Bayonets Along the Border E-Book

John Wilcox

• Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Serie: Simon Fonthill
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 509

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

North West India, 1897. Simon and Alice Fonthill are travelling with their old friend Jenkins to Marden, India for an anniversary party with the Guides Corps. But when they are ambushed on their journey, they realise that the land may not be as peaceful as they first believed. Their suspicions are confirmed when they are told of fresh trouble from the Pathans and Simon is tasked by Viceroy Elgin to deliver a very important letter to the Amir in Kabul. With Simon in Kabul, the Pathans attack the Pass and Alice is kidnapped by the Mullah leading the revolt, so Simon must battle against time and incredible odds to rescue his wife.

Leseprobe

BAYONETS ALONG THE BORDER

JOHN WILCOX

For Betty, again

Contents

Title PageDedicationChapter OneChapter TwoChapter ThreeChapter FourChapter FiveChapter SixChapter SevenChapter EightChapter NineChapter TenChapter ElevenChapter TwelveChapter ThirteenChapter FourteenChapter FifteenChapter SixteenAuthor’s NoteAcknowledgementsAbout the AuthorBy John WilcoxCopyright

CHAPTER ONE

On the road to Marden, North-West Frontier, India. July 1897

They could see from the way that Jenkins sat his horse, up ahead, that he was disconcerted. His head kept swivelling to scrutinise the barren jumble of scree, rocks and large boulders that climbed relentlessly on either side of the narrow track and he kept easing himself in the saddle and occasionally wiping, with a dirty handkerchief, the black moustache that spread across his face as though some great rat had died under his nose. It was hot – nearing a hundred degrees – and it was clear that the Welshman was less than comfortable. A verbal explosion was close at hand.

Eventually he twisted round and addressed Simon Fonthill and his wife, Alice, riding together on the seat of the wagon behind the two mules. ‘I ’ave to say, look you,’ cried Jenkins, ‘that this is the most miserable country on the face of God’s earth. It matches the bloody Sudan – savin’ your presence, Miss Alice – for bleedin’ misery – sorry again, miss. There’s been not a drop of shade and nothin’ but rocks for miles now. ’Ow much further, then, do you reckon, bach sir?’

Fonthill nodded. ‘I knew you’d enjoy the trip. Maybe another ten miles, I’d say. Don’t break into a lumbering trot, now, or you’ll exhaust yourself.’

Alice waved her sun umbrella. ‘If you see a bit of green growing, 352, stop and pluck it and I’ll pop it into a bottle and save it as a curiosity.’

‘Humph.’ Jenkins turned back and urged his plodding horse onwards. Then, half to himself, but loud enough to be heard: ‘Just don’t know why we ’ad to come all this way back to these bleedin’ ’ills. Nearly got our throats slit last time we was ’ere. Barmy, if you ask me. An’ not a beer to be ’ad for miles, see. A bloke could die o’ thirst if these Parteens don’t get ’im first. Just plain barmy …’

Alice leant towards her husband. ‘Dear old Jenkins has a point, darling,’ she murmured, low enough not to be heard by their servant and old comrade. ‘This must be one of the most desolate places on earth in which to hold a party. Too late now, I know, but perhaps we should have thought a bit more about it before coming out, don’t you think?’

Fonthill frowned and used his whip to flick the flies away from the muzzles of the mules. ‘Now, Alice, you know as well as I do that we were bored to tears in green, wet, flat, old Norfolk. I’d been patiently farming without a word of complaint ever since we got back from nearly getting killed with Rhodes in Matabeland – which I see he’s now named after himself, the arrogant bastard. So the invitation was a blessed excuse to take a break for a while.’

He gestured with the whip to where a distant snow-capped mountain could just be seen poking its tip above the grey tumble of rocks stretching ahead. ‘Look, my love. The beginning of the Hindu Kush. That’s wonderful country, leading on to the Himalayas and providing some of the best climbing in the world. We’re not exactly young but we’re fit enough. Probably our last chance to get up high while we can and witness some of the world’s best scenery. Think on’t, lass.’

Alice gave him an affectionate smile. They made a good-looking couple, sitting close together, one arm linked through that of the other. Both forty-two years of age, they seemed younger. Fonthill carried little weight but he was broad-shouldered and although not exactly tall at 5ft 9in, his body – toughened by years of campaigning far from home and then farming back in Norfolk – was obviously hard. His hair, flecked at the temples now with grey, remained thick and his face was well formed, only marred by a nose broken years before by a Pathan musket so that it now seemed hooked, giving him a hawk-like expression like that of a hunter. Yet the eyes, brown and soft, seemed unusually diffident for those of a man, born in the upper class in the middle of Queen Victoria’s century, who had spent much of adult life fighting in her wars throughout the Empire. In addition, his cheeks and jaw remained clean-shaven, marking him as a man who did not march with fashion.

His wife, too, had retained her figure and her hair carried very few strands of grey. With high cheekbones, cool grey eyes and a smooth skin – touched a comely brown by the sun (not for her the anaemic, chalk-faced appearance of most British memsahibs in India) – she would have been flawlessly beautiful if it were not for the firm, almost masculine set of a jaw that revealed the determination that had earned her a reputation as one of the best war correspondents in London’s Fleet Street, irrespective of gender.

Now she grinned at her husband and nodded towards Jenkins. ‘I don’t see him climbing many mountains, my love, do you?’

Fonthill returned her smile. Jenkins – his Christian name long forgotten and always known as 352, the last three numerals of his army number, originally to distinguish him from the many other Jenkinses in that most Welsh of Regiments, the 24th of Foot – had the heart of a lion, could ride a horse like a dragoon, and was as accurate a shot as any Pathan. At 5ft 4in, he was almost as broad as tall, and although four years older than Fonthill, he remained immensely powerful. Years of fighting in bars, barrack rooms and on battlefields around the world had given him formidable skills as a fighter, with fists, knife, bayonet or rifle. Simon had seen him crack the neck of a Hindee thug almost twice his size. Yet he retained a lifelong fear of heights and water and had absolutely no sense of direction. The two had met when Fonthill was a young subaltern in the 24th and Jenkins had recently been released from ‘The Glasshouse’, the feared and newly opened army correction centre, where, in addition to losing his two stripes, he had served two years’ detention for striking a colour sergeant. He had become Simon’s batman and then inseparable comrade as the two had carved out unique careers and no little fame as army scouts and very irregular soldiers throughout the Empire. Now the Welshman, though nominally a servant, was an integral part of the small (Simon and Alice had been denied children) Fonthill family.

