Sword of Fortune

by Christopher Nicole

  Thomas grinned. ‘Sure and begorrah, Monnseer, ye’ll have to climb up and see.’

  Pedron considered. Then he said, ‘Very well, General Thomas. I will make a truce with you, and convey the demands of Appa Khunde Rao, as expressed by you, to the Scindhia. Suppose my lord Mahadoji were to agree to confirm Appa as Rao of Khunde, with the right to impose his own taxes, but always acknowledging that the Scindhia is his rightful lord, do you suppose your master would agree?’

  ‘He’d be a fool not to,’ Thomas said bluntly.

  ‘Then this is what I shall recommend to the Scindhia, and to Maréchal de Boigne. Are you in agreement with this?’

  ‘I’ve just said so, haven’t I?’

  ‘Well then, let me shake your hand, General Thomas. As of this moment we are, after all, both servants of the Scindhia.’

  ‘Why, so we are,’ Thomas agreed.

  ‘Very good.’ Pedron suddenly became very businesslike. ‘Your master, Appa Khunde Rao, is not the only rebel against the authority of the Scindhia. Are you aware that the town of Sohawalgarh has declared itself an independent jaghir?’

  ‘We had not heard this,’ Thomas said. ‘Where is this place?’

  ‘Some hundred miles north of here. The ruler of Sohawalgarh has utterly refused to negotiate, and defies anything that may be done to bring him to heel. It would encourage the Scindhia to receive my proposals with greater appreciation were I able to inform him that Appa Khunde Rao’s famous general had undertaken the subjugation of Sohawalgarh in his name.’

  ‘You mean we are to march our army north and leave the road to Khunde open to you?’ Richard inquired.

  ‘I have just made a truce with you, monsieur. I will give you my word as an officer and a gentleman, and I will pledge the words of both the Scindhia and Maréchal de Boigne, that this truce will not be broken. Rather, it will be cemented by such an act of loyalty on your part. Nor do I wish you to undertake such a campaign by yourself. I will place you, General Thomas and General Bryant, in joint command with General Sutherland and General Gardiner, and thus our combined armies will march to the ruin of the rebels of Sohawalgarh.’

  Richard almost felt ashamed for having doubted the Frenchman’s word. But to combine the two armies would reveal their weakness.

  ‘I don’t doubt yer word, General,’ Thomas said. ‘Nor do I doubt that ye’ve the right to speak for yer superiors. I am perfectly willing to lead a part of my army to reduce this township in order to prove my good faith. But I doubt we shall need an army to deal with one town. I will bring five hundred of my men to fight with five hundred of yours.’

  His calm effrontery took Richard’s breath away. Five hundred men would leave scarcely a hundred to guard the route to Khunde. But the French did not know that.

  ‘A thousand men, without artillery, to take Sohawalgarh?’ Sutherland snorted.

  ‘Then you stay behind, General,’ Thomas suggested. ‘Mr Bryant and me’ll do it on our own.’

  Pedron smiled. ‘My generals will accompany you with five hundred men, General. And I will wish you good fortune in your enterprise. When will you march?’

  ‘Why, I’ll leave at dawn tomorrow.’

  Pedron nodded. ‘My detachment will be ready then. I will wish you good fortune, General Thomas.’

  He saluted, and mounted his horse. Sutherland and Gardiner did likewise. Then the three generals and their staff rode back down the valley.

  ‘You don’t reckon we may have made a big mistake?’ Richard asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Suppose Pedron probes our position as soon as we march north, and discovers there is naught but a screen?’

  ‘He’ll keep his word. He’s playin’ a deep game, Dick lad. It’s up to us to play a deeper. He wants us to prove our mettle, if we have any, without havin’ to take us on. An’ if you or me gets our head shot off doin’ it, it’ll be no loss to him. No no, he’ll wait and see how we get on before this Sourmash place.’

  ‘And what of Appa?’

  ‘Sure, and we’ll send a messenger to tell him what’s happenin’. He should be happy. We’ve turned back the invasion of his land, secured him virtual independence…at least for the time bein’.’

  ‘I don’t see why, as we are going to do Scindhia’s fighting for him anyway, we didn’t just accept his offer to serve in his army. I’m damned sure Pedron was right, and Appa cannot be trusted.’

