The Sabre's Edge Page 6

  The boats were packed with the Thirty-eighth's biggest men, the grenadier company, and there was scarcely space for one more, let alone two. But the grenadiers looked happy enough that an officer in another uniform - from the staff indeed - thought their enterprise worthy.

  The grenadier captain was welcoming. 'It would not do for a dragoon to be overtaken by foot,' he said, smiling and holding out his hand. 'I am Richard Birch, sir.'

  'Matthew Hervey, sir. And very pleased to join your ranks, though I fear my coat a little conspicuous in so much red.'

  'I should worry not, Captain Hervey, for I have no doubt we shall all look the same within minutes of scrambling ashore.'

  Seeing the colour of the grenadiers' belts, Hervey could only smile ruefully; the white pipeclay had run off onto their jackets and trousers, and even the red dye was not holding fast. 'I freely confess that your alacrity took me by surprise, though. It was but a few hours ago that the general gave the brigadier his orders.'

  Captain Birch smiled. 'The colonel has had a company under arms since we landed. It was my good fortune that it was the grenadiers' turn for duty today.'

  Hervey nodded. Even so, he thought, it was smart work.

  'The rest of the battalion will follow. Our intention is to test the strength of the stockade and to try to take it by surprise.' Captain Birch had to raise his voice against the beating rain and the sailors' oar work, and his resolve seemed all the stronger thereby.

  Hervey had no doubt that Birch's company would carry all but the most determined resistance before them - if they could make headway enough to reach their objective: so strong was the current that the sailors were red in the face despite the cooling drench. If ever they had need of the steamship to give them a tow it was now, but Commodore Peto had said he would not risk Diana until he was sure the banks were clear of cannon, and the river of fire boats.

  Captain Birch's little flotilla was not without resource, however. The naval officer in command, one of Liffey's lieutenants, had as good an eye for water as Hervey prided himself he had for ground. As they reached the point of the big bend that hid Rangoon from further observation upstream (and, as Hervey observed, vice versa), and where the oars could shift no more water in that swollen flow, he signalled for the boats to turn full about and for hands to pull hard for the slack water by the left bank.

  It was done in less than a minute, and very neatly thought Hervey - quicker, for sure, than trying to row broadside across the stream, as he would have attempted. The crews now put the boats about again and struck off with a will, for there was an obvious danger in going for the slacker water - too close to the bank, easy prey to musketry no matter how ill-aimed.

  It was a tense quarter of an hour before the lieutenant was able to lead the boats to the middle of the river again, but there was no sign of life on either bank except for a solitary zebu that watched them pass, mournful-looking.

  'Can we make room in the boat for him on the way back, Corporal?’ came a voice from the bows.

  Captain Birch replied. 'It will be yours if we take the stockade!'

  There were cheers. Hervey smiled to himself. A beef dinner - not a promise that would excite men ordinarily to great feats of arms. But such was the miserable fare to which the expedition had been reduced that a pile of gold was worth nothing compared with boiled meat. He turned his cloak collar up once more against the rain.

  'Pull hard now, lads; pull hard!' Though the lieutenant's voice carried easily to the other three boats, there was just something in his tone that coaxed the extra from his sailors rather than commanded it. It promised them something if they did pull hard rather than threaten if they did not. In truth, they needed little encouragement. Months confined, cruising the Bay of Bengal, and now the prospect of action. It would take more than the monsoon and the Rangoon river in spate to damp their ardour.

  After half an hour's pulling hard, the boats swung closer to the right bank to clear a thick knot of mangrove that reached into the river like a giant's arm. And then their first sight of the enemy, or rather his work - a hundred yards distant on the opposite bank.

  'Still a mile to go by my reckoning, at least,' said Captain Birch. 'An outpost do you think?'

  Hervey had no more prior intelligence than Birch. 'I think it best to work on that assumption. It's not a thing to have at your backs as you go for Kemmendine - or, for that matter, in front of you as you come back.'

  'My view precisely.' Birch cupped his hands to be heard above the fall of water. 'Mr Wilkinson!'

  The lieutenant brought his boat within easier hailing distance, and without once losing the stroke.

  'I want to put half the company ashore to assault yonder fort,' called Birch, gesturing with his pistol. 'The rest I would have Mr Ash work upstream to assault the Kemmendine stockade. We can go at it from two sides at once. But maintain a contact.'

  Both officers signalled their understanding, and put their boats for the bank.

  ★ ★ ★š

  Out scrambled the grenadiers like ants swarming from a nest, with Hervey and Wainwright almost knocked over in the rush. There were no orders, no forming-up, just a headlong rush with the bayonet.

  Shots rang out from the fort. At a hundred yards the musketry was well wide, though one ball sent a man's shako flying.

  It continued as grenadiers splashed through the sodden padi, and still no nearer the mark. Hervey could hear the whizz of balls high above, or see the odd one spatter in front. He was surprised the Burmans stood their ground at all, for they could neither volley nor snipe.

