An American Lion

Forward

During my time in minimum security custody in the mid-1990s, I used a Macintosh Apple Computer in prison to write a historical romance novel. Even though it is pretty time consuming, I will gradually convert the chapters over to a format where it can be read here. It is a book of passion, of love, of a kind of love triangle…it is the…

Rampage of the Innocents 

[Masacre de los inocentes - en Espanol]

General Norman Rogers took command of the British Army in India in the time that he was there. He was one of many British generals to take command of the far flung forces of Empire. Few knew that he was to be known as the greatest field commander in the history of the British Army.

He was tall, sweaty, sturdy, handsome, and he had the manly hips of a man who can ride a horse, amble into a room and dance with a lady, and still cut a slim figure in his scarlet uniform. All of the men who met him wanted to be him. But they could not. So they hated him, except for the men who had to serve under him. They envied him and wished he would fall in battle, forcing them to bend down and hear his last few words. They would likely be about a woman. But, she didn’t care, this woman of whom he’d speak while the bullets danced around him.

She loved him. She couldn’t have him, however.

His first mistress was the army, and his love for the Queen was impenetrable. He doted on and loved Queen Victoria, even though, in her advanced age, she was often confused when he was in Buckingham Palace to have an audience with her majesty before a major campaign, and she would stagger out of the room looking for the water closet and call him “Skippy boy.” The woman who loved him was delicate and fragile, as if made of thin, ancient porcelain. Her name was Burma, and she hated her name. It was where her father, an itinerant ship’s master in the East India Company, had had his way with her mother, the daughter of the colonial governor of Burma.

In the short period of time when her father was respectable, he had insisted on naming her Burma. The family, appalled, nevertheless accepted. And so was born the name she hated, which was a name the man she loved refused to speak, for he had lost a thousand men in a desperate fight with a Burmese warlord. To him, she was “My Lady.” He would not speak her name, but he would ravish her, that was for certain. She lived in Bombay, in the house of the governor, who was her grandfather.

She was the eldest daughter of a disgraced mother, a spinster in her own right, but she was only 25, and could do no better than to carry on an illicit, passionate, clothes-stripping, sweaty romance with the greatest British Army General in the history of the world. One the day when her grandfather sent her from the drawing room, she stole a glance at General Rogers, who swept into the room covered in mud from his horseback ride from the outskirts of Bombay where he commanded the British Army forces in India.

He ignored her. He had military matters on his mind. He hadn’t thought about sex in days. Her father was a timid old man. He was weak and dithered when presented with the information on the military maps spread before him. General Rogers listened to the governor and his staff, and the naval and army officers dither. Then he spoke, crisply and clearly and the room fell silent.

“With the governor’s permission, I shall lead 4,000 regulars, 24 cannon, and 500 cavalry to Prakasha on the Tapi River. There, I will confront the army of the Sultan of Mhow and destroy it in place.” And so it was.

No other man had anything to offer. General Rogers had the only answer worth listening to. His jaw tightened, and he nodded to the governor, who meekly disappeared into the background.

“Your Lordship,” he said through gritting teeth, “when I bring the head of the Sultan to you, and when I place it upon your fine writing desk, I shall expect to be given freely and without hesitation the hand of your daughter…Ba ba ba burrrr…bur ba ba ba…the hand of your eldest daughter, in holy matrimony, sir.” General Rogers dismissed the men with a wave, and walked through the governor’s mansion, dismissing the stares and gossip with an icy glare. He looked for Burma and found her, lingering in a drawing room that was similar, but different from the one he had just left.

“My lady, there is concern upon your face,” he thundered. She softened and bared a shoulder to him. “I’m concerned for the safety of a man who is so brave, he doesn’t know what a coward looks like.” He strode into the room, confident and full of purpose. His legs were long and his hips were pronounced, like a man who has ridden horses all of his life would have. He was what the peasants would call hippy in his appearance, but his close-fitting breeches were tailored and his scarlet uniform hung on his frame with care.

“I’ll be having my way with My Lady before I leave for war in the morning,” he breathed, “and My Lady will LIKE it.”

“I fear I shall like it. Like it so much that I will lament your departure and long for you, ever so hungrily.”

