Rogue Officer Read Online Free PDF Page B

girl’s family had tried to have him assassinated for violating their relative, but the assassin had failed, ending his life by being shot by Lieutenant Crossman in a coffee shop in the Punjab. Since that time Jack Crossman had taken a young Indian boy out of virtual slavery – the boy Sajan had been a punkah wallah – and King had decided he was his lost child. No one knew if this was true (it was highly likely it was false) but none wanted to prise the belief from the sergeant, who had adopted Sajan as his son. The boy now went everywhere with the group and proved to be very useful in certain circumstances. King was teaching him to make maps.
    ‘You leave Wynter to me, sir,’ said King. ‘I’m the man for him. If he wants to settle scores behind the trees with fists, I’ll accommodate him in that too.’
    Farrier King had fists as big and hard as four-pound hammers.
    Raktambar, while all this was going on around him, was happy to talk in Hindi to Sajan. The Rajput was ostensibly Jack Crossman’s bodyguard, but he resented the duty and only remained in the position out of loyalty to his master in Jaipur, and more recently out of respect for Lieutenant Jack Crossman. Gradually, as they had fought together against the rebels (another aspect of his duties which was not entirely in accord with Raktambar’s own principles) the pair had come to like and think highly of each other. The most important ideal to Raktambar, and many others from the Punjab and various areas of India, was honour. A man with his honour intact was a man to be respected. He and Jack were both of the opinion that a soldier without honour was not worth a crow’s droppings. The late General Nicholson’s entourage of Afghans and Punjabis – big, fierce men who fought to the death beside him – had been at his shoulder because of their regard for Nicholson as a man with great honour.
    ‘Who are we going to fight?’ asked young Sajan in his native language. ‘Is it the sepoys again?’
    ‘Now there are more than just mutinous sepoys and sowars,’ replied Raktambar. ‘There are the rajahs’ matchlock men, badmashes and Gujars, along with many ordinary civilians unhappy with the British. The sepoys are only a few now, at the heart of the rebellion. But that is not for you to take part in – you must stay out of the fighting.’
    ‘Who is their leader?’
    ‘Why, there are many hereabouts. I think this is one Nirpat Singh, but there is also Khan Bahadur Khan in Rohilkand. They say Khan has many followers, almost as many as the Maulvi. There will be many more battles before this is over, child. We must wait and see what happens.’
    ‘You think the British will not win?’
    ‘Who knows? There are valiant fighters out there, with Tantia Tope and the Rani of Jhansi. Men are willing to die. Perhaps it may yet turn against the British and they will be driven out?’
    During their conversation they kept their opinions on the uprising neutral, both boy and man. In truth their loyalties were stretched; Raktambar’s more than the boy’s. A child who has been treated with much kindness, adopted by a British sergeant, and whose feelings have not yet hardened to granite, will rarely bite the hand that feeds him.
    Raktambar though was resentful of the arrogance of the East India Company’s acquisitiveness. They had annexed provinces like Sind and Oudh and seemed determined to extend that annexation further. He saw people like himself hanged for no other crime than standing and watching. Yet there were thousands of others who still fought with the British and saw them as the main power in a vast land which had been held by conquerors for hundreds of years. In fact, Raktambar was secretly glad the decision to choose sides had been taken from him by his maharajah.
    The column marched and camped for several days, so by the fifteenth of April they were some fifty miles south-east of Lucknow and just a few miles from the River Ganges. Brigadier Walpole was