Hazard in Circassia

by V. A. Stuart

  “I shall be happy to do so.”

  “One thing more,” Selina begged. “Serfir asks if you will leave him the rifles you have brought. He has some marks men who would like to put them to the test tomorrow.”

  “They are a gift from my Admiral, mademoiselle. I trust that his men will find them useful.” Phillip glanced enquiringly at Erikson, who snapped smartly to attention.

  “I’ve given them the basic instructions, sir. They won’t have any trouble with these rifles.”

  “Good. We’ll retain our own, with fifty rounds apiece, and leave the rest for the Pasha’s marksmen.”

  Serfir Pasha accompanied them to the cave entrance, where he bade them a ceremonious farewell.

  “He will send us word when the supply train is sighted,” Selina said. “And, if my father is no better by tomorrow morning, Serfir Pasha will have him brought here, so that he may rest in safety.”

  They returned, under the reluctant escort of Dafir, by the way they had come, to find the remaining members of their small party asleep in their refuge, with the exception of the sentry, who sat by the fire, his rifle across his knees.

  “We would be as well to follow their example, Commander Hazard,” Selina advised, evading Phillip’s attempts to thank her. “One of our men will remain on guard and I shall attend to my father, so . . .” she smiled at him warmly and, weary though he was, Phillip felt his heart quicken its beat. In the faint glow of the dying fire, he watched her kneel down at her father’s side and he continued to watch her, whilst making a pretence of sleep, until the fire finally flickered into extinction and his heavy lids closed . . .

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Phillip was roused by someone shaking him gently. He had been dreaming, a happy, golden dream from which he was reluctant to wake, because Selina had been in it and, for a moment, he stared dazedly about him, not recognizing his surroundings, the beautiful face that peered down at him seemingly part of his dream.

  “Selina,” he murmured, “Oh, Selina, I—”

  “I let you sleep for as long as I could, Commander Hazard,” Selina told him apologetically. She thrust a cup of wine into his hand, urging him to drink it. “The others are up already and Serfir Pasha has sent word that the supply train has been sighted. Unless we go to our position at once, we shall have to stay here until the ambush is over, for he permits no one to move, once the enemy enter the valley.”

  Phillip sat up, roused to full wakefulness by her words. He passed a hand over the two-day growth of stubble on his chin and decided regretfully that there was no time to remove it.

  “There is only our drinking water,” Selina said. “No one else has shaved.”

  “Right—then I shall be ready to leave in a couple of minutes.” He stood up, stretching his cramped limbs and then asked, as memory returned, “How is the Colonel, your father, mademoiselle?”

  “He is almost himself, thanks be to God. Although”—she sighed—“I am not sure that I should give thanks for this, since he insists on riding with us, when he would be wiser to rest. However, we shall be in no danger—Serfir has sent men to escort us and we are to watch the—the proceedings from this end of the valley.” She excused herself and Phillip made a hasty toilet. Emerging from the darkness of the cave, he found the sun up and the rest of his party already mounted or about to do so, including Colonel Gorak, who greeted him cheerfully, brushing aside all enquiries as to his health with an impatient wave of the hand.

  “Do not concern yourself on my account—I am perfectly all right, Commander. Mount, I beg you, and let us be on our way.” He looked almost himself, as Selina had said and when Phillip swung himself on to his horse, it was the Colonel who gave the order for the small cavalcade to move off.

  Anthony Cochrane reined in, to allow Phillip to catch up with him. “I hear, sir,” he said, “that your conference with the Pasha last night was extremely successful . . . I trust that’s so?”

  “Yes, I think it was, Mr Cochrane. At any rate, he’s agreed to come back to Ghelenjik with us . . .” Phillip gave him a brief account of what had passed between Serfir and himself and described the Pasha’s mountain headquarters at some length.

  “These Circassians seem to be pretty well organized, sir,” his second-in-command observed.

  “They are, indeed. Mind you, they have been engaged in this type of warfare against the Russians for nearly thirty years, according to the Colonel.”