“Let me make you less hungry,” he growled. “Let me remind you that my sister Ellesmere Island is nearby, and if she discovers us, our love may be doomed.” She gasped and fell into his arms, and her clothing slipped away as an afterthought. He ravished her, pulling away the things that were between him and what he wanted. He threw her undergarments into the air and attacked her shoulder blades with abandon.

She quieted an inadvertent squeal and he stopped.

“Did I go too far? Do you wish me to stop?”

“I wish you to ride me like you would ride a horse,” she said.

“That doesn’t sound…” he drew away a little.

“I mean that to be a figurative sort of—”

“—oh,” he said, leaning back down over her.

“Horses are a poor metaphor for what I want you to do to me,” she explained.

He continued ravishing her, “horses are not erotic to me. The Army uses them up at an extraordinary rate and they cost a general, dearly, if they are ruined by passion.”

“Ruin me with your passion,” she whispered.

***

Burma was like many women of her time—she was fickle. She was madly in love with General Rogers, but she knew that he could be killed fighting in the war that was happening at or around the time when she was in love with him. She thought endlessly of the rough hands that he caressed her with—or what she thought was perhaps a caress was for him a fumbling grasp at anything his gnarled hands could find to touch. The only person that she could confide in was her foolish and carefree sister, Ellesmere Island.

“Tell me, Elles,” Burma said one languid afternoon, weeks after General Rogers had moved out of his base camp, “do you think father wishes either of us to marry a military man?” Ellesmere Island was a flightly, silly girl.

She twirled her umbrella and said, with a saucy look, “father just wants to marry us off so he can be rid of us. Love is not meant to be for us. We should just fornicate madly until scandal overtakes us!” She squealed and ran out of the room, promptly knocking over a lamp and a chair.

Burma shrugged.

“What else would I expect from such a ridiculous girl?” she said to no one.

***

General Rogers dismounted from his horse and walked up to the wagon that was mired in mud. He called for an iron rod, and placed it expertly between his thick, massive legs, which were like oak trees in the ascendancy, where it would free the wagon and allow his tired army to move forward. A tired private looked at the General as he trudged past and tipped his cap. The General grunted and handed the private an apple.

“Keep moving forward, soldier and we’ll drive these animals before us and destroy their homes.” The British Army moved forward, slowly but with great majesty and power. They followed their General because he was a gentleman, and because he knew how to love women.

When he guided them, they moved as one. When he commanded them, they put their heads down and did their tasks, unflinchingly. It was said that formations commanded by General Norman Rogers were often surrounded in battle—his men refused to run when the tide against them was turned. General Rogers could count several times when his men were being attacked on all sides, and he had never been forced to surrender. In fact, his men usually routed the enemy and moved on. Rare was the sister formation that could keep up.

A sergeant barked at his men to stay in line and hold their heads up. He pointed to General Rogers and said, “there goes what is a gentleman, you fancy. Being he is a man what can dance with a lady you see, like holding a teacup and a baby. Aye, lads, and you should see him what he looks like while taking a shat by a standing on the fine porcelain rim of a fancy French loo, I swears that he can.”

“A slap and tickle man, he be?”

“You lot should slap it and tickle it, more than you deserve,” the sergeant said, earning laughs. “See to your gear and shoulders straight, brain bucket up high, a kick to the man who cannot shine in the reflection of my steel.”

***

Lord Mortimer Sneedgrass collected taxes for Her Majesty and he was so good at his task, he kept a ledger book containing the names and families that he had ruined by viciously and voraciously collecting those taxes without mercy. He was an unimaginative autocrat and a purveyor of filth. He sold naughty postcards to whoever would buy them and he consumed food and only the lowest of easily-purchased women with lusty abandon. He was moral and physical coward, employing a dozen men to carry weapons to protect him. He had never held a sword in his life. He slept with one hand on a bell that he could ring to summon assistance. His tax collecting duties had brought him to India in order to collect estate taxes from officials from the British Government who were assigned to the edges of the Empire. He had been sick and terrified throughout the long voyage and he arrived at the home of the colonial governor in a state of exhaustion and rage. Upon his arrival, he was greeted by the governor and his daughter and some assorted granddaughters—all lovely, handsome women who were simply too old to marry anymore.

