‘No, sir.’ The voice sounded strangulated. ‘It’s you, sir. It was bad enough when you first joined us; now it’s a lot worse. That smell, sir. That stench.’
Mayne sniffed, smelling nothing, and then glanced at the sleeve of his tunic, seeing the spatter of brown. ‘Ah. Occupational hazard for the cameleer, I’m afraid. You’re going to have to get used to that, Corporal Jones.’
He positioned his rifle against the parapet and took a round from the ammunition pouch, examining it carefully and wiping around the narrow upper end of the brass case that clenched the bullet to ensure that it was free from dirt. He pulled down the lever of the rifle to open the breech, put the cartridge on the loading block and pushed it home with his thumb, then closed the breech with the lever. As there was no safety on the Martini-Henry, it was now cocked and ready to fire. He lay on his front, nestled against the edge of the embrasure, and slid the rifle out until the muzzle was resting on the parapet, invisible to an observer four hundred or more yards away; then he shouldered it and aimed along the sights, traversing across the stretch of ridge where he would have positioned himself had he been the sharpshooter, where the profile was broken up by jagged spurs and ridges that would provide good concealment. He relaxed, breathing in deeply a few times, focusing his mind, remembering how good he had always felt when he had a target in his sights and knew he could kill, how it had made him feel when he had first done it and all the grief and anger at the death of his parents and brother and sister had finally seemed to lift from him, if only for a precious moment.
‘Sir, I’m going for ammunition.’ He heard the Irish soldier speak to the subaltern, and then a shuffling noise as the man crawled across to the stack of gear at the back of the sangar. He felt uneasy for a moment, knowing that the man would be vulnerable to a bullet on an arching trajectory, but he was in position now and did not want to lose his concentration, even to shout out a warning. The sun was dropping, and he knew he would only have one chance.
Suddenly there was a deafening metallic clang beside him. A bullet had smashed into the receiver of the rifle of the soldier next to him and ricocheted off in fragments, peppering the loose folds of his tunic but miraculously missing flesh. The soldier knelt up, stunned, head and shoulders above the parapet, and Jones screamed at him to get down, but it was too late. A bullet burst out from him in a spray of blood and shredded cloth, and he fell backwards with a neat black hole in the front of his neck, his eyes wide open and lifeless. Behind him Mayne heard the sickening thump of lead striking flesh, and then another a few seconds later, followed by a blood-curdling cry and a string of Anglo-Saxon curses. He kept focused on the ridge, his right forefinger feathering the trigger, panning the rifle in a tiny arc to cover the twenty or thirty metres of cliff where he thought the shooter would be. Another round whined overhead and crashed into the rock behind. The sharpshooter had got their range and was firing fast, dropping rounds into the sangar as quickly as he could work the lever of his rifle and reload. Mayne knew that this was his chance: there would be small movements in the rocks, moments of incaution as the shooter exposed himself, misplaced confidence that there could be nobody opposite to match his skill.
He sensed something different, a barely perceptible change in the light. He blinked, and it was still there. The sun had dropped. And then he saw it, a minuscule wobbly reflection among the rocks, the white of a headdress, a briefly elevated rifle barrel. He held himself steady, staring down the sights, both eyes open, focusing on the target. There was no wind, and he could aim dead-on. He adjusted infinitesimally to the left, an instinct, no more, and then slowly exhaled until there was nothing left, and squeezed the trigger. The rifle jumped and cracked, and through the smoke he saw the figure rise upwards as if standing, but then crumple sideways and hang head first over the ledge in front of him, arms dangling, blood gushing and splatting down the cliff and his rifle falling with a clatter to the rocks beneath.
He was conscious of a ragged cheer from the men by the river below. He barely felt the need to breathe, and when he did so it was as if he had taken a lungful of the strongest tobacco, leaving his heart pounding and the blood rushing to his head. It had been a long time since he had done that. He let go of the rifle and turned to look at the scene in the sangar. The man who had been beside him was lying on his back in a pool of blood, already coagulating and dotted with flies. The other two bullets had hit the same man, the Irish soldier who had gone back for more ammunition. He was lying on his back, surrounded by a group of men, with his trousers torn off, his legs drenched with blood and shaking convulsively. One round had ploughed into a calf, shearing off the muscle and leaving it curled up in a lurid yellow and red mass below his knee. The other had gone through both thighs and severed the arteries, leaving him bleeding to death in agony. The subaltern was propping his head up while the other men worked feverishly to staunch the blood, Jones holding his hand and feeding him dribbles of water from his bottle. The soldier was moaning and weeping, his face deathly grey and contorted, his lips saying something that only the subaltern could hear. Mayne could have told him that he had got the man who had shot him, but it seemed irrelevant. He swung open the loading lever on the rifle to eject the spent cartridge, and then closed it up and laid it beside Jones’ gear. He watched as the man’s face relaxed and his eyelids drooped, and his breathing became a rasping, snoring rattle, and then he was dead.
The subaltern remained hunched over, unable to move, and the two men beside his legs sat back, their arms and tunics dripping blood. Jones got up and came over to him, offering the water bottle. Mayne took it gratefully, drinking in great gulps, feeling suddenly very much alive. ‘That was a good shot, sir,’ Jones said, eyeing him. ‘Not even the Afghans could shoot like that.’
Mayne wiped his mouth and handed the bottle back. ‘It’s what we soldiers are out here for, isn’t it, Jones? To kill the enemy.’
‘Kill the enemy,’ Jones repeated thoughtfully. ‘That’s right, sir. To kill the enemy.’ He jerked his head towards the others in the sangar, all of them sitting in various stages of shock, two of them with their heads in their hands. ‘Don’t worry about them, sir. I well remember the first time it happened to me, when a mate died in my arms. It was at Maiwand in Afghanistan, back in ’80. Now there was a battle for you.’
‘I know. I was there. In the mountains, watching.’
‘Forward reconnaissance, sir?’