The Sabre's Edge mh-5

by Allan Mallinson

  When he was done, he picked up his pen again and reached for a fourth sheet. He did not imagine anything, but on the eve of such a battle - in which the Company must prevail, whatever the cost - there were certain 'arrangements' he felt obliged to mention, arrangements which, though the regimental agents in Calcutta and London were perfectly able to expedite them, needed the supervision of someone of sensibility, sensibility of Hervey's own situation.

  These things now occupied a good three-quarters of the page - nine or so inches of Hervey's small, neat hand to arrange the future for his daughter, sister, parents . . . and bibi. On this latter he was doubly insistent:

  You who know so much of these things, of my own circumstances as well as the travails that might come to a destitute bibi, will appreciate my imperative wish that no scruple should stand in the way of my will in this regard.

  And now, if you will forgive my overlong trespass into sentiment, I must say how it has been my very great pleasure in knowing you both, and in the friendship you have unfailingly shown to me. I am proud to be godfather to the offspring of your perfect union, which duty, I most fervently trust, I may discharge to its ultimate purpose.

  Believe me,

  your ever grateful friend,

  Matthew Hervey.

  The sap was quiet, voices hushed, no lights. It was a little before eight, with the merest hints of daylight in the sky behind them. Hervey had not slept. On finishing the letter he had left his comfortable, warm tent and walked the troop lines and then the picket - 'the little touch of Hervey in the night' - before setting off on foot with Green and the others to the place from which they would storm the long-necked bastion. There was a deal of time to wait still, for as they slipped into the trenches in the early hours the word was passed that the mine would be sprung not at eight but at half-past. In order, they were told, to have just a little more light to carry the breach with.

  Hervey thought he would rather have a half-hour of dark than of light for such an enterprise, but then he was not an infantryman. If that was Major-General Reynell’s wish - he personally was to direct the storming of the main breach - then be it according to his will.

  There were so many senior officers in the sap that Hervey wondered if they might yet see Lord Combermere himself. There was General Reynell, commanding the first division of infantry, a fine, whiskered foot soldier who had seen more campaigning than most men in his thirty years with the colours, and whose appetite for the fight was no less diminished by it. There was Brigadier-General McCombe of the 14th Foot commanding the first brigade, and Brigadier Paton of the 18th Native Infantry commanding the fifth. There was said to be a wager between them as to who would be out of the trench first.

  And there was Sir Ivo Lankester, wearing his pelisse coat still, feeling the chill a little but as determined as McCombe and Paton to be out of the trench at once when the mine was sprung. He exchanged a few words with Hervey and Hugh Rose when they were settled, waiting, and then said he would see if he could get a few more yards forward to be next to the brigade commanders for a better view of the explosion.

  'He's a spanker all right, sir,' said Armstrong. The consolation in letting Armstrong remain with the sappers was that E Troop and his serjeant-major now stood side by side at the point where must come the decision in this battle. 'I wish we might have a better view of it’ complained Hervey. I’d no idea the sap was going to be this deep.'

  'We'll be grateful of it when yon mine's sprung, sir. I never saw so much powder in my life. They only got the last keg in just before midnight.'

  'We must hope for a good pile of stones to scramble up,' said Hugh Rose. 'It'll be the very devil if all it does is rearrange the wall.'

  Hervey raised his eyebrows. It would not be the first time if that happened. 'Yes, indeed.' He turned and looked over his shoulder. 'Mr Green?'

  'Sir?'

  'The lieutenant-colonel has gone up the trench to be with General Reynell. You had better go up and be with him in case he has any orders.'

  'Yes sir. Which way is "up"?'

  Hervey was momentarily speechless.

  'This way, Mr Green, sir,' said Armstrong equably, making to lead him past Hervey and Rose.

  Johnson now wholly recovered the situation, whether intentionally or not. 'Tea, Mr 'Ervey?'

  Hervey smiled - though it was still too dark for any to see. 'Do you think it is why I got a ball in the shoulder at Rangoon, Johnson? Because I'd not had your tea at daybreak?'