This man had probably failed to properly marry off his womenfolk—common in a man with an independent income and no need to pawn off his daughters to poor men. There would only be a dowry to pay out of this man were to die suddenly.

They had strange names, sweaty bosoms, and wandering eyes. They started longingly in all directions, ignoring the good graces.

“Won’t you join us for dinner?” the governor offered.

Sneedgrass clucked his tongue, and said, “it shant reduce your obligations to the crown sir, unless you poison me.” And there was mild tittering laughter.

“The crown is, I hope, pleased with our efforts here,” the governor wondered, as if he needed to beg for something complimentary.

“The crown has no message to you, as far as I know, governor,” Sneedgrass said, but then he realized that he had just highlighted and identified his own lack of influence and power by not having anything from Her Majesty to say. He fiddled quietly with a napkin and stared hotly at his hands. He cursed himself. He had not met with the Queen in years, forced to grovel to Parliament for any sign of approval or disapproval.

“It’s just as well, my father,” Ellesmere Island, his comely daughter, purred. “The crown seems to think India is far enough away to be someone else’s problem.”

The governor looked at her with reproach, but she stuck her tongue out and made a move to flash her breasts at the table. A waiter put an empty silver platter in front of her and blocked her from doing so. The waiter quietly returned to his position directly behind her. This was his sole occupation in the governor’s house. Sneedgrass was seated next to Burma when dinner was served to the governor and his guests.

Waiters swiftly served all manner of food, but Sneedgrass found it provincial and tiresome to eat the local cuisine. Pieces of it gathered in his teeth and prodded at him to be removed. It was like discovering that one has been chewing absent-mindedly on the legs of an insect withoutremembering the taste ofthe better parts first.

Burma noticed he wasn’t eating and offered, “if you don’t like the dinner, we can serve you a more traditional British meal instead.”

“No, my lady, I’m just not interested in food. I have tax related issues on my mind.”

She had nothing to say. He had bested her and put her in her place.

***

General Rogers surveyed the forces lined up against him. The small army that he commanded was drawn up in lines, dress right dress, and was supported by cannon and cavalry.

Arrayed before him were 85,000 irregulars under the command of the Sultan of Mhow. They were a mob, surging back and forth and smacking their lips at the possibility of looting the bodies of his troops. They were counting on another 12,000 infantry that were the linchpin of the Sultan’s forces. If his infantry could hold, and perhaps advance, the cutthroat mob would surge forward when the danger of death was mitigated.

He called for a messenger, and, to his chagrin, the man sent forward to deliver his dispatch to the Governor was Corporal Clinton.

“Useless and drunk,” someone muttered, and General Rogers agreed. This was a chance to get Clinton out of the battle, and so he issued a clear message—enemy engaged, battle joined, will pursue enemy with light forces if victorious, God Save the Queen.”

Clinton fumbled with his horse, and nearly fell off. It was a good thing to be sending him off, then, General Rogers felt.

Corporal Clinton raced away from the scene of the impending battle, relieved that he was out of it, convinced that his countrymen were about to be slaughtered. He was a coward, and a fool, and a lover of the bottle. He promptly forgot the General’s message and planned on deserting when he was able to get back to the capital.

What Corporal Clinton did not know was that there was not one brave soul in the Sultan’s vast army, save one. His daughter Mapoopoo, the most beautiful Sultanic princess in all of India, wanted to take up a British Army rifle and kill all of the British soldiers that she could see from her father’s tent. Then, she wanted to take that rifle and kill everyone in her father’s army, and then take the rifle and bash her father’s skull into a fine, watery paste made of bones, hair and brains. And then she wanted to ride a horse bareback all the way to China. She wanted many, many things, and was a creature of impulse. Her impulses drove everyone around her mad. Even her beauty was enough to make a man chew the inside of his cheek. She stared at the scene before her.

