A Call to Arms

have set every last man to work.’

The adjutant smiled. ‘You had better tell me of it then.’ He turned and called inside to his assistant. ‘Woordi-Major-sahib!

Out came the woordi-major, as martial-looking a man as any, but wearing spectacles. ‘Yes, sahib?’ he asked in English, bowing also to Hervey — an English bow rather than namaste.

‘Please have my bearer come to my bungalow with beer and limewater.’

‘Very good, sahib.’ He turned to Hervey and bowed again. ‘Good morning, Captain Hervey sahib.’

‘Good morning, Woordi-Major-sahib,’ replied Hervey, with a smile, touching his peak again.

‘Very well, Hervey: let us be along. Whatever it be, it be better done with iced beer and limewater.’

Hervey would only too gladly concede that that was true in general and not just this morning. ‘I’m afraid you will not like what I have to tell you, and just as little what I have to ask,’ he warned as they set off for the officers’ lines.

‘You had better begin then,’ replied the adjutant, sounding more curious than troubled. He laid a hand on Hervey’s arm to stay him as a half-rissalah, back from morning exercise, turned into the camp road from the direction of the guardroom, horses and men as sweat-stained as E Troop had been the day before.

Hervey found the sweat reassuring. ‘I’m sorry we’ve not had an opportunity to drill together yet.’

‘You’re not leaving, are you?’

Hervey had already decided that he could not practise any deception on the Skinner’s adjutant, for to do so would be tantamount to practising it on the commandant himself; and that he could never contemplate — not, at least, when he was to ask for men who might have to risk their lives, even if he did not imagine it to be in any degree likely. He therefore told him of the intelligence on which they were to act, and his general design. By the time he was finished, they had reached the adjutant’s bungalow. They sat down in deep cane armchairs on the verandah, and in not many minutes the punkah began to swing and the bearer brought them iced beer and salted limewater.

At length, the adjutant — the acting commandant — expressed his opinion. ‘I can’t see that you will get one league into those forests.’

Hervey was dismayed. ‘Are they so much worse than elsewhere?’

The adjutant frowned. ‘I have no taste for the jungle, Hervey. I have never seen what was so diverting about collecting tiger skins directly.’

It seemed, thought Hervey, that he himself might be Pollock’s superior in affairs of the forest, though his experience in Chintal had been precious little. ‘There are good tracks, and we shall have guides.’

‘Don’t mistake me, Hervey: your scheme is admirable. It’s only that there are not the troops to execute it.’

‘I don’t follow.’

‘You yourself have said you have a troop in the making. And such a scheme as this would need a made troop for certain.’

Hervey saw no advantage in debating the point. ‘You will not give me a galloper gun?’

‘I didn’t say that. But I do not see what use they would be to you. However good are the tracks they’ll scarcely admit a gun.’

‘I had thought to carry them broken down, chapman-fashion.’

The adjutant was silent. He had evidently not considered it.

‘At least lend me the guns and have your men instruct mine in how to use them.’

Now the adjutant looked dismayed. ‘Hervey, these men would do anything I asked, no matter how perilous — “sahib bolta”, “the sahib says” — but I should not hazard to disarm them!’

Hervey fixed him with a steady look: they were at a fork in the road. ‘Then I must ask if you would have them accompany us.’

The adjutant paused long. ‘Hervey, taking cavalry into the forest is as desperate a scheme as ever I heard. I might say foolhardy.’

Hervey continued to look him in the eye.

‘But without guns it would be madness.’ He paused again, as if to emphasize the narrow margin of sanity. ‘You shall have my best men.’

Hervey nodded in gratitude, the faintest smile upon his lips — a knowing, confiding, grim smile.

‘Come,’ said Pollock, getting up. ‘I’ll turn out the daffadar and his guns. And I’ll tell you of the forest in those parts — what little of it that I know.’

‘Where have you been?’ asked Somervile anxiously. ‘Your groom said you’d left parade not long after seven.’

‘To see the Skinner’s commandant,’ replied Hervey, matter of fact, pouring limewater for himself from a large glass jug.

Somervile’s jaw dropped. ‘You haven’t told him what you’re about?’

Hervey turned with a look like thunder. ‘Somervile, you trust me to embark on a foray which some would call hare-brained, and then you think I would tattle it about the bazaars!’

Somervile was clearly angered by his own ejaculation, though not entirely disposed to remorse. ‘It is a deuced tender time for me too, you know, Hervey.’

That it was, Hervey saw at once: for whereas he risked but his life, Somervile hazarded his reputation. ‘I have told Captain Pollock the design, yes, but let us not quarrel over it. I had a tricky mission with Skinner’s. I wanted their galloper guns — they have two.’

Somervile looked dismayed again, but stayed his protest. ‘Have you got them?’

‘Oh yes. They’re readying them at this moment.’

‘Could you not have had them without letting your intent be known?’

Hervey drained the glass and poured himself more. ‘There was nothing in honour I could say to the adjutant but why I had need of his guns, and that I confided that he would tell no one.’

Somervile looked at him anxiously for further assurance.

‘You need have no fear on that account. I would trust his pledge with my life.’

‘You have indeed done so, by all accounts. Pollock is an efficient officer, but …’

‘You mean he would not have secured a King’s commission.’

‘Just so. And in these circumstances it is hardly something one may overlook with impunity.’

‘I don’t gainsay it, Somervile. But Pollock’s a soldier to his fingertips.’

Somervile raised his eyebrows. ‘And of the “yellow circle”?’

Hervey nodded, with just the degree of mock solemnity that the question had implied. ‘Just so, Somervile. The fellowship of the sabre is felt most keenly.’

Somervile frowned indulgently. ‘You fellows — you feast on Malory, no doubt, fancying yourselves all Sir Gawains.’

Hervey returned the frown. ‘And you civil servants of the Crown have ever need of questing knights for your ambitions.’

A khitmagar brought in a tray of coffee. Somervile gestured towards his guest. ‘Shall not the guns be a hindrance in the forest? Indeed, shall you be able to traverse the country at all with them?’

Hervey took a cup of blisteringly hot coffee, stronger even than Somervile’s normal taste required, then sat down. ‘We shall dismantle them at the forest edge and port them on the horses like woolpacks.’

Somervile nodded at this evidence of Hervey’s ingenuity, but he still wore an air of concern. ‘What then, in general terms, is your intention?’

Hervey sipped at his coffee. ‘The intelligence we have is quite precise, although how reliable we cannot tell. The Burmans are assembling just inside the country, on the river where a road appears to lead all the way from Ava and to the middle of nowhere, though perhaps it is the other way round. Either way it seems curious. Has the road some significance, do you know?’

Somervile answered at once. ‘I think you need not concern yourself on that account. The road leads from there to Ava. The story goes that a great white elephant was found in the forest, and the local zamindar took him as a gift to the king, making the road as he went.’

Hervey was gratified there was no more complicating detail than this. ‘The only difficulty is finding the road on our maps. The river divides near the border, and it’s by no means apparent which is the place. You say the