Hervey 11 - On His Majesty's Service (24 page)

The Russian battery opened up again, shot angrily tearing the air above them. Agar looked mildly startled.

Fairbrother shook his head. ‘Don’t trouble yourself. If you hear the shot it has passed.’ That much,
petite guerriste
or not, he could say with assurance, having been shot over by the Cape artillery.

But Hervey came to his cornet’s aid. ‘It is, however, deuced queer to be advancing on the Turks with a pair of pistols and a sabre, and no horse.’

‘You have your Deringer, I hope?’ said Fairbrother with mock earnest.

‘I have,’ replied Hervey, unabashed.

Colonel Vedeniapine looked rear to signal the waiting battalion.

Out from the trenches clambered three companies of muskets.

The
strelki
marched on, rifles still at the trail, dressing perfectly from the centre.

A minute passed silently, then another, and then another.

There was a flash and a roar. Six roundshot sped from the Turk battery. The first graze was a hundred yards ahead of the skirmish line, throwing up dust and stones. The rounds lofted ten feet (the ground like iron) and passed harmlessly over the line before their second impact two hundred yards behind. By the time they reached the battalion companies, bowling along the ground like balls in a skittle alley, they had lost pace and the men could sidestep them.

‘They’ve time for one more of shot, I think, and then it’ll have to be canister – or else limber up,’ said Hervey, glancing back to watch for the Russian battery’s reply.

‘Or else the entire camp stands to arms,’ suggested Fairbrother.

The problem was that the entire camp lay in dead ground: it could be observed neither from the redoubts nor from the walls of the town – nor even from the tops of the frigate west of the peninsula. There was a Cossack vidette on the shore, a furlong or so from the battery, but it had been held at a distance by the Turk pickets (Fairbrother had seen the position: there was so much scrub that any patrol was bound to get itself into trouble). The Turks might even now be forming up in column of attack. Had they been French or Prussian – or so his reading told him – they would have counter-attacked at once, and with more than mere artillery fire. So what did their caution – timidity – portend? Was it a sign, perhaps, that the Turks knew they could take their time here? Did they know something that Wachten did not? Had the offensive in the north faltered? Could they, so to speak, sit around the tree here at Siseboli and wait for the fruit to fall?

A whistle blast brought the
strelki
to a halt. As one man they knelt down and brought their rifles to the aim.

Fairbrother couldn’t understand the order which followed, but at three hundred yards there could be no doubting the target.

‘Fire!’

The line was at once shrouded in white smoke – a perfect volley. He tried to make out its effect, but the smoke hung stubbornly in the still air. At three hundred yards a bullet could be two feet wide of the mark, even with the rifle in good hands. And the Turk gunners were firing from behind gabions. It was all too possible that not a single round had struck home.

The
strelki
were back on their feet, reloaded and resuming the advance – in line, yet, not pairs, for there was no counter-fire.

Another minute, another whistle blast – another perfect volley. But even more smoke.

Fairbrother thought it strange not to cover more ground before a second volley – or perhaps the effect of the first had been prodigious?

They hastened through as the smoke of the second volley thinned and drifted.

‘Damnation!’ he said, quietly but insistently as they saw what had brought the rifles to the aim again.

‘Very tricky,’ agreed Hervey, stroking his chin with the air of a connoisseur appraising a work of art.

Fairbrother needed no schooling in
la grande guerre
to appreciate the danger. Two, possibly three squadrons of Turk cavalry were drawing up on the left flank of the battery. They placed the
strelki
on the proverbial horns of the dilemma: did they choose to stay in skirmishing order, less vulnerable to both musketry and artillery, or did they risk bunching in ‘close order’ to fend off the lancers?

He looked back towards the Azov’s muskets. They were shouldering arms.

Hervey saw too. ‘I trust they’ll stand their ground.’

Fairbrother said nothing; he thought that rather too much had been left to trust already.

Seconds later they had their answer: the line of muskets advanced.

‘Admirable initiative,’ said Hervey.

‘Do you know, sir, that there’s no word in Russian for “initiative”?’

‘Thank you, Mr Agar. Later, if you will.’

Fairbrother smiled. There seemed little else to do.

The Russian battery spoke – four rounds, in sequence rather than volley. And explosive shell instead of solid shot.

Two burst in the air, the other two – by Fairbrother’s estimation – a little long. He saw several lancers tumble. If the gunners corrected well they’d draw much blood. ‘What now, Hervey?’

The captain of the
strelki
turned to ask the same of Vedeniapine. The colonel raised his right arm and made a leisurely circling movement.

Three short whistle blasts. Half the line rose by alternate men and began doubling rear while the other half remained kneeling, rifle butts to the ground.

‘Here they come, sir,’ said Corporal Acton, first to detect the Turk movement. ‘At the trot.’

The captain of
strelki
had seen them, too. Up went the rifles into the aim, and the line volleyed as one.

Three short whistle blasts again. The line rose without reloading and began doubling back to where the other half-company had formed.

Another volley as they cleared the line of fire tumbled several more Turks – at three hundred yards. Very passable shooting, reckoned Fairbrother.

But even if every round of the next volley found its mark it could scarcely be enough to halt the
sipahis
.

