The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [646]
They closed and barred the great door behind them, and as it shut, a howl of triumph went up as the mob became aware that all three feringhis were dead.
Hundreds began to stream towards the barracks, led by the Fakir, who, leaving the shelter of the stables, ran at their head capering and waving his banner, while the crowds on the house-tops, realizing what had happened, ceased firing to dance and shout and brandish their muskets. But the three remaining jawans of the four whom Wally had sent up to the roof of the barracks continued to fire, though coldly now, for they had very few rounds left.
The mob had forgotten those four. But it remembered when three of its members fell dead and a further two, immediately behind them, were wounded by the same heavy lead bullets that had killed the men in front. As the Afghans checked, the rifles cracked again and a further three died, for the Guides were firing into a solid mass of men at a range of less than fifty yards, and it was not possible for them to miss. And presently a bullet struck the Fakir full in the face, and he threw up his arms and fell backwards, to be trampled under the feet of his followers, who running behind him, could not check in time.
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There were several factors that contributed to Ash's survival. For one thing, he was wearing Afghan dress and clutching a tulwar; and for another, only those who had been in the forefront of the fighting were aware that a man who appeared to be a citizen of Kabul had for a while fought side by side with the Angrezi officer. Then in the subsequent rush to finish off the mortally wounded Sahib, his unconscious body had been spurned aside, so that by the time the dust had settled he was no longer lying where he had fallen, but was some little distance away; not among the fallen Guides, but among half a dozen enemy corpses, his face unrecognizable under a mask of blood and dirt, and his clothing dyed scarlet from the severed jugular of a Herati soldier whose body lay sprawled above his own.
The blow on his head had been a glancing one, and though sufficiently violent to knock him insensible, it had not been severe enough to keep him so for very long; but when he recovered consciousness it was to discover that not one but two corpses lay above him; the second being a heavily built Afghan who had been shot through the head by one of the jawans on the barrack roof less than a minute earlier, and fallen across his legs.
The two inert bodies effectively pinned him to the ground, and finding that he could not move, he lay still for a while, dazed and uncomprehending, and with no idea where he was or what had happened to him. He had a hazy recollection of crawling through a hole – a hole in a wall. After that there was nothing – But as his mind slowly cleared he remembered Wally and strove futilely to move, only to find that the effort was beyond him.
His head throbbed abominably and his whole body felt as though it was one vast bruise and as weak as wet paper; yet gradually, as his wits returned, he realized that in all probability he had received no wound beyond a blow on the head and rough handling at the hands – or more likely the feet – of the mob. In which case there was nothing to prevent him struggling free of this weight that was pinning him down, and returning to the attack the minute he could collect the strength to do so and rid himself of this appalling dizziness: for to get on his feet merely in order to stagger round like a drunken man would be to invite instant death, and be no help to anyone.
The roar of the mob and the continued crackle of muskets and carbines told him that the battle was by no means over, and though his face was bruised and swollen, and his eyelids clogged with a sticky paste of dust and blood that he was unable to remove because he was still too weak to free his arms, he managed by dint of an