‘Agreed.’ Simon nodded. ‘But we couldn’t leave him behind. I had already had to work hard to get him off two charges of being drunk and disorderly in Norfolk.’ Suddenly a shadow fell upon them and Fonthill looked up. High in the sky, an eagle had flown across the face of the sun. He frowned. Wherever he looked, the terrain presented the same grim face: jagged rocks, crumbling scree and jumbled, broken ground stretching up above them for hundreds of feet, the prevailing colour gunmetal grey.

The North-West Frontier was, without a doubt, harsh, unforgiving country. The indigenous Pathans who bestrode it called it Yaghistan, ‘The Land of the Untamed’. Their folklore maintained that when Allah created the world there were many stones and rocks left over and he scattered them along this border between the Punjab and Afghanistan. The trio had got to know it well eighteen years before during the Second Afghan War. It was then that Simon and Jenkins had begun to earn their reputations as army irregulars, operating on the fringe of the armies high in the hills, and Alice, well before her marriage, had earned her spurs as a fearless – towards British generals, as well as the enemy – war correspondent. It was then, also, that Fonthill had received his broken nose and sustained other, more frightening wounds at the hands of the Pathans. And it was then that he had first become part of The Queen’s Own Corps of Guides, one of the Frontier’s most famous regiments in the Indian army.

Holding temporary postings as, respectively, captain and sergeant in the Corps, Fonthill and Jenkins had lived and fought in these unforgiving hills, before cementing their fame – and a touch of notoriety among the British army’s senior ranks – over the next couple of decades in South Africa, Egypt, the Sudan and Matabeland. It was still a surprise, however, when, in the tranquillity of Norfolk, Simon had received a letter from the Colonel-in-Chief of the Guides, inviting the trio to be the guests of the Corps at its headquarters in Marden on the occasion of the delayed celebrations of the fiftieth anniversary of its establishment.

‘Come and get some mountain air, do a bit of shooting and climbing,’ the Colonel had written. ‘It would be an honour to have you and show you a little of how the Corps works to keep the peace here now. Get here by 27th July before the champagne runs out. And belated congratulations on your appointment as C.B. after the Gordon business in the Sudan.’

So, free from financial cares after the inheritance of two estates, following the deaths of both Simon and Alice’s parents (they were the only issue of both families), the trio had taken a steamer through the Mediterranean, down the Suez Canal and then on to Bombay, marvelling again at the colour and vibrancy of that place, vying as it did with Calcutta to be the largest city east of Suez until Tokyo and the second city in the Empire after London. The sea voyage had been refreshing, which is more than could be said for the hot and long train journey which had eventually taken them to Peshawar, the capital of the Border territory. Now, they were on the last stage of their tortuous perigrination.

Fonthill had been sceptical at first about riding without escort on the thirty-three-mile last lap from Peshawar, where the rail ended, to Marden. The North-West Frontier of India had been in a more or less constant state of unrest since the British had subjugated the Sikh nation and taken the Punjab into the Empire half a century ago. The Pathans who straddled that border and looked down upon it from their mountain fastnesses were not a homogenous race. They were made up of at least sixty different tribes who were in a constant state of warfare among themselves and, particularly, with the army of British India.

They never accepted formally the suzerainty of the British and they made a national sport of raiding army outposts, killing sentries and stealing rifles, which became a form of currency for them. They shared the ability to stalk a man with the stealth and cunning of a panther and, when making a night attack, they would discard baggy pantaloons to avoid rustling against the undergrowth and would carry twigs to act as funnels and so reduce noise when they had to relieve themselves during a long wait before they sprang. Their morals were oxymoronic. They had a tradition of unquestioningly extending hospitality to strangers who arrived unannounced in their villages but would unhesitatingly slit their throats once they were outside the village boundary. Their word for cousin, tarbur, was synonymous with ‘enemy’. Fierce warriors and splendid marksmen with their old jezail (musket) or stolen British Martini-Henry, they were casual homosexuals and quoted a saying in Pushtu: ‘across the river lives a boy with a bottom like a peach, but alas I cannot swim …’

It was rare that the Frontier was quiet. But in Peshawar Simon was assured there had been no major outbreaks of hostility along the 200-mile Border for at least two years – a most remarkable period of tranquillity. There would be no interference with travellers journeying the road to Marden, particularly with the fearsome Guides in residence in that town.

And yet. And yet …

They had camped the previous evening at a rare shady spot by a trickling stream, feeling safe enough and wrapped well in their sleeping bags. Indeed, Fonthill thought it unnecessary to take it in turns to keep watch. The new day seemed to bring no threat and they had made tea over a low fire, watching without concern the smoke rise languidly above them. It was only then that Simon had realised that, on this allegedly busy highway, they had met no fellow travellers. It seemed strange, although not particularly alarming. Nevertheless, before resuming the journey, he had quietly removed from the back of the wagon the two Lee-Metford army rifles he had purchased at Peshawar and slipped into them the magazines, each containing ten .303 cartridges. He had also taken out from their luggage the three Webley revolvers he had also bought in town from the resident army quartermaster. He left them lying within reach on top of their bags but took the precaution of shortening the leading reins on which his and Alice’s horses were tethered behind the cart. Jenkins and Alice had noticed what he was doing, although his wife made no comment. Also without speaking, Jenkins picked up his rifle and rode now with it balanced across his saddle.

They remained the only riders on the dusty track as the sun climbed in the sky and the intense heat, the dryness of the air at their high altitude and the monotony of the landscape seemed their only enemies as they plodded along. Their only company were three vultures which circled, seemingly disinterestedly, high above them.

The first shots, when they came, then, startled them. The bullets clipped into a boulder on the right above their heads and the crack of the rifles – certainly not old jezails – echoed along the pass, rebounding from the rocks in dull booms.

