PATRICK MERCER

Red Runs the Helmand

To my wife, Cait.

This is the third and final book in the Anthony Morgan trilogy: I will miss him and his friends. I would like to thank my wife, Cait, who has heard every word of this book more times than she cares to remember, my son, Rupert, and the staff of the 66th Regiment’s Museum in Salisbury. I canot forget Sue Gray and Edward Barker for their patience and forebearing and, of course, my agent, Natasha Fairweather of AP Watt and my faultless editor, Susan Watt.

Skegby, February 2011

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Epigraph

Author’s Note

Chapter One - Kandahar

Chapter Two - The Ghazi

Chapter Three - Khusk-i-Nakud

Chapter Four - The March

Chapter Five - Gereshk

Chapter Six - Eve of Battle

Chapter Seven - Maiwand, Morning

Chapter Eight - Maiwand, Afternoon

Chapter Nine - Retreat

Chapter Ten - The Siege

Chapter Eleven - The Sortie

Chapter Twelve - The Battle of Kandahar

Glossary

Historical Note

Also by PATRICK MERCER

Copyright

About the Publisher

Author’s Note

I’m amazed that anyone can soldier in Afghanistan at all. During several recent visits to that country I have found the heat almost unbearable and the ground unforgiving. Today’s soldiers have the advantage of wheeled and air transport (well, some of the time) but much of their fighting is done on foot burdened with personal loads of electronic equipment, body armour, helmets and the like that would have horrified their predecessors.

Most remarkably, though, the soldier of 1880, while carrying much less kit, survived on a fraction of the water that his great-great-grandson does. It’s noticeable how much logistic effort in the Helmand valley today is absorbed by the carrying forward of potable water – an effort that is directly equivalent to that needed for animal fodder in the 1880s. It has taken me some time to understand the priorities of an army in the field in the nineteenth century and the different privations they suffered.

Another challenge has been to grasp how the relationship between officers and men in the Indian armies actually worked. I’ve modelled this on the modern Gurkha troops alongside whom I served and the way that their British officers communicated with them. Nowadays, officers in Gurkha regiments have to pass exams in the language of their men. While a similar system was in its infancy at the time of Maiwand, British officers would have been surrounded by native dialects both on and off duty and this, I have no doubt, would have encouraged them to learn the language. But imagine how difficult communications would have been between, say, the 66th and Jacob’s Rifles; I’ve tried to capture some of this friction.

The language of my British characters, for obvious reasons, lacks the casual racism of the later nineteenth century, but I’ve tried to reflect the humour, candour and pragmatism of the time. In the same way, I believe that relationships then between officers and men in the British Regular Army were very similar to those of today. The film industry is, perhaps, most to blame for the impression that Victorian officers treated their men with a stiff, unbending formality but contemporary diaries and letters would utterly refute that. So, I’ve taken the heartbeat of the men with whom I served a hundred years later and sprinkled the way in which they spoke and joked with the military patois of imperial times; I hope I’ve got it right.

Anthony Morgan has now fought in the Crimea, the great Mutiny and the Second Afghan War, fearing much, slaughtering many and seeing more horrors than ten men. I’ve visited the home of the real Morgan in a delightful corner of County Cork and been treated with great courtesy by his descendants. It was there that Anthony actually retired to raise a family, pursue foxes and all other forms of wildlife and have a walk-on part in the Somerville and Ross books. I suspect that it is now time to let the fictional character enjoy some of the same.

Last, I’ve taken advice on almost everything in this book. If something is obscure, not covered in the glossary or just plain wrong, then it is entirely my own fault.

Patrick Mercer

Skegby

Nottinghamshire

Chapter One - Kandahar

‘No, Havildar, turn out the bloody guard, won’t you? I don’t want these two men standing there like goddamn sacks of straw. Just turn out the guard!’

I never could get my tongue round Hindi. It was all very well cussing native troops, but if they really couldn’t understand anything beyond the fact that you were infuriated with them, what was the point? In my experience, the angrier a sahib got them, the more inert and immobile they became. It was the middle of March 1860 and I’d only arrived in Kandahar after a long journey from India forty-eight hours before. And what a hole it was. The surrounding country was what I’d expected, all mountains, vertical passes and twisting, gritty roads; there was a rough beauty about it after the stifling lowlands of India. But the old city was not what I’d imagined at all. For a start, it was so much smaller than I’d thought. True, shacks, mud-built slums and thatched huts sprawled around outside the wall of the place, but the town itself wasn’t much bigger than Cork, yet it was packed twice as tight and smelt three times as bad.

Now, this little fracas at the gate came at the end of a long day when Heath, my brigade major, had proved to be even more useless than I’d thought. We’d been all round the units of my brigade, some of which were still dragging themselves into the town after the long march up from Quetta, although most of them had now arrived. I’d thought the Sappers and Miners’ horses slovenly – girths loose and fodder badly stowed. I’d found rust on more than one entrenching tool of the 19th Bombay and now, as I approached the Shikapur, or south, Gate of the city, Jacob’s Rifles – who had been the first to arrive and were meant to be finding the city guard – failed to recognise their own brigade commander. And what was that clown, Heath, doing about it? Was he chasing and biting the NCO in charge? No, I had to do it my-bloody-self.

Don’t misunderstand me, I was as keen as anyone else to get another campaign medal to stick on my chest, but from the very start of this punch-up, I’d had my doubts about being in Afghanistan. I’d never been convinced of how much the Russians really wanted to get a toehold on the Hindu Kush, but Disraeli had been persuaded by the political officers out here that there was more to it than the Tsar’s boys sending missions to Kabul and bending Amir Shere Ali’s mind against the British, so we had invaded in November ’78. All credit to Dizzy, Generals Roberts, Sam Browne and Stewart were backed to the hilt. Their three columns pushed hard into this miserable country, occupied Kabul after a bit of trouble, drove out Shere Ali and concluded peace with his son, Yakoob Khan, in May ’79. They’d bought the wily old lad off for the knock-down price of sixty thousand quid, after he’d promised to behave himself and accepted our Resident, Sir Louis Cavagnari. And there we’d all thought it had ended. If only that had been the case.

While others were grabbing all the glory (like that odious little sod Bob Roberts), I was still in Karachi, thinking that, as a forty-nine-year-old colonel, I’d reached the end of the career road, when news reached us of Cavagnari’s murder last September. Before that, there had been some pretty vicious fighting and we had all thought that his being allowed into the capital had marked the end of things – at least for a while. I reckoned we’d done quite a good job right across Afghanistan, but then, as usual, the windbag politicians had failed to open their history books and sent all the wrong signals to the Afghans. Instead of reinforcing success and giving the tribesmen the chance to sample the delights of imperial rule for a few months more, Whitehall listened too closely to the lily-livered press, the Treasury began to do its sums – and the tribesmen soon grasped that we had no plans to stay in their country beyond the next Budget Day. And who paid for that? Poor Cavagnari and his Corps of Guides bodyguard: butchered to a man in the Residency in Kabul. It was all a little too much like the last débâcle back in ’42 for my liking.

Then, of course, the papers really took hold. The blood of English boys was being shed for no reason, while innocent women and children were being caught by ill-aimed shells, the Army’s finest were being made to look like monkeys by a crowd of hillmen armed with swords and muskets. There were echoes of our last attempt to paint the map of Afghanistan a British red, of MacNaughton and Dr Brydon again. Then, to my amazement, three weeks ago, the Whigs won the general election: Gladstone found himself wringing his hands and ‘saving’ fallen women all the way into Downing Street. Now, with a card-carrying Liberal in charge, we all suspected we would quit Afghanistan faster than somewhat and certainly before the next tax rise, leaving the job half done and with every expectation of having to repeat the medicine once the amir or his masters in St Petersburg got uppity again.

‘What on earth’s taking them so long, Heath? We haven’t interrupted salaah, have we?’ I knew enough about Mussulman troops to understand that their ritual cleansing and prayers, when the military situation allowed, were vitally important. ‘Well, have we, Heath?’ But my brigade major didn’t seem to know – he just looked blankly back at me. ‘We need to make damn sure that when we’re in garrison all the native regiments pray at the same time. Otherwise there’ll be bloody chaos. See to it, if you please.’

I’d found out as much as I could about the general situation while I was on my way up here to take command of a thrown-together brigade. In it I had some British guns, Her Majesty’s 66th Foot and two battalions of Bombay infantry, while the 3rd Scinde Horse was in the cavalry brigade next door. By some strange twist of fate, I had one son in the 66th under my direct command while my other boy was in the Scindis, just a stone’s throw away.

Mark you, I was bloody delighted and a bit surprised to find myself promoted to brigadier general – but I was an old enough campaigner to know that a scratch command of any size would need plenty of grip by me and bags of knocking into shape on the maidan before I’d dream of allowing it to trade lead with the enemy – particularly lads like the Afghans: they’d given our boys a thorough pasting last year. And what I was seeing of the units that I was to have under my command left me less than impressed. Anyway, it was as clear as gin that if hard knocks needed to be dished out, my divisional commander, General James Primrose, would choose either his cavalry brigadier – Nuttall – or my old friend Harry Brooke, the other infantry brigade commander, to do it, wouldn’t he? After all, while they were both junior to me, they’d been up-country much longer.

Talking of being less than impressed, this little mob was stoking up all my worst fears. ‘Come on, man, turn out the guard!’ I might as well have been talking Gaelic. The havildar just stood there at the salute, all beard and turban, trembling slightly as I roasted him, while his two sentries remained either side of the gate, rifles and bayonets rigidly at the ‘present’. Of the whole guard, a sergeant and twelve – who should have been kicking up the dust quick as lightning at the approach of a brigadier general – there was no sign at all. And Heath just continued to sit on his horse beside me, gawping.

‘Well, tell him, Heath – I don’t keep a dog to bark myself, you know!’ I wondered, sometimes, at these fellows they sent out to officer the native regiments. I’d picked out Heath from one of the battalions under my command, the Bombay Grenadiers – where he’d been adjutant – because he’d had more experience than most and because he was said to be fluent. But of initiative and a sense of urgency, there was bugger-all.

‘Sir . . . yes, of course . . .’ and the man at last let out a stream of bat that finally had the havildar trotting away inside the gate to get the rest of his people. It was quite a thing to guard, though. The walls of Kandahar were packed, dried mud, thirty foot high at the north end, faced with undressed stone to at least half that height and topped with a fire step and loop holes for sentries. The Shikapur Gate was a little lower than the surrounding walls. It was made up of a solid stone arch set with two massive wooden gates, through which traipsed a never-ending procession of camels, oxen and carts, carrying all the wonders of the Orient. Now, the dozen men came tumbling out of the hut inside the walls that passed for a guardroom, squeezing past mokes and hay-laden mules while pulling at belts, straps and pouches, their light grass-country shoes stamping together as the havildar and his naik got them into one straight line looking something like soldiers.

If I’d been in the boots of the subaltern who’d just turned up, though, I’d have steered well clear. I’d dismounted and was about to inspect the jawans when up skittered a pink-faced kid, who looked so young that I doubted the ink was yet dry on his commission. He halted in the grit and threw me a real drill sergeant’s salute – as if that might deflect my irritation.

‘Sir, orderly officer, Thirtieth Bombay Native Infantry, Jacob’s Rifles, sir!’ The boy was trembling almost as much as the NCO had done – God, I remembered how bloody terrifying brigadier generals were when I was a subaltern.

‘I can see you’re the orderly officer. What’s your name, boy?’ I knew how easy it was to petrify young officers; I knew how fierce I must have seemed to this griff and he was an easy target for the day’s frustrations – I wasn’t proud of myself.

‘Sir, Ensign Moore, sir.’ The boy could hardly speak.

‘No, lad, in proper regiments you give a senior officer your first name too – you’re not a transport wallah with dirty fingernails . . .’ I knew how stupidly pompous I was being ‘. . . so spit it out.’

‘Sir, Arthur Moore. Just joined from England, sir.’

But there was something about the youngster’s sheer desire to please that pricked my bubble of frustration. If I’d been him, I would have come nowhere near an angry brigadier general – I’d have found pressing duties elsewhere and let the havildar take the full bite of the great man’s anger. But no: young Arthur Moore straight out from England had known where his duty lay and come on like a good ’un.

‘You’re rare-plucked, ain’t you, Arthur Moore?’ I found myself smiling at his damp face, all the tension draining from my shoulders, all the pent-up irritation of a day with that scrub Heath gone. ‘Let’s have a look at these men’s weapons, shall we?’

Well, the sentries may have been a bit dozy and not warned the NCOs of my approach, and the havildar’s English may have been as bad as my Hindi, but Jacob’s rifles were bloody spotless. Pouches were full, water-bottles topped up and the whole lot of them in remarkably good order. It quite set me up.

‘Right, young Moore, a slow start but a good finish. Well done.’ I tried to continue sounding gruff and impossible to please, but after all the other nonsense of the day, this sub altern and his boys had won me over.

‘Shabash, Havildar sahib . . .’ It was the best I could manage as I settled myself back into the saddle.

‘Shabash, General sahib.’ The havildar’s creased, leathery face split into a grin as the guard crashed to attention and Moore shivered a salute. Perhaps, after all, there was some good in the benighted brigade I’d been given.

No sooner had I had my sport with the lads on the gate and arrived at the mess rooms that had been arranged for me than I was summoned to the Citadel to report to my divisional commander in his headquarters, which the great man had set up in the old building. Now, Kandahar had been occupied by General Donald Stewart’s Lahore Division during the initial invasion, so when our division had been ordered to tramp up from India to replace Stewart’s lot, I’d expected to find the town in good order and all ready to be defended – after all, the Lahore Division had arrived in the place more than a year ago. However, apart from skittering about the Helmand valley, they appeared to have done absolutely nothing to prepare the place for trouble. They’d just loafed about before being ordered to clear the route back to Kabul, leaving us of Primrose’s division to put the place in some sort of order.

At the north end of the town, just within the walls, there was a great, louring stone-built keep of strange Oriental design. There may have been some fancy local name for it, but we knew it simply as the Citadel. I’d never seen anything quite like it: its curtain walls were a series of semi-circular towers, all linked to one another, with a higher keep that dominated them in turn. I don’t know when it was built, probably more than a century before, but it was solid enough and could have been made pretty formidable. But Stewart’s people hadn’t thought to mount a single gun on it, while almost two miles of old defensive walls, which stretched in an uneven rectangle south of the fort, had been neither improved nor loop-holed. Meanwhile, the garrison’s lines were sited nice and regimentally, but with no more thought for trouble than if they’d been in bloody Colchester! Had they learnt nothing after Cavagnari’s murder and the bloodbath in Kabul last September?

‘Here, General, look at those ugly customers.’ Heath, my brigade major, had failed to read my mood, as usual, and was being his normal irritating self. ‘Ghazis, you can bet on it.’

Heath, Lynch – the trumpeter who had been attached to me by the Horse Gunners – and I were hacking along from the cantonment to meet our lord and master General Primrose up in the Citadel. There, I was expected to report my brigade present and correct to Himself. I would also be briefed on the situation.

‘Ghazis? Why d’you think that, Heath?’ I looked across at a handful of young braves who were filing along past a scatter of native stalls on the edge of the bazaar. Lean, tall, well set-up men, their hook noses and tanned skin told me nothing exceptional; they carried swords, shields and jezails slung across their backs, like half of the rest of the men in this town, and looked me straight in the eye, rather than slinking away, like most of the other tribesmen do at the sight of Feringhee officers. ‘They look more like normal Pathans to me. I’ve a notion that Ghazis don’t carry firearms.’ Those who knew told me that the Ghazis, Islamic zealots from the most extreme sects who had sworn to die while trying to kill any infidel who trod upon their land, did their lethal duty with cold steel only, eschewing muskets and rifles as tools of the devil.

‘Possibly, General, but you never quite know how they’ll disguise themselves. Look at their arrogant expressions,’ Heath continued. When I’d picked him, I’d assumed that, with all his service in India and his fluent bat, a degree of common sense and knowledge of the workings of the native mind would come with it. Both appeared to have eluded him – he was even more ignorant of local matters than I was.

‘No, sir, they ain’t Ghazis.’ Trumpeter Lynch had been part of my personal staff for less than twenty-four hours, but he’d already seen through my brigade major. ‘If they was Ghazis they’d have buggered off at the sight of us, sir. My mate who was in Kabul last year reckons you’ll only see one of them bastards when he’s a-coming for you, knife aimed at yer gizzard. No, sir, them’s just ordinary Paythans, like the general said.’