  Now they were under the bamboo walls, breathless. 'Up, up, get up!’ shouted the corporals as grenadiers clambered onto each other's shoulders: the Burmans were only ten feet above them, and the redcoats wanted but a fingerhold to claim first blood.

  But the Burmans wouldn't wait for them to gain the top. They leapt from the parapet and ran for the gate for all they were worth. The stockade was no longer a fort but a pen.

  Over the parapet came the Thirty-eighth, wild-eyed and baying like, hounds on to their fox.

  The gate wouldn't open, and then not wide enough. And then the press of Burmans was so great that it jammed closed again, trapping three dozen of them, perhaps four.

  Hervey picked himself up after half tumbling from the wall.

  The grenadiers' yelling was truly terrible. The Burmans turned to receive them on their spears, but they had never faced English bayonets before.

  The ferocity astonished even Hervey. Two dozen of them fell to the point of steel in a handful of seconds, a single man sometimes to three and more bayonets. The rest would have fallen the same had not the gates been suddenly wrenched from their hinges, terror-stricken Burmans throwing down spear and musket and fleeing through the ooze in bare feet twice as fast as boots could follow. They were lucky that the rain kept lead from following, too.

  Hervey looked at the heap of dead, a sight he was spared as a rule since the horse took him and his dragoons on from their slaughter. The Burman soldier looked the same in death as any other: untidy, unsuccessful. He felt nothing for them. Had they stayed at their posts and fought they might at least have repulsed the first headlong attack. Was that not what they were paid to do? Perhaps Calcutta was right: perhaps there was no fight in the Burman army.

  'Good work this, eh, Hervey?' called Captain Birch from outside the gates. He bent to wipe his sword on a Burman coat.

  'Very good work indeed. But I wonder they were not more determined. You might have lost a fair few men had they stood their ground.'

  'Perhaps,' said Birch, returning his sword. 'But in this rain they would not have been able to reload, and we'd have pushed them from that wall in no time. See the size of these men compared with mine.'

  Hervey did. The grenadiers were picked men. It had been many years since the biggest soldiers in a battalion had been mustered together to throw the grenade, but the custom of putting the biggest men in the same company remained - quite evidently so in t
he Thirty-eighth. He nodded. 'But I doubt we shall be so fortunate every time. I can but admire the ardour of your men, though,' he added quickly, not wanting to belittle it in the slightest.

  Captain Birch turned to his ensign. 'Have them form up in column of route, if you please.' And then to Hervey. 'Shall you come with us?'

  'Indeed I shall.'

  'Good. We all know of your exploits in Chittagong.'

  Hervey was gratified, if surprised. He made no reply.

  He did not speak for the best part of one full hour. They marched the while, first through mud so gummy that it pulled boots from feet at every step, and then through forest that from the outside looked deceptively like an English wood.

  'No, no; it's too much,' said Captain Birch, coming to a standstill in the middle of a particularly dense tangle of byaik.

  'I've never seen thicker,' agreed Hervey.

  'We'd better make for the river and re-embark. We've lost enough time - and surprise, too.'

  Hervey could but agree again. 'The shots may not have carried that far in this rain, but the runaways will have. They're bound to know a way through this.'

  Captain Birch cursed.

  Hervey sympathized. An approach march through difficult country for an attack from an unexpected direction was an admirable undertaking, much to be preferred to a frontal assault from the direction they were expected. But, as he had heard say often enough, the business of war was merely the art of the possible, and passage of this verdure was not possible in the time they had.

  'At least this rain's to our advantage,' said Birch, signalling the change of march with his hand to those behind.

  Hervey smiled. Here was an infantryman who knew his job: a man who preferred a soaking to the skin in order that it might soak the powder of his enemy too.

  'Pull hard again, my lads; pull hard!' called Liffey's lieutenant as they struck off.

  'I'm grateful to you, sir,' said Captain Birch, who had decided to place himself in his barge as they re-embarked. The rain had not eased in the slightest; he turned up the collar of his cloak again. 'You kept a good contact. Did you see aught of the fugitives bolting the stockade?'

  'We did indeed, sir! Your lieutenant was all for putting ashore to give chase, but they sped so there was little chance of taking any. I fancy they're hiding in that wilderness and won't come out for a week.'

  'And I fancy they're already half-way to Kemmendine to raise the alarm. What say you, Hervey?'

  Hervey was trying to secure the bib of his jacket, having pulled off a couple of buttons while scrambling into the cutter. 'We must pray they're not like the Thirty-eighth, Birch, but proceed as if they are.'

  'Well said. And very wise. I think we'd better take their measure this next time before hurling ourselves at the walls. Anyway, we're number enough to give them a fright.'

  Hervey was relieved. It saved him the trouble of telling a man his job. A bayonet rush may have overawed the stockade, but Kemmendine would be different. A show of discipline and steady bearing, and all in red, might do better. It would at least preserve a good many of them, for he could not quite believe that Kemmendine had as little fight in it as the place they'd just sent packing. 'And we shall shock them!'

  'Ay, indeed, Hervey. Naught shall make us rue!'

