The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [365]
He had deserted her twice before: once in Gulkote when she was a child, and again in Bhithor – though that had been sorely against his will. He would not do so a third time. Yet if he was ordered back to Mardan, what then? Would it do any good if he were to write to Wally and Wigram Battye, asking them to use their influence to get his recall postponed if they should hear that it was being considered? But then, having told both of them how much he wanted to get back to the Guides, how did he propose to explain this abrupt volte face…? ‘I'm sorry I can't tell you why I've changed my mind and would rather not come back to the Corps just now, but you'll just have to take my word for it that it's vitally important that I should be able to remain here for the time being –’
They would think he must be ill or mad, and Wally, at least, would expect to be trusted with the truth. But as the truth could not be told there was no point in writing at all.
Ash fell back on hope. With luck the ‘Tin Gods’ who had banished him to Gujerat had forgotten about him and would leave him alone. Or better still, Gobind would manage to get in touch with him and tell him that their fears were groundless and that all was well with the Ranis of Bhithor, in which case it would not matter how soon he was recalled to the Guides. The sooner the better in fact, for Wally's last letter had increased his longing to get back almost as much as Kaka-ji's letter had made him wish to stay.
Wally wrote to say that the Guides had been in action again, and that Zarin had been wounded, though not seriously. The letter gave a detailed description of the affray (which involved a gang of Utman Khel tribesmen who two years previously had murdered a number of coolies working on the Swat River canal-works), and sang the praises of its instigator, one Captain Cavagnari, Deputy Commissioner of Peshawar, who having heard that the leader and several members of the gang were living in a village called Sapri some five miles upstream from Fort Abazai and just inside the Utman Khel border, sent a message to the village headman demanding their surrender, together with a large sum of money to furnish pensions for the families of the murdered coolies.
The inhabitants of Sapri, fondly imaginging their village to be impregnable, replied offensively, and Captain Cavagnari decided to take them by surprise and laid his plans accordingly. Under the command of Wigram Battye, three officers of the Guides, two hundred and sixty-four sowars of the cavalry and a dozen sepoys of the infantry – the latter mounted on mules – set off one night after dark for Sapri, accompanied by Cavagnari, who had managed to keep the whole operation so secret that two of the officers had actually been playing racquets up to the last moment, and left almost straight from the courts.
The first part of the march had been simple, but eight miles short of their goal the country became so rough that the horses and mules had to be sent to Fort Abazai, while the Guides groped their way forward in the darkness on foot. Sapri, still confident that the intervening wilderness of rocks, precipices and nullahs afforded ample protection against any attack, awoke in the dawn to find itself surrounded and rushed for its arms, but after a brisk spell of fighting during which the murdered coolies were fully avenged, the ring-eaders and nine others who had been implicated in that massacre were taken prisoner.
‘Our losses were only seven men wounded,’ wrote Wally, ‘and Wigram has put up Jaggat Singh and Daffadar Tura Baz for the Order of Merit for “Conspicuous bravery in action”. So as you can see, we haven't exactly been living an idle life up here. What about you down there? You know, I hate to say it, but your letters seem to contain a great deal about this pearl among horses that you have acquired, but next to nothing about yourself, and it's you and your doings I want to hear about, and not his. Or does nothing ever happen in Ahmadabad and Roper's Horse-Show? Wigram