Heath might have been wrong on that score, but he was right about their arrogance. They all continued to stare at us. The oldest of the group, a heavily bearded man without, apparently, a tooth in his head, spat on my mounted shadow as it passed them by, expressing his contempt most eloquently.

‘A trifle slow off the mark, Morgan?’ Major General James Maurice Primrose and I had never liked each other. ‘I asked for you to be here at half past the hour. It’s five and twenty to by my watch.’

The sergeant of the Citadel guard had been a smart but slow-witted man from the second battalion of the 7th Fusiliers who’d been incapable of directing my staff and me to the divisional commander’s offices; none of us had been there before and Heath hadn’t thought to check. So, to my fury, I was late and last, giving Primrose just the sort of opening I’d hoped to avoid. We’d first met in Karachi a couple of years ago and, both of us being Queen’s officers, we should have got along. But we didn’t. He was one of those supercilious types who’d never got over his early service in the stuck-up 43rd Light Infantry and, I was told, envied both my gong from the Crimea and my Mutiny record.

‘Still, no matter, we’ve time in hand. Now, while I need to know about your command, I’ve taken your arrival as an opportunity to bring all my brigade commanders up to date on developments. Forgive me if you know people already, but let me go round the room.’ Primrose was small, standing no more than five foot six, just sixty-one and with a full head of snowy hair. There had been rumours about his health, but he seemed to have survived. Now he pointed round the stuffy, low-ceilinged room with its two, narrow, Oriental-style windows. ‘Nuttall commands my cavalry brigade.’

I’d never met Tom Nuttall before but I’d heard his name bruited about during the Mutiny. A little older than I was, he was an infantryman by trade but now found himself in charge of the three regiments of cavalry – including my son Sam’s regiment, the 3rd Scinde Horse. He was as straight as a lance, clear-eyed, and had a friendly smile.

‘I know that you know Brooke.’ I thought there was a distinctly cool tone in Primrose’s voice as he waved a hand at Harry. Yes, I knew and liked him for he was a straight-line infantryman like me, a few years younger, but he’d seen more than his share of trouble in the Crimea and China before rising to be adjutant general of the Bombay Army.

‘And McGucken tells me you two stretch back a long way.’ Again, I thought I caught irritation in the general’s voice as Major Alan McGucken reached out a sinewy hand towards me, his honest Scotch face cracked in the warmest of smiles.

‘Yes, General, we’ve come across one another a couple of times in the past. It’s good to see you again, Jock.’ By God, it was too. Six foot and fifty-four years of Glasgow granite grinned at me, one of the most remarkable men I knew. He was wind-burnt, his whiskers now showing grey, and wore a run of ribbons that started with the Distinguished Conduct Medal on the breast of his plain blue frock coat. I’d first met him when he was a colour sergeant and I was an ensign in the 95th Foot. We’d soldiered through the Crimea and the Mutiny, never more than a few feet apart (we were even wounded within yards of each other), until his true worth had been recognised. After the fall of Gwalior in ’58, he’d been commissioned in the field and, with his natural flair for languages and his easy way with the natives, he had soon gravitated back to India. I’d watched his steady rise through merit with delight and pleasure but had been genuinely surprised to hear that he’d been seconded to the Political Department, some eighteen months ago, and then appointed to advise the divisional commander here in Kandahar.

‘An’ it’s good to see you, General. There’s a deal o’ catching up to do – perhaps a swally or two might be in order?’ He was older, for sure, but that rasping accent took me back to good times and bad, triumphs and disappointments we had shared, scares and laughter too many to remember.

But our familiarity clearly irritated General Primrose, who rose on the balls of his feet, peering up at McGucken while shooting me a sideways look. ‘Indeed, gentlemen. I’m sure there’ll be plenty of opportunity for such niceties once my political officer has briefed us all on the possible difficulties we face.’ Primrose cut across McGucken’s and my obvious delight in each other’s company, reasserting his authority and returning the atmosphere to all the conviviality of a Methodist prayer meeting. ‘Let’s have no more delays. Proceed, please, Major McGucken.’

And with that stricture, McGucken moved across to a map that was pinned to the wall, shooed a couple of somnolent flies off its lacquered surface, cleared his throat and began.

‘Before I arrived, back in November last year, while General Stewart was handling his own political affairs, a rumour gathered strength over in Herat.’ McGucken pointed to the city, more than three hundred miles to the north and west of Kandahar. ‘Ayoob Khan is the governor there and he has designs on Kandahar – he’s already declared himself the real wali – and for those of you who don’t know, gentlmen, a wali’s a regional governor who, so long as he’s got the local tribes with him, is extremely powerful. And I can understand why he’s interested in Kandahar. It’s the most prosperous of the regions and our people in India hadn’t made it clear that there was likely to be a permanent British presence here. Anyway, General Stewart took the intelligence seriously enough to report it to the viceroy—’

‘But not seriously enough to do anything about preparing Kandahar for any sort of a fight,’ Primrose interrupted, bristling away and looking every bit the petulant little scrub I’d always thought him.

‘Aye, General, quite so.’ McGucken continued: ‘But, as you know, things quietened down after the end of the fighting last year and the rumour came to nothing. Some of you gentlemen have already met the Wali of Kandahar, Sher Ali—’

‘You haven’t had a chance to clap eyes on him yet, Morgan.’ I could see how irritated McGucken was becoming by Primrose’s constant interjections. ‘I’ll get you an appointment as soon as possible. He must be in his mid-sixties now, not well liked and without much influence among either the Pathans or the Douranis, but the viceroy decided that he was the man to rule Kandahar as a state that is semi-independent of the Kabul government, so support him we shall. Trouble is, his own troops – who are meant to be keeping the tribes in order hereabouts – are unreliable and we’ve had a number of minor mutinies already. But don’t let me interrupt, McGucken, do go on.’

I knew that look of McGucken’s. He’d never suffered fools gladly, not even when he was an NCO, and his expression, a mixture of contempt and impatience, told me all I needed to know about the interfering nature of our divisional commander.

‘Sir, thank you.’ McGucken’s accent disguised his exasperation – unless you knew the man as well as I did. ‘The situation is extremely ticklish. You all know about General Stewart’s victory at Ahmed Khel on the nineteenth of April. He was halfway to Kabul when he met a right set of rogues and gave all fifteen thousand of them a damn good towelling. But, despite what you might think, that has only made the local tribesmen bolder. Word has come down from the Ghilzais that they nearly beat Stewart’s force, and whether that’s right or wrong is unimportant for that’s what they want to believe, and over the last couple of weeks the locals have become decidedly gallus.’

I smiled as the others knitted their brows at McGucken’s vocabulary. His speech had acquired a veneer of gentility to go with his rank and appointment, but his orphan Glasgow background was still obvious if you knew what to look for. And I knew what he meant: the badmashes Heath had pointed out were certainly ‘gallus’ – far too confident for their own good.

‘There’s been trouble among the wali’s forces while our own troops have been pestered, harassed, attacked, even, by tribesmen here in the city—’

But McGucken wasn’t allowed to continue, for Primrose butted in again: ‘Yes, that’s right. Some of your fellows had a very ugly incident the other day, didn’t they, Brooke? Tell Morgan about it.’

‘Well, yes, sir.’ I could see that Harry Brooke, decent sort of man that he was, didn’t want to break into McGucken’s briefing, but Primrose was insistent. ‘Willis, one of the Gunner subalterns of my brigade, had gone down into the Charsoo – that’s the odd domed building at the crossroads in the centre of the town, Morgan, if you ain’t seen it already – where the normal gathering of villains was going on around the bazaar stalls. He’d got a couple of soldiers with him and was armed according to my orders, but in the crowd he got separated from his escort – quite deliberately, I’m sure – and a Ghazi came at him with an ordinary shoemaker’s awl . . .’

My face must have betrayed my horror at what I knew Brooke was about to say.

‘Yes, I know it’s hard to believe, but I asked to see the murder weapon after the whole beastly business was over. It was just one of those sharp little iron awls, no more than two and a bit inches long, I’m telling you. The lads who witnessed the attack reckoned that it was an unusually crowded day in the markets, and a lunatic waited till his confederates had distracted them both and then just ran at him and buried it in the poor fellow’s neck. The two soldiers saw the assassin running at their officer but had no idea what he was about to do. All they saw was a look of crazy hatred on the man’s face and something small glittering in his hand. They’d had all the lectures about what the Ghazis can do and been told about their penchant for cold steel, but the whole thing was such a surprise that Willis didn’t stand a chance.

‘Anyway, then the mob closed in and the wretched fellow bled to death before anyone could do anything for him. I think even the locals were shocked by the brutality, for intelligence started to come in at once and we arrested the culprit a couple of days later – the cheeky sod was still running his cobbler’s business, as cool as you like. We hanged him just yards away from where the murder had occurred – that served as a lesson for the natives – but at least this bit of nastiness has shown exactly what the Ghazis can do. Everyone is on the qui vive when they’re in and about the town and—’

‘Go on, McGucken.’ Primrose had cut right across Brooke.

‘Sir, as I was saying, we’ve now received further intelligence that Ayoob Khan is preparing to move out of Herat. He’s trying to get his troops – as many as nine thousand we’re told – into some sort of fettle, but that’s all we really know. It’s possible that he’s going to bypass Kandahar and move on Kabul, but that seems less likely now that Stewart’s force have moved up to Kabul to reinforce General Roberts’s troops.’ McGucken paused.

‘How long would it take a native army of that size to reach us from Herat, and what sort of troops are they?’ I asked.

‘Well, General, it’s hard to know exactly, but I guess it would take Ayoob Khan more than a month, so – if my people are worth their salt – we should get plenty of warning. But they’re better organised than you might think, General. He’s got regulars, including some of the Kabuli regiments who turned on Louis Cavagnari last year, armed with Enfields and a few Sniders and some guns with, we’re told, overseers from the Russian artillery. How many pieces, and of what calibre, we’re not yet sure.’

I could see that McGucken had plenty more to tell me but Primrose hadn’t yet heard enough of his own voice: ‘So, Morgan, gentlemen, there we are.’ He was up and down on his toes like some wretched ballet dancer – I knew he would be an awkward man to work under. ‘We’ve got local problems with the troublesome, headstrong folk here in the town and the odd murderous loon in the shape of the Ghazis. The wali’s troops are an unknown quantity but will, I suspect, come to heel once the wali takes them properly in hand . . .’ McGucken raised his eyebrows ‘. . . and now the rumour of Ayoob Khan is back with us. I think it’s time, gentlemen, to take the soldier-like precautions that General Stewart so signally failed to do. We must not only be ready to take the field at a moment’s notice, we must also be ready to defend Kandahar.’

I could see Primrose scanning us all, challenging anyone to disagree with him, as the flies buzzed drowsily and the punkah creaked on its hinges above us. I have to say, it had all come as a bit of a surprise to me. I’d thought our division would be in Afghanistan just to see things quieten down, give a bit of bottom to the new wali and then be off back to India before the next winter. Now it seemed we might have a bit of a fight on our hands and – as Roberts, Browne and now Stewart had found out – these hillmen were not Zulus armed with spears whom we could mow down in their thousands. As well as regular troops and demented Ghazis, it now appeared that Ayoob Khan had guns directed by Russians. McGucken and I had had a bellyful of just such creatures a few years back.

‘Well, sir, may I suggest that there are three measures we could start with advantage right away?’ Harry Brooke spoke, clear and direct, taking Primrose’s challenge head on.

‘Please enlighten us, Brooke,’ Primrose replied, with a slight edge of sarcasm that caused McGucken to glance at me.

‘We must secure fresh and plentiful water supplies within the walls of the town before the weather gets really hot.’ Brooke paused to see how this would be received.

‘Yes, yes, of course – that’s just common sense,’ replied Primrose, so quickly that I suspected he’d never even con sidered such a thing. ‘Do go on.’

‘Well, sir, if we’re to face an enemy in the field, we’ll need every sabre and bayonet that we can find so we can’t be distracted by foes inside the town such as those you’ve just described. Should we not expel all Pathans of military age and pull down the shanties and lean-tos that have been built so close to the walls that they restrict any fields of fire? Can we not start to burn or dismantle them now, General?’

The punkah squaled again and I could see that the trouble with Harry Brooke, like all of us Anglo-Irish, was that he was too damn blunt. I’d had much the same thoughts about the clutter of plank and mud-built houses, shops and stalls as I’d ridden up from the cantonments towards the town walls and his comments about the tribesmen made a great deal of sense to me. But, judging by the way Primrose was hopping from foot to foot, Harry’s ideas hadn’t found much favour.

‘No, no, Brooke, that will never do. You must remember, all of you . . .’ Primrose treated us to another of his basilisk stares ‘. . . that we are not an army of occupation. We’re guests – pretty muscular guests, I grant you – of the wali under whose hand we lie. We can’t go knocking his people’s property about and chucking out those we haven’t taken a shine to. How on earth will we ever gain his or his subjects’ confidence if we behave like that? No, that will never do.’

What, I suspect, the little trimmer really meant was that sensible measures he wouldn’t have hesitated to use last year, while Disraeli’s crew held sway, simply wouldn’t answer now that Gladstone and his bunch of croakers were in charge. Primrose didn’t want to be seen by the new Whig regime as one of the same stamp of generals of whom the liberal press had been so critical for their heavy-handedness in Zululand and then for so-called ‘atrocities’ here in Afghanistan twelve months ago.

I could repeat, word perfect, Gladstone’s cant, which I’d read when I’d paused in Quetta three weeks ago, just before the election. It had caused near apoplexy at breakfast in the mess: ‘Remember that the sanctity of life in the hill villages of Afghanistan, amid the winter snows, is as inviolable in the eyes of Almighty God as your own,’ or some such rot. Disraeli had responded by calling his comments ‘rodomontade’ (which had us all stretching for the dictionaries) but there was no doubting the public mood that didn’t want to hear about British regulars being bested by natives and the murder of their envoys in far-away residences. They were heartily sick of highly coloured press accounts of shield-and-spear-armed Zulu impis being cut down by rifles and Gatling guns. If the new God-bothering government caught even a whiff of Primrose’s treating the tribesmen with anything other than kid gloves then his career was likely to be as successful as the Pope’s wedding night.

‘There it is, gentlemen. With a little good fortune, all this talk of Ayoob Khan descending on us like the wrath of God will prove to be just hot air and we can get on with an ordered life here, then make a measured move back to India later in the year.’

I looked round the room to judge people’s reaction to this last utterance from Primrose and there wasn’t a face – except, perhaps, Heath’s – that didn’t look horrified at such a pro spect. I, for one, had sat in Karachi whittling away over the last couple of campaign seasons while my friends and juniors gathered laurels innumerable, courtesy of the Afghans. And I’d had little expectation of any excitement when I’d been sent for a few weeks ago. But now our hopes had been raised. Perhaps we were to see deeds and glory. Maybe Nuttall, Brooke and I would not be bound for our pensions, Bath chairs and memories quite as soon as we had feared.

But not a bit of that from our divisional commander: he seemed to be longing for his villa in Cheltenham. ‘But if we are unlucky and all this trouble comes to pass, then we must be as ready as we can be. So, away to your commands, gentlemen. But not you, Morgan. May I detain you?’ All the others were gathering up their swords and sun-helmets, folding maps and despatches in a thoughtful silence, and I’d hoped that the general might have forgotten his summons to me – I wanted to spend some time with McGucken before events overtook us, but Primrose wasn’t having that. As I picked up my documents he said, ‘We need to discuss the state of your new brigade, don’t we, Morgan?’

‘What do we do, sir, when we meet a wali? I’ve never met one before,’ asked Heath, to whom I had been about to pose the same question.

‘How, in God’s name, should I know, Heath? I chose you to be my brigade major because you’re savvy with all this native stuff, ain’t you?’ All I got in reply from the great lummox was a sulky look. ‘We’ll just go in and salute, regimental-like, and let him do the talking. I hope his English is up to it.’

Primrose had been true to his word: the very next day I found myself bidden to Sher Ali Khan’s presence, the Wali of Kandahar. Now Heath and I were waiting in a stuffy little anteroom on the other side of the Citadel from where we’d met Primrose and all the others yesterday. At least the wali had tried to do the place up a little. I didn’t know where the furniture had come from – it looked French, with overstuffed satiny fabric and curly, carved legs – but there were some grand carpets on the floor and hanging on the walls. A couple of greasy-looking sentries had performed a poor imitation of presenting arms as we were escorted up to see His Nibs while a funny little chamberlain – or some such flunkey – had buzzed around us, talking such bad English that I saw little value in what was coming next beyond the call of protocol. But I was wrong.

