Retribution Road

by Antonin Varenne

Genres: Historical Mysteries; Historical Thrillers

Synopsis

"We owe you our lives, Sergeant, but you are our worst nightmare . . ."

Burma, 1852. Sergeant Arthur Bowman, a sergeant in the East India Company, is sent on a secret mission during the Second Anglo-Burmese War. But the expedition is foiled - his men are captured and tortured. Throughout their ordeal, a single word becomes Bowman's mantra, a word that will stiffen their powers of endurance in the face of unimaginable suffering: "Survival". But for all that, only a handful escape with their lives.

Some years later in London, battling his ghosts through a haze of alcohol and opium, Bowman discovers a mutilated corpse in a sewer. The victim appears to have been subjected to the same torments as Bowman endured in the Burmese jungle. And the word "Survival" has been daubed in blood by the body's side. Persuaded that the culprit is one of the men who shared his captivity, Bowman resolves to hunt him down.

From the Burmese jungle to the slums of London to the conquest of the Wild West, Antonin Varenne takes us on a thrilling journey full of sound and unabated fury, reviving the lapsed tradition of the great writers of boundless adventure. Sergeant Bowman belongs to that breed of heroes who inhabit the imaginations of Conrad, Kipling, Stevenson . . . Lost soldiers who have plunged into the heart of darkness and will cross the globe in search of vengeance and redemption.

Translated from the French by Sam Taylor

Release date: March 9, 2017

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 512

Sample

“Rooney! You lazy Irish bastard! Pallacate!”

Rooney got up off the bench, slowly crossed the courtyard and stood in front of the corporal.

“The mare’s on her last legs, sir. All the horses are knackered.”

“You’re the one who’s knackered. Now get in the saddle!”

Back bent by exhaustion, head half sunk into the trough, the mare was noisily gulping down gallons of water. Rooney grabbed the reins, pulled the horse’s mouth out of the water, and grimaced as he put his foot in the stirrup. He’d spent half the night riding from one barracks to another. His arse hurt, his teeth and nostrils were lined with dust, and the sun was burning his head.

Fifteen miles to the trading post in Pallacate.

The animal shook its head, refusing the bit. Rooney yanked the reins, the mare bridled, and he gripped the pommel to stop himself falling. The corporal laughed. Rooney whipped his horse’s ears, yelling: “Giddy-up!”

The mare galloped across the paved courtyard. Rooney passed through the north gates of Fort St George without slowing, whipping the horse constantly. Mulberry plantations flashed past, cotton fields where a few peasants worked, bent over their tools. All along the path, columns of sepoys in their red uniforms walked quickly under the hot sun, kitbags on their backs and rifles on their shoulders.

The garrisons converged on the fort and the port. The villagers, worried by all this activity, had closed their doors and windows to keep out the dust kicked up by the soldiers’ boots. The Madras army was on the march, and the countryside had emptied around its path.

Lord Dalhousie, Governor-General of India, had declared war on the King of Burma.

General Godwin, who had arrived from Bombay the day before with ten ships, was mobilising all the regiments.

Rooney had spent the last twelve hours delivering letters all over the region.

Pallacate. His final errand.

Maybe he’d be able to stay there tonight, go to the Chinaman’s place and pay for a girl. They were clean, and gin was cheaper there than in St George. The idea of spending the night in the weavers’ village gave him wings, but it didn’t help his horse, which was gasping like a consumptive.

Rooney, his legs soaked with foam, whipped it hard, again and again. It was wartime: you were allowed to kill a horse.

He passed children on donkeys and peasants in rags. Seeing the first houses of Pallacate, he spurred the horse and entered the main street at a gallop, and women with children clinging to their backs ran for shelter.

“C’mon!”

At the end of the village, he turned left towards the warehouses of the trading post. He’d have the Chinaman’s shop all to himself. Same thing at the fort. There’d be no-one left, no more stupid chores to do for weeks. While everyone went off to Rangoon, he’d stay behind and take it easy. The King of St George!

“C’mon!”

The mare shook her head, her strides fell out of time. There was a jolt, as if her legs were giving way beneath his weight. Rooney held on with all his strength and the horse suddenly started up again, accelerating without even the need for a kick in its side, half crazed with heat and exhaustion. In the courtyard encircled by warehouses, Rooney saw the Company’s flag waving in the wind.

