Dust and Steel. Patrick Mercer

didn’t they?’ Morgan replied.

      As the wing of the 95th had arrived at the little town of Bhuj some three hours before dawn and been shown to a mixture of reed-shelters and dak bungalows by staff officers, where they had sunk gratefully onto mats and charpoys, other troops had streamed in. The wing of the 10th BNI had been hard behind them, more than two hundred sabres of the Scinde Horse were already milling around in the dark, and then, just before dawn, Captain Cumberland’s Royal Engineers had come rumbling into camp on the squealing, solid wooden wheels of innumerable bullock carts.

      ‘They did,’ Bazalgette wiped at his plate of curried goat with a piece of rubbery chapatti, ‘but this has the makings of quite a formidable little column, don’t you think?’

      ‘No, gentlemen, don’t stand up, please.’ Colonel Hume was just too late to stop the group of captains and subalterns, all working hungrily at a tiffin of rice and meat, from dragging themselves to their feet. ‘Good to see a bit of civilisation again, ain’t it?’

      Morgan marvelled at the man. It was all he himself could do to cast a rudimentary eye over the crude shelters allotted to his company when they’d arrived a few hours ago before a quick, ‘…Carry on, Colour-Sar’nt,’ as he scuttled off to the officers’ bungalow and stretched himself out to sleep. Not Hume, though. His red-rimmed eyes showed that he’d been far too conscientious for slumber whilst all the other units in the column had been arriving, and now he even had time to play down the wretchedness of the camp and its amenities.

      ‘You’ll all be pleased to hear – ah, thank you, shukria,’ Hume passed his sword belt, pistol and cap to a native servant – ‘that the artillery is on its way. Once the Second Field Battery of our friends the Bombay Artillery is with us, then we’ll be complete and Johnny bloody Sepoy will have to look to his laurels.’

      There was a general mutter of agreement from the officers, although the younger subalterns, Morgan noticed, were much too engrossed in their food to give the Colonel the attention that the older officers thought he merited.

      ‘And on that subject…’ Hume gratefully accepted the quart pot of ale that a servant pressed into his hand as he settled into one of the cane chairs, ‘…how have the men accepted your pep talks on “Clemency Canning’s” dictat?’

      ‘Fine, sir,’ said Bazalgette, as the colonel’s gaze fell upon him, though he was far more interested in the contents of a tureen of fish soup.

      ‘And your lot, Massey?’

      ‘It took a bit of getting through to them at first that we can’t go around behaving like the mutineers themselves, but I think they took the point,’ Massey answered thoughtfully.

      ‘And Number One Company?’ Hume turned to Carmichael, who having been first to get at the food, was replete; now he was rubbing an oily cloth over his revolver, having first made a great show of drawing the six charges from the chambers.

      ‘They’re all right with things, Colonel, but I explained how we’d got to be careful not to cause more trouble than we solve, and how we mustn’t go around assuming everyone’s a bloody Pandy.’ Carmichael held the big pistol up to the light and nonchalantly squinted down the barrel.

      ‘And they understood that?’

      Hume was checking more that his officers knew what was expected rather than just the soldiers, thought Morgan, listening intently.

      ‘Oh, yes, they seemed to,’ Carmichael answered rather too easily. ‘Anyway, sir, I told them that if all else failed, Mr Enfield and Mr Adams here would be able to provide the answers.’

      ‘Oh, so that’s one of the Adams revolvers, is it?’ Hume asked innocently, to Morgan’s delight.

      Carmichael never ceased to brag about his expensive pistol and how it had saved his life in the Crimea more times than he could recall, but his casual answer had needled Hume, though Carmichael didn’t seem to have noticed.

      ‘I’ve noticed it before; may I have a look?’ the colonel continued.

      Carmichael passed the big blued-steel weapon across to the commanding officer, presenting the handsome ivory grips first. He never lost an opportunity to show the weapon off; its smooth double action and the precision of its rifling served as an excuse for everyone to admire the inscriptions in the ivory – the monogrammed ‘R. L. M. C.’, as well as the battles at which its owner had been present.

      ‘Hmm…that balances well.’ Hume handled the weapon appreciatively. ‘And a craftsman’s been at work here.’ He studied the butt. ‘Alma, Balakava, Inkermann, Sevastopol. My word, you must have cared for this, Carmichael – it looks as if it’s never been out of its holster.’

      Hume’s barb was lost on Carmichael, but not on Bazalgette and Morgan, who looked at each other and smiled.

      ‘I feel like bloody Noah, sir. Look at these rascals, will you?’ McGucken was rarely so voluble, but Morgan had to admit there was something biblical about the bullocks, camels, donkeys and even six vast grey elephants that swayed about the gun lines of Number Two Field Battery.

      ‘They give us some queer jobs, they do, but the commanding officer was most particular about the safety of the guns and the gunners, and I suppose it’s a compliment of sorts…oh, goddamit,’ Morgan cursed as he stepped in a giant dollop of what looked like horse manure.

      ‘Dunno whether standing in pachyderm shite’s lucky or not, sir, but I guess you’ll find out now,’ McGucken grinned as Morgan scraped the welt of his boot with a handful of coarse grass, ‘though I’d prefer to be with the rest of the column rather than hanging around wiping gunners’ arses. The fightin’ll probably be done by the time this menagerie catches up with ’em.’

      ‘I hear what you say, Colour-Sar’nt, but there’ll be no attempt at towns or cities without the guns, and if there are rebels about on the route to Deesa, they’ll want to knock out the artillery first,’ answered Morgan, almost convinced by his own line of reasoning.

      ‘An’ look at this lot, sir – what’ll we do wi’ them in the middle of a fight?’ asked McGucken as he stared at the crowd of civilan bearers, grass cutters, grooms, cooks, washerwomen and general servants whom the battery had brought with them.

      ‘D’you know, Colour-Sar’nt, I haven’t the least idea.’ The same thought had occurred to Morgan as swarms of civilians had appeared from nowhere once the troops had reached the relative civilisation of Bhuj and attached themselves to the company before they started the long march up-country. ‘I suppose they’ll make themselves scarce if the lead begins to fly. Anyway, are we ready to march once the sun’s down?’

      ‘Aye, sir, as ready as we’ll ever be, but I have me doots about yon cows.’ McGucken looked at the great, lazy-eyed oxen. One scratched its chin with a rear hoof, narrowly missing Private Swann as its horns flailed about, whilst its partner, shackled to it by a clumsy wooden yoke, flapped its ears incessantly at a cloud of flies.

      ‘Yes, not to mention the rest of God’s creatures that we seem to have inherited.’ Morgan looked with dismay as two camels wandered past, swamped by bundles of fodder almost as large as themselves. ‘Still, with such a lack of draught horses, I’d prefer to have this lot than try to pull the hardware ourselves.’

      As the march started after sundown that night, Morgan regretted his words. The guns and their limbers behaved well enough – the Indian drivers keeping the horses well in hand – and the camels were aloof but quiescent, whilst their vast loads meant that no traffic could pass in the other direction. Then, after a great deal of trumpeting and general skittishness, the elephants that were pulling the extra ammunition caissons settled to their duty, plodding stolidly in the dark under the direction of their mahouts. But the bullocks: how right McGucken had been not to trust ‘yon cows’.

      ‘Get up, won’t you, you lazy son of a drab,’ one of the Bombay gunners, a grizzled Englishman wearing the Sutlej medal, kicked and slapped one such creature that had lain down directly in the centre of the narrow,