‘My dear General!’ We’d been ushered into another, similar, room, performed our military rites and removed our helmets as the wali leapt off a low divan, a smile beaming through his beard and his hand outstretched. ‘How very good of you to make the time to see me.’

He looked much older than sixty-two. He was short, fat and yellow-toothed; he wore a sheepskin cap that, I guessed, hadn’t been removed since the winter; there was a distinct aroma of armpits about him and yet he was utterly, disarmingly, charming. He pumped our fins, sat us down, pressed thimble-sized cups of coffee on the pair of us and made me feel that his whole life had been a tedious interlude while he had waited to meet me.

‘No, really, it is very good of you.’ His English was accented, slightly sing-song, perhaps, but completely fluent. ‘I know what a trying journey you must have had up from India, but we do appreciate it. Now that General Stewart has gone, I’m so glad that you’ve brought another whole brigade to help General Primrose and me.’ The fellow made it sound as if I’d mustered my own personal vassals for this crusade as a favour to him. ‘Oh, we shall need them.’

I have to say, the next ten minutes were more useful than anything I’d heard from Primrose or would hear from him in the future. McGucken had, obviously, made a deep and favourable impression on the clever old boy, for he told me (and I don’t think it was just gammon) to seek him out if I hadn’t met him already. I forbore to mention how well I knew Jock, for I wanted to hear exactly what the wali himself had to tell me, especially about the threat from Ayoob Khan, which Primrose seemed to be playing down.

‘Well, yes, dear General, my prayers concentrate upon nothing at the moment but the intentions of that man. Your people don’t really understand what he wants and how determined he is to get it.’ Sher Ali trotted over the fact that he was a cousin of the amir and that he’d been installed as governor of the entire region in July last year in the clear expectation that he would be kept in post by force of British arms. ‘But then your government started to reduce the number of white and Indian soldiers here, and that was when the trouble started with my own men. You see, as far as most of them are concerned, I’m a British . . . a British . . . oh, what’s the word I want?’

‘Catspaw, sir?’ asked Heath, leaving all of us wondering what on earth he meant.

‘Eh? No, not an animal . . . puppet – that’s the word. Well, they hated that, but they had to put up with it, as long as there were enough British guns and bayonets to subdue them. My troops are not my tribesmen, General. They understand tribal authority more than any rank that is given or imposed – particularly by Feringhees. Oh, I do beg your forgiveness. I don’t wish to suggest that your presence is unwelcome!’ The old boy nearly poured his coffee down his beard when he thought he might have been unmannerly.

‘And this is where Ayoob Khan has the advantage.’ He told us again about Kandahar’s prosperity, how Ayoob Khan had been eyeing it up as his own for ages and how he’d managed to suborn the local forces with people from the Ghilzai tribes loyal to him but serving under the wali. ‘We’ve been hearing for months now that he and his people are likely to march out of Herat, and if that is the case, we must try to stop him before he gets anywhere near this city. But I worry about taking my troops into the field, General Morgan. As you will know, I’m sure, we have already had difficulties over pay – one of my cavalry regiments threw down their arms only last month when their officers tried to take them out of their lines for training. Now, if he were to come towards us, we should have to try and meet him somewhere here.’ The wali pointed to the Helmand river fords near Gereshk on a spanking new map that, I guessed, McGucken had given him.

‘Aye, sir, and that’s quite a way west over dry country.’ The map showed few water-courses and little but seventy or so miles of plains beset by steep heights.

‘Indeed so, but he and his elders know it well. And there are more complications.’ I heard him sigh when he said this, as if the very thought of what lay ahead sapped his energy and determination. ‘He will do his best to raise not just tribesmen along the way, but also the cursed Ghazis in the name of jihad. Have you been told about these creatures, General?’ I assured him that I had, and that Primrose and Brooke had given me a pretty fair idea of what they could do.

‘Ah, but, General, all you have seen of them is odd ones and twos. True, they make trouble in the town, they caused Stewart huzoor much pain, and they have started to gnaw at the ankles of General Primrose’s new division. But just imagine what such people could do if they were massed against you. That, no one has yet seen. If Ayoob Khan ever ventures out of the west, then be certain, my dear General, that those white-robed madmen will hover around him like wasps . . .’

Two days after my meeting with the wali, I had been up at dawn, ridden out of the town with Heath and Trumpeter Lynch to the lower slopes of the Baba Wali Kotal – the high ground some three miles to the north-west – and made an assessment of where the enemy’s best viewpoint would be. Then I’d come back to the mess for a swift breakfast of steak and fruit, before heading to my headquarters. I was just settling down behind my folding desk, preparing to indulge Heath with the things he loved best – detailed accounts, returns and all manner of mind-numbing administration – when news began to filter in of an ugly incident involving the 66th Foot.

The only British infantry that I had, the regiment had so far impressed me both times that I had seen them. But now there were reports that one of their patrols had killed a child right in the middle of Kandahar, then dispersed with great violence the angry crowd that gathered. Predictably, the first reports were vague and vastly unreliable, so once the dust had settled – literally – and the facts were clear, I had got back into the saddle and come to see the commanding officer, James Galbraith.

It had been an uncomfortable couple of hours’ waiting for me, for Primrose had caught wind of it, as had some British journalists who were out and about in Kandahar, and he was pressing me for a full account before the editors in London learnt of it. But I had commanded a battalion – albeit nowhere more demanding than Pembroke Dock – and I knew how irritating pressure from above would be for the commanding officer. Once the matter was fully investigated, Lieutenant Colonel Galbraith had asked me to come into the cramped little hut that served as his office. He rose from behind a trestle table in his rumpled khaki and stood stiffly to attention, expecting the worst.

‘Sit down, sit down, please, Galbraith.’ Despite my attempts to put him at ease, Galbraith continued to stand. I threw myself into one of the collapsible leather-seated campaign chairs that were so popular at the time.

‘A cheroot?’ I flicked one of the little brown tubes towards him, but Galbraith shook his head without a word. ‘Tell me what happened.’

The 66th had been in India for almost ten years now, stationed at Ahmednagar and Karachi, and I’d been pleased to see how many long-service men they still included. While the new regulations allowed men to enlist for shorter periods – which was reckoned by some to be good for recruiting – I always thought it took some time for a lad from the slums of England to acquire any sort of resistance to the heat and pestilence of India. It can’t have been a coincidence that the Second Battalion of the 8th Foot – almost all young, short-service lads – had been gutted by disease last year outside Kabul.

‘Well, General, we had a routine patrol in the central bazaar earlier this morning, an officer, sergeant and six men. They all said that the atmosphere was tense, with a lot of people and beasts bringing goods to market. Suddenly the crowd opened and a child rushed at them with a knife in his hand.’ Galbraith had been in command of the 66th for four years now and had a reputation for being as devoted to them as his men were to him. Another English-Paddy from Omagh up north, my father knew his family, but the slim, handsome man, whose heavy moustache and whiskers made him look older than his forty years, had never thought to presume upon this link.

‘A child, Galbraith? How old was he?’ I found it hard to believe that a fully armed patrol of British soldiers might be attacked by a boy. A strapping youth, perhaps, for many of the Ghazis, while fully grown, were said by those who had had to face them to be too young to have proper beards. But a mere boy behaving like that I found difficult to credit.

‘Well, I’m not exactly sure, General, but young enough for there to be an almighty bloody fuss kicked up by the mullahs to whom the press are listening with all their normal evenhandedness,’ replied Galbraith.

‘Are you sure that one of the lads didn’t fire his rifle by mistake, hit the boy and now he’s trying to cover it up just like the Fifty-Ninth did?’ I knew soldiers: they’d lie most imaginatively if they thought it would save their necks. The story was still circulating about a drunken spree by the 59th last Christmas. Two of the men had been drinking and tinkering about with their rifles when one had shot the other. They had made up some cock-and-bull story about a Ghazi entering their barracks and, in an attempt to shoot him down, one man had accidentally wounded his comrade.

‘Well, no, sir. The youth was killed with a sword and a number of bayonet thrusts quite deliberately. The men didn’t fire for fear of hitting one of the crowd.’ Galbraith looked indignant.

‘Oh, good. That’s exactly what I wanted to hear. So now we don’t just have a child being killed, the poor little bugger was hacked to pieces by your ruffians while half of Kandahar looked on. I really don’t like the sound of this at all. Who was in charge of this fiasco? I hope you’re not going to tell me it was a lad straight out of Sandhurst with some lance sergeant at his side?’ When I’d paid my first visit to the 66th a few days ago, I’d been pleased with the appearance of the men but I’d noticed how junior some of the NCOs were. Galbraith had explained that he’d had to leave a large number of sergeants behind in India, either sick or time-expired, and he’d been forced to promote fairly inexperienced corporals to fill the gaps.

‘No, sir. Sar’nt Kelly is one of my best substantive sergeants with almost sixteen years’ service. He’s due to get his colours at the next promotion board. That’s why I’ve put him with one of my new officers.’ Galbraith came back at me hot and strong. ‘If you’d prefer to hear it straight from those who were there, sir, I’ve got Kelly and his officer waiting outside.’

‘Yes, I bloody well would. Ask them to march in, please, Heath.’ My tosspot of a brigade major had been sitting in on the meeting with Galbraith, his expression increasingly disapproving, not a shred of sympathy showing for the men who had been faced with what sounded to me like a thoroughly nasty business.

I saw the pair of them file in, smartly in step. Sergeant Kelly was five foot nine, heavily sunburnt, with a moustache trimmed to regulation length, and the ribbon of the rooti-gong above his left breast pocket. His puttees were wrapped just so, his khaki drill pressed as neatly as field conditions would allow, three red chevrons standing out starkly on his right sleeve and his brasswork polished for the occasion. He gave ‘Halt,’ then ‘Up,’ sotto voce to his subaltern, both men stamping in time before their hands quivered to the peaks of their khaki-covered helmets. After a silent count of ‘Two, three,’ they snapped them down to their sides. The officer was taller but slighter than his sergeant. His fair hair curled just a little too fashionably almost to his collar, his skin was red with the early summer sun and his moustache still not fully grown. Holding his sword firmly back against his left hip, pistol to his right, the single brass stars of an ensign on either side of his collar, he was my younger son, William.

‘Well, Sar’nt Kelly, Mr Morgan, if I’m to put up a good case on your behalf and keep your names from being spread over the gutter press, you’d better tell me exactly what happened this morning.’ Galbraith had deliberately not mentioned that my son was the officer involved – wise man that he was.

Now Billy cleared his throat and raised his chin before he spoke, just like his late mother might have done. ‘Sir, with your leave, I’ll explain everything . . .’

Chapter Two - The Ghazi

It was hot, and as Ensign Billy Morgan looked up into the cloudless sky he could see a pair of hawks circling effortlessly on the burning air just above the walls of Kandahar. They reminded him of the sleek, lazy-winged buzzards back in Ireland, except that there the sun rarely shone. He wondered how the thermals would feel to the birds – would they sense the heat of the air under their feathers as they scanned the collection of humanity below? And would they have any sense of the tensions that pulsed through the city under them? Then, as he looked at the gang of khaki-clad lads in front of him, he realised just how ridiculous his musings were. The birds cared not a damn for him or his soldiers, or for any man or living beast, he thought. Their eyes and beaks roamed ceaselessly for dead or dying things, for carrion to feed their bellies. Of the feelings and concerns of the men in the dust and grit below them, they knew nothing.

‘Is that belt tight enough, Thompson?’ Morgan was checking the six soldiers who had been detailed off to patrol the centre of Kandahar. They knew it would be a tense and hostile time, as the villagers pressed into the bazaars for market day.

‘Sir,’ replied Thompson, flatly – the Army’s universal word of affirmation that could mean anything from enthusiastic agreement to outright insubordination. The big Cumberland farmer’s lad looked back at Morgan, his face trusting and open.

‘Well, make sure it is. I don’t want you having to bugger about with it once we’re among the crowds. Just check it, please, Sar’nt Kelly.’ Morgan hesitated to treat the men like children, but even in his few weeks with the regiment, he’d come to recognise that the ordinary soldiers, dependable, smart and keen most of the time, could be the most negligent of creatures once they put their minds to it.

‘Sir.’ Sergeant Kelly came back with the same stock response ‘Come on, Thompson, I can get this between your belt and that fat gut of yours – look.’ Kelly had stuck his clenched fist between the soldier’s belt, which had been scrubbed clean of pipe clay on active service, and his lean belly. ‘Take it in a couple of notches.’ Thompson moved his right foot to the rear of his left, rested his Martini-Henry rifle against his side and undid the dull brass belt buckle, inscribed with ‘66’ in the middle and ‘Berkshire Regiment’ round the outer part of the clasp.

Thompson was the last man to be inspected. Once his belt was back in place and he’d assumed the position of attention, Kelly stamped in the packed dust just outside the regimental guardroom where the patrol had assembled, slapped the sling of his rifle and repeated the well-worn formula, ‘Leave to carry on, sir, please?’

‘And is Bobby a vital member of the patrol, Sar’nt Kelly?’ The non-commissioned officer’s scruffy little terrier-cross, which had followed his master all the way from India, now sat on the ground, sweeping his remnant of a tail back and forth, looking imploringly up at Kelly. Morgan’s words provoked laughter from the file of men, and a grin from Sergeant Kelly, relieving the tension. When he had arrived with the 66th, Morgan had been surprised by the deference the soldiers had shown to him. Sandhurst had trained him to expect and, indeed, demand their instant obedience, but he hadn’t anticipated how concerned they would be by his inexperienced eye being run over them during an inspection. Now there was the added edge of danger, with the knowledge that previous regiments had suffered casualties among the Afghan mob, and the need for constant vigilance.

‘No, sir. Go on, pup, away wi’ you.’ Kelly’s voice was firm but kind as he pointed towards the guardroom while the dog continued to look at him and wag his tail with increased urgency. ‘Go on, Bobby, fuck off.’

‘One word off you, Sar’nt . . .’ Private Battle, the longest-serving soldier in the patrol, murmured, to the delight of the others, Kelly grinning broadly as well. Morgan knew that Battle could be a handful, often nicknamed ‘Bottle’ because he was fond of his grog – that was why he was still a private.

‘That’s enough from you, Private Edward bleedin’ Battle. Got enough trouble wi’ one mongrel that won’t obey me without another addin’ to me grief. Go on, Bobby, fuck off to the guardroom like a good dog.’ The patrol laughed again as the mutt slunk off towards the bell tent that served as the entrance to the 66th’s lines.

As the fun died down, Morgan continued, ‘Right, Sar’nt Kelly, no one’s loaded but ammunition’s ready, ain’t it?’ Kelly simply nodded in reply. Standing orders stated that no firearms should have a round in the breech during a patrol except on the instructions of an officer or an NCO, but that ammunition should be broken out of its paper parcels and ready for instant use in the men’s pouches. A number of natives had been wounded during scuffles with the previous regiments and Colonel Galbraith was keen that the 66th should not have the same problems. ‘Good. Loosen slings, fix bayonets and stand the men at ease, please.’

Kelly gave a few simple instructions, none of the parade-ground shouting that Morgan had seen with other sergeants, to which the men responded readily, slipping the long steel needles over the muzzles of their rifles before pushing the locking rings home with an oily scrape. Then the leather slings were slackened, weapons slung over shoulders, and they all looked at Morgan for his next word of command.

‘Right, lads, gather round and listen to me.’ The six men shuffled round Billy Morgan, Sergeant Kelly hanging back, slightly to the rear. Morgan looked at his command. He was the junior subaltern of H Company, charged with leading nearly forty men, mostly good fellows as far as he could see, and few of the sweepings of the gutter that the press would have you believe made up the Army. Morgan was twenty-two, about the same age as most of his men, but they looked older. The product of the new sprawling industrial towns, some from the plough and a few from Ireland, they had been used to a hard life even before they came into the 66th. Now, good food, drill and regular physical training had made them fit and lean, prime fighting material. ‘Most of you have been on town patrol before . . .’ This was only Morgan’s second outing. The first had passed in a blur of new sights, sounds and smells but otherwise had been uneventful. ‘We’re to make sure that the natives know we’re here and alert, and to take note of anything unusual.’

‘Like what, sir?’ Battle, the old soldier of six years’ Indian service, cut in, his brogue as thick as the day he had left Manorhamilton.

