The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [543]
Wally, having seen Wigram fall, had supposed that he had been carried back to the rear and out of danger. But his Destiny had been waiting for Wigram that day and he had not been permitted to escape it. He had ordered Wally, the only other British officer, to take the squadrons forward; and the boy had obeyed him – charging into the thick of the fight and coming through unscathed, with no mark on him except for a faint scratch and a slashed riding boot. But Wigram, following slowly and painfully on foot with the aid of one of his sowars, had been hit again in the hip.
As he fell for the third time a group of tribesmen, rushing in for the kill, had been beaten off, for the sowar carried a carbine as well as a cavalry sabre, and Wigram had his revolver. Five of the attackers fell and the rest drew back, but Wigram was losing blood fast. He reloaded the revolver and with an enormous effort of will managed to raise himself on one knee. But as he did so, a stray bullet fired by someone in the mêlée further up the slope struck him full in the chest and he fell forward and died without a word.
An exultant shout went up from his surviving assailants, and they rushed forward again to hack at his body, for to an Afghan the corpse of a dead enemy merits mutilation – and never more so than when the enemy is a feringhi and an Infidel. But they had reckoned without Jiwan Singh, Sowar.
Jiwan Singh had snatched up the revolver, and standing astride his dead Commander, fought them off with bullet and sabre. He had stood there for more than an hour, protecting Wigram's body against all comers, and when the battle was over and the surviving Guides came back from the plateau to count their dead and wounded, they found him still on guard; and around him in a circle the bodies of no less than eleven dead Khugianis.
Later, when all the official reports had been sent in, the praise and blame apportioned and decorations awarded – and when the critics who had not been present had pointed out errors of judgement and explained how much better they themselves would have handled the affair – Sowar Jiwan Singh was awarded the Order of Merit. But to Wigram Battye there fell a greater honour…
When the wounded had been taken away and the stretcher-bearers came for his body to carry it back to Jalalabad (as any grave near the battle-field would certainly be dug up and desecrated as soon as the column had gone) his sowars had refused to let the ambulance men touch it. ‘It is not fitting that such a one as Battye-Sahib should be borne by strangers,’ said their Sikh spokesman. ‘We ourselves will carry him.’ And they had done so.
Most of them had been in the saddle since dawn, and all, in the heat of the day, had ridden in two charges and fought a desperate hour-long battle against tremendous odds. They were weary to the verge of exhaustion and Jalalabad was more than twenty long miles away over a road that was little more than a track over stony ground. But all through that warm April night, relays of his men plodded forward, carrying Wigram's body shoulder high. Not upon a hospital litter, but laid upon cavalry lances.
Zarin had taken his turn at that sad task, and so for a mile or two had Wally. And once a man who was not a sowar, but from his dress appeared to be a Shinwari, came out of the darkness and took the place of one of the pallbearers. Strangely enough, no one had made any move to prevent him or questioned his right to be there, and it almost seemed as though he was known to them and had been expected; though he spoke only once, very briefly and in an undertone to Zarin, whose reply was equally brief and inaudible. Only Wally, stumbling tiredly in the rear, his mind blurred by fatigue and grief and the sour aftermath of battle, did