The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [622]
‘Keep to the south side of the barracks and seek what cover you can between there and the stables, instructed Sir Louis. ‘The jawans will distract the enemy with rapid fire until you reach the wall. God be with you.’
William sent an orderly to find Wally and tell him what was planned, and to ask for covering fire. And presently the messenger slipped away to the accompaniment of a barrage of shots, and having run the gauntlet of the open stretch of compound between the barracks and the near wall of the Kulla-Fi-Arangi, scrambled over it… to be seen no more.
Somewhere between that low mud wall and the palace, the fate that Allah is believed to tie about the neck of all His creatures may have lain in wait for him; or perhaps he had friends or relatives in Kabul or elsewhere in Afghanistan, and decided to take refuge with them in preference to carrying out an appallingly hazardous mission. All that is certain is that his message never reached the palace, and that he himself vanished as completely as though he had been no more than a grain of sand on the autumn wind.
In the barracks Wally and Havildar Hassan, assisted by half-a-dozen sepoys, several syces and some of the Residency servants, had been barricading the doorless stairways that led up in the thickness of the wall on either side of the archway to the long strips of roof that surrounded the canvas-covered central courtyard. This would leave them with only a single stair – case – the one at the far end near the door that gave on the Residency lane – but at least, in the event of a mass attack from the front, the men on the roof would not have to worry about the enemy storming up from below when or if Wally's makeshift outer door went down.
Their position was already precarious enough without that, and Rosie had erred in imagining that Wally did not realize the extent of the casualties that the garrison had suffered. Wally not only knew, but had been mentally crossing them off one by one and re-arranging the disposition of his little force, carefully husbanding his resources and doing everything he could to avoid risking the life of a single man unnecessarily, or allowing their morale to sink. His own was still high, for the sight of a familiar blue and white jar had told him that Ash was somewhere around, and he felt confident that Ash would not be idle.
Ash could be relied on to see that the Amir was informed of the parlous plight of the British Mission, even if every minister and high official in the entire Afghan Government was bent on concealing it. He would manage it somehow, and help would come. It was only a question of holding out long enough and not allowing themselves to be overrun… ‘Shabash, Hamzulla! Ab mazbut hai… That should fox the hosts of Midian,’ said Wally. ‘Now if we can -’
He stopped, listening to a new sound: a deep, slowly gathering roar that he had been aware of for the past few minutes as a distant background to the tumult raging beyond the north-western limits of the compound, but that now, unmistakably, was coming nearer. Not ‘Dam-i-charya’ this time, but ‘Ya-charya' – the war-cry of the Suni sect of Moslems, rolling towards him with ever-increasing speed and growing louder, nearer and fiercer until even the solid barrack walls seemed to shake to the rhythmic thunder of that rabble-rousing battle cry –
‘It is the troops from the cantonments,’ said Wally. ‘Bar the doors and get back into the Residency, all of you. Tell Jemadar Jiwand Singh to choose his men and be ready for another sortie. We may have to clear them out of that waste ground again.’ He turned and made for the stair at the far end of the barrack courtyard, and leaping up it ran forward along the roof above the Mohammedan quarters to the shorter strip of roof above the archway.
Looking over the loopholed parapet and the kneeling sepoys who were firing from behind it, he saw