The Sabre's Edge Page 9

  Would Campbell address the sortie? The rain hammered so loud it would be pointless but for a few men in the front rank. So they would just turn into column of route and march off down the track into the forest. Poor infantry - trudge, trudge, trudge, a mouthful of black powder biting the cartridge, a minute of rushing blood in a bayonet charge, and then . . .

  Then it was the same for all of them - kill or be killed. The soldier's life was nearest Nature -lowly, nasty, brutish, and all too frequently short.

  It was, of course, why they made comrades of one another so quickly. Everyone knew that. Hervey had seen it in his first week at the depot squadron, and he supposed it was why, perhaps, decent society could sometimes hail the soldier, for all his licentiousness. The quality certainly liked an officer in his regimentals. He wondered if they ever imagined them as they appeared this morning, however - sodden, tattered, grubby. Or what they looked like when rent with grape, ball, or the point of iron and steel.

  It was strange he should think now of Henrietta. Now, when things stood at their most brutish. But Henrietta had had a good imagination of the truth, for all her feigning otherwise. Not so Lady Katherine Greville. Hervey did not suppose she had ever thought of it, let alone was capable of imagining it. Regimentals were not for this. They were for the delighting of her and those like her - a mark of potency rather than aught else. He did not suppose it, indeed; he knew it. Her letters told him as explicitly as she had implied the day they had ridden together in Hyde Park. That was four, nearly five years ago, and still she wrote. He wrote too, not exactly by return, but with sufficient despatch to keep the correspondence lively. It flattered him. She might have her pick of officers in London - and no doubt did - and yet she penned him letters. He smiled to himself, now, at her questions. Did he wish to be an ADC? Did he wish for an appointment at the Horse Guards? If he would not return soon to London, did he wish a place on the commander-in-chief's staff, or even the Governor-General's? There was not much, it seemed, that Lieutenant-General Sir Peregrine Greville could not arrange if his wife were to ask him. 'Sir?'

  Hervey turned.

  'I asked if you still don't want your cape, sir,' said Corporal Wainwright, water running down his shako oilskin as if it were an ornamental fountain. 'I can fetch it quick enough.'

  Hervey shook his head. 'No. I think we're beyond all help in rain like this. It'll be sodden in minutes and then a dead weight. Why don't you take yours though?'

  'No, sir. It'll be just as sodden. And I'd as soon kick off these boots.' He smiled.

  Hervey smiled back. Corporal Wainwright had been wearing shoes when first he had seen him on Warminster Common, though the rest of the inhabitants of that sink had been barefoot. 'Easier going in the approach, I grant you, but just wait till you get a bamboo splinter!'

  Words of command now rippled through the ranks, like dominoes toppling. Back up to attention came the companies; they shouldered arms, moved to the right in column of route, then struck off to the dull thud of soggy-skinned drums and watery fifes - a cheery enough display for the general, thought Hervey, even if the sepoys did look distinctly ill-used to marching in torrents of rain. The King's men, he didn't doubt, would have marched in many times worse, and some of them in the Peninsula, where the rain could fall as a stinging hail of ice rather than as a warm drench. Poor, wretched infantry - the regiments of foot - and their feet often as not cold and wet. The cavalryman knew privation, and worked the harder for having a horse to look after as well as himself, but his feet bore nothing like the punishment of the infantryman's.

  'Nice tune, sir,' chirped Corporal Wainwright as he picked up the step.

  'Yes,' said Hervey, in a vague way.

  'Don't you recognize it, sir?'

  'No?' Corporal Wainwright obviously thought it of significance.

  'The rain it fell for forty days!'

  'Of course,' he said, smiling - black humour, the soldier's privilege. 'But I'm afraid the drum-major is excessively an optimist. The rains will be an affair of months, I fear.'

  ★ ★ ★š

  They were not set off more than half an hour, and only a short distance into the jungle, when the first shots were fired. In this rain they defied belief. Hervey could not conceive how any powder might be dry enough, especially in Burman hands.

  There was at once a great cheer and the leading men went at the pickets with the bayonet. It was over in a minute. Hervey saw nothing.

  The column halted and the general pushed his way to the front, Hervey with him. They found a half-finished stockade built directly across the track and extending the length of a cricket pitch each side into the forest, empty of all but redcoats, and half a dozen Burman musketeers too slow on their feet. General Campbell peered at the bodies, as if they might reveal something of the campaign before him. ‘Pull the place down!' he snapped. ‘Press on, Colonel Keen!'

  They left a sepoy company to the work, and the column trudged on into jungle made increasingly dark by the heavy skies. In another half-hour they passed three more stockades just as hastily abandoned, and then not a sign of the enemy in five miles of swamp and thicket until the artillerymen were too exhausted to pull their guns any further.

  'In God's name get the sepoys to the ropes!' cursed the general.

  Hervey despaired. He had taken gallopers into the jungle - two-pounders dismantled, and carried by packhorses. But guns like these ... it would not serve. 'Sir, I believe the effort may not be worth it. And when it comes to withdrawing, we could never afford to abandon them.’

