The Flashman Papers 09 - Flashman and the Mountain of Light

gorracharra that Lal Singh had dispatched against him—if he had dispatched them. Suppose he hadn't—suppose he'd ignored my plan, or bungled it? Suppose Littler's fear was well-founded, and Lal had been humbugging me—but, no, that couldn't be, the fellow had been almost out of his wits. He must be advancing to meet Gough … but would he mind what I'd said about detaching regiments along the way, so as to even the odds? Suppose … oh, suppose any number of things! All I could do was wait, keeping out of Littler's way, limping gamely around the mess, aware of the eyes that glanced and looked away.

It was about four, and the sun was starting to dip, when we heard the first rumble to eastward, and Huthwaite, the gunner colonel, stood stock-still on the verandah, mouth open, listening, and then cries: 'Those are big fellows! 48s! Sikh, for certain!'

'How far?' asks someone.

'Can't tell—twenty miles at least, might be thirty …' 'That's Moodkee, then!'

'Quiet, can't you?' Huthwaite had his eyes closed. ''Those are howitzers!³¹ That's Gough!'

And it was, white fighting coat and all, with an exhausted army at his heels, ill-fed, ill-watered, and in no kind of order, out-gunned but not, thank God, outnumbered, and going for his enemy in the only style he knew, bull-at- a-gate and damn the consequences. We knew nothing of that, at the time; we could only stand on the verandah, with the moths clustering round the lamps, listening to the distant cannonade which went on hour after hour, long after sunset, when we could even see the flashes reflected on the distant night sky. Not until one of Harriott's light cavalry scouts came back, choked with dust and excitement, did we have any notion of what was happening in that astonishing action, the first in the great Sikh War: Midnight Moodkee.

When I sport my tin on dress occasions, I have clasps lor a score of engagements, from 'Cabul 42' to 'Khedive Sudan 96'—but not for that one, the battle I started. I don't mind that; I wasn't there, praise the Lord, and it wasn't a famous victory for anyone, but I like to think I prevented it from being a catastrophe. Gough's army, which a well-managed Khalsa should have smothered by sheer weight, lived to fight another day because I'd squared the odds for them—and because there are no better horse soldiers in the world than the Light Brigade.

Between them, Hardinge and Gough came damned near to making a hash of it, one by his old-wife caution, t'other by his Donnybrook recklessness. Thanks to Hardinge, we were ill-prepared for war, with regiments held back from the front, no proper supply stations on their line of march (so that Broadfoot and his politicals had to plunder the countryside to improvise them), not even a field hospital ready to move, and Paddy having to drive ahead with his fighting force, forced-marching thirty miles a day, and devil take the transport and auxiliaries straggling behind him all the way to Umballa. Meanwhile Hardinge had decided to stop being Governor-General and become a soldier again—he went careering off to Ludhiana and brought the garrison down to join the march, so that when they reached Moodkee they had about twelve thousand men, pretty fagged out after a day's march—and there were Lal's gorracharra waiting for them, ten thousand strong and a couple of thousand infantry.

Now it was Paddy's turn. The Sikhs had stationed their foot and guns in jungle, and Gough, instead of waiting for them to come on, must fly at their throats in case they escaped him—that was all he knew. The artillery duelled away, kicking up a deuce of a dust—Hardinge's son told me later that it was like fighting in London fog, and the fact is that no two accounts of the battle agree, because no one could see a damned thing for most of the time. Certainly the gorracharra were in such numbers that they threatened to envelop us, but our own cavalry took 'em in flank, both sides, and broke them. The 3rd Lights were riding in among the Sikh guns and infantry, but when Paddy launched a frontal infantry assault they ran into a great storm of grape, and it was touch and go for a while, for when they reached the jungle the Sikh guns were still doing great execution, and there was horrid scrimmaging among the trees. It was dark by now, and fellows were firing on their comrades, some of our sepoy regiments were absolutely blazing into the air, everything was con-fusion on both sides—and then the Sikhs withdrew, leaving seventeen guns behind them. We lost over 200 dead and three times as many wounded; the Sikhs' losses, I'm told, were greater, but nobody knows.

