Dust and Steel

by Patrick Mercer

  ‘Right, that’s it,’ Kemp shouted as a dark bundle of sepoys came spilling out of a barrack block fifty paces beyond the temple, dragging their weapons up into the aim. ‘They know something’s wrong. No more caution now; let’s be at ’em,’ and he kicked his heels hard into his mount’s flank and pointed his revolver, ready for the next foe.

  Morgan pulled out his own pistol, bawled, ‘Stay here and guard that bastard Dunniah, Corp’l Pegg; shoot him if he tries to run,’ and then spurred Emerald to catch Kemp and Rissaldar Batuk, who were already bearing down on their enemies.

  There’s only a handful of them, thought Morgan as the sepoys tried to form a defensive line…The three of us should see them off so long as they don’t manage a volley. But even as he thought it, he heard a command, and the clutch of men were lit up by sharp, yellow muzzle flashes. Lead balls whirred past him, one of which caught the rissaldar, throwing him from his saddle with a choking moan.

  Even if he had wanted to turn and run, it was now too late, for Kemp was already in the middle of the enemy line, kicking left and right at his enemies, leaning down from the saddle, pressing the barrel of his heavy revolver into their faces, shooting, killing and cursing fluently. Some ran for their lives, but an NCO and three other men stood firm, crowding round the commandant, trying to get a clear blow with their bayonets or with the broad blades of their short-swords.

  Close as you can…As Morgan charged into the mass of struggling bodies, he thought of the advice of the very man whom he was now trying to save when he’d been given the same pistol that he now held outstretched in front of him…Try to touch the bastards with your barrel before you fire…It seemed an age ago though it was only about four years, just before he’d sailed for the Crimea, when he was still a stranger to violent death…That’s close enough, he thought as Emerald barged one of Kemp’s attackers onto the ground with her shoulder and he pointed at the back of the neck of another and pulled the trigger. The man had been too busy trying to rip the commandant from the saddle to see Morgan coming. Now the ball hit him at the base of the skull, jerking him forward onto his face below both horses’ stamping hoofs.

  Kemp was deeply involved with another assailant. As the sepoy had tried a high lunge with his bayonet at the mounted officer, Morgan saw how Kemp had swung his chest back and out of the way like a man half his years. Then he grabbed the sepoy by his forward arm and half dragged him onto his saddle, the musket and bayonet falling away with a clatter. Now Kemp pinioned the man and dashed at his head with the barrel of his pistol, each blow being greeted by a shriek and the crunch of steel meeting bone.

  Canny old sod…Morgan could only admire the more experienced man’s skill,…he knows that he’s running short of rounds, so he’s saving what he’s got.

  Morgan fired at the man on the ground whom Emerald had knocked down, but as Kemp’s tussle continued, two more men ran at them, one firing a harmless shot from his musket as he charged. They were easy targets, even in the dark, for the pair ran hesitantly, both obviously scared and uncertain. Morgan’s shot hit the man in front in the middle of the chest, half an inch of lead throwing him on his back, the cloud of powder smoke briefly obscuring the moonlit scene. The other saw his chance, though, and scuttled away from the fight as fast as his sandals would let him and as suddenly as the din and clashing of weapons had erupted, there was silence.

  ‘Thank you for that, young Morgan.’ Even Kemp’s victim now lay quiet on the cobbles. ‘That was a little more exciting than I expected.’

  ‘Well, if you will go charging off on your own, Commandant…’ said Morgan, but Kemp wasn’t listening,

  ‘See if there’s anything that can be done for Rissaldar Batuk, will you,’ Kemp asked as he swung down from the saddle, ‘whilst I deal with this lot?’

  Morgan was about to turn his horse to look for their fallen comrade, but he paused and watched his superior. There were four bodies on the ground; Kemp peered at each one, leaving the two who were dead before turning to deal with the two wounded.

  First, Kemp’s heavy riding boots kicked and thrashed at each victim in turn, lashing at their faces, iron-tipped heels stamping on their balls until the blood splashed about quite freely; only his spurs catching in their clothes inhibited him. The whole performance culminated in Kemp’s seizing a lump of shell-torn brick and thumping at both inert men until their features were mush. But, to Morgan, more shocking than the frenzied violence was the litany of hate that Kemp grunted. Each kick, each blow was accompanied either by a storm of Hindi, or broken English where the word ‘Neeta’ was the only one he could recognise. Then, with both men dead and still, the demon departed. Kemp’s furious form became calm, he rubbed his hands with satisfaction, as if he had just bowled a particularly satisfying over, took the reins of his horse and sauntered over to Morgan.

