The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [542]
The Guides obeyed, spurring recklessly forward up the long sweep of broken ground, until suddenly Wally saw for the first time something that had been hidden from him by the rise of the ground. And seeing it his heart seemed to stop.
Between the base of the steeper ground that fell sharply away below the rim of the plateau and the spot where the slope began to level out lay a natural obstacle that presented a far worse hazard than the man-made breastworks of loose rock and stone above: a deep gash in the hillside, running parallel to the rim, cut long ago by some mountain torrent that had dried up and left behind a welter of stones at the bottom of a sheer drop of eight or nine feet. On its far side the hill rose steeply, and along the crest stood the entrenchments – now filling again with wild-eyed tribesmen who turned to howl defiance and fire down into the pursuing cavalry.
It was a sight calculated to daunt many a better and more experienced soldier than young Lieutenant Hamilton. But Wally was drunk with the intoxicating frenzy of battle and he did not hesitate. He used his spur on Mushki, who leapt down into the gulf and bounded across the stones. And behind him, in a wild, slithering, shouting confusion, poured the Guides.
Once down they scattered to left and right searching for a possible way up and out, and when they found one, scrambled up in twos and threes and charged straight into the attack: Wally, with his trumpeteer a close second, the first to reach the summit where the long line of breastworks barred the way to the level ground of the plateau. Here the many tribesmen who had managed to scramble back behind these defences turned at bay, firing their muskets as fast as they could load. But the breast-high wall had not checked Mushki. She rose to it with all the ease and grace of a thoroughbred hunter taking a stone wall in Kerry, and by a miracle, and her rider's skill with a sabre, came through the desperate hand-to-hand fighting that followed as she had come through the battle on the slopes below, with no more than a scratch.
There had been no co-ordination in that fight, or any time to wait for the infantry to come up on the flank, or the guns to follow and get into position. The Guides had attacked singly or in small groups, and with a ferocity that drove the undisciplined tribesmen from their entrenchments and back onto the open stretch of the plateau. For though the Khugianis fought stubbornly, most of their Chiefs and all their standard-bearers were dead. And without leaders to rally them, they failed to regroup.
Their entrenchments had been carried in a matter of minutes, and once again they broke and ran, dispersing across the level plateau like fallen leaves in an autumn gale as they fled with bursting lungs and straining muscles for the uncertain refuge of the forts and villages that nestled in the cultivated valleys beyond.
But they were not permitted to go freely. The guns of the artillery were ordered to open fire on any concentration of the tribesmen and the cavalry ordered to pursue; and Guides and Hussars together swept off in the wake of the retreating enemy, cutting down scores of fugitives as they went, and only drawing rein when they were almost under the walls of the Khugiani stronghold of Koja Khel.
The Battle of Fatehabad was over and won, and the weary victors turned and rode back across the blood-soaked plateau, past the tragic debris of war: the mutilated bodies of dead and dying men, the discarded weapons, broken standards, chupplis, turbans and empty cartridge-belts…
General Gough's column had left Jalalabad with orders to ‘disperse the Khugianis’; and they had done so. But it had been a terrible slaughter, for the Khugianis were brave men, and as Ash had warned, they had fought like tigers. Even when they broke and ran, groups of them had turned to fire on their pursuers, or attack them, sword in hand. Over three hundred of them had been killed,