‘Well, large gatherings of young men, the sight of any modern weapons such as Sniders – to be frank, you’re all more experienced than I am and I hope that you’ve got a better nose for trouble than I have.’ Morgan looked around. This touch of humility seemed to have been well received by the men. ‘But remember, lads, be on the look-out for the least sign of danger. The Fifty-Ninth found that a mob would know if something was amiss and would thin out at the approach of a patrol.’ The only British infantry regiment that had been part of General Stewart’s division and had handed over to the 66th had shared all sorts of horror stories with their successors. They’d had a litany of minor casualties and two deaths while patrolling the Kandahar streets. ‘So, keep your eyes peeled and if you think we need to put a round up the spout, ask Sar’nt Kelly or me before you do so.’

‘But, sir, we’re meant to be here to support the wali, ain’t we, not to do his troops’ work for ’im? The Fore and Afts’ – Battle used the nickname of the 59th – ‘got right kicked about an’ was never allowed to shoot back. If the town’s so bleedin’ ’ostile, why can’t the wali’s men deal with it an’ save us for the proper jobs?’

There was a rumble of agreement from the other men and Morgan shot a look at Sergeant Kelly, whose level stare merely told him that he, too, expected an officer-type answer to a wholly reasonable question.

‘Good point, Battle.’ Morgan paused as he measured his reply. ‘It isn’t like the proper war that was being fought last year. We’re here, as you say, to help the wali, but his own troops are unreliable and the town is full of badmashes we need to know about, and then report back to the political officer. Now, if there are no more questions . . .’ Morgan was suddenly aware that he and his patrol had been hanging around for far too long.

‘Yessir. What do we do if we see a Ghazi, sir?’ Thompson, belt now tightened, chirped up.

‘Most unlikely, Thompson. They’ll melt away at the sight of us,’ replied Morgan.

Thompson wasn’t to be put off. ‘They didn’t with the Fifty-Ninth, sir, did they? Why—’

‘Yes, well, we’re not the Fifty-Ninth, are we? This lot have heard that the Sixty-sixth are here and they won’t want to take us on. Now, split into pairs, ten paces between each. Sar’nt Kelly, bring up the rear, please. Follow me.’ With that, Morgan’s little command stepped out of the tented lines of the 66th, through a gate in the barbed-wire perimeter and away up the gentle incline three-quarters of a mile towards the walls, shanties and sun-lit pall of woodsmoke that was Kandahar.

Morgan walked as casually as he could among his soldiers. The men were moving either side of the pot-holed road in what the Army liked to describe as ‘staggered file’ – odd numbers on the left and even numbers on the right, no two men in a line with each other. That, he thought, was meant to make a random jezail shot less likely to strike more than one man, but he could see how the troops tended to close in on each other for comfort and reassurance.

‘No, lads, keep spread out. Don’t bunch up, keep your distance,’ Morgan said, as lightly as he could, trying not to let his tension show in his voice. He looked at the men that some mistaken fate had placed under his command. They were all polite to him, almost painfully so, trusting him because of the stars he wore on his collar and his accent, more than any proof of competence he had so far shown. Yet he was surprised by how easy he found their company. Sandhurst had told him to expect the worst, that while most of his men would be good, trustworthy sorts, a few would be out to mock him and dun him of every penny he might be foolish enough to carry around. He had identified no one like that. True, Battle was a bit of a handful – he’d come the wiseacre a couple of times over the young officer’s Protestantism – but Morgan had managed to slap him down good-naturedly enough.

But, looking at Private Battle, Billy Morgan remembered how his father would tease the Catholics both back home in Cork and in his countless stories about the old Army. Yet, while he pretended to be suspicious of their religion, his obvious fondness for what he called his Paddies shone through. Now the new Army, Morgan thought, had fewer of those Irishmen who’d been driven to take the shilling by the potato blight back in the forties and fifties, but those who had enlisted were good enough and fitted in well with the sturdy English lads that the 66th recruited from around their depot in Reading. No, even in the short space of time he’d spent with H Company, Morgan was beginning to understand the men, to enjoy their ready, irreverent humour (how had they referred to General Roberts in his vast, non-regulation sun-helmet when they saw his picture in the paper? ‘That little arse in the fuck-off hat’, wasn’t it?) and understand their values. How, he wondered, would he have managed if he’d been commissioned into one of the native regiments, like his half-brother, Sam Keenan? Everything would have been so foreign – and even if he’d managed to learn the language well enough to do his job, it would never have been possible, surely, to become really close to an Indian.

But, thought Billy Morgan, that would never have been the case for he was only ever going to serve in a smart regiment – his father would hear of nothing else. As a little boy he’d accepted, without questioning, that he would always get the best of everything while Sam would have what was left over. He could still remember when he was five years old and how bitter the older, bigger Sam had been at having to accept the smaller of the two ponies their father had bought for them. It was the first time Billy had really noticed any difference, but as he matured, he had seen how Mary, his step-mother, had protected the way in which Sam had been brought up in her Catholic Church.

His father had made a joke of it, laughing when Mary elongated the word ‘maas’ and crossing himself in faux-respect whenever something Roman was mentioned. And as Father thought that County Cork was far too much under the sway of the Pope, he would brook no suggestion that Billy should be sent to one of the local schools. Oh, no, they were good enough for Sam, but for Billy there should be nothing but the best: he was to be educated in England, at Sandhurst and then a good line regiment, just like his father.

He and his brother had seen little of each other. Only when Billy returned to Glassdrumman in the school holidays would they meet – and clash. Billy knew that Sam resented him and the preferential treatment he received, and on the few occasions that they were together as boys, and then as young men, he wasn’t slow to show it. Everything became a contest – no fish could be pulled from a stream or bird shot from a rainy sky without its becoming a test of manhood. At first Billy was always bettered by his bigger brother, who would challenge him to runs over the heather or bogs or turn a fishing trip into a swimming challenge across an icy lough, which he always lost. But as Billy grew, he began to win, so Sam ensured that the contests became more intense.

It was just before Sam had gone off to the Bombay Army, Billy remembered, that things had come to a head. He was home from school and Sam was full of piss and vinegar about his new adventure, full of brag about the Indians he would soon command and the glamour of that country. Then Billy had made some disparaging comment about native troops and the great Mutiny and Sam had retorted with something snide about Maude, Billy’s dead Protestant mother. Billy knew he was being daft, for he’d never known his mother – she had died in childbirth, allowing his father to marry again – and he loved his step-mother, Mary, but the sneer was too much and he had flown at his brother just outside the tack-room.

There hadn’t been much to it, really. Both boys were scraped and bruised by Billy’s first onslaught – he could feel the granite of the stableyard setts even now – before Finn the groom was pulling them apart and promising ‘a damn good leatherin’ to the pair o’ ye if you don’t stop it, so’. But, Finn’s intercession lay at the root of the trouble even now. Billy knew that if they’d been allowed to fight on, for them both to get the bile out of their systems, there might have been some settlement. Instead Finn had made them shake hands and Sam was away too early the next day for there to be any further rapprochement.

They’d not seen each other since that drizzly afternoon in Cork four years ago, but now Billy found himself at the end of the sun-baked earth, yet within spitting distance of the brother he’d hoped never to see again. The brother, Billy thought, who’d chosen to keep his own father’s name – well, God rot Sam Keenan, and the unlucky sods he commands.

Morgan was pulled back from his thoughts by a trickle of tribesmen on their way to market. At first the soldiers passed one or two heavily laden donkeys swaying up the gritty main road towards the town, their loads of newly woven baskets towering above them. Their owners ignored Morgan’s and his men’s attempts at cheerful greetings, and as the traffic became denser the troops gave up any attempt to humour the population.

‘Close up at the rear, please, Sar’nt Kelly.’ Morgan had to yell down the street to be heard at the back of the patrol: the closer they got to the Bardurani Gate, the thicker the press of people and animals became.

‘Right, sir. Come on, you lot, shift yourselves,’ answered Kelly, provoking the last pair of soldiers to break into a shuffling run, their eyes wide at the medley of sights, colours and smells before them. Like his men, Morgan was fascinated by what he saw – camels carrying earthenware pots, herds of bleating goats and sheep, driven by boys with long, whippy sticks, mules and asses with rolled carpets and every manner of cheap, Birmingham-made pots and pans, even a dog pulling a crude cart that squeaked under a load of apricots. And the stink filled his nostrils. Animal piss and human sweat, aromatic smells from little charcoal braziers where urchin cooks touted fried meat and cheese, stale puddles and the universal scent of smoke and shit. The women, Morgan noticed, swivelled great kohl-dark eyes away from his gaze behind the slits of the black burkhas that hid them from head to toe. But that was more than he got from any of the men. Tall hillmen, Mohmands, Afridis and Wazirs, each one heavily armed, strode past on sandalled feet while stockmen with broad, flat, Mongol faces and men from the plains – Durrani Ghilzais, Yusufzais – looked straight through him. It was as if he and his troops didn’t exist, as if some unspoken agreement between all the men dictated that the Feringhee should be made to feel as invisible as possible.

The noise was vast. Tradesmen proclaiming their wares, the rattle of sheep and goats’ bells, the hammering of smiths and, above all else, the Babel of a dozen different tongues and dialects, all competing to be heard above the others. So vast, indeed, that Morgan didn’t hear his leading left-hand man’s initial shout of alarm; he didn’t hear the soldier’s cry, ‘You little sod!’ The first he knew of the attack was when Thompson yelled in pain, which jerked him from his reverie in time to see a blur of white robes and khaki drill, a thrashing bundle of boots and sandals in the nearby gutter, one of his soldiers falling, rifle clattering, helmet rolling, sprawling on what seemed to be a boy as steel flashed and jabbed.

Private Battle reacted faster than his officer. While Morgan groped to draw his sword and understand the sudden bedlam, the older soldier rushed to help his mate, saw the boy pinioned below a shrieking wounded Thompson and a six-inch blade poking time and again into his comrade’s side. As Morgan ran he watched Battle’s bayonet rise and fall, spitting the brown, writhing form of a boy who, he guessed, could be no more than twelve years old. Now it was the child’s turn to cry out as the lethally sharp metal punctured his right arm, then cracked through his shoulder blade before transfixing him to the ground.

‘You murdering little fucker!’ Battle was standing astride both Thompson and the boy, trying to shake the assassin loose from his jammed bayonet. ‘Get off, won’t you?’

As Morgan sprinted up to the tangled trio, he looked down into the lad’s face. It was twisted in a combination of hate and pain, teeth bared, not yet old enough to be yellowed by tobacco, his dirty white robes and turban stained with his own and Thompson’s blood. The more Battle tugged at his weapon, the more the child rose and sagged, firmly skewered on the steel; all three shouted in a rising cacophony.

Without a second’s hesitation, Billy Morgan drove his sword firmly into the boy’s chest, remembering at the last moment to twist his blade so that it might not stick in the child’s ribs. The point passed straight through his target’s heart and Morgan saw both dirty little fists grab at the steel before falling away, just as the lad’s eyes opened wide in a spasm of shock and his whiskerless jaw sagged open.

Now Battle finished a job that was already done. At last his blade came clear and, with a stream of filthy language, the burly soldier kicked and kicked at the youth’s face with iron-shod boots, then stamped down hard until bone crunched and blood oozed from blue-bruised lips and a splintered nose.

‘All right, Battle, that’s enough – that’s enough, d’you hear me?’ Sergeant Kelly was suddenly on the scene. ‘Help Thompson. The kid’s dead enough.’ There was something calming, soothing, in Kelly’s tone for, despite the gore and horror all around him, he had hardly raised his voice. ‘You all right, sir?’

Morgan was suddenly aware that Kelly had taken him by the elbow, that his sword was free of the corpse and that, somehow, a spray of someone’s blood was daubed across his trousers. ‘Yes, Sar’nt Kelly, I’m fine.’ Morgan looked at the attacker’s sightless eyes and realised he had killed this boy, but he felt none of the nausea that was supposed to accompany such things and no more regret at having taken such a young life than he would after shooting a snipe. ‘How badly hurt is Thompson?’

‘I’ve seen worse, sir.’ Kelly was stooping over the casualty, who clutched his left side where several rents in his khaki oozed red, blotching the cloth, his face screwed up in pain. ‘He’s got some puncture wounds, but none are deep. Come on, son, on yer feet,’ Sergeant Kelly helped Thompson – who let out a great hiss of pain – to stand up. ‘Get his rifle an’ headdress, Hyde.’

But as the wounded man leant against his sergeant for support, Morgan was suddenly aware that the bellowing throng had gone quiet. Where the people had pressed and crowded about their business, Morgan could now see nothing but a circle of hard, silent faces, only the children showing open-mouthed curiosity, everyone else staring with badly concealed hatred. As he looked at the people, though, the crowd parted and a tall, bearded man, armed with a knife, his black turban tied carelessly in a great, ragged ball, pushed his way to the front.

‘Who’s this bucko, Sar’nt Kelly?’ Morgan asked, distracting him from Thompson.

‘Buggered if I know, sir,’ Kelly noted the deference with which the people seemed to treat the man, ‘but these bastards all seem to know him.’

The lofty newcomer paused for a moment and took in the little knot of the 66th, who had now gathered round their stabbed comrade in a loose, defensive ring, their rifles and bayonets pointing at the crowd. Then he strode over to the boy’s corpse. Morgan had noticed that the child seemed to have shrunk in death; now he was just a tiny pile of stained and dust-soiled rags, whose beaten face lay in a rusty puddle. The tribesman crouched over the body and swiped away a cloud of flies. The mob was still hushed, but as the man stood and turned towards the troops, Morgan found himself gasping almost as audibly as the crowd. Three or four men, all similarly dressed and armed, had jostled to the front; they looked towards their tall leader, apparently waiting for him to give orders.

‘Seems to have brought his gang with him too, Sar’nt Kelly.’ Morgan found himself shuffling backwards towards the others. Now the patrol were practically back to back, facing the surrounding crowd, Thompson moaning softly in their midst.

‘Aye, sir, an’ ’e don’t look too pleased about that nipper we’ve just turned off. Should we load, sir?’ Kelly, so far, had been utterly in control, whether in routine barrack matters or on patrol, available to give sage and discreet advice to his young officer. But now, Morgan realised, as the officer he had to exercise total judgement and leadership. Despite his lack of experience, the men required him to fill the role that his brass stars and station in life suggested. He licked his lips and searched his mind for what Sandhurst might have taught him to do in such circumstances.

The answer was simple: nothing. They’d been told about conventional war, about victories over French and Russians; they’d been shown how to deal with howling masses of ‘savage’ spear-wielding natives, to read maps, to control artillery, and even how to sap and build bridges. But of operations among supposed friends who were actually foes, of how to deal with fanatical, murderous children in the middle of a crowd of civilians while a critical press corps hovered close by, not a thing had been said.

But Morgan was given no more time to ponder. The big warrior turned to his friends, broke the silence with a gabble of words, then dropped his hand to the bone hilt of his foot-long knife and began to draw it. Morgan didn’t even answer his sergeant’s question for he knew that if he was going to act he had to do something fast and decisive. Launching himself over the few yards that separated them, the young officer went as hard as he could for the tribesman, knowing he had one chance only to defeat the bigger man. Once that knife was clear of its sheath, his enemy would strike fast and hard – and that would not only be the signal for his henchmen to attack but for the rest of the crowd to swamp him and his men.

The hours of sword training that Morgan had received were ignored. Fencing at school, then cut and guard under the skill-at-arms instructor, even the first fatal thrust he’d just delivered, were instantly forgotten. Instead, visceral instincts took over and he smashed the hilt of his sword as hard as he could into his opponent’s face, catching him by surprise and sending him sprawling into the gutter next to the cooling child, a welter of limbs and flying robes. Unwittingly, Morgan had done just the right thing. A neat, deft blow might have dealt with his opponent, but he would have fallen with a dignity that inspired the others. This brawling assault made the tribesman look foolish; he dropped almost comically, which gave the patrol just enough time to seize the initiative.

‘Move, Sar’nt Kelly. I’ll hold ’em!’ But even before Morgan had said this, Kelly was leading the others hard into the throng, making for the gate, pushing and shoving his way through the crowd, bayonets pricking those who were slow to move, while Thompson was half dragged, half carried with them.

The people were mercifully slow to react. Morgan’s impression as he dashed and turned, sweeping his sword blade from side to side to keep the Kandaharis at bay, was of a cowering bank of flesh and cloth that pressed itself against the town’s walls as he and his men scrambled down the street.

‘Let’s not wait, Sar’nt Kelly, they’re hard behind,’ gasped Morgan, as he caught up with his clutch of men, who had paused to get a better hold on the barely conscious Thompson.

