‘He does not need the whole army, surely?’
‘He will use at least four battalions, maybe all five.’ Jack was enjoying lying on Sarah’s charpoy. It beat the sandy ground on which he had tried to sleep the previous night. The travelling bed had only been built for one, but he did not mind being pressed close to such a charming bedfellow.
‘The whole division. Why so many?’
‘The assault is making Stalker nervous, and he’s right to worry.’ Jack knew from bitter experience just how hard it was to remove an enemy from a fixed defensive position. ‘He cannot risk failure. He knows that the longer the campaign goes on, the more likely it is that he’ll be replaced by someone more senior. His only hope of remaining in command is to give his masters a swift victory. So he cannot afford to delay.’ Jack enjoyed being able to recount the general’s plans. It made him feel part of the campaign’s inner circle. He only knew what was planned because Ballard had told him over dinner, but it did not matter. He wanted to impress the woman who had taken him to her bed, and prove that he was so much more than a typical junior officer.
‘So the men will have to fight simply to keep Stalker in his job.’
‘Isn’t that always the reason?’
‘Ah!’ She purred in approval. ‘You’re a cynic.’
‘No, I’m a soldier. We’re all cynics when it comes to laying down our lives.’
Sarah looked at Jack out of the corner of her eye. ‘You’re no ordinary soldier, Arthur. You’re quite different to all the rest.’ She gave up her temporary hairdressing and lifted herself up one elbow so she could look at him properly. She reached forward to trace the thick scar on his left side, the legacy of a bullet that had been meant to kill him. Her fingers walked soft patterns over his skin as she stroked each scar and blemish, the tantalising, gossamer-light touch setting him on fire. She leant forward and kissed the thick raised line on his left arm, the legacy of a wound that had cut his flesh to the bone.
‘Why don’t you like my brother?’ She whispered the question, her lips busy on his body.
‘Who said I don’t like him?’
Sarah lifted her head and pouted. ‘I think you have made it rather clear, or do you normally barge into people you like?’
‘He walked into me.’ Jack frowned at her tone. He wanted her teasing his flesh, not picking at his mind.
‘Don’t be childish.’ The rebuke was waspish. She pulled away, the memory of her touch leaving his skin tingling.
Jack sighed. He could not explain why he had taken such a dislike to Sarah’s brother. It was based on nothing more than instinct, but he had long ago learnt to trust his judgement. ‘He’s not my type.’
‘That’s not an answer.’
‘It’s all I have.’
Sarah’s eyes narrowed. ‘So will you at least tell me how you come to be here?’ She rolled on to her side to face him, once again reaching forward to stroke his flesh. ‘One minute you’re a lieutenant in an ordinary regiment of the line. The next you’re a dashing cavalry officer and a captain.’
‘I don’t recall spending all that much time in conversation when last we met.’
Sarah pouted and her fingers stilled their delicate touch. ‘The 15th are not with the division, so why are you here?’
Jack sensed the change in the tone of her voice. ‘I’m on special duties.’ It was hard to keep the pride from his reply. He was an urchin from the foulest rookeries of east London, but now he was serving on the staff of a general, wrapped in all the finery of a hussar captain. It was hard not to be proud.
The answer seemed to appease her. ‘Special duties; that sounds intriguing.’
‘So far it’s been as boring as hell.’ Jack thought of the hundreds of dull reports he had read. His life in Ballard’s department was far from glamorous.
‘I’m pleased you’re here.’ Sarah used her nails to trace the outline of the scar on his arm, sending shivers running through his body. ‘I would’ve hated being alone.’
Jack closed his eyes to maintain control over his body. He had a feeling Sarah Draper was never alone for long. ‘Why are you here?’
‘For my book.’ Sarah was earnest as she explained the reason for her presence. ‘I plan to write a journal about the campaign. If that fat old sow Fanny Duberly can do it, then so can I. She was only the wife of a damn quartermaster and never got within a mile of the fighting, yet she is being treated like some Amazonian warrior.’
