The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection

by George MacDonald Fraser

  “He can’t promise that,” I protested. “Sale isn’t under his command now; he’ll hold Jallalabad till he is given orders from India to leave.”

  Akbar shrugged. “These are the terms. Believe me, old friend, Elfistan Sahib must accept them – he must!” And he thumped his fist against my shoulder. “And for you, Flashman; if you are wise you will be one of the six hostages. You will be safer with me than down yonder.” He grinned, and reined back his pony. “Now, go with God, and come again soon with a wise answer.”

  Well, I knew better than to expect any such thing from Elphy Bey, and sure enough, when I carried Akbar’s message to him he croaked and dithered in his best style. He must consider, he said, and in the meantime the army was so exhausted and confused that we should march no farther that day. It was only two o’clock.

  Shelton flew into a great passion at this, and stormed at Elphy that we must press on. One more good march would take us through Khoord-Kabul Pass and, what was more important, out of the snow, for beyond the pass the ground dropped away. If we spent another night in the freezing cold, said Shelton, the army must die.

  So they argued and wrangled, and Elphy had his way. We stayed where we were, thousands of shivering wretches on a snow-swept road, with nearly half our food already gone, no fuel left, and some of the troops even reduced to burning their muskets and equipment to try to keep a tiny flicker of warmth in their numb bodies. The niggers died in droves that night, for the mercury was far below freezing, and the troops kept alive only by huddling together in huge groups, burrowing in among each other like animals.

  I had my blankets, and enough dried meat in my saddlebags not to go hungry. The lancers and I slept in a tight ring, as the Afghans do, with our cloaks above; Hudson had seen to it that each man carried a flask of rum, and so we kept out the cold tolerably well.

  In the morning we were covered with snow, and when I clambered out and saw the army, thinks I, this is as far as we’ll go. Most of them were too frozen to move at first, but when the Afghans were seen gathering on the slopes in the dawn light, the camp-followers flew into a panic and blundered off down the road in a great mob. Shelton managed to heave the main body of troops up in their wake, and so we stumbled on, like a great wounded animal with no brain and no heart, while the crackle of that hellish sniping started afresh, and the first casualties of the day began to totter from the ranks to die in the drifts on either side.

  From other accounts of that frightful march that I have read – mostly Mackenzie’s and Lawrence’s and Lady Sale’s18 – I can fit a few of my recollections into their chronicle, but in the main it is just a terrible, bloody nightmare even now, more than sixty years after. Ice and blood and groans and death and despair, and the shrieks of dying men and women and the howling of the Ghazis and Gilzais. They rushed and struck, and rushed and struck again, mostly at the camp-followers, until it seemed there was a slashed brown body every yard of the way. The only place of safety was in the heart of Shelton’s main body, where the sepoys still kept some sort of order; I suggested to Elphy when we set off that I and my lancers should ride guard on the womenfolk, and he agreed at once. It was a wise move on my part, for the attacks on the flanks were now so frequent that the work we had been doing yesterday was becoming fatally dangerous. Mackenzie’s jezzailchis were cut to ribbons stemming the sorties.

  As we neared Khoord-Kabul the hills rose up on either side, and the mouth of that awful pass looked like a gateway into hell. Its walls were so stupendous that the rocky bottom was in perpetual twilight; the dragging tread of the army, the bellowing of the beasts, the shouts and groans and the boom of shots echoed and rang from its cliffs. The Afghans were on the ledges, and when Anquetil saw them he halted the vanguard, because it seemed certain death to go on.

  There was more consulting and arguing around Elphy, until Akbar and his people were seen among the rocks near the pass mouth. Then I was sent off again, and it was to tell him that at last Elphy had seen reason: we would give up six hostages, on condition that Akbar called off his killers. He agreed, clapping me on the shoulders and swearing that all should now be well; I should come as one of the hostages, he said, and a merry time we would have of it. I was torn two ways about this; the farther away I could keep from Gul Shah, the better; on the other hand, how safe would it be to remain with the army?

