Flashman Papers 3-Book Collection 2: Flashman and the Mountain of Light, Flash For Freedom!, Flashman and the Redskins. George Fraser MacDonald
of about thirty miles, but I ain’t certain. As near as I’ve been able to figure, Lal’s headquarters lay about two miles due north of Ferozepore, but it was still dark when we passed through the lines of tent-lanes, all ablaze with torches. Most of his force were gorracharra, like ourselves, and my memory is of fierce bearded faces and steel caps, beasts stamping in the dark, and the steady throb of drums that they kept up all night, doubtless to encourage Littler in his beleaguered outpost two miles away.
Lal’s quarters were in a pavilion big enough to hold Astley’s circus – it even had smaller tents within it to house him and his retinue of staff and servants and personal bodyguard. These last were tall villains with long chainmail headdresses and ribbons on their muskets; they barred our way until Ganpat announced our business, which caused a great scurry and consultation with chamberlains and butlers. Although it was still the last watch, and the great man was asleep, it was decided to wake him at once, so we didn’t have to wait above an hour before being ushered into his sleeping pavilion, a silken sanctum decked out like a bordello, with Lal sitting up naked in bed while one wench dressed his hair and combed his beard, another sprayed him with perfume, and a third plied him with drink and titbits.
I’ve never seen a man in such a funk in my life. At our previous meetings he’d been as cool, urbane, and commanding as a handsome young Sikh noble can be; now he was like a virgin with the vapours. He gave me one terrified glance and looked quickly away, his fingers tugging nervously at the bedclothes while the wenches completed his toilet, and when one of them dropped her comb he squealed like a spoiled child, slapped her, and drove them out with shrill curses. Ganpat followed them, and the moment he’d gone Lal was tumbling out of bed, hauling his robe about him and yammering at me in a hoarse whisper.
“Praise God you are here at last! I thought you would never come! What is to be done?” He was fairly quivering with fright. “I’ve been at my wits’ end for two days – and Tej Singh is no help, the swine! He sits at Arufka, pretending he must supervise the assembly, and leaves me here alone! Everyone is looking to me for orders – what in God’s name am I to say to them?”
“What have you said already?”
“Why, that we must wait! What else can I say, man? But we can’t wait forever! They keep telling me that Ferozepore can be plucked like a ripe fruit, if I will but give the word! And how can I answer them? How can I justify delay? I don’t know!” He seized me by the wrist, pleading. “You are a soldier – you can think of reasons! What shall I tell them?”
I hadn’t reckoned on this. I’d always thought myself God’s own original coward, but this fellow could have given me ten yards in the hundred, and won screaming. Well, Gardner had warned me of that, and also that Lal might have difficulty thinking of reasons for not attacking Ferozepore – but I hadn’t expected to find him at such a complete nonplus as this. The man was on the edge of hysterics, and plainly the first thing to be done was to calm his panic (before it infected me, for one thing) and find out how the land lay. I began by pointing out that I was an invalid – I’d only been able to limp into his presence with the aid of a stick – and that my first need was food, drink, and a doctor to look at my ankle. That took him aback – it always does, when you remind an Oriental of his manners – and his women were summoned to bring refreshments while a little hakim clucked over my swollen joint and said I must keep my bed for a week. What they thought, to see a hairy gorracharra sowar treated with such consideration by their Wazir, I don’t know. Lal fretted up and down, and couldn’t wait to drive them out again, and renew his appeals for guidance.
By that time I’d got my thoughts into some order, at least as far as his Ferozepore dilemma was concerned. There are always a hundred good reasons for doing nothing, and I’d hit on a couple – but first I must have information. I asked him how many men he had ready to march.
“At hand, twenty-two thousand cavalry – they are lying a bare mile from Ferozepore, with the enemy lines in full view, I tell you! And Littler Sahib has a bare seven thousand – only one British regiment, and the rest sepoys ready to desert to us! We know this from some who have already come over!” He gulped at his cup, his teeth chattering on the rim. “We could overrun him in an hour! Even a child can see that!”
“Have you sent messengers to him?”
“As if I would dare! Who could I trust? Already these Khalsa bastards look at me askance – let them suspect that I traffic with the enemy, and …” He rolled his eyes and flung his cup away in a passion. “And that drunken bitch in Lahore gives me no help, no orders! While she couples with her grooms, I wait to be butchered like Jawaheer –”
“Now, see here, Wazir!” says I roughly, for his whining was starting to give me the shakes. “You take hold, d’you hear? Your position ain’t all that desperate –”
“You see a way out?” quavers he, clutching at me again. “Oh, my dear friend, I knew you would not fail me! Tell me, tell me, then – and let me embrace you!”
“You keep your bloody distance,” says I. “What’s Littler doing?”
“Fortifying his lines. Yesterday he came out with his whole garrison, and we thought he meant to attack us, and held our ground. But my colonels say it was a feint to gain time, and that I must storm his trenches! Oh, God, what can I –”
“Hold on – he’s entrenched, you say? Is he still digging? Capital – you can tell your colonels he’s mining his defences!”
“But will they believe me?” He wrung his hands. “Suppose the deserters deny it?”
“Why should you trust deserting sepoys? How d’ye know Littler hasn’t sent ’em to give you false reports of his strength, eh? To lure you into attacking him? Ferozepore’s a ripe fruit, is it? Come, raja, you know the British – foxy bastards, every one of us! Deuced odd, ain’t it, that we’ve left a weak garrison, cut off, just asking to be attacked, what?”
He stared wide-eyed. “Is this true?”
“I doubt it – but you don’t know that,” says I, warming to my work. “Anyway, it’s a dam’ good reason to give your colonels for not attacking headlong. Now then, what force has Tej Singh, and where?”
“Thirty thousand infantry, with heavy guns, behind us along the river.” He shuddered. “Thank God I have only light artillery – with heavy pieces I should have no excuse for not blowing Littler’s position to rubble!”
“Never mind Littler! What news of Gough?”
“Two days ago he was at Lutwalla, a hundred miles away! He will be here in two days – but word is that he has scarcely ten thousand men, only half of them British! If he comes on, we are sure to defeat him!” He was almost crying, wrenching off his beard net and trembling like a fever case. “What can I do to prevent it? Even if I give reasons for not taking Ferozepore, I cannot avoid battle with the Jangi lat! Help me, Flashman bahadur! Tell me what I must do!”
Well, this was a real facer, if you like. Gardner, for all his misgivings about Lal, had been sure that he and Tej would have some scheme for leading their army to destruction – that was what I was here for, dammit, to carry their plans to Gough! And it was plain as a pikestaff that they hadn’t any. And Lal expected me, a junior officer, to plot his own defeat for him. And as I stared at that shivering, helpless clown, it came to me with awful clarity that if I didn’t, no one else would.
It ain’t the kind of problem you meet every day. I doubt if it’s ever been posed at Staff College … “Now then, Mr Flashman, you command an army fifty thousand strong, with heavy guns, well supplied, their lines of communication protected by an excellent river. Against you is a force of only ten thousand, with light guns, exhausted after a week’s forced marching, short of food and fodder and damned near dying of thirst. Now then, sir, answer directly, no hedging – how do you lose, hey? Come, come, you’ve just given excellent reasons for not taking a town that’s lying at your mercy! This should be child’s play to a man with your God-given gift of catastrophe! Well, sir?”
Lal was gibbering