Dust and Steel

by Patrick Mercer

  ‘Have a care, Corp’l Pegg!’ Morgan alerted the NCO as the blade flickered in a semicircle, striking nothing, but driving both Britons back and allowing the sepoy to drag the pony and its terrified cargo clear. For no more than a few seconds, the three men sat on their horses, glaring at each other, trying to get their breath, whilst the sword blade hovered menacingly.

  Any order that might have been restored, though, was still-born. Just as Dunniah reached to shorten the rein that attached the children’s horse to his own, confusion returned.

  ‘You barnshoot!’ This, bellowed at the top of a powerful voice, accompanied thunderous hoofs that seemed, to Morgan at least, to have come from nowhere. ‘That’s Damodar. I’ll nab the little brute; get that fucker Dunniah.’ Kemp, wounded and bleeding as he was, had immediately grasped what Morgan, Pegg and he had stumbled upon. The horses that were beginning to settle started bucking and prancing again as the big man and bigger horse flung themselves into the mêlée. Morgan could see that Kemp was in no condition to tackle Dunniah, but he grabbed the larger of the two boys and began to pull at the child for all that he was worth, for he realised that by seizing her precious son he could disable the Rhani as a commander in the field.

  Pegg and Morgan had little choice but to launch themselves again at the muscular Dunniah before he had a chance to cut at Kemp. With a shout they pushed their horses forward as the Indian tried unsuccessfully to manoeuvre his horse back and out of reach. But he’d forgotten the reins that bound him to the other pony. Neither had Kemp accounted for the ropes that were tied to the boys’ ankles and passed under their mount’s belly. The more he tugged at Damodar, the more the creature and the boy objected; so did poor, two-year-old Samuel, sandwiched between his deeply alarmed elder, and sixteen stone of sweating, cursing, bleeding colonel of irregular cavalry. There was utter chaos.

  As Kemp swore and pulled, Pegg and Morgan tried to get inside Dunniah’s guard, ducking and swerving at each flick of the man’s steel. In the dark and confusion, Emerald caught a slight gash across her nose that made her throw her head up high, whinnying in pain as she did so, but as the sword flashed back in the other direction, Morgan, even as he reached across to draw his own sword, found his reins slack in his hand. They had been cut and he had no more control over his wounded horse than his heels could provide. Game as she was, the mare needed the bit to keep her head towards the fight, but with no control from her master, she swerved away.

  In the dark and pandemonium, Morgan – to his eternal regret – saw only flashes of the next vignette. Just as he lost control of his charger, another rider joined the jostling mob. The arrival of a further fury only became obvious when yet more curses were added to the bedlam.

  ‘Keep your hands off them wee ’uns, you feckin’ thing.’ From the sound of it, an angry daughter of Erin had joined the uproar, and a familiar one at that. ‘Get away, you dirty bowsie!’ The virago went straight for Kemp.

  Morgan was doing his best to help Pegg in his unarmed assault on the sepoy so he sensed more than saw a flurry of whirling hands slapping, punching and clawing at Kemp’s head and his wounded shoulder, and the commandant’s shrinking from the attack with uncharacteristic speed. Morgan could not mistake the dark demented figure, for he’d heard and seen that temper too many times before – although in rather different circumstances – to need to be told that Mary Keenan had joined the throng.

  ‘Leave off, you crazy bitch.’ Kemp was grunting with pain as the she-devil battered at him. ‘I’m on your side.’ He did his best to hold Mary at bay and shield his head with an arm. Meanwhile, Samuel took his cue from his mother and added his infant fists to the tattoo that was now falling on the commandant’s stout form.

  Soon, the combination proved too much for Kemp, who wheeled his horse from the fray and, in doing so, released Dunniah and the pony’s last anchor. Seeing that he now had only one Englishman to deal with, the Indian brought the knuckle bow of his curved sword into crunching impact with Lance-Corporal Pegg’s nose, knocking the NCO from his saddle, and then kicked violently at his horse, which hauled the pony and its passengers away from the brutish scene.

  ‘Mary…Mary, it’s me!’ Morgan stuttered as, maddeningly, his filly turned in exactly the opposite direction that he wanted her to. He saw the woman hesitate, look directly at him and bring her fingers to her mouth in indecision.