‘Can you see ’em?’ shouted Simon to Jenkins. ‘Can we outrun them, d’yer think?’

The answer came with two more shots, from the same direction. The first whistled harmlessly above their heads, but the second thudded into one of the mules, sending it slowly to the ground, sighing and still in its harness. With only one mule, there was no way they could ride out of trouble.

‘I can see these two buggers,’ shouted Jenkins and, standing in his stirrups, he levelled his rifle and loosed a round into the rocks on the other side of the track, slightly above them. It seemed to have no effect.

Fonthill leapt out of the cart and lifted his arms to receive Alice as she leapt down to him. ‘Quick,’ he cried, ‘take this revolver and get behind that large rock just there.’ She nodded mutely and scrambled away up the scree.

‘352.’

‘Bach sir.’

‘Give me some covering fire as I try to bring the horses over here behind the wagon. With the baggage, it might provide enough cover for them. We can sacrifice the mules but we mustn’t lose the horses. We shall be lost in this godforsaken country if we did.’

‘Very good, sir.’

Jenkins slipped from the saddle like a jockey, wrapped the reins around his wrists and then, kneeling, let off a series of rounds to where drifts of gunsmoke could now be seen rising above two large rocks opposite them. It was done almost with one movement, it seemed to Fonthill, as he desperately tried to unknot the lead reins of his and Alice’s mounts. As he did so, he heard the lighter crack of his wife’s revolver. At least this would show their attackers that they weren’t to be taken easily.

The horses were trembling but not rearing as he led them behind the fragile cover of the wagon. He tied their heads close to the side boarding and heard two more bullets thud into their baggage as Jenkins brought in his horse.

‘What are they after, then, bach sir?’

‘Our rifles, without a doubt. They will be worth a small fortune in these hills.’ Fonthill levelled his own rifle over the edge of the buckboard. ‘Ah, I can see where they are now. Alice,’ he called. ‘Keep your head down and keep behind cover. I think we can handle these two if there are no more.’

‘Balls, darling. I’m as good a shot as you. I nearly winged one, then, I think.’ She fired again.

Simon fired and clipped the edge of one of the boulders. ‘Damn!’ He called across to Jenkins. ‘They’ve probably found new cover. Take a good look, old chap. See if you can see ’em move. And particularly, if there are any more of the bastards.’

‘Can’t see ’em. P’raps we’ve scared ’em off.’

But that was not so. Four separate rifles sounded now, still from the other side of the track and about a hundred feet above them. The bullets pinged off the rocks behind them, giving Simon the small satisfaction that these Pathans weren’t quite living up to there reputation as marksmen – at least so far. Yet the original two had moved so quickly and seemingly imperceptibly among the rocks. And now, it seemed, there were four of them.

Both Fonthill and Jenkins were now sheltering behind the wagon but, despite the cover provided by their baggage, it was clear that it was giving inadequate protection, for bullets were now thudding through the bags and woodwork, narrowly missing them.

‘Better get back among the rocks,’ grunted Simon. ‘Spread out a bit. You go first and I will cover you. Then you do the same for me.’

Jenkins nodded. He let off a round and then sprinted behind up the hill as Simon delivered three rounds of rapid fire at where he could see the faint smoke trails of the Pathans’ gun barrels. Of the men themselves, though, there seemed no sign. It was like shooting at wraiths.

‘Right,’ shouted Jenkins. Simon reached forward from the baggage and grabbed the box of cartridges he had placed on the top, tucked it under his arm and then turned and scrambled, slipping and sliding, up the shale as he heard Jenkins and Alice firing to cover him. Puffing, he flung himself behind a large rock, roughly level with where his wife was crouching.

‘Are you all right, darling?’ he called.

‘Yes, thank you. How the hell are we going to get out of here?’

‘God knows.’ Fonthill turned his head and looked up behind them. ‘We shall be in real trouble if they get behind us to shoot down on us. And we shall be in even worse trouble if we are still here after nightfall. They will creep up, rush us and then we would have little chance of stopping them, I’m afraid.’

‘Hmmm.’ Alice’s voice was cool. ‘Do you think that the Guides might send out a patrol and hear the gunfire?’

‘It’s a possibility.’ He ducked his head as a bullet clipped the rock near his cheek and went pinging its way up the hillside. ‘Damn. They’re getting better at this. I doubt if the Guides would be actively patrolling around here. It’s supposed to be quiet, if you remember.’

‘Yes.’ Four more shots rang out, bouncing and echoing away from hilltop to hilltop. ‘I’ve noticed how quiet it is.’

‘Quite. As long as there are only four of them, we have a chance.’ He lifted his head. ‘352.’

‘Yes, bach sir.’

‘If I were these bastards, I would try to get behind us, on this side of the track. So I think one or two might make a dash for it across the road to get up the hill on this side. Be alert and see if you can pick them off if they try it. They’ll be in the open and it’s our best chance.’

‘Good idea. Let’s ’ope they try it.’

And they did. Three more shots rang out from the Pathans, and immediately a figure appeared some hundred yards up the track, broke from cover and, head down and rifle at the trail, sprinted across the road. Quick as he was, Jenkins was quicker. Swivelling from the hips as he knelt, the Welshman fired one shot and then, working the bolt smoothly, another. The first brought the man down, his rifle skittering away from him in the dust and blood spurting from his thigh. He tried to crawl to safety, but Jenkins’s second shot took him in the head, sending his turban spiralling away like a Catherine wheel. Then he lay still, as the echoes faded away.

Fonthill blew out his cheeks. ‘Well done, 352. Bloody good shot. Couldn’t have done better myself.’

Alice let out a quiet snort of derision. ‘Do you think this might scare the others off?’ she asked.

‘Maybe. We’ll have to wait and see. Jenkins.’

‘Bach sir?’

‘I don’t intend to hang about here and wait while they pick us off.’

‘What, ride for it, d’yer think?’

‘No. They would pick us off as we fumbled about untying the horses, mounting and riding off in full view of them.’

‘An’ you’d fall off if we ’ad to gallop, of course.’

