Hazard in Circassia

by V. A. Stuart

  “Sir . . .” Thompson’s voice broke in. “I think they’re coming, sir.” He spoke with commendable calm but his hand shook a little as he pointed towards the road below them. Phillip had the Dollond to his eye in an instant. At first all he could see was a small dust cloud, rising above the surface of the road, but then it resolved itself into a column of horsemen, moving at a steady trot and he said, passing his glass to Colonel Gorak, “The cavalry patrol, sir.”

  “Yes,” the Colonel confirmed. “And not a large one. It will of course, be permitted to pass here without a shot being fired.”

  Cochrane wormed his way to Phillip’s left side, his own glass raised. “I’d say only about fifteen or twenty men, wouldn’t you, sir?”

  “Twenty-two, sir,” the keen-eyed Thompson supplied. Both he and Erikson had their rifles to their shoulders and Phillip said crisply, “No opening fire without orders, either of you. The patrol is to be allowed through.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Thompson acknowledged. “Just sighting, that’s all, sir.”

  They waited in silence and Phillip could feel the tension mounting as the patrol came steadily nearer. The horsemen— Cossacks, in sombre grey greatcoats, mounted on shaggy, unclipped horses and carrying lances—rode in pairs, keeping to the road and making no attempt to send scouts to investigate the belt of trees which he himself had noted as a possible source of danger, when he had first taken up his position on the heights above it. Either they did not expect an ambush, he decided, or else they were confident of the ability of the supply train’s escort to ward off any attack that might be made on it . . . if, in fact, the supply train was following them through the pass. Certainly they were riding with almost arrogant confidence, their lances slung, and watching them, Phillip was puzzled, conscious of an odd premonition that all was not well. His glass to his eye, he scanned the road anxiously and, about five minutes later, caught sight of a second and larger dust cloud.

  Selina forestalled his announcement, her voice, quiet and without a tremor, coming from behind him. “It is the supply train, Papa. I can see it.”

  “Good,” her father returned, shifting his position and holding out his hand. “If I may borrow your glass, Hazard . . . thank you.” He studied the approaching dust cloud for several minutes and then handed back the Dollond.

  “Yes, it’s the supply train all right and, at a guess, I should say it’s a large one.”

  “Sir . . .” Erikson pointed to his left. “The Cossack patrol— they’ve halted, do you see, just round the bend there? And . . . they’re getting off their horses. Why would they do that, sir?”

  He was right, Phillip saw, and once again felt instinctively that something was wrong. The Colonel, too, was watching with a frown as the grey-coated cavalrymen abandoned their horses and, leaving the animals under guard about a hundred yards beyond the curve in the road, climbed some way up the boulder-strewn hillside, each man carrying the carbine he had taken from his saddle. Spread out in a semicircle, they took cover and waited, facing the road. Their position was good for, although they had their backs to the Circassian riflemen on the ridge above them, they were protected by the rocky overhanging ridge and could only be fired upon from that quarter if the Circassians left their concealment and came further down the slope. The Colonel touched his arm and Phillip, who had been estimating the range between themselves and the entrenched Cossacks, guessed what he was about to say and nodded.

  “We could pick them off, sir, without too much risk of ricochets, so long as the Circassians hold their positions.”

  “They will,” Colonel Gorak assured him. “But what I am asking myself is why that patrol has done what it has . . . they must have a reason.”

  Phillip, too, had been wondering precisely the same thing. “Perhaps, sir,” he suggested, “the commander of the supply train is simply taking precautions against a possible attack? This is an obvious place to set an ambush and, presuming that he knows the road, he’s being careful.”

  “Yes,” the Polish Colonel conceded, “No doubt he is . . . as I confess I should be, were I in his place. Ah . . .” he added, with relief, “The Cossack officer is going to signal to the convoy that the road is clear.”

  Phillip, eyes narrowed, watched the commander of the scouting party ride back to the bend in the road. He had an orderly with him and the two sat their horses in motionless silence until they, too, were able to see the head of the approaching convoy, when the officer drew his sabre and, raising it high above his head, waved it vigorously. The sunlight glinted on the naked blade and, in the distance, the answer came from the supply train in a brief flash, as an officer at its head waved his own weapon. The train was moving slowly and would probably take another ten or fifteen minutes to reach the road-bend, Phillip thought. He turned to Cochrane and said in a low voice, “We’re supposed to be non-combatants, Mr Cochrane, but if those Cossacks cause trouble, I think we’d be justified in taking a hand, don’t you?” Cochrane nodded without hesitation. “Right, then . . . pass the word to Thompson and Erikson, if you please, to spread out and take up firing positions. I’ll give the order to open fire, if it’s necessary. Warn them to watch out for ricochets—the Circassians are on that hill there and we don’t want to hit any of them. Keep your shots low and only fire when there’s a target in your sights.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.” Cochrane moved across to pass on these instructions to the two seamen. As they took up their new positions, Phillip heard a rustle close behind him and glanced over his shoulder to see that Selina had slipped into Cochrane’s place at his side, her long, old-fashioned flintlock rifle gripped purposefully in her two small hands. He deplored the competent familiarity with which she handled the weapon and, when she smiled at him in reassurance, he shook his head, unable to overcome an instinctive revulsion to the thought of her taking any part in what would almost certainly be violent action.

