the cleft. A rocket landed thirty paces behind him and began to chase
its tail, whirling about on the turf, scattering sparks, until it
finally lodged against a rock and burned itself out in a display of
small blue flames. Another round shot hammered into the gab ions but
now they were well stacked and the ball’s impact was soaked up by the
tight packed soil.
A whistle blew from the battery site, then blew twice more. Morris,
relieved by the sound, called to the men to his right.
“Back to the road!
Pass it on! Back to the road!” Thank God the worst of the ordeal was
over! Now he was supposed to withdraw to the battery, ready to protect
it through the remaining hours of the dark night, but Morris knew he
would feel a good deal safer once he was behind the gab ions just as he
knew that the cessation of the work would probably persuade the
Mahrattas to cease fire.
“Close on me!” he called to his company.
“Hurry!”
The message was passed along the picquet line and the men ran at a
crouch back to where Morris waited. They bumped into each other as
they gathered, then squatted as Morris called for Hakeswill.
“Not here, sir,” Sergeant Green finally decided.
“Count the men, Sergeant,” Morris ordered.
Sergeant Green numbered the men off.
“Three missing, sir,” he reported.
“Hakeswill, Lowry and Kendrick.”
“Damn them,” Morris said. A rocket hissed up from the gatehouse,
twisted in the night to leave a crazy trail of flame-edged smoke, then
dived down to the left, far down, plunging into the ravine that edged
the isthmus. The light of the exhaust flashed down the steep cliffs,
finally vanishing a thousand feet below Morris. Two guns fired
together, their balls hammering towards the fake lanterns. The battery
lanterns had vanished, evidence that the sappers had finished their
work.
“Take the men to the battery,” Morris ordered Green.
“Garrard? You stay with me.”
Morris did not want to do anything heroic, but he knew he could not
report that he had simply lost three men, so he took Private Tom
Garrard west across the tumbled ground where the picquet line had been
stretched. They called out the names of the missing men, but no reply
came.
It was Garrard who stumbled over the first body.
“Don’t know who it is, sir, but he’s dead. Bloody mess, he is.”
Morris swore and crouched beside the body. A rocket’s bright passage
showed him a slit throat and a spill of blood. It also revealed that
the man had been stripped of his coat which lay discarded beside the
corpse. The sight of the gaping throat made Morris gag.
“There’s another here, sir,” Garrard called from a few paces away.
“Jesus!” Morris twisted aside, willing himself not to throw up, but
the bile was sour in his throat. He shuddered, then managed to take a
deep breath.
“We’re going.”
“You want me to look for the other fellow, sir?” Garrard asked.
“Come on!” Morris fled, not wanting to stay in this dark charnel
house.
Garrard followed.
The gunfire died. A last rocket stitched sparks across the stars, then
Gawilghur was silent again.
Hakeswill cowered in his hiding place, shuddering as the occasional
flare of an exploding shell or passing rocket cast lurid shadows into
the narrow cleft. He thought he heard Lowry call aloud, but the sound
was so unexpected, and so quickly over, he decided it was his nerves.
Then, blessedly, he heard the whistle that signalled that the sappers
were done with their work, and a moment later he heard the message
being called along the line.
“Back to the road! Back to the road!”
The rockets and guns were still battering the night, so Hakeswill
stayed where he was until he sensed that the fury of the fire was
diminishing, then he crept out of his cleft and, still keeping low,
scuttled eastwards.
“Hakeswill!” a voice called nearby.
He froze.
“Hakeswill?” The voice was insistent.
Some instinct told the Sergeant that there was mischief in the dark,
and so Hakeswill crouched lower still. He heard something moving in
the night, the scrape of leather on stone, the sound of breathing, but