  'I recall when last I said that, just as we were about to attack a Burman camp. We thought ourselves very bold.'

  'You were.'

  'It was a comfortable affair compared with this.'

  'You would count yourself happier in the saddle, I suppose?'

  Hervey smiled. 'Does it seem ill that I would?'

  'Not at all. The cobbler is better at his last. I wonder you've exchanged a dry billet at all for this.'

  Hervey clapped a hand on Birch's shoulder. 'Oh, don't mistake me; I would not miss this for all the tea in China, even if I mayn't be dry-shod.'

  Birch offered him his brandy flask.

  'What is your intention then?' asked Hervey, taking a most restorative swig.

  'It is not easy to say without seeing the object, but I shall land out of musketry range and then advance with skirmishers. I think the navy might feint beyond. You never know: we might yet bolt them as we did before.'

  'It will be a famous business if you do,' said Hervey, taking another draw on the flask. 'That and to put a torch to the place.'

  The reason they were making now for Kemmendine was Peto's fear of fire boats, for it was no hindrance to progress if the general struck for the Irawadi. That said, if Campbell could not proceed for a month or so - and in this weather Hervey thought it nigh impossible - then it would not do to have the village become a fortress from which Maha Bundula's men might sortie. The general himself believed that the same weather would also hold up the Burmans, but Hervey had reasoned that they would be moving on interior lines and might therefore do so much swifter. And he knew enough of Maha Bundula's reputation to know that he would march where others could not. Captain Birch's work today might well be an affair on which the expedition turned. He had better let him know it.

  How those sailors pulled on the oars! Hervey marvelled at their skill and strength - like the free hands that propelled the triremes of ancient Greece faster than could the galley-slaves of their enemies. The rain had stopped, quite suddenly, revealing how warm was the morning - and how soon could the mosquitoes set about them again, so that in a little while both red- and bluejacket alike would have welcomed back the rain in whatever measure. And, of course, the rain dispersed the miasma, the mist that brought the fevers. Hervey, having lowered his collar and unfastened his cloak, quickly reversed the decision with the first bites at his neck. He was lucky to have his hands free for it, unlike the oarsmen.

  'There's the place,' exclaimed Captain Birch suddenly, double-checking his map. 'It's good and flat, and Kemmendine just around the bend ahead. We land there.'

  Hervey searched with his telescope. It was an excellent place to disembark. Boats could beach and the grenadiers jump to dry land, if that description was at all apt. ' 'Ware pickets, though, Birch. It's altogether too likely a place.'

  'It may be so, Hervey, but we're beggars in choice.' He hailed his ensign in the boat alongside. 'Secure a footing, Kerr!'

  Ensign Kerr, looking half the years of any man in his boat, saluted and put the cutter at once for the shoal.

  'Pull!' bellowed the mate: he would have it run well up the bank.

  Out scrambled the grenadiers as the boat stuck fast, a full ten feet of keel out of the water. At once a fusillade opened on them.

  Musket balls struck the clinker side. A grenadier crumpled clutching his stomach. One dropped to his knees, his hip shot away. Another fell backwards into the water with a ball in his throat.

  'Lie down!' shouted Ensign Kerr.

  They did so willingly, even in so much mud, while Kerr himself stood brazenly looking for the source of the musketry.

  Another volley. White smoke billowed from a thicket not a hundred yards away.

  Bad soldiers, tutted Kerr. No target for the volley and all to lose by giving away the position. The bayonet should dislodge them easy enough!

  But no - his eyes deceived him. It was no haphazard cover in which the musketeers hid, but bamboo walls as before, only this time most artfully, cunningly, concealed. He looked up and down the bank. There was no other place to land to advantage. 'Stand up, men!'

  As soon as fire was opened, Captain Birch had signalled for the other boats to row for the bank, covered from view by abundant mangrove. 'We'll just have to hack through,' he called to Hervey, gesturing at the tangle that overhung the river.

  Both were now standing in the stern trying to get a clearer picture of Kerr's skirmish.

  'Not two dozen muskets by the sound of it,' said Hervey. 'Your man might yet do it on his own.'

  That indeed was Ensign Kerr's intention. 'Fix bayonets! On guard!'

  He would waste no time trying to load - certainly not to have so many of them misfire with damp powde
r. And the clattering of bayonets locking home was a fine sound!

  'Advance!'

  Captain Birch gasped at the audacity. 'Make after them!' he bellowed. 'Pull hard!'

  They fairly raced through the slack water of the bank, but there wasn't the same room to get the boats run up the shoal.

  'Out! Out!' roared Birch, leaping from the stern into water knee-deep, followed by Hervey and Corporal Wainwright.

  The silting was so bad it took the greatest effort to make the five yards to the bank. 'All right, sir?' asked Wainwright as they crawled out.

  'Ay, just,' said Hervey, sliding back a second time before getting to grips with a firm-rooted clump of rushes to pull himself free of the silt. ‘I’d forgotten how much easier it is on four legs.'