  It was settled for me, for Elphy himself called on Mackenzie, Lawrence, and Pottinger to give themselves over to Akbar. They were among the best we had, and I suppose he thought Akbar would be the more impressed by them. Anyway, if Akbar kept his word it did not matter much who remained with the army, since it would not have to fight its way to Jallalabad. Lawrence and Pottinger agreed at once; Mac took a little longer. He had been a trifle cool with me – I suppose because my lancers had not shared the fighting that day, and his folk had been so badly mauled. But he said nothing, and when Elphy put it to him he didn’t answer, but stood staring out over the snow. He was in a sad pass, with his turban gone and his hair all awry, his poshteen spattered with blood and a drying wound on the back of his hand.

  Presently he drew his sword, and dropped it point first into the ground, and walked over without a word to join Pottinger and Lawrence. Watching his tall figure moving away I felt a little chill touch me; being a ruffian, perhaps I know a good man when I see one better than most, and Mac was one of the mainstays of our force. A damned prig, mind you, and given to immense airs, but as good a soldier – for what that’s worth – as I’ve met.

  Akbar wanted Shelton as well, but Shelton wouldn’t have it.

  “I trust that black bastard as far as I’d trust a pi-dog,” says he. “Anyway, who’s to look after the army if I’m gone?”

  “I shall be in command still,” says Elphy, taken aback.

  “Aye,” says Shelton, “that’s what I mean.”

  This started another bickering match, of course, which ended with Shelton turning on his heel and stumping off, and Elphy whining about discipline. And then the order to march sounded again, and we turned our faces towards Khoord-Kabul.

  At first it was well enough, and we were unmolested. It looked as though Akbar had his folk under control, and then suddenly the jezzails began to crack from the ledges, and men began to fall, and the army staggered blindly in the snow. They were pouring fire into the pass at almost point-blank range, and the niggers began to scream and run, and the troops broke their ranks, with Shelton bawling, and then in a moment everyone was running or riding full tilt through that hellish defile. It was just a great wild rush, and the devil take the hindmost; I saw a camel with two white women and two children shot, and it staggered into the snow and threw them out. An officer ran to help, and went down with a ball in his belly, and then the crowd surged over them all. I saw a Gilzai mounted warrior seize on a little girl of about six and swing her up screaming to his saddlebow and make off; she kept shrieking “Mummy! Mummy!” as he bore her away. Sepoys were throwing down their muskets and running blindly forward, and I saw an officer of the Shah’s Cavalry riding in among them, belabouring them with the flat of his sword and yelling his head off. Baggage was being flung recklessly away, the drivers were abandoning their animals, no one had any thought but to rush through the pass as fast as possible, away from that withering fire.

  I can’t say I wasted much time myself: I put my head down to my pony’s neck, dug in my heels and went like billy-be-damned, threading through the pack and praying to God I wasn’t hit by a stray ball. The Afghan ponies are as sure-footed as cats, and she never stumbled once. Where my lancers were I had no idea, not that I cared; it was every man (and woman) for himself, and I wasn’t too particular who I rode over in my flight. It was nip and tuck like a steeplechase, with the shots crashing and echoing and thousands of voices yelling; only once did I check for an instant, when I saw young Lieutenant Sturt shot out of his saddle; he rolled into a drift and lay there screaming, but it would have done no good to stop. No good to Flashy, anyway, and that was what mat
tered.

  How long it took to make the passage I don’t know, but when the way began to widen and the mass of fugitives ahead and around began to slow down I reined in to take stock. The firing had slackened, and Anquetil’s vanguard were forming up to cover the flight of those still coming behind. Presently there was a great mob streaming out of the defile, troops and people all mixed together, and when they reached the light of day they just collapsed in the snow, dead beat.