As he passed the first warehouse, the mare’s head sank forward and disappeared. He heard the horse’s front legs break – the terrible sound of crushed bones. Rooney went flying straight ahead, six feet above the ground. He held out his arms, but did not feel the collision, did not feel the bones snap in his wrists and arms. His head banged into the ground, he somersaulted forward and his back smashed into the water pump, a cast-iron pillar in the middle of the courtyard.

Sergeant Bowman grabbed his rifle, which was leaning against a root of the large banyan tree, and got up from the deckchair he had positioned in the shade of its branches. The cloud of dust raised by the fall of the horse and its rider was floating slowly over the courtyard. The mare was screaming loud enough to wake the dead and the unconscious messenger wasn’t moving at all. The sergeant walked past the animal, which was thrashing its hind legs in the air, put the Enfield across his thighs, and crouched down in front of the soldier.

Crumpled in a heap next to the pump, he opened his eyes.

“What . . . what happened?”

His head fell onto his chest and a thread of blood dripped from the corner of his mouth. His pelvis was smashed, his legs tangled together like bits of cloth. His eyes rolled from side to side, trying to recognise his surroundings. The courtyard, the silk warehouses, the sergeant who was watching him, and the horse lying on its side, its tongue licking the earth as if it were water.

“I can’t . . . feel anything . . .”

His eyes looked down at his shattered body. A grimace of panic distorted his face.

“Fuck . . . what . . . happened . . . to me?”

The sergeant did not answer him.

“Help me . . . fucking hell . . . help me.”

Again, Rooney looked around. There was no-one else. The horse was whinnying and kicking, but the sergeant just squatted there, motionless. Rooney tried to call out for help, but he choked and spat out blood. Sergeant Bowman moved back a little bit to avoid being splattered.

“You . . . bastard . . . Help . . . me.”

The sergeant, stone-faced, tilted his head.

Private Rooney’s face suddenly stopped moving, frozen in an expression of panic, his eyelids open and his eyes staring into Bowman’s. A bubble of blood formed between his lips and burst.

The trading-post manager came running from his office.

Sergeant Bowman stood up and walked over to the horse, loaded his rifle, placed a boot on the mare’s throat and fired a bullet into the side of its head.

The manager crossed himself before opening the satchel that hung from the courier’s neck. He took out the sealed letter with his name on the front.

“Bloody ridiculous. To meet your death delivering a message in wartime . . .”

Sergeant Bowman rested the rifle on its butt and and crossed his hands over the still-warm barrel. Sepoys rushed over, forming a circle around the dead man. The Company accountant searched the soldier’s pockets, finding his military papers inside his jacket.

“Sean Rooney. Fort St George . . . Well, that’s one who won’t die in Burma.”

The manager turned to Bowman.

“Sergeant, go now. You’re expected in Madras with your men.”

Bowman put his rifle on his shoulder and headed over to his hut in the shade of the banyan tree. The accountant shouted after him:

“Sergeant! You’ll be responsible for taking Private Rooney’s body to Madras.”

Bowman kept walking.

“I’ll leave you the horse.”

*

Twenty sepoys waited in the sun, standing in two columns. Next to the sergeant’s horse, an ox was harnessed to a wagon. Inside the wagon, Rooney’s body lay covered by the soldiers’ kitbags.

Bowman walked past the saluting men and knocked on the manager’s door.

“I’m leaving five men here while you wait for Madras to send a contingent.”

“Very good. I am not interested in warfare, Sergeant, only in trade. I am not in any danger here. I must admit I am not unhappy to see you leave, Bowman, but it is my duty as a Christian to wish everyone well. May God be with you, wherever you go.”

Bowman mounted his horse and rode to where the dead animal lay. The horse sniffed at the carcass, snorted loudly, and lifted its head. The sepoys passed at a trot, followed by the wagon. Bowman followed them, bringing up the rear.

*

At Fort St George, Bowman let the sepoys draw breath and asked a guard for the name of the officer responsible for the messenger.

“Rooney? You’ll have to see the corporal, over at the stable. What happened?”

Bowman found the stable, where the corporal sat at a table with other tired, dirty messengers, amid the stink of dung.

“What a prick! Killed a horse and himself too! He always was a bit of an idiot, Rooney. And those bloody Irish – they hate being buried far from home! He didn’t suffer too much, did he?”

“My monkeys will bring you the body. I’ll leave you my horse too.”

At the fort’s headquarters, Bowman received his orders.

*

The docks were swarming with merchandise, crates of weapons and ammunition. Mountains of barrels were piled up, over a distance of nearly a hundred feet. Water, wine, rum, vinegar, cages containing chickens and rabbits, squealing pigs. Coolies unloaded tons of food and armament supplies while rowing boats came and went from the seventeen stranded ships of the Madras fleet. The sun hung low over the ocean, and the Company colours, on the immense flags floating above the sea, sparkled in the yellow light.