  Cochrane nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, he told me that it cost the Russians twenty thousand men a year to maintain even nominal control of Circassia . . . they’re remarkable people, aren’t they, sir? I hope they win their independence. God knows they deserve to! And talking of remarkable people—the old Colonel’s a tough old bird, isn’t he? Last night, after you’d gone, I was pretty worried about him—he just lay like a log and I kept getting up to feel his heart, to make sure he was still alive. And now look at him, leading us into battle!”

  “We are to be spectators of the battle,” Phillip told him. “As honoured guests of Serfir Pasha. And,” he added, with a wry smile, “we are to extend a like courtesy to His Excellency, when we take him aboard the Huntress and throw a few shells into the Anapa batteries.”

  “Are we, sir?” Cochrane’s eyes lit with a furtive gleam of amusement. He pointed ahead. “Do you see who else is leading us? I can’t see young Dafir being content with the role of spectator, somehow, can you, sir?”

  But Dafir, it seemed, had his orders and too healthy a respect for the Pasha to risk disobeying them. He led them to the tree-grown edge of the valley and instructed them to dismount. Leaving the horses in concealment among the trees, guarded by two of the Circassians, he led them on to the top of a steep rise, beneath which there was a sheer drop of about seventy or eighty feet to the floor of the valley. It was an excellent vantage point, well screened by rocks, and overlooking a curve in the narrow, winding road through the pass, of which it afforded a clear view in both directions and it had the added advantage of being inaccessible by any route save the one by which they had come. Phillip stretched out at full length behind the shelter of a rock and, his Dollond to his eye, studied the scene below him with keen interest.

  Immediately opposite where he lay and on the far side of the road, the ground rose in a series of craggy ridges, falling to a thick belt of trees and a patch of open ground to his right, bordering the road. As far as he could see, there was no movement along the whole length of the valley. He swept the opposite side of the defile with his glass without being able to pick out a single Circassian rifleman and then, swinging the glass round, he made a careful inspection of the belt of trees with precisely the same result. From behind him, Colonel Gorak observed with satisfaction, “Well, Commander—if you were in charge of that supply train, would you have any hesitation in ordering it through the pass?”

  Phillip turned, lowering his glass. “No, sir, I don’t suppose I should. However, since this is a natural place to expect an ambush, I’d probably send a mounted patrol ahead of me and, if I had any men to spare, possibly some skirmishers into that belt of trees over there before I approached this point.”

  “The Russians will send out a mounted patrol—they have had patrols out here for two or three days and will have received negative reports from them all.” The Colonel smiled. “Serfir has seen to that!”

  “Are they large trains, sir?”

  “They vary in size. Sometimes they consist of fifteen or twenty wagons, sometimes of twice that number, and they are usually well protected, with cavalry in front and rear and a column of infantry marching with the wagons.” The old man lowered himself stiffly to the ground and came to lie at Phillip’s side, “This should be a fairly large train—supplies are urgently needed at Soujak and, because they are, I think the column will make an attempt to get through.”

  “And you think it will make the attempt today, sir?” Phillip asked.

  “Serfir does, my young friend!” The Colonel pointed to the steep, craggy slo
pe opposite their vantage point. “There is a man behind almost every rock and fold in the ground across there—a man who has lain there, with his rifle in readiness, since first light and who will wait without betraying his presence, for hour after hour with incredible patience, until the enemy train is sighted or he is recalled.”

  The men of whom Selina had told him, Phillip thought, those who lay on the bare ground and did not light fires . . . “What tactics do they employ for an ambush, sir?” he questioned curiously.

  “The simplest,” Colonel Gorak answered, his tone oddly apologetic. “They know nothing of strategy and have no idea of what is meant by a refused flank, for example—and they have no artillery. They are not easy to discipline, either, as we Europeans understand discipline—you could not induce Circassians to advance in line under gunfire or to form square, as your British soldiers do so admirably. Yet, in his own way, the Circassian fights with great courage, I can assure you. His natural instinct is, of course, to fight for plunder . . . to strike swiftly on horseback, seize whatever he can lay his hands on and then make off with his booty as fast as he knows how. If he suffers a reverse, he will take refuge in flight, not from cowardice but rather on the principle that he who fights and runs away will live to fight another day, as your English saying has it.” He sighed. “Serfir has managed to instil the rudiments of discipline into his own band of picked men, as I trust you will see for yourself before long. But . . . they are still a trifle unpredictable, by European standards, and they tend to repeat, again and again, tactics they have found successful.”

