Pohlmann’s compoo had now joined the rest of Scindia’s army, which had already been swollen by the troops of the Rajah of Berar, so that over a hundred thousand men and all their animals now wandered the Deccan Plain in search of grazing, forage and grain. The vast army hugely outnumbered its enemy, but Scindia made no attempt to bring Wellesley to battle. Instead he led his horde in an apparently aimless fashion. They went south towards the enemy, then withdrew north, they made a lumbering surge to the east and then retraced their steps to the west, and everywhere they marched they stripped the farms, slashed down crops, broke into granaries, slaughtered livestock and rifled humble homes in search of rice, wheat or lentils. Every day a score of cavalry patrols rode south to find the enemy armies, but the Mahratta horsemen rarely came close to the redcoats for the British cavalry counter-patrolled aggressively and each day left dead horses on the plain while Scindia’s great host wandered mindlessly on.
“Now that you have such a fine horse,” Pohlmann said to Dodd a week after the Major’s theft, ‘perhaps you can lead a cavalry patrol?”
“Gladly, sir.”
“Someone has to find out what the British are doing,” Pohlmann grumbled.
Dodd rode south with some of Pohlmann’s own cavalry and his patrol succeeded where so many others had failed, but only because the Major donned his old red coat so that it would appear as if his score of horsemen were under the command of a British officer, and the ruse worked for Dodd came across a much smaller force of Mysore cavalry who rode unsuspecting into the trap. Six enemy escaped, eight died, and their leader yielded a mass of information before Dodd shot him through the head.
“You might have brought him back to us,” Pohlmann remonstrated gently when Dodd returned.
“I could have talked with him myself,” the Colonel added, peering down from his green-curtained howdah. The elephant plodded behind a purple-coated horseman who carried Pohlmann’s red flag emblazoned with the white horse of Hanover.
There was a girl with Pohlmann, but all Dodd could see of her was a dark languid hand bright with gems hanging over the howdatfs edge.
“So tell me what you learned, Major,” Pohlmann ordered.
“The British are back close to the Godavery, sir, but they’re still split into two forces and neither has more than six thousand infantry.
Wellesley’s nearest to us while Stevenson’s moving off to the west. I’ve made a map, sir, with their dispositions.” Dodd held the paper up towards the swaying howdah.
“Hoping to pincer us, are they?” Pohlmann asked, reaching down to pluck the map from the Major’s hand.
“Not now, Lwbchen,” he added, though not to Dodd.
“I imagine they’re staying divided because of the roads, sir,” Dodd said.
“Of course,” Pohlmann said, wondering why Dodd was teaching him to suck eggs. The British need for decent roads was much greater than the Mahrattas’, for the British carried all their foodstuffs in ox wagons and the cumbersome vehicles could not manage any country other than the smoothest grass plains. Which meant that the two enemy armies could only advance where the ground was smooth or the roads adequate. It made their movements clumsy, and it made any attempt to pincer Scindia’s army doubly difficult, though by now, Pohlmann reflected, the British commander must be thoroughly confused about Scindia’s intentions. So was Scindia, for that matter, for the Maharajah was taking his tactical advice from astrologers rather than from his European officers which meant that the great horde was impelled to its wanderings by the glimmer of stars, the import of dreams and the entrails of goats.
“If we marched south now,” Dodd urged Pohlmann, ‘we could trap Wellesley’s men south of Aurungabad. Stevenson’s too far away to support him.”
“It does sound a good idea,” Pohlmann agreed genially, pocketing Dodd’s map.
“There must be some plan,” Dodd suggested irritably.
“Must there?” Pohlmann asked airily.
“Higher up, Liebchen, just there!
That’s good!” The bejewelled hand had vanished inside the howdah.
Pohlmann closed his eyes for an instant, then opened them and smiled down on Dodd.
“The plan,” the Hanoverian said grandly, ‘is to wait and see whether Holkar will join us.” Holkar was the most powerful of all the Mahratta chieftains, but he was biding his time, uncertain whether to join Scindia and the Rajah of Berar or whether to sit out the war with his huge forces intact.