  But then came the eldritch shriek, ‘Mama…Mama!’ from Samuel, whose fat little arms reached out beseechingly – and that won the day. As the rebel soldier headed off into the dawn at the best speed that his trailing charge would allow, Mary kicked hard at her horse’s flanks and followed Dunniah as fast as she could.

  As Morgan fought to control his bucking horse, he stared after Mary. She was lying low in the saddle, making the smallest possible target of herself; she looked neither left nor right nor back at him; she just rode hard into the shadows and the dust.

  But there was enough light now for Morgan to see what a sorry sight the three of them made. Pursuit was pointless as Kemp slouched astride his horse, clutching at his shoulder.

  ‘Are you badly hit, Commandant?’ Morgan could see a dark saucer of blood staining the older officer’s khaki shirt just above the collarbone.

  ‘No, it’s bugger all; it’s nothing compared with what I’m going to do to that murderer Dunniah.’ Although the grimace on Kemp’s face suggested something rather more serious. ‘Corp’l Pegg needs your help more than I do.’

  Morgan, still numb from the sight of his lover, looked down at Pegg. What the NCO lacked in style in the saddle he made up for with the common sense of survival and he had kept his reins looped about his wrist even when he was unseated. Now he clutched at his bridle with one hand and his nose with another. Morgan noticed simultaneously how the blood dripped from Pegg’s nostril whilst a great clump of grass and dirt protruded from the blocked barrel of his slung rifle where it had rammed into the ground during his fall.

  ‘Fuckin’ India, never did want to come to the bleedin’ place,’ Lance-Corporal Pegg groaned nasally. ‘Leaves a man nothing but black and fuckin’ blue, it does; it’s just a flyblown shite-house, it is.’ Morgan had to admit that Pegg had had more than his share of misfortunes since the beginning of the campaign.

  ‘It’ll be good for your pension, though, Corp’l Pegg,’ said Kemp through clenched teeth as Morgan started to dismount.

  ‘If I ever fuckin’ live to see a fuckin’ pension, sir.’ Pegg was swearing even harder than usual.

  ‘I’d get my reins knotted together before I’d do anything else, Morgan,’ said Kemp before: ‘Jaysus, look there,’ as he brought his pistol up with his good hand.

  Whilst shouts and commands had continued in the wake of the ambush, dark shapes of horsemen had been slipping past the battered trio. Morgan looked up at half a dozen horsemen riding as fast as they could along a nearby track through the scrub in the same direction that Dunniah and Mary had taken. At their head was a noticeably slim figure in a metal helmet, whose nose-piece glinted in the first rays of light.

  ‘It’s the Rhani – the little whore!’ As Kemp spoke, he fired two quick shots from his revolver, the second one of which wounded one of the group’s mounts, causing the beast to rear and throw its rider. Morgan was to remember that moment for the rest of his life, for even as Kemp fired he knew that he should have tried to stop him, as the three of them were in no condition to face the swirling hell that now descended.

  The riders jerked off their course to charge down on them. They needed no orders, understanding their leader’s intentions instinctively, simply following the point of her heavily curved, outstretched sabre and rousing their horses to a gallop. They were only thirty paces away when they swerved into the attack, so the three soldiers didn’t even have time to form a hasty defence. Each man reacted viscerally. Lance-Corporal Pegg shrank behind a thick tree trunk, experience reminding him to reach for his bayonet – the only effective weapon he had. Meanwhile, Morgan still had one foo
t in the stirrup when Kemp opened fire, so he dragged his mare down to the ground, groped for his carbine, which hung from the swivel on his cross-belt, and made as small a target as he could behind Emerald’s saddle and haunch.

  Mother of God, Hume was right. Morgan thumbed the carbine’s hammer back and checked that his percussion cap was in place, That man must be tired of life. He watched as the wounded Kemp jerked his reins as best he could with his gouged left arm, thumped his heels viciously into his grey’s ribs, and with his revolver outstretched, surged straight for the Rani as she thundered directly at him. Kemp fired two more shots as the range closed, but neither found a mark.

  I hope he’s counting his rounds, thought Morgan, and I wish I’d loaded with ball. On the advice of Cornet Breen, Morgan had primed his carbine with pellets rather than one single lead shot so that he would have more chance of hitting a fleeting target during a mounted fight. But now he needed the power of one solid bullet to bring an attacker to a standstill, not just wound him. Most of all, though, he wanted his pistol and its six chambers, which now lay abandoned somewhere in the scrub.