  “And those are . . . what, sir?” Phillip prompted.

  The Colonel raised himself on one elbow and pointed below them. “That curve in the road will slow down the wagons,” he said. “The men posted on the hill opposite will roll down boulders, with the object of cutting the column in two. The riflemen, who are strung out all along the ridge, then open fire on the troops guarding the wagons, forcing them to take cover. They are remarkably good shots and, being well hidden, offer difficult targets for the Russian troops’ return fire. The best marksmen concentrate on the cavalry escort, to prevent any of the Cossacks going to the aid of the column and, if there is any danger of that, they hurl a few more boulders down or some of them get on their horses and charge down to draw off the escort. When sufficient confusion has been created, separate bodies of Circassian horsemen sweep in from concealment, striking simultaneously at different parts of the train and cutting the wagons off from one another. Depending on the size of the train and the strength of the escort, of course—if it is a very large train, only one part of it may be attacked . . .” he went into military technicalities and added, with a faint smile, “Their tactics are those of expediency, you understand. If they meet with unexpectedly strong opposition, they abandon their attack and, without waiting to destroy munition wagons—as we should—they simply make off. However, Serfir’s spies have reported that there will be a comparatively small escort with today’s train. Baron Wrangel, who commands at Kertch, is evidently expecting that your Admiral will launch an attack on him in the near future and is consolidating his forces . . . although it seems foolish, on the face of it, to risk sending a supply train if it cannot be adequately protected, don’t you think?”

  “Indeed I do, sir,” Phillip agreed. He hesitated, a frown drawing his brows together. “Can the reports from these spies be relied upon?”

  The Colonel nodded. “Usually they can, yes. Serfir’s spies have been known to report what the Russians wanted them to report but, on the whole, they are very useful and the information they provide always contains an element of truth . . .” he talked on, waxing eloquent on the subject of spies and the Circassians’ type of warfare, and Phillip listened, occasionally putting his glass to his eye in order to scan the apparently deserted valley. Thompson and Erikson, he saw, when he glanced round, were lying down on his left, watching the road, their Minié rifles beside them, and Cochrane was engaged in a low-voiced conversation with Selina and two of their Circassian escort. Dafir, as he had expected, had vanished— presumably in order to position himself nearer to where he anticipated the action would be.

  Phillip’s gaze went back to Selina, drawn there almost against his will and he thought, as he watched the swiftly changing expressions on her mobile face, that he had met few women who could look as beautiful as she did in such circumstances as these. She was laughing now, amused by something Cochrane had said to her, her laughter gay and untroubled, her head, in its tall fur cap, thrown back to reveal the long, shapely line of her throat. Her clothing was, to say the least of it, unglamorous yet somehow she contrived to look womanly in the heavy sheepskin coat, and as fresh and wholesome as if she had just emerged from a brisk swim in some mountain pool, whereas the rest of them . . . he rubbed his unshaven chin ruefully.

  “She pleases you, my little Selina, does she not?” the Colonel suggested, breaking into his thoughts.

  “She is . . .” Phillip caught his breath, realizing that he had been about to say more than was politic. “She is a revelation to me,” he finally admitted quite truthfully. “You are fortunate to have a daughter of her beauty and intelligence, sir.”

  The old man looked pleased. “How did she carry out her duties as your interpreter last night?”

  “Quite admirably, sir. No one could have done better, I assure you. Her English is perfect and—”

  “It should be, my dear Hazard. Her mother was English, you know—she was a sister of General Guyon.”

