Vikram Chandra - Red Earth and Pouring Rain

Uday seemed to understand, and on his order half the rissalah dismounted, some running down the street, others pulling themselves up onto the roofs; four followed us, still mounted, as we turned about and went into the dust. A regiment of infantry trotted out of the haze and vanished behind us; here and there, men sat looking down helplessly, death already making its presence known in the way in which their hands lay palm upwards, limp, on the ground. We swerved suddenly to avoid a collision with three horsemen who passed us in a whoosh of rolling eyes and bared teeth, gone before we could tell whether they were friend or foe. The soil looked as if it had been furrowed, chewed up, by a giant animal; a cannon lay on its side, wheels splintered. Some distance away, two men were loading another gun, a twenty-five-pounder, preparing to fire. As we rode up to them they rolled under the gun, expecting to be speared. Uday spoke to them, and they emerged, blinking; the fighting had surged over them and back again, I expect, and the bullock-teams that drew the guns were long gone, having fallen back to the rear or been killed. I could see no rope, so our horses were of no use, and time was short, so we jumped off and put our shoulders to the cannon. The gun moved slowly, stubbornly, in the loose mud, and my cheek lay against the hot metal as I sobbed for breath, feeling the blood rise to my temples; a little ditch that we had ridden over moments ago, barely noticing the momentary bunching of muscles below the saddle, now became a moat, an almost insurmountable obstacle that we cursed and reviled; I pushed, the world contracting into a little sphere filled with the wood under my hands, the heavy burnt odour of the metal, and then it went over, our gun, and we ran it towards the town, followed by the two artillery-men, who were laden with powder-bags and shot and leading our horses, similarly loaded. In the town street, the dismounted sowars had been pushed back almost to the end of the street, and within a spear’s length of the combat we loaded and primed our gun.

I gestured at Uday, and we pushed our gun forward, pushed it forward, you understand, till we were in that first line, that extreme border where steel raised fire from other steel, and men gasped to see a twenty-five-pounder being manhandled and used like a short weapon for close fighting, but then I held a piece of smouldering rope to the touch hole — some stumbling back, now, holding up arms, still unwilling to comprehend the sudden appearance of that black muzzle — and then it jumped, leapt straight up in the air, both wheels clearing the ground by at least six inches, and when the smoke cleared a moment or two later I could see that the blast had knocked them down like dolls. For a moment nobody moved, and then Uday and his sowars jumped forward with a shout, swinging and cutting down the dazed, the blinded, the deafened enemy like boys slashing at half-dead weeds with sticks. I reloaded, pushed forward, laid the gun, fired again; in that hour, on that day, fortune changed sides on that field, because we cleared that street in less time than it took to drag that gun to the town.

The momentum was now ours, and they could do nothing, and after I elevated the muzzle a couple of times, even on the roofs they fell back easily, demoralized, stunned; now when we lifted the gun over the clumps of bodies and debris that lay on the cobble-stones it seemed to weigh nothing. Now I could hear myself shouting, roaring, my face flushing, laughing with a mad fury born in horror; I don’t know exactly how many times I fired that gun, how many times my comrades and I leap-frogged each other, but soon we were clear through to the other end of the street, where it opened out into an expanse of grass; Uday shouted orders to our rear, and now the other half of his rissalah — mounted, weapons at rest — rode up in a compact mass and past us.

Uday swung himself into a saddle, and they debouched into the field, riding through the fleeing enemy, gaining speed, lances lowered for the attack, and I sank to my haunches, conscious now that a band of pain encircled my brow, and watched as they launched a charge at the contingents of Amjan’s cavalry which had been waiting some few hundred yards away. I felt the shock as the rissalah hurled itself onto the unprepared ranks of the enemy, I heard that indescribable, shattering groan as that combined weight of horses and men descended like a hammer; Amjan’s cavalry wavered, broke and fled, and that lost him the day, because his entire left flank crumbled, like a wall shaken to the foundations by an earthquake, and it seemed marvellous to me then, that a small body of men could ride at and defeat a foe superior in numbers, but I have seen much since, many battles, and it seems to me now that numbers, the quality of weapons, the use of ground, the ability of men, all these things are to be valued, but there is a secret hand, a blind god of chance who decides victory and defeat, the sacking of cities and the fate of countries. Because of a memory from my past, because of a momentary collision between a remembered image and present need, I had thought of the gun, and it brought us victory; perhaps someone else would have thought of it a moment later, or maybe we would have beaten them anyway, but battle is like a haze, a chaos in which order is seen only after the fact; men tell themselves stories to comfort, to protect, but Kali dances on these fields, her face black, her tongue red, and she is mad.

Their left flank shook and began to scatter, but they were good soldiers, and could have held on, reformed, counter-attacked, but Amjan lost his nerve, and fled from the field on his elephant. Seeing him vanish, the entire army seemed to give up, and they fled helter-skelter, with our cavalry riding in among them, chopping them down. I sat, exhausted, watching the rout, and I realized now that at some time in the day I had lost my bow and quiver. On the cannon, which lay quiet now, close by, there was some writing in Urdu, in that script which looks like a flight of birds aimed at the horizon, and I ran my fingers over the swooping letters.

’Ghazi,’ a voice said behind me. It was Uday, with his face and clothes splattered with rust-coloured blood and black powdery grime; he pointed at the writing on one side of the cannon, and repeated: ‘Ghazi.’

I shook my head, and he pointed to the other side: ‘Himmati-mardan, maddad-i-khuda.’

But I had to shake my head again; he thumped the rump of the horse, and I clambered up behind him; we rode back together, with men pointing me out to their friends, staring frankly at me; the street was covered with blood, tufts of hair, shoes, tulwars (some broken and shivered to pieces), entrails, severed limbs, bodies.

At the camp I was given a tent, a soft bed with silken pillows, and food was put before me in golden plates, but I could only drink water, cup after cup, and had to wave away the food, the smell of which filled my head and gullet, bringing up the bile, the nausea; I lay back, hardly able to move, but unable to sleep, reliving each moment of that day, and already the unbelievable richness of sight, sound and smell had begun to contract into a series of fragmented pictures.

The next morning, I bathed, and Uday gave me a new set of clothes. In open durbar that morning, I sat a little behind Uday, and tried to imitate his every movement, his every polite bow and gesture. Balrampur handed Uday a khillut, and then I was motioned forward; the maharaja held out a khillut, which I accepted with the same gestures and salutes that Uday had just performed, but then the maharaja began to speak, saying, I suppose, something statesman-like and inspiring, as good commanders should; he finished, and the rest looked expectantly at me. I stuttered for a moment, then without thinking, burst out with the formula I had heard recently: ‘Himmat-i-mardan, maddad-i-khuda.’