‘Certainly not. I’m much better now. No. I’ve got a better idea … Listen. I estimate that we are only about eight miles or so from the Guides’ cantonment at Marden up the road here—’

Interrupting, Jenkins’s voice now had an underlying note of terror. ‘Ah, no. Not me. You know I can’t find me way anywhere, unless there’s a pub at the end of it. I’d get lost in these bloody ’ills, so I would. You go, bach sir. I’ll stay and look after Miss Alice.’

‘No. It must be you. You will have to ride like the wind in this heat and you’re a much better horseman than me. You can’t possibly get lost because this road leads straight into the garrison. You just follow your nose and bring back a troop of the Guides as quickly as possible.’ He looked up at the blue, unforgiving sky. ‘It’s midsummer. I reckon we’ve got a good eight hours before nightfall. You can do it, I know you can.’

‘Oh, very good, bach sir. Give me some cover while I mount. Ah … er … which way would it be, then, like?’

‘Oh, for God’s sake. The way we were heading. Straight up there.’ He indicated to the right. ‘I reckon with only three of them, Alice and I can keep their heads down while you get away. And keep them out until you get back. Throw me your rifle and take this revolver. It will be easier for you to handle from the saddle if you have to. Don’t stop for anything till you get there.’

‘Very good.’ The rifle and the Webley were exchanged in mid-air. Simon threw the Lee-Metford sliding across the scree to Alice. ‘Do you think you can handle this, darling? It will be more effective than that popgun you’ve got.’

‘Yes, I think so.’ She picked up the heavy weapon but she now wore a frown. ‘How many rounds left in this magazine?’

‘Work the bolt and you will see. But Jenkins has fired quite a few so you will need these.’ He pulled out three more magazines from the ammunition box and threw them to her. ‘Now, 352, are you ready to go?’

‘Oh, aye. I’m looking forward to it, look you. Fire off a few rounds while I scramble down. Give me ’alf a minute to free the ’orse and get on it and then blaze away while I ride off.’

‘Very well. Ready, Alice?’

She nodded.

‘Right. Fire!’

The two rifles barked as one and then again. But they did not prevent two guns blazing back from the other side of the track. The bullets, however, hit the scree just behind Jenkins as he leapt and skidded down to the dubious protection of the wagon.

‘I can see where those two are now, Alice, can you?’ called Fonthill.

‘I think so. But this bloody thing is a bit heavy for me. Never mind. I’ll fire away and hope for the best.’

‘Good. Don’t expose yourself unduly, darling. Are you ready, 352?’

‘Got one foot in the stirrup. Right. Let the buggers ’ave it and good luck to you both!’

Jenkins swung himself into the saddle and dug his heels into the flanks of his mount and with a whoop was off, his back lying parallel to that of his horse and his head alongside its neck as Simon and Alice began firing as fast as they could, Fonthill inevitably emptying his magazine before Alice had let off three rounds. Nevertheless, the modest fusillade was heavy enough to provide the precious cover that the Welshman needed and horse and rider rounded the bend to their right and disappeared out of sight, leaving a cloud of dust dancing in the rays of the sun.

‘Thank God for that!’ Fonthill flattened himself behind his rock and cast an anxious glance at his wife, five feet away from him. ‘All right, darling?’

Alice put down her rifle and dashed the perspiration from her brow. ‘I think so, Captain.’ Then she cast an anxious glance at her husband. ‘I’m not sure, though, Simon, that I’m going to be good enough with this damned rifle to support you in keeping these three at bay. It’s a bit heavy for me in this heat.’

‘Don’t worry. Go back to the revolver if you are more comfortable with that, but I think you’d better keep most of your ammunition for the handgun until they get close, because it won’t be too effective at long range. In the meantime I’ll do my best and they will have to cross the open road to get to us. That’s when we can bring them down. But keep behind cover most of the time – and go to the other side of the boulder to keep them guessing.’

‘Do you think there are any of them behind us?’

‘No. They would have revealed their hand by now. Keep under cover and leave the fine marksmanship to this Bisley champion.’

They exchanged grins and Fonthill marvelled once again at the great good fortune that God had bestowed on him in allowing him to find and then marry this magnificent woman: so cool in a crisis and as brave as a guardsman. Their one joint regret over the years of their marriage had been the failure of the pregnancy incurred in the Sudan, after a heavily disguised Alice had found her way over the barren desert sands and then through the lines of the Mahdi’s camp outside Khartoum to rescue him and Jenkins from imprisonment, torture and slave labour there. The miscarriage – it had been a boy – had damaged Alice’s ability to conceive again. But they remained close, each one’s love of adventure and challenge matching the other’s – and that of Jenkins.

Simon licked his lips, which were now beginning to blister from the heat and the cordite. This would be one of the closest scrapes that they had ever endured. The question was: could they keep these three Pathans at bay long enough for Jenkins – a Jenkins who notoriously couldn’t find his way from A to B if it was lit for him by blazing torches – to bring relief? And would the Welshman meet any further Pathans on the road, waiting to bring him down? On that score, however, he felt more at ease. Jenkins could fight his way out of the tightest corner. He shook his head. Just as well, for he was their only hope!

He stole a glance around the rock, which immediately brought a shot crashing into the stone. This wouldn’t do. If he didn’t keep constant watch, they could creep up on them. And if he continually exposed himself to do so, then he would provide an easy target to men whose shooting was now beginning to match their reputation. What to do?

Fonthill nodded reassuringly to Alice and gestured to her to stay covered. Then he seized a sizeable stone and, keeping low behind the outline of the boulder, tossed it as far as he could to the right. It fell with a crash amongst the scree and immediately produced three shots from across the track, which slammed into the rocks where his stone had landed.

Simon had realised some time ago that the Pathans were firing with old single-shot Martini-Henry British rifles not the rapid-firing Lee-Metford. So he immediately took advantage of their clumsy reloading to scramble high up the hill and seek the shelter of another large rock – there were plenty of them about. This gave him a slight height advantage and he levelled his rifle and took careful aim – Jenkins’s oft-repeated mantra of ‘squeeze gently now and don’t jerk’ ringing in his ears – at the scrap of fabric he could see protruding around a rock opposite. He swore happily as he heard the soft thud of the bullet hitting flesh not stone and saw a rifle fall from behind the rock and slither down the slope.