  “I did not realize that, sir.” Phillip was taken aback. “I had thought—”

  “That she learnt her English in an American convent school? No, my friend, she learnt it at her mother’s knee. And I . . . I was fortunate also in my wife who, alas, is dead.” The Colonel did not go into the manner of that death but instead, with an abrupt change of tone, asked Phillip if he was married. He shook his head, reddening and Colonel Gorak went on, with a regretful note in his voice, “You are wise. It is better, in wartime, to have no ties and I confess I envy you. Do not misunderstand me . . . my own marriage was a very happy one and, whilst my wife was alive, I envied no man. But now, for Selina’s sake, I wish I were not an exile and a mercenary in the service of an Oriental power engaged in a savage war. She is the most loyal and courageous of daughters—no man could ask more of his child than Selina has given me but . . . this is no life for her, Hazard, is it? Oh, she does not complain, she insists that she is happy and that she wishes only to be with me and yet . . . if anything should happen to me, she would be alone. That is my nightmare, for she has no one else—apart from her uncle, of course. But Guyon is more embroiled in this war even than I am.”

  Phillip was silent, at a loss to know what to say. Until this moment he had given little thought to Selina’s unusual and precarious situation, had accepted her for what she was or appeared to be and—in what he was now compelled to admit was a cowardly attempt not to allow himself to become involved—he had endeavoured not to think of her at all. Now, however, in the light of her father’s distress, his conscience began seriously to trouble him. He owed a debt of gratitude to Colonel Gorak and, indeed, to Selina herself, a debt that, if it were possible, he would gladly repay . . . but was it possible? What help could he offer! Unless . . . an idea occurred to him.

  “Colonel, I might be able to arrange a passage to Constantinople for her,” he began. “In one of our transports, if—”

  “Thank you, Hazard,” the Colonel put in. “But that is not the problem—the Turks would provide transport to the Bosphorus if I asked them to, only Selina cannot go alone, you understand. I should have to go with her and my duty is here. However”—he brightened—“if your Admiral’s plans succeed— if he takes Kertch, and the Circassians, aided by Zarif Mustapha, drive the enemy from Anapa and Soujak, then my task here will be at an end, will it not? I could return to Constantinople for a time—for long enough, that is to say, to see Selina married and—”

  “Married,
sir?” Phillip exclaimed, startled. He glanced involuntarily at Selina’s lovely, serene face, conscious of a bitter and quite unreasonable anger welling up inside him. “But surely—”

  “You are surprised?” Colonel Gorak demanded stiffly. “Is not an honourable marriage, to a good husband, what every father desires for his daughter?”

  “Yes, sir, of course it is. I only—”

  “I do not understand why you should be surprised, Commander Hazard. You have said yourself that Selina is a beautiful, intelligent girl. She would make any man a wife to be proud of, and I have had many offers for her hand, I can assure you.” The Colonel’s tone was still stiff and, fearful that he might inadvertently have offended him, Phillip’s swift surge of anger faded.

  “I am not surprised, believe me, sir. Indeed, I—”

  “There was one in particular that I should have been happy to accept,” the old man said, ignoring the interruption. “It came from a young Irish officer, Captain Patrick O’Hay, of the East India Company’s Engineers, who is serving under General Cannon. He greatly distinguished himself at the capture of Guirgevo last year.”

  “And why did you not accept Captain O’Hay’s offer for your daughter’s hand, sir?” Phillip asked.

  “For the simple reason that Selina would not have him,” the Colonel answered, with a wry smile. “She is a good, obedient child but her head is full of sentimental notions. Perhaps I should have insisted, only it was too soon after her mother’s death. I had not the heart and I was lonely and selfish in my loneliness . . . I listened to her pleas and allowed her to come here with me, which was a grave error, I am afraid.” He sighed and went on, talking more to himself than to Phillip, “She sees no one but these Circassians and she has made their cause her own, which is understandable, I suppose—although it has its dangers. I do not want my Christian child in a Mohammedan harem, Commander Hazard, so I have made it clear to her that she must choose a man of her own faith or allow me to choose one for her. But whilst she goes unveiled and accompanies me on these forays of theirs, there is always a terrible fear in my heart that, perhaps, she might let her eyes stray to one of them . . . as theirs stray constantly to her. Oh, they treat her with fitting respect, none would lay a hand on her but—”