  “Not you, Selina,” he said in a harsh whisper. “We are enough without you.”

  “But I am a good shot,” she told him.

  “That’s beside the point. Fighting and war are not for women.”

  Her eyes met his in innocent and faintly hurt surprise. “In Circassia everyone must fight, Commander Hazard. Not only women but children also.”

  “All the same, I would rather you did not fight in this battle,” Phillip answered firmly. “Put away your rifle.” She obeyed him with a resigned shrug, obviously unable to comprehend the reason for his request, yet anxious, if she could, to please him. “Then I will—what is it called? I will spot for you, if you will lend me your telescope.”

  She sat back on her heels, obedient but by no means docile, a hand held out for the glass. “In a moment,” Phillip promised. “I want to have another look at the train.” As he focused the Dollond on the slowly moving line of wagons, he thought suddenly of his mother and sisters. What, he wondered wryly, would they think, if they could see him now, with a girl like Selina at his side—a girl whom he had been compelled to dissuade from using a rifle to maim and perhaps even to kill her enemies? His mother, entertaining her staid and impeccably mannered guests to tea in her Kensington drawing-room, would not have approved of his present companion and would be quite incapable of understanding a woman who, on her own admission, had been more than willing to play an active part in the destruction of a Russian supply train. For that matter, he himself found it none too easy to understand the attraction Selina Gorak had for him, yet . . . the Colonel’s hand gripped his arm and he thrust the problem of Selina to the back of his mind, concentrating all his attention on the advancing Russians.

  The wagons, he now saw, were drawn by four horses each, with the exception of the leading one, a cumbersome and obviously heavily laden vehicle, which had six straining animals attached to its shafts. There were thirty-one—no, he checked them again—thirty-two wagons in all, preceded by four mounted scouts, with grey-coated infantrymen plodding on either side of and between the wagons. The long column was well strung out, the la
st in line only just coming into sight as the leading wagon approached the curve in the road. The Cossack officer, who had been waiting there, again waved his sabre to indicate that the way was clear and trotted on, the scouts falling in behind him. Phillip trained his glass on the first wagon, curious as to what cargo it could be carrying to render it so much heavier than the rest. The horses were sweating, he noticed, their driver belabouring them with his whip, and the wheels sinking so deeply into the sun-baked surface of the road as to leave distinct tracks to mark its passing. There was something odd about those tracks, his mind registered although, despite a renewed study with the Dollond, he could not at first decide what it was. Then a possible reason for their oddity dawned on him and he was conscious of a sick sensation in the pit of his stomach. He could be mistaken, of course, but . . . he thrust his glass into the Colonel’s hand and said urgently, “That first wagon, sir—it has an extra pair of wheels, as well as an extra pair of horses to draw it, and it’s excessively heavy. Have a look, sir, would you? Because I wouldn’t be surprised to find that it’s concealing a field-gun— a nine- or even a twelve-pounder, judging by the way those horses are straining. And if it is . . .” he did not complete his sentence but, after a swift inspection, Colonel Gorak lowered the glass and completed it for him.

  “If you are right, Hazard,” he said grimly, “then Serfir’s horsemen will be cut to pieces if they attempt an attack on this end of the train. And I fear”—he raised the Dollond again— “that you may well be right. Those extra wheels do not belong to the wagon. Dear God in Heaven! The Russians must have received warning . . . they’re expecting an ambush and—”

  “Is there any way of warning Serfir?” Phillip interrupted. “Can we make a signal? His horsemen are waiting under cover of the trees, I take it, so they won’t have seen that wagon clearly.”

  The Colonel shook his head. “If we tried to make any sort of signal from here, they would almost certainly take it as encouragement. There’s only one way to stop them charging— I shall have to go to Serfir myself.” He gestured behind him, down the slope, to where they had left their horses, silencing Selina’s offer to go in his place with a brusque, “He would not listen to you, chérie.”

  “We could pin down the gunners from here, sir,” Phillip said. “There are five of us, with rifles”—unconsciously, he had included Selina—“we might be able to prevent them firing their gun and . . .” his voice was drowned in the thunder of crashing rocks and he turned, startled, to see that a mass of boulders and loose earth was cascading down from the hillside opposite his vantage point, with perfect timing and almost perfect accuracy. The mass, gathering momentum as it fell and uprooting any trees and bushes which lay in its path, hurtled down to spread itself in a cloud of choking dust across the road, engulfing both the fifth and sixth wagons and cutting off the rear portion of the supply train from its head. And from the field-gun, if his guess was right and that was what the first wagon was concealing, but . . . was that the only gun? If the Russians had been warned to expect an ambush, would there not be others—or at least one other—similarly hidden at the rear of the long column?

