On His Majesty's Service

form ranks, yet not be seen distantly.’

He turned to a second aide-de-camp and gave the order to cease fire.

Seconds later there was a noise like the hiss of steam from a boiler, and another of the signal rockets raced high over the isthmus, bursting red. The fire from the gunships ceased.

Hervey took out his telescope to peer into the lightening darkness, trying to avoid the glare of the burning pitch barrels which the redoubts had lit. He could make out shadowy movement on the extreme right of ‘B’, the western redoubt (from which they had made yesterday’s sortie). It was rapid – darting, even – but without form. Yet what could it be but Turks, for all the Azov’s men must surely be standing to in the trenches? The flashes of musketry, besides playing the devil with his night eyes, revealed a fight of some sort, but whether it was Turk or Russian musketry, or both, he could not know.

‘What do you make of it all?’ he asked Fairbrother.

‘Quite evidently an affair of some heat, but what’s beyond it? For all we know the whole Turk force might be drawn up waiting for the storming party to take the forward trenches. Or equally possible that it’s a raid in strength, and no more.’

‘Just so,’ replied Hervey, lowering his glass and closing his eyes to recover from the sudden flaring of another tar barrel. ‘Yet they must know that daylight’s at hand. If it’s merely a raid they’d want to be away before it’s full light.’

‘I see ’orses, sir,’ said Corporal Acton, who had borrowed Cornet Agar’s telescope.

Hervey took up his glass again. ‘You have better eyes than I, Corp’ Acton. Where?’

Acton closed to his side, and pointed. ‘Go right, sir – furthest end of the Plough ’andle, and then below to where all that smoke’s drifted.’

Hervey searched. Even half a mile, perhaps more, from the trenches the white smoke was reflecting the flaring light of the pitch barrels and occasional bursting shell – but he could see no horses. ‘You’re sure of it?’

‘Sure of it, sir. Just a dekh, and then yon smoke must’ve drifted again.’

It was good enough. Hervey turned to his host. ‘My corporal had a glimpse of horsemen, General.’ He reckoned he did not need to say that it might mean artillery.

‘The devil! Clearly an attack of some weight then. Well, I am going down to accompany the regiments. You may accompany too.’

‘With pleasure, General.’

Fairbrother took hold of Hervey’s arm. It was one thing to wish the Turks their conge, but quite another to become embroiled in delivering it. Had they not had scrapes enough? ‘Are you quite sure it’s the place from which best to observe?’

‘We can hardly stand here as if it were a race meeting,’ Hervey replied.

‘But we ain’t declared, either. What will it serve if you’re shot?’

‘The odds are agin it.’

Fairbrother turned to follow his friend. ‘Who would live for ever?’ he said wearily, bracing himself to more action.

The gates swung open and the regiments began marching out in column to the taps of the company time- beaters. It was now light enough for Hervey to make out the colour of the facings, and for the NCOs to see an errant man and bark at him to keep step – but still too dark to see with any certainty what was happening at the trenches. Not feeling bound to hang on the general’s coat tails (who was, in any case, mounted), he, Fairbrother and Corporal Acton slipped through the gates and scrambled atop the rubbled wall near which Johnson had been bowled over by the franc tireur not a week ago.

The Pavlovsk, leading, began forming at the halt, two companies abreast, two in support, with all the regularity of the parade ground – sharp but unhurried. And then the Kozlov, with less majesty, but with no less efficiency, forming double-company front, abreast and left of the Pavlovsk. Hervey was impressed.

Into the interval of a dozen yards between the two regiments rode General Wachten and his staff.

Hervey sighed. ‘I suppose we’ll see no less for being on foot, though it makes it deuced awkward having any conversation with Wachten.’

‘Shall you need to converse with him?’ asked Fairbrother guardedly. ‘I really do counsel caution.’

‘You are always judicious.’ Hervey understood perfectly his friend’s reluctance, but also that Fairbrother could never run from a just fight; he was, as the saying in India went, a man to go tiger shooting with.

There was the sound of hoofs, and then the unmistakeable jingling of Cossack bridles.

‘Perhaps they bring your seat at the general’s right hand,’ said Fairbrother archly as the sotnia came through the gates at a jog-trot.

‘I doubt it.’ But he was still inclined to excitement. It was the only way he could dismiss his friend’s caution (for he could not fault his reasoning). ‘I would see the battle as does the infantryman. I have quite a taste for it now.’

‘Leave to speak, sir?’

‘Wear away, Corporal Acton.’

‘I’ve just seen ’orses again, sir,’ he said, still peering through his telescope.

The light was increasing rapidly. Hervey thought he too could see what might be horsemen. ‘Well, we shan’t have long to wait,’ he said, putting away his glass as if to say they were now committed to the fight.

Five minutes later, the sun broached the horizon and its first horizontal rays began searching the plain.

And then it was revealed – infantry, a brigade and more, standing waiting a mile hence, a mass of cavalry on either flank, artillery drawn up forward. ‘I believe the Seraskier has stolen a march,’ said Fairbrother decidedly. ‘Vedeniapine’s chaplains had better be on their knees.’

‘I’d never discourage prayer,’ said Hervey thoughtfully, ‘but Vedeniapine’s situation may by no means be as perilous as you surmise. The Seraskier can’t have wanted his position revealed by daylight thus. The storming parties should have broken into the trenches while it was yet dark so the rest could close with the redoubts as daylight came – rather than standing yonder in review order.’

General Wachten’s coup d’oeil evidently accorded with Hervey’s. Pointing with his telescope in the direction of the massing Turks, he gave the order for the regiments to load.

‘See,’ said Hervey, nodding to the suddenly animated lines of infantrymen; ‘we might be with Marlborough for all that the drill’s changed.’ He supposed that Peter the Great himself would have approved (certainly the Duke of Marlborough would have found the drill entirely familiar). He could not understand the Russian, but he soon saw what it meant.

‘Prime and load.’ Each man made a quarter turn to the right, brought his musket to the hip and opened the pan.

‘Handle cartridge.’ Back snapped the frizzen, out came cartridge from cartouche bag, and a thousand well-drilled soldiers of the Tsar bit off the bullets and spat out the paper.

‘Prime.’ Hammer to half-cock, pinch of powder in priming pan, frizzen snapped closed again.

‘About.’ Musket butt to the ground, rest of powder into barrel, spit in the ball and push in the cartridge paper to wad the charge.

‘Draw ramrods.’ Pull the ramrod half-way from the barrel hoops, seize backhanded in the middle, draw out and turn it simultaneously to the front, place one inch into barrel.

‘Ram down the cartridge.’ Drive wadding, bullet and powder to bottom of barrel, tamp down with two quick strokes, return ramrod to its hoops.

Half a minute.

The brigade shouldered arms, and waited.

General Wachten rode forward five lengths. ‘Troops will advance!’

Battalion commanders repeated the cautionary.

‘By the left – March! ’

Out stepped the line to the beat of drum in the left flank company, taken up in turn by the time-beaters the length of the brigade. The Cossacks followed at a hundred yards.

‘Come on,’ said Hervey, scrambling down the pile of masonry.

Fairbrother was past remonstrating. In any case, he had never marched to the beat of drum in a parade like