'And that's done for you,' Coleman wiped clean his bayonet on the scorched tunic of a Mutineer. 'Bloody murdering bastards.'
They moved on. Seeing Thorpe's example, other soldiers had fired the roofs, so the village was ablaze, with bodies, British as well as native, scattered in ones and twos and small groups. One private of the 64th lay amidst a pile of enemy dead, his body slashed and chopped by a score of swords.
'Paddy Cavanagh,' Coleman said casually. 'I met him in Cawnpore. He was a good lad.'
Even with the village on fire the Mutineers, joined by warriors from Oudh, resisted with more determination than the British had met since leaving Allahabad. House by house and yard by yard desperate fighting pushed them back. Jack heard the high Gaelic and saw the swirl of colourful tartan as a party of the 78th split in front of a pair of the Mutineers' cannon and closed in a melee of stabbing bayonets. Refusing to run, the gunners fought and died around their charges.
'Brave men,' Coleman said. 'I wouldn't care to stand against these Sawnies.'
'We're winning,' Elliot appeared from the right, with O'Neill and Parker at his side.
'Tough fighting, sir.' O'Neill's uniform tunic was ripped, and there was blood on his face, but whether his own or from one of the enemy Jack could not tell.
'Move on!' Riding his horse and gesticulating with his sword, Havelock was never far from the worst of the fighting. 'You've taken the village men; now keep pressing.'
The path between the village and town of Unao was narrow, with flooded fields on both sides and Mutineers' muskets firing down the entire length. Havelock spurred his horse, forcing a passage with his men following, exchanging shot for shot with the enemy until they reached the outskirts of the town.
'Here!' Jack threw himself into the shelter of a wall. His men were around him, taking breath, swearing and glad to be still alive.
'We're winning,' Elliot said.
'What next?' Jack snapped open his revolver and reloaded, counting how many cartridges he had in his pouch.
'Sir,' O'Neill was panting. 'Look to the left.'
The Mutineers stood in great ranks of men and horses, watching but not advancing. They looked formidable, scarlet uniforms and white cross-belts, shakos and white trousers with irregular horsemen as well as sowars on the flanks.
'There's more in front, sir.' O'Neill said.
Jack counted his men. 'Where's Samuels?'
'Dead, sir.' Riley said. 'A Mutineer nearly chopped him in two with a bloody great sword.'
'What happened to the Mutineer?'
'Logan happened to him, sir.'
'I see.' The Mutineer was dead. Logan was one of the smallest soldiers in the regiment and probably the most deadly in close-quarter fighting. 'Samuels was a good man.'
Like so many British soldiers in so many campaigns, Samuels would be mourned by his colleagues for a few hours and then would lie forgotten in a lonely grave thousands of miles from home. Samuels was the true price of Empire, the blood price of glory, the shilling-a-day private, spurned by the very people he defended and who profited by his sacrifice. Rule Britannia.
'Form line of battle,' Havelock ordered.
Reinforced to six thousand strong, with batteries of artillery, cavalry and great blocks of infantry, the Mutineers advanced along the road toward the diminished and heat-exhausted British.
'They don't have to defeat us,' Prentice said. 'All they have to do is fight; kill a few of us, slow us down and retreat. With their numbers, they can't lose. Wounds and disease will whittle us away until we are too few to bother about.'
'The quicker we win and relieve Lucknow the better,' Jack said. 'Thank God General Havelock seems to think the same.'
'They're attacking us this time,' Elliot said. 'Cry Havelock!'
'Havelock!' The 113th echoed him. 'And let loose the dogs of war.'
With the enemy coming straight at them on the only road and with swamp land on either side, Havelock had no choice but to stand square on. He placed four pieces of artillery to command the centre of the road, two more on either flank and had the precious infantry in support.
'Come on, you bastards,' Logan said softly. 'Wee Donnie's waiting for you.'
'They're coming, Logie,' Riley stamped his boots on the ground. 'You won't have to wait for long.'
Jack grunted and nodded; for the first time in weeks Riley sounded something like his old self.
The Mutineers marched straight up the road and suddenly halted. Something like a shiver ran through them, with the men in the front ranks pulling back and some of the cavalry edging forward.
