Dust and Steel. Patrick Mercer

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СКАЧАТЬ guns, and if there are rebels about on the route to Deesa, they’ll want to knock out the artillery first,’ answered Morgan, almost convinced by his own line of reasoning.

      ‘An’ look at this lot, sir – what’ll we do wi’ them in the middle of a fight?’ asked McGucken as he stared at the crowd of civilan bearers, grass cutters, grooms, cooks, washerwomen and general servants whom the battery had brought with them.

      ‘D’you know, Colour-Sar’nt, I haven’t the least idea.’ The same thought had occurred to Morgan as swarms of civilians had appeared from nowhere once the troops had reached the relative civilisation of Bhuj and attached themselves to the company before they started the long march up-country. ‘I suppose they’ll make themselves scarce if the lead begins to fly. Anyway, are we ready to march once the sun’s down?’

      ‘Aye, sir, as ready as we’ll ever be, but I have me doots about yon cows.’ McGucken looked at the great, lazy-eyed oxen. One scratched its chin with a rear hoof, narrowly missing Private Swann as its horns flailed about, whilst its partner, shackled to it by a clumsy wooden yoke, flapped its ears incessantly at a cloud of flies.

      ‘Yes, not to mention the rest of God’s creatures that we seem to have inherited.’ Morgan looked with dismay as two camels wandered past, swamped by bundles of fodder almost as large as themselves. ‘Still, with such a lack of draught horses, I’d prefer to have this lot than try to pull the hardware ourselves.’

      As the march started after sundown that night, Morgan regretted his words. The guns and their limbers behaved well enough – the Indian drivers keeping the horses well in hand – and the camels were aloof but quiescent, whilst their vast loads meant that no traffic could pass in the other direction. Then, after a great deal of trumpeting and general skittishness, the elephants that were pulling the extra ammunition caissons settled to their duty, plodding stolidly in the dark under the direction of their mahouts. But the bullocks: how right McGucken had been not to trust ‘yon cows’.

      ‘Get up, won’t you, you lazy son of a drab,’ one of the Bombay gunners, a grizzled Englishman wearing the Sutlej medal, kicked and slapped one such creature that had lain down directly in the centre of the narrow, muddy track, anchoring its yoked partner securely and blocking all the traffic that came behind it. ‘Get your fuckin’ arse movin’ before I take the steel to ye.’

      To the 95th’s Grenadiers, who marched beside the column of nine-pounders, howitzers and their attendant traffic, ready to protect them from any interference by the enemy, such sights were a wonder.

      ‘Come on, you useless sod,’ the gunner continued, pulling his hanger from its scabbard and giving the animal such a poke that it leapt to its feet, bellowing forlornly and pulling its partner violently forward.

      ‘You’ll need to tend the wound you’ve given that beast,’ Morgan said, concerned not with any pain that the gunner had inflicted, but merely the continued efficiency of the ox, ‘or it’ll mortify in this climate, won’t it?’

      ‘Mortify, sir – I hope it bloody dies.’ The gunner had, quite clearly, reached the end of his patience with this particular animal. ‘But I doubt it; they’ve got hides thicker than a docker’s dick-skin, these bastards ’ave, sir.’

      And after a brace of night marches and sleep-short days, Morgan came to agree with the gunner, for the tiresome cattle seemed to ignore hunger, thirst, threats or reason, suiting themselves entirely whether they wished to obey orders or not, and apparently impervious to all stimuli other than those that they imposed upon themselves.

      The hours of darkness were hells of delay and infuriating petty problems – slipped saddles, shed shoes, broken spokes and binding axles – whilst the days provided little sleep at all as the sun beat down.

      After almost two weeks of stuttering progress, McGucken was tramping alongside Morgan one night, reliving some story of his time with the 36th in Gibraltar when vivid flashes lit up the road at the front of the column.

      ‘What in God’s name’s that?’ asked Morgan, though he knew well enough as the flat bangs of musket-fire and the sweeping whistle of lead shook him from his reverie.

      ‘Bloody ambush, sir,’ yelled McGucken, already sprinting hard towards the trouble. ‘Come on, Captain Morgan, sir, you don’t want to miss the fun.’

      Morgan’s belly was tight with fear, but he scrabbled after McGucken when more flashes reflected off the bushes and trees as a couple of British rifles returned fire.

      The track was narrow and greasy, blocked by animals and drivers, shrieking women and cowering grooms. Worse still, as the pair ran forward, grabbing their own men as they went, so a stream of panic-filled bearers came bowling down the verges towards them, shouting, eyes wide with fright, barging and pushing their way to the rear. As the mob skittered past Morgan in the dark, one man fell under the feet of the others, pulling at something in his shoulder whilst a nearby camel suddenly sank to its knees, its breath soughing coarsely from its lips. As he jostled his way forward, Morgan was aware of something fast and menacing whispering through the night: flights of arrows were thumping into flesh and saddles and tack, or quivering in the mud around his ankles.

      ‘Jaysus, this is like the bloody crusades, sir,’ McGucken puffed as they ran up to the head of the column. ‘What else will the fuckers use, boiling oil?’

      But before Morgan could reply, McGucken spotted two figures stumbling hard down the track on the other side of the camels and the frightened oxen, away from the noise of battle in front.

      ‘Corporal Pegg…’ even though the arrows continued to fly, McGucken’s barrack-yard yell brought the fugitive and his companion to a sudden halt, ‘…where d’ye think yer going?’

      Despite the darkness, Morgan could see the guilt on Pegg’s face.

      ‘Er…nowhere, Colour Sar’nt,’ Pegg stammered. ‘I were just mekin’ sure that—’

      ‘Put that bint down, Corporal, and get back to your men.’

      Even in this chaos, McGucken’s strength of character could galvanise others. It was what made him so indispensable, thought Morgan.

      Pegg objected no further: the native girl whom he had been sheltering shrieked off into the night, clutching her sari about her, whilst he skulked his way back to the front of the column, trying to look as though he’d never been away.

      ‘What’s going on, Sarn’t Ormond?’ Morgan found the non-commissioned officer kneeling in the grass surrounded by a handful of his men. They stared hard at the fringe of jungly forest that loomed darkly fifty yards away from them, weapons ready, peering down the barrels, looking for a target.

      ‘Got shot at from over yonder, sir.’ Ormond pointed at the trees with a nod of his forehead, never taking his eyes off the source of danger nor his finger off his rifle’s trigger. ‘Couple of the lads fired back.’

      But before Ormond could finish, another volley boomed out from the trees, the rounds whipping high overhead in the darkness. Though they were wide of their mark, Morgan found himself flat on his belly, pressing his body into the grit and mud of the track whilst a camel danced about him, the creature’s decorative bells jingling madly, more frightened of the human’s strange behaviour round his feet than the noise and uproar.

      Christ, that was a mile off, thought Morgan. What am I doing down here on my belt buckle? What’ll the boys make of me? They’re not scrubbing around in the dirt, are they?

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