  But if Morgan wanted a revolver, he wouldn’t have chosen Kemp’s, for the Adams jammed at the critical moment. As the two riders closed on each other, Morgan watched the commandant aim straight at the Rhani’s throat and squeeze the trigger when they were no more than two horses apart. The heavy ball should have lifted the princess from the saddle, but instead there was just an empty click.

  ‘You useless lump of junk!’ yelled Kemp as he hurled the pistol and watched it bounce harmlessly off the Rhani’s shoulder.

  But in throwing the now redundant bit of steel at his attacker, Kemp had raised his arm and exposed his ribs as he did so, giving the Rhani the classic cavalryman’s target.

  Morgan knew that a handy British trooper would have dug his straight, regulation blade into the soft target point first, but the woman’s curved sword was designed for slashing and that was exactly what she did. The thin steel blade sighed through the air, carving a neat seam below Kemp’s arm from which the blood instantly sprang, but there was something else, something sinister, about the way that she handled her horse. Morgan saw a cruel, foot-long, dagger in her other hand. She was controlling her mount with reins attached to her feet, just as the Mahrattas were said to do. Now she drew her elbow back and pushed the poniard hard into the already stricken commandant, the tip of the blade darting quickly into his vitals before being drawn out again just as fast, but now dull with blood. Morgan saw his commander topple slowly from the saddle and fall with a dusty thump amongst the pounding hoofs. But he had no time to see anything more, for his own hands were suddenly very full.

  The charging horse seemed enormous, its knees and hoofs pumping gigantically, its mouth open far enough for Morgan to be able to see its yellow tombstone teeth. So much of his vision did this leviathan take up that Morgan could barely see the rider: a skull cap showed above the charger’s ears, a ragged beard framed an open mouth above two hate-filled eyes, whilst a slashing blade was held high above his attacker’s head. It may not have been much of a target, but the officer threw the carbine into his shoulder and fired without pausing. Even at this short range the thirty lead slugs fanned out enough to catch the top of the horse’s head and pepper the Indian’s face at the same time, making the mount scream, rear and throw its rider, whose hands were clutched to his face. But as the cloud of powder smoke cleared, Morgan could see that two men and horses down was enough for the Rhani. Now her party sheared off quickly, whacking their ponies’ rumps with the flats of their blades in order to make good their escape.

  From first shot to the last chasing round from an 8th Hussar, the whole affair had lasted no more than two and a half minutes.

  ‘Well, she’s seen us off properly, ain’t she, Corp’l Pegg?’ Morgan urged Emerald to her feet, looped her reins over his shoulder and plodded off, exhausted, to examine the command ant.

  ‘She bloody ’as, sir.’ Pegg turned over the moaning sowar whom Morgan had wounded. ‘What d’you want me to do with ’im?’

  Morgan was distracted by the mayhem of the last few seconds, the glimpse of Mary, and Kemp’s inert form.

  ‘Destroy him,’ Morgan barely noticed the way that he was using the irregulars’ patois, ‘then get over here and help me with the commandant.’

  Pegg slipped the long steel shaft of his bayonet casually behind the wounded Pandy’s collarbone, the sowar ceasing to moan and twitch once the tip plunged into his heart. Then Pegg took a minute to wipe the blade on his victim’s kurta and run a hand over the man’s waist to check for a purse before obeying the officer’s orders.

  One of Kemp’s feet remained in the stirrup whilst the man lay quite still, twisted on his left side. As his horse cropped at the patchy grass, both Morgan and Pegg reached down to Kemp and turned him gently on his back,

  ‘They’ve made a right mess of ’im, ain’t they, sir?’

  Morgan couldn’t disagree with Pegg, for the commandant seemed to be bleeding from every point of his body. He’d been shot in the shoulder, slashed across his side, his nose and mouth streamed redly, but the neat, blue little hole in the left side of Kemp’s groin that hardly bled at all was the wound that worried Morgan most.

  ‘That’s a nasty jab he got from that dagger.’ Morgan had pulled Kemp’s breeches down and, as feared, the puncture seemed deep and grievous. ‘He lives, but it’ll be nip and tuck.’

  ‘No, my money’s on Queen Victoria. Look at her – ain’t she got a sting like a lance, though?’ Morgan was quite certain of his choice.