You might call it a draw in our favour,³² but it settled a few things. We'd taken the ground and the guns, so the Khalsa could be beaten—at a cost, for they'd fought like tigers among the trees, and took no prisoners. Our sepoys had lost some of their fear of the Sikhs, and our cavalry, British and Indian, had seen the backs of the gorracharra. If Gough could follow up quickly enough, and dispose of the rest of Lal's force which was concentrated on Ferozeshah, twelve miles away, before Tej's host came to reinforce it, we'd be in a fair way to settling the whole business. But if the Khalsa reunited … well, that would be another story.

Some of this was clear as early as next morning, but by then I had other concerns. One of the gallopers whom Littler had sent with news of my arrangement with Lal and Tej, had reached Gough at the height of the battle; it had been an astonishing sight, with twenty thousand horse, foot and guns tearing at each other in the starlight, and the old madman himself raging because he couldn't take part personally in the 3rd Lights' charge on the Sikh flank: 'It's damnable, so it is! Here's me, an' there's them, an' I might as well be in me bed! Away ye go, Mickey, an' give 'em one for me—hurroo, boys!'

The galloper had wisely decided that there'd be no talking sense to him for a while, and it wasn't until near midnight, when the fighting was done, that the news had been broken, to Gough and Hardinge, with Broadfoot in tow, as they left the field. The galloper said it was like a strange dream: a huge golden moon shining on the scrubby plain and jungle; the Sikh guns, with their dead crews heaped around them; the mutilated corpses of our Light Dragoons and Indian lancers marking the path of their charge through the heart of the Khalsa position; the great confused masses of men and horses and camels scattered, dead and dying, on the plain; the wailing chorus of the wounded, and the shouts of our people as they sought their fellows among the fallen; the mound of bodies piled up like a cairn where Harry Smith had ridden ahead on his Arab, Jim Crow, planted the Queen's Own's colour at the head of a Khalsa column, and roared to our fellows to come and get it—which they had; Gough and Hardinge standing a little apart, talking quietly in the moonlight, and Paddy finally giving the galloper his reply, and adding the words which brought my heart into my mouth.

'My respects to Sir John Littler, an' tell him he'll be hearin' from me presently—an' he'll oblige me by sendin' that young Flashman to me as soon as he likes! I want a word with that one!'

*

It wasn't a hard word, though; indeed, the first thing he said, when I limped into his presence in the big mess-tent at Moodkee, was: 'What's amiss with your leg, boy? Sit ye down, an' Baxu'll get ye a glass of beer. Thirsty ridin', these days!'

First, though, I must be presented to Hardinge, who was with him at dinner, a plain-faced, tight-mouthed sobersides with the empty cuff of his missing left hand tucked into his coat. I disliked him on sight, and it was mutual: he gave me a frosty nod, but Broadfoot was there, with a great grin and a hearty handclasp. That was welcome, I can tell you: the thirty-mile ride from Ferozepore, skirting south in case of gorracharra scouts, and with only six N.C. sowars for escort, had given me the blue devils and done my game ankle no good at all, and on reaching Moodkee I'd had a most horrid shock. We'd come in at sunset from the south, and so saw nothing of the battlefield, but they were burying the dead in scores, and I'd chanced to glance aside through an open tent-fly, and there, wrapped in a cloak, was the body of old Bob Sale.

It quite undid me. He'd been such a hearty, kind old soul—I could see him mopping the noble tears from his red cheeks at my bedside in Jallalabad, or grinning from his table-head at Florentia's wilder flights, or thumping his knee: 'There'll be no retreat from Lahore, what?' Now they were blowing retreat over him, old Fighting Bob; the grapeshot had got him when they stormed the jungle—the Quartermaster-General charging with the infantry! Well, thank God I wouldn't have to break the news to her.

But poor old Bob was soon forgotten in the presence of the G.G. and the army chief, for now I must tell my tale again, to that distinguished audience—Thackwell, the cavalry boss, was there, and Hardinge's son Charlie, and young Gough, Paddy's nephew, but only three faces counted: Hardinge, cold and grave, his finger laid along his cheek; Gough leaning forward, the brown, handsome old face alight with interest, tugging his white moustache; and Broadfoot, all red whiskers and bottle glasses, watching them to see how they took it, like a master while his prize