  'I agree, General,’ said Colonel Keen.

  Campbell looked vexed. He wanted to blow in a stockade and tell the Burmans there was nowhere safe for them. But he had brought the wrong guns and he knew it. The Madras artillery's commander had told him so last night. 'Very well. The sepoy company will remain guarding them until we return.’

  There were no packhorses, of course. Not one. Indeed, there was not a single animal in the entire expeditionary force. But this was to be an entirely novel campaign, one that did not observe the normal usages of war. Hervey seethed. Who were these officers who would undertake a campaign without a few ready horses?

  The next two miles were done much quicker without the guns. They did not find the enemy, however, nor any sign of him, and in an hour the column emerged from the forest into green padi fields six inches deep in water.

  Colonel Keen halted the column to allow the general to come forward.

  'What do you make of it, Colonel?’ asked Campbell, sounding confident still.

  The colonel had the advantage of two minutes’ survey through his telescope, but even so there was not much he could tell him. 'I feel the want of a map very sorely, General. I suppose yonder village is fortified, or at least has some hasty stockading erected, for they must have known of our approach these several hours.'

  General Campbell now surveyed the ground for himself.

  The village lay half a mile ahead astride the track by which they had come. Without a map it was impossible to tell if it ran through the village and beyond, in which case the village commanded further advance, or whether it ended there. Colonel Keen thought the question apposite since, he reasoned, the Burmans would be bound to defend the former whereas they would probably have abandoned the latter.

  The general nodded to the logic, but either way he would have the place. 'And if I find so much as a loophole in yonder buildings I'll raze the entire village.'

  Colonel Keen folded his telescope. 'Column of companies, I think, General?' 'If you please.'

  The colonel turned to his adjutant. 'Column of companies if you please, Mr Broderick.'

  While this evolution was taking place, which required the sortie to advance a good hundred yards to make manoeuvre room, and for the companies to extend left and right for about fifty into the padi, Hervey climbed to the lower branch of a sal tree and began his own survey. To the right of the village, perhaps a little closer than to the forest's edge, was water - one of the delta's m
any creeks, he supposed. To the left, and beyond, the same distance, was jungle. He strained to make out something of the village, but the cloud and the rain made it impossible to tell whether there was any stockading. There was certainly no sign of life. He looked at his watch: a little past midday. They could not advance much further without spending the night in the forest. And there were the guns to think of.

  The companies struck off at a good pace, splashing through the muddy rice as if skylarking on a beach. Hervey climbed down and pushed his way along the track to where the general marched with the Thirty-eighth's lieutenant-colonel, just to the rear of the leading company. He fell in behind the adjutant, counting himself lucky to have his feet out of the padi. It was only then that he observed how effective was a general's cocked hat in a downpour. Campbell had his pulled over his ears, and water ran down the points 'fore and aft' clear of both face and neck. Strange, the things one noticed at times such as these, he mused.

  'View halloo!'

  Hervey woke instantly. Where? What? He couldn't see beyond the shakos of the company in front.

  'Skirmishers out!' he heard the lieutenant-colonel order.

  Men from the light company began doubling past on both flanks to form a skirmishing line. How would they load in this weather?

  'Smart work!' said the general.

  Hervey could now see the Burmans forming up on either side of the village - with officers on horseback. He prayed there would be no cavalry, however inexpert. They would have the advantage, for sure, even in this going.

  'Curse this padi!' It was taking forever to make headway. Hervey glanced left and right: the lines were uneven, and they were having to mark time in the middle, the men on the flanks up to their knees in water, mud sucking at every stride. He thought it bordered on the reckless. If there were cavalry behind the village they could be onto flanks in an instant. He began unbinding one of his pistols, but he had little expectation of its serviceability. He cursed again. A pistol which misfired, perforce at short range, was worse than useless. He began rebinding. He would trust to the sabre, as the infantry would trust to the bayonet.

  At a hundred paces musketry broke out from in front of the village, left and right. Hervey could scarce believe it. Just as at Kemmendine the Burmans had concealed their stockades in byaik little more than shoulder high, and kept their powder dry. But again they'd fired too soon and not a ball struck home.

  The skirmishers held their fire: theirs was to discourage any who would stand in the open.

  Coolly, as if at a field day, the general took in the business before him. 'One company, if you please, Colonel,’ he said, matter-of-fact. 'Remainder to stand fast in reserve lest those there begin to advance.’ He pointed at the Burmans drawn up either side of the village.

  It was promptly done. Eight dozen bayonets in two ranks inclined right and quickened almost to double time, Campbell following.

  Hervey was hard-pressed to keep pace.

  The musketry increased, but it was ragged and had no more effect than before.

  The ground now fell away - three feet, perhaps more. Down the slope to the bamboo walls ran the company - eight-foot walls, not five.

  There were shots from the left - hopelessly too far again - as Hervey and the general raced to catch them up. He couldn't understand how the Burman fire discipline could be so poor when their other skills were so admirable.

  The general glanced left, marked the smoke, then drew his sword and sprinted the last dozen yards to the fort.

