from their eyes and flicked their tails while their riders talked soft Pashto to them, gently pulled their ears and tried to impart a calm they did not feel.
‘Squadron . . . mount.’ Reynolds’s voice carried clearly on the cool, still air as his mostly Pathan troopers swung easily into the saddle, the lance points sparkling in the sun. ‘Prepare to advance by troops.’ Keenan spurred his horse to the front of his twenty men. ‘Right wheel, walk march.’ The whole khaki-turbaned column divided into three neat little blocks, immediately throwing up a cloud of choking dust as the hoofs cut the ground.
‘Daffadar sahib.’ Keenan turned to his troop sergeant, a swarthy, heavily bearded ancient of two previous campaigns and at least thirty summers. ‘I guess we’ll be dismounting once we get into that bit of cover and moving forward with our carbines. Warn the horse holders, please and let’s be sharper than the other troops.’
Daffadar Sayed Miran, one of the only NCOs in the regiment whose English was fluent, nodded and spoke to the men, having to raise his voice above the thump of horseshoes and the metallic jingle of bits, weapons and harness. The ground was dry for February – the snows around the banks of the Helmand had been unusually light that year – but there was still a bite in the wind that made Keenan glad of the sheepskin poshteen in which he and all of the men had wrapped themselves. It had been an uneventful few weeks of foraging and inconclusive reconnaissance while Major General Biddulph had scattered his troops up to Gereshk and beyond, trying to find both supplies and the enemy. But the latter had hardly shown themselves – until now.
‘Well, the weather’s improving and it’s clear that the column has done all it usefully can,’ had been the verdict of Colonel Malcolmson at the start of the fifty-mile march back to Kandahar. Things had begun quietly enough, with every unit that took its turn on rearguard duty hardly expecting to see the foe. Then, about four days ago, just as the column had entered the gritty valley of the Khakrez, the sniping had started. They were trespassing in Durani country, land that belonged to the people of Ahmed Shah’s Pearl Throne, proud and doughty warriors.
At first, Keenan and everyone else would duck as odd bullets whined over the column fired by invisible not-so-sharpshooters. Then, a couple more badmashes had taken up the challenge and a steady drip of casualties had begun. The first violent death that Keenan had seen had been that of a sowar from the 3rd Bombay Light Cavalry, whose pierced body had been carried past his own men on a dhoolie two days ago. Even his Pathans had pretended to look away while sneaking little peeps at the inert form whose blanket had come away from its cooling contents. Keenan had seen what had been a husky youth lying on his face, head turned to one side, eyes open with flies feasting at the corners. The wind caught the corpse’s moustache, lifting the hair to show stained yellow teeth set in a jaw that had been smashed by a bullet. Blood had spread over the man’s khaki collar and soaked, brown, into the grey issue blanket. Keenan had been repelled but fascinated by the sight.
‘Left wheel, form line of squadron.’ The NCOs repeated Captain Reynolds’s orders as Keenan’s and the other two troops wheeled from column into line. ‘Halt . . . dismount. Prepare to skirmish.’ None of the words of command came as a surprise as the five dozen cavalrymen dropped from saddle to ground, secured their lances, passed their reins to every fourth man – the horse holders – and pulled their Sniders from the long leather buckets strapped to the saddle beside their stirrup leathers. But a covey of shots whacked through the leafless branches above Keenan’s head, just as his first foot touched the ground, showering him with chips of bark and wood.
‘Ah, sahib, it is you the Duranis want – they have heard the great shikari has come for them at last!’ Of all the native NCOs, only Daffadar Sayed Miran had the confidence and fluency to mock a British officer – however gently. The whole troop had watched Keenan fail to knock down a single duck when they’d been encamped by a lake two weeks ago, although he’d expended much powder and shot. So his reputation as a great hunter – or shikari – had been stillborn, and the troops chuckled at the jest.
‘That’s as maybe, Daffadar sahib, but I want the boys to line that bank yonder, load and make ready.’ Keenan was more interested in having his men in place and looking for targets before either of the other two troops than in his sergeant’s humour. He was gratified to see how easily the men moved, sheathed sabres pulled back in their left hands, carbines at the trail in their right, each man looking for a good position from which to reply to those who had dared to fire at their sahib.
‘Where d’you think that fire came from, Daffadar sahib?’ Keenan had thrown himself down on a dusty bank topped with coarse grass that was deep in the shadow of the trees. He and his men would be difficult to see in cover like this and he pulled his binoculars from the pouch on his belt to scan the ground in front of him.
‘I don’t know yet, sahib – but our infantry are moving up on something.’ Miran pointed slowly so as not to draw the enemy’s eye with any sudden movement, indicating twenty or so khaki-clad men from the 29th who were making their way along the muddy banks of a stream about three hundred paces in front of the squadron.
Keenan admired the way that Captain Reynolds had interpreted the colonel’s orders for the rearguard. Where he’d chosen to dismount his men allowed him not just a covered position, but a dominating view over the rest of the shallow valley below them. A stand of high trees surrounded a scatter of ruined, weather-beaten buildings at the edge of some unusually verdant fields just to their front, before the valley rose grandly to their south against a powder-blue sky into a series of jagged foothills that dominated the far horizon. If nothing else, the last three months in the field had taught Keenan how to read the ground. Now he could see that while the slope below looked smooth and ideal for mounted work, shadowy folds could easily hide ditches or even wide nullahs that could protect them from any enemy horse, but also make a quick descent to the lower ground very difficult.
‘There, sahib, look.’ Miran had spoken even before the reports of several rifle shots reached their ears. He’d seen the billows of smoke of the enemy riflemen who had fired at them a few minutes before from the cover to their front, as the next volley sang harmlessly around their heads. ‘The infantry wallahs have found them – see.’
‘Yes, the Twenty-ninth are on to it, and the Duranis ain’t seen them yet.’ The winter sun caught the long, thin blades as the turbaned Beloochi infantrymen fixed bayonets, invisible to their enemies in the brush on the bank above them.
‘Three fifty, aim at the muzzle smoke.’ Captain Reynolds gave the range to the squadron. ‘Volley on my order, then fire by troop sequence.’
Keenan knew that sixty rounds all at once from the short Snider carbines should throw the enemy into disarray. Then a steady ripple of rounds would allow the infantry to close in without taking casualties, although, at this range, none of the fire would be precise.
The breech-traps of the Sniders snapped closed. The men fiddled with the iron ramp sights, then cuddled the butts against the shoulder and settled into their firing positions. Keenan watched as the khaki dolls began to clamber out of the ditch before Reynolds gave the order, ‘Fire!’ and every man bucked to the kick of his weapon. Dust flew; twigs and dry leaves were thrown about as the volley struck home.
‘Two Troop, reload, three fifty, await my order,’ Keenan yelled, just as if he were at the butts. This was the first time he’d given orders designed to kill other human beings, but he was at such a distance from the damage he was trying to inflict that it all felt remarkably innocent, really no different from an exercise. ‘Wait for One Troop, lads.’ Keenan didn’t want any of his men from 2 Troop to fire prematurely – they would be a laughing-stock if that happened. But as the men to his left fired, so the 29th rushed forward, weapons outstretched. Suddenly his men’s sights were full of their own people, charging home amid the thicket.
‘Wait, Two Troop!’ One or two of his men looked up from the aim towards him, uncertain whether they had understood the English orders. ‘Switch right . . . fire!’ Much to his relief, every round flew to the flank of the attacking infantry, scything through the brush where further enemy could be sheltering.
‘Stop . . . Cease fire. Reload, One and Two Troops.