The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection. George Fraser MacDonald

by native boatmen, but with a light gun in the bows, manned by two sepoys. “That’s another provocation,” says Nicolson. “We’ve sixty of these tubs on the river, an’ the Sikhs suspect we mean to use ’em as a bridge for invasion. You never know, one o’ these days … Ah, see yonder!” He shaded his eyes, pointing with his crop across the swollen river; the mist was hanging on the far shore, but through it I could see a party of horsemen waiting, arms gleaming in the sun.

      “There’s your escort, my boy! The vakil sent word they was coming to see you into Lahore in style. Nothin’ too good for an envoy with the scent of cash about him, eh? Well, good luck to you!” As we pushed off he waved and shouted: “It’ll all come out right, you’ll see!”

      I don’t know why I remember those words, or the sight of him with that great mob of niggers chattering about him while his orderlies cuffed and pushed them up to the camp where they’d be fed and looked after; he was for all the world like a prepostor marshalling the fags, laughing and swearing by turns, with a chico perched on his shoulder – I’d not have touched the verminous imp for a pension. He was a kindly, cheery ass, working twenty hours a day, minding his frontier. Four months later he got his reward: a bullet. I wonder if anyone else remembers him?

      The last time I’d crossed the Sutlej had been four years earlier, where there was a British army ahead, and we had posts all the way to Kabul. Now there were no friends before me, and no one to turn to except the Khyberie thug Jassa and our gaggle of bearers – they were there chiefly because Broadfoot had said I should enter Lahore in a jampan, to impress the Sikhs with my consequence. Thanks, George, but I felt damned unimportant as I surveyed my waiting escort (or captors?), and Jassa did nothing to raise my spirits.

“Gorracharra,” grunts he, and spat. “Irregular cavalry – it is an insult to thee, husoor.ⁱ These should have been men of the palace, pukka cavalry. They seek to put shame on us, the Hindoo swine!”

I told him pretty sharp to mind his manners, but I saw what he meant. They were typical native irregulars, splendid cavalry undoubtedly, but dressed and armed any old how, with lances, bows, tulwars,^j and ancient firearms, some in mail coats and helmets, others bare-legged, and all grinning most familiarly. Not what you’d call a guard of honour – yet that’s what they were, as I learned when their officer, a handsome young Sikh in a splendid rigout of yellow silk, addressed me by name – and by fame.

“Sardul Singh, at your service, Flashman bahadur,”^k cries he, teeth flashing through his beard. “I was by the Turksalee Gate when you came down from Jallalabad, and all men came to see the Afghan Kush.” So much for Broadfoot’s notion that shaving my whiskers would help me to pass unnoticed – mind you, it was famous to hear myself described as “the slayer of Afghans”, if quite undeserved. “When we heard you were coming with the book and not the sword – may it be an omen of peace for our peoples – I sought command of your escort – and these are volunteers.” He indicated his motley squadron. “Men of the Sirkar^l in their time. A fitter escort for Bloody Lance than Khalsa cavalry.”

Well, this was altogether grand, so I thanked him, raised my civilian kepi to his grinning bandits, saying “Salaam, bhai’”,^m which pleased them no end. I took the first chance to remind Jassa how wrong he’d been, but the curmudgeon only grunted: “The Sikh speaks, the cobra spits – who grows fat on the difference?” There’s no pleasing some folk.

Between the Sutlej and Lahore lie fifty of the hottest, flattest, scrubbiest miles on earth, and I supposed we’d cover them in a long day’s ride, but Sardul said we should lie overnight at a seraiⁿ a few miles from the city: there was something he wanted me to see. So we did, and after supper he took me through a copse to the loveliest place I ever saw in India – there, all unexpected after the heat and dust of the plain, was a great garden, with little palaces and pavilions among the trees, all hung with coloured lanterns in the warm dusk; streams meandered among the lawns and flower-beds, the air was fragrant with night-blooms, soft music sounded from some hidden place, and everywhere couples were strolling hand in hand or deep in lovers’ talk under the boughs. The Chinese Summer Palace, where I walked years later, was altogether grander, I suppose, but there was a magic about that Indian garden that I can’t describe – you could call it perfect peace, with its gentle airs rustling the leaves and the lights winking in the twilight; it was the kind of spot where Scheherazade might have told her unending stories; even its name sounds like a caress: Shalamar.¹⁶

