A Call to Arms

willingly?

The field went silent now. It ought to have been welcome, the sign that they had done their work well, but not knowing what would follow was unsettling. Hervey considered dismounting and having them make ready with the carbines, but the range was too great to guarantee the effect. He looked back at the river. There was smoke and fire the length of it, but he could still see boats unburned. He looked at his little command. ‘Well done, E Troop!’ he called. ‘Smart work. We may yet have more of it!’

Not many minutes later, E Troop saw the work to be had. Out from the forest burst as one a dozen horsemen. The guns fired, the shot arched and plunged beautifully into the defile, but by the time it fell there was no target. Seconds later more horsemen began pouring out. The Burmans had the measure of the time to reload. The collective inrush of breath behind him left Hervey in no doubt of what chance the troop believed it had.

‘Jesus!’ muttered Collins to himself.

Hervey counted quickly — fifty of them. Had they stopped coming? The guns fired again. No more appeared. ‘Daffadar, grape, load!’

‘Ji, sahib,’ came the reply, as cool as ever.

The Burman horse took their time. They were so regular that Hervey reckoned it would take the same number, at least, to prevail over them.

‘Now remember,’ began Collins, trotting forward, his voice as matter-of-fact as the daffadar’s. ‘Guard;’ he thrust his arm straight and front, sabre across his chest parallel with the ground. ‘Left Protect;’ he flexed his wrist upright and to his left, the sabre perpendicular. ‘Right Protect;’ he swung it back across his chest and out to his side. ‘St George;’ and up went the sabre to protect his head. ‘Those are the ones you’ll want. Then make your cuts!’

Hervey knew the guns were useless, for the Burmans would not ride at them. He could stay close and be safe, therefore — indeed, if he didn’t the Burmans would ride the guns down from a flank — but that would leave the field open for them to take the bridge. There was only one thing he could do. ‘Daffadar, guns to the bridge! Troop advance!’

E Troop marched forward a dozen paces to mask the guns, then halted. Hervey could only pray the Burmans were not as quick as an English cornet was expected to be.

It took the sowars less than a minute to hitch up the guns, but it seemed more. As they made to gallop back, Hervey knew he had at least saved them. A minute more and he could retire too.

But the Burman horse began to advance, at the trot. Hervey looked back at the galloper guns: it was still too close. ‘Troop will advance, walk-march!’

He did not want them to cover too much ground: every yard they advanced was another painful one to withdraw. He had to judge the speed of collision, though. A fair gallop was what they’d need.

‘Trot!’

Some of the horses broke into three-time instead. Collins’s curses took their riders’ minds off the enemy for the moment.

Hervey raised his sword above his head. ‘Gallop!’

Every sabre went up.

‘Arms straight, curse you!’ bellowed Collins. ‘Close up! Close up!’

‘Charge!’

The ragged line of sabres dropped to the guard. An instant later they crashed into the Burman horse, flesh on flesh, steel on steel, steel on flesh. Hervey parried an artless cut from a tulwar and sliced its sword arm with a Cut Two as he swept past. He looked behind as he reined about, and saw two dragoons unhorsed by the violence of the collision. He saw Mole brought to a halt and bend his elbow in the instinct to protect his face. The tulwar sliced his forearm, Mole dropped his sabre, then the tulwar sliced his neck. He fell sideways from the saddle, his face contorted with terror. Hervey, raging, made straight for his executioner and took him between the shoulder blades with the point. He cut left and right at Burmans who had not yet turned. He saw Collins duelling and McCarthy hacking artlessly but bloodily. He saw Seton Canning in a desperate fight with two Burmans at once, and then Lingard and Vanneck coming to his aid. He saw Armstrong. Then the Burmans were wheeling and trying to fight back the way they had come.

‘Rally! Rally!’ he shouted.

Storrs, breathless and his own sword red, just kept sounding the G and the C. Somehow the troop, battered and very bloody, formed line and fronted, Armstrong and Collins chivvying them straight and cursing those who had not sloped swords properly. One or two of them could barely stay upright; Corporal Mossop’s sword arm hung limp like a rag doll’s, Needham had lost an ear. But every horse was on its feet, one way or another.

‘I brought up all we could spare when I saw what was happening, sir,’ called Armstrong as he closed to Hervey’s side. ‘But only the half-dozen of us. Gutless bastards, them Burmans!’

Hervey looked at him askance.

‘Did you not see, sir? Half of ’em sat still on their arses back there when the others came on.’

Hervey took out his telescope. ‘There’s a very pretty flag there. That was their trouble. They wouldn’t leave whoever was bottom of it.’

‘Well, thank Christ for flags. Another dozen and we’d have lost it!’

Hervey looked at Mole’s lifeless body thirty yards or so in front of them. ‘Troop will advance!’

‘Jesus, Jobie, not again!’ gasped Needham.

‘I reckon we’ve got to, Sammy.’

‘Ha-a-alt!’

They stopped just short of where Private Mole lay.

‘If you please, Corporal McCarthy,’ said Hervey simply.

‘Thank you, sor,’ replied McCarthy, as if it were a favour to him. ‘Give me a hand, boys,’ he said, nodding to Harkness and Rudd.

Hervey watched as they lifted their fellow dragoon across McCarthy’s saddle. ‘Troop will retire, at the trot!’

They about-faced three times in the first furlong to the river. Each time Hervey expected to see the Burmans pressing them, but each time he saw the distance between them only lengthening. Were they really gutless, or merely artless? The third time he decided it was probably the latter, for now he saw them extending, and a far longer line than his. The Burman horse could not outrun him now — not take his flanks — but if he judged it badly they might give him another mauling. He tried to calculate if it was worth standing long enough to give them a round from the carbines to check their zeal. He would lose men to theirs if he did, and it would do little to slow their advance. He could now see Corporal Ashbolt at the bridge with half a dozen men, dismounted, the led horses trotting along the river’s edge behind the line of burning barges. Ashbolt could hardly have had the best view of the field, but he had judged at once that their withdrawal could no longer be by the way they had come. Hervey was relieved. He had feared he might have his force divided.

Two more fronts and they were close on the bridge, but Hervey saw to his dismay that the second gun was still not across. The sowars struggled desperately to remove the pin that held fast the barrel to the trail. Seton Canning looked hard at him. ‘What do we do, Hervey?’

Hervey was only certain of what he would not do. ‘I could never abandon a gun, Harry.’

He saw Corporal Ashbolt mount and gallop towards him.

‘That bridge won’t take any more horses, sir,’ called Ashbolt from a dozen yards. ‘The decking’s broken away and the supports are gone. The farrier’s breaking the pin on that gun now and we’ll have it across in a minute. The other can fire grape. I’d like to put my Burmans in the river if it’s all right with you, sir.’

Hervey looked back to where Ashbolt’s prisoners sat — more than a hundred of them, for the moment, quiet.

‘You would only be able to drive them in with the point, and there are too many for that. Are they bound?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Then cover them with the other gun. And give no quarter if any try to break free!’

Ashbolt raced back to the bridge to drive the sweating sowars and dragoons across before setting to with