The captain knew it too. Rapid whistle blasts transformed the extended line into a daisy-chain of riflemen in tight bunches, four or five standing back to back, bayonets (‘swords’) fixed.

Colonel Vedeniapine beckoned Hervey and the others to the nearest. The riflemen greeted them with much saluting and grinning.

They drew sabres.

‘Like a square at Waterloo?’ suggested Fairbrother, wryly. It looked as if they would have a fight of it again.

Hervey would not rise to the fly. ‘Smart work to be sure. Exactly from the book. They evidently have trust in the supports.’

The battalion companies were indeed still advancing.

‘Have you space to parry, Corporal Acton?’ he asked blithely, turning to his coverman.

‘Sir, I ’aven’t space to salute if the Sultan ’imself rides up, let alone parry.’

Hervey smiled. ‘If the Sultan himself rides up then Mr Agar shall explain to him we are here to observe and not to fight.’

‘Knew there was nought to worry about, sir,’ replied Acton, happy enough to share the joke.

Fairbrother said nothing – though if ever he were minded to write a memoir of his association with his friend, this exchange would have its place.

The battalion companies, two hundred yards rear, halted and began throwing out flanks. Whatever else happened, it was plain to him that the Turk cavalry would not be able to shift these, covered by the battery in the redoubt. The
strelki
could therefore chance a dash to safety behind them.

‘Couldn’t they have advanced another hundred yards though?’

Hervey agreed with the sentiment, but as his friend must know, the evolutions of a line of infantrymen in close order were not to be compared with those of a troop of dragoons, he said. Even a troop could take an inordinate time at the beginning of the drill season.

And as if to prove his point, only now, with the Turks getting into a gallop, did the Azov’s major give the order to the companies, ‘Front rank, kneel!’

Hervey took one of the pistols from his belt and ported it defiantly. Fairbrother and the others followed.

The Turk line was already losing cohesion, however, confused by the
strelki
’s dispersion. By some instinct, the Turk horses, or perhaps their riders, made not for the huddled riflemen but the gaps in between, as if in a race to the more distant line, and the
strelki
merely obstacles on the way.

Riflemen fired exuberantly as
sipahis
galloped past, like guns with driven game. Men and horses tumbled. Those that galloped on did so with no attempt to close up or rally, so that what should have been a charge by a wall of lancers became instead an affair of disunited spearmen. Whistles blew, and the daisy-chain lay prone.

And now the battalion companies proved their mettle – rolling musketry by platoons, an almost continuous show of flame and noise, and no little lead.

Losing all cohesion, the
sipahis
faltered, circled, turned and then spurred for home, barging back through the risen line of
strelki
with scarce an idea of the bullets now taking them in the flank once more. Here and there a bolder Turk took a rifleman on his lance, and one cluster was scattered by riderless horses that were too hemmed in to evade, but the daisy-chain held, turning check into rout by their fire, and the battery hastening them with shell.

But the Turks were not completely done. Their guns, the field of fire at last clear again, now answered – and this time with shell too.

They had the range at once: air-burst over the
strelki
line – a murdering hail of iron balls. A dozen men fell dead, and as many wounded.

‘That should not have happened,’ said Hervey, turning to look for the others in the melee of riflemen. ‘Agar, you are hit?’

Agar stood dazed-looking, as if a prize-fighter had struck him. Blood covered his left shoulder.

Corporal Acton saw, and put an arm round his waist. ‘Sit down, sir, please.’

Agar hardly needed the invitation, his legs giving way.

‘Deep breaths, sir. Just keep taking deep breaths.’ He took off Agar’s crossbelt and unfastened his tunic to examine the wound. It looked savage, but the blood was oozing not spurting. ‘No artery severed, sir.’

He took a lint dressing from his pocket and then a bandage to hold it in place – once round the chest and twice over the shoulder. Then he refastened the tunic, tight. And finally the crossbelt.

‘I’ll carry ’im rear, sir,’ he said, helping Agar up and then crouching to take him over his shoulder. ‘Wouldn’t want to wait for another o’ them charges.’

‘Good man,’ said Hervey, taking up Agar’s sabre and pistols.

‘They’re rallying!’ called Fairbrother, who had kept an eye on them throughout, not able to believe they could be quite as supine as in the affair of the Cossacks.

The whistle signalled retreat.

The Russian battery fired again, and moments later the Turk. Hervey felt shell-splinter nick his right ear. Fairbrother swore as a splinter struck his cartridge case and broke the fastening, so that his crossbelt fell apart. Another stung Acton’s elbow. He swore too but he wouldn’t quicken pace – not with a wounded cornet on his back.

‘Here they come,’ said Fairbrother.

‘Double time, Corp’ Acton!’ barked Hervey, seeing they could just make it rear. ‘Your life on it!’

XI

MAN OF LETTERS

Later

Hervey lay back in a wicker chair and closed his eyes, the exertions of the previous hours at last claiming their due. If they had been English cavalry, or French, he would not have lived to take his ease. He was certain of it. What had become of the wild Turk of legend? Three companies of muskets had driven the same number of cavalry from the field without even forming square. And the regiment, moral masters of the ground as much as by weight of fire, had been able to recover their dead and wounded.