'They've seen us,' Elliot said.
'They'd have to be blind not to,' Jack said. 'With our guns pointing straight down their throat.'
'They're forming into battle order,' Elliot said.
'Fire when you're ready,' Havelock ordered, and after an imperceptible pause, the British artillery opened up.
'Fire, lads,' Jack said, and the rifles of the infantry joined the artillery. The noise was deafening, killing all conversation and the result on the disorganised Mutineer army shocking. Iron cannon balls ripped holes in their ranks, knocking down entire files of men. Some of the sepoys darted forward, others pulled back, and the Mutineers' artillery pulled right off the road to deploy elsewhere.
The British artillery changed to grape, scything into the Mutineers, destroying their cohesion, killing, maiming, dismembering by the score.
'Watch the pandy guns,' Logan jeered, 'they're stuck in the bog!'
It was true; either due to panic or inexperience, the Mutineers had plunged their artillery into the boggy ground at the side of the road and now could not haul them out. The cannon remained there, useless, as the British guns poured shot after shot into the rebel army.
'They're breaking,' Jack shouted. 'Keep firing!'
With their artillery out of action and British fire unrelenting, the rebels crumbled, turned and fled, leaving hundreds dead and fifteen guns stranded in the marshland.
'That was easier than I expected,' Elliot reached for his hip-flask.
Jack nodded. 'It's another step closer to Lucknow.'
Ignoring the bloodied bodies of the Mutineer dead and the men who collapsed with heatstroke and dysentery, the British chased the retreating enemy for mile after mile until Havelock, seeing the exhausted state of his army, ordered a halt.
'Thank God.' Elliot crawled to the shade of a tree and fanned himself with his hat. 'I can't march another yard.'
'Our men are about done,' Jack agreed. He was gasping yet knew he could keep going for a while yet.
Elliot pulled at his flask. 'God, Jack, I wish this was water and not rum.'
'I never thought I'd hear you say that.' Passing over his water-bottle, Jack watched as Elliot took a long drink. 'It makes you long for an English autumn day, doesn't it?'
'I never thought I'd agree to that, either,' Elliot wiped beads of sweat from his forehead. 'Do you think the pandies will stand again between here and Lucknow?'
'God only knows,' Jack shook his head. 'They seem to have an inexhaustible supply of soldiers while we are being whittled away man by man through battle and disease. Unless we get reinforcements, we won't have sufficient force to relieve the Residency.' He glanced toward the men. 'Don't tell the men, for God's sake.'
'The general will get us through,' Elliot said. 'Are your ladies with us this time?'
Jack looked back along the road the army had come. 'They will be.' He had a sudden desire to meet them again, to talk to Mary, to know she was there, to know she was safe.
'It's quiet at present, Jack,' Elliot said quietly. 'Go and find her. I'll look after the men if anything happens.'
Jack hesitated between his desire to see Mary and Jane again and his duty and responsibility to his Company. He stood up, shook his head and sank back down. 'My place is here,' he said. 'If the pandies attack or the general orders us forward I have to be with my men.'
'And your women?' Elliot asked gently.
> 'They're not my women,' Jack said.
Elliot smiled. 'They think they are.'
'Well they're wrong, damn them!' Jack said.
'If you say so,' Elliot crawled deeper into his patch of shade.
'My women,' Jack tried to push the image of Mary from his head and concentrate on his duty. 'They are not my women in any shape or form. I wish they would leave me alone.'
The sun was high now, gradually drying up the land on either side, drifting steam across the British to give an ethereal, near mystical quality to the temporary encampment. Deliberately turning his back on the road to Cawnpore, Jack surveyed his men as they lay supine, gasping in the heat and grubbing for shade.
Thorpe, Coleman and Williams were playing cards; Parker was smiling as he shared the contents of his water-bottle with the dog that Jack had already ordered him to discard and Riley was in earnest conversation with an attentive Logan. Wherever he wandered, the regiment was now his home. After years of striving for promotion and a route away from the 113th and into a more respectable regiment, he was now reconciled with his lot. He lay back, and despite himself, he thought of Mary.
'We're moving again.' Wearily, Elliot pushed himself upright, straightened his tunic and checked the chambers of his revolver. 'Let's see how many more pandies try to stop us.'
