breakfast in the shade of a tree. ‘ “Friendly”, they said. About as friendly as a nest of hornets! It's obvious that the whole blasted jing-bang have run off to join the enemy.’