Flashman on the March. George Fraser MacDonald
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to be what matters! Aye, survival!’ This was greeted by a brief silence, followed by a drawl from a Scinde Horse subaltern.
‘Ah, well … any volunteers for the relief expedition in two years’ time?’ Some laughter, by no means hearty.
The usual grumble-and-grin of men in the field, if you like, but with a decided note of uncertainty in it – and these weren’t just any soldiers, but the best India could show. Still, I might have dismissed them as croakers if Speedy’s silence during the meal hadn’t convinced me that he shared their misgivings.
You see, we poltroons have a talent for spotting heroes – we have to, in order to steer well clear of them – and from what I learned from Henty, who sat by me at tiffin, Speedy was a prime specimen, and an expert to boot. A gentle giant who looked like the wrath of God but had no side at all, had served in four armies, and probably killed more men than the dysentery. He knew Abyssinia inside out, spoke Amharic, which is the principal lingo of the country, and had been drill instructor in the service of Emperor Theodore, who had particularly admired his party trick of cleaving a sheep in two (lengthwise, God help us) with a single sword-stroke. But they’d fallen out, and Speedy had been farming and fighting Maoris in New Zealand when the present crisis arose; Napier had insisted on having him as his political, and Speedy had rolled up for service with nothing but the clothes he stood in and a couple of blankets.
That tells you the sort of chap he was,21 another of the crazy gentleman-adventurers who infested the frontiers in the earlies, and when a fellow with his authority don’t contradict croaking, you draw your own conclusions – mine being that I must lose no time in tapping Napier for my ticket home.
Just for interest I asked Speedy, when we were making ready for our departure up-country, how he thought Napier might set about the campaign, and was shocked when he said coolly that his only hope was to go hell-for-leather for Magdala with a small force, trust to luck he’d find the prisoners there, and high-tail it back to civilisation double-quick.
‘You went with Grant to Pekin, didn’t you, and Gough to the Sutlej – aye, and Sherman to the sea?’ He shook his shaggy head. ‘’Tain’t that kind of trip. They knew where they were going, with proper transport, commissariat, lines of communication, knowing who and where their enemy was, and with force enough to do the trick. Napier’s got none o’ that. As that old Baluch said, it’s time and the country he’s up against, and all he can do is raid and run.’
‘Man to man, what are the odds?’
He thought a moment, tugging his beard. ‘Even chance. Six to four against if ’twas anyone else, but Napier’s the best since old Colin Campbell. Yes, I’d risk a monkeyfn8 on him – if I had one!’
He was all action now, breaking the seals on one of the strong-boxes and having the glittering mass of Maria Theresas transferred to saddlebags by the Marines, with the sergeant watching like a hawk to see that no coins stuck to crafty fingers – he made ’em strip to their drawers and bare feet to make sure no one slipped cash into his clothing, and Twentyman again gave thanks that the 33rd weren’t on hand.
‘Aye, a parcel of Fenian thieves,’ says Speedy, ‘but well worth their salt when they form square. Did you hear that they went on an almighty drunk, and when Cooper swore they’d be left down-country their spokesmen asked for fifty lashes a man if only they could join the advance? What could Cooper do but pardon them, the impudent rascals?’
The Provost-Marshal was called to take charge of the remaining boxes, and I commended my Bootnecks to him as the best guard for the dollars he could hope to find. Their sergeant smiled for the first time in our acquaintance, and I supplied a little touch of Flashy by thanking him and his file for their good and trusty work, shaking hands with each man by name, which I knew must go well. Popularity Jack, that’s me.
The weight of the specie was such that we needed half a dozen beasts apart from our own,22 and Speedy decided that so many led-horses must slow us down, so a half-section of the Scinde Horse were whistled up, stalwart frontier riders in the long green coats and trowsers, with red sash and puggaree, that I hadn’t seen since the Mutiny, each man with a twin-barrelled rifle and sword – not the chaps I’d have picked myself, since half of them were Pathans who’d sooner steal than sleep. But Speedy swore by them, and to my gratification their havildar was a leathery veteran from the Mogala country who claimed to remember ‘Bloody Lance’, as he addressed me, pouring out the old tale of how Ifflass-mann slaughtered the four Gilzais – so much lying tommyrot, you understand, but I daresay I could still dine out on it in the caravanserais along the Jugdulluk road.fn9
We saddled up, Speedy inspecting the saddlebags on every ‘Scindee’, and then we set ahead through the bedlam of the camp; five miles it stretched from the Zoola causeway, on either side of the railway tracks, with the two locomotives puffing and squealing up and down. They weren’t used on the causeway itself, for fear of their weight causing a landslip. What with piled gear, work gangs, Ab vendors who’d set up their stalls as a bazaar in the tent-lines, and no attempt to bring order to the camp, it took us the best part of an hour to reach open country, and Speedy cursed the delay. I didn’t mind, for there was plenty to take the eye, chiefly the Shoho girls with their saucy smiles and hair frizzed into great turbans, bare to their loin-cloths and well pleased with the catcalls they drew as they sashayed along with their pots balanced on their heads.
‘Fine crop of half-caste babes there’ll be by Christmas,’ says Speedy. ‘Can’t blame our fellows either; ’tain’t often they run into beauties like these beyond the borders.’
There was an elephant train loading up on the edge of the camp, half a dozen of the enormous brutes kneeling, each beside a sloping ramp up which the great mortars and Armstrong guns were being hauled to be secured on platforms on the elephants’ backs. Speedy explained that there was no other way the heavy artillery could be carried through the ravines and along the narrow winding paths cut into the cliff-sides in the high country; the lighter mountain guns could be taken apart and carried by led-mules.
‘That old Baluch major was right, you see. We stand or fall on animal transport; without it we’re dead in our tracks in the middle of nowhere. And transport depends on forage, and forage depends on money.’ He slapped his saddlebag of coin. ‘That’s Napier’s life-blood you’ve brought us. This’ll keep him going for a day or so, and God willing the mules’ll bring up the rest within the fortnight.’
‘Can we count on the tribes for supplies? Some of the fellows at tiffin seemed to think they might fight.’
He shook his head. ‘Not at the moment. They’re too glad to see us – and our dollars. Fact is, the common folk would like nothing better than to have us conquer the country and rule it. We pay, we’d give ’em peace from their endless civil wars, protect ’em from rebels and bandits and locusts and slavers, maybe even relieve their poverty – d’you know that many are so poor they’ll sell their wives and daughters, even? They’re priest-ridden, too; their kangaroo Christian church gets two-thirds of the peasantry’s produce – aye, two-thirds! The king and their chiefs get a cut of what’s left, so there ain’t too much over for the brigands to pinch, is there?’
I wondered if we’d add Abyssinia to our savage possessions, but he said there was no chance of that. ‘We’re here to free the prisoners – bus!’fn10 says he. ‘Oh, the chiefs are all for our removing Theodore and installing one of them in his place, but Napier won’t play politics, or take sides, and so he’s told ’em. They can’t believe we ain’t bent on conquest – and I daresay our European pals and the Yankees share their view – but they’re dead wrong. Even the Tories think Britannia’s got quite enough empire, thank’ee very much, and stands in no need of the most advanced barbarians in Africa, whose idea of politics is civil war and massacre. Anyway,’ he added, ‘what profit is there in a country that’s mostly rock and desert? Why, no colonists would look at it!’
I asked what had brought him here, into Theodore’s service, too, and why he’d left it. He rode for a moment in thought, chin down on his chest, and then laughed almost as though he was embarrassed.
‘Blowed