  ‘Right, that’s finished…and what are you staring at?’ asked Kemp with a serene smile. ‘The job’s got to be done; I’m wasting no more shot on these scum.’

  Perhaps, thought Morgan, but you’re not meant to enjoy it so much. The last time he’d witnessed a scene anything like the one that had just occurred had been at Inkermann. There, he remembered, the boys had beaten their enemies without hesitation. But each one of them had been sickened, not grinning at the grossness of it like you are, Commandant.

  After this bestial show, Morgan expected some remorse over the death of the rissaldar, but he was to be disappointed. Kemp’s old friend was lying in a smear of blood that had leaked from a ball-torn artery.

  ‘Poor old Batuk; tough jawan he could be. Still, there’s no wife to mourn for him – just like the rest of us – Pandy’s seen to that.’ Kemp pulled the Sutlej medal from the dead man’s coat and stuck it in his pocket, rolled the cavalryman on his back and closed both eyes, simply saying, ‘Take his tatt and pistol, Morgan; put that lass on the horse and check your priming. Now, where’s Pegg got to with that fucker Dunniah?’ as if such horrors were the most normal thing in the world. Morgan shivered in the warm night, and looked at the dead, bearded face of a man whom he’d come to like and respect deeply, before turning his mount to follow Kemp.

  ‘I won’t tell you again.’ Kemp pushed the barrel of his pistol firmly into Dunniah’s back, making the injured man wince with pain. ‘Keep bloody moving.’

  With the rissaldar dead, handling the truculent Dunniah had become even more difficult. It soon became obvious to Morgan that Kemp’s Hindi was not as good as he boasted and this allowed the captive to delay and prevaricate whilst the three British and the native girl squatted in the shadows of the fort, trying not to draw attention to themselves. Morgan had looked on helplessly as Kemp had questioned their prisoner and indulged in a little, casual twisting of his broken arm before they set off towards the makeshift hospital where Damodar was said to be.

  The girl walked at the front of the group alongside Dunniah – Morgan wondered what the poor creature must be making of the whole, mad scheme – with Kemp behind, then Pegg and Morgan leading the horses.

  ‘Look there, Commandant,’ said Morgan as they approached a fortified building. ‘There’s movement just beyond that low wall.’ Even in the dark, Morgan could see that sandbag walls had been built at the entrance to the next long, one-storey barracks. Then he realised that the bobbing shape up ahead was a bullock lazily tossing its horns and that behind it was a wagon, peeping out above the wall.

  ‘Aye, I can see it,’ said Kemp, before holding a mumbled, unintelligible conversation with Dunniah. ‘He says that that’s the building that’s being used as the Pandies’ dressing station and that the doors are always guarded.’

  As they got closer, Morgan saw the human detritus of war draped and dumped around the temporary hospital’s entrance. Two bullock carts were sprawled across the mouth of the sandbag walls – one was empty with no oxen, whilst the other was full of dead or unconscious men, most in the uniform of John Company. Both animals were still in this cart’s traces and around their hoofs were a jumble
of wounded, some lying, some sitting, some moaning gently, others deathly quiet. The night prevented Morgan from seeing the details too closely, but they all seemed to be youngish men in a mixture of uniform and native dress, liberally daubed with dried blood.

  ‘Hookum dear?’ the universal challenge in stilted English came from the doorway to the barracks from behind another pile of sandbags, the moonlight flashing off steel as the sentry raised his barrel.

  ‘Dunniah Bahadur, woman an’ dree,’ Dunniah replied. Morgan had seen how the rebels still used English for all military purposes.

  The sentry beckoned them forward, recognising Dunniah and stiffening to attention.

  Here we go again, thought Morgan. Bloody Pandies as suspicious as you like, and now that the rissaldar’s dead, no one to check on what bloody Dunniah’s really telling them. And we’ve got nowhere to run to this time…

  Morgan looked into the long, low building that they were about to enter. None of the gas mantles seemed to be working and the place was lit by dimly flickering candles.