  Three thousand people died in Khoord-Kabul, they say, most of them niggers, and we lost all our remaining baggage. When we made camp beyond the eastern limit of the pass we were in the middle of a snow-storm, all order was completely lost; stragglers kept coming in after dark, and I remember one woman who arrived having carried her baby on foot the whole way. Lady Sale had been shot in the arm, and I can see her now holding her hand out to the surgeon and shutting her eyes tight while he cut the ball out; she never flinched, the tough old bitch. There was a major struggling with his hysterical wife, who wanted to go back for her lost child; he was weeping and trying to stop the blows she was aiming wildly at his chest. “No, no, Jenny!” he kept saying. “She’s gone! Pray to Jesus to look after her!” Another officer, I forget who, had gone snow-blind, and kept walking about in circles until someone led him away. Then there was a British trooper, reeling drunk on an Afghan pony and singing a barrack-room song; where he had got the liquor, God knows, but there was plenty of it, apparently, for presently he fell into the snow and lay there snoring. He was still there next morning, frozen dead.

  Night was hell again, with the darkness full of crying and groaning. There was only a handful of tents left, and the English women and children all crowded into one of them. I wandered about all night, for it was freezing too bitterly to sleep, and anyway I was in a fearful funk. I could see now that the whole army was going to be destroyed, and myself with it; being a hostage with Akbar would be no better, for I had convinced myself by this that when he had finished butchering the army he would kill his prisoners too. There was only one hope that I could see, and that was to wait with the army until we were clear of the snow, and then strike out by night on my own. If the Afghans spotted me I would ride for it.

  Next day we hardly advanced at all, partly because the whole force was so frozen and starved as to be incapable of going far, but also because Akbar sent a messenger into camp saying that we should halt so that he could have provisions brought up. Elphy believed him, in spite of Shelton’s protests; Shelton almost went on his knees to Elphy, urging that if we could only keep going till we were out of the snow, we might come through yet. But Elphy doubted if we could get even that far.

  “Our only hope is that the Sirdar, taking pity on our plight, will succour us at this late hour,” says he. “You know, Shelton, he is a gentleman; he will keep his word.”

  Shelton just walked away in disgust and rage. The supplies never came, of course, but the following day comes another messenger from Akbar, suggesting that since we were determined to march on, the wives and families of the British officers should be left in his care. It was just this suggestion, made back in Kabul, that had provoked such indignation, but now every married man leaped at it. Whatever anyone might say openly, however much Elphy might talk as though he still expected to march to Jallalabad, everyone knew that the force as it stood was doomed. Frost-bitten, starving, cluttered still with camp-followers like brown skeletons who refused to die, with its women and children slowing it down, with the Ghazis and Gilzais sniping and harrying, death stared the army in the face. With Akbar, at least, the women and children would stand a chance.

  So Elphy agreed, and we watched the little convoy, on the last of the camels, set off into the snow, the married men going along with their wives. I remember Betty riding bareheaded, looking very pretty with the morning sun shining on her hair, and Lady Sale, her wounded arm in a sling, poking her head out of a camel howdah to rebuke the nigger who was trotting alongside carrying the last of her belongings in a bundle. But I didn’t share the general satisfaction that they were leaving us; I was keeping as well out of harm’s way as I could by staying next to Elphy, but even that was not going to be safe for long.

  I still had dried mutton enough left in my saddle-bags, and Sergeant Hudson seemed to have a secret store of fodder for his horse and those of the lancers who survived – there were about half a dozen left of my original party, I think, but I didn’t count. But even clinging to Elphy’s palankeen, on the pretext of riding bodyguard, I was in no doubt of what must happen eventually. In the next two days the column was under constant attack; in about ten miles we lost the last of the camp-followers, and in one terrible affray which I heard behind us but took good care not to see, the last of the sepoy units were fairly wiped out. To tell the truth, my memories of that period are hazy; I was too exhausted and afraid to pay much heed. Some things, though, are clear in my mind; images like coloured pictures in a magic lantern that I shall never forget.

  Once, for example, Elphy had all the officers of the force line up at the rearguard, to show a “united front”,19 as he called it, to our pursuers. We stood there for a full half hour, like so many scarecrows, while they jeered at us from a distance, and one or two of us were shot down. I remember Grant, the Adjutant-General, clapping his hands over his face and shouting, “I’m hit! I’m hit!” and falling down in the snow, and the young officer next to me – a boy with yellow side-whiskers covered with frost – saying, “Oh, poor old fellow!”