An endless flood of sepoys and British soldiers were arriving in columns. From the rowing boats could be heard the sound of men singing in rhythm as they pulled on the oars, transporting contingents and cargo.

Seventeen first-class vessels, a thousand cannons and fifteen thousand men at anchor, three-quarters of them sepoys, as they were three times cheaper than English soldiers. The Company’s army outnumbered the British army, but its numbers were swollen by indigenous recruits.

The shareholders of Leadenhall Street wanted the Gulf of Bengal for themselves alone. If this armada did not prove sufficient, they would send another thirty thousand men. Pagan Min had to fall before the monsoon season, or the Company would be stuck for another four months while they waited for the rivers to become navigable again. The officers knew it, and the N.C.O.s yelled at the tops of their voices, urging the men forward, urging goods to be moved and sailors to row with greater speed.

Bowman’s little troop of soldiers was sucked up into the whirlwind of the port.

For two hours, jostling for position on the docks, they waited their turn to jump aboard a rowing boat. The sun was setting when the sergeant and his men finally started climbing the rope ladder up the side of the Healing Joy, the flagship of the fleet.

The sepoys went down to the bottom deck, beneath the waterline, and Sergeant Bowman joined the British contingent on the first deck. Four hundred men searching in the darkness for their places, unrolling the hammocks where they would fester for the next two weeks.

If the wind was in their favour.

Several hours passed before the sound of cannon fire exploded above their heads and the fleet began to move. On the deck, above the troop, there were whistles and shouted orders, the voices of sailors and the creaking of wooden masts, the vibrations reaching all the way down to the sepoys’ hold.

It was midnight. The heat was unbearable.

Surrounded by overexcited men, as the Joy listed and soldiers began to throw up, Sergeant Bowman lay in his hammock and closed his eyes, one hand on the Afghan dagger in his belt. Three years he’d waited.

A porthole was opened.

Bowman, elbows on the railing, leaned a little further forward.

A body fell into the sea, a white shirt pulled roughly up over its head. It hit the water, sank for an instant, then bobbed back up to the surface. A second followed, and slowly drifted the length of the ship. A grey shape circled the corpses. When a third cadaver toppled overboard, the sea – motionless since dawn – suddenly started bubbling.

Dozens of fins and tails stabbed through the water. Little black eyes appeared in the foam. Huge jaws snapped at arms and legs. The red cloud spread as the soldiers’ bodies fell from the porthole like chicken into a vat of hot oil.

Bowman counted eight that morning.

Sprays of pink water splattered the hull, and headless torsos rolled in the frothing sea, tangled up in scraps of shirts. Sharks wounded by their frenzied fellow creatures continued fighting for a piece of shoulder, while others, killed in the maelstrom, floated belly up amid the slaughter.

Bowman looked up. Around other ships, a few cable-lengths from the flagship, the same aquatic frenzy was taking place with figures just like his leaning over to watch. He scraped a match against the rail, protected the flame with his hand, and lit his pipe again.

About a hundred men had died that night, on board the seventeen ships.

Once their feast was over, the sharks moved away and the seagulls swooped down for the leftovers. The sea was red, as if dyed by laterite silt in the estuary of an African river. The current took away the fleet’s waste matter, spreading the coloured stain, which grew steadily paler, towards the coast. The morning sun rose above the dark line of the continent, and round-bellied clouds, filled with rain that did not fall, rolled low over the horizon.

Bowman spat in the water, cleaned out his pipe and went back down to the first deck.

After a three-week crossing and three days in anchorage, the Healing Joy stank like a zoo. The wind did not blow in the gulf, and the fleet dawdled dismally on a deep swell.

He lifted up the sheet that separated his hammock from the rest of the men and lay down on the mouldy fabric.

*

On land, Pagan Min’s spies could not care less about this immobile armada: they were watching only the sky, waiting for the monsoon to burst. The boredom of the men in the anchored vessels turned to melancholy and more and more of them fell ill. Laid low by fever, stupefied by the ships’ slow movement, by the silence and the heat, they lay still all day and all night, amid a constant murmur of groaning and coughing. Under the waterline, where the air no longer circulated, the sepoys were dropping like flies. Of the eight corpses thrown into the water this morning, six were Indians. Piss and shit sloshed over the duckboard, the air was putrid, and General Godwin had forbidden the sepoys to go up to the upper deck: the more degraded the state of the troops became, the more important it was to hide this fact from Min’s spies.

