Free The Maharajah's General by Paul Fraser Collard Page B

spit out death before the men would be unleashed and ordered to charge. Jack could not afford to waste it, and he forced himself to stand calm, waiting until the enemy was close enough so that every shot would find a target.
    The disordered mob surged forward. Still Jack delayed the order to fire, even though the ambushers were so close that he could see every detail on the faces rushing towards him.
    The mob was no more than fifty yards away, just moments from reaching the thin red line that stood with such stoic defiance in their path.
    ‘Fire!’ Jack bellowed the order, releasing the tension that had gripped him since the first bandit had appeared.
    The sepoys obeyed immediately, the sudden thunderclap of sound shocking in its violence as the muskets fired as one.
    He had deliberately left the volley late, the front of the mob barely twenty-five yards from the frail British line. At such close range every bullet smacked into an enemy body, flensing those who had rushed to the fore.
    ‘Charge! Charge!’
    Jack felt his fear released. Nothing mattered now. Nothing except the need to fight, to take his sword and hack at the enemy. This was the intoxicating madness that he had half forgotten. The soul-searing surge of hate and anger that combined with his fear to drive him willingly into the dreadful cauldron of battle.
    He tore out of the cloud of smoke created by the discharging muskets. The ambush had been bludgeoned to a halt. Bloodied, crumpled bodies formed a grotesque barrier and tangled around the feet of those nearest to them, the impetus of the bandits’ charge broken by the brutal volley.
    He heard a roar behind him as the sepoys followed his lead, their sudden scream a horrific contrast to the stoic silence with which they had watched the enemy close on them. The men in red coats were unleashed to do what they had been trained to do.
    It was time to kill.
    Jack rushed at the stalled mob, the last few yards disappearing in a blur of movement as he led his men forward. He ducked under a farmer’s sickle wielded by a man dressed in nothing more than a simple loincloth. The curving blade flashed past, missing his neck by no more than an inch. He was on the man in a heartbeat, the narrow escape meaning nothing as the madness of battle surged through him. There was time to see terror ripple through the man’s greased body before Jack rammed his sword into his throat.
    As he tore his blade from the gruesome wound, his victim fell to the ground, his hands clasped around the dreadful ruin of his neck. Jack was forced to step swiftly to his left to avoid a spear-thrust aimed at his side, the speed of the melee leaving no time for thought. He back-swung his sword, using the sharpened rear edge to gouge across the face of the white-robed man who had just attempted to kill him. Another spear-thrust from the mass that swirled around him tore through his red coat, missing his flesh by inches. Jack spun as he felt the impact, slashing upwards, releasing a howl of frustration as it bounced off the heavy robes of his assailant, the thin edge of the cheap sword already too dull to cut through the thickly bound cloth. But the blow drove the attacker back, giving Jack enough time to raise his revolver.
    The barrel of the weapon was no more than six inches from the nearest attacker in the press of bodies. He pulled the trigger, aiming at the snarling face of a heavily armoured man who was lifting a thick talwar above his head, readying himself for a blow that would shatter Jack’s skull with a single strike. The bullet punched into the man’s face, blood and scraps of flesh flung wide as it smashed through skin and bone. The man fell and Jack felt nothing, already searching for his next target, his soul emptied of all emotion save the need to kill.
    He aimed into the whirl of bodies, pulling the trigger again and again, each shot knocking another one of the enemy from their feet, the pistol deadly in the bloody close-quarters