  ‘Sure. But we can be trusted, Dick me boy. That’s the word we want to get about. De Boigne, now, I’d trust him, just as ye trusted the Begum. But he’s not a young man, so I’ve heard. And under him are officers who hate us, including that English pair, I’d reckon. We’d be exchanging one bowl of boiling soup for another.’

  ‘So we fight for Appa,’ Richard said sadly. There was no hope of Appa ever providing the men for a march on Agra.

  Thomas tapped his nose. ‘Until we’re ready to fight for ourselves, Dick, sure.’

  *

  Thomas made his dispositions. Hanif was placed in command of the hundred men left to hold the valleys. He was both delighted to be given an independent command, and disappointed to be left behind.

  ‘Now mark me well,’ Thomas told him. ‘If the French mean treachery, there’s naught ye can do to stop them. In that case, send yer fastest galloper to inform us, and fall back. Understood?’

  Hanif nodded.

  Thomas grinned. ‘Ye’d better send a messenger to Appa as well, to give him time to commit suicide.’

  He had already despatched a messenger to Khunde with the news of the truce and the march on Sohawalgarh. But there was nothing the Rao could do about it, until they returned, either victorious or dead.

  *

  Next day the two brigades marched north, in column, some half a mile apart. They moved rapidly out of the forest on to bare slopes, where the nights were chilly; both Thomas and Sutherland had to maintain foraging parties all day every day to feed their men.

  They made a fascinating contrast. Sutherland and Gardiner had brought only Frenchmen, moustachioed, sun-burned, blue-coated, severely disciplined and hard-bitten, armed with muskets and bayonets, taking their time from the beat of a drum. With them marched a small horde of camp followers, mainly women. Thomas’s untouchables, in their red tunics and bare legs, armed, apart from the sixty musketeers, with spears and bows and arrows, looked like savages from antiquity. They flowed, rather than marched in step, and were encouraged to do so by the uncertain rhythm of the bugles and cymbals. They had no camp followers at all.

  The four generals invariably visited each other in the evenings.

  Sutherland had with him a store of French brandy, which suited Thomas; the two Englishmen watched him in amazement as he despatched bottle after bottle without the slightest apparent effect.

  They spent their time reminiscing, about past campaigns and victories. Thomas drank, and Richard listened.

  A march of eight days brought them to the hills overlooking Sohawalgarh. During the final three days they saw men watching them from various vantage points, but did not trouble to drive them away; there was no way they could prevent the rebels from knowing of their approach.

  The generals surveyed the town through their glasses while their men pitched camp.

  ‘As I expected,’ Sutherland said. ‘That place will not fall to an assault unsupported by artillery.’

  Sohawalgarh was situated in a valley, but on a large hillock which rose from the bed of the valley some thirty feet. The sides of this hillock had been hacked away to make an almost sheer precipice beneath the mud walls of the town, save for a single sloping track which led up to the gate.

  The walls themselves were another eight feet high. Beyond was the usual cluster of red-walled houses, with one or two temples. There was not, apparently, an inner keep; the entire town was a fortress.

  ‘Their water supply is that river,’ Gardiner observed. ‘We’ll start with that. We’ll dam it.’

  ‘Ye mean to besiege the place?’


  ‘There is no other way to take it,’ Sutherland pointed out.

  ‘Ye don’t think they’ll have wells in the town?’

  ‘No doubt they have. But damming the river will be a start. Once they realise they’re cut off, they’ll soon want to make terms.’

  ‘Sometime in the next year, maybe,’ Thomas growled.

  ‘That is warfare, General Thomas. It is not a matter of snapping one’s fingers. It is a business of patience and careful application.’

  ‘Then we’d best all go to bed,’ Thomas said.

  ‘I don’t care for the situation,’ Richard confessed as they returned to their bivouac. ‘I wonder if that wasn’t Pedron’s real plan, to keep us tied up here for several weeks.’

  ‘Sure, and maybe it was. But we’ll be starting home tomorrow,’ Thomas said.

  ‘You mean to abandon the alliance?’

