Dust and Steel. Patrick Mercer

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СКАЧАТЬ NCOs who had seen more blood and killing than they cared to remember, was usually taciturn, passionless in circumstances that would have more callow men at fever pitch.

      ‘Aye, Colour-Sar’nt, you have a point. I don’t see why this scum should dishonour our uniforms.’ Hume paused for a second before adding, ‘Get those coatees off their backs if you’d be so kind, Sar’nt Ormond.’

      Sepoy Guddrea already had both feet and one hand tied to the struts of the wheels of Number Two gun by stout, leather thongs. Lance-Corporal Abbott and Private Scriven were pulling his right arm back for the waiting gunner to complete the last set of bonds when they heard the order. So the coatee was dragged off Guddrea, the lining of one sleeve showing a greyish white as it was turned inside out. Rather than loosen the tethers on the prisoner’s other wrist, though, Scriven produced a clasp knife fron his haversack and the sleeve was briskly cut away.

      ‘Right, Havildar,’ sneered Pegg, ‘you won’t be needing this where you’re a-going,’ and he pulled the coatee roughly off the second, condemned man.

      At the Indian’s feet two gunners kneeled, tying his ankles hard back against the gun’s wheels. As Pegg and Private Grimes held his arms for the gunners to complete the job, Morgan noticed his toes digging into the dust and the gun’s brass muzzle pushing the flesh at the base of the prisoner’s spine into a bulging, coffee-coloured collar.

      ‘Prime!’ At Bolton’s word of command, the bombardiers at both guns slid copper initiators the size of a pencil into the touchholes, before attaching lanyards to the twists of wire that emerged from their tops. Once the strings were jerked, the rough wire would rasp against the detonating compound in the tubes, producing a spark that would fire the charge.

      The pair of sepoys were stretched like bows over the ends of the barrels, their limbs strained tight against the wheels of the guns by the leather straps, their chests – with the skin pulled tightly over their ribs – directly facing their comrades. They would have seen guns being loaded many times and now they must know exactly what was about to happen, thought Morgan, as he watched the havildar arch his head slowly back, eyes closed, the knot of hair on the top of his skull hanging loose, his mouth open below the drooping moustache, waiting for the last word that he would hear.

      Both lanyards were drawn tight, the bombardiers looking towards Bolton, whose horse skittered and pawed the dust. The crowd remained quiet; even the crows in the trees seemed to be keeping a respectful silence, thought Morgan.

      ‘Ready, sir,’ Bolton reported.

      ‘Fire by single guns, if you please, Captain Bolton,’ said Hume, with exaggerated courtesy.

      ‘Sir.’ Bolton looked towards the crew to his left, making sure that they were quite ready before shouting, ‘Number Two gun…fire!’

      The concussion thumped Morgan’s ears. The crows and scavengers rose from the trees in a black bruise, tattered wings beating in alarm, cawing and squawking, whilst the crowd gasped and the horses gibbed and pecked. Morgan expected the gun to recoil until he realised that, with only a blank charge, there was nothing to hurl it back on its wheels. Then, as the smoke hung around the muzzle in the still air, he saw the crew clawing at their faces.

      Naked arms and legs were still attached to the nine-pounder’s wheels by their leather straps, raw chopped meat at the end of each buckled limb. But when the piece had fired, the vacuum created by the explosion had sucked a fine stew of blood and tissue back over the gunners. Their white, leather breeches were now pink with matter, their helmet covers a bloody smear, whilst their faces were flecked with the same gore. Each man wiped frantically at his eyes and cheeks in disgust.

      But there was worse to come. As Morgan and all the others gawped, so a tousled football fell from the heavens and bounced towards the 10th Bengal Native Infantry, their ranks swerving and breaking to avoid Sepoy Gudderea’s bounding, blistered head. Ripped from its shoulders, the man’s skull had shot straight up into the sky before falling like a bloody stone to deliver the starkest, possible message to his living comrades.

      ‘Number Three gun…fire!’ Then Bolton’s command turned Drill-Havildar Din Hussain into carrion. Each face on the maidan turned upwards like a crowd at a firework party as, rising from the smoke, the black disc turned over and over, its mane of hair flailing around its scorched flesh, unseeing eyes staring wide in death. It rose to its zenith, every eye watching its plunge to earth then, with a thump and a couple of dusty bounces, Din Hussain’s head rolled towards his last tormentor.

      ‘Now that’ll teach you not to be a naughty little mutineer, won’t it?’ grinned Pegg at the lump of bone and blackened skin.

      Morgan gagged as the hideous ball came to a halt in the dust.

       TWO Bombay Brothers

      ‘Christ, I never want to see anything like that again.’ Morgan and Bazalgette were sitting in the shady anteroom of the officers’ mess in the fort, chota-pegs in hand, icecubes clinking, still dusty from the maidan.

      ‘Aye, I thought I’d seen some sights at Sevastopol, but nothing like that.’ Bazalgette’s forehead was cut across by sunburn, stark white above his peeling nose where the peak of his cap had kept the rays at bay. He pulled hard at his brandy. ‘It hardly made the right impression on the sepoys when Mabutt from my lot and that other lad from Carmichael’s company fainted dead away. We’re supposed to be the hand of a vengeful God, not a bunch of swooning tarts. I didn’t see a single sepoy drop out, did you, Morgan?’

      ‘No, I didn’t, and I agree that our men droopin’ around the place ain’t good, but the jawans did have Bolton’s guns to help ’em on their way, didn’t they?’

      As the Bengal officers had bellowed the orders to the three native battalions that sent them marching back to their own cantonments, the Horse Gunners had hand-wheeled the two loaded guns behind them just to make sure that there were no second thoughts. It was as well they did, Morgan had thought, because the sepoys had missed the sight of the sweepers, the lowest of the professions, picking up the remnants of their comrades and untying their limbs from the wheels of the guns, so defiling their caste and punishing the victims after death.

      Then, with a muted curse, brushing dust from the knees of his overalls, Captain Richard Carmichael came stamping into the mess.

      ‘Hey, chota-peg, jildi, boy.’

      It hadn’t taken the big Harrovian long to pick up the arrogances of the worst type of white officers, thought Morgan. In their own mess in England or Ireland, the soldier servants would have been called by the discreet ringing of a bell, but here in India, the mess staff hovered just out of sight, instantly gliding to obey their officers’ wishes.

      ‘Can’t you keep the noise down, Carmichael? Haven’t you had enough din for one day?’ Morgan asked peevishly, tired of Carmichael’s boorishness.

      ‘Enough Din…I’ve just seen more than enough of Din, spread all over the maidan, poor bugger…ha!’ chortled Carmichael. Morgan immediately regretted feeding him the line. ‘And I don’t know who you think you are to be telling me what to do…you’ve let that brevet quite go to your head, ain’t you?’

      The mess waiter had slid into the room, proffering a tiny silver tray to Carmichael on which sat a beaker of brandy and soda: it was snatched without a word or gesture of thanks.

      Morgan СКАЧАТЬ