Jack grimaced at Sarah’s turn of phrase. He was not accustomed to hearing a lady curse. He had heard a little about Fanny Duberly. She had successfully managed to avoid the authorities and stay close to her husband during the campaign in the Crimea. She had published her journal of the campaign the previous year and had become the talk of London. ‘I’m sure it will be fascinating.’
Sarah jabbed a sharp nail into the soft flesh above his hip. ‘Don’t patronise me, Arthur.’
Jack opened his eyes to see Sarah staring at him coldly. ‘I was not patronising. I think your book will be very good indeed. I don’t think you would have it any other way.’
His words made her smile. ‘It seems you’re getting to know me, Arthur.’ She leant forward, her fingernails tiptoeing down the side of his body. ‘I always get what I want.’ Jack gasped as she traced her nails lower, and Sarah smiled wider. ‘You would do well to learn that.’
Jack let his eyes close, enjoying the sensation. He did not fully understand what he felt towards Sarah, but she enthralled him. He would happily submit to her will.
The hiss of a gas lamp woke him, and he blinked away sleep as he struggled to adjust to the light in the tent. He propped himself on his elbows and looked across to see Sarah bent low over a small table.
‘What are you doing?’ His voice was croaky and he cleared his throat as he came fully awake. He had been dreaming of the Crimea and he could feel the sheen of sweat cold on his flesh. He shivered as he forced the nightmare away.
‘Writing.’ Sarah didn’t deign to turn round, but kept her nose pressed close to the page.
‘At this time?’
‘One must write when one has the muse,’ she answered, but it was clear she was concentrating on her work.
Jack rose from the charpoy and walked over to the table, where he stood in silence and watched as she wrote, listening to the scratching of her steel nib across the paper. Every few moments her free hand rose to push her hair back over her ear, where it remained in place for only a short while before it fell back, forcing her to repeat the gesture. Jack thought it was one of the most endearing things he had ever seen.
‘You should go back to sleep.’ Sarah lifted her head and turned to face him, speaking softly as she became aware of his continued scrutiny.
‘I should be saying the same to you.’
‘I’m a big girl, Arthur.’
‘I can see that.’ She was dressed in only a thin silk gown. With the gas lamp behind her, Jack could see every curve of her silhouette through the shimmering fabric.
His comment was not well received. ‘Don’t be tiresome, Arthur.’
She sounded weary, and Jack was made to feel boorish. He walked back to the bed and retreated under the covers, letting his head fall on to the pillow, doing as he was told. He was learning that it was the best tactic when faced with a resilient enemy. As he lay and listened to her pen working quickly and without pause, he wondered whether he would feature in her account.
He drifted off to sleep, the rare comfort of the charpoy lulling him to his rest.
Jack panned his field glasses along the line of enemy defences. The ancient Dutch fort at Reshire shimmered in the heat haze, then came sharply into focus. The power of its defences made the breath catch in his throat. Stalker’s division was lining up, readying for the assault. Jack and Ballard had found a vantage point on a s
mall rise well out of the line of march. It gave them a fine view of both the fort and the army, allowing them to study the two forces as they prepared for the fight that both sides knew had been coming.
The Persian commander had had two days since the British division landed at Hallila Bay. Two days that he had used to gather his men and make sure the defences were as strong as he could make them.
They started with a network of trenches facing the direction the British army had to take if it were to storm the fort. They had been dug deep, the tops reinforced with sandbags, their path twisting and turning across the end of the peninsula. The long, wearing campaign in the Crimea had taught the world the most modern techniques of siege warfare. The Persian defenders had clearly employed the lessons the allied army had learnt, and now the redcoats would have to attack a series of well-constructed and scientifically designed trench systems packed with enemy soldiers. Hundreds of muskets were now aimed at the British troops who had formed up in front of them with ponderous precision. The power of their massed volleys would be brutal, the redcoats forced to advance into a storm of musket fire that would gut their ordered ranks.
