Chapter Thirty-Six

The enemy could not charge in and slaughter all the Vastrum men in one go. The bulwarks that had been dug from the hard ground by soldiers with their entrenching spades were built well, considering the conditions. Many a fight had been hard won, not on the open field, but by digging in and defending a position. That was what the army did now. The enemy cavalry wheeled and shot and tried to draw out the Vastrum men. Then, when that failed, they tried to come over the barricades with horses. Finally, they tried on foot. Dryden walked up and down the line with a handful of men including his few surviving cavalrymen looking for a gap to plug. The line was stout. They found few. Mar and their few other wizards blasted away with his spells. The cannons hammered down on the enemy. By midday, the battle was won and the Vuruni had been driven off. The fields were filled with Vuruni warriors and their horse.

Of the thousand or so men that remained, half were sepoys. A quarter were company mercenaries or remnants of the original garrison that had held Golconda. The core units of Vastrum infantry, including the grenadiers, had been decimated by the Belfair’s poorly timed square formation. The cavalry had been broken by the necromancy of Aisa and finished in defence of the column coming up the slope to Golconda. Much of the sepoy infantry had been devastated in the rearguard action. The rangers had been depleted while acting as the vanguard. Many officers had been sniped by enemy jezail. Excepting a few core sepoy companies, any semblance of unit cohesion was gone. What remained was a hodgepodge of survivors from different units, each of them wounded and bloody. Only tough men were left.

Gorst sat looking out at the battlefield around Golconda. Somewhere in the fighting he had taken a deep cut on his cheek. He had a faraway look in his eyes and he kept glancing back at the storm clouds that were gathering. Then he would look again up to the top of the pass where a line of enemy waited behind their stone wall.

“Sir, you ought to go have that looked at.” Dryden offered, gesturing to his colonel’s cheek.

“I’m fine.” Gorst replied, “Or as fine as I can be anyway. I suppose the sooner we get this over with, the better it’ll be, eh?” He gestured to the pass.

One of the junior lieutenants who was sitting around got brave and asked, “Why can’t we just keep fighting them here, we seem to be winning.”

“Insufficient ammunition, no food, no shelter for half of us, and the snows are coming. Captain Pugh had the right of it. We can’t stay long. At some point, they’ll stop coming to attack and they’ll just settle into the siege. Unlike us, they can bring up supplies to stay here for a time. Our men are already getting hungry. We’re already on quarter rations and that only gives us three days before the fort’s provisions are gone. They were meant to last the winter, but only for a hundred men, not the nearly thousand that we have left. Might as well go for it before we’ve no strength. The pass is just right there. They won’t dare follow us down towards Andaban, not far anyhow. If we can get through, we can get home.”

“If this is all so bleak, and they must simply keep us here, then why do they attack?” The same lieutenant asked.

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“They don’t want to stay here all winter any more than we do.” Dryden answered for the colonel, “Better to get it over with now. They’ll lose men to the cold too, and disease. You don’t want to besiege someone if you can help it. Better to end the fight quickly. I should think they’ll give us another try or two before they settle in.”

“Not if we make our push for the top first, though,” Gorst said.

“Indeed.” Dryden agreed, “Let us retire to the fort and plan this thing in earnest.”

“Agreed,” Gorst said, and so they did.

All the remaining senior officers went back to the fort. The soldiers were left to man the defences. A few lieutenants were left to man the wall in case of another attack. The group of officers was rather small, perhaps only a dozen men. They all circled around Gorst in the centre of the courtyard. It was not a complicated matter. There were no tables with maps or little figures to denote units in the army. Gorst simply took his swagger stick and knelt in the dirt of the old courtyard to draw the plan.

“Koen.” He looked up at the towering ranger lieutenant, “You volunteered to lead the front. Take what’s left of the rangers and grenadiers, such as they are and screen our advance as you can. You must not stop advancing up the slope. Stop and we all die there. Don’t worry about formations. Spread out thin across the front. Don’t shoot back, their cover is too good.”

“Don’t shoot back?” Koen asked, unsure.

“The bullet is a fool, but the bayonet is a fine fellow, Suvor told me that during the siege of Hagensborg. I believe you all know he’s a better commander than I.” The officers nodded in agreement. That Suvor was better was an understatement. He was among the greatest generals the world had ever known. Their only surprise was that Gorst had served alongside the man as Suvor had been dead nearly 40 years now and Colonel Gorst was not much more than fifty. “Their ditch is shallow, their wall is low. You get over that barricade and put them to the bayonet. We’ll need our muskets for what comes after.”

Koen nodded, “Understood, sir.”

“Good, Captain Khathan, you bring up the rear with your sepoys. You’ll have enemy light cavalry after you the whole way. Can your men retreat backwards uphill in good order?”

“We can.” He answered. Dryden had seen them fight, he believed it.

“That brings it to the rest of us.” He drew the line of the wall at the top of the pass and the fort down at the bottom. He drew lines to represent the rangers and the sepoys. Then he drew further lines staggered across the rise up to the pass, “Sometimes the simplest things are the very hardest.” He said, “Dryden, I want Pugh to take what’s left of the Marrowick boys up the left side. They lost their last lieutenant in the fighting today.”

“Done,” Dryden replied, then looked to Pugh who nodded back at him.

Gorst looked up to Pugh, “Don’t overextend on the left. I want all of us converging here at the low point in the rise.” He pointed to the middle of the pass.

“Hood, can I have Lieutenant Cavallo to command on the right?”

“You can.”

“Good. Dryden, I want you with me in the centre. If I fall, you’ll command. Hood, I’ll let you choose your own spot, where will you be?”

“I’ll command the fort.” Hood replied, “I’ll keep those guns pounding their cavalry as long as I can.”

All the other officers looked at him in surprise. To stay meant death. It was a noble sacrifice. None protested. They knew someone had to command the fort at Golconda. It was not a job any wanted. Even if they somehow managed to hold the fort, of which there was no guarantee, they were in for a long cold winter of starvation.

When the planning was done Gorst looked around at all the assembled officers, “Gentlemen, it has been an honour. Live, or die, I will see you on the other side.”

“Three cheers for Colonel Gorst and the King’s Own! Three cheers for Colonel Hood and the 5th of Vurun!” Dryden shouted, “Hip-hip!”

“Huzzah!” The other officers shouted in reply, suddenly full of vigour.

“Hip-hip!”

“Huzzah!”

“Hip-hip!”

“Huzzah!”