But this wasn’t the sight that Sardul wanted me to see – that was something unimaginably different, and we viewed it next morning. We left the serai at dawn, but instead of riding towards Lahore, which was in full view in the distance, we went a couple of miles out of our way towards the great plain of Maian Mir where, Sardul assured me mysteriously, the true wonder of the Punjab would be shown to me; knowing the Oriental mind, I could guess it was something designed to strike awe in the visiting foreigner – well, it did all of that. We heard it long before we saw it, the flat crash of artillery at first, and then a great confused rumble of sound which resolved itself into the squealing of elephants, the high bray of trumpets, the rhythm of drums and martial music, and the thunder of a thousand hooves making the ground tremble beneath us. I knew what it was before we rode out of the trees and halted on a bund^o to view it in breathtaking panorama: the pride of the Punjab and the dread of peaceful India: the famous Khalsa.

Now, I’ve taken note of a few heathen armies in my time. The Heavenly Host of Tai’ping was bigger, the black tide of Cetewayo’s legions sweeping into Little Hand was surely more terrifying, and there’s a special place in my nightmares for that vast forest of tipis, five miles wide, that I looked down on from the bluffs over Little Bighorn – but for pure military might I’ve seen nothing outside Europe (and dam’ little inside) to match that great disciplined array of men and beasts and metal on Maian Mir. As far as you could see, among the endless lines of tents and waving standards, the broad maidan^p was alive with foot battalions at drill, horse regiments at field exercise, and guns at practice – and they were all uniformed and in perfect order, that was the shocking thing. Black, brown, and yellow armies in those days, you see, might be as brave as any, but they didn’t have centuries of drill and tactical movement drummed into ’em, not even the Zulus, or Ranavalona’s Hova guardsmen. That was the thing about the Khalsa: it was Aldershot in turbans. It was an army.¹⁷

That’s worth bearing in mind when you hear some smart alec holding forth about our imperial wars being one-sided massacres of poor club-waving heathen mown down by Gatlings. Oh, it happened, at Ulundi and Washita and Omdurman – but more often than not the Snider and Martini and Brown Bess were facing odds of ten to one against in country where shrapnel and rapid fire don’t count for much; your savage with his blowpipe or bow or jezzail^q behind a rock has a deuce of an advantage: it’s his rock, you see. Anyway, our detractors never mention armies like the Khalsa, every bit as well-armed and equipped as we were. So how did we hold India? You’ll see presently.

      That morning on Maian Mir the confidence I’d felt, viewing our forces on the Grand Trunk, vanished like Punjabi mist. I thought of Littler’s puny seven thousand isolated at Ferozepore, our other troops scattered, waiting to be eaten piecemeal – by this juggernaut, a hundred thousand strong. A score of vivid images stay in my mind: a regiment of Sikh lancers wheeling at the charge in perfect dressing, the glittering points falling and rising as one; a battalion of Jat infantry with moustaches like buffalo horns, white figures with black crossbelts, moving like clockwork as they performed “at the halt on the left form companies”; Dogra light infantry advancing in skirmishing order, the blue turbans suddenly closing in immaculate line, the bayonet points ripping into the sandbags to a savage yell of “Khalsa-ji!”; heavy guns being dragged through swirling dust by trumpeting elephant teams while the gunners trimmed their fuses, the cases being thrust home, the deafening roar of the salvo – and damme! if those shells didn’t burst a mile away in perfect unison, all above ground. Even the sight of the light guns cutting their curtain targets to shreds with grape wasn’t as sickening as the precision of