‘Think I’ve got one of the varmints,’ he called down to Alice, who looked up and nodded wearily. He realised now that it was like being in a blast furnace, crouching on this hillside among the rocks that were reflecting the heat. It was obviously getting too much for Alice. She had removed her pith helmet the better to fire around the side of the boulder and he became aware that she was in imminent danger of suffering from sunstroke.

‘Pour water over your head from your carrier,’ he shouted. ‘Do it quickly, otherwise you could lose consciousness. Then put your helmet back on. I will keep firing, don’t worry.’

She nodded and complied. Fonthill pulled out the tail of his cotton shirt and tore it off. Dousing it with water from his own bottle he tied it around his head and, poking his rifle around the rock, fired at a quick flash of movement he caught from near the road. Ah, they were inching nearer! He must never relax. Keep watching and firing!

Reaching out, he scraped together a pile of medium-sized stones and made a low rampart. Then, sprawling on his stomach, he crawled out behind it, rested his rifle in a ‘V’ between two large stones and realised that he had a much better protected and viable firing position, giving him cover and a stable platform. Sighting to where he had noticed the movement earlier he waited patiently. Ah, another flash of colour from higher up! Instinctively, he fired, without any obvious result. But it was clear that they were trying to get nearer, using cover as only skilled mountaineers like the Pathans could, slipping between the rocks like eels in a stream. How long, dear God, before Jenkins arrived?

The three Pathans, of course, had the advantage of numbers, demanding that Fonthill deter each of them from crawling closer. However, now that he was better able to take aim, Simon realised that they also faced his own problem – how to fire without revealing themselves and, additionally in their case, how to move from cover to cover without drawing down fire. The answer, of course, lay in each of them moving at the same time. Would they think of it?

They would and they did. Almost immediately, there was a flurry of movement and Fonthill gained a quick impression of three figures, dressed in dun-coloured long garments and wearing high turbans, wound like dirty washing on top of their heads, breaking cover and sliding down the scree to a last line of rocks near the edge of the track. He fired five shots, working the bolt of the Lee Metford as hard as he could but he was not a good enough shot to hit, although he glimpsed one of the three wearing a bloodstained bandage around his forearm, where his previous bullet had found a home.

He shook his head. Damn! Any hope of them being deterred by his and Alice’s resistance had obviously disappeared. They had invested time and loss – one killed, one wounded – in attempting to kill these infidels and they were not going to waste that effort. They must know that Jenkins had ridden for help and that they had little time left. Or … a disconcerting alternative thought struck him. Perhaps they knew that there was plenty of time because there were more of their clan waiting up the track to cut Jenkins off! He gulped.

Squirming, he pulled out his pocket watch. It was now well past 1 p.m. How long had Jenkins been gone? Less than an hour. Not long enough for him to have reached Marden and get back on the road. He flicked a bead of sweat from his brow. He and Alice would have to fight their own way out of this.

He called down. ‘Alice.’

‘Yes.’ Her voice had lost some of its strength. But she cleared her throat and then called back, more firmly this time. ‘Yes. Don’t worry. I’m all right.’

‘Good girl. Now listen. They are now close enough perhaps to try and rush us. This means that, as they run – and they’ve got about a hundred yards to cover – they can’t fire. So when I shout to you, get to your feet, aim carefully across the top of your rock and shoot to kill. Take your time and make sure you hit. You will have time to get at least one of them. I will get the other two.’

‘Well, my love,’ her voice had recovered its strength and that familiar note of irony had entered it, ‘I only hope you do. I have no wish to be ravaged by some smelly Pathan.’

‘I promise I shall not let that happen. Bad for the family tree. Now. Be on your guard.’ He inserted another magazine into the rifle and looked down at his wife, some six yards below him. If they failed to pick off all the Pathans as they rushed, then he reckoned he had about five seconds to scramble down to her aid … with what? He had no bayonet. He shrugged. He had better aim carefully, that’s all. Oh, to have Jenkins here now, with his steady hand and eye!

Suddenly, he heard a yell and saw the three assailants spring to their feet, their rifles thrown aside and the famous curved Pathan sword, the tulwar, in their hands and reflecting the rays of the sun as they were waved.

‘Here they come, Alice,’ he screamed, and steeled himself to aim carefully. Mercifully, his first shot took the leading Pathan in the breast as he reached the centre of the track and he fell back without a sound. He heard Alice’s pistol crack twice but the two other men disappeared from sight behind a boulder fringing the near side of the track and he could not release another round. Scrambling to his feet and desperately working the bolt of his rifle to insert another cartridge as he did so, he half bounded, half slipped down the hill towards Alice.

He reached her just as the second Pathan rounded the rock, his tulwar raised. For a split second they looked into each other’s eyes. Those of the hillman were black, blazing with intent and set above an equally black beard and high cheekbones. Fonthill’s brain inconsequentially recorded the fact that the Pathan was remarkably handsome before he pulled the trigger in a reflex action. The bullet took the man in the chest, springing a flash of crimson from his cotton angarka smock and, at this short range, exploding him backwards down the hill.

There was one man to go and, with no time to insert another round, Simon spun round towards Alice. She was standing, her back to the rock, the back of one hand to her mouth and her pistol dangling at her side from the other. She tried to speak but, for a moment, could find no words. Then, ‘It’s all right,’ she half whispered, half mouthed. ‘I got the other one.’ And she gestured over the rock with her head.

Simon worked the bolt, inserted another cartridge and carefully put his head round the boulder. Down at the bottom of the slope, the first man he had killed lay face downwards, his mouth open but his body quite inert. Near to him and half buried in the scree he had brought with him as he had tumbled down the hill, lay the second, equally dead. The third lay very close to the rock that had protected Alice, two bullets in his chest from which blood was oozing, finding its way down the slope in a little rivulet through the shingle.

His breast heaving, Fonthill took his wife in his arms and stroked her sodden hair. ‘Well done, my love,’ he whispered eventually. ‘Messy and sad, I know, but they were savage creatures and we had done them no harm. It was them or us. We had no choice.’

