Sure enough, shots began to ring out as the column entered the pass the following morning, and the march stopped as negotiations were carried out. Akbar Khan agreed to let the column through in exchange for hostages, but his deceit knew no bounds, for after the hostages were handed over the firing began again, while mounted tribesmen rode into the column, scattering followers, hacking down civilians and soldiers and even carrying off children.
Three thousand lost their lives in the pass and all supplies were lost. That night the remnants of the march camped with just four small tents and no fuel or food. Hundreds died of exposure.
The killing continued over the next few days. To escape the massacre some killed themselves while others deserted, though they were not allowed to escape by the Afghans, who only spared those they might ransom later – the officers, wives and children. Soldiers, servants and followers were butchered.
By the fifth day the column numbered just three thousand – five hundred of them soldiers. Elphy Bey gave himself up, later to die in captivity, while the wives and families surrendered also. Still the march struggled on, numbers dwindling, and was attacked at the Jugdulluk Crest, suffering appalling casualties. Running battles took place overnight, in feet of snow, until the survivors got to Gandamak, by which time they numbered fewer than four hundred.
They took up position on a hill, but found themselves surrounded by Afghans, who commanded them to surrender. ‘Not bloody likely!’ scoffed a sergeant, and his retort would become something of an English national catchphrase. He was as good as his word, though, so the Afghan snipers went to work before a final attack.
Jugdulluk Crest was no battle; it was a massacre. Six officers escaped, five of whom were cut down on the road to Jalalabad. Just one, William Brydon, made it. Part of his skull had been sheared off by an Afghan sword stroke but he’d survived the blow thanks to a copy of Blackwood’s Magazine stuffed into his hat. ‘Never knew this old bit of Lolland drivel could come in so handy,’ he’d apparently remarked.
Of the sixteen thousand who had set off from Kabul six days previously, he was the only one to reach his destination.
Except … not quite. The story of good old William Brydon making it alone to Jalalabad was a good one – so good that it loomed large in the public consciousness for some time. Sadly, however, it was not quite the truth, because there were other survivors. Just that the methods and means of their survival were not quite so noble as the stoicism of Dr William Brydon. A man will do anything to survive, to live to see another sunrise, feel the lips of his wife and children, laugh along with a drink in his hand. So, yes, there were others who lived through that disastrous march, but their exploits were not to be applauded, celebrated, sung about nor later immortalized by artists. They were not even ‘exploits’ at all, in the sense that the word suggests adventure and derring-do. They were acts of survival, pure and simple. Dirty and mean and ruthless and executed at a dreadful cost to others.
And so it was that on the march there was a certain commander who went by the name of Colonel Walter Lavelle. This man belonged to the Order of the Knights Templar. He was not an especially high-ranking Templar, not a person of interest to the Assassin Brotherhood, but known to them nevertheless.
Shortly before the march was due to leave Kabul, a corporal by the name of Cavanagh inveigled himself with Walter Lavelle.
‘I wonder if I could have a word, sir,’ said this Cavanagh on the morning of the march.
Seeing a certain seriousness and, if he was honest with himself, a little danger in this man’s eyes, Lavelle had nodded, despite the fact that the man was a mere corporal, and the two soldiers moved to the shelter of a cypress tree, away from where servants and followers were loading carts, and horses struggled beneath the weight of panniers and saddlebags. Indeed, the courtyard was a hive of industry. Above the sound of men cursing and struggling and orders being issued and women wringing their hands and crying, came the constant exhortations of Lady Florentia Sale, the wife of Major General Robert Henry Sale, a woman in whose honour the word ‘redoubtable’ might well have been minted. Lady Sale left nobody in doubt that she considered this march a mere afternoon excursion, a matter of little import for the might of the English army and that to think otherwise was treacherously un-English. ‘Oh do cease your bawling, Emily, and make yourself useful,’ she would exhort. ‘You there, have a care. That is my very best Madeira wine. And you, watch that china or my Jalalabad soirées will be somewhat lacking in finesse. I’m planning my first one two days hence. What a hoot it will be to meet the good ladies of Jalalabad.’
Away by the cypress tree, Corporal Cavanagh turned to Lavelle and in a dead-eyed way said, ‘She’s a fool.’
They were well out of earshot but even so the colonel spluttered indignantly, as colonels were in the habit of doing. ‘Have you gone mad, sah? Have you taken leave of every single one of all your senses at bloody once? Do you know who you’re talking to, man? Do you know who you’re talking about? That is –’
‘I know full well who I’m talking to and who I’m talking about, sir,’ replied Cavanagh evenly (by gad the man was a cool fish and no mistake), ‘and it’s precisely because I know who I’m talking to that I feel I can talk openly. Forgive me if I misjudged the situation and I shall retire to continue preparing the men of my section.’
He made as though to walk away, but Lavelle stopped him, curious to hear what was on the impertinent corporal’s mind. ‘I’ll hear you out, man. Just mind your tongue is all.’
