Still the Pindarees remained motionless.

Hervey smiled grimly. It was a fault he’d observed before in India – waiting, in order to be sure. Fatal.

With a furlong to go Garratt put them into a gallop.

Down at last came the Pindaree lances – but only those on the flanks came forward to meet them.

Hervey quickened the pace but held short of a gallop. Both the right of the Sixth’s line and left of the Nizams began extending so as not to be taken in flank.

‘Good work!’ (though no one heard).

Then the bugle sounding the charge, and the sabres pointing …

He quickened the pace again, but still a canter, a hundred yards behind the first line – perfect.

Now just twenty yards for Garratt to the Pindarees …

Then the crash of men and horses, blades and points.

And then the check; always the check – an age sometimes, in truth just seconds – before the effect revealed. Men – Pindarees – gave way, rallied, gave way again, turned once more to fight; or yielded, fled or fell bloodily from the saddle. The lance was supreme in the charge, useless in the melee. Those who threw them away and drew swords bore it longer. But the crush foiled many a one.

Garratt’s line made progress, but it was time for more steel.

‘Now, Commandant! Both flanks,’ shouted Hervey, gesturing left and right with his sabre.

In joining the melee, the support line must not disorder the first line by too great a momentum.

Regulations. All well on paper but …

They drove in at a gallop.

In an instant the Pindaree flanks, inclined at too great an angle to see them bearing down, ceased to exist. Hervey made for the centre surrounded by his gallopers, Acton as ever a length and a half behind.

Regulations.

He drove with the point for a Pindaree battling with a stricken dragoon, pitching him from the saddle like a sack in a tiltyard, then cutting at a second trying to turn about, who took Acton’s point a second later.

A pistol exploded so close as to deafen. Minnie stumbled over a falling horse but recovered – heaven knew how. Hervey grasped back the reins and dug in his spurs, lying along her neck and cutting left and right. She leapt at a gap, just missing a spear – which Acton dealt with, giving point as he followed through – and Hervey drove his own at another spearman who’d left it too late to draw sword instead.

Then he was clear; nothing before him but the backs of fleeing men.

But he was bloodied and breathless, the ringing in his ears as loud as the battle behind. He was exhilarated by the charge, as always – as every man – but this time strangely spent, though an affair of just minutes. Indeed, one of the quickest he’d known.

But now he turned to weigh the butcher’s bill.

It was savage.