They marched on, deeper into rebel-dominated territory, each step bringing them closer to the besieged garrison of Lucknow, with the ground drying under the punishing heat and the mosquitoes feasting on the flesh of perspiring men.
Two hours of marching brought them to the town of Bashiratgunj, where the rebels had decided to make another stand.
'Oh look.' There was no expression in Elliot's voice. 'Pandies. Have they not learned they can't defeat our general? Havelock has them in his pocket every single time.'
'They've taken a strong position,' Jack said.
'They always take a strong position,' Elliot said, 'and Havelock always tosses them out.'
'Aye,' Jack studied the Mutineers' lines.
Bashiratgunj was a walled town with a substantial turreted gateway through which the road entered. The walls on each side of the gate were loopholed and battlemented, while the defence was supplemented by earthworks and a wet ditch, rather like a moat, in front. Between the ditch and Havelock's men was a jhil, a wide pond. To the rear of the town, out of Jack's vision, a causeway stretched across another deep jhil and led to the only exit.
'It's a bit of a bugger,' O'Neill gave his professional opinion.
'What do you think, sir?' Prentice asked. 'Another frontal attack or do we pound the walls with artillery until we destroy them, and then walk in?'
'Not the former, I hope,' Jack said. 'We're losing men like water through a sieve.'
'Sixty-fourth!' Havelock's order ended the debate. 'I want you to march around Bashiratgunj and position yourselves in the rear to cut off the Mutineers' retreat. The rest of us are going right for the throat.'
'And may the good Lord have mercy on our souls,' Elliot said and started as the officers and men of the 113th roared out their new battle-cry.
'Cry Havelock!'
'That's my shout,' Elliot complained and joined in. 'Cry Havelock and let loose the dogs!'
As always, the British artillery opened the battle, with the Madras Fusiliers skirmishing in front and the 113th and 78th advancing in a solid line. Five jets of white smoke erupted from the town walls as the enemy artillery responded.
Elliot closed his eyes. 'For what we are about to receive,' he said as the cannon balls smashed into the British lines. Jack saw Lieutenant Henry Havelock, the general's son go down as his horse was shot. He rose again, grinning like a mischievous school boy and continued the advance. With the Fusiliers as skirmishers, the 113th and 78th ran to the entrenched Mutineers.
'Come on, boys!' Jack fired his revolver at the heads bobbing behind the entrenchments. He saw Coleman duck under the swing of a tulwar, saw Thorpe bayonet the swordsman as O'Neill shot a Mutineer at close range and May stagger and fall, bleeding from a wound to the neck. Then the Mutineers were backing away, the kilted 78th were swarming over the earthworks, and the Fusiliers were hammering at the gate.
'Keep pushing forward!' General Havelock shouted as the Mutineers broke and fled into the town. 'Don't allow them to rally.'
There was sense in Havelock's order. Jack could only imagine the horror of a fight among the narrow alleys of Bashiratgunj, where the defenders would know every corner and the British would be in small, isolated pockets.
'Come on, 113th!' Jack followed the Madras Fusiliers into the town, gagging as the stench of packed humanity, untreated sewage, cow-urine and spices smacked him in the face. 'Chase them, lads!' He fired at a huge, bearded rebel wielding a sword, saw a white-trousered Mutineer with a matchlock musket, and saw Logan duck down to gut a yelling Mutineer.
'Hard going!' Elliot gasped. He had lost his forage cap somewhere.
'Keep pushing!' Jack fired a snap-shot at a Mutineer. The man screamed and spat blood.
Suddenly the defenders were running again, leaving a litter of bodies behind them.
Jumping over the man he had just shot, Jack ran on, gasping in the stifling heat, swearing as he slipped on a pile of human entrails, dodging as bullets hummed past him. He tried to shout from a throat closed through heat and dust, tried to encourage his men. He had to keep the momentum; to halt was to allow the enemy time to regroup and the British were at their most vulnerable, scattered inside the town.
'We've beat them again,' Elliot leant against the wall of a house, panting.
'Keep moving,' Jack said. 'Push them right out of town. Don't let them reform.'