  He grabbed the Dollond but let it fall again. Dust, rising from the man-made avalanche, obscured his view. All he could see were men, struggling free of it and running for cover and, as a crackle of musketry from the hillside told him that the battle had now begun in earnest, he shouted to Cochrane at the pitch of his lungs to sight on the first wagon. There was no need to tell him why, for as he shouted, the muzzle of the gun came thrusting from the back of the wagon, propelled by a score of grey-coated infantrymen, who tipped the wagon over on to its side the better to bring their weapon into action without loss of time. The horses, cut free of their traces trotted dazedly away and, from the wagons which had given them shelter, the gunners—distinguished from the rest by their green uniforms—grouped themselves round their gun, as the horses were led back to drag it into position.

  “Fire!” Phillip shouted. “Aim for the gunners and fire at will!” He sighted his own Minié on one of the green uniforms and heard four other rifles bark almost in unison but the range was long and only one of the green-clad figures staggered away from the gun, clutching a shattered arm. To his chagrin, the Russians got off a round of grape, which was aimed accurately at the trees to his left, and beside him, reloading her long, cumbersome flintlock, Selina said with a sob in her voice, “They know—they know where our men are waiting! We have been betrayed . . .” she thrust the stock of her rifle into place against her shoulder, took careful aim, and fired again. “Too low,” she added regretfully, as the smoking field-gun sent a second shower of grape into its target and the gunners sponged and started to reload.

  In the distance, Phillip thought he heard the boom of another gun, coming from his right and, as he sighted on one of the green uniformed artillerymen, his mind registered the fact that there must be two field-guns, at least, with the train . . . and there might well be more. He squeezed the trigger of his Minié and knew a savage but short-lived satisfaction when the man at whom he had aimed pitched forward across the gun barrel and lay still. Two of his comrades flung his body into the dust of the road, one grabbed the ramrod he had been about to use and rammed home a fresh charge. They were working fast and well, Phillip saw, and had completed the loading of their gun before he had reloaded his rifle. Dear God, he thought, if there were two or three more guns’ crews as well trained as this one in the column, the Circassians would be annihilated if they attempted to employ their usual tactics. But Serfir must surely, by this time, have realized what he was up against, he must hear the guns, even if he could not see them and . . . he drew in his breath sharply. Had not the Colonel said that, when faced with unexpectedly strong opposition, the Circassians would not press home their attack but instead were more likely to abandon it and make off, to seek safety in their mountain hideouts?

  He looked round for the Colonel and Selina said, as if she had guessed his thoughts, “My father has gone to Serfir . . . he will ride as fast as any man could, you may be certain.” She had not turned her head and the cough of her rifle added a strangely poignant emphasis to her words. “Ah!” she exclaimed, raising herself on her elbows to look down into the smoke and dust below them. “I have hit their officer at last. They will not work so well now.”

  She was right, Phillip realized, on the first count, at all events, and would probably be proved right on the second. He was reminded suddenly of young Henry Durbanville who, in somewhat similar circumstances to these, had held off a Russian attack with a pair of Minié rifles and an almost arrogant pride in his own skilful marksmanship. Selina had the same oddly dispassionate attitude that Durbanville had displayed: indeed she—“Look!” she cried, far from dispassionate now, her voice high-pitched with emotion. “Oh, look—they are coming, they are charging down from the hill! And Dafir is leading them . . . oh, the fool! Does he not see the gun?”

  From the clump of trees to his left front, Phillip saw them coming, forty or fifty Circassians on their shaggy mountain ponies, with the unmistakable figure of Dafir at their head, his scimitar drawn and his long hair flying behind him . . . driven from their concealment, he could only suppose, by the rapid and accurate fire which the Russians had directed into it. They were coming at breakneck speed down the steep slope, at an angle and well spread out, and they had chosen their moment well, for the field-gun was still being sponged and had yet to be reloaded but . . . if any of them were to survive, the gunners must be prevented from getting off another round of grape at close range.

  Phillip yelled to Cochrane and, leaping to his feet, fired down at the milling green figures, reloaded and fired again, at a speed of which he had never imagined himself capable. He hit the gunlayer with his first shot, heard Thompson’s voice raised in a cheer and did not consciously notice the crunch of musket balls striking the parapet a few feet below him. It was impossible to tell in the noise and confusion who was firing or from whence the shots came b
ut, one after another, the gunners fell and, as they did so, others ran forward to take their places. They got off one more round and Phillip watched, in horror, as more than a dozen of the galloping Circassians went down before a hail of grape. A horse squealed in mortal agony, the sound rising above the thunder of hooves and the crackle of discharging rifles but then, with Dafir still at their head, the horsemen were among the gunners, hacking them down and driving them back from their gun, some of them riding at the grey-coated infantrymen who came forward, with bayonets menacingly fixed, to dispute their possession of the gun. It became a desperate, hand-to-hand struggle, with neither side giving quarter and, unable to fire without the risk of hitting their own men, Phillip shouted to his small party to cease their efforts and laid his smoking Minié down to cool.

  The Cossack scouts, led by their officer, turned and charged into the mêlée, in an attempt to take the Circassians from the rear but Dafir, as if some sixth sense had warned him of the danger, was ready for them, he and six or seven of his followers meeting them with a counter-charge. Only when the Cossack saddles were empty did they break off and, shackling the gun to some riderless horses which they had rounded up, they galloped off with their prize, firing their rifles into the air with exultant yells of triumph.