  There’s wounded all over the place – it bloody stinks…the smell of piss and sweat hung heavily,…and all sorts of rooms and corridors. Can Mary really be somewhere in this hellhole? Morgan’s breathing was suddenly difficult; could it be that after all this time, all this misery, that he was about to see his own Mary again? To add to his worries, a wounded man suddenly started to moan loudly, encouraging others to do the same. It’s like a scene from Hogarth in there, it is.

  But there were more immediate problems to be overcome. Dunniah and Kemp passed by the sentry without remark, but as the native girl came close, the man beckoned her to one side and began an animated conversation, his scrawny head and greasy hair – his topknot was held in a dirty little bag – bobbing and nodding excitedly.

  ‘What’s ’e want with ’er, sir?’ Pegg whispered, gently fingering a vicious little axe that he’d lifted from a corpse by the main gate.

  Morgan answered by just narrowing his eyes, not daring to speak a word of English, nudging Pegg past the sentinel, hoping that he would be too distracted by the blood-soiled attractions of the girl to bother with them. And, up to a point, he was right. Both of them slipped past with hardly a glance from the soldier, but his casual interest in the girl had changed with the tone of his voice, for despite the fact that Morgan couldn’t understand a word, he knew that something was wrong. Where the sepoy’s questions had initially been light-hearted he was now suspicious of the girl and she was becoming more and more frightened by him. As Pegg and he moved further into the shadowy entrance hall, the sentry grabbed the girl’s arm and pressed her against the wall, his enquiries becoming increasingly demanding; she responded by pointing at Kemp with her chin, chirruping wildly and rolling her eyes. But whatever was being discussed was the last thing that troubled the sentry’s mind.

  Kemp could see what was going on and he had to intervene. No sooner had the girl confirmed the sepoy’s suspicions than the commandant moved swiftly and silently, taking the axe from Pegg’s belt (without even a by-your-leave) and burying the spiked end of the steel in the rebel’s spine. Morgan realised that the last time he had seen such an axe it had been embedded deeply in Thanadur Forgett’s body all those months ago in Bombay. Now a similar tool did similar work, for the sentry made nothing more than a gentle soughing noise as the life ebbed out of him. His eyes bugged and his mouth lolled open but, by the time that Kemp lowered him to the floor, there was no more resistance from the man.

  Luckily, the collective moaning of the wounded covered the native girl’s horrified squeal as the sentry died with his hands still on her. Morgan had some sympathy for the lass; in the last couple of hours her house had been ransacked and her husband killed, she had narrowly avoided rape – but only at the cost of being kidnapped – and she had become involuntarily involved in one of the daftest, most suicidal ventures that he’d ever even thought about. Now complete strangers were slaying her countrymen within inches of her; it couldn’t have been the best of days for the girl, he thought.

  ‘Pegg,’ Kemp was as calm as if he had just shaken the sentry’s hand, rather than stabbed him to death, thought Morgan, ‘drag this scum over to the wall yonder…’ Kemp pointed to an inner part of the corridor where a line of mostly silent wounded lay, ‘…and prop him up with the others so that no one notices.’

  ‘It’s Corporal Pegg, sir,’ replied the non-commissioned officer automatically,

  ‘Yes, quite so. Then you and the girl stay here and don’t let anyone in whilst Captain Morgan and I go off to find Damodar and Mrs Keenan.’ Kemp paused and flicked a look at Morgan. ‘Collect some of the firelocks that are kicking about and if there’s any sign of interference, just shoot and keep shooting. Don’t let any bugger interfere with the horses.’ Kemp glanced at their exhausted mounts, which they had tethered outside in the darkness. ‘When we get him we’ll be out of here and riding like the devil. Keep the girl with you; use her if you can, but any sign of treachery and take that axe to her.’

  He’d hack that poor wee girl down with no remorse at all, thought Morgan as he looked at Kemp, realising that all mercy, all compassion had been driven from him by the horrors of the last few months, and we’ve only got four horses to get away on so, assuming we find Damodar, Sam and Mary, then Kemp will be looking to ditch someone here, the ruthless sod.

