Dust and Steel. Patrick Mercer
under his left ear across to his windpipe.
‘Yon’s no sepoy, is ’e, sir?’ McGucken held up a slender curved bow that he’d pulled from the dead man’s hand.
‘Certainly doesn’t look like it, Colour-Sar’nt. He’s no uniform or belts on him. More like a common badmash, I’d say,’ replied Morgan.
But before the professional debate began over exactly what sort of man it was that McGucken had reduced to cold meat, a gale of shouting and frightened trumpeting from the elephants that towed the heavy ammunition carts broke out from the column waiting on the road behind them.
Morgan began to run through the brush, back towards the road, the noise of the elephants being joined by a strange, feral squealing.
‘Come on, then, get after the company commander.’ McGucken chivvied the troops into a stumbling run, away from the dead man at whom they had all been gawping. ‘Watch out for any of these rogues hidin’ in the grass.’
But the danger came from quite a different source. When the column stopped, the elephants had jammed themselves tightly together at the rear of the line behind the guns and just in front of the spare oxen and some dhoolies carrying the sick. Here the track was deeply sunken, its banks reaching up five feet or more, effectively penning in the animals and their burdens.
‘Get out of the way!’ Morgan, at the head of his panting men, had been able to make out the forms of the six elephants wildly swaying about, trunks outstretched, trumpeting deafeningly in the night, stamping and stomping at something that shrieked beneath their feet. Now, one of the huge beasts came lumbering over the bank straight towards the group of soldiers, mighty ears flapping wildly, tusks thrashing left and right, its mahout clutching helplessly to its neck as its ammunition cart floundered after it. As the monstrous thing cut a swathe through the running troops so a wheel came off the caisson, which slewed round, spilling great, black, 24-pound howitzer rounds, which bounced through the grass.
‘Oh, ow…’ yelled Private James. ‘It’s broke me leg!’ as he was bowled over like a skittle by one of the iron shot, which knocked his feet from under him.
‘They’re pigs, sir.’ McGucken had dodged the blundering grey form and now stood on the edge of the bank just feet from the other plunging elephants, looking down at a dozen shrieking, darting forms, ghostly pale in the night. ‘The elephants are terrified of ’em – so’s the natives. Where the fuck have they come from?’
He was right. Morgan saw how the squeals of the pigs were tormenting the elephants, who were trying to rid themselves of their attackers with tusks and vast stamping feet, which, in turn were making the pigs even more petrified and noisy. Meanwhile, the Hindu civilians and military drivers had gathered in an appalled huddle on the opposite side of the road, aghast and helpless as the unclean creatures ran amok.
‘God knows. Kill the bloody things, lads.’ Morgan leaped down amongst the huge, stamping, grey, leathery feet, immediately regretting his decision. ‘But don’t shoot, stab the sods.’
This is no way to die, he thought as an enormous pad with nails the size of trowels thumped into the earth just inches from him, and just look at those nuts – as a scrotum the size of a bag of flour swung past his face. It’ll look just grand on the Court and Social page:…‘gallant fate at the head of his men; bashed to death by an elephant’s bollocks whilst trying to sabre a swine.’
Eventually they finished the job. Private Saint had his foot run over by the wheel of the battery’s forge wagon, Sergeant Ormond was brushed sideways by an elephantine knee, but the pigs were finally subdued by the blades of the men and order restored to the terrified leviathans.
‘What d’you suppose that was about, Colour-Sar’nt?’ Morgan sat on the bank by the track, as the first light of dawn turned the black sky to turtle-dove grey.
‘Oldest trick in the book, apparently, sir. One of the gunner naiks was tellin’ me that everyone knows that elephants and pigs are shit-scared of each other an’ if yous want to stampede the big buggers you just release a few wee porkers around their feet,’ answered McGucken.
‘Well, there we are; they didn’t teach us that back at the depot, did they, Colour-Sar’nt? Still, it shows the Pandies have got a deal of sense. If they could have knocked the guns out, or just destroyed the ammunition, we’d be in queer street,’ Morgan reasoned. ‘What damage is done?’
‘Not much, sir. A fodder camel’s down, some oxen have bolted an’ can’t be found yet, one bearer’s been wounded, Sar’nt Ormond an’ Saint are a bit knocked about, an’ the artillery lads are just getting a spare wheel back on that limber.’ McGucken checked a pencilled list on a scrap of paper. ‘Oh, aye, one of the Bombay gunners is unaccounted for; they think he might have gone off wi’ the Pandies. An’ the natives reckon that judging by the archer we got, the whole thing was probably the work o’ rebels from one of the maharajah’s armies up north, not reg’lar sepoys.’
‘So, irregular rebels, not regular rebels…Hmm, this is going to be even more confusing than I thought. Anyway, let’s get moving once that wheel’s fixed. We’ll find some water up ahead, get everything square and bed down for the day.’ Morgan tapped his pipe out on the heel of his muddy boot. ‘But we’ll have to be more alert in close country if we don’t want to get caught like that again.’
‘You all right, Pete, Jono?’ Lance-Corporal Pegg pushed through the brush into the small clearing where Privates Sharrock and Beeston were sitting behind a modest ant hill as sentries for the column that rested in the midday heat behind them.
‘Aye, we’re sound as a bell, Corp’l. Too much bloody staggin’, though,’ Beeston replied dolefully.
Since the ambush the day before, Morgan had ordered that the sentries should be doubled, so cutting by half the small amount of sleep that the men were getting during the day.
‘Well, I’ve got Jimmy here to replace you, Jono, so you’ll soon be rolled up snug; mek the most on it.’ The men were posted for two-hour shifts, a fresh sentry being brought forward by a junior NCO every hour to replace one of them, so minimising the likelihood, at least in theory, that a pair of sentries would fall asleep at the same time. The burden, though, fell heavily upon the lance-corporals and corporals, who got little rest.
‘If I’m on me chin-strap, I bet you’re half dead, ain’t you, Corp’l?’ The new sentry posted, Beeston and Pegg were walking back to the column down a narrow track.
‘Well, I’ve ’ad more restful times, but double sentries is always a pain in the ring, ain’t it?’ Pegg replied.
‘Wasn’t the sentries I were thinking about, Corp’l.’ Beeston’s darkly tanned face lit into a smile. ‘It was that dhobi bint that you’re a-poking.’
‘Less o’ that, you cheeky sod.’ Though only twenty, Pegg was more than capable of pulling rank with older, more experienced men when it suited him. ‘Anyway, she’s not just a bint, she’s—’
‘Hush, Corp’l, what’s that noise?’ Beeston cut across Pegg’s retort, freezing in his steps and pulling the hammer back on his rifle, raising the butt to the shoulder.
Pegg must have missed the low gurgling snuffle amongst the hum and click of insects as he’d walked up the track with the new sentry a few minutes before. But now, as both men listened intently, the noise came again.
‘What d’you reckon it is, Jono?’ asked Pegg, as he too brought his weapon up to the shoulder.
‘Dunno. Sounds like a man, though, Corp’l,’ answered Beeston. ‘There, it’s coming from over there.’
Slowly, hesitantly, the two soldiers crept forward off the track and into the thicket as the rasping moan came again.
‘Bloody hell, they’ve made a job on him, ain’t they?’ Jono Beeston murmured as they both looked at the torn form of a man who was tied to a tree trunk. His naked feet stuck out below his crumpled knees; the only clothes he now wore were