‘Aye, sir, I can see that . . .’ and, as if to reinforce what he knew already, a shower of stones, fruit and whatever else came to hand bounced around Kelly and Morgan as the mob surged up the street in pursuit.

‘So, hardly the most glorious start to an officer’s career, Mr Morgan?’ I knew that all four of those listening, Galbraith, Sergeant Kelly and Heath would be expecting me to show some sort of favouritism to my son. In truth, I’d have been a damn sight less hard on a young officer I didn’t know than I was going to have to be on Billy – if I’d been in that horrid situation, I suspect I’d have made a right bloody hash of things and got the whole patrol kicked and stabbed to death. What worried me, though, was how matter-of-fact Billy had been about killing a child.

‘No, sir, I know that, but I was fortunate to have a good set of men around me. If they’d got out of control or fired into the crowd, I suspect we wouldn’t be here now, sir,’ Billy answered confidently, Galbraith nodding his approval almost imperceptibly.

‘Quite so, young man. I gather that Private Thompson should recover, but you were lucky that the whole thing didn’t turn very nasty indeed. Who d’you suppose the maniac child was?’ I asked Billy, but Sergeant Kelly responded.

‘Ghazi, sir. Pretty young one, but a Ghazi beyond doubt,’ he said, with total conviction.

‘What – at twelve years of age? The only possible attraction I can see for being a bloody Ghazi is the dozens of virgins they’re promised in eternity if they butcher one of us. Can’t see how that would influence a twelve-year-old unless he’s a very early starter.’ The idea of using children as assassins was preposterous, wasn’t it? But, then, the very concept of committing certain suicide in the name of religion was also pretty odd – yet that was what was happening.

‘Well, sir, he was dressed all in white.’ Billy had taken up the narrative now. ‘Apparently he was yelling, “Din-din,” though I didn’t hear that myself. He was quite demented and went for Thompson with a knife rather than a firearm.’

‘Perhaps he couldn’t get a jezail or a pistol.’ I still found it hard to believe that anyone could bend a child’s mind to do such a thing.

‘Ten a penny in the metal-workers’ quarter, sir,’ Kelly added quietly.

‘Yes, I’m sure you’re right.’ I’d not yet been into the teeming bazaars of Kandahar, the same bazaars in which I was asking boys like Thompson to risk their lives. ‘Well, you two, it seems our enemies’ beastliness knows no bounds, yet you’ve come out of this remarkably unscathed. I have no doubt that the mullahs will get to the press vermin and that you’ll read all about your own atrocities, but let me handle that side of things.

‘Heath, I want a full account of this new tactic that the Ghazis are using sent to all commanding officers – and I’ll need to take a copy of it with me when I report to General Primrose, so don’t drag your heels.’ My brigade major adopted his customary harassed expression as he scratched in his notebook.

‘Have either of you anything more to say?’

Both Billy and his sergeant gave me a regulation ‘Nosir.’

‘Sar’nt Kelly, you should have known better than to let a patrol get into a mess like this and, Mr Morgan, if I hear about any more errors of judgement, then I’ll have your balls for bandoleers and you’ll be back to India before you know what’s hit you.’ I knew how lame this sounded and if it had been anyone but Billy standing in front of me, I would probably have given both him and his sergeant a cautious pat on the back – but I couldn’t, could I? ‘Well, think yourselves lucky. I’ll come and visit Private Thompson: now fall out, the pair of you.’ I’d tried to sound gruff and to conceal the fact that my son had got himself out of a nasty scrape without a mark on him, but as both officer and sergeant saluted, I caught a look in Billy’s eye that concerned me. He knew me – of course he did – and he would certainly know how much I sympathised with him and Kelly, whatever act I put on, but there was no self-doubt in that glance, apparently no residue of regret that the first person he’d had to kill had been just a child.

‘One more thing, Galbraith.’ I’d stood up, put on my helmet, settled my sword and was preparing to leave my son’s commanding officer. ‘You’ll need to be very careful of such tactics in the future. You’ll warn the men to be on the qui vive, won’t you?’

‘Of course I will, sir. In fact Taylor, whose company is just about to take over patrolling duties, is working up a series of instructions to help the men handle just such events in the future.’ He looked suitably pained that I should have asked such a question.

‘Quite so, quite so. I wouldn’t have expected anything less.’ I was trying my damnedest not to let my concern for Billy show, but I couldn’t quite stop myself. ‘I’ll smooth things over with General Primrose. And how’s young Mr Morgan settling in?’

‘He’s a most promising officer, sir, and while I know how ticklish things are in town, I think he conducted himself right well today.’ Galbraith stared straight back, making no reference to the boy’s relationship to me. But I wondered if he knew the question I really wanted to ask.

I wanted to ask him how he would have reacted to having to run his sword through a twelve-year-old’s chest. Would he have shown no remorse, like Billy? I knew that – no matter the circumstances – I would have reproached myself. I wanted to ask him if he’d noticed the cold glaze in my son’s eyes. But I didn’t – I couldn’t. I just nodded my understanding, flicked a salute out of courtesy and left the room.

Chapter Three - Khusk-i-Nakud

The 3rd Scinde Horse felt they were old hands, for they had been in Afghanistan more than a year and had a couple of successful skirmishes to their credit; now they were brimful of confidence. As the tribesmen seemed to have subsided into an uneasy truce, there was time for some sport in the hills and valleys around Kandahar: the commanding officer had asked some of the new arrivals from India to join him and his officers for what was insouciantly known as a ‘little spearing’.

It was widely accepted that Sam’s step-father, Brigadier General Anthony Morgan, regarded himself as a great shikari, so an invitation to ride out with a pig-spear, almost as soon as he’d wiped the dust of his travels off himself, had seemed like the most natural thing in the world. Over the past two years, Sam had written and received a few stiff soldier-father-to-soldier-son letters from his step-father, but he hadn’t seen him until now. He was wondering how much the prospect of another campaign at this late stage of his career would please him. Then Malcolmson, the colonel, ambitious to the last and delighted that one of his people knew someone of influence, had introduced his officers – the handful of British and twice the number of Indians – to their guests. Keenan was amused to see that his father had changed into mufti while he and the other officers had been required to stay in uniform due, as the colonel stuffily put it, ‘to the omnipresent possibility of an enemy presence’.

They’d all been lined up outside the bungalow that served as the British officers’ mess, themselves drinking a fruit-punch stirrup cup and the Indian officers unadulterated fruit juice. Malcolmson, no doubt, wanted to give the new general an impression of relaxed élan, a study in dash and the spirit of irregular cavalry, but once the man himself and the other guests came cantering up, in an assortment of linen jackets, corduroy breeches and the most battered sun-helmets, the colonel’s efforts were made to look a little contrived. Had the officers of the Scinde Horse been similarly déshabillé then the ruse might have worked, but the polished boots, the native officers’ oh-so-carefully tied puggarees and everyone’s Sunday-best behaviour gave the game away.

As the general arrived, Sam realised he’d never seen him in circumstances like this before. At home in Ireland it was an open secret that Sam was the bastard son of Anthony and Mary, conceived in the Crimea while Mary was married to a sergeant in the company Sam’s father commanded. Everyone also knew that Sergeant James Keenan – a Corkman too – had perished in circumstances of great bravery in India under the mutineers’ knives a couple of years later. With the death in childbirth of Maude, Anthony’s first wife, the way was clear for the lovers to marry.

Sam, it was true, had stuck to the name Keenan and followed his mother’s wishes that he should be brought up a Catholic, but most people knew the truth. Anthony, whenever he was at home, had treated him like the son he was – well, he had treated him in the rather distant, muscular way that, Sam supposed, military fathers were meant to treat their boys, yet there had always been tension between himself and his younger half-brother, Billy. Sam had soon understood that, despite being older, he would always come off second best; not for him the name Morgan and an inheritance, not for him a scarlet coat. No, it was the Indian cavalry for the Catholic Sam Keenan and a life a long way from Dublin drawing rooms. If he thought about it too much it angered him, but just at the moment he couldn’t have given a hang, for he was in Afghanistan among people he liked and trusted, being paid to do a job that he would have cheerfully done for free.

Now here was the man who, while he might have made him play second fiddle at home, had given him the chance for this great adventure, a man who certainly had failings but was kind and brave, a man who preferred to ask rather than demand, and that same man had just made his own colonel look like the gauche little thruster he was.

The general had shaken every hand, admired the medals that hung from the native officers’ breasts, asked everyone about their home towns (and even looked as though he understood what the rissaldars were talking about) and made friends with them all. Sam wondered how he would greet him, but he needn’t have worried.

‘So, Colonel, you seem to have turned this gouger into more of a soldier than I ever could!’ There had been laughs from Sam’s contemporaries at this and a beam of pleasure from the commanding officer. ‘May I steal him away from you this evening? I need to learn a bit about fighting the Afghans.’

And so General Morgan won the confidence of the Scinde Horsemen, as Sam had seen him do so many times before with huntsmen, magistrates, police and tradesmen at home. It had never struck him before, but Sam now knew that there might be much to learn about leadership and raw soldiering from his father, whom he knew so slightly. But there were more surprises to come for, towards the end of a disappointing hunt, they flushed a panther from its hiding-place and chased it into a piece of rocky ground that was set about with tall grass, scrub and stunted trees. Long, low, dangerous growls could be heard, echoing from the slabs of rock about them. Then Sam watched his father ride into deep, thick cover after it, quite alone and armed only with a spear. It was in that instant that he saw where his own impulsiveness – his pig-headedness – came from.

Until an hour or so before, the spearmen had had a sparse day of it. There had been distant sightings of pig, excited cries from the native beaters and much galloping hither and yon to no effect whatsoever. But then Sam had been amazed to see a low, sleek, dark form come slinking from a rocky fissure; he had never seen such a beautiful creature before, her black coat groomed and glossy, her ears tipped back and her eyes alight with feral intelligence. The villagers had claimed that the great cat stalked the area, taking withered cows, chickens and goats, and causing mothers to watch their children closely, despite only rare sightings. The native beaters had fired the bush around an outcrop and the creature’s supposed lair, hoping to smoke her out. As Sam sat his pony, the short, seven-foot spear in his hand, and watched the grey-blue smoke billow with a bored detachment, he could not have been more surprised when the mythical quarry became reality.

‘Hey, goddamn – here, here.’ Sam found himself shouting inanities at the backs of the fire-raisers, behind whom the animal ambled, unseen. But as he shouted and dug his spurs into his pony, the panther broke into a gentle trot, dignifying him with a short, disdainful glance before she disappeared into a thicket of grass and scrubby bush.

Sam pushed his mount forward, hallooing as loudly as he could, but the tangle of branches and stalks, combined with the clouds of smoke, gave the advantage to the animal and by the time he’d extracted himself there had been another sighting and more excited cries further up the line of rocks. Galloping as hard as he could to catch the other horsemen, who were now much closer to the cat, he saw two riders hesitating over a body that lay still on the ground.

‘A beater, sahib.’ Rissaldar Singh, one of the Indian troop commanders in Keenan’s squadron, held his horse’s reins tightly, flicking his eyes from the inert pile of rags on the ground to the stand of long, coarse grass from which low growls could be heard. ‘I saw the cat on him but was too late: bus.’

‘Aye, and we’ll be too late if we fanny around here any longer,’ said the other horseman, his voice thick with excitement. ‘You two get up towards that gap in the brush just there.’ He pointed with his spear to a dark-shadowed, natural hollow in the grass about ten yards from where they all stood. ‘I’ll poke her up the arse and you two catch her as she bolts. Be sharp about it, though, for you’ll get no second chance.’ Before either of them could try to stop him, General Anthony Morgan was away into the brush by himself, crashing his horse through the low cover, yelling loudly and shouting, ‘Hi, hi, get on,’ with his stout little spear held low and ready.

There was to be no argument, that was clear, so Keenan and Singh dug their heels into their mounts, the dead beater forgotten, and in a few seconds were covering the indicated spot. There was just time for Keenan’s heart to beat a little less frantically, for the horses to settle, for the general’s shouts and thrashing to become less torrid and for them all to think that the panther had slipped away – when out she shot.

Keenan thought of the cats at home as they stalked sparrows around the stables, low on their haunches, all shoulder-blades, flicking tails and rapt concentration. The panther looked just like that as she emerged – but ten times the size and weight, her whiskers bristling and eyes narrowed, trying to weigh up whether to attack the two horsemen or bolt between them. In the fraction of a second that Keenan watched and mused, Singh acted, kicking his horse on, causing the panther to swerve, but still catching her with the point of his barbed pig-spear deep in the rump.

Again, Keenan was reminded of domestic cats, for the panther hissed and screamed in pain just as he had heard two toms do when they were contesting some bit of food thrown on to the kitchen waste. But this cat’s enemy was Singh’s spear, around which she curled her body, biting at the wooden shaft and clawing so powerfully at the ground that she almost pulled her antagonist from the saddle. Keenan found the writhing, kicking target hard to hit; he jostled his pony alongside Singh’s, missed with his first lunge and only managed to prod the panther in the ribs with his second attempt, infuriating the wounded animal even further.

As the horses wheeled and pecked, and the panther scrabbled at the ground to which she was pinned, the dust rose, along with the yells of the two cavalrymen. Then into this chaos panted a third man, a dismounted man, who loped forward with his spear held in front of him.

‘Let me in, goddamn you! Clear the way!’ rasped General Morgan, as he dodged among the hoofs and flying specks of blood. ‘Get your spike into that bloody cat, won’t you, son? Skewer it – hold the damn thing down while I finish the job!’

Keenan reached forward from the saddle and jabbed as hard as he could into the fine sable fur, thrusting the point of his spear so deeply that the steel drove through the flesh until it met the dirt beneath. Now, with two shafts holding the agonised beast, Keenan watched as his father closed in.

Although the panther was weak she was still dangerous, and Morgan had to wait for his moment. As the blood flowed from her wounds, so she became more desperate, and as she clawed at the stakes, she finally showed her soft belly and Morgan darted in. Keenan held on to his bucking shaft and watched as his father poked his own spear between a line of teats where the hair was thin and the white hide showed. The general, he saw, was skilful enough just to push a few inches of steel home and then pause until the blood flowed. Once he was sure that the point would find a vital organ, Morgan threw all his weight behind the weapon, thrusting the spear until the metal and wood were deep inside the creature’s lungs and heart. Then it was over. One final jab saw the end of the cat’s agony. With a twitch that shook the black body from the point of its tail to the tip of its nose, the panther at last lay still.

The horses snorted and shook their heads – almost like a last salute to their humbled foe, thought Keenan.

‘Well, damn your eyes, you two, that was a neat bit of work, so it was. The pelt will look grand on your veranda, Rissaldar sahib, well done, bahadur! And not a bad show from you, either, my lad.’ Keenan saw his father grinning up at both of them as he jerked his spear from the corpse. The general was dusty, spotted with the panther’s blood, exhilarated and, clearly, pleased with himself. Yet, Keenan realised, his father, who had taken most of the risk, wanted no credit for himself: how little he knew him.

The day’s chase had quite revived my spirits and I rounded things off by sending my clueless brigade major to check that the Horse Gunners had settled into their lines – that was far too grubby a task for a man of his fine habits. Now I could try to enjoy a supper with my elder son and, after today, I suspected that he’d matured into quite a different person from the lad I’d last known. I hadn’t seen him for a couple of years – the last time we’d met passed through Bombay and Sam had invited me to a guest night with his new regiment, the 3rd Scinde Horse. I was just a full colonel on the staff then and he was a fresh-minted cornet, straight out of the factory, all new mess kit and sparkling spurs. But what a different sight he’d been when we were after that cat, and now here he was in the dusty courtyard of my living quarters in Kandahar – burnt as dark as any of his sowars, his tulwar swinging by his side, spiked helmet at a rakish angle and a look of such self-confidence in his brown eyes that it took me a second to realise he was my own flesh and blood.

Mind you, Sam had been hard at it for more than a year. His regiment had been right through the first campaign in the Helmand valley, serving under that poor, tired old sod General Biddulph, while my newly formed brigade and I had been rotting down on the lines of communication from the freezing mountain passes up here to Kandahar itself.

‘General Morgan, sir.’ The boy was exaggerating my new exalted rank. ‘Mr Samuel Keenan, sir, at your command.’ There was a relaxed self-assurance in the way he saluted that I hadn’t seen before.

