He would send out no scouts or flankers to beware ambush, however, for how were they to maintain direction? They’d only slow the advance. Besides, what skill did an insurgent rabble possess that might disconcert the 13th Light Infantry, or, indeed, what art of war to march through forest to take them by surprise? No, Colonel Dennie believed, as Hervey, in reckoning and then risking.

But they struck, in great numbers and savagery. Pioneers, sappers and men in the leading company were assailed with shocking speed. Many fell to the ground, others staggered blindly, while some ran swearing blue, hands clenched to their wounds.

Hornets.

Faces swelled like pumpkins; hands like gourds. In minutes, two men were gasping their last, and the adjutant lay back against a tree, unrecognizable, his breathing too shallow for hope. Dennie himself, his face so bloated as to make him unrecognizable too but for the crown on his epaulettes, could only keep upright with hands to a tree, breathing deeply yet still cursing, angered beyond reason that his battalion be thus stopped in its tracks.

Brandy came to his aid, the colour ensigns rushing to his side. Then a horse to support him. He thrust his right arm angrily through the stirrup leather, refusing all entreaties to get into the saddle, cursing foully still, every thing and every one.

But recover they must. The jungle took no side. He’d allow them half an hour, no more, and then those that couldn’t rise – two dozen and more – he’d leave for the surgeon and the camp-followers.

The Somersets thus forged on, Dennie’s jaw set even squarer, his sword swinging even angrier. ‘And I will send hornets before thee, which shall drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite, from before thee.’ Those within hearing thought he raved, but Dennie was leading them into the Promised Land, like the people of Israel. He’d spare neither himself nor any other to drive out these latter-day Hivites, Canaanites and Hittites – these tribes who opposed the coming of his battalion to Chintal.

And so when at last, in the late afternoon, they broached the forest edge, he smiled with grim satisfaction and told his major to carry on – to make a marching camp in the way he said that morning – and sat down with his back against a peepal tree, and though utterly exhausted wrote a despatch for Colonel Lindesay – and thence for Hervey – and sent the gunner back for his troop. And then, dosing himself with more brandy, he pulled his cloak round him, told his orderly to wake him before dawn, and lay down to sleep off the poison. Colonel William Dennie would wake ready for whatever the day or Hervey’s gallopers might bring. That, or he’d not wake at all.

As for those left for the surgeon and the camp-followers, however, five would breathe their last before morning, and be buried with bayonets for grave markers and shakos tied to them to honour their regiment. It scarcely mattered that their names couldn’t be inscribed, for who would read them in the forest? They were known unto God and, in due course, the regimental paymaster. That was all that counted.