The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [605]
By the time he was able to roll clear and struggle to his feet, bruised, dazed and choked by dust, the rout had gone past and he was at the back of the crowd; and there was no longer any hope of his being able to get into the compound in time – if at all – for the noisy throng that milled to and fro ahead of him now numbered close on a thousand, and there was no question of his being able to force his way through it.
But he had under-estimated Wally. The youthful commander of the Escort might be an indifferent poet and hold an over-romantic view of life, but he possessed the extreme military virtue of keeping his head in a crisis.
The first inkling that something had gone wrong with the pay parade had dawned on the denizens of the Residency compound when they heard the roar of rage that greeted the disclosure that the Amir's Government was defaulting on its promise. And though that sound and the tumult that followed had been muffled by the houses in between, there were few in the compound who did not hear it, and stop whatever they were doing to stand stock still, listening…
They did not hear the suggestion that Cavagnari-Sahib would pay, for that had been a single voice only. But the uproar that had preceded it and the applause with which it was received, above all the cry of Dam-i-charya chanted in unison by several hundred voices, had been clearly audible. And when presently they realized that the volume of sound was not only increasing but coming steadily nearer, they knew before they saw the first of the running soldiers where the shouting crowd was heading.
Except for Wally, the Guides were not yet in uniform: the infantry and those who were not on guard duty had been taking their ease in the barracks, and Wally himself had been down at the cavalry pickets beyond the stables, inspecting the horses and talking to the cavalrymen and the syces. A sepoy of the Guides Infantry, Hassan Gul, ran past without seeing him, making for the barracks where the Havildar of B Company stood by the open archway, picking his teeth with a splinter and listening with detached interest to the hullabaloo being raised by those undisciplined shaitans of the Ardal Regiment.
‘They are coming here,’ panted Hassan Gul as he reached the barracks. ‘I was outside and saw them. Quick, shut the gate!’
It was the makeshift one that Wally had had made and put up only a short while ago, and would not have stood up to any determined battering. But the Havildar closed it while Hassan Gul ran on past the inner door of the deep archway and through the long courtyard, to shut and bolt the far door that faced the entrance to the Residency.
Wally too had been listening to the din of that abortive pay parade as he strolled along the line of picketed horses, pausing to fondle his own charger, Mushki, while he discussed cavalry matters with the sowars. He turned, frowning, to watch the running sepoy, and seeing the door into the barracks being closed, reacted to the situation as swiftly and instinctively as Ash had done:
‘You – Miru – go and tell the Havildar to open that gate and keep them open. All three, if they have shut the others. And tell him that whatever happens, no one is to fire unless I give the order. No one!’
Sowar Miru left at a run and Wally turned to the others and snapped: ‘No one – that is an order,’ and went swiftly back to the Residency by way of the barrack courtyard, where the doors now stood open, to report to Sir Louis.
‘You heard what the Sahib said: there will be no firing,’ said Jemadar Jiwand Singh to his troopers. ‘Moreover –’ But he had no time to say more, for