The small, puny British forces were formed in a perfect series of lines on the hill above the river. Her father’s army was surging forward like an undisciplined mob, splashing across the low river and struggling to move horses and small cannon in place. She laughed out loud and startled everyone around her. “You face General Norman Rogers, who has the high ground, and his cannon will bark at you in a moment and begin cutting your regulars to pieces, father. By the end of the day, three quarters of your army will have fled and your head will be a trophy on General Norman Rogers’ wall or desk or perhaps in the regimental display case that is discreetly maintained some distance from here.” The sultan stroked his beard. Yes, the British regulars were well positioned. But, already, he could see men falling and cannon balls creating geysers in the river.

“Perhaps it will be the head of General Rogers who is displayed prominently somewhere, yes, daughter? And, for your insolence, perhaps you should be strapped backwards with your legs in the air upon the back of an ass and paraded before the enemy?” Mapoopoo sneered. She had been bested and put into her place. She said nothing as the screams of men and the whinnying of horses mixed with the cackle of rifles and the roar of cannons.

***

Burma walked languidly through the garden. She carried a book she would not read and a care for a man who was facing a horrible war. The servants brought her no news from the gutter or the slum or the horrible places where they received news. The grapevine was bare. A terrible battle was set to occur near where they languished upon wicker furniture in meticulously tended gardens. A rampaging horde of men, sweaty and licking their lips, could appear at any moment, firing guns and swinging swords, and she would be powerless to resist the wanton needs of so many savages.

Her sister Ellemere often asked about the wild men from the North and would they come and have sex with all of the white women in Bombay?

Would they arrive all sweaty and needy and demand sex?

Over and over and over again?

Probably. Probably.

***

“General Rogers, we have captured the daughter of the Sultan,” the regimental commander said, without much emotion.

He waved the man into his command tent.

“Saunders, have a drink old man. The girl can wait. Your regiment was superb today. Your front companies were torn to pieces, and yet they held. And yet, they held. I am going to ensure you are given a medal, and that your remaining soldiers are accorded an extra ration of rum.”

Colonel Saunders touched his hat and drank the whiskey.

“We were in position, thanks to your orders, general,” Saunders said.

“What now of this girl, Saunders?”

“A right pretty one, I imagine. I’ve had trouble seeing. A flash went off and I am seeing things in a blur this evening,” Saunders said, staring off into space.

“Well, it is dark and poorly lit.”

“General, that’s probably it. Anyhow—the girl? The girl is the daughter of the Sultan. Oh, she’s been through the worst of it. My cavalry detachment stopped her as her mule was running off to the south, away from the battle. Dreadful thing to see. She was strapped to it and someone had slapped the mule’s flanks to make it run.”

General Rogers studied his map. “We shall have to move in the morning. North. After the Sultan himself. She could be a useful bargaining chip. I’m taking no more than five companies of cavalry on a fast march to cut him off and cut him down. She will be strapped to a horse, held fast, and a trooper shall have her reins.”

“I will ensure that it is done,” Saunders said.

***

A messenger, looking like he had rolled out of a tavern, brought a confused message from the front. The governor looked at it and puzzled over it for a few minutes. General Rogers had sent the message at a point in the battle when all seemed lost, it appeared.

The Governor was having none of it. Was it true that General Rogers had dispatched the courier to warn the governor to flee the country, should his army be destroyed? That made little or no sense.What the governor did not know is that General Rogers had turned the tide, almost entirely by himself, with a daring cavalry and cannon attack that split the Sultan’s forces and drove off the opportunistic raiders and ransackers. That message was two days away.

“We shall wait to see what the outcome is,” the Governor sniffed. “General Rogers is being prudent, nothing more. The British Army cannot be defeated when he is at the head of it.” He turned back to face Lord Sneedgrass, “it would appear that we are in danger of losing the protection afforded to us by the British regulars under the command of General Rogers.”

Lord Sneedgrass shot to his feet. “We are in danger?”

The governor, fanned himself with papers, his own, showing the dire position of his finances. If they were overrun and sacked, he could avoid paying his debts, perhaps. Catastrophe has a way of freeing a man from the burden of his Earthly obligations. It was evidently true, however, that he would be run through with a rusty pole by a fanatical member of the Sultan’s formidable army, should it ever come to that, and the allure of catastrophe lost a bit of the sheen he imagined it had.

“I doubt it.”