Eventually, she withdrew her head. ‘I know, I know. But it’s a long time since I have been so frightened or seen such barbarism at such close range – and even longer since I have killed anyone.’ She forced a smile. ‘This is a far cry from playing bridge with Mrs Hill-Dawson and Miss Brackley in Norfolk, you know. I thought we were just going to do some gentle climbing, that’s all.’

‘I know. I’m sorry. Now sit down for a moment. I’m just going to make absolutely certain that there aren’t any more of these chaps about in these rocks.’

But there was no need. As he straightened to look about them, he heard, in the distance, the sound of a bugle, sounding clear in that mountain air and as refreshing as a douche of spring water.

‘Thank God,’ he exclaimed. The bugle sounded again and then was complemented with the distant drumming of horses galloping. ‘Jenkins is arriving with the whole of the Indian cavalry by the sound of it.’ He looked at his watch. ‘He must have met a troop on the way. Well,’ he grinned at his wife, ‘better late than never. At least the dear old devil found the way.’

‘That’s because there weren’t any pubs on the way.’ Alice returned the grin but perspiration was now pouring down her face and her chest was heaving.

Within two minutes a troop of khaki-clad horsemen of the Corps of Guides rounded the bend, fronting a curtain of dust. At its head, tall in the saddle, rode a daffadar, or Indian sergeant, carrying a lance bearing a coloured pennant, closely followed by an English subaltern and the figure of Jenkins, now almost unrecognisable because of the thick coating of dust covering him.

Reining in, the subaltern shouted a stream of orders. Immediately, in a smooth sequence of actions, single troopers ran forward, each taking the bridles of three horses; others broke into two sections, each of which selected a side of the track and began climbing fast up the scree, carbines at the ready. A weary Jenkins scrambled up towards where Alice and Simon were standing.

He embraced them both roughly and then stepped back with a sheepish grin. ‘Ah, sorry about the dust, beggin’ your pardon, but I felt we’d be too late, see. I was worried sick. But …’ he nodded down the hill, ‘I might ’ave known you’d both be able to look after yerselves.’

Fonthill and Alice each grabbed a hand of the Welshman. ‘Well, we nearly needed you, old chap,’ smiled Simon. ‘You could have been in on the final act if you hadn’t wandered off the track looking for an alehouse. But you virtually made it in time, so thank you. Well done.’

They turned to welcome the young subaltern – the only white man in the sixty-man troop – who now joined them. He extended a hand. ‘Freddie Buckingham, Second Lieutenant, Royal Corps of Guides,’ he said. ‘I am so sorry, sir – madam – that you’ve had this welcome to our party. Damned bad thing to happen, doncher know. Apologies from the Corps. I know the colonel will be most upset.’

‘Thank you, Freddie,’ said Simon. ‘This is my wife, Alice, and, of course, you have already met 352 Jenkins – late sergeant in the Corps, I may say.’

The formalities over, the officer turned and shouted something in what sounded to Simon like Pushtu to the tall daffadar who was high on the other side of the track. The soldier responded with a negative wave of the hand.

‘I don’t think there are any more of these Pathans about,’ said Simon, ‘otherwise they would have been down on us like a swarm of locusts. We could only just handle four, as it was. So I think you can recall your men.’

The eyebrows under Buckingham’s helmet rose and his pink cheeks seemed to glisten in the sun. ‘Ah, you understood the order, so you speak Pushtu, Captain. Splendid. By the way, everybody calls me Duke. Inevitable with a surname like mine, dash it, but I’m no relation, more’s the pity …’

Fonthill smiled. ‘Duke it is, then. As to Pushtu, I learnt a bit of the language when I was here in the Second Afghan War but I am not fluent, alas.’

The young man’s face opened up again. ‘Yes, I heard how you and your remarkable chap here blacked up as natives and disappeared up into the hills for weeks on end before reporting back to General Roberts and then warning him of the Afghans’ depositions at Kandahar. Oh, yes. You’re quite famous around here, sir, I will have you know. It’s a pleasure to have you with us on our anniversary – and your famous wife, too, if I may say so.’

Alice gave a small curtsey. ‘Oh, you may say so, Lieutenant. Now, tell me. You must have met Jenkins while you were out on patrol, no doubt?’

‘No, ma’am. We had come looking for you. Colonel had learnt that you had arrived in Peshawar and sent a wire to say not to start out until we had sent an escort but we were told you had left. So I was sent off hotfoot to rescue you.’ He looked ruefully down the hill. ‘Though it looks to me, Captain, as though you and Mrs Fonthill are well able to look after yourselves.’

Fonthill and Alice exchanged glances. ‘I wouldn’t exactly say that,’ said Simon. ‘It was touch and go. But we were told that the Border was quiet and that this road was safe.’

Buckingham pulled a face. ‘And so it was. But things have stirred up almost over night. Now, we’d better get back to Marden.’ He shouted another order to his troops then nodded down to the bodies of the Pathans. ‘These chaps are not exactly locals. They look to me as though they’re from the Wazir tribe from near the Khyber. Big troublemakers when they want to be and as fierce as hell. We can’t bury them in this terrain, but we’ll just cover them with rocks – and, of course, take their rifles. Come along, let’s get your wagon back on the road. I’m afraid that, with one mule dead, you will have to ride your horses, but it’s not all that far.’

All this was said with a fluent air of knowledge and self-confidence and Fonthill was reminded again of how amazed he had always been at the skill of these young men who, looking as though they had just left the sixth form of their schools, were leading men into action with the sangfroid of veterans. It was, he reflected, the Empire at its best.

Buckingham turned as he picked his way down the shale. ‘Oh, by the way,’ he called back. ‘There’s someone in my troop who is most anxious to meet you. Come on. As soon as we’re safely on the road, I’ll introduce you.’

CHAPTER TWO

The troopers, who had ranged over the hills on both sides of the track remarkably quickly, now trudged down again and quickly re-formed on the road. Intrigued by the reference to someone who wanted to meet him, Fonthill regarded the men with interest.