‘At my command, Lieutenant bloody Keenan? If you are, that’ll be the first time in twenty-four years, you scoundrel! Anyway, son, that was a brisk little business today, wasn’t it? You did well . . .’ Actually, he’d done bloody well – but I wasn’t going to say that. The Indian officer had snagged the panther, but if Sam hadn’t struck when he did and hung on like a demon, more would have died than just that poor coolie. ‘I want to hear all about your adventures. I had a look at one of the squadrons of your lot on my way to take command of my brigade and a very fair impression they made. Your officers looked a damn good lot today, especially the Indians – they’ve seen a bit of service, ain’t they?’

‘We’re lucky with our native officers and the rissaldar major is a grand fellow . . .’ Sam tailed off.

‘I know . . . you’ve no need to tell me.’ His hesitation had told me all I needed to know. ‘Malcolmson, your colonel, is a scrub – tell me I’m wrong.’

‘Well, Father . . .’

‘No, it was all too clear when he had you drawn up drill-yard style, booted and spurred yet trying to loll over fucking cocktails or whatever fancy nonsense they were. I’ve not seen plunging like that since the Crimea . . .’ Sam was looking blank ‘. . . yes, you know, plungers – don’t you use that word any more? Horrible ambitious types – usually tradesmen’s sons – who think that licking round their superiors and trying to give themselves airs and graces will somehow give them a foot up the ladder. What does he think he commands – the bloody Life Guards? It’s a regiment of native irregulars, ain’t it?’ I saw a slight shadow pass over my son’s face. Without thinking, I’d suggested he might have been consigned to something second rate. ‘And bloody good in the field it is too – we depended heavily on your lot back in the Mutiny, you know.’ I tried to redeem myself. ‘I can see he’s an arse socially, Sam, but Malcolmson’s done well enough on campaign so far, ain’t he? The regiment’s got a good name.’

‘I think we’ve done pretty well, Father, but we’ve only had one serious brush with the enemy and the commanding officer was fine, as far as I could see. Is this your mess?’ replied Sam, changing the subject as he ran an approving eye over the single-storey building that stood at the end of the courtyard.

‘Yes, it is. Henry Brooke – you know him and his family, Protestant folk from up Tyrone way . . .’ Oh, damn it, there it was again: I’d reminded Sam of the differences between us once more when I was trying to find common ground. ‘As you know, he’s the other infantry brigadier and we’ve been pals for years. Well, he found the place when he arrived in Kandahar a little after you did. Now he’s converted it into a joint mess for both of us and our staff. But you don’t have to be over-loyal in front of me, lad. I’ve seen men like Malcolmson before – a veneer of efficiency that usually hides something much less savoury. Anyway, enough of that. You’ll soon know if I’m right or wrong – and I wasn’t pumping you up in front of Malcolmson earlier. I really do need to know about this country and the folk we’ve got to fight. Sam Browne and Roberts have been poked in the eye a couple of times but seem to have come through it, and you tell me that your lot have crossed swords with ’em, so what are they like?’

As Sam started to reply I knew I must concentrate, but my mind kept wandering away. I thought how little I knew the young warrior who had so impressed me during today’s hunt. Why, the last occasion we’d spent any time together had been in Ireland and I’d been daft enough to criticise his skill in the saddle. Yet today he’d been like a satyr while the big cat had spat and scratched around the three of us.

No, I hardly knew him. I seemed to have lavished all my time and attention on his half-brother, William. I had packed Sam off to India as soon as I could into a cheap, but good, native cavalry gang while his brother got the best of schools and a commission in a decent English regiment that nearly broke the bank. Yet, looking at the man, I could see myself a quarter of a century before.

‘They’re damn good, Father. They’ll come at you out of nowhere, exploit every mistake you make, carve you up, and are away like the wind. They nearly gave us a hiding at Khusk-i-Nakud – I thought I’d finished before I’d started when we had to charge fifteen hundred tribesmen who had got into our rear.’

We’d had word of that smart little skirmish when it happened more than a year ago, and I’d been both thrilled and worried when I heard that the 3rd Scinde Horse had been involved. I’d written to Sam immediately, but his reply had been brisk and modestly uninformative and, until now, I’d had no chance to talk to him about his first time in action. ‘Tell me about it, Sam. I want to hear every last detail.’

‘Take your squadron up to that bit of scrub yonder, Reynolds. I’ll hold B and C Squadrons and the 29th Balochi lads down here while you move.’ Colonel Malcolmson, commanding officer of the 3rd Scinde Horse, was in charge of the rearguard. ‘Then, when you hear my signal, be prepared to fall back behind that handful of buildings over there.’

This looks a damn sight more promising than anything we’ve seen so far, thought Lieutenant Sam Keenan. I’ve been here for three months and done nothing but watch other men’s battles, picket till I’m blue in the face and freeze my balls off. I wonder if this’ll develop into anything more than all the other disappointments? He could hear the colonel’s orders to Reynolds, his squadron commander, quite clearly, as could every man in his troop. The sixty or so horsemen of A Squadron waited with the rest of the rearguard in the bottom of the shallow valley, watching the first enemy that they had seen in any numbers since their arrival in Afghanistan. In the low hills above them, dark groups of tribesmen could be seen trotting from cover to cover, firing a random shot or two at the distant British.

Now the men stood by their mounts, lances resting on the ground, easing girths and harness, as they waited with the prospect of action gnawing at their guts. The horses could feel it as well. Just handy little ponies, really, carrying nets full of fodder across their saddles that made them look more like farm beasts than chargers. They whinnied and threw their heads, shook the flies 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. Prepare for new targets.’ Reynolds and all of them could hear the 29th’s rifles popping in the thicket and see their figures darting about, bayonets rising and falling.

After the crashing noise all about him, Keenan noticed the sudden quiet. Odd shouts and NCOs’ brass-lung commands could still be heard on the cool air, but his first taste of action had been disappointingly ordinary.

‘Check ammunition, Daffadar sahib,’ Keenan ordered needlessly, for the experienced Miran was already overseeing his lance daffadars doing just that. But as the scene of military domesticity took shape around him, men reaching into pouches, oily rags being drawn over breeches and hammers, a strange sing-song shout echoed up from the low ground in front of them.

‘Dear God . . .’ said Reynolds, as every man in the squadron saw what he had seen. ‘Trumpeter, blow “horses forward, prepare to mount”.’ Less than half a mile to their front, a great swarm of tribesmen, dirty blue and brown turbans and kurtas, some armed with rifles, all with swords and miniature round shields, crowded out of a courtyard where they had been lying hidden and rushed towards the platoon of the 29th, who were distracted by the Afghans with whom they were already toe-to-toe.

‘How many of those bastards are there, Daffadar sahib?’ Keenan asked. He knew that the bugle call was as much about warning the commanding officer, who was at least a mile away, of Reynolds’s intentions as it was about getting the squadron ready to attack.

‘Bastards, sahib? Do you know these Duranis’ mothers?’ Keenan marvelled at the daffadar’s ability to joke at a time like this. ‘About five hundred – Reynolds sahib is going to charge them, is he not?’

His daffadar had obviously read the battle much better than he had, thought Keenan. A charge – the horse soldier’s raison d’être – in this his first taste of action? Yes, he could see it now. If his squadron was swift and sure-footed, and the commanding officer had the rest of the regiment trimmed and ready to support them, even sixty of them could cut up the tribesmen from a vantage-point like this. Scrambling over the dust and grit, Keenan was pleased to see his syce first at the rear of the little wood, holding his stirrup ready for him to mount even before the rest of the troop’s horses began to arrive.

‘Troop, form column,’ Keenan used the orders straight from the manual that he knew his men understood, as 1 and 3 Troops went through exactly the same evolutions on either side of his men. His command, ‘NCOs, dress them off,’ saw much snapping and biting from the two daffadars and Miran, but his troopers were almost ready to move before the squadron leader and his trumpeter had come trotting breathlessly through the brush.

Captain Reynolds nodded with approval at his three troops – his orders had been well anticipated. ‘Good; troop officers, lead your men to the front of the brush and take post on Rissaldar Singh – he’s your right marker. Be sharp now.’ Keenan was the only British troop officer, the other two being Indians. Now 1 Troop commander – at thirty-five Singh was the oldest man in the squadron – had been placed to guide the troops as they formed up ready for the attack.

With the minimum of fuss, Keenan’s troop followed him forward through the stand of trees before fanning out to the left of 3 Troop, Miran pushing and shoving the horses and their riders into two long, thin lines in the middle of the squadron.

‘Right, sahib,’ Miran said, which told Keenan that he should trot round to the front of his men and turn about to face them, his back to the enemy. He looked at twenty earnest young faces, every one adorned with a variety of moustache and beard – some full, some scrawny. They could be tricky in barracks, these Pathans of his, but now they looked no more than nervous boys, faces tense in the sun, pink tongues licking at dry lips. Keenan raised his hand to show that his troop was dressed and deployed to his satisfaction, the other two troop officers doing the same at either side of him.

‘Squadron, steady!’ came Reynolds’s word of command that brought the officers wheeling about in front of their troopers, allowing Keenan his first proper glimpse of the enemy. Two furlongs down the slope, a wedge of enemy infantry had charged hard into the rear and flanks of the 29th Bombay and was overwhelming them.

‘Drop your fodder, men.’ The squadron leader’s order caused every man to fiddle with the hay-net that made his saddle appear so swollen. In an instant the ground was littered with awkward balls of crop, while the horses looked instantly more warlike.

‘Carry . . . lances,’ Reynolds shouted, as the sun caught knife blades that were slicing and hacking at the Indian infantry men. Sixty or so long, slender bamboo poles, topped with red and white pennons, dipped and bobbed before coming to rest in their owners’ gauntleted hands. Keenan looked to either side of him: reins were being tightened, fingers flexing on weapons, every man intent on the target to their front.

‘They have not noticed us, yet, Daffadar sahib,’ Keenan said, as his sergeant rode up to him, fussing over the men as he came.

‘No, sahib, they have not. They’re too busy howling about the Prophet to realise they’re about to meet him. Look there, sahib: one of the officers is helping those monkeys to meet Allah.’ The daffadar pointed with his chin – as Keenan had noticed all natives did – towards a struggling scrum of men right on the edge of the fight. Among the swarthy faces a white one stood out. His helmet gone, a subaltern of the 29th was fighting for his life.

A strange, savage noise: grunting, sighing, the clash of steel on steel was coming from the throng. Then Keenan heard two revolver shots and saw the young officer hurl his pistol at the nearest Durani before dashing himself against five or more assailants, his sword blade outstretched. In an instant it was over. Two robed figures rolled in the dust before steel flashed and fell, knives stabbing, short swords slicing and cutting the young lieutenant’s fair skin.

‘Prepare to advance.’ Reynolds used just his voice rather than the bugle. ‘Walk march, forward!’ The squadron billowed down the hill, over-keen riders being pulled back into line with an NCO’s curse, the horses snorting with anticipation, ears pricked.

‘Trot march!’ The line gathered pace at the squadron commander’s next order, the men having to curb their mounts’ eagerness as the slope of the hill added to the speed.

‘Prepare to charge!’ Keenan had heard these words so many times before on exercise fields and the maidan, yet never had they thrilled him like this. ‘Charge!’ As Reynolds spoke, the front rank’s lances formed a hedge of wood tipped with steel, level in front of the soldiers’ faces, spurs urging the horses on, a snarl that Keenan had never heard before coming from the men’s lips.

Then the ecstasy of relief. Keenan found himself yelling inanely, his mount Kala’s ears twitching at her master’s unfamiliar noise. The soldiers became centaurs as the trot turned into a canter, Keenan only having to pull gently on the reins to check his mare and prevent her getting too close to the pounding hoofs of Reynolds and his trumpeter, who rode just in front of him.

‘Steady, lads, steady,’ shouted Keenan, pointlessly, as the enemy loomed hugely just paces in front of them. He could see that the Duranis had been intent upon their prey, crowding over the clutch of Bombay soldiers who had survived their first onslaught, but now they were shocked by the appearance of a charging squadron. Contorted faces, whose owners had tasted easy blood, turned in fright towards the hammering hoofs and flashing spear points.

‘Mark your targets, men.’ Another needless but self- reassuring order spilled from Keenan’s mouth, as Kala jinked hard to avoid one of the enemy who had dropped to the ground. The Afghan had realised, almost too late, that he’d caught the eye of at least three angry Scinde Horsemen. In the first wave Captain Reynolds had cut at him, doing nothing more than ripping his kurta. Next, Sowar Ram – the trumpeter – sliced the soft, sheepskin cap off his head, but left the man unharmed. Then it was Keenan’s turn. The young officer tried to reach low enough to spit his enemy on the ground, but the Durani had learnt more in the last sixty seconds than in a lifetime of swordplay. First he crouched. Then, as Keenan’s blade came close, he sprang like a cat, took the full force of his attacker’s steel on the boss of his shield and cut up hard with his long Khyber knife. Keenan was past his target, over-exposed, leaning down from the saddle, and had it not been for the lance daffadar riding close behind him, the knife would have taken him squarely in the back. Instead, an issue lance, with twelve stone of cavalryman behind it, entered the Afghan’s left lung, emerged just above his heart and left him dead before he hit the ground.

‘Shukria, bahadur,’ gasped Keenan, as the corpse dropped away. The lance daffadar seemed almost as surprised by the perfection of the blow as the officer was to be in one piece.

The charge slowed and broke, as the horsemen fell upon their enemies, knots of cavalrymen soon surrounded by a sea of Duranis who had quickly recovered from the crashing impact. Keenan found himself in a sandy gully filled with pushing, yelling tribesmen, his own troopers hacking left and right in a desperate attempt to force the enemy swordsmen back.

‘More than we thought, sahib,’ said Miran, almost matter-of-factly. ‘I hope the colonel sahib has got those owls in B Squadron ready to come and help.’ The last few words were said with a grunt – the daffadar had abandoned his lance and drawn his sword. Now the blade sickled through a sheepskin poshteen and deep into the shoulder of an older, bearded warrior, who quit the fight with a yelp of pain.

‘Aye, Daffadar, but they’ll need to be quick – look to Captain Reynolds, won’t you?’ Keenan saw his squadron leader just a few paces further up the nullah engulfed by a dozen attackers. The trumpeter – who was taught to protect the officer when at close quarters like this – seemed to be down. Keenan thought he’d seen one of the horses roll on to its side as muskets and matchlocks banged all around. Then, at first, Reynolds had slashed all about him, driving the Duranis back, but Keenan saw one bolder than the rest who threw down his shield and musket, drew his knife and scrambled forward. The tribesman had come from the captain’s rear, and the long knife poked hard over Reynolds’s rolled blanket and darted into the small of his back. The blade disappeared and re-emerged, stained red, and, in an instant, the officer had gone from a fighting man to a semi-cripple: he dropped his sword and yelled in pain, gripping the pommel of his saddle as the rest of the foe closed in and tried to drag him to the ground.

With no further words, the daffadar had dug his spurs into his mount, the pony kicking up the grit as she surged towards the mob. Keenan did the same, Kala barging one man out of her way with her left shoulder before putting her master right among the struggling throng.

Just in front of Keenan, a young Durani had thrown down his sword and seized Reynolds’s tunic with both hands, dragging at the wounded officer who was feebly kicking out with the toes of his riding boots while trying to control his rearing horse. Keenan was about to strike a living target for the first time but, despite hours of practice, every bit of training deserted him. His victim was facing away from him, intent upon Reynolds in the noise and confusion that overwhelmed them all – a perfect mark for a deep stab with the point of the sword. Such a strike, Keenan had been taught, would be effective and economical, yet blunt instinct took over as he swept his tulwar over his left shoulder and let go a great scything cut that almost unbalanced him.

The carefully sharpened steel hit the foot soldier in two places at once. The base of the blade struck the man just above the left ear, his woollen cap taking some of the power out of the blow, but not before a great wound was opened on his scalp. At the same time, the forward part of the sword sliced obliquely through the Durani’s left hand, neatly cutting off a couple of fingers and carving a wide flap of skin under which the bones showed whitely. The blow had been awkward, clumsy, and his opponent, though hurt and shouting in pain, still clung to Reynolds with fanatical determination.

‘Use the point, sahib, finish him properly.’ Next to Keenan in the plunging mêlée, the daffadar was jabbing at his own countrymen expertly, while remaining detached enough to guide his British officer.

Pulling the hilt of his sword back over Kala’s rump, Keenan lunged hard at his shrieking opponent. The point of the weapon hit the man under his armpit and pushed obliquely through his major organs with surprising ease. One moment the tribesman had been wounded, but alive and dangerous; at the next he fell away, slipping easily off Keenan’s blade into the cloud of dust and thrashing hoofs below, a look of horror on his bristly face.