“You have faith in the skill of this general of yours?” Lord Sneedgrass was calculating how many bags he would need to flee India with. Would there be enough porters? Would his assistants mind being left to slow down the marauders so that he could escape?

“He is a fighter, a man capable of destroying the heart of the enemy,” Burma said, sweeping into the room and interrupting. “General Rogers is a man who can engage the enemy and kill him, man to dog, victor to vanquished, and he can do it quick as rainbows,” she said, flashing her eyes and ignoring her father’s discomfort.

Lord Sneedgrass looked at his pants. They were soiled. He retired forthright, wondering which suitcases and bags would be left behind. He was struck by how much he loathed the general for being brave and capable. Surely, the registrars and records would have proof that the general was behind somehow, some way, in his taxes.

Corporal Clinton laughed at the message he had delivered to such fine and hoity-toity people. He made up a wild story of slaughter and destruction, sending everyone into a panic that would give him cover. As hundreds of people began making their way to the docks to secure passage to safer climes, he would steal aboard, perhaps sign on as a crewman, and work his way back to Ireland where he could indulge in his love of alcohol, potatoes, and indolence.

***

General Rogers cleaned the brains from his boots. He scrubbed the blood from his uniform. He flecked away bits of flesh and bone from his sword scabbard and took a rag and cleaned the blade with expert care. His powdered wig was a matted, foregone conclusion. He would not be able to don his hair. He would simply wear his hat and allow himself the indulgence of campaigning sans his finery.

The men were sore, the horses were sore, and the enemy was fleeing before him. Crowded into tents, arranged expertly into a circle upon the high ground, his men were standing watch, tending the animals, preparing a meal.

In contrast to the order and discipline around him, he could look down and see rifles, uniform pieces, packs, kits, cases and caissons, all abandoned or left where they were thrown. The debris was a comfort to him—the enemy will not stand and fight; they have little left to fight with.

Since the regiment with him belonged to Saunders, he waved the man into his presence and shared water and hardtack with him.

“Is there anything left of their ranks, of their order of battle?” General Rogers asked, trying to get a feel for what the men were telling Saunders.

“There is a disciplined group that has marched back to the East, leaving little or nothing behind. They are troops aligned to the Sultan through marriage. The deserter we questioned said that those troops will not fight the British under the Sultan again. They were promised victory and none was had. The rest are a rabble. We find they are carrying almost nothing now. The kits are lighter and lighter—they are eating their provisions and walking on full stomachs—not a recipe for receiving a fight. They are shooting their officers.” Saunders thought he was saying too much so he stopped.

“We will press on and capture the Sultan. We will end this.” General Rogers caught sight of the girl, Mapoopoo, as she was trying to cajole bread from a private. She was too lovely to be campaigning, too fierce not to be in the thick of it, however.

“The girl is to ride with me today,” he said.

***

The Sultan of Mhow watched another horse die. He and what was left of his forces were running, terrified, and they knew the British were closing in on them.

“Betrayal everywhere!” he screamed, flinging his feathered hat down at the expiring horse. “I must not be captured.”

His men had had enough of his insane demands—stopping to inspect bridges, eating crickets and grass, using rifle butts to open coconuts. There was a deep-seated belief in the Sultan that coconuts were the ideal food for his men, but really, they were too heavy, they were bulky, and no one had brought straws.

A dozen of his bodyguard began to saunter off, then all of them disappeared. The Sultan shook his fist at them, and sank to his knees.

“General Norman Rogers has bested me!”

***

Lord Sneedgrass pressed his back against the seat, trying to absorb the liver-jiggling shock of the carriage. He refused to ride a horse, and was in the carriage with the women, uncomfortable and miserable. The smell of soiled linen clung to him. The women in the carriage knew he was a moral and physical coward. Polite society prevented them from telling him so.

Ellesmere Island was in her element—able to speak her mind and comment freely on their predicament.

“As we flee before the onslaught, doesn’t anyone wonder what is to become of India? Will we ever see it again?”

The disapproving sneer of Lady Prentiss was barely visible under her stylishly outdated summer hat.

“We’ll see the regulars take them to the whipping post, I would expect. I can’t imagine the army would accept a beating and run. If that is to be so, it means that General Rogers was killed.”

Burma squealed at the thought. There was silence in the carriage.

