Free The Maharajah's General by Paul Fraser Collard

the flurry of shots sending bullets crashing around the ears of the small party. Youngsummers felt his terror rebuilding, his stomach twisting as if the devil himself was inside, squirming in his guts, cruelly injecting the fear that consumed his soul.
    He abandoned his precious daughter to the care of a stranger and sought escape.
    ‘Get on, damn you. Get on!’ He heard the fear in his own voice as he kicked his heels callously against his horse’s sides, careless of his cruelty, desperate to get away from the bullets that had torn through the sunburnt air.
    He could not die. He could not carry out God’s work as a corpse. The Reverend Youngsummers ran from the danger, reassuring himself that he did God’s will by saving his own skin.
    ‘Oh dear Lord, save me.’ He pushed himself up in the saddle, leaning his weight forward to urge the tiring horse on, his bowels exploding and farting the moment his backside lifted from the saddle.
    The scabby hillside suddenly fell away in front of him, revealing a patch of dead ground he had not seen as he charged up the slope. A hundred yards of barren scrub still separated him from the edge of the village. All that remained between danger and safety.
    Yet it might as well have been a thousand.
    ‘No! Dear God, no.’
    Youngsummers had abandoned his only daughter in a desperate bid for safety. Yet his coward’s flight had not secured him the security he craved.
    Instead, Reverend Archibald Youngsummers had found the Tiger.

The second British volley crashed out, the sound rippling and echoing down the valley.
    ‘Rear rank. Reload.’
    ‘Front rank! Front rank, prepare to fire!’
    The havildar strode behind the rear rank, his watchful glare roving over his charges as they reloaded.
    Jack flinched as a bullet scored past his head, reacting to the high-pitched sound as it punched through the air despite his best efforts to remain composed in front of his men. He knew the volume of fire was nothing compared to the barrage into which the British had marched with such stoic calm at the Alma. Yet despite all he had experienced, his body still reacted with fear, his trembling hands all the evidence he needed to know that he had not become immune to the proximity of death.
    A red-coated sepoy took a glancing wound to his upper arm. The slight, dark-skinned soldier surprised Jack with a stream of foul infective straight from the dockside at Chatham as he staunched the flow of blood, before retaking his place in the line.
    The sepoys’ volleys were having the effect Jack had intended. The enemy fire had slackened considerably, the ambushers driven into cover by the British response. Their return fire was sporadic, and Jack counted the puffs of smoke on the hillside, anxious to be able to get his small command away.
    He had just opened his mouth to order a final volley when a cheer erupted from in front of where the redcoats stood. It was a visceral snarl, the sound warriors made when released to fight, and was followed by the noise of dozens of armed men moving at once. The scrape of metal on metal as weapons were drawn and readied for use.
    Jack looked up the slope and cursed. He realised at once that the gunmen on the hillside had been given one role: to pin the party in place and divert their attention whilst the main force of the ambush manoeuvred into position into the dead ground in front of the stalled column. It was a simple plan, but it was effective.
    ‘Fix bayonets!’ He did his best to sound calm. The ten redcoats heard the order and reached for the scabbards in their belts that held the long steel bayonets. They were vicious weapons, deadly tools in the hands of a trained redcoat. For centuries, British soldiers had closed with their enemies, using the sharpened steel to win the famous victories of which they were so very proud.
    The sepoys clicked the bayonets on to the locking points at the tip of their muskets before wheeling in line so that their two-man-deep formation