  'Ay, 'appen tha did, sir,' replied Johnson, uncorking his patent warming flask. 'And for you, sir?' he added, directing the question at Rose, having a care to use the less familiar second person.

  'Mindful of its possible properties, I should indeed. Thank you,' drawled Rose. 'Do you think we might smoke, Hervey?'

  Hervey smiled again. 'I rather think not, Hugh.'

  There were a dozen or so of the Sixth in the trench. Their function, along with the fifty other volunteers, was straightforward - to rush the breach as soon as it was made and to hold on to it until the infantry could come up in proper order. It was ever a precarious enterprise. By rights, if the engineers and artillery did their work, it was but a headlong dash into a devastated space and then a few exchanges of fire with those of the garrison not too stunned to raise a musket. The work of carrying the fortress was then the business of the assault columns. But if the breach was feeble or incomplete it was theirs still to take it. And then they might face disciplined volleys, or the raking fire of guns not overturned in the blast. It was vulgarly called 'the forlorn hope', but no one really knew why. One or two were always killed, subalterns usually, well in the van and hoping for the reward of field promotion. But for the rank and file it was not a bad gamble: a good breach was worth a year's reckoning of service.

  Not that Hervey or Rose would be in the van. Command of the party was the prerogative of an ensign, always, and today it fell to one of the Fourteenth's, the senior regiment of foot in the army before Bhurtpore. It was Ensign Daly's eighteenth birthday, and he had shaken hands with each man of the storming party, as was customary, before taking his place next to General McCombe at the head of the sap, together with Lieutenant Irvine of the Engineers and, just behind, Sir Ivo Lankester and Cornet Green.

  There was more method in Hervey's sending Green forward than merely to give Sir Ivo a galloper. If Green showed a moment's hesitation in leaving the trench then the lieutenant-colonel would see it for himself, and all would be up. But Hervey was not entirely closed to the notion of redemption. He thought it possible that Green, with so many brave men about him, and his blood heated by the occasion, would find after all that he had the resource to do his duty, and that once it was done he would then have appetite for it in the future. However, he had determined one thing: if Green did hesitate to leave the trench - if he were still not out when he himself came up - then he would have him out at the point of the sword.

  'A bit confused, I'd say, Mr Green, sir,' whispered Armstrong to Hervey as he rejoined them.

  Hervey sighed. 'Well, Sar'nt-Major, there'll be no doubting which way to advance once the mine's sprung, so that's one thing he needn't concern himself over.'

  'No, that's true. But I gave him some wadding to put in his ears, and told him to cover them if he got a chance. I've known sound enough men become a mite addled in a thunderstorm.'

  Elsewhere about the fortress were other storming parties braced for the assault. But all would take their cue from the springing of the cavalier mine, or what was now known in the Sixth - the secret at last out - as the cavalry mine, or even 'Armstrong's mine'. What Hervey had written to Somervile the evening before was as much as he knew, and a good deal at that, for Lord Combermere's staff had been generous in their information in the final waiting days. But he supposed that only Combermere himself had in his mind a complete picture of the assault, the commander-in-chief having appointed no deputy, the major-generals being with the assaulting divisions. If he should fall, it would likely as not be h
is quarter-master-general, the veteran cavalryman Sir Sam Whittingham, to whom the reins would pass and in due course the laurels be given. But Hervey hoped that when the fortress was taken, Armstrong's part would receive its due recognition - more so, even, than it had already. And, of course, that of Brigadier Anburey, for it had been he who had directed the preparations for the assault and had ordered the cavalier mine to be driven under Armstrong's supervision.

  And even now Anburey courted oblivion by attending the mine like an anxious midwife with her charge. He had assembled ten thousand pounds

  of the coarsest-grained powder - 'corned' powder, as it was known, as opposed to the fine 'mealed' sort - which, because of the air between the bigger grains, burned faster and therefore produced an explosion of greater force. But he did not know if this depended on a normal supply of air in the atmosphere in which the powder burned. The only way that he could be sure there would be an explosion was to have air at the end of the tunnel, and this required Armstrong's fire to be lit and Stray's duct to function. He would not, of course, ask either man to see to the work. He would not even ask one of his own. He did it himself - lighting the fire and then crawling to the end of the tunnel to be sure that air was being drawn through the duct.

