They vie with each other in giving names of their regiments. There are 10,000 or more on the other side. Hodson Sahib knows all he wants to know. He cocks his carbine, jams it into the old man’s chest and fires. ‘Take this you namak haram!’ The grey beard rolls over with a loud cry, ‘Ya Allah!’

‘Hack off the heads of these namak harams and feed their carcasses to the jackals,’ he orders.

The prisoners become like living corpses. We take off their belts. Our sweepers pull off their uniforms and boots. We march them naked down the ridge. We line them and tell them to kneel with their heads bent. They whine, urinate, defecate. We hack off their heads with our kirpans. It is like slaughtering goats for the Guru’s kitchen. Only a man’s neck is thicker than a goat’s and cannot always be severed at one jhatka (stroke).

Hodson Sahib gives us an extra ration of rum.

Two of our risallah had been badly wounded. I went to see them in the camp-hospital. They were lying under a keekar tree; there was no room inside for natives. The doctors were busy looking after goras, many of whom had cholera, dysentery or shivering fever. Some had just melted like wax under the heat of the sun. I sat with the boys and pressed their legs. Hodson Sahib brought a doctor who threw a packet of ointment on the ground and said: ‘Spread this on your injuries and report back for duty in two days.’

In the afternoon I went to see Hodson Sahib. He was in his tent writing something. ‘Sahib must be very tired. Shall I take off Sahib’s boots?’ He did not open his mouth but turned in his chair. I sat on the ground, unstrapped his putties and massaged his legs. He stopped writing and turned to me.

‘Good fighting today, eh?’

‘Sahib, they have killed a lot of our men I replied.

The Sahib looked at his paper. ‘Seventeen dead, twenty-five injured, twenty horses dead or destroyed.’

I had seen many more than seventeen dead. I understood. The Sahib was only counting the goras. ‘It takes more than an army of jackals to fight the English,’ he said. ‘This was their big hamla. We have broken their backs,’ he explained: ‘Today is the 23rd day of June. It is the hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Plassey when the English defeated the Mussalmans. They believed that after hundred years, it would be their turn to win. It takes more than a pack of jackals to beat the sahiblog,’ he said again.

I pulled off his boots. ‘The English are very bahadur,’ I said as I pressed his feet.

‘The best fighters in the world.’

I nodded my head. ‘Sikhs are also very bahadur. One Sikh is equal to 1,25,000 others.’

Hodson Sahib didn’t like that. He ran his hand over his bald head and asked ‘What happened at Mudki and Pherushahr and Sabraon and Multan and Chillianwala and Gujarat?’