Far Pavilions (184 page)

‘
The golden evening brightens in the West
,’ sang Wally, plying that deadly sabre: ‘
Soon, soon, to faithful warriors comes their rest. Sweet is the calm of Paradise the Blest; Alleluia! Al-le-lu
–’

‘Look out, Wally!’ yelled Ash, and beating aside the blade of an opponent, leapt back to attack an Afghan armed with a long knife who had come up behind them unseen.

But even if Wally had heard, the warning came too late. The knife drove home to the hilt between his shoulder-blades, and as Ash's tulwar slashed through his attacker's neck, he staggered, and firing his last round, flung the useless revolver into a bearded face. The man reeled back, tripped and fell, and Wally transferred his sabre to his left hand: but his arm was weakening and he could not lift it. The point dropped and caught on a roughness in the ground, and as he pitched forward, the blade snapped.

In the same moment the butt of a jezail crashed down on Ash's head with stunning force, and for a split second lights seemed to explode inside his skull before he plunged down into blackness. And then the tulwars flashed and the dust fumed up in a blinding cloud as the mob closed in.

A few paces behind them, William had already fallen with a scimitar half buried in his skull and his right arm shattered below the elbow. And Rosie too was dead, his crumpled body lying barely a yard beyond the barrack archway, where he had been struck down by a musket-ball through the temple as he ran out at Wally's heels.

Of the rest, two, like Surgeon-Major Kelly, had died before they reached the gun, and three more had been wounded. But the survivors had obeyed their commander's orders to the letter: they had not looked aside or attempted to fight, but harnessing themselves to the gun had strained every nerve and muscle to drag it back. Yet even as they panted and struggled, others among them dropped; and now the ground was too littered with bodies, fallen weapons and spent bullets, and the dust too sticky with spilt blood, to make the task a possible one for so few men. Those who were left found that they could move the gun no further, and at last they were forced to abandon it and stumble back to the barracks, gasping and exhausted.

They closed and barred the great door behind them, and as it shut, a howl of triumph went up as the mob became aware that all three
feringhis
were dead.

Hundreds began to stream towards the barracks, led by the Fakir, who, leaving the shelter of the stables, ran at their head capering and waving his banner, while the crowds on the house-tops, realizing what had happened, ceased firing to dance and shout and brandish their muskets. But the three remaining jawans of the four whom Wally had sent up to the roof of the barracks continued to fire, though coldly now, for they had very few rounds left.

The mob had forgotten those four. But it remembered when three of its members fell dead and a further two, immediately behind them, were wounded by the same heavy lead bullets that had killed the men in front. As the Afghans checked, the rifles cracked again and a further three died, for the Guides were firing into a solid mass of men at a range of less than fifty yards, and it was not possible for them to miss. And presently a bullet struck the Fakir full in the face, and he threw up his arms and fell backwards, to be trampled under the feet of his followers, who running behind him, could not check in time.

68

There were several factors that contributed to Ash's survival. For one thing, he was wearing Afghan dress and clutching a tulwar; and for another, only those who had been in the forefront of the fighting were aware that a man who appeared to be a citizen of Kabul had for a while fought side by side with the
Angrezi
officer. Then in the subsequent rush to finish off the mortally wounded Sahib, his unconscious body had been spurned aside, so that by the time the dust had settled he was no longer lying where he had fallen, but was some little distance away; not among the fallen Guides, but among half a dozen enemy corpses, his face unrecognizable under a mask of blood and dirt, and his clothing dyed scarlet from the severed jugular of a Herati soldier whose body lay sprawled above his own.

The blow on his head had been a glancing one, and though sufficiently violent to knock him insensible, it had not been severe enough to keep him so for very long; but when he recovered consciousness it was to discover that not one but two corpses lay above him; the second being a heavily built Afghan who had been shot through the head by one of the jawans on the barrack roof less than a minute earlier, and fallen across his legs.

The two inert bodies effectively pinned him to the ground, and finding that he could not move, he lay still for a while, dazed and uncomprehending, and with no idea where he was or what had happened to him. He had a hazy recollection of crawling through a hole – a hole in a wall. After that there was nothing – But as his mind slowly cleared he remembered Wally and strove futilely to move, only to find that the effort was beyond him.

His head throbbed abominably and his whole body felt as though it was one vast bruise and as weak as wet paper; yet gradually, as his wits returned, he realized that in all probability he had received no wound beyond a blow on the head and rough handling at the hands – or more likely the feet – of the mob. In which case there was nothing to prevent him struggling free of this weight that was pinning him down, and returning to the attack the minute he could collect the strength to do so and rid himself of this appalling dizziness: for to get on his feet merely in order to stagger round like a drunken man would be to invite instant death, and be no help to anyone.

The roar of the mob and the continued crackle of muskets and carbines told him that the battle was by no means over, and though his face was bruised and swollen, and his eyelids clogged with a sticky paste of dust and blood that he was unable to remove because he was still too weak to free his arms, he managed by dint of an enormous effort to force open his eyes.

At first it was impossible to focus anything, but after a minute or two his sight, like his brain, began to clear, and he realized that he was lying a yard or two behind the main bulk of the mob, which was being kept at bay by the determined fire of three sepoys above the entrance to the barrack block. But their shots came at longer and longer intervals, and he became dimly aware that they must be running out of ammunition, and presently, as his gaze wandered, that there was some sort of conference going on among the mutineers who stood behind the abandoned guns.