But Cavanagh did nothing of the sort. He planned to speak his mind and speak it he did. ‘Do you know how far it is to Jalalabad? It’s ninety miles. We have an army of fourteen thousand, but hardly a quarter of them are soldiers, the rest of them a great rabble: porters, servants, women and children. Hardly a fighter among them. Do you know what the conditions are like, sir? We’ll be marching through a foot of snow on the worst ground on earth and the temperature freezing. And what of Akbar Khan? He’s been in the hills, going from this chief to that, gathering support for further hostilities. Khan will not stand by his word. As soon as we step outside those gates he will begin taking us apart. Lady Sale thinks she’ll be having her first Jalalabad soirée in two days’ time. I say we’ll be lucky to make that march in two weeks. We don’t have arms, ammunition, nor enough food or supplies. The march is doomed, sir, and we are doomed with it unless we join forces to take action.’
He went on to tell Lavelle that he had a reasonable command of Pushtu, and suggested that he took a position as Lavelle’s batman. But Lavelle hadn’t finished spluttering, and he did a bit of blustering as well, and when that was over he dismissed Cavanagh with a flea in his ear, telling him not to be so impertinent and to keep his treacherous thoughts of desertion to himself.
‘You must have hoped to curry favour with me, y’wretched lickspittle!’ he roared, ‘For whatever reason I cannot imagine, but I’m telling you I remain General Elphinstone’s faithful servant to the very last.’
By the first night of the march it was clear that Akbar Khan had indeed gone back on his word and that Elphy Bey was a fool. And as the column rang to the screams of wounded men and the Afghan sorties continued, and poor unfortunates froze where they lay, a terrified and craven Lavelle crept into Cavanagh’s tent to ask if the corporal would agree to be his batman.
‘Me, a mere wretched lickspittle?’ said Cavanagh, his face betraying nothing of the dark satisfaction he felt at the look of panic on the colonel’s face. He demurred and refused, acting offended, until he elicited an apology from the quaking colonel.
The next morning, as Britis
h Lancers rode against the Afghans in a futile attempt to deter further attacks, Cavanagh, Lavelle and a faithful sepoy, whose name is not recorded, left the company for good.
Their path through the hills and passes was treacherous. They didn’t dare get too near the column for fear of being seen by either the British soldiers or their Afghan attackers, but neither did they want to stray too far from established routes. The Afghan countryside was well known for being among the most hostile on the face of the known world, never more so than in the unforgiving frost of January, and what’s more the men feared falling into the hands of far-flung tribes.
They had feed for their mounts, but as they made their way through the cliffs and peaks of the pass it became clear that they had seriously miscalculated when it came to food for themselves. So when, in the late afternoon of the third day, the chill breeze brought to them the smell of cooking meat, their stomachs were as alert as their senses.
Sure enough they soon came upon five Afghan hillmen on the track. They were tending to a fire in a clearing, over which they were roasting a goat, with sheer rock on one side of them and a vertiginous drop on the other.
The three deserters took cover immediately. Like all English soldiers they maintained a healthy respect for the fighters of Afghanistan – theirs was a warrior nation: the men were skilled and fearsome, and the women notorious for their ghastly methods of execution, with flaying and ‘the death by a thousand cuts’ among the least sadistic.
So the trio stayed hidden behind a large boulder: the sepoy, implacable, a picture of steely resolve, despite knowing how the Afghans treated their Sikh prisoners; Lavelle wordlessly ceding authority to Cavanagh, who thanked God the tribesmen had not thought to post a lookout and, in a series of quick glances, took stock of the situation.
Well, there was no making a detour round the position, that was for sure. In order to continue along the path, Cavanagh, Lavelle and the sepoy would have to engage them in combat – either that or return to the column and explain their absence and most likely be shot for desertion.
Combat it was then.
There were five of them, wearing skullcaps or turbans and long coats. Tethered nearby were horses loaded with supplies, including the carcass of a second goat. The Afghan rifles, called jezzails, were arranged in a tepee shape not far from the campfire.
Cavanagh knew the jezzail well. Home-made weapons, their long barrels gave them a considerable range advantage over the British Brown Bess musket used by Elphinstone’s men. These Afghan warriors would use their jezzails to great effect against the column, with expert snipers firing a deadly barrage of bullets, nails and even pebbles down upon the beleaguered retreat some eight hundred feet below. They were intricately decorated, as was the Afghan custom; one of them was even adorned with human teeth.
However, noted Cavanagh, with relief, the jezzail was a muzzle-loaded weapon, and by the looks of things the stack in front of them were not primed. Either way, the tribesmen would reach for the Khyber knives at their waists. Excellent close-quarter weapons.
Cavanagh looked at his two companions. The sepoy, as he knew, was a decent shot. He wasn’t sure about Lavelle, but he himself had trained at the Domenico Angelo Tremamondo fencing-master academy and was an expert swordsman.
(Here, The Ghost came across a note, presumably left by whichever Assassin curator had assembled the dossier. The writer wondered how a mere corporal had studied at the great Angelo’s School of Arms in Carlisle House, Soho, in London, where the aristocracy were tutored in swordsmanship. Or, perhaps, to turn the question round: how a graduate of that particular academy had ended up a mere corporal? The note was appended with an inscription from Ethan, a single word. The Ghost knew it well from the dreaded Latin lessons Ethan had insisted upon as part of his tutelage. ‘Cave’ it said, meaning beware.)