  ‘Now why should I want to do that, Dick lad? We pledged ourselves to take this town for the Scindhia. We’ll do it before we leave.’

  ‘When do we do this?’

  ‘I’m all for a good night’s sleep. We attack at first light. Ye’ll tell the men. We don’t want any noise.’

  Richard scratched his head. ‘Who’s going to tell Sutherland and Gardiner?’

  ‘Nobody. They don’t like the look of the place. That’s up to them.’

  ‘And you reckon we can just walk up to the town and take it?’

  ‘Sure we can, Dick lad. It’s a matter of will.’ He grinned. ‘And hitting them before they improve their defences or get a little confidence. Dawn.’

  He lay down and was asleep in seconds. Richard duly informed the havildars of what they were going to do. None of them showed the least apprehension; they all had the most sublime confidence in their gigantic commander. He found himself wide awake, staring at the stars. He wasn’t aware of being afraid. He only wondered what, if he were killed, would happen to Caty?

  *

  The camp was roused silently in the last hour of darkness. Thomas forbade the use of any musical instruments.

  ‘Keep ’em for under the wall,’ he told his men.

  The untouchables were wildly excited, keen and confident. Thomas formed them into two columns, one under Richard, the other commanded by himself.

  ‘Ye take the gate, Dick, lad,’ he said. ‘Go for it. We’ll take the wall.’

  The brigade surged down the slope and into the valley, as the first fingers of light crept through the hills. The French pickets noticed them, and shouted with alarm; someone fired a musket.

  By then the untouchables were already racing across the floor of the valley towards the doomed town.

  The French shot alerted the sentries on the walls. There too shots were fired, and someone blew a bugle.

  ‘Cut loose,’ Thomas bawled.

  Richard gave the signal, and the untouchables’ bugles began to blare, while their cymbals clashed.

  Thomas’s contingent reached the walls first. Thomas, wearing his cuirass and helmet, waved his sword and dug it into the earth wall. Assisted by the spears of his sepoys, he hacked himself a series of steps upwards. Men appeared above him and began firing their muskets down, but the shots were too wild to do much damage. Others began hurling stones which merely bounced off Thomas’s helmet.

  And now he was clambering up. When he reached the foot of the wall itself, he simply put his hands up to grasp the lip, and heaved himself over it in a tremendous bound, his sword gripped between his teeth.

  Richard lost sight of him then, as he and his own men reached the foot of the ramp. But he was keenly aware that at this moment George was taking on the entire town single-handed.

  He pointed his sword at the gate, uttered a yell which was echoed by every one of his men, and ran at the obstacle.

  Rebels appeared on the battlements above the gate and began firing their muskets, again to little effect. Richard reached the twelve-foot-high wooden doors, and two of his men seized his legs to lift him up. Following Thomas’s example he thrust his sword between his teeth, and vaulted the arch, to find himself in the midst of half a dozen rebels, waving tulwars. Instantly he drew his pistols and shot two of them dead. The rest fell back, and Richard dropped his pistols, seized his sword, and ran at them. Several of his men had followed him over the wall, and these now dropped down to unbar the gate.

  The sepoys swarmed in, and the rebel forces fled before them. Richard led the rush through the narrow streets, cutting and thrusting, to encounter Thomas and his men coming the other way.

  ‘By God,’ Richard said. ‘Have we really done it?’

  It could not have been more than fifteen minutes since the assault had commenced.

  ‘Like I said, Dick lad,’ Thomas grinned. ‘Battles are won in the mind. These poor beggars lacked sufficient of it.’

  ‘No one but you could have done it,’ Richard told him, slapping him on the back.

  Diary of Mrs Alistair Lamont, 7 July 1781

  I am a wicked, wanton woman!

  Dear Andrew! His touch is so gentle. But then, his entire personality is so gentle. I shudder to think what might happen if Alistair were to find out about this morning. Or next week, and the week after, and the week after that.

  I cannot stop now.

  To cuckold one’s husband is a terrible thing. But then, what if one’s husband is also a terrible thing? Alistair no longer in any way cherishes me. I am certain he keeps an Indian woman; his clothes from time to time smell of coconut oil, and heaven knows I never touch the stuff.