Behind the trenches the ruins of old houses formed the next obstacle the attackers would face if they succeeded in breaching the first. The Persian soldiers had worked tirelessly to clear their fields of fire, and the redcoats would have to brave a storm of shot in the more open ground. There they would be forced to assault ruined wall after ruined wall, each one certain to be defended to the death by the fierce warriors who held them.
The Dutch fort formed the furthest part of the defences. It stood at the end of a rocky peninsula that jutted far out into the sea. The forbidding grey waters crashed around the heavy band of rocks at its base, the sound of the impact echoing across the peninsula like distant thunder. The old fort had been repaired and strengthened by the Persian defenders, who had seized upon its ancient defences to form the bedrock of their position. Broad ramparts lined the thick mud walls buttressed by bastions dotted at regular distances along their length. The whole was surrounded by a deep dry moat, a killing ground where any attackers would be exposed to constant fire from the defenders safe behind the ramparts.
Close to two thousand Persian soldiers were crammed into the network of defences. They came from the Dashti and Tungestoon tribes, the hardest of the irregular infantry in the Persian army. They were sarbaz infantry, the troops that made up the bulk of the Shah’s armed forces, and they were determined to stand firm and repel the invading red horde that had dared to venture into their homeland.
The Persian battalions were dressed for battle. Each fuadji wore a different-coloured cloth jacket, which created a gaudy kaleidoscope across the wide defensive line. The bright jackets were tucked into wide white pantaloons that were fastened above ankle-high boots with long stockings. On their heads they wore tall cone-shaped ram’s-fleece hats called popakhs, which made them look distinctly foreign to the watching British soldiers. The rest of their uniforms were similar to those worn by the marching redcoats, the thick white cross belt worn over the chest a legacy of the decades now long past when British officers schooled the Persian troops in the art of war.
The sarbaz infantrymen were armed with long smooth-bore muskets. They were outdated when compared to the modern Enfield rifles carried by the British redcoats, but were still reliable and brutally effective. The Persian weapons used English-supplied flintlocks, another legacy of the British association with their army. The redcoats would come under fire from weapons sparked by the product of English manufacturing.
The enemy infantry waited for an assault they knew was inevitable. They trusted to their guns and their defences, confident that the red-coated army they faced would break itself on their walls and trenches. They would defeat the invaders and send them scurrying back to the boats that hovered on the horizon. Confident of victory, the sarbaz waited for the assault without fear.
But they hadn’t reckoned on the Indian navy.
The gunboats, sloops and steam frigates had manoeuvred into position around one thousand seven hundred yards away from the fort, and now they opened the bombardment that signalled the start of the assault. Heavy artillery shells ripped through the air, their passage marked by a dreadful keening. They smashed into the network of trenches, great gouts of earth thrown high into the sky as explosions rippled across the defenders’ line.
‘Bang on time.’ Ballard snapped shut his pocket watch and returned it to his pocket. ‘Do pardon the pun. You have to hand it to our jolly Jack Tars. They certainly know how to shoot.’
Jack winced as a second salvo of shells roared out from the ships anchored close to the shore. He knew what it was to be on the receiving end of well-directed artillery fire. The terror of marching into a bombardment from a battery of heavy cannon still haunted his dreams, and he felt a pang of sympathy for the Persian soldiers. The second round of shells ripped into the trenches. Many exploded too early, the flash of the explosions bright even in the early-morning sunshine. But the navy gunners knew their trade, and a great number exploded the moment they entered the trenches. Even from a distance Jack could hear the screams as the shells tore men apart, their dreadful effect magnified in the closed confines of the trenches. The slaughter would have been terrible to behold.