  ‘Balls. Prince Albert’s the boy. It’s not the sting that matters really, it’s the pincers. The lad who can get the strongest grip will come out on top, you mark my words. Who do you fancy, Pegg?’ asked Kemp from his wicker chair.

  ‘It’s Corporal Pegg, sir. Why, I’m with you, sir. Albert’s smaller in the body, but ’e’s got a right pair of grippers on ’im. I’m in for two rupees,’ Pegg replied.

  Morgan knew not a blind thing about scorpion fighting, but it was worth a few coins just to oppose the bloody old curmudgeon. In any event, he would have paid just to watch the sport, let alone wager, so bored had he become with Kemp’s moaning and this aimless hanging around.

  ‘I’m buggered if I know how ’e don’t get stung.’ Pegg marvelled at Rissaldar Batuk, who, having first held an armoured insect in the thumb and forefinger of each hand and shown them to the audience so that they could see which they fancied more, was now tying a piece of coloured thread to Victoria’s tail. ‘You wouldn’t catch me doing that – oh, no. Mind you, that string’s a good idea. Lets you know which is which when they set to partners, don’t it?’

  ‘Aye, it’s an old trick, that. D’you know, there was a sepoy in the Twenty-Fifth who used to fight scorpions and his speciality was to hold the creature and tie the thread with just one hand. In fact, after Aliwal I saw…’

  Morgan ceased to listen as Kemp chased yet another memory. Like Pegg, he was fascinated by Batuk’s skill with the venomous black horrors.

  ‘Where should I put my money, Rissaldar sahib?’ Morgan called.

  ‘Where your wisdom tells you, Morgan sahib; both are evil little whores,’ Batuk replied with a grin.

  These two were some of the biggest that Rissaldar Batuk had ever seen caught. Victoria, at about two inches, was longer than Albert, but without the massive claws that Kemp had identified as the deciding factor in the coming battle. Usually, they only managed to catch creatures of sporting size one at a time; then the unlucky things were put on a specially prepared stone slab with a circular channel etched in it that was filled with raw spirits. The scorpion was placed in the middle, the circle of liquor ignited and bets won or lost according to how long the sacrifice lasted against the clock before it stung itself to death. Morgan thought it a very crude entertainment, but it had its following.

  No, whilst this was no substitute for rat baiting or what his father would call ‘the spurs’, sc
orpions answered well enough whilst the soldiers licked their wounds here in Seepree and waited for the campaign to sweep them up again in its arms.

  ‘There’s no real rules for this, sir, is they?’ Pegg asked, all his attention fixed on the two tiny knights as the rissaldar and one of the other daffadars placed them carefully opposite each other in the ring. ‘Not like ratting?’ The lance-corporal had become almost as keen on that other noble sport as Morgan, in the few brief months that the 95th had been in Dublin before setting out for this campaign.

  ‘No, Corp’l Pegg,’ Morgan answered, just as engrossed by the forthcoming combat, ‘the ring’s usually the same dimensions.’ He looked at a thick piece of rope spliced into a circle like a quoit about fourteen inches across. ‘They just insist that the dirt is packed down and smooth so that the little heroes can’t sneak out underneath the twine. Then they just go at it. Watch now…’

  The rissaldar had glanced for approval at the bandaged Kemp, who sat on his chair like an emperor of Rome at the amphitheatre. He waited for the minute hand on his pocket watch to be set and then nodded – the signal for the contest to start. The whole audience – hussars, irregulars, officers as well as rank and file, almost all the dog-eared survivors of Kemp’s column – strained in one scruffy, ill-dressed mob to get a glimpse of yet more death and suffering. They were not disappointed.

  The royal pair circled for a moment, horrid segmented tails arched above their bodies, twitching slightly as they scuttled in the grit. But then Morgan realised how sinister these tiny gladiators were. Terriers and rats had living eyes that betrayed fear and emotion; even cockerels’ black marble orbs had some flicker of character in them, but these ghastlies had just two hoods on top of their heads and then rows of other dot-like things that looked utterly soulless.

  Certainly, Victoria’s first charge was seen off easily, Albert sidestepping as she darted at him, throwing his tail and sting towards his opponent but not physically connecting. They whirled to face each other again as the audience sighed with anticipation.