House by house and alley by alley the 78th, Madras Fusiliers and 113th Foot shoved forward, shooting, bayoneting, swearing and dying until the Mutineers fled out of the rear gate. If they had followed Havelock's plan, the 64th would have been waiting there to destroy the remnants, but they had stopped to exchange fire with the defenders. The Mutineers scattered into the countryside, a defeated army that could reform and fight again.
'They're running like hares!' Grabbing a rifle from a private, Elliot fired after the fleeing Mutineers. 'Havelock's beat them again.'
'We could have destroyed them if the 64th were on time,' Jack leant against the outside wall of the town. 'Now we'll have to do it all over again.' He looked at his men. Exhausted and blood spattered, they stared at the retreating Mutineers even as they sunk to their knees or slumped onto the ground to lie, chests heaving with the effort of drawing in oxygen. Despite this next victory against odds, there was no energy left to celebrate.
'The men are all in,' Jack said. 'One more victory and there won't be enough of us to mount guard yet alone relieve Lucknow.'
'Here comes Holy Havelock,' Elliot said as the weary infantry stiffened to attention.
'Clear the way for the general!' O'Neill ordered.
'You have done that well already,' Havelock replied, and the men raised a faint cheer.
It was to be their last reason for cheering for some time.
Chapter Twelve
'We're pulling back.' The words ran around Havelock's column. 'We're pulling back to Mangalwar.'
Sick at heart, Jack heard the inevitable comments.
'What? We've got them licked! Why are we retreating?'
'Retreating from the dirty pandies? Bugger that! There's nothing between Lucknow and us but a rabble of scared blacks.'
'Charlotte's up there! We can't leave her!'
'Right lads,' Jack stepped in front of the indignant 113th, knowing every man in every other regiment in the column shared their emotions. 'We've only got eight hundred and fifty fighting men left now, what with battle casualties and disease. There are about ten thousand pandies ahead of us so the general has ordered a temporary withdrawal and there is no more to be said.'
'Sir … How about the women? What about my wife?' Riley was plainly distraught.
'We'll be back, Riley,' Jack promise
d. 'You know General Havelock as well as I do. He's not a man to give up.'
Unhappy, the British withdrew back across the land they had won with such courage and suffering. Heads bowed and rifles across shoulders, they marched, hating everything, hoping the enemy would attack so they could take out their frustrations on somebody, anybody.
'We had them licked,' Logan said. 'Dirty pandy bastards. We had them licked.'
'We've still got them licked, Logan,' Jack said. 'This is a withdrawal, not a retreat.
'Dirty pandy bastards.' Once Logan had a phrase in his head it was hard for him to lose it. 'Dirty murdering pandy bastards.'
They mustered around Mangalwar, with the men glowering in the direction they had just come and the officers discussing their likely next move.
Outside the village, two cannons pointed in the direction of Lucknow.
'What's happening here?' Jack asked as stern-faced Fusiliers marched a pair of rebel prisoners toward the guns. Both men remained erect, with proud faces and no trace of fear.
'The gunners are going to execute them,' Elliot said. 'They've to be blown from the guns.'
Nobody protested; there was no sign of sympathy for the condemned men. Gondabad and Cawnpore had killed any vestige of pity the 113th may have had.
Jack nodded to a pair of trees nearby from which the bodies of two Mutineers hung, swaying slightly. 'What's wrong with an old-fashioned hanging?'
Elliot shrugged. 'I'm not sure I want to see this.'
'You've seen much worse,' Jack said.
'Yes, sir, but seeing men killed in battle is different.'
Many of the infantry seemed not to agree as they crowded round to watch. Neither of the Mutineers flinched as the Fusiliers pressed the small of their backs against the muzzle of a cannon and tied them in place.
'They're brave men,' Elliot muttered.
'Murdering pandy bastards,' Logan gave his expected opinion.
A stout major ordered: 'Fire', and immediately both cannons gave a muffled bark, and the Mutineers disappeared in a welter of blood, flesh and bones. Jack saw a human head lift high in the air to land with a thud on the ground. Parker's dog ran toward it, with Parker in hot pursuit. He pulled the dog away.
Windrush: Cry Havelock (Jack Windrush Book 4) Page 18