  And so he stood now at the mouth of the gallery in the knowledge that all he could do he had done, yet still uncertain that it was enough. The lives of so many men depended on that powder. He had emptied the Company's arsenals in Hindoostan of the coarsest, and he had put bellows into the middle of the pile of kegs - and he had doubled the quantity first calculated in order to make up for any slowness in the burn, whether through damp or poor air. But he remained as fearful in his way as the ensign in command of the storming party.

  He looked at his watch. It was time to seek cover. He had lit the quick match fifteen minutes ago and it was timed for twenty. Its accuracy he was in no doubt of, for he had made it himself, sending to Calcutta for isinglass, and he had tested two others in the tunnel before they had brought in the powder.

  In the sap, Hervey looked at his watch too - the luminescent hunter that Daniel Coates had given him. It said the time was past eight-thirty, but no watch or clock agreed with any other to within five minutes, except when the noon guns fired, and so he could not know if the mine was live or not. The sky was rapidly lightening. Now would be best, while they could still cross the hundred yards to the walls without the defenders seeing all. He made to draw his sword, but the sap was too tight-packed. He pulled the pistol from his belt instead.

  'Sar'nt-Major, do you think—'

  The mine went off like the crack of doom. The earth shook as if the trench sides would fall in, splinters of stone whistled overhead like bullets, rocks showered into the sap. A dragoon standing only two feet behind Johnson was felled dead instantly. Ahead there was shouting and moans. Hervey began to push forward, but he could not get past the men in front waiting to debouch from the end of the sap. The artillery had opened fire, on the signal, making it difficult to communicate any sense of what was happening. But it was clear the mine had somehow gone off ill.

  'Help me up!' he barked, raising his hands to the side of the trench.

  Armstrong and Johnson hoisted him high, then scrambled out themselves, followed by Rose and the covermen. He ran only a dozen yards before coming on Sir Ivo. The sap was all but blown in and covered with debris from the bastion. 'Christ!' he groaned, seeing his lieutenant-colonel a mass of blood. 'Johnson!'

  One of the surgeons got to him first. The assault was nothing if not well provided for. 'I have him. On you go!' rasped the Glasgow voice.

  'Stay with him, Johnson,' said Hervey, firmly.

  He got up, only to see Cornet Green a few yards away, and in a worse state. 'Christ almighty!' he spat, kneeling by his head. But it did not take a practised surgeon to know there was no life whatever there.

  He now saw General McCombe lying almost as bad, and Brigadier Paton. And Irvine, the faithful lieutenant of engineers. A few yards further on was Ensign Daly sitting upright, as if in a stupor. His right leg was unrecognizable as a limb, attached only by the thinnest thread of flesh and bone. 'Jesus!'

  Up came Colonel Nation, commanding the 23rd Native Infantry. He took in all with one glance, drew his sword and shouted 'Forward!'

  Then came General Reynell, shouting, 'Go to it, Fourteenth!' and running on with them.

  Hervey cursed worse than he might remember, drew his sabre and followed.

  There should have been cheering; that was the old way. But there wasn't. Or perhaps he just couldn't hear it, for his ears rang like the bells on Easter Day. He glanced behind - just a mass of men running at the crouch, mainly red-jacketed. Wainwright was with him, and Rose, and he could just make out Corporal McCarthy.

  Now they were clambering over fallen masonry, the bastion no more - a great hole in the side of the Pride of Hindoostan. He looked up and saw Colonel Nation in the breach, and then he saw him fall - to what, he couldn't tell, for the artillery fire of both sides was drowning all.

  The storming party was now thoroughly mixed up with the Fourteenth's assault columns. He saw their two majors urging them on. Everard knew how, thought Hervey: he'd led the forlorn hope at Monte Video. And Bisshop - he'd been at Badajoz.

  He saw the first bodies of the defenders - bits of them, rather, the primitive butchery of the mine. An arm stuck out from the debris; a private of the Fourteenth, huffing and puffing as he struggled up the broken ramparts with a scaling ladder on his shoulder, took the hand and shook it before plodding on.