So, that was what it was like to kill, thought Keenan. He glanced at the corpse – it was already shrunken and shapeless in death – but any pang of guilt had no time to develop as the daffadar bawled, ‘Shabash, sahib!’ at him and ran yet another of the enemy through the shoulder to send the man corkscrewing back behind them and right on to the lance of a sowar riding with the second rank. Keenan knew the lad, a well-muscled youngster who’d come down from Rawalpindi to enlist last year. He was a wrestler and now every bit of sinew was put into a blow that buried his spear deep in the wounded tribesman’s belly, finishing the brutal work that the daffadar had started. Keenan glanced at the cavalryman as he brought his weapon back to the ‘recover’. There was no regret, no sympathy, just a vulpine grin behind his beard – a soldier satisfied with a job well done.

The immediate danger was over. Keenan watched as the Durani infantry loped away from his men, dodging among the brush and trees, one or two pausing to fire but most running hard to regroup among the buildings from which they had emerged. Even as Keenan took all this in, however, even as he looked back at the bundles of dusty rags that had been his enemy and the odd khaki figure sprawled beside them, he realised that a badly cut-about, barely conscious Captain Reynolds was being helped down from his saddle by two soldiers.

‘What are your orders, sahib?’ Rissaldar Singh, the senior of the squadron’s two native officers, stood before him, a fleck of blood on his horse’s neck but otherwise as unruffled as if he were on parade.

‘Orders?’ Keenan answered bemusedly, wondering why one of the other troop officers should have come to him for guidance.

‘Yes, sahib, orders. You’re in charge now that Reynolds sahib is hurt,’ Singh continued calmly.

‘Yes . . . yes, of course I am.’ Despite Keenan’s lack and Singh’s depth of experience, as the only British officer left in the squadron, command automatically devolved upon him. Now he looked at the enemy. He could see a great crowd of them, probably two hundred strong, he guessed, turning to face his troops from the mud-walled hamlet that lay a furlong away over open, tussocky ground. Even as he watched he could see their confidence returning: they had started to shout defiance and fire wild shots towards the Scinde Horse.

‘Let’s be at ’em, then. Get your troops shaken out either side of mine beyond this nullah . . .’ Keenan pointed to the shallow ditch immediately to their front, but stopped as Singh shook his head.

‘No, sahib, we are too few – look.’

Keenan took stock of his new command. Singh was right: not only had the squadron lost its commander and several men, but many of the horses had been cut by swords and knives or grazed by bullets and all were blown. Most of the men had lost or broken their lances and two score simply could not hope to repeat the success of their earlier action, especially now that surprise was lost and the enemy had planted himself among protective walls and enclosures.

‘The colonel will want to finish them with the other squadrons – we must hold them with our carbines, sahib,’ Singh suggested, with quiet insistence.

‘Aye, you’re right, sahib. Trumpeter . . .’ But there was no one to obey Keenan – he’d forgotten that the signaller had been one of the first to fall. ‘Dismount, prepare to skirmish,’ he shouted, the command being taken up by the NCOs who tongue-lashed the dazed troopers off their horses and forward with their weapons.

Keenan looked away to his right where the main body of the rearguard had been concentrated before the fight. Again Singh seemed to have been correct: he could see the remaining two squadrons of the Scinde Horse wheeling amid their own cloud of dust, shaking out into line abreast, while the company of the 29th Beloochis were trotting off to a flank to give covering fire, he guessed, with their long Snider rifles. Their own carbine fire, if quick and accurate, would gall the enemy just as the rest of Colonel Malcolmson’s horsemen charged home.

‘Squadron, load.’ The men had flung themselves down behind any cover they could find and now they rammed cartridges into the breech of their weapons and clicked the breech-traps closed. ‘Two fifty . . . aim high.’ Keenan reckoned the range to be a little less than three hundred yards. The men adjusted their sights. ‘Fire!’ The snub-nosed rifles crashed out, pleasingly together, immediately obscuring his view of the target with a dense grey cloud.

‘Reload.’ The gentle breeze cleared some of the smoke, allowing Keenan to see where his men’s bullets had whipped and stung the enemy. Where, just seconds before, there had been a dense packet of defiant tribesmen, now wounded men were struggling on the ground and their chanting had been replaced by moans of pain.

‘Fire!’ Again, the carbines banged out, and the rifles of the 29th joined in from way over on his troop’s right. Behind the bank of muzzle smoke, Keenan could see the hundred and twenty lancers of the other two squadrons gathering speed as they trotted, then cantered up the gentle slope towards the village.

‘Engage by troops.’ Keenan wondered if this was the right thing to do or whether it would have been better to continue to volley fire.

‘Shabash, sahib.’ The daffadar beamed delightedly at his officer as he encouraged his soldiers’ frantic marksmanship. ‘See them run.’

And, through the smoke, Keenan could see how the Durani formation was beginning to disintegrate. Lashed by bullets, with more and more warriors writhing on the ground, a steady trickle of men was edging away into the cover of the village. Then the remaining two Scinde Horse squadrons charged home. The buildings and walls took some of the momentum away from the assault, but as Keenan watched, and Miran capered with delight beside him, the cavalrymen began their lethal trade.

Lances stabbed and curved steel hacked, poked and slashed; some tribesmen resisted bravely, trying to meet the terrible blades with shields and muskets, but most just melted away through the village, running for all they were worth into the hills beyond.

‘Fire at will!’ It was the last command that Keenan gave in his first action. As his men blazed at fleeing targets, he took his own carbine, which, until then, he hadn’t thought to fire, but now he found a mark. One Durani was moving well from cover to cover, firing a captured Snider at Malcolmson’s men as they hunted down the few who still resisted. Keenan watched his man shelter behind a bush, topple a trooper from his saddle with one shot, then rise and scuttle back to his next position. But as the man broke into a trot, Keenan put the metal V of his foresight on the knot of his target’s belt, aimed just a fraction more to the left to allow for the time of flight of the round and gently squeezed the trigger. The warrior dropped like a shot rabbit, falling towards Keenan as the lead ploughed through his flesh. There was not even a flicker of life in him: the half-inch lump of lead had ripped it from him.

He’s trying to be as modest as he can be, but I know that Sam was in the thick of it – word soon got back to me, especially as he had ended up commanding a squadron when things got tight. Firing his carbine alongside the men . . . I did the same in my first action – well, almost. But I don’t see any of the self-doubt that beset me: there’s a poise about the lad that I never had and which I’ve never noticed in him before – must get it from his mother. I expect I’ve been blinded by setting Billy’s course for him, making sure that the Morgan name is held high. Well, much good may that do, for both my boys are out here in Afghanistan now – though I doubt that Billy will get the same chance to earn his spurs that Sam’s had. It’ll take Billy an age to live down that business in Kandahar with the child.

‘Well, anyway, Father, that was months ago. We’ve seen a little more skirmishing since then, but nothing to compare with Khusk-i-Nakud. D’you think there’s likely to be another campaign this season, or will we be going back to India?’ asked Sam.

The boy even holds a glass like I do, both hands curled around the base,

‘I doubt there’ll be any more fighting, Sam. All the spunk’s gone out of things now that hand-wringing Gladstone has got in. Mark my words, if we don’t show the Afghans who’s in charge, the bloody Russians will be in Kabul, like rats up a gutter, and then we’ll see just how safe India’s borders are. But I expect we’ll sweat out the hot weather here and then take a gentlemanly trek back through the passes some time in late summer. I think you may have seen all the action you’re likely to get just for the moment, my lad. Just be glad your hide’s in one piece.’

‘Aye, Father, you’re right. A nice silver medal and a notch on my hilt are probably as much as I want. Some of the other officers are full of piss and vinegar – they can’t wait for the next round – but a little swordplay with an angry Durani goes a long way in my book.’

I looked at my first son and liked what I saw. It would have been so easy to give his superior officer – and his father – some sort of devil-may-care, God-rot-Johnny-Afghan patter. But, no, he’d tasted blood and once was quite enough for him. I admired his frankness. Mind you, I wonder if I really did expect a quiet summer and a long walk, or was I just trying to calm the lad’s expectations? If I’d really thought that things in Afghanistan were all but over that spring, I was sorely disappointed.

Chapter Four - The March

I’d hung around in garrisons before, but nothing ever like this. In Dublin, Pembroke Dock, Bombay and Karachi, you could establish some sort of routine, some sort of rhythm, to your work and have as good a social life as the people, the shooting and the hunting would allow. Then, when man oeuvres, postings or even campaigns beckoned, you could gear yourself up, jildi the men, tighten belts and set about whatever it was that Horse Guards wanted with gusto.

But Kandahar was debilitating. We weren’t at war yet we were; we were expecting trouble yet we weren’t. The rumours about a troublesome Ayoob Khan in Herat on the Persian border, which had held so much sway when I assumed command of the brigade in April, more than a month ago now, waxed and waned. Meanwhile, fighting was still going on in the north and the town was just as uneasy and bloody unpleasant as it had always been. Patrols continued to be knocked around, scuffles were frequent, and yet we had to pretend that everything was sweetness and light with the wali and his scabrous troops.

At least the dithering gave me time to get to know the units in the brigade and to push them into some sort of shape. By early May I’d visited the two companies of the 66th who were detached to protect the lines of communication at Khelati-Ghilzai, eighty-five miles away on the Kabul road, and got a good idea of how the land lay to the north-east. More importantly, I’d come to realise how I would miss them in the event of a serious fight around Kandahar. Their detachment meant that Galbraith only had six companies under his command, and these four hundred and fifty men were the only European troops – other than the Gunners – that I had to my name.

But the 66th were a good lot. Even though Galbraith had never seen active service before, he’d had a fair old time with the regiment and established a pretty firm grip on them. I’d already noticed how many long-service men they had with them and my son’s sergeant – Kelly – was typical of their senior NCOs. I was also impressed with Beresford-Pierce, Billy’s captain commanding H Company. He and his colour sergeant – James – seemed as close as McGucken and I had ever been in the old days, and it was this company that Galbraith chose to demonstrate to me the 66th’s skill at arms.

The British battalion was the only unit to be armed with the Martini-Henry breech-loader; they’d had it for several years now and were thoroughly proficient with a weapon whose rate of fire could be devastating in the right hands. Galbraith and his musketry officer had trained the soldiers to fire eight volleys a minute; a high number of men were good enough shots to have qualified for the extra pay that a certified marksman received. As long as the weapon didn’t overheat and fail to eject a spent cartridge case, each rifleman would be crucial if the sort of fighting that Roberts’s troops had experienced up north came our way.

The only fly in Galbraith’s ointment seemed to be his men’s thirst. The Temperance Movement had got a real grip in India with, in my experience, most British units having at least a hundred men or so who had forsworn the bottle. But there were many fewer in the 66th, and I noticed that the regimental prison was always full of lads doubling about in full kit in the heat of the day with an energetic provost corporal in close attendance. Still, there were worse problems, and while there continued to be clashes between the regiment and the toughs in town, there were no repeats of the incident in which Billy had been involved in April.

But when I managed to get some time with my native battalions, I discovered how much work there was to do. The 1st Bombay Grenadiers came with a high reputation for steadiness earned in the Mutiny – but that was a long time ago now – and they had done well in Aden in ’65, but I didn’t like the way that my brigade major, Heath, talked about them. He’d been their adjutant, after all, and whenever we discussed them he would mention nothing except their steadiness on parade and the various complicated devices they used to ensure that they all took a graduated pace when each company wheeled from column to line. He never mentioned their musketry or their ability to cover miles without a man dropping out and seemed oddly ignorant about which tribe and caste each man came from.

But that was better than the open suspicion that swirled around the other battalion, the 30th Bombay Native Infantry, or Jacob’s Rifles. They had made quite a good start in my eyes, being more ready for the field than their counterparts, yet they were a new regiment, having been raised after the Mutiny, and had no battle honours to hang on their colours. On top of this, the vast majority of their recruits were Pathans, the very same folk from whom we had most trouble in Kandahar. As was the way with the Army, someone had decided that the loyalty of Jacob’s Rifles was in doubt, so everyone treated them like pariahs, yet Sam’s 3rd Scinde Horse – also mainly Pathani – were never criticised for the same thing, not in my hearing, anyway.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the composition of both battalions, I was more concerned with how they would perform in a fight. Since the Mutiny, it was our habit to keep the Indian units equipped with the last generation of small-arms rather than the most modern. So it was that the Grenadiers and the Jacobs both carried the .577 Snider-Enfield conversion rifles. These were the old muzzle-loaders that I had known in my young day, with a trap affair let into the breech and a metal cartridge and bullet fixed together as one neat round. The result was good enough in well-trained hands, allowing six volleys to be fired per minute with accurate individual fire up to about six hundred paces. But the Snider was prone to jam and fouling and it took a lot of practice before a soldier became really proficient with it. Also, many of our Afghan enemies had the same weapon, which meant that the only advantage we might enjoy would come from stern discipline and plenty of practice.

My strongest card, for sure, were the six guns of E Battery, B Brigade Royal Horse Artillery. The men were smart and sharp, every horse I saw was beautifully groomed and a proper source of pleasure to its driver, while the rifled nine-pounders were lethally well kept.

‘Them fuckers’ll soon sort out Johnny Afghan, sir.’ I let Lynch, my trumpeter, who was on loan from E Battery, regale me with the tools of his trade. ‘Aye, we can hit a sixpence up to three an’ a half thousand paces with high-explosive or shrapnel rounds, we can, sir.’ Lynch was bursting with pride, delighted to be back among his pals with ‘his’ general under his wing. I allowed him to think that I was a complete tyro in such matters. ‘An’ the lads can get off four rounds a minute once they’ve found the range.’

Lynch was right to be proud of his guns and his battery, but our nine-pounders were still muzzle-loading and slow compared with the new breech-loaders that were coming into service. Now I’d seen what well-handled guns could do, especially to native troops, but there was a nasty rumour that Ayoob Khan had rifled guns like we did, and further intelligence to suggest that Russian advisers were to be seen openly in Herat. I preferred to forget how bloody good the Russian gunners had been in the Crimea.

Whatever the strengths and weaknesses of this lot, I managed to get them out of cantonments for two full man oeuvres by mid-May, and saw that they seemed to be settling down. I was still fretting over the compatibility of my two native battalions with my British one when rumours began to filter into the lines of a bloody little affair in which the 29th Baloochis and some of the 66th, who were detached, had been involved near Khelat-i-Ghilzai. I was called to Primrose’s headquarters with the other brigade commanders to be told what was in the wind.

‘Gentlemen, three days ago, on the second of May, a wing of the Twenty-ninth Bombay and a half-company of the Sixty-sixth under Tanner’s command were ambushed on Shahbolan Hill. They’d been out on a punitive expedition along the lines of communication towards Kabul and were returning to Khelat-i-Ghilzai when they got bounced. Now, as it happened, none of our men was killed and we found fourteen enemy bodies.’ I hated the way that Primrose strutted about while he told us this. A starched white liner stuck out above the collar of his neat khaki drill while he paced to and fro, hands clasped behind his back, apparently relishing the idea of sudden death. ‘But there’s far more to this little skirmish than meets the eye. McGucken, would you take over, please?’

‘Aye, General, thank you.’ The political officer stood up from his camp chair, towering over the scrawny form of our commander. I hadn’t seen much of Jock in the intervening weeks for we’d both been busy. I’d knocked into him as he was riding out towards Kabul with an escort of native troopers, himself wearing Afghan dress and looking very much the part with the beard he’d grown, but we’d had no time for the ‘swally’ we’d been promising each other.

Now he cleared his throat in a way that took me back more years than I cared to remember, swept the room with an uncompromising eye and continued. ‘Gentlemen, I canna pretend that intelligence is as reliable as I would like. Simla has been insisting that Ayoob Khan’s troops are as good as useless because they continue to have major differences with one another. Sadly, however, this affair up near Khelat-iGhilzai is the first real proof I’ve had that Simla’s talking rot.’ McGucken’s suggestion that our headquarters in India was incompetent – which we all suspected – raised a chuckle. ‘No, this was a determined attack by Herati troops. It was well planned but was dealt with by Colonel Tanner’s quick thinking and the determination of our men. Some of the bodies are believed to be from one of the Afghan regular units that were involved in the murder of Sir Louis Cavagnari last year.’ This prompted an uneasy muttering among the audience. ‘It’s the first real demonstration of how far afield Ayoob Khan’s men are able to operate – and his intention to destabilise the situation here in Kandahar even further.