A third, then a fourth salvo crashed out. Jack could picture the sweat on the smoke-streaked faces of the ships’ gunners as they readied their enormous weapons. They would be going through the well-rehearsed drills without thought, the commands of the gun captains redundant after countless hours of repetition. The sailors were fortunate. They were far enough away to see their target as an abstract thing, not a living mass of humanity. They were spared bearing witness to the dreadful destruction they were bringing down on the Persian soldiers closest to the British assault troops.
Jack turned and looked at the long line of redcoats assembled to attack the fort. Major General Stalker had ordered his five battalions to form the assault in two lines of attack. The one regular British army regiment, the 64th Foot, were in the front rank, alongside the 2nd Bombay Light Infantry, a regiment of the East India Company’s forces recruited from European rather than native soldiers. Two native regiments, also from the Company’s army, the 20th Bombay Native Infantry and the 2nd Belooch Battalion, formed the second line, with a third native regiment, the 4th Bombay Rifles, positioned out on the left flank. Three thousand men, ordered to attack whatever remained of the Persian defences after the initial bombardment had finished.
As Jack watched, the army’s own gunners opened fire. Two batteries of field artillery and one of horse artillery added their firepower to the barrage fired from the ships crowded close to the shore.
The trenches had now nearly disappeared under a thick cloud of smoke from the countless explosions. Yet it was not hard to imagine the destruction. All along the line, huge explosions threw enormous fountains of soil high into the air, as if some angry god was tearing holes out of the very earth itself. The ground shook with the power of the salvos, the watching redcoats shaken by the force of the barrage that never let up, shell after shell pounding into the enemy’s defences in a remorseless demonstration of the brutal effectiveness of well-directed artillery fire.
‘There they go!’ Ballard squinted hard as he peered into the smoke. Shadowy figures were emerging from the battered trenches, moving quickly as the Persians ran to escape the ferocious barrage that was flaying their ranks and destroying their carefully constructed defences.
Still the artillery bombardment continued, tearing though the fleeing troops. It was hard to believe that each wraith-like figure was a living being. It was more like watching a shadow puppet show at the local fair, the spectacle seeming somehow unreal. Dozens of the dark shapes were thrown to the ground, the unceasing explosions gouging huge holes in the smoke, the navy pitiless in the execution of its orders.
The Persians were in fu
ll flight now. The battered battalions stationed in the trenches were unable to endure the dreadful storm of shot and shell that had torn their ranks apart. All notions of order and defiant defence were forgotten, the shattered bodies of their comrades abandoned without thought as they fled.
‘Now’s the time.’ Ballard muttered the comment under his breath.
Jack could see the flush on the major’s cheeks. He suspected this was Ballard’s first taste of battle. Where the sight of the destruction turned Jack’s stomach, Ballard had not yet seen enough to know the same revulsion. Instead, the smell of powder smoke excited him, like a schoolboy before his first rugger match.
‘Advance!’
The brigade major bellowed the command. It was picked up quickly, the battalion officers repeating the order and stirring the five battalions into life.
Ballard turned to Jack as the long red line lurched into motion. ‘Remember your orders, Jack. You are not going to fight, is that clear? Stay out of the way and search for any information that will be of use. You will most likely find it in the fort, so bide your time. When the enemy have been cleared out, go in and look for documents and so on that will tell us something of their plans. And don’t give them time to destroy anything.’
Jack nodded. His throat had gone dry. The pungent powder smoke from the barrage was drifting over the British lines, its acrid tang sour in his mouth. Drums rattled and bugles blared amidst the red-coated ranks as they began the long advance, the bellows and shouts of sergeants and corporals loud even over the cacophony of the bombardment that continued unabated.
It was just as Jack remembered. The noise of the cannonade was the same, assaulting the eardrums and reverberating through the very fibre of his being. The fear returned. The icy rush followed by the churn in the guts and the tremor deep in the bowels. The terror of battle wormed its way in, twisting in his belly as he faced the prospect of death. Yet there was also the excitement, the fierce desire to enter the dreadful cauldron of battle and once again prove his worth.
The Devil's Assassin (Jack Lark) Page 11