As he watched, one of them – a member of the Ardal Regiment judging from his dress – climbed up onto one of the guns and standing upright brandished a musket to the barrel of which he had tied a strip of white cloth that he waved to and fro as a flag of truce, shouting:
‘Sulh. Sulh… Kafi. Bus!’
*

The crackle of musketry died and the sepoys kneeling behind the parapet held their fire. And in the silence the man on the gun climbed down, and advancing into the open space before the barracks, called up to the beleaguered garrison that he would have speech with their leaders.

There followed a brief pause in which the sepoys were seen to confer together, and then one of them laid aside his rifle and stood up, and walking to the inner edge of the roof, called down to the survivors in the troops' quarters below.

A few minutes later three more Guides came up to join him, and together they went forward to stand behind the parapet above the archway, erect and unarmed.

‘We are here,’ said the jawan who had been elected spokesman because he was a Pathan and could speak freely to Afghans in their own tongue – and because no one of higher rank was left alive. ‘What is it that you wish to say to us? Speak.’

Ash heard a man who was standing a yard or so away draw in his breath with a hiss and say in an awed whisper: ‘Are there no more than that? There cannot be only
six
left. Perchance there are others within.’

‘Six…’ thought Ash numbly. But the word carried no meaning.

‘Your Sahibs are all dead,’ shouted the mutineer with the flag, ‘and with you who are left, we have no quarrel. Of what use to continue the fight? If you will throw down your arms we will give you free passage to return to your homes. You have fought honourably. Surrender now, and go free.’

One of the Guides laughed, and the grim, battle-grimed faces of his comrades relaxed and they laughed with him, loudly and scornfully, until their listeners scowled and gritted their teeth and began to finger their muskets.

The jawan who was their spokesman had not drunk for many hours and his mouth was dry. But he gathered his spittle and spat deliberately over the edge of the parapet, and raising his voice, demanded loudly: ‘What manner of men are you, that you can ask us to forfeit our honour and shame our dead? Are we dogs that we should betray those whose salt we have eaten? Our Sahib told us to stand and fight to the last. And that we shall do. You have been answered –
dogs
!’

He spat again and turned on his heel, the rest following; and while the mob yelled its fury the six strode back along the roof and down the far stair into the barrack courtyard. Here they wasted no time, but paused only briefly to line up shoulder to shoulder: Mussulmans, Sikhs and a Hindu sowars and sepoys of the Queen's Own Corps of Guides. They lifted the bar and threw back the doors, and drawing their swords, marched out under the archway to their deaths as steadily as though they had been on parade.

The Afghan who had spoken before sucked in his breath and said as though the words were wrenched from him: ‘
Wah-illah
! but these are Men!’

‘They are the Guides,’ thought Ash with a hot surge of pride, and struggled desperately to rise and join them. But even as he fought to free himself, a rush of men from behind trampled him down, driving the breath from his lungs and leaving him writhing helplessly among choking clouds of dust and a forest of
chuppli
-shod feet that trod on him, tripped over him, or spurned him aside as heedlessly as though he had been a bale of straw. He was dimly aware of the clash of steel and the hoarse shouting of men, and, very clearly, of a clarion voice that cried ‘Guides
ki-jai
!’ Then a shod foot struck his temple and once again the world turned black.

This time it had taken him longer to recover his senses, and when at last he swam slowly up out of darkness it was to find that although he could still hear a clamour of voices from the direction of the Residency the firing had stopped, and except for the dead the part of the compound in which he lay appeared to be deserted.

Nevertheless he made no immediate attempt to move, but lay where he was, conscious only of pain and an enormous weariness, and only after a lapse of many minutes, of the need to think and to act. His brain felt as sluggish and unresponsive as his muscles, and the sheer effort of thinking at all, let alone thinking clearly, seemed too great to make. Yet he knew that he must force himself to it; and presently the cogs of his mind meshed once more and memory returned – and with it the age-old instinct of self-preservation.

At some time during that final massacre the bodies that had lain above him had been displaced, and after a cautious trial he discovered that he could still move, though only just. To stand upright was beyond him but he could crawl, and he did so – as slowly and uncertainly as a wounded beetle: creeping painfully on hands and knees between the sprawled corpses, and making automatically for the nearest shelter, which happened to be the stables.

Others had had the same idea, for the stables were full of dead and wounded Afghans: men from the city and the Bala Hissar as well as soldiers of the Ardal and Herati regiments, huddled together on the reeking straw; and Ash, suffering from a combination of mild concussion, multiple bruises and mental and physical exhaustion, collapsed among them and slept for the best part of an hour, to be aroused at last by a hand that grasped his bruised shoulders and shook him roughly.

The pain of that movement jerked him into consciousness as effectively as though a bucket of snow-water had been dashed onto his face, and he heard a voice say, ‘By Allah, here is another who lives. Heart up, friend; you are not dead yet, and soon you will be able to break your fast' – and opening his eyes, he found himself staring up at a burly Afghan whose features seemed vaguely familiar to him, though at the moment he could not place him.

‘I am attached to the household of the Chief Minister's first secretary,’ supplied the stranger helpfully, ‘and you I think are Syed Akbar in the service of Munshi Naim Shah: I have seen you in his office. Come now, up with you – it grows late. Take my arm…’ The nameless Samaritan helped Ash to his feet and guided him out of the compound and towards the Shah Shahie Gate, talking the while.

The sky ahead was softening to evening and the far snows were already rose-coloured from the sunset; but even here in the smoke-filled alleyways between the houses the corporate voice of the mob was still clearly audible, and Ash checked and said confusedly: ‘I must go back… I thank you for your help, but – but I must go back. I cannot leave…’