“I should think it terrible for an officer and a decent man to die.”

No one said anything. They were too preoccupied with themselves, and their safety.

***

Mapoopoo had nothing but her wits and her wiles, and so she added her thighs and her lips to the equation. She preened. She stamped her feet like a colt. She threw her head back and let her hair fly. She was aware of the sweat on her shoulders, and how it made her glisten, but she didn’t care. If her hands had been free, she would have drawn patterns upon herself with it.

General Rogers was asleep, however.

Eventually, she gave up. She was trying too hard. General Rogers could never be seduced. He was the seducer, and her clever mind had not arrived there, but in time, it would.

Near the middle of the night, he sat up.

“A husband?” he asked her.

“None would survive me,” she flashed at him. She began to feel electricity running through her. This man, this general, this British soldier had stirred.

“What virtue do you have?” he asked, looking at her bare thighs. She was not modest.

“I have the virtue of a whore and the ability to crush a man’s skull with my thighs,” she growled. 

He made love to her like a sick panther because his food had not digested. It turned, in his stomach, but his lust settled everything between them. His passion rose and fell, his nausea was temporary, his grunting heard fifteen tents away. Aye, the men in his regiments knew, the general was having his tonight.

***

Corporal Clinton reached up to grab the ropes on the side of the Transpire, the vessel which would carry him and a hundred or more British subjects to safety. Corporal Clinton was a man without a uniform, wearing stolen rags and a makeshift grin. He had rolled in the straw with whores and had drunk himself to a dangerous state of stupor. And now, he was about to sign on as a spare crewman and escape.

A hand came over his shoulder, an army hand, and he froze.

“And it’s down with ye, then,” said the sergeant from his battalion who had recognized him. “Clinton, your rank is broken from ye and ye is to march back to the regiment and have your neck stretched.”

“No, not me, I,” he stammered, fumbling in his rags for a knife.

Two soldiers leveled their rifles at him and the sergeant stepped back, safely.

“He’s brought a message of defeat he has,” the sergeant said, looking around him, “Clinton, did you start this panic, you cur?”

Clinton merely grimaced.

“The real courier has already reached the governor. This panic will pass. Clinton, we’ll stretch your neck for sure. Search his person for what he seeks and strip this filth off of his back. To the regiment with a bare back we’ll bring you, and flogging is too good for ye,” said the sergeant, waiting for order to be restored.

The courier had, indeed, reached the governor. The victory over the Sultan’s army was complete. The dispatch to the governor was a troubling relief.

Troubling, because the Sultan had escaped. General Rogers was in pursuit with his light forces. His baggage train, most of his artillery, and the wounded were en route back to their barracks. In addition, he had ordered four companies of foot to fast-march back to the city in order to guarantee that a reorganized element of the Sultan’s vast army could not reconstitute itself and make a move against British interests. These were the men that had caught the hapless Corporal Clinton trying to sign on for a free passage to Ireland.

The Governor told Lord Sneedgrass to return to his quarters and that the danger had passed.

“Are four companies enough to defend us?” he asked in a fright.

The Governor rolled his eyes in contempt, “Four companies of men trained by General Rogers can hold five thousand savages at bay for as long as necessary. The British solder does not retreat, sir. He holds the ground upon which he stands. We are, indeed, quite safe.”

Lord Sneedgrass ordered his porters and assistants to put right that which they had frantically packed. He was safe, then, but he did not feel safe. He gradually began to feel that the Governor held him in contempt.

The way to get back at a man who hold another man in contempt is, of course, to seduce his daughter and marry her, and Lord Sneedgrass began to formulate a plan to do just that. The problem was, which one of them? Neither was appealing. Ellesmere Island was younger, but had no mind. Burma had a mind, but was too plain and too headstrong. In the end, he would have to choose which one to manipulate.

He grabbed one of his assistants and ordered him to go out and buy him a suit of clothes, something military in appearance but nothing that wouldn’t cause a lady to look away. He began to think of how he could seduce the daughter who seemed the most valuable, and that was Burma. Headstrong or not, he would have to break her like a horse and ride her wherever he could ride her, even if that wasn’t very far at all.