  Morgan studied Dunniah, who was cradling his injured arm next to Kemp – all the fight seemed to have gone out of him. Morgan remembered the muscular, rather dashing sepoy whom he had first seen alongside the Rhani in Kotah, then the bold fight that he had put up during the ambush that seemed to be a year ago but was actually only a few weeks. Now he stood forlornly holding his hurts, his eyes lacklustre, absorbed in his own pain, hardly interested in the remains of the rebel dream that lay broken around him. He was in no condition to resist Kemp’s growled demands and the pokes that his former commanding officer kept administering to his damaged arm.

  ‘Dunniah seems to be suggesting that Damodar will be under guard in one of these rooms to the right.’ Kemp pointed down the half-lit corridor off which an irregular series of rooms and offices seemed to lead. ‘I’ll take this rogue with me.’ Kemp pulled his pistol from its holster and jabbed Dunniah. ‘You take the left side. If you find Damodar just holla, but be ready for a fight.’ Morgan saw Kemp quickly reloading the empty chambers of his revolver, and checked his own priming.

  It’s moments like this that I almost miss Corp’l Pegg, thought Morgan, as he stepped over wounded and dying sepoys to start the search. He’s a bloody nuisance most of the time, but he has his uses when life cuts up rough.

  Morgan had left Pegg alone with the girl at the sentry point, his eyes wide with lonely fear, his tongue flicking over dried lips, looking more like the pantomime lead than a mutineer.

  ‘You’d best be careful now, sir,’ was all that Pegg had managed as he held his rifle pointing rigidly to repel all comers, as Morgan had slid off to start his search of the first room.

  The stench was remarkable. There was no light of any sort inside the room and the vinegary smell of sweat and that heavy, sweet reek of rotting flesh and pus hit him like a wall. He could see nothing, but the power of the smell spoke of many people, some of whom moaned softly. But what should he do, he wondered. He could hardly cry out, ‘Mary, sweet thing, are you within? Is little Damodar clinging to your skirts?’ No, this was no place for Mary and the boys – they would have to be in another room – and, besides, Dunniah was much more likely to know where she was, thought Morgan, with one ear cocked for the commandant’s progress in the other rooms.

  The next room smelt just as awful, but at least there was a candle burning. Morgan pushed himself over the injured and the dead through the bell-shaped arch of a doorway and looked inside, pistol at the ready. But there was no threat here, nor was there any sign of Damodar, Sam or Mary. Instead, just more suffering men whose ragged clothes and torn bodies spoke of meetings with shot, splinters and bul
lets. There was hardly a flicker of interest as he moved on to the next room.

  But as he edged back into the corridor, a great, familiar shout came from just across the way: ‘No you don’t, you rogue!’ Followed by two, booming pistol shots in quick succession.

  ‘Commandant, are you all right?’ Morgan thrust his head round the doorway opposite to see much the same sort of sight that he’d seen already, except that the wounded who could move inside this room had been roused to pandemonium by Kemp’s fire. The officer stood in the centre of the room, framed in gunsmoke.

  ‘Of course I am,’ snapped Kemp. ‘More than these pair of Pandies are – and what sort of a damn-fool question is that?’ Two bodies seemed to have been flung back on the floor at Kemp’s feet. ‘And why are you whining, Dunniah? I’m like Florence fucking Nightingale to you, I am; should have cut the lights out of you weeks ago.’ Dunniah cringed as his mutinous comrades cried out even more shrilly at the sound of English about them. ‘Found ’em yet, Morgan?’

  ‘Not yet, Commandant,’ Morgan replied as he wondered why Kemp had chosen to kill two men who were already badly wounded, but as he turned back amidst the din to the next room that he was to search on the other side of the corridor, he was met by the snub, black muzzle of a cavalry carbine pointing directly into his face, no more than three feet from him.

  The weapon was held steady; Morgan could see the whiteness of the index finger where first pressure had been taken on the trigger, whilst two great chestnut eyes were narrowed in steely determination.

  Kemp’s right, thought Morgan, his bladder tightening yet again that day. Mary’s turned and I’m going to be blown to eternity by the very woman I came to save.

  But then her eyes sprang wide open in shocked delight. Mary Keenan slowly let the weapon drop, smiling with pleasure at the sight of her dog-eared lover.