Red Runs the Helmand. Patrick Mercer

      As the general arrived, Sam realised he’d never seen him in circumstances like this before. At home in Ireland it was an open secret that Sam was the bastard son of Anthony and Mary, conceived in the Crimea while Mary was married to a sergeant in the company Sam’s father commanded. Everyone also knew that Sergeant James Keenan – a Corkman too – had perished in circumstances of great bravery in India under the mutineers’ knives a couple of years later. With the death in childbirth of Maude, Anthony’s first wife, the way was clear for the lovers to marry.

      Sam, it was true, had stuck to the name Keenan and followed his mother’s wishes that he should be brought up a Catholic, but most people knew the truth. Anthony, whenever he was at home, had treated him like the son he was – well, he had treated him in the rather distant, muscular way that, Sam supposed, military fathers were meant to treat their boys, yet there had always been tension between himself and his younger half-brother, Billy. Sam had soon understood that, despite being older, he would always come off second best; not for him the name Morgan and an inheritance, not for him a scarlet coat. No, it was the Indian cavalry for the Catholic Sam Keenan and a life a long way from Dublin drawing rooms. If he thought about it too much it angered him, but just at the moment he couldn’t have given a hang, for he was in Afghanistan among people he liked and trusted, being paid to do a job that he would have cheerfully done for free.

      Now here was the man who, while he might have made him play second fiddle at home, had given him the chance for this great adventure, a man who certainly had failings but was kind and brave, a man who preferred to ask rather than demand, and that same man had just made his own colonel look like the gauche little thruster he was.

      The general had shaken every hand, admired the medals that hung from the native officers’ breasts, asked everyone about their home towns (and even looked as though he understood what the rissaldars were talking about) and made friends with them all. Sam wondered how he would greet him, but he needn’t have worried.

      ‘So, Colonel, you seem to have turned this gouger into more of a soldier than I ever could!’ There had been laughs from Sam’s contemporaries at this and a beam of pleasure from the commanding officer. ‘May I steal him away from you this evening? I need to learn a bit about fighting the Afghans.’

      And so General Morgan won the confidence of the Scinde Horsemen, as Sam had seen him do so many times before with huntsmen, magistrates, police and tradesmen at home. It had never struck him before, but Sam now knew that there might be much to learn about leadership and raw soldiering from his father, whom he knew so slightly. But there were more surprises to come for, towards the end of a disappointing hunt, they flushed a panther from its hiding-place and chased it into a piece of rocky ground that was set about with tall grass, scrub and stunted trees. Long, low, dangerous growls could be heard, echoing from the slabs of rock about them. Then Sam watched his father ride into deep, thick cover after it, quite alone and armed only with a spear. It was in that instant that he saw where his own impulsiveness – his pig-headedness – came from.

      Until an hour or so before, the spearmen had had a sparse day of it. There had been distant sightings of pig, excited cries from the native beaters and much galloping hither and yon to no effect whatsoever. But then Sam had been amazed to see a low, sleek, dark form come slinking from a rocky fissure; he had never seen such a beautiful creature before, her black coat groomed and glossy, her ears tipped back and her eyes alight with feral intelligence. The villagers had claimed that the great cat stalked the area, taking withered cows, chickens and goats, and causing mothers to watch their children closely, despite only rare sightings. The native beaters had fired the bush around an outcrop and the creature’s supposed lair, hoping to smoke her out. As Sam sat his pony, the short, seven-foot spear in his hand, and watched the grey-blue smoke billow with a bored detachment, he could not have been more surprised when the mythical quarry became reality.

      ‘Hey, goddamn – here, here.’ Sam found himself shouting inanities at the backs of the fire-raisers, behind whom the animal ambled, unseen. But as he shouted and dug his spurs into his pony, the panther broke into a gentle trot, dignifying him with a short, disdainful glance before she disappeared into a thicket of grass and scrubby bush.

      Sam pushed his mount forward, hallooing as loudly as he could, but the tangle of branches and stalks, combined with the clouds of smoke, gave the advantage to the animal and by the time he’d extracted himself there had been another sighting and more excited cries further up the line of rocks. Galloping as hard as he could to catch the other horsemen, who were now much closer to the cat, he saw two riders hesitating over a body that lay still on the ground.

      ‘A beater, sahib.’ Rissaldar Singh, one of the Indian troop commanders in Keenan’s squadron, held his horse’s reins tightly, flicking his eyes from the inert pile of rags on the ground to the stand of long, coarse grass from which low growls could be heard. ‘I saw the cat on him but was too late: bus.’

      ‘Aye, and we’ll be too late if we fanny around here any longer,’ said the other horseman, his voice thick with excitement. ‘You two get up towards that gap in the brush just there.’ He pointed with his spear to a dark-shadowed, natural hollow in the grass about ten yards from where they all stood. ‘I’ll poke her up the arse and you two catch her as she bolts. Be sharp about it, though, for you’ll get no second chance.’ Before either of them could try to stop him, General Anthony Morgan was away into the brush by himself, crashing his horse through the low cover, yelling loudly and shouting, ‘Hi, hi, get on,’ with his stout little spear held low and ready.

      There was to be no argument, that was clear, so Keenan and Singh dug their heels into their mounts, the dead beater forgotten, and in a few seconds were covering the indicated spot. There was just time for Keenan’s heart to beat a little less frantically, for the horses to settle, for the general’s shouts and thrashing to become less torrid and for them all to think that the panther had slipped away – when out she shot.

      Keenan thought of the cats at home as they stalked sparrows around the stables, low on their haunches, all shoulder-blades, flicking tails and rapt concentration. The panther looked just like that as she emerged – but ten times the size and weight, her whiskers bristling and eyes narrowed, trying to weigh up whether to attack the two horsemen or bolt between them. In the fraction of a second that Keenan watched and mused, Singh acted, kicking his horse on, causing the panther to swerve, but still catching her with the point of his barbed pig-spear deep in the rump.

      Again, Keenan was reminded of domestic cats, for the panther hissed and screamed in pain just as he had heard two toms do when they were contesting some bit of food thrown on to the kitchen waste. But this cat’s enemy was Singh’s spear, around which she curled her body, biting at the wooden shaft and clawing so powerfully at the ground that she almost pulled her antagonist from the saddle. Keenan found the writhing, kicking target hard to hit; he jostled his pony alongside Singh’s, missed with his first lunge and only managed to prod the panther in the ribs with his second attempt, infuriating the wounded animal even further.

      As the horses wheeled and pecked, and the panther scrabbled at the ground to which she was pinned, the dust rose, along with the yells of the two cavalrymen. Then into this chaos panted a third man, a dismounted man, who loped forward with his spear held in front of him.

      ‘Let me in, goddamn you! Clear the way!’ rasped General Morgan, as he dodged among the hoofs and flying specks of blood. ‘Get your spike into that bloody cat, won’t you, son? Skewer it – hold the damn thing down while I finish the job!’

      Keenan reached forward from the saddle and jabbed as hard as he could into the fine sable fur, thrusting the point of his spear so deeply that the steel drove through the flesh until it met the dirt beneath. Now, with two shafts holding the agonised beast, Keenan watched as his father closed in.

      Although the panther was weak she was still dangerous, and Morgan had to wait for his moment. As the blood flowed from her wounds, so she became more desperate, and as she clawed at the stakes, she finally showed her soft belly and Morgan darted in. Keenan held on to his bucking shaft and watched as his father poked his own spear between a line of teats where the hair was thin and the white hide showed. The general, he saw, was skilful enough just to push a few inches