***

A few dozen more of his fleeing soldiers found the Sultan of Mhow by the river. He had seven hundred men in various states of being armed and prepared for a march. He estimated that seven or eight thousand of his men had fled in the general direction of where he was encamped. If he waited long enough, he could assemble a small division and move on the capital. If he waited too long, the bulk of the British army might move to intercept him. He knew that he had to keep moving, in a southerly arc away from the site of the disastrous battle and away from the British forces.

He ordered men to acquire weapons and camp near him. He organized horses and mules into companies. He created a small cavalry force and sent them to range out around the camp and bring in the stragglers. In order to quell the doubts of his men, the Sultan stripped himself of his fine robes and painted his face red. He insisted on spartan accommodations and told the men that if they stayed with him until they could overwhelm the sparse forces around the capital, they could loot and burn everything in their path and keep the spoils. He told them that their obligation to him ended when the last British soldier in the capital fell dead. He promised them women and gold. He would keep none for himself.

Gradually, his force began to acquire confidence. He watered the horses for a day, then moved them slowly, rampaging through villages and taking whatever weapons could be found. Some of his soldiers carried shovels until they could acquire axes. When they found firearms, they threw the axes into the back of a wagon that the Sultan refused to ride in. He called it his pioneer wagon, and he intended to use it to supply a detachment of soldiers to chop through the wooden stockade wall that he knew was waiting for him.

***

It wasn’t like General Rogers to ravish a woman, leave her in a hot, sticky mess, and not allow her the time she needed to bathe and clean herself. He had no choice—he had to propel her onto a horse and get his detachment moving.

“We must overtake the main body moving back to the capital. We must arc around it so that it does not impede our path. I fear that the Sultan has moved here,” he gestured at his tactical map, “and I want to ensure that he is not here. If so, we can leisurely march to barracks and plot our next move. Here,” he gestured to where he and his officers were standing, “he has dissipated into nothing. The calculation that he was in retreat to his palace was wrong. He has abandoned the palace and now he is behind us. He is weak, but he could amass a large enough force to strike at the capital. I must act decisively and prevent this.”

“A flying column,” Saunders said. “Horses with little flesh left on the bone, troops exhausted. I will scour my companies and assemble a force of 200 men, if the General will have it.”

“Exactly so, and your regiment can assemble the remaining forces and lead our rear-guard march back to the capital. There will be plenty of time to campaign against the Sultan when we have put right his rout.”

The army began to separate into elements that General Rogers would command. His flying column consisted of healthy troops with solid marching strength. Packs were stripped down and surplus materials were piled onto a regimental wagon. Barking sergeants inspected each man, ordering up cartridges, water canteens, and the odd replacement bayonet.

***

The Sultan of Mhow watched horsemen and footsore soldiers appear in every village along his path. Reluctant warriors were no match for regular British troops, but those were now far to his rear. He hurried, perhaps losing a handful here and there to vengeful elements who resented his ascendancy to the Sultanate, but he paid little heed to the men on foot. He knew his horse elements were reluctant to risk being shot from the saddle, but they brought speed and confusion, and he needed them for that.

“We number nearly a thousand,” he said to cowering commanders, “and your troops are nearly worthless. If we can strike the capital and pour through a hole into the city, this lot will rape and pillage and cease to be effective. If we hit the Englishmen directly and drive them from the field, all will settle in for a day or more of taking rewards.”

“These are the options?” a commander asked him.

“Yes, we must hit the soft belly, and pierce like a spear. Then, and only then, shall we in the elite command flee. We cannot stay in the capital, but we can unleash this mob upon the people, who will see that their English war merchants cannot protect them.

The scouts returned to the presence of their Sultan.

“The daughter of the most exalted Sultan of Mhow is with the English general. With my own eyes, I spied this,” the scout testified.

A commander waved the scout away.

“Mapoopoo will kill the English general if she is given the chance, and then she will kill whomsoever she meets for a year.” The sultan whispered.

***

Lord Sneedgrass preened himself before the mirror, and put a golden ring on his pinky. He licked his hands and smoothed his hair. His gut spilled into the folds of his trousers, but all he had to do was avoid being seen from the sides. In the panic of the palace, he looked like a man apart.