Soldier of the Queen Read Free Page B

upside-down stripes under crossed trumpets. Trumpeter Sparks behind Colby began to lick and lap his lips in anticipation.
    ‘Sound the Advance!’
    The trumpet’s notes shrilled sweetly, to be taken up by the squadrons behind. Orders were called, harsh in a curious silence that managed to exist beyond the jingle of equipment, as if everybody was holding his breath. Over it Colby could hear Holstead’s rasping voice.
    ‘Git yerself in line, do!’ he was snarling at some nervous trooper. ‘And sit yer mount proper. I could read the bleeding Times between yer legs.’
    Colby caught Ackroyd’s eye and Ackroyd gave him a reassuring grin, as his grandfather must have given Colby’s father on that muddy June day nearly forty years before in Belgium.
    ‘19th Lancers–!’
    Colby’s voice seemed to have dried up and, as his command came out as a croak, Cardigan’s head jerked round.
    ‘Not yet, damn you!’ he snarled. ‘Wait for the order!’
    Humiliated enough for his fear momentarily to disperse, Colby looked from the corner of his eye at his men. Knowing more about it than he did, they had been slow to respond, and not one lance butt had been jerked from its bucket by the right stirrup. Blushing, facing front again, he saw that Cardigan had wheeled his horse to face the dark mass at the end of the valley. Colby swallowed. He had a stone in his throat and a vacuum in his stomach. He glanced across at Brosy and it was obvious in the quick nervous smile he received that the same thoughts had occurred to Brosy, too.
    Feeling he wasn’t very far from meeting his Maker, he tried to think noble thoughts. What things, his frantic mind asked, have I left undone that I ought to have done? What have I done, apart from thinking of Georgina Markham, that I ought not to have done? Let me come out of this one alive, he prayed. He had never had a woman and he desperately wanted to live to go home and claim Georgy Markham as his prize.
    ‘Please God,’ he murmured. ‘Take care of my mother and father, and my sister Harriet. And, while you’re at it, please keep an eye on yours truly. There aren’t any more Goffs after me.’

 
     
Two
     
    ‘Pride, discipline and tradition,’ Colby’s father had often said, ‘are what carry a regiment into battle. And pride, discipline and tradition are what bring it out again.’
    Because Colby had never before seen them manifested, he hadn’t the foggiest idea what his father had meant and they had remained for him nothing but meaningless abstracts. Now, for the first time in his life, with his heart thumping, his blood thickening and crawling within him, he saw exactly what they stood for.
    As he clutched his sabre, a red bandanna twisted round the hilt and round his hand, his mouth felt like sandpaper and his eyes prickled painfully. No man, unless he were an idiot, could advance to what looked very much like certain death without fear twisting his vitals. Yet, as the Walk March sounded, not a man moved from the line, and it was then that it occurred to him that they were held there not through a desire for glory or a wish to get at the enemy, but simply because nobody else had moved and because the regiment had never turned tail in its history and couldn’t possibly do so now.
    He looked sideways at his men. They sat with lances still at the Carry, the nine-foot bamboo shafts vertical, the red and green pennants fluttering, the burnished barbs flashing in the sunshine. It was impossible to tell what they were thinking because their expressions were blank and they seemed to show no emotion whatsoever. But, because his colonel had not measured up to the moment and his squadron officer was still skulking in Balaclava, they were following him – him , Colby William Rollo Goff, the most useless officer in the brigade – simply because he had ordered them to. He felt overcome with pride and remarkably close to tears.
    He glanced down at himself. He was thinner than usual, not so