Dust and Steel

And after a brace of night marches and sleep-short days, Morgan came to agree with the gunner, for the tiresome cattle seemed to ignore hunger, thirst, threats or reason, suiting themselves entirely whether they wished to obey orders or not, and apparently impervious to all stimuli other than those that they imposed upon themselves.

The hours of darkness were hells of delay and infuriating petty problems – slipped saddles, shed shoes, broken spokes and binding axles – whilst the days provided little sleep at all as the sun beat down.

After almost two weeks of stuttering progress, McGucken was tramping alongside Morgan one night, reliving some story of his time with the 36th in Gibraltar when vivid flashes lit up the road at the front of the column.

‘What in God’s name’s that?’ asked Morgan, though he knew well enough as the flat bangs of musket-fire and the sweeping whistle of lead shook him from his reverie.

‘Bloody ambush, sir,’ yelled McGucken, already sprinting hard towards the trouble. ‘Come on, Captain Morgan, sir, you don’t want to miss the fun.’

Morgan’s belly was tight with fear, but he scrabbled after McGucken when more flashes reflected off the bushes and trees as a couple of British rifles returned fire.

The track was narrow and greasy, blocked by animals and drivers, shrieking women and cowering grooms. Worse still, as the pair ran forward, grabbing their own men as they went, so a stream of panic-filled bearers came bowling down the verges towards them, shouting, eyes wide with fright, barging and pushing their way to the rear. As the mob skittered past Morgan in the dark, one man fell under the feet of the others, pulling at something in his shoulder whilst a nearby camel suddenly sank to its knees, its breath soughing coarsely from its lips. As he jostled his way forward, Morgan was aware of something fast and menacing whispering through the night: flights of arrows were thumping into flesh and saddles and tack, or quivering in the mud around his ankles.

‘Jaysus, this is like the bloody crusades, sir,’ McGucken puffed as they ran up to the head of the column. ‘What else will the fuckers use, boiling oil?’

But before Morgan could reply, McGucken spotted two figures stumbling hard down the track on the other side of the camels and the frightened oxen, away from the noise of battle in front.

‘Corporal Pegg…’ even though the arrows continued to fly, McGucken’s barrack-yard yell brought the fugitive and his companion to a sudden halt, ‘…where d’ye think yer going?’

Despite the darkness, Morgan could see the guilt on Pegg’s face.

‘Er…nowhere, Colour Sar’nt,’ Pegg stammered. ‘I were just mekin’ sure that—’

‘Put that bint down, Corporal, and get back to your men.’

Even in this chaos, McGucken’s strength of character could galvanise others. It was what made him so indispensable, thought Morgan.

Pegg objected no further: the native girl whom he had been sheltering shrieked off into the night, clutching her sari about her, whilst he skulked his way back to the front of the column, trying to look as though he’d never been away.

‘What’s going on, Sarn’t Ormond?’ Morgan found the non-commissioned officer kneeling in the grass surrounded by a handful of his men. They stared hard at the fringe of jungly forest that loomed darkly fifty yards away from them, weapons ready, peering down the barrels, looking for a target.

‘Got shot at from over yonder, sir.’ Ormond pointed at the trees with a nod of his forehead, never taking his eyes off the source of danger nor his finger off his rifle’s trigger. ‘Couple of the lads fired back.’

But before Ormond could finish, another volley boomed out from the trees, the rounds whipping high overhead in the darkness. Though they were wide of their mark, Morgan found himself flat on his belly, pressing his body into the grit and mud of the track whilst a camel danced about him, the creature’s decorative bells jingling madly, more frightened of the human’s strange behaviour round his feet than the noise and uproar.

Christ, that was a mile off, thought Morgan. What am I doing down here on my belt buckle? What’ll the boys make of me? They’re not scrubbing around in the dirt, are they?

The crackle of shots from his own men helped to restore Morgan’s senses as Ormond turned to him, his face damp with sweat in the moonlight, and yelled, ‘What d’you want us to do, sir?’