  From her, to me? I am the most beautiful woman in Bombay, yet he must go elsewhere for his amusement. No doubt, as he has told me more than once, I lie beneath him like a sack of coal. Well, should I not, as he does nothing whatsoever to stimulate me into greater activity?

  Dear Andrew. He knows little of the art of love either, but he is at least gentle, and kind and solicitous. Perhaps too much so.

  Will I ever find the perfect lover?

  How tremulous I felt, creeping into a bachelor bungalow. How afraid of meeting a servant. But Andrew had arranged it all with meticulous care.

  How strange it felt, to undress before another man, when I have only ever done so for my husband. But to have him kneel before me and worship at my bushy shrine was heavenly!!

  I felt about to scale the heights I know are there. Yet I did not. Perhaps Andrew is too self-effacing ever to be a great lover. There are times, most times, when a woman wishes only gentleness. But there are others when she needs to be taken, ravished, transported to the realms of delight.

  Andrew lacks that art, and I do not know how to instruct him, at least without appearing even more wanton than I am. Oh, Richard, Richard. Where are you now?

  Will I ever see you again?

  8: Ship Sahib

  The sepoys were allowed to indulge in a certain amount of rape and pillage, while Thomas and Richard searched for the rebel leader. They found him cowering in a cellar, surrounded by his gold and his women. They cut off his head and mounted it on a pole.

  By then the astonished French had arrived.

  ‘By God, I would not have believed it possible,’ Gardiner exclaimed.

  ‘A coup de main,’ Sutherland said. ‘You have my congratulations, General Thomas. And you, General Bryant. What you did was a marvellous thing. You will receive the credit, gentlemen. And you are entitled to more than half what you see here.’

  ‘’Tis yours,’ Thomas said, grandly.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘The rascal was in arms against your Scindhia. I merely did the job for ye. Take the gold, and his head, back to yer lord, and tell him General Thomas makes him a present of it.’

  *

  ‘You are a remarkable fellow, George,’ Richard confessed, as they marched back to Khunde.

  ‘Why so? What was in those chests, Dick lad? Not so much as a lakh of rupees. But what have we gained? Reputation, boy, reputation. Reputation is what no man can take away from ye…ye can only lose it for yerself. And I
’ll tell ye something more: reputation leads to power, and once ye’ve power all the lakhs ye can manage will fall into yer hands.’

  ‘So now you seek power to match your reputation.’

  Thomas grinned, and tapped his nose. ‘First of all, we’ll claim our reward from Appa Khunde Rao.’

  Appa, it turned out, was just as anxious to see them. When they regained the camp at the head of the valley, where Hanif reported there had been no hostile activity from the Scindhia side, he told them that messenger after messenger had arrived from the Rao, demanding the presence of Generals Thomas and Bryant to explain their actions. They were commanded to leave their brigade and repair to Khunde with just an escort.

  ‘I don’t like the sound of that,’ Richard said.

  ‘Well, neither do I,’ Thomas agreed. ‘But we’ll allow the little scoundrel rope enough to hang himself. Ye’ll take command here, Dick. Ye know the score now. Keep ye eyes open to left and right, and send a galloper to Khunde should any word come from de Boigne.’

  ‘You’ll go to Khunde, alone?’

  Thomas grinned. ‘I’ll take an escort. Twenty men. I’ll be back in a week.’

  *

  Richard saw him ride off with many misgivings. Yet he had a tremendous victory to report. Appa should be pleased.

  He worried more that Thomas would go on a monumental drinking bout once he was back in the city; he had hardly touched a drink since the campaign had started. And with Thomas drunk, anything could happen.

  He also envied him being able to return to the arms of Multi. He found himself missing Tanna.

  He pulled himself up sharply. He still had Caty to regain, or avenge.

  *

  The untouchables were jubilant. As far as they could see, they had met the redoubtable men from Scindhia, and defeated them without losing a single man of their own. Then they had carried a formidable fortress by assault, while suffering but eleven casualties. Richard did not disillusion them as to their prowess; well led, they were as good as any soldiers he had ever heard of. Nor could he enlighten them as to what they might be doing next, as he simply didn’t know. No doubt Thomas had some ideas. He was content to await the big Irishman’s return.