Cavanagh knew this was his chance to impress upon Lavelle that he was more than a mere deserter. The day before, when Lavelle had asked him why he might wish to curry favour, the question had gone unanswered. But the truth of it was that Cavanagh was well aware of Lavelle’s position within the Order and wished to take advantage of it. So Cavanagh drew his sabre silently, gave his own service pistol to the sepoy, and indicated for Lavelle to ready his.
When the two men were in place he indicated for them to take the two tribesmen on the left.
Next he rose up slightly on his haunches, stretching out his calves. The last thing he needed was his legs seizing up when he made his move.
Which he did. Trusting Lavelle and the sepoy to be accurate and putting his faith in the element of surprise and his own not-inconsiderable swordsmanship, Cavanagh sprang from behind the boulder to do battle.
He saw the soldier on the left spin and scream at the same time as he heard the pistol shot from behind, and then came a second shot, this one not so accurate but enough to lift the next man off his feet and take him down clutching at his stomach. As the second tribesman turned and snatched for the Khyber knife at his waist, Cavanagh reached him and attacked with the sabre, a single chopping blow to the neck that opened the carotid artery, and then stepped nimbly away to avoid the rhythmic fountain of blood.
The Englishman had chosen his first strike deliberately. Afghan warriors were as tough and unflappable as they come, but even they could not fail to be disturbed by the sudden appearance of bright arterial spray arcing and splattering in the dying light of the afternoon. It sent the other two into a state of disarray, one of them wiping his comrade’s blood from his face with one hand, even as he reached for his curved knife with the other.
His knife cleared the belt but that was all. Cavanagh spun his own blade mid-air as he swung backhand, slicing open the luckless hillman’s throat. The man’s skullcap tumbled from his head as he folded to the dirt with blood sheeting down his front and a final wet death rattle, but there was no time for Cavanagh to bring his sabre to bear and take the last man. He heard a shot from behind and felt the air part, but the shot went wild. Too late he saw the Khyber knife streak from outside his peripheral vision, and though there was no immediate pain he felt the hot wash of blood coursing down his face.
[A note from the dossier curator: NB Cavanagh bears this scar to this day.]
Had the Afghan pressed home his advantage he might have made it out of the clearing alive, and maybe even with the blood of a British corporal to show for his pains. Instead he chose to make a break for the horses. Possibly he hoped to escape and warn his friends; maybe he knew of a loaded pistol secreted within the saddlebags. Unfortunately for him the sight of a terrified man running towards them was too much for the normally imperturbable Afghan steeds and they reared up, pulled their tethers free and scattered.
Hell’s teeth, cursed Cavanagh, as he watched the horses, the supplies and not to mention the second goat carcass, go scarpering out of sight along the frosty track.
Meanwhile, the Afghan wheeled, his teeth bared and his Khyber knife slashing. But Cavanagh went on guard sabre-style, his right hand raised, the point of the sword tipping downwards, and it was with some satisfaction that he saw the tribesman’s eyeballs swivel up and to the left for a second before he buried the tip of his blade into the man’s face.
In the aftermath of the battle was silence. The gut-shot Afghan writhed and moaned, and Cavanagh delivered the coup de grâce, wiping his sabre clean on the man’s robes, which were already so bloodstained as to be useless.
‘Quick, grab whatever clothes you can before the blood ruins them,’ he told Lavelle and the sepoy, who had emerged from behind the rock. The sepoy had acquitted himself well, just as Cavanagh alw
ays thought he would, and Cavanagh congratulated him. Lavelle congratulated Cavanagh. Nobody congratulated Lavelle.
The three men ate heartily of goat, which having been left unattended during the conflict was slightly overdone. Not that it mattered to the ravenous British. They ate until their bellies were full of overcooked goat, and after that they donned the robes and turbans of the dead, cobbling together what outfits they could that didn’t show obvious bloodstains. When that was done, they hid the bodies as best they could and carried on their way.
For a day they rode, staying ahead of the retreating column, a mile or so as the crow flies. Despite the distance they heard the constant crack of shot, even the occasional shriek of pain that was carried to them on the chill wind. Cavanagh began to grow in confidence. They drew further away from prescribed routes, finding a new track higher up the rock pass. And then, on the afternoon of the fifth day, they came upon the outskirts of another much larger travelling encampment. And they faced their most difficult test yet.
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Thinking about it later, Cavanagh would come to the conclusion that they had happened upon a roaming settlement belonging to one of Akbar’s warlords. From such a base the chieftain could dispatch snipers to take up position on the passes above the column, where they would use their jezzails to rain devastation on the poor marchers below, and send riders to make their way down near hidden paths to the floor of the pass, where they could make terrifying damaging charges into the rear, less well-guarded sections of the column, mercilessly cutting down servants, women and children and plundering what few supplies were left.
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