He pointed on his map with the leaflet of a palm frond.

‘The forest’s burned out there, they say. They reckon a thousand foot, and guns, but I doubt they know exactly.’

Hervey beckoned the baboo to come closer. He wanted to question them for himself, if only to gauge their manner. Both were clean-shaven but for a day’s growth, tall, clear-eyed and active looking. A good stamp of soldier.

‘What was your purpose in firing the shots?’

‘Huzoor, they were my orders.’

‘Who would hear the shots if the river is so far away?’

‘Huzoor, the vidette behind me, one whole kos.’

Hervey frowned. Kos – a mile, two miles, three? But it scarcely mattered. It was obvious there was a relay of some sort. He told Maclean to have one of them taken aside, out of earshot, and then he’d question each in turn.

‘How many cannon?’

This took a little more time, for Indians could be equally loose with terminology as distance, inclined to lump all shot together as ‘artillery’, whether top (cannon), bundook (musket), or anything else for that matter.

But in questioning them separately he managed to establish that there might be some twenty guns covering the crossing – ‘wheel to wheel’. Even if there were half that number it was bad enough.

Did they know if there were troops on the other road, though, the northern?

It was a tall order. Why would two such Jats know the plan of battle?

But Hervey persisted: had they seen others marching in a different direction? Did they think the force at the river was the major part of the army? And so on.

Eventually he was satisfied there was no more to be had save the odd detail that might be useful as they closed up to the river – but that was for Maclean. The true import of the intelligence was that Ashok Acharya, or whoever was his field commander, intended confining them in the forest rather than defeating them in the open. If it were so, it were poor strategy, simply one of inflicting casualties, delay and discouragement. Did he not know His Majesty’s troops better than that?

But, he’d concede, from a purely tactical point of view the river sounded like a well-calculated position. It was just about the furthest march from the frontier that could be had in a day, so that then the invader would be halted, there being no possibility of taking the position at night, and would spend half the following morning in preparation, and if checked in his first assault – as he surely would be by so many guns, whether twenty or half the number – and with no room to manoeuvre, night would come again with the defenders still in possession of the ground, and the invader exhausted. If they were then able to bring up new troops in the night – which ought to be possible – it would be the same the next day, and the next, and …