  The Thirty-eighth were already atop the walls. Hervey glimpsed the bayonets at work - bloody, vengeful work.

  The general climbed on a corporal's shoulders and heaved himself up. Hervey and the ADCs followed as best they could. Hervey lost his footing on the wet bamboo several times until Corporal Wainwright leaned out and got hold of his crossbelt.

  But it was over by the time they were up. Five minutes' work, at most, to turn the fort into a slaughterhouse as bad as he'd seen. There were dozens of dead piled against the gates, and as many more scattered about the stockade in ones and twos where they had stood and fought or cowered and craved mercy, both in vain.

  General Campbell, sword still drawn, but unbloody, at once ordered out the company to assault the second stockade. Hervey, standing on the parapet, glanced back at the other three companies formed up ready, their colonel in front, and wondered at the general's impetuosity. Was it that he was happy at last, knowing exactly what he was about - the simple certainty of fighting, and with his old corps? He might almost be seeking a glorious death. He made work for his covermen, for sure.

  Two ranks! Get fell in!' The serjeant-major blew his whistle fiercely and waved his sword. 'That was nothing! Look sharp, damn you!'

  The voice of the Black Country made Hervey think of Ezra Barrow: dragoon to captain - what would he make of it? He would not have volunteered for it, that was certain. 'Never volunteer for anything' was a maxim Barrow had long lived by. And it had evidently served him well. Hervey might almost envy him at this moment, undoubtedly taking his pleasure in an afternoon's repose.

  At last the company was fell in to the serjeant-major's satisfaction. They were scarcely depleted, for all the ferocity of the first assault, though every man was as gory as a surgeon's mate. No matter, the rain would wash them clean. But by their look, Hervey wondered if it was what they would want.

  The general now threw over all restraint and placed himself in front of the line. He waved his sword at the objective, two hundred yards ahead. ‘Once more, the Thirty-eighth! Let 'em have Brummagem!’

  There was a great cheer.

  Poor Colonel Keen, sighed Hervey. The general was a captain again and nothing would stop him.

  He took post on the right of the front rank, along with the ADCs, with Corporal Wainwright beside him. It would be the closest he had come to a bayonet charge - just as he'd wanted. He could already feel the strength of a line of well-drilled men elbow to elbow, 'the touch of cloth', even blue with red. If only the enemy were not behind a palisade! But no, he needn't worry: the bamboo walls would delay them, not stop them, surely? These men's blood was hotted: they would take the place by escalade again, and the Burmans would once more rue their lot.

  But the second stockade was not as easy as the first. The walls were no higher, and the defenders no greater, but the Burmans held their fire and then stuck at it just that bit longer. The first volley came at about seventy yards - some lucky hits, enough to shock - then another at fifty which felled several men including a serjeant.

  'Charge!’

  The general's voice was louder than the rain and the firing combined, and the cheering louder still as the right-flank company of His Majesty's 38th Foot, under their erstwhile colonel, ran slipping and sliding to the wooden walls.

  This time the defenders would not be bolted. They held their ground and kept up a steady fire even as the first redcoats were scrambling up the palisade.

  The second rank began desperately unwrapping their flintlocks to engage them. Few managed to fire.

  The Burmans had the advantage and the will this time, and the fallen red coats began to show.

  But little by little - it seemed an age yet could not have been more than minutes - red began to preponderate atop the palisade. It defied reason, for they could not be gaining it by fire. Hervey himself had fired both his pistols, and the rounds were wide. No, it was not fire that let the redcoats escalade the fort.

  He got a shoulder again from a thickset private— ‘Yow mun gow, sir; me leg's shot through.' This time he reached the parapet while there was still fighting. 'Where's the general?'

  'I can't see 'im, sir,' said Wainwright, looking either side of the wall.

  'Christ!' It wasn't his business to guard him, but—

  An ear-splitting roar and the whizz of shrapnel smoke rolled across the stockade floor and hid all for an instant.

  Hervey leapt from the parapet and dashed for the gun. A dozen redcoats beat him by a mile. A
dozen more lay full of iron.

  He saw his man though, spear couched, hesitant but standing his ground. Up went the sabre as he ran in, Wainwright with him.

  He didn't feel the ball strike. He only saw the lights dancing in the sky as he fell. And then the shadow of Corporal Wainwright over him, saying something he couldn't hear.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE SURGEON'S BLADE

  That evening

  The sight of a horse, even a lone horse, made the sentries at Rangoon's gates rush to their posts, and the inlying picket stand to. A horse was at best the bearer of a Burman who wished to treaty; at worst it bore the forerunner of a Burman army.

  'Shall I take a shot at 'im, sir?' called the picket-corporal to his officer.

  The lieutenant strained to make out the target. Two hundred yards: he could not determine who sat astride, and he was as certain that his corporal, for all his reputation as a hawk eye, could strike neither horse nor rider at that range with a common musket. And with the extra windage of the French balls they'd been issued with he'd have no more chance at half the range. He looked for reassurance towards the field piece in the mouth of the gate - the gunners were already ramming home shell. 'No. Let him come on some more.'