A Call to Arms

before the action, and that he would not be surprised if Hervey didn’t want to hunt him down himself!’

‘Where is Serjeant Collins now? I should very much like to hear more of their time in the jungle.’

Somervile smiled. ‘Sleeping, I shouldn’t wonder. The poor devil had ridden day and night — two days and nights!’

‘Well, I shall send word for him to come here to bathe and take his ease the minute he wakes.’

‘I beg you would. But I also believe the native horse are due high honours. Captain Pollock emerges from this a considerably stouter man than I’d imagined.’

‘Oh … yes,’ said Emma, a little uncertainly. ‘I didn’t rightly understand the circumstances of their being at the river.’

‘It was deuced resourceful,’ pronounced Somervile, holding out his glass for Emma to refill. ‘All their orders said was for them to patrol the forest edge — nothing about the border. But Pollock, it seems, heard tell of the Chakma guides who’d arrived at the rendezvous with Hervey’s troop two days late. Well, not late; they’d got there as soon as they could. They just hadn’t received word in time. So Pollock took it upon himself to go with them after Hervey, but he’d taken a more roundabout route, so they met only at the river. How in God’s name Pollock could make himself understood with the Chakma I cannot imagine.’ His glass was empty again.

Emma shook her head. ‘I think we’re bidden to luncheon.’

Somervile put his glass down. ‘I’d better summon a hircarrah and send off a despatch to Calcutta this afternoon. They can have a fuller one when Hervey returns. With any luck we’ll see him by tomorrow evening.’

Hervey angrily brushed away a barbed attap frond which hooked into the sleeve of his tunic. The jungle was becoming thicker. Did these Chakma guides really know where they were going? Yet for all the trouble he was having, they were making faster progress now than they had on the wide tracks at the start of the expedition. It was just one of those imponderables: six men and horses with tribal guides made quicker headway than forty on uncertain bearings, even on better going.

He wondered again about Johnson. Not a rib unbroken, said the surgeon. How could a man be half drowned and have every rib broken and the surgeon say he would live? He wished he had allowed some dhoolies to be brought. They had fashioned a decent makeshift one, but Johnson’s ride back to Chittagong could not be comfortable. But Ledley had said that he wouldn’t feel a thing — or know a thing — by the time he’d had the laudanum. It was just the worst time to leave him, that was the trouble. He had to recover French, though. But poor French might be dead. Would the surgeon’s orderly and Boy Porrit make their own way back, in that case? Then there was the girl …

Thank God — thank all their gods — that Pollock and his men had come when they had. He didn’t want to think what would have happened had they had to limp back, fighting all the way. A rearguard of Skinner’s Horse — he could scarcely have hoped! And not a shot after the first hour. The Burmans had undoubtedly given in. Seton Canning would have the troop back in Chittagong tomorrow night, and if these Chakma really knew their business he would not be long behind them. And then what a tamasha they’d have — a celebration with Skinner’s the like of which the Sixth hadn’t seen since they’d got to Paris!

Another attap frond struck him in the face. He broke it off and gave it to his mare behind him; she would eat anything. And then suddenly there were no more attap fronds, just a track, the hoofmarks plain to see, as the Chakma turned left.

‘Captain Hervey, sir!’

Private French, now more recognizable than when Hervey had last seen him, and certainly more mobile, came towards them with a look both relieved and anxious.

‘Don’t sound so surprised, French. I’m not in the habit of forgetting people,’ said Hervey drily.

‘Do those buttons, up, young French!’ came Corporal Ashbolt’s voice from behind. ‘And where’s your carbine?’

‘Porrit has it, sir.’

‘Porrit?’ said Ashbolt, disbelieving.

‘He’s guarding Dodds, sir.’

Hervey pushed past him roughly and almost doubled to where Boy Porrit, Otway the surgeon’s assistant and Dodds sat. Porrit and Otway scrambled to their feet, but Dodds remained seated, his back against a tree, eyes closed. His thigh was bandaged and bloodstained. Hervey turned back to French. ‘Well?’

‘Sir, Dodds came yesterday morning. He said he’d got lost going for water. We told him which way you’d gone but he said he’d better wait with us. Then yesterday evening he tried to take the food you’d left us and wanted the girl to go with him. Then it came to a bit of a fight, sir, and Dodds threatened his pistol and grabbed the girl, and that’s when the boy fired, sir.’

Hervey glanced at Porrit, who lowered his eyes. ‘You did well, boy,’ he said grimly. He would not quibble about his aim at this time.

‘And where is the girl?’

‘She … she went for some privacy a few minutes ago, sir,’ said French, with admirable decorum.

Hervey raised an eyebrow, glanced at Dodds and then the surgeon’s orderly.

‘He’s been unconscious an hour and more, sir,’ said Otway. ‘He bled a lot.’

Corporal Ashbolt took a closer look. ‘You’d better check ’im again, Ottie. I reckon ’e’s gone.’

The surgeon’s orderly felt in vain for Dodds’s pulse, then opened an eyelid. ‘Ay, ’e’s dead.’

Hervey cursed. ‘Then he’s cheated the gallows just as he’s cheated in everything before!’

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR. UNDER AUTHORITY

The maidan, Chittagong, a week later

‘E Troop, carry … swords!’

Up from the slope went the points of forty sabres in whitegloved hands. Horses threw their heads about as if to add their own salute. Gilbert’s throat plume danced as Hervey shouted the command.

‘Skinner’s Horse, atte-e-enshun!’ echoed Captain Pollock.

Four hundred heads atop yellow kurtas braced up, lance pennants caught the breeze, and the sun glinted on the gleaming barrels of the galloper guns.

An uneven parade, but an apt one, thought Hervey as he rode up to the dais and dropped his sword in salute.

Eyre Somervile was dressed the same as when he had faced the Avan envoy. In his hand were a few notes, in Hindoostani and English. He would alternate between the two, and leave both King’s and native horse in no doubt of the great service they had rendered, and the esteem in which the Presidency in Calcutta held their actions. ‘Gentlemen, I stand before you humbly in the face of courage and resource beyond what it is common to behold.’

‘That’s nice,’ said Johnson, painfully, from a chair at the edge of the maidan, his chest swaddled in bandages. ‘I was sure it’d end up a lagging matter.’

Hicks frowned. ‘I just wish I’d been there. There’ll be no talking to anybody now. Bloody leg!’

‘It were no place for a cripple, I can tell thee!’

Somervile’s Hindoostani found its mark just as surely among the ranks of yellow, where heads nodded approvingly. He sang the praises of King’s troops and Company’s fulsomely, though he warned that the King of Ava was a predatory and corrupt man, and that the day might be sooner than they thought when an altogether bigger expedition would have to be mounted to put an end to his designs on the lawful territory of the Honourable Company.

‘See, Hicksy, tha’ll soon ’ave a chance to get thi’ own back!’ said Johnson, almost smiling.

Somervile said that he had recommended to the Council of the Presidency that some pecuniary reward be