Vikram Chandra - Red Earth and Pouring Rain

After a leisurely breakfast we formed up and took to the field, You may well imagine the scene: the flare of the sun off armour and weapons, the dust, the beating of drums, the shriek of conch-shells, the jingling and creaking of horse-furniture, the whinnying of the horses and the screams of the elephants, the rich stink of dung. Balrampur arranged his army thus: the front consisted of three regiments of infantry, interspersed with a motley collection of cannon from his gun-park; the left flank was covered by a rissalah of cavalry, mostly Afghans and Rajputs; our right flank was protected by the empty houses of that nameless town, where a brigade of infantry had dug in; behind the front line of infantry he positioned three rissalahs of cavalry and one of elephants, and finally, in the rear, at the centre, he sat, surrounded by his household cavalry, resplendent in white, on a richly caparisoned elephant, in a howdah with steel walls some three feet high, so only his eyes and head were exposed to attack.

Uday’s rissalah was positioned behind Balrampur, held in reserve; I had no horse, so I had run beside Uday’s black Arab, holding on grimly to my meagre Vehi weaponry, augmented by a tulwar given to me by him; he smiled at me, fingering the knob at the top of the hilt, and it rose away, turning on some sort of hinge, revealing a shallow compartment built into the hand-grip, full of little green balls. Uday lifted out one of these balls and put it into his mouth; seeing me watching, he flicked a ball at me, and I put up my hands to catch it, but lost it in the sun. I knelt and ran my fingers through the grass, looking for it, and when I brought it up to my lips my fingers were stained green with sap from the broken blades; I chewed, licking my fingers, watching Amjan’s army spread over the field opposite, and a calm lassitude, an accepting quietude flowed through my veins, into my finger-tips.

The two forces were about equally-matched, though perhaps we had a little more infantry; they were deployed in a formation approximately the mirror image of ours, with cavalry on the flanks, and infantry and guns at the centre, their line being a little shorter than ours, with their left flank angling towards the town on our right. A little before noon, judging by the sun, I saw smoke puff across the field, and then the thud of the pieces echoed over us, followed by the whoosh of shot. Our guns replied with a cannonade, and instantly the firing became general, but the men around us seemed unconcerned; the blood thrilled through my limbs, and I remember feeling only a mad excitement, and seeing, unexpectedly, the cannon balls (little black dots against the blue) suspended at the top of their arcs before they plummeted down to raise fountains of mud. The firing seemed to create more noise and smoke than casualties, and was punctuated by the hiss and roar of rockets, fired by men who ran out between the lines carrying sticks and fuses; all this was new to me, then, you see, so even when a ball of flame, spitting sparks, meandered crazily through the air and spent itself against the ground near us, causing the horses to shift from leg to leg uneasily and toss their heads, I stood straight, my neck rigid, my eyes darting about, drinking it all in, eager young fool.

With a shout, Amjan’s skirmishers at the centre started forward towards us, with little jets of flame springing out at our lines. Balrampur said something to one of his generals, and two horsemen raced away from us; moments later, one of the rissalahs in front of us galloped between our brigades of infantry and cut into the enemy, scattering them to and fro, but almost instantly they received a charge from Amjan’s cavalry, and then the horsemen wheeled around each other, dust eddying around the melee, and from where I was I could hear the shouts, the commands and the calls of recognition and the screams of pain, far away and brittle on the hot air; my head pounding, I thought then of what it must be like in there, in the whirlwind, and I cannot describe that feeling to you, pity and fear and eagerness and something else moving underneath, that obscene other thing, the moving of blood, and I was young, so I watched, lost in it, in the spectacle, and forgot to observe carefully, as I had planned in the calm of night, the tactics used by the generals, their feints and techniques and use of ground, so I cannot tell you exactly what transpired on that field as the sun moved above us, as our shadows shifted about us, but I remember a sudden commotion nearby, a craning of necks and moving.

I looked up at Uday, who was shading his eyes to peer at the town to our right, where smoke was rising above the roofs. To our front, our whole line was engaged, shrouded in dust; the sun was a glowing yellow patch above us, dimmed, but the air was searing hot in my nostrils, and the metal on the hilt of my sword burnt my fingers. It was clear what Amjan had done: some troops had been concealed, perhaps during the night, near the town, in a copse of trees or a fold in the ground, a nullah or such-like, and when our line was engaged, they had hurled themselves at the point where we least expected attack, in an attempt to roll up our flank; orders were shouted, and the horsemen around me began to move; I ran beside Uday, and he looked at me, thoughtful, calculating, and they began to trot — now I could barely keep up with them — and I lifted up my bow and gestured at him, not knowing myself what I meant, but something changed in his eyes, and maybe it was a squint against the dust, maybe something else, but in any case he reached down to grasp my arm, lifting, and a moment later I was seated behind him, bouncing as we galloped hell-for-leather towards the white houses.

We leapt over overturned carts and twisted bodies in the main street, at the other end of which two groaning masses of men strained and twisted against each other, but even as we drew near a shower of missiles enveloped us, coming from the roof-tops, whizzing past our heads and making sudden thudding sounds as they hit flesh. I felt the horse beneath us stumble, twist to the side and then we had to scramble as it went down; I tried to fight my way to the side of the street, something hit me on the nape of my neck, a boot or somebody’s knee, and I tasted blood and my vision constricted, and when I came to myself I was on my knees, being dragged along by Uday, who had his sword out and was cursing, shouting about mothers and sisters, and I found myself wanting to laugh, and I could see thrashing horse limbs and a fine spray of blood, and I giggled a little and struggled to my feet.

In that narrow street, jammed together, the sowars had no chance to use their speed, mobility or weight; the arrows kept coming from the roofs, where another battle was being fought, and I could hear the whip-lash crack of jezails, and soon a pile of men and horses, bubbling and leaking, jammed together like drift-wood, became a dam against which the ranks behind milled and eddied, falling in their turn, helpless. A riderless horse squeezed past me, maddened with fear, and I thrust my hand into its mane, pulling myself into the saddle, then reached down for Uday; we hurled ourselves back down the street, away from the scything hail.

Uday shouted orders, and soon the whole rissalah burst out into the maidan at the end of the street. They wheeled around, clearly on the verge of another headlong charge, angry and spontaneous; again, Uday shouted, and they quieted down a little; meanwhile, I was thinking of the engagements I had been in, on the water, and the two ships tacking to come up alongside each other, and the broadsides, the grape punching holes in the sails and sweeping across decks.

’Cannon,’ I said, in Urdu, somehow finding the word instantly, without effort, pointing to the centre of our line, and then back to the town, ‘cannon.’