  I saw an Afghan boy, once, chuckling to himself as he stabbed and stabbed again at a wounded sepoy; the boy was not over ten years old. And I remember the glazed look in the eyes of dying horses, a pair of brown feet marching in front of me that left bloody footprints on the ice. I remember Elphy’s grey face, with his jowls wobbling, and the rasping sound of Shelton’s voice, and the staring eyes in the dark faces of the few Indians that were left, soldiers and camp-followers – but mostly I remember the fear that cramped my stomach and seemed to turn my legs to jelly as I listened to the crackle of firing before and behind, the screams of stricken men, and the triumphant screeching of the Afghans.

  I know now that when we were five days out from Kabul, and had reached Jugdulluk, the army that had been fourteen thousand strong was just over three thousand, of whom a bare five hundred were fighting troops. The rest, apart from a few hostages in the hands of the enemy, were dead. And it was here that I came to my senses, in a barn at Jugdulluk where Elphy had made his quarters.

  It was as though I came out of a dream to hear him arguing with Shelton and some of the staff over a proposal that had come from Akbar that Elphy and Shelton should go to see him under a flag of truce, to negotiate. What they were to negotiate, God knows, but Shelton was dead against it; he stood there, his red cheeks fallen in, but his moustache still bristling, swearing that he would go on for Jallalabad if he had to do it alone. But Elphy was for negotiating; he would go and see Akbar, and Shelton must come, too; he would leave Anquetil to command the army.

  Aye, thought I, and somehow my brain was as clear as ice again, this is where Flashman takes independent action. They would never come back from Akbar, of course; he would never let such valuable hostages go. If I, too, let myself fall into Akbar’s hands, I would be in imminent danger from his henchman, Gul Shah. If I stayed with the army, on the other hand, I would certainly die with it. One obvious course suggested itself. I left them wrangling, and slipped out in search of Sergeant Hudson.

  I found him dressing his horse, which was so thin and jaded now it looked like a run-down London hack.

  “Hudson,” says I, “you and I are riding out.”

  He never blinked. “Yes, sir,” says he. “Where to, sir?”

  “India,” says I. “Not a word to anyone; these are special orders from General Elphinstone.”

  “Very good, sir,” says he, and I left him knowing that when I came back he would have our beasts ready, saddlebags as full as he could manage, and everything prepared. I
went back to Elphy’s barn, and there he was, preparing to leave to see Akbar. He was fussing as hard as ever, over such important matters as the whereabouts of his fine silver flask, which he intended to take as a gift to the Sirdar – this while the remnants of his army were dying in the snow round Jugdulluk.

  “Flashman,” says he, gathering his cloak round him and pulling his woollen cap over his head, “I am leaving you for only a little time, but in these desperate days it is not wise to count too far ahead. I trust I find you well enough in a day or two, my boy. God bless you.”

  And God rot you, you old fool, I thought; you won’t find me in a day or two, not unless you ride a damned sight faster than I think you can. He sniffed some more about his flask, and shuffled out, helped by his valet. Shelton wasn’t yet ready, apparently, and the last words I heard Elphy say were: “It is really too bad.” They should be his epitaph; I raged inwardly at the time when I thought of how he had brought me to this; now, in my maturer years, I have modified my view. Whereas I would have cheerfully shot him then, now I would hang, draw and quarter him for a bungling, useless, selfish old swine. No fate could be bad enough for him.

  Chapter 11

  Hudson and I waited for night, and then we simply saddled up and slipped off into the dark, striking due east. It was so easy I could have laughed; no one challenged us, and when about ten minutes out we met a party of Gilzais in the dark I gave them good night in Pushtu and they left us alone. There was no moon, but light enough for us to pick our way easily enough through the snowy rocks, and after we had ridden a couple of hours I gave the order to halt, and we bedded down for the night in the lee of a little cliff. We had our blankets, and with no one to groan around us I slept the best sleep I had had in a week.