They were smartly turned out in collarless khaki tunics atop riding breeches with tightly bound puttees and black boots. (Simon recalled that, at their formation in 1846, at a time when every British soldier wore scarlet, they were the first troops to adopt khaki – an Urdu word of Persian origin meaning dusty or dust-coloured.) Polished leather cross belts gave prominence to their chests and red cummerbunds circled their waists. Their turbans were tightly bound and featured contrasting colours. They carried Martini-Henry carbines and cavalry sabres dangled from their saddles. They were all Pathans, natives of the Frontier, with the high cheekbones, prominent, sharp noses and ferocious black beards indigenous to these peoples, and they were, without a doubt, a handsome bunch.

Returning their grins now, Fonthill remembered that they had been recruited originally as an irregular force whose purpose it was to gather intelligence of tribal movements and act as guide to troops in the field. Shortly after their formation, they had won acclaim in the Mutiny by marching in record time across the north of India, from the Border to Delhi, to support the loyal troops besieging the city. From that moment, although they had retained their nomenclature as Guides, they had been subsumed into the India army as fighting men – and specialists in mountain warfare. Although recruited from the Border tribes, the Guides never suffered any defections or mutinous revolts. They were regarded as one of the most trusted units in the British Raj.

With snorts from the horses and a jingle of harness, the troops mounted and Simon, Alice and Jenkins trotted forward to join Buckingham at their head.

‘Now, Captain,’ said the lieutenant, ‘I promised you that there was someone in particular who was most anxious to meet you.’

‘So you did.’ Fonthill looked into the dark faces behind them. ‘I must confess I can’t quite think who it would be.’

‘Ah.’ The young man chuckled. It was clear he was happy to be playing some sort of game. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I will give you a clue. You’ve met him before, although a long time ago.’

Simon looked again around the troop. All of the men were grinning at him again, their teeth cutting slashes of white in their black countenances. All, that is, except the daffadar, who sat ramrod-straight in the saddle holding the pennanted lance and frowning straight ahead of him. He was clearly much taller than the rest of the troop and, although bearded and dark-skinned like the others in this Pathan unit, Simon realised that he was a Sikh. But his appearance rang no bells with him. He exchanged puzzled glances with Alice and Jenkins, who shook their heads negatively.

‘Very well.’ Buckingham raised his voice. ‘Daffadar!’

‘Sahib.’ The Sikh gently heeled his horse forward, so that it was level with the quartet.

‘Captain Fonthill, Mrs Fonthill, Mr Jenkins,’ said Buckingham formally, ‘may I introduce you to just about the best soldier in the Queen’s Own Corps of Guides. This is Inderjit Singh, daffadar in my troop.’

The tall Sikh immediately gave an impeccable salute and, for the first time, allowed himself to engage in eye contact with Simon. His handsome face slowly relaxed into a warm smile.

‘So glad to see you again, sahib, memsahib, sahib,’ he said to each in turn, in impeccable English, with only the trace of the Indian lilt to show that he was not some public schoolboy from Winchester or Harrow.

Fonthill frowned and stared at him. ‘I am sorry,’ he began haltingly. ‘We have met before, have we?’

‘Oh yes, sahib, but only when I was a little boy. I am grateful to you, for you paid for my education at Amritsar. My mother, who is dead now, wanted to write to you to tell you I had joined the Guides but she did not know where to write. Now, when Buckingham Sahib tell me that you were coming, I was delighted and wondered if I could meet—’

‘Wait a minute.’ Fonthill’s frowned deepened. ‘You say I paid for your education?’

‘Yes, sahib. You see I am the son of my father, Inderjit Singh, once of the Guides. You knew him, I think, as W. G. Grace.’

‘What! You are the son of W.G.?’

‘Good Lord,’ cried Alice.

‘Bloody ’ell,’ crowed Jenkins.

‘Oh yes, sir.’ Singh was clearly delighted at the impression his father’s name had created. ‘His name is well known in the Guides – almost as famous as yours and Jenkins sahib, I think.’

Buckingham intervened. ‘So glad you’ve resumed acquaintance,’ he said, ‘but I think we had better get moving.’ He nodded to his daffadar and spoke to him in Pushtu. Immediately, the Sikh lifted his arm, pointed ahead and fell back as the troop began to walk forward, three scouts thrown out far ahead, two at the rear and, in the middle, the wagon, with one trooper squatting on its seat, urging the mule forward.

‘Now,’ said the lieutenant, ‘I’ve heard a bit about the elder Inderjit Singh, but do tell me about your involvement with him.’

But first Simon reached back and grasped the hand of the Sikh, who then, rather self-consciously, shook hands with Alice and Jenkins, before falling back again to take his place at the head of the troop. Then, Fonthill, with many an interjection from the other two, told of how Singh’s cricket-loving father – such an aficionado of the game that he had changed his name to that of the famous English batsman of the time – had guided the disguised Simon and Jenkins to Kabul and then up in the hills to gain information about the massing of the hill tribes in the Second Afghan War, eighteen years before. The trio – later joined by Alice after she had been refused permission by the authorities to report at first-hand on the conflict – had survived many a clash with the Afghans before reaching Kandahar in time to warn General Sir Frederick Roberts of the Afghan placements at that battle which had ended the war. The Sikh had died in a skirmish just before the battle and Fonthill, had, indeed, made provision for his son before leaving Afghanistan.

‘Do you know I had forgotten that,’ Simon confided at the end of his story. ‘And he’s turned out to be a good soldier?’

‘Remarkably so,’ said Buckingham. ‘Born to the job, so to speak. He’s very young to be a daffadar but everyone respects him and he rose through the ranks quickly. He’s a splendid horseman, a good shot and as brave as a lion.’

‘Just like ’is da, then,’ interjected Jenkins. ‘Wonderful bloke, old Gracey, look you. Miss ’im still.’

‘Well,’ said Fonthill, ‘he must have been only about four when I saw him for the only time, so no wonder I didn’t recognise him. I look forward to reminiscing with him about his father. Thank you for bringing him along.’

‘Humph.’ The young man snorted. ‘Wouldn’t dream of going out into the hills without him. Come along. I could do with a drink.’

‘What a splendid idea, bach,’ rejoined Jenkins.

