'They're all hot, McCandless answered. 'Haven't had a cold day since I came here. He thought for a second, then worked out that it must be Thursday the twenty-eighth of March. It would be cold in Scotland today and, for an indulgent moment, he thought of Lochaber and imagined the snow lying deep in Glen Scaddle and the ice edging the loch's foreshore, and though he could see the image clearly enough, he could not really imagine what the cold would feel like. He had been away from home too long and now he wondered if he could ever live in Scotland again. He certainly would not live in England, not in Hampshire where his sister lived with her petulant English husband. Harriet kept pressing him to retire to Hampshire, saying that they had no relatives left in Scotland and that her husband had a wee cottage that would suit McCandless's declining years to perfection, but the Colonel had no taste for a soft, plump, English landscape, nor, indeed, for his soft plump sister's company. Harriet's son, McCandless's nephew William Lawford, was a decent enough young fellow even if he had forgotten his Scottish ancestry, but young William was now in the army, here in Mysore indeed, which meant that the only relative McCandless liked was close at hand and that circumstance merely strengthened McCandless's distaste for retiring to Hampshire. But to Scotland? He often dreamed of going back, though whenever the opportunity arose for him to take the Company's pension and sail to his native land, he always found some unfinished business that kept him in India. Next year, he promised himself, the year of our Lord 1800, would be a good year to go home, though in truth he had promised himself the same thing every year for the last decade.
The seven men unpicketed the horses and hauled themselves into their worn saddles. The Indian escort was armed with lances, sabres and pistols, while McCandless carried a claymore, a horse pistol and a carbine that was holstered on his saddle. He glanced once towards the rising sun to check his direction, then led his men northwards. He said nothing, but he needed to give these men no orders. They knew well enough to keep a keen lookout in this dangerous land.
For this was the kingdom of Mysore, high on the southern Indian plateau, and as far as the horsemen could see the land was under the rule of the Tippoo Sultan. Indeed this was the Tippoo's heartland, a fertile plain rich with villages, fields and water cisterns; only now, as the British army advanced and the Tippoo's retreated, the country was being blighted.
McCandless could see six pillars of smoke showing where the Tippoo's cavalry had burned granaries to make sure that the hated British could not find food. The cisterns would all have been poisoned, the livestock driven westwards and every storehouse emptied, thus forcing the armies of Britain and Hyderabad to carry all their own supplies on the cumbersome bullock carts. McCandless guessed that yesterday's brief and unequal battle had been an attempt by the Tippoo to draw the escorting troops away from the precious baggage onto his infantry, after which he would have released his fearsome horsemen onto the wagons of grain and rice and salt, but the British had not taken the bait which meant that General Harris's ponderous advance would continue. Say another week until they arrived at Seringapatam? Then they would face two months of short rations and searing weather before the monsoon broke, but McCandless reckoned that two months was plenty enough time to do the job, especially as the British would soon know how to avoid the Tippoo's trap at the western walls.
He threaded his horse through a grove of cork trees, glad of the shade cast by the deep-green leaves. He paused at the grove's edge to watch the land ahead, which dropped gently into a valley where a score of people were working in rice paddies. The valley, McCandless supposed, lay far enough from the line of the British advance to have been spared the destruction of its stores and water supply. A small village lay to the west of the rice paddies, and McCandless could see another dozen people working in the small gardens around the houses, and he knew that he and his men would be spotted as soon as they left the cover of the cork grove, but he doubted that any of the villagers would investigate seven strange horsemen. The folk of Mysore, like villagers throughout all the Indian states, avoided mysterious soldiers in the hope that the soldiers would avoid them. At the far side of the rice paddies were plantations of mango and date palms, and beyond them a bare hill crest. McCandless watched that empty crest for a few minutes and then, satisfied that no enemy was nearby, he spurred his mare forward.
The people working the rice immediately fled towards their homes and McCandless swerved eastwards to show them he meant no harm, then kicked the mare into a trot. He rode beside a grove of carefully tended mulberry trees, part of the Tippoo's scheme to make silk weaving into a major industry of Mysore, then he spurred into a canter as he approached the bed of the valley. His escort's curb and scabbard chains jingled behind him as the horses pounded down the slope, splashed through the shrunken stream that trickled from the paddies, then began the gentle climb to the date palm grove.
It was then that McCandless saw the flash of light in the mango trees.
He instinctively dragged his horse around to face the rising sun and pricked back his spurs. He looked behind as he rode, hoping that the flash of light was nothing but some errant reflection, but men he saw, horsemen spurring from the trees. They carried lances and all of them were dressed in the tiger-striped tunic. There were a dozen men at least, but the Scotsman had no time to count them properly for he was plunging his spurs back to race his mare diagonally up the slope towards the crest.
One of the pursuing horsemen fired a shot that echoed through the valley. The bullet went wide. McCandless doubted it had been supposed to hit anything, but was rather intended as a signal to alert other horsemen who must be in the area. For a second or two the Scotsman debated turning and charging directly at his pursuers, but he rejected the idea. The odds were marginally too great and his news far too important to be gambled on a skirmish. Flight was his only option. He pulled the carbine from its saddle holster, cocked it, then clapped his heels hard onto the mare's flank. Once over the crest he reckoned there was a good chance he could outrun his pursuers.
Goats scattered from his path as he spurred the mare over the ridge's skyline. One glance behind satisfied McCandless that he had gained a long enough lead to let him turn north without being headed off, and so he twitched the rein and let the mare run. A long stretch of open, tree-dotted country lay ahead and beyond were thick stands of timber in which he and his escort could lose themselves. 'Run, girl! he called to the mare, then looked behind to make certain his escort was closed up and safe. Sweat dripped down his face, his scabbarded claymore thumped up and down on his hip, but the strong mare was running like the wind now, her speed blowing the kilt back up around his hips. This was not the first time McCandless had raced away from enemies. He had once run for a whole day, dawn to twilight, to escape a Mahratta band and the mare had never once lost her footing. In all India, and that meant all the world, McCandless had no friend better than this mare. 'Run, girl! he called to her again, then looked behind once more and it was then that the Havildar shouted a warning. McCandless turned to see more horsemen coming from the trees to the north.
There must have been fifty or sixty horsemen racing towards the Scotsman and, even as he swerved the mare eastwards, he realized that his original dozen pursuers must have been the scouts for this larger party of cavalry and that by running north he had been galloping towards the enemy rather than away from them. Now he rode towards the rising sun again, but there was no cover to the east and these new pursuers were already dangerously close. He angled back to the south, hoping he might find some shelter in the valley beyond the crest, but then a wild volley of shots sounded from his pursuers.