‘He’ll be leading us out to clear them.’ Happily, McGucken was there at Morgan’s elbow, as calm as if it were all a blankfiring exercise. ‘Won’t you, sir? Get yer spikes on, lads.’

And whilst the clutch of men around them pulled the slender, eighteen-inch-long bayonets from their scabbards and slipped the sockets firmly over the end of their barrels, Morgan collected himself, dragging his blade from his belt and pushing his hand through the sword knot whilst his arse shrivelled tight in an all-too-familiar way. He licked his lips, held the gently curved steel out in front of him and stumbled forward over the greasy verge at the edge of the road and into the long grass beyond.

‘Come on, Grenadiers, follow me!’ Morgan’s words seemed to come from a stranger as the little crowd of men surged after him, weapons levelled, half cheering as they crashed over the broken ground.

His mind raced back to the last time he’d been ambushed at night outside Sevastopol. Then it had been screaming Russians, banging rifles and popping flares. But the enemy was nowhere to be seen now, just the ominous, black tree line that got closer with each clumsy stride.

‘There’s the bastards…there. Fire, lads.’ Ormond’s breathless voice came from somewhere behind Morgan, as drab spectral figures paused, snatched at bowstrings and scrambled away into the depths of the forest before the troops could close with them.

A covey of arrows flickered harmlessly around as a handful of rifles crashed, the yellow flashes instantly lighting up the night, giving just a glimpse of lithe, running shadows, one of which was flung onto its face as if by the swipe of a giant’s hand.

‘Got ’im,’ McGucken growled with satisfaction, the cloud of powder smoke hanging heavily amongst the leaves and branches. ‘Stop here, lads. Don’t chase ’em, they’re not for catching, now.’

Morgan reached for a tree trunk for support as he sucked for breath, his sword suddenly leaden. ‘Get the men reloaded, please, Colour-Sar’nt.’ Experience had taught him that, at least.

‘Aye, sir,’ McGucken replied. ‘You heard the officer,’ even as he pushed around looking for his quarry in the undergrowth as a sportsman might search for a downed woodcock.

‘’Ere ’e is, Jock…bus.’ Sergeant Ormond had been in more bloody scrimmages with the colour-sergeant than either could count and was allowed such familiarity. Now he kneeled, parting the grass so that the moonlight might let him see just what the enemy looked like.

‘Skinny little runt,’ said Ormond as Morgan and McGucken clustered round. ‘Nice shot, though, right through the neck.’

It was difficult for Morgan to see much in the dark; all he could make out was a man not much bigger than a child wearing a dirty grey dhoti from which stuck stick-thin legs and bare muddy feet. Stained teeth were visible under a wispy moustache, lank hair covered much of his face, whilst blood, black by the light of the moon, still pumped from a long gash that ran from under his left ear across to his windpipe.

‘Yon’s no sepoy, is ’e, sir?’ McGucken held up a slender curved bow that he’d pulled from the dead man’s hand.

‘Certainly doesn’t look like it, Colour-Sar’nt. He’s no uniform or belts on him. More like a common badmash, I’d say,’ replied Morgan.

But before the professional debate began over exactly what sort of man it was that McGucken had reduced to cold meat, a gale of shouting and frightened trumpeting from the elephants that towed the heavy ammunition carts broke out from the column waiting on the road behind them.

Morgan began to run through the brush, back towards the road, the noise of the elephants being joined by a strange, feral squealing.

‘Come on, then, get after the company commander.’ McGucken chivvied the troops into a stumbling run, away from the dead man at whom they had all been gawping. ‘Watch out for any of these rogues hidin’ in the grass.’

But the danger came from quite a different source. When the column stopped, the elephants had jammed themselves tightly together at the rear of the line behind the guns and just in front of the spare oxen and some dhoolies carrying the sick. Here the track was deeply sunken, its banks reaching up five feet or more, effectively penning in the animals and their burdens.