This was the second time the Company had gone to war in Burma. The first time, in 1826, Campbell, at the head of the British troops, had won trading posts all along the coast, as far as the kingdom of Siam. He, too, had arrived too late. Rain and fever had killed ten thousand men when he tried to reach Ava by land. His campaign ended in a half-victory and the right to trade in the ports. Since then, the Burmese had regained their strength, attempting to renegotiate the ’26 agreement, giving the trading-post managers a hard time, threatening trade in the gulf and on the road to China. Dalhousie had sent Commodore Lambert there at the beginning of the year, on a diplomatic mission. Lambert was no diplomat. The situation grew poisonous and the last recourse remaining to the Company was to declare war. This time, the goal was to put an end to the situation by taking the whole country.

But the wind did not blow, miring the fleet as it waited for the chance to attack. Men were dying before a single cannon blast or gunshot had been fired.

*

Bowman took a handkerchief from his bag and unfolded it over his stomach. He chewed the last piece of dried pork that he had brought with him from Pallacate, slowly savouring the meat’s flavour. He rubbed his teeth and gums with a carefully hoarded slice of lemon peel, then swallowed it.

Supplies were running low. They had not brought enough food with them. Rations were reduced. The fresh water had stagnated, and they’d had to cut it with vinegar.

He sank back in his hammock, cursing the shareholders in London who declared wars without any knowledge of warfare, the officers getting rich in their palaces, the Bengal sepoys who’d been recruited from the more delicate castes and had refused to go to Burma. Bombay and Madras had been forced to supply men, and the Company had arrived later than planned.

Amid the usual moans and other noises of the deck, the sound of raised voices drew the sergeant’s attention. Strong words, first of all, which turned to insults. Laughter and jostling. He stood up and pulled aside the sheet.

There were about twenty soldiers surrounding two men who were fighting. A huge, bull-necked blond man was laying into a tall, brown-haired soldier, lighter by about twenty or thirty pounds. The men were laughing, and when the weakling tried to run away, refusing to fight, they pushed him back into the arms of his opponent. The blond man threw him against the hull, his head smashed into a metal girder, and blood spurted from his temple. The men around him laughed even harder. The bull charged at him, the tall thin man evaded the attack, and his opponent collided with the ship’s wooden framework. Stunned and angry, he took a knife from the sleeve of his uniform. The spectators stopped laughing, and moved away from the weapon. The weakling raised his hands.

“Stop. This is pointless. I don’t want to fight you.”

The man with the knife was no longer listening. Forced to defend himself, the tall man took off his jacket and rolled it around his arm, edging back towards the hammocks while never taking his eyes off the blade.

The bull leapt forward. Again the weakling eluded him, tripping over, rolling along the floor and springing back to his feet.

Bowman, leaning against a post, watched with the others. There had not been anything to watch for quite some time now.

In the next attack, the tall thin soldier tried to hit the hand holding the knife. He missed, and the blade whistled through the air in a quick downward arc, slicing through his shirt. He fell to his knees and coiled up like a snake around his wound. As the blond man rushed forward to strike another blow, two hands seized his throat, lifted him from the floor and threw him backwards. He got to his feet, furious, and saw Sergeant Bowman standing in front of him. He blinked, open-mouthed and breathless, and let his knife drop to the floorboards.

Bowman leaned forward over the wounded man. The gash was long but not very deep. He ordered a soldier to fetch the surgeon.

“Why didn’t you stop it before, Sergeant?”

Bowman stood straight.

“Throw him in his hammock.”

The surgeon arrived a few minutes later, grumbling that he had enough sick men to deal with already without the soldiers slicing each other open. Once he had treated the wound, he stood in front of Bowman’s hammock.

“Perhaps you should report this, Sergeant? The men are growing more and more tense. We do not want this kind of incident to happen again.”

“I’ll take care of it. There won’t be any more problems. How’s the victim?”

“Nothing serious. I didn’t bother with stitches.”

The surgeon had an ugly face, eyes red with fever. He stood there, mulling something over, and Bowman waited for him to speak.

“If we stay here too long, I won’t be able to do anything. I’m almost out of medicine, and half the Indians are sick. They can’t stand the sea.”

He looked down.

“Take care of the men, Sergeant. The wounded man is a good Christian. They’re all good Christians.”

The doctor gave a nervous smile, which dissolved into a look of utter despondency. He was still waiting for something. Bowman