‘You’ll all be aware of the guns that we presented to the wali recently.’ McGucken looked round the brigade commanders to assess their reaction: there had been all sorts of moaning about the decision to give Sher Ali Khan a battery of brass smooth-bores. Primrose had backed McGucken, whose idea it had been, suggesting that the guns would be seen as a gesture of trust that might lead to greater co-operation from the wali, but I thought back to my brief meeting with Sher Ali last month and his own lack of confidence in his troops. I didn’t like the idea of giving away gun-metal that might very well be turned upon its donors. ‘Well, that ordnance seems to have served as a key that’s unlocked our host’s lips. I always suspected that those who might be persuaded to talk to us were being told to keep their traps shut by the rebellious elements in the wali’s forces. Well, the wali gave the guns into his son’s safe keeping and that young fellow, some of yous gentlemen’ – McGucken’s speech dropped back into pure Glasgow only occasionally – ‘will have met him already, has suddenly become much more talkative. He tells me that Ayoob Khan plans to move out of Herat in the middle of June, in about five weeks’ time. He will try to make us believe that his forces will skirt north of us and go on to Kabul, where he and several thousand troops will then do a spot of gentle lobbying. His real intention, however, will be to fall upon Kandahar.’

‘You say several thousand troops, McGucken. What does he actually have?’ Nuttall, the cavalry brigade commander, voiced my question.

‘Well, sir, we don’t know for sure and we won’t until he marches – and we don’t yet know if his mind’s fully made up. Anyway, the wali intends to send a body of his troops up here to the fords over the Helmand river.’ McGucken pointed on the map at an area that I could see was a natural convergence of several different roads near Khusk-i-Nakud, seventy-odd miles away, where Sam and the Scinde Horse had drawn first blood more than a year ago. ‘He’s still getting his own house in order and, as we all know to our cost, Kandahar will only become more volatile with a reduction in the wali’s garrison, while the troops themselves are not dependable. I have no doubt, General’ – I saw the flash of dislike in McGucken’s eyes as he turned to Primrose – ‘that he’ll ask for some of our regiments to accompany his forces to act as a stiffener.’

‘I’m sure he will, McGucken, and as you and I have discussed before, I’m reluctant to diminish what strength I have here in Kandahar for the reasons that you’ve just outlined. On top of that, I believe in concentration of force’ – sometimes Primrose talked like a field manual – ‘and I don’t want to split what few units I have. But I shall do what Simla tells me to as the picture becomes clearer. In the meantime, I want you all to be prepared to take the field for an indefinite period at twenty-four hours’ notice.’ He prosed on about musketry, skirmishing practice, preparation of the horses and their fodder, and a host of minor details that Harry Brooke, Nuttall and I had already been working on.

We scratched away in our notebooks to show willing while Primrose tried to tell us our jobs. What he didn’t cover, though, were the vital details that we all wanted to know. Eventually he ran out of steam and asked for any questions.

‘Yes, General. McGucken’s intelligence, understandably, is less than perfect.’ Harry Brooke, I knew, had become good friends with McGucken, admiring the Scotsman’s plain speaking and direct approach. ‘But what do we actually know about the forces that Ayoob Khan might have available to him?’

‘He’s got about eight thousand regular troops of which some two thousand are cavalry, and as many as six batteries of guns, many of which are rifled pieces, but we lack detail, Brooke.’ I could see why Primrose was reluctant to divide his already slender force.

‘Aye, General, but that’s only really half the story.’ This was McGucken at his best. He was by far the most junior in terms of both military and social rank yet the rest of us would hardly have dared to correct Primrose: we were too career-conscious, too much the victims of the Army’s strangling habit of unthinking obedience and uncritical respect. But not big Jock McGucken, who wore the DCM and knew that he had naught to fear from men like Primrose for there was nothing they could do for him. His reward was the knowledge that his children wouldn’t grow up in the Glasgow slum that had been his home, and the respect that all of us showed him. ‘The real question is how many irregulars, tribesmen and mad Ghazis he’ll be able to draw to his colours. If he’s a halfway decent commander, he could double the number of men he’s already got – and we’ve all seen what ugly buggers the Ghazis and their like can be.’

I was as stunned by McGucken’s monologue as the rest of them. Suddenly there was the prospect of the best part of fifteen thousand men with more guns than we had descending on our three untried and untested brigades in a town that had no serious defences and was riven by malcontents. On top of that, I remembered the wali’s words of caution about his own troops’ dependability and the dubious attractions of a swarm of Ghazis. Surely he would know better than any of us Feringhees what a ticklish spot we could be in.

‘General, I wonder if we shouldn’t prepare the town for defence.’ Harry Brooke, Nuttall and I had spent hours wondering why Primrose hadn’t done what should have been done an age ago by Stewart.

‘We’ve discussed this before, Morgan, but, I grant you, the situation has evolved so tell me what’s on your mind.’

I knew from the tone of Primrose’s voice that he wouldn’t relent. ‘Well, sir, should we not bring the troops within the walls of the town and establish a proper defensive routine rather than trying to live in the cantonments as if we were a peacetime garrison? We could then put the troops to work on improving the walls and preparing gun positions both there and in the Citadel. And we ought to start to clear the shanties and mud dwellings that deprive us of any fields of fire.’

‘Yes, and that’s exactly the point I’ve tried to make all of you understand.’ I’d annoyed Primrose – but Brooke had made a pretty good start on that with his earlier questions. Now the peppery little sod was about to go for all of us. ‘Right, everyone except the brigade commanders – you as well, McGucken – please leave us.’ The three brigade majors and Primrose’s own pair of lickspittles grabbed at their papers and maps and scuttled from the room, only too happy to leave their superiors to face the storm. ‘Can’t you see that we’ve got to make this whole situation look as normal as possible and that the least little thing we do’ – the man was getting redder and redder in the face as the discussion turned into a rant – ‘could upset the whole damned applecart and cause the wali’s troops to revolt?’

‘All the more reason to have us on top of them, surely. If we’re in the town then we can watch them more closely and act more quickly – it makes sense,’ McGucken was unable to conceal his irritation any longer, not even adding a per functory ‘sir’, treating Primrose like a particularly dim recruit.

‘And I’ll thank you not to interrupt, Major McGucken!’ The venom in the general’s hissed reply shocked me – and it seemed to have the same effect on the others, for there was a sudden silence. Even the flies stopped buzzing, so taken aback were they. ‘Do you really think that we could clear the mosques and other religious sites that teem just outside the walls?’ None of us replied. ‘Well, do you? You all seem to think that we can treat this place as we did Cawnpore or Peking twenty-odd years ago. But can’t you get it into your thick heads that this is a new kind of war where I’ve got newspapers and politicians looking over my shoulder . . .’ (I’d have loved to add, ‘and dictating our tactics and risking our men’s lives’, but he was vexed enough already) ‘. . . and that, no matter what’s happening elsewhere in the country, Kandahar is supposed to be the one place in which we’re succeeding? If we tear the scab off things here, then the government’s strategy to get us back to India without further bloodshed will be ruined.’

It was a shame that the little fellow had lost his rag for he’d just alienated the lot of us.

‘So, get back to your troops now, gentlemen, and let’s hear no more about ruining Kandahar. If the wali can’t deal with Ayoob Khan and we’re called upon to do the job, we’ll do it in the field as far from this town as we possibly can. That’s always supposing our intelligence gives us any warning at all.’ Primrose was speaking normally now, but he hadn’t grasped how much damage he had done to his standing in our eyes. He hadn’t even been able to resist that nasty little dig at McGucken, which I knew he would come to regret. I was on my feet and saluting almost as quickly as the other three, for none of us could bear the poisonous career-wallah for a second longer.

When Sam Keenan had moved up to Afghanistan with his regiment, he’d known that life wouldn’t all be gallant deeds and glory. He had vivid memories of Finn the groom yarning to Billy and himself back in the tack-room at home about India and the Sikh wars in the forties and much of that had revolved around heat and dust, flies and rotting food, good officers and bad. There had been little about blood and flame. Well, he thought, now it was his turn to experience the waiting and frustration of campaign life.

June was the hottest month in these latitudes and the temperature only made the smell of piss-damp straw all the more distinct. It wasn’t an aroma that any cavalryman could actually dislike, but in A Squadron’s horse lines, which had been established in an old Kandahari stable, it was almost overpowering. There were none of the drains and gutters to which the regiment had become used, and the windows were so narrow that a permanent gloom hung over the place. Now, as he waited for Rissaldar Singh to join him, he peered down the long line of feeding horses, the thin streams of sunlight thick with the dust that the hoofs of the tethered mounts threw up.

Almost eighty horses had been crushed into the stable, sixty or so the private property of each trooper, his pride and joy, and another twenty remounts provided by the government while on campaign. Keenan worried about this so-called sillidar system, which was the very definition of irregular cavalry. Each man would bring his own mount as a condition for enlistment – a very considerable investment for these mainly Pathani men who came from poor hilly country – and tend it. Horses became ill or were injured and had to be put down so they needed a cushion of extra animals. But now, as casualties had occurred, the men were being issued with whalers, like any common regular regiment, and Keenan was worried that they would not be cherished as much as a man’s own horse had been. The squadron leader had ordered extra veterinary inspections in the certain knowledge that the stabling and relatively little exercise might encourage certain maladies.

Now Keenan, who’d done his basic vet’s course at the cavalry school in Nasirabad, looked at his list of common diseases and symptoms as he waited for Singh by the wide doors of the building.

‘I’m sorry, sahib, am I late?’

Keenan looked up from his list towards the native officer as he stopped and saluted. ‘No, not at all, Rissaldar sahib. I’m early. I’ve been puzzling over these lists, I hope you know what we’re looking for,’ replied Keenan, deliberately flattering the man.

In the months that they’d been together in Afghanistan, the two had got to know each other as well as any native and British officer could. They’d ridden together in the Helmand valley last year and fought side by side at Khusk-i-Nakud, but still Keenan was uncomfortable with the relationship. Singh was over thirty, one of the new generation of native officers who had received a viceroy’s commission based on merit rather than age and length of service; he had a depth of experience far beyond the young Irishman’s. They wore the same badges of rank, were both addressed as ‘sahib’ and commanded troops of about twenty men. Yet they lived in different messes and Keenan was the senior, for he was a British officer, the most junior of whom was superior even to the rissaldar major, the most senior native officer in the regiment. His thoughts unaccountably flicked to his brother. Keenan smiled to himself and doubted that Billy would cope in his plodding, stiff old 66th with the extra layer of officers who were at the heart of the regiment yet weren’t really officers at all.

Singh spoke incomprehensibly to one of the four men on morning duty at the stables before turning to Keenan. ‘Butt Mohammed believes that one of the remounts may be developing surra, sahib, but we’ll soon see.’

Not only could Singh speak English a hundred times better than he could express himself in Pashto or Dari, Keenan marvelled, but he also had a practical knowledge of an ailment of which he himself had no experience whatsoever. But then, he supposed, that was what years in the 3rd Scinde Horse taught a man. As they walked briskly along the straw-strewn floor through the horsy fug, he consulted his Field Service Pocket Book (India) in its supposedly waterproof cover. ‘Isn’t that mainly a camel and donkey disease, sahib?’ he asked, freshly knowledgeable.

‘It is, sahib, but read on a bit further and you’ll see that it can affect horses too,’ answered Singh, with a smile.

With the trooper stroking the horse’s nose to calm it, both men looked for signs of ‘. . . repeated attacks of fever during which the animal is dull and off feed, gradually loses condition, gets swelling, spotted membranes, pot belly and finally dies’.

‘No, sahib, this is not surra. I have seen it before and it is dreadful. Horses cannot recover, and that is why the men are so worried about it, especially when their animals are around filthy camels and asses.’ Singh spoke again to Butt Mohammed before patting the horse gently on its admittedly bulbous belly. ‘I think it’s no more than a touch of colic.’ Keenan thought about that phrase and knew that he would be reduced to charades if he was trying to express such a thing to the men.

That was the only problem to worry any of the men, but the two officers continued their inspection, lifting mares’ tails to look for thrush, digging sawdust and muck out of hoofs to check for cracks and mud fever, peering up nostrils for a hint of glanders, and for sores around the saddle area that might indicate farcy.

‘What of Ayoob Khan, sahib?’ The rissaldar was smoothing down the hairs on a horse’s flank having examined an old ringworm site. ‘The soldiers say he is bound to march on Kandahar once the weather gets a little cooler.’

‘Perhaps, Rissaldar sahib. But I only know what the colonel sahib tells us and he tells you the same. Do any of the soldiers have any contact with Ayoob Khan’s people?’ Keenan asked.

‘Of course, sahib. Many are Pathans from the same tribes who soldier for Ayoob Khan and they have kinsmen here in Kandahar who travel far and wide. Indeed, a caravan arrived from Herat two days ago and brought family news to many of our jawans, and grand stories of the headman’s bragging about what he will do to any of “his” people who are taken in the service of the gora-log,’ answered Singh.

‘Does that worry them, sahib?’

‘No, Keenan sahib, they don’t give a donkey’s cock about such things. All that most want is a chance of more fighting and looting – you know our sowars,’ replied Singh, making Keenan wonder just how well he did know the men with whom he could hardly converse. ‘But, sahib, don’t run from this talk – you must know, for does your father, the general sahib, not tell you?’

‘No, of course not, Rissaldar sahib. He’s the chief and I’m nothing but a worm. Why should he tell me anything that he does not tell you?’ Keenan realised now that every last sowar must look at him as the receptacle of great knowledge and influence. If only that were true.

‘Because he is your father, sahib. He is a general, certainly, and that is why he has gathered both his sons about him to go to war and seek glory. Of course he will tell you and your brother his secrets,’ Singh answered evenly.

Keenan snorted with amusement at he idea of Billy and himself being summoned by his father for some sort of ramasammy. He had a picture of Father sitting cross-legged next to the wali, both men pulling at pipes while he and that pup Billy made deep salaams and prepared to advise the elders on what should happen next. But that was what Rissaldar Singh and all the others thought. He must seem horribly naïve in their eyes when he tried to grapple with their tribes, castes and religions.

‘And, why, sahib, does your father allow your poor brother to walk to war when he has given you horses and saddles and found you a place in a regiment like the Scinde Horse? Has your brother done something wrong? Has he displeased Morgan sahib yet still bears his name?’

Singh had never asked such questions before, thought Keenan. ‘No, Rissaldar sahib, my brother, my half-brother, can do no wrong in the general’s eyes and that is why he walks to war and I ride. You see, sahib, I have a horse or two, but that is all I will ever have from the general. I will never bear his name or inherit his house and fields . . . but enough of that! This creature has been rubbed a little by its heel rope, hasn’t it?’ The native officer had got quite close enough for now.

It’s always the way. Something happens or someone says something that causes a bit of heat at the time, but you soon forget it, only grasping its true significance later on. So it was with that conference two months ago – back in May. From that moment on neither the other two brigade commanders nor I had any faith in Primrose. True, he’d sent out the odd patrol, and we’d had some time to manoeuvre in the field – turned a lot of live ammunition into empty cases on the rifle range – and the guns had had some useful practice, but there had been no attempt to improve the town’s defences.

Worst of all, the distrust between Primrose and McGucken had become obvious to everyone. I was there four weeks ago in early June when the news reached divisional headquarters that the wali was so worried by intelligence he’d received that he was preparing to march out of Kandahar towards the fords on the Helmand. There the Wali, game old bugger that he was, intended to fight Ayoob Khan well forward, as far away from Kandahar and its skittish tribesmen as he could mange. Not surprisingly, he wanted some British troops to help him. Now, we’d all heard that Ayoob Khan had left Herat some weeks ago and was picking up volunteers from the tribes by the hatful as he headed our way, but Primrose seemed genuinely surprised by the sudden rush and fuss among the local troops as they prepared to take the field. It wasn’t as though it was difficult to see what was going to happen. A few days before the wali left, McGucken had given me a carefully translated copy of Ayoob’s proclamation, which was being distributed by his vanguard.

Then, after a month’s dithering by Primrose, we’d marched out of Kandahar in order to catch up with the Wali. Now, as I sat on Rainbow’s sweaty saddle, my brigade stretched about me in a fog of dust and grit, I got the proclamation out from my map case to reread it:

Soldiers of the true faith! We march to the conquest of our city of Kandahar, now in the possession of our bitter enemy the Feringhee, whom we will drive back with our steel and win back the capital of the south. The garrison is weak and we are strong; besides, we are fighting for our homes and native land and our foe is not prepared for us with either food or ammunition for a siege. The bazaars are full of British gold and this shall be the prize of the conquerors when we have chased away the invaders from our soil. Let us march on then, day by day, with the determination to conquer or to die.

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