‘Get out of the way!’ Morgan, at the head of his panting men, had been able to make out the forms of the six elephants wildly swaying about, trunks outstretched, trumpeting deafeningly in the night, stamping and stomping at something that shrieked beneath their feet. Now, one of the huge beasts came lumbering over the bank straight towards the group of soldiers, mighty ears flapping wildly, tusks thrashing left and right, its mahout clutching helplessly to its neck as its ammunition cart floundered after it. As the monstrous thing cut a swathe through the running troops so a wheel came off the caisson, which slewed round, spilling great, black, 24-pound howitzer rounds, which bounced through the grass.

‘Oh, ow…’ yelled Private James. ‘It’s broke me leg!’ as he was bowled over like a skittle by one of the iron shot, which knocked his feet from under him.

‘They’re pigs, sir.’ McGucken had dodged the blundering grey form and now stood on the edge of the bank just feet from the other plunging elephants, looking down at a dozen shrieking, darting forms, ghostly pale in the night. ‘The elephants are terrified of ’em – so’s the natives. Where the fuck have they come from?’

He was right. Morgan saw how the squeals of the pigs were tormenting the elephants, who were trying to rid themselves of their attackers with tusks and vast stamping feet, which, in turn were making the pigs even more petrified and noisy. Meanwhile, the Hindu civilians and military drivers had gathered in an appalled huddle on the opposite side of the road, aghast and helpless as the unclean creatures ran amok.

‘God knows. Kill the bloody things, lads.’ Morgan leaped down amongst the huge, stamping, grey, leathery feet, immediately regretting his decision. ‘But don’t shoot, stab the sods.’

This is no way to die, he thought as an enormous pad with nails the size of trowels thumped into the earth just inches from him, and just look at those nuts – as a scrotum the size of a bag of flour swung past his face. It’ll look just grand on the Court and Social page:…‘gallant fate at the head of his men; bashed to death by an elephant’s bollocks whilst trying to sabre a swine.’

Eventually they finished the job. Private Saint had his foot run over by the wheel of the battery’s forge wagon, Sergeant Ormond was brushed sideways by an elephantine knee, but the pigs were finally subdued by the blades of the men and order restored to the terrified leviathans.

‘What d’you suppose that was about, Colour-Sar’nt?’ Morgan sat on the bank by the track, as the first light of dawn turned the black sky to turtle-dove grey.

‘Oldest trick in the book, apparently, sir. One of the gunner naiks was tellin’ me that everyone knows that elephants and pigs are shit-scared of each other an’ if yous want to stampede the big buggers you just release a few wee porkers around their feet,’ answered McGucken.

‘Well, there we are; they didn’t teach us that back at the depot, did they, Colour-Sar’nt? Still, it shows the Pandies have got a deal of sense. If they could have knocked the guns out, or just destroyed the ammunition, we’d be in queer street,’ Morgan reasoned. ‘What damage is done?’

‘Not much, sir. A fodder camel’s down, some oxen have bolted an’ can’t be found yet, one bearer’s been wounded, Sar’nt Ormond an’ Saint are a bit knocked about, an’ the artillery lads are just getting a spare wheel back on that limber.’ McGucken checked a pencilled list on a scrap of paper. ‘Oh, aye, one of the Bombay gunners is unaccounted for; they think he might have gone off wi’ the Pandies. An’ the natives reckon that judging by the archer we got, the whole thing was probably the work o’ rebels from one of the maharajah’s armies up north, not reg’lar sepoys.’

‘So, irregular rebels, not regular rebels…Hmm, this is going to be even more confusing than I thought. Anyway, let’s get moving once that wheel’s fixed. We’ll find some water up ahead, get everything square and bed down for the day.’ Morgan tapped his pipe out on the heel of his muddy boot. ‘But we’ll have to be more alert in close country if we don’t want to get caught like that again.’