They rode into Marden some three hours later and Simon and his two companions looked around them with interest. It was hardly a town, or even much of a village in its own right, for it was dominated by the Guides’ cantonment on its edge. Nestling between towering mountains on a small plain through which a small, gin-clear stream trickled, the garrison was similar to many that Fonthill had seen in India: barracks, bungalows, a church, a club and, inevitably, a cemetery, all surrounded by a low wall. The buildings were all of red brick and seemed, amidst the grandeur of their surroundings, to possess an air almost of melancholy, something perhaps that had leached out from the nearby graveyard, with its many stained and leaning headstones telling their sad stories of deaths in action and from cholera. Attempts to enliven the club and the bungalows had been made with the planting of shrubs and flowers, but Simon could not help but feel that this outpost of Empire was rather a sorrowful place.

The welcome, however, was warm enough. A short, khaki-clad full colonel, his Sam Browne belt trying but failing to restrain his corpulence, bustled out to greet them. His red face boasted a clipped, salt-and-pepper moustache and a wide smile.

‘Nigel Fortescue,’ he cried, pumping each of their hands in turn. ‘You are all most welcome …’ Then his voice trailed away as he took in the dust still engrained on Jenkins’s figure and his trained eye observed the traces of cordite on Fonthill’s cheek. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘You’ve had trouble. Damnit. Those idiots at Peshawar shouldn’t have let you come on your own. Tell me about it.’

Simon related the story of the attack on them and of the deaths of the Pathans.

‘Wazirs by the sound of it,’ said the Colonel. He turned up to Buckingham. ‘Eh? What, Duke? Wazies, eh?’

‘Yes, Colonel. But, by George, the captain and Mrs Fonthill here knocked ’em off – all four of ’em – before we were able to get there. Remarkable stuff.’

‘Well,’ interjected Simon, ‘Jenkins here got one before we were forced to send him for help.’

‘Not surprised, from what I’ve heard about you all. Now, enough of all this. You must be in urgent need of a bath, all of you – ah … er … particularly you, Mr Jenkins, eh?’

‘Very true, Colonel bach. And p’raps a drink of somethin’ cold d’ yer think?’

‘Most certainly. All in good time.’ He turned back to Simon. ‘The bad news is, I’m afraid, that you’ve missed our main celebrations by just a couple of days, don’t you know. Our fault. Should have given you a notification that we had had to bring it forward to accommodate our colonel-in-chief and, indeed, Lord Roberts, C-in-C India. Yes, both of them were here. Great honour. But they’ve had to leave for Simla. Bit of trouble about, as you have already probably heard. Oh, by the way, Lord Roberts sends his warmest regards to all three of you. Most insistent that I should pass them on. He’s sorry he’s missed you.’

Simon and Alice exchanged wry smiles. The relationship between them and the fiery little general had rarely been warm, despite Fonthill and Jenkins’s good intelligence work in the campaign, and Roberts had not taken kindly to Simon’s curt refusal to accept a permanent commission and higher rank in the Indian army offered to him. It looked now as though all had been forgiven. Another mark, he noted, of his now seemingly warm acceptance by the British army after his work in the Sudan and his appointment as a Commander of the Bath.

‘That’s very kind of them, sir. Yes. We would certainly welcome a tub.’

‘Right. I’ll get the adjutant to show you to your quarters and allocate your boys to you. The fact that you have arrived safely – oh, and by the way, have you met Daffadar Iinderjit Singh?’

‘Yes, we have. Very rewarding to see how well he has grown up – and so like his father.’

‘Yes. Good. Now. Your safe arrival has given us the excuse to have another damned good party in the mess tonight. And madam, you shall be our main guest of honour and you, Jenkins, Sergeant or whatever you are or were – got the DCM after Khartoum, I hear, eh? – shall be our honoured guest as well. No need to dress up. You’ve been travelling. Just put the best on that you have with you. Shall we say 6.30? Good. That should give you time to relax after your exertions. Welcome again.’

‘Thank you, Colonel.’

Willing hands unloaded their bags and took away their horses and they were escorted to their quarters in the club. These were spartan enough – all for single visitors so there was no double room for Alice and Simon – but the great luxury awaited, a little further along the wooden corridor, of three separate bath houses where bhistis were already boiling water for them. Within fifteen minutes Fonthill was lying with only toes and chin breaking the surface of the steam as he listened to the voice of Alice softly singing from the cubicle next door.

As he relaxed, his mind turned to the colonel’s phrase ‘bit of trouble about’. Well, they had already met that and there was obviously more unrest in these hills. He knew what Alice’s view of that would be. Why, she had always argued, did we expect native people to take sanguinely the British occupation of their countries? Would we accept the French moving into Surrey and Norfolk and imposing their rule and culture on us? It was no use pointing out that Indians and Pathans were primitive races who benefited from the examples we set with our higher economic, social and political values. These peoples, she maintained, should have been left to have found their own levels in their own way and in their own time.

Simon wrinkled his brow. And wasn’t she right? The lives that Jenkins, Alice and he had taken that day had been forced on them, of course. They were acts of self-defence. Yet the root cause of all that violence – he saw again the blood oozing down the scree, the hatred in the eyes of the man he had killed at point-blank range, the overweening barbarity of it all – didn’t it all spring from the British invasion of their country?

He splashed the water gently with his hand to generate more heat. As he closed his eyes at the luxury, he recalled the famous message that the British General Sir Charles Napier had relayed back to the British army HQ at London’s Horse Guards after he had occupied the Indian province of Sind by force for the British East India Company in 1843. It consisted of the single Latin word, ‘Pecavvi’ – ‘I have sinned’. Such smirking arrogance! Such a pompous, self-regarding display of superiority! How very British!

Simon’s thoughts turned back to his wife. He had undoubtedly pushed her rather in persuading her to come on this trip. Fresh air and gentle climbing indeed! If his instincts were right, they could be about to become immersed in a tribal uprising that might well involve them in more violence, more killing. He stirred in the warm water. Well, perhaps they might be able to escape to the tranquillity of Kashmir and the lower reaches of the Hindu Kush, further to the east, before the trouble escalated. He must seek the advice of the colonel. They would do their duty to their hosts, take part in the final cordialities of their anniversary and then be on their way. Yes. He felt better at the thought. He had no right to put Alice in the way of further danger. They would be off as soon as possible.