The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [616]
The roof of the Mess House was the highest point in the Mission cormpound, and from it he had a clear view of the great Arsenal that looked down on the compound from the rising ground beyond the cavalry lines. The range was barely two hundred yards; and there was a man standing in the doorway handing out muskets…
Sir Louis fired and saw him throw up his hands and fall, and reloading swiftly, fired again: taking deliberate aim and paying no attention to the hail of bullets that pattered about him as men on the surrounding house-tops began to fire in reply at the roof of the barracks and the Residency. Below him several women of the town, who had been hiding in the servants' quarters where they had no business to be, ran screeching like pea-hens across the compound, herded by a sepoy and one of the khidmatgars to the hammam, the bath-house, that was built partly underground and where the majority of the servants had already taken refuge. But though Sir Louis heard them, he did not look down.
Had the compound been on higher ground it would have made an excellent defensive position, since it contained a series of courts, each separated from the next by low mud walls that could have been easily loopholed, and the defenders could have held off any number of attackers, inflicting enormous casualties for as long as their ammunition lasted. But its position was pre-cisely that of the arena of a bull-ring to which Wally had compared it on the day of the Mission's arrival, so that the walls that would have provided cover against a frontal attack were useless against an enemy that was able to fire down from above: and by now, on house-tops ahead and along one entire side of the Residency and its compound – in high windows and on the battlements of the Arsenal and even on the roofs of many buildings in the upper Bala Hissar – men clustered thick as flies on a sweetmeat stall, firing as fast as they could load and yelling in triumph whenever a shot told.
Yet for all the notice he took of them, Sir Louis Cavagnari might have been lying peacefully on a rifle-range, engaged in target-practice and intent on marking up a high score. He fired and re-loaded swiftly, calmly, methodically, aiming at the men who swarmed down from the Arsenal, and selecting those in the forefront so that the ones who pressed behind tripped over the bodies as they fell.
He was a superb marksman, and his first nine shots had accounted for nine of the enemy when a spent bullet, ricocheting off the low brick rim of the roof a few inches from his head, struck him on the forehead. His head dropped and his long body jerked once and lay still, while the rifle slid from his nerveless hands and toppled into the lane below.
An exultant yell burst from the enemy on the nearer house-tops, and Ash, who had been watching from the window of his room, drew a harsh breath between his teeth and thought: ‘Oh God, they've got him’ – and in the next moment, ‘No they haven't!’ For the wounded man began to raise himself slowly and painfully, first to his knees and then with an enormous effort to his feet.
Blood was pouring down from the gash in his forehead, blotting out one side of his face and staining his shoulder scarlet, and as he stood there, swaying, a score of muskets cracked and as many puffs of dust exploded all around him from the mud-plastered surface of the roof. But it was as though he bore a charmed life, because not one struck him, and after a moment or two he turned and walked unsteadily to the stairs that led down from the roof and groped his way down and out of sight.
The Mess House was full of servants who had run in from their quarters to take refuge in the Residency, and of Guides who were firing steadily through loopholes cut in the walls and through the wooden shutters, and who did not look