They made good progress to begin with, but the jemadar warned them that a mile or so before Jhansikote the road narrowed and passed through thick jungle. Here would be a picket, for certain. But the picket evidently was expecting no trouble since a fire gave away both its presence and disposition — fortified as it was by a tree felled across the road. Hervey’s troop stopped well short. Hervey himself dismounted and advanced cautiously until he could hear the fire crackling, peering through the darkness with his telescope — as much an aid at night to seeing near to as it was to seeing distantly by day. He could detect no-one his side of the tree. It was impossible to know how many were on the other, but he didn’t imagine there would be many, since all they would be expected to do was raise the alarm rather than fight any lengthy action. However, they were less than a mile from Jhansikote, and shots would carry that far, even muffled by the forest. He could not risk an assault head-on. Back he stalked to the troop to tell Locke and the jemadar that they would have to approach through the forest and take the picket from a flank with the sword.
The jemadar looked alarmed. ‘Sowars not like go in forest, sahib,’ he stammered.
He knew some English: that much would be useful. Hervey might have owned to a dislike for the forest too, but instead he spoke briskly in Urdu.
‘Sahib!’ snapped the jemadar when he was done, saluting and turning back to look for his dafadar.
‘What did you say to him?’ asked Locke.
‘I told him they would have more to fear from me than the jungle.’
Locke sighed. ‘They’re more likely to die with
‘It seems the same to me. Shall we toss a rupee for it?’ he replied lightly.
‘For heaven’s sake, man!’
‘Very well. Which side is the moon?’
Locke glanced skywards. ‘The left.’
‘In that case we attack from the right,’ said Hervey.
Locke said nothing for a moment, and then he could conceal his puzzlement no longer. ‘Why then from the right?’
‘Because as Hindoos they will sleep facing the moon, and we shall therefore have the advantage of them.’
Locke could not but admire Hervey’s acquisition of such apt knowledge in the short time they had been in the country. ‘Very well, then,’ he whispered, ‘right it is!’
The jemadar returned with his sowars, leaving but five as horseholders. The dafadar looked a good man, a Rajpoot thought Hervey — the high cheekbones and supreme confidence. Private Johnson came up, but Hervey said he was to stay to keep an eye on the horseholders. Johnson took Jessye from him and started for the rear, for once without protest, though the muttering beneath his breath was all that Hervey needed to be reassured that his groom had not lost any of his former spirit. The remainder drew their sabres silently, and then, in single file, they slipped into the forest.
The moon was still good to them. They were able to see the road — now little more than a track — and keep parallel with it as they edged cautiously through the unearthly darkness, Hervey leading. There was more undergrowth than where he had spent the earlier part of the day, for the road allowed in light, and with that came growth on the forest floor. It was not enough to slow their progress, however. Anxiety to keep silence was what checked them. That and the dread of what lurked in the blackness. He shivered at the thought of the hamadryads.
It took more than a half-hour to cover the three hundred yards to where the tree lay across the road. They had slowed to the snail’s pace as they neared it, for although the fire was an excellent beacon, and they were able to align themselves well, the undergrowth, the dead leaves on the forest floor especially, made for noise. Hervey stopped as he came level with the picket, only twenty yards into the jungle, and motioned half a dozen of the sowars to pass him so that he would be in the centre of the line as they broke from the forest edge. Five more minutes and they were ready. Something rustled on the ground not a yard in front. He froze, expecting any second to feel the creature’s strike, or to hear a sowar shriek — or the picket to sound alarm. But there was nothing. Only the heavy silence of the jungle. He waited a full five minutes more and then motioned the line to advance. His heart pounded so hard he swore he could hear it.
The sepoy sentry at the tree, seeing them rush in, had only a second’s horror before the dafadar’s tulwar cut his head clean from his shoulders. After that it was easy. Simply a business of despatching the remainder in their sleep — eleven in all. Not one let out so much as a cry. It was a brisk, bloody business, over in less than a minute.
As they searched the dead, Hervey looked into the faces of the men who had just slaughtered their fellows. Whatever he saw he could not fathom, but one thing at least — they were more determined faces than before. Even the jemadar looked more resolute. ‘Good work!’ said Hervey. ‘Well done, Jemadar sahib; well done!’
The jemadar’s self-esteem grew visibly. It was good work: swift death to the enemy and no blood of their own shed.
‘More men are flattered into courage than are bullied out of cowardice,’ said Hervey to Locke as they sheathed their swords.
Locke seemed pensive. ‘Hervey, you said they would be sleeping with their faces to the moon. They were sleeping the other way.’
Hervey smiled. ‘I don’t play brag, my dear Locke; perhaps I should! How in heaven’s name was I to know which way they would be sleeping?’ He turned to the jemadar: ‘And now we must get that gun over this tree, Jemadar sahib!’
Locke was still shaking his head even as Hervey gave the orders for the gun-dafadar.
The jemadar assembled his NCOs, and there were words, increasingly heated, none of which Hervey could understand. In their haste to be away, the dafadar had not brought the tools to disassemble the piece and lift it — barrel, trail and wheels.
‘Jesus, nothing’s easy!’ swore Locke. ‘We could build a ramp and then haul it over, I suppose.’
‘It would take too long,’ said Hervey. ‘Jemadar sahib, the dafadar will have to jump with the gun.’
The jemadar relayed the instruction but the dafadar replied with much shaking of the head. ‘He says the horse does not jump, sahib.’
‘Nonsense!’ said Hervey. ‘
‘I do not think the dafadar will be able to do so, sahib,’ he replied sceptically.
Hervey sighed. ‘Very well, let
Locke voiced his disquiet too, but what was the alternative, said Hervey. ‘We can’t take all night building a ramp. The worst that can happen is that we’ll end up with the horse and gun straddling the tree, and then we shall just have to cut it from between the shafts.’ He chose not to speak of the ruinous crash they might have at any point of the leap. ‘There is at least plenty of moon!’
He walked up to the gunhorse defiantly. ‘He pulls to the left always, sahib,’ said the dafadar, helping Hervey to shorten the stirrup leathers when he had mounted.
That was more the pity, thought Hervey, for he would need his right arm to drive the horse at the tree with the flat of his sword. All he could do was put him at his fence with so much speed that he would have no time to think about running out. The animal was a big country-bred; Hervey thought it strange the dafadar had never jumped him. Was it
‘Does tha want me to give thee a lead, sir?’ chirped Johnson out of the gloom.
That was exactly what Hervey was about to ask the jemadar to do. But Johnson he could wholly rely on. And Jessye — the ‘covert-hack’ so much derided by his fellow officers when he had first joined the Sixth. ‘Take her, then,’ he said. ‘Keep me close up behind, but we’ve got to hit the tree at a pace!’
A minute or so later they were ready, and he signalled the off. Johnson put Jessye into a canter in a few strides and Hervey was surprised by how the gunhorse was able to match her. He didn’t need his sword until they were a dozen strides from the tree, and even then it looked unnecessary, for the gelding was chasing Jessye strongly. The teak barrier was plain to see in the moonlight — that much was a mercy — and Jessye cleared it easily. Hervey gave the gunhorse its head and slapped its quarters with the flat of his sword for all he was worth, feeling the beginning of a pull to the left.
He jumped. He jumped big! Hervey felt the gun lift behind him, praying that the shafts wouldn’t break with