  At the top an ensign was triumphantly planting the Fourteenth's colours. But the regiment was not intent on consolidation. Without seeming to check, a company set off at once along the wall to the left, and two more under Major Bisshop to the right. And Bisshop's were almost at once hurling themselves at a bastion whose guns the Jhauts were desperately trying to re-lay for enfilade instead of sweeping the ramparts.

  Hervey glanced left and right as if trying to choose, but Major Everard was even now mustering the rest of the regiment to press into the fortress. Hervey looked about him to rally any of the Sixth who had made it to the top: Rose looked game, Armstrong was with him, and Wainwright; McCarthy, his instincts still a foot soldier's, had picked up a musket.

  They set off after Everard's men, half-tumbling down the shattered ramparts. Bodies and pieces of bodies lay thicker than before, scattered like winnowed chaff, the harvest of Armstrong's method. Even as they slid and stumbled over rock and flesh, brick and bone, Hervey hoped the army would indeed remember its debt.

  Now there was the rattle of musketry, and to the smell of powder which had hung in their nostrils since the springing of the mine came that other stench of battle, of ordure and evisceration. Always it nauseated some men and excited others.

  Soon they were doubling. There seemed no resistance despite the musketry. They were soon into the streets of the town, mean though it was. Hervey had his bearings now: the citadel lay straight ahead. An easy affair this was, his pistol and sabre as clean as a whistle.

  They debouched suddenly into the maidan before the citadel. Hervey at last got a clear view ahead as the Fourteenth's companies spread left and right. He saw the great gates swinging closed, and he groaned. What an opportunity was gone!

  Then he saw what the gates had also shut out - hundreds, four or five perhaps, of Durjan Sal's legionaries, who now turned back in desperation.

  Everard had his men ready in the space of two words of command: 'Extend! Present!'

  One hundred muskets levelled at the host not fifty yards in front.

  ‘ Fire! ’

  The citadel and all before it was at once masked by a wall of black smoke.

  ‘ On guard! Charge! ’

  It was not his fight, this, but Hervey would not hold back - not when the citadel itself stood within their grasp. He raced forward, barging ahead of the bayonets even, sabre thrust out like a lance.

  He saw only a mass of limbs and face
s in the seconds before they clashed - no 'pick your man, recover sabre, ride through, rally'. The infantry had their science too, but it didn't amount to much when it came to steel on steel. Only brute strength and will atop a certain skill. He felt the sabre jump in his hand as the point found a mark. But his grip was tight, and in deep went the blade. Then up came the pistol, the flash and the smoke, and the ball striking the same chest as the sabre, point-blank, throwing the man from off it, freeing the sabre to begin its proper work - the cutting and slicing and blooding of its razor edge. In seconds, red ran the length of the blade.

  He was gasping for breath. There were only bodies now within reach of him. Wainwright closed to his side, Armstrong was already reloading a pistol next to him, McCarthy stood on-guard with the bayonet. Only Rose was still fighting, determined to force his way past friend and foe alike to get to the citadel gates. 'Hold hard,’ said Hervey to the three of them. It made no sense to press forward when there were formed ranks of redcoats doing their work so efficiently.

  At first it had been a fight. Now it was merely slaughter. The Jhauts who had not fallen to the Fourteenth's volley had stood their ground until the first clash, but without order they had soon collapsed, while those in the ranks behind sought in vain to escape. There had been no time for quarter, either to beg it or to give it. The Fourteenth -and the Sixth's men - had gone at their quarry with brute strength and a will. Some of the Fourteenth's bayonets had run two men through at once, and some had broken with their wielders' ardour. Not a Jhaut was spared in the maidan that hour. Not one.

  Hervey had not stood back, but he was ever thankful for the infantry's skill at execution. These men were now so heated they could surely escalade the walls of the citadel! But that was asking too much, for there was increasing musketry from the high walls, and they had but a few scaling ladders, and those inadequate. Instead, Major Edwards coolly retired with his company to the cover of the havelis across the maidan and sent word back to General Reynell for the engineers to bring up longer ladders, and powder to blow in the gates.