that the two horses seemed to curl around each other, nose to tail, and
the sabre and sword rang together. Dodd was taller than his opponent,
but the young Englishman, who was a lieutenant and scarce looked a day
over eighteen, was strong, and Dodd’s blow had hardly broken the weave
of his coat. He gritted his teeth as he hacked at Dodd, and Dodd
parried, parried again and the two blades locked, hilt against hilt,
and Dodd heaved to try and throw the young man off balance.
“You’re Dodd, aren’t you?” the Lieutenant said.
“Seven hundred guineas to you, boy.”
“Traitor,” the young Englishman spat.
Dodd heaved, then kicked the Lieutenant’s horse so that it moved
forward and he tried to slash back with his disengaged sword, but the
Lieutenant turned the horse in again. The men were too close to fight
properly, close enough to smell each other’s breath. The Lieutenant’s
stank of tobacco. They could hit their opponent with their sword
hilts, but not use the blades’ lengths. If either horse had been
properly schooled they could have been walked sideways away from the
impasse, but the horses would only go forward and Dodd was the first to
take the risk by using his spurs. He used them savagely, startling his
horse so that it leaped ahead, and even so he flinched from the
expected slash as the sabre whipped towards his spine, but the
Lieutenant was slow and the blow missed.
Dodd rode twenty paces up the track towards the watching sepoys, then
turned again. The Lieutenant was gaining confidence and he grinned as
the tall man charged at him. He lowered the sabre, using its point
like a spearhead, and urged his weary gelding into a trot. Dodd also
had his sword at the lunge, elbow locked, and the two horses closed at
frightening speed and then, at the very last second,
Dodd hauled on his rein and his horse went right, to the Lieutenant’s
unguarded side, and he brought the sword back across his body and then
cut it forward in one fluid motion so that the blade raked across the
Lieutenant’s throat. The sabre was still coming across to the parry
when the blood spurted. The Lieutenant faltered and his horse stopped.
The young man’s sword arm fell, and Dodd was turning. He came
alongside his opponent whose jacket was now dark with blood, and he
rammed the sword into the Lieutenant’s neck a second time, this time
point first, and the young man seemed to shake like a rat in a
terrier’s jaws.
Dodd hauled his sword free, then scabbarded it. He leaned over and
took the sabre from the dying man’s unresisting hand, then pushed the
Lieutenant so that he toppled from the horse. One of his feet was
trapped in a stirrup, but as Dodd seized the gelding’s rein and hauled
it round towards the fortress, the boot fell free and the young man was
left sprawling amidst his blood on the dusty road as Dodd led his
trophy homewards.
The Indians on the ramparts cheered. The sepoys spurred forward and
Dodd hurried ahead of them, but the Madrassi cavalrymen only rode as
far as their officer’s body where they dismounted. Dodd rode on,
waving the captured sabre aloft.
A gun fired from the fort and the ball screamed over the rocky isthmus
to crash home among the cavalrymen gathered about their officer. A
second gun fired, and suddenly the British cavalry and their riderless
horses were running away and the cheers on the wall redoubled. Manu
Bappoo was on the big buttress close to the gatehouse and he first
pointed an admonitory finger at Dodd, chiding him for taking such a
risk, then he touched his hands together, in thanks for Dodd’s victory,
and finally raised his arms above his head to salute the hero. Dodd
laughed and bowed his head in acknowledgement and saw, to his surprise,
that his white coat was red with the Lieutenant’s blood.
“Who would have thought the young man had so much blood in him?” he
asked the leader of his escort at the fortress gate.
“Sahib?” the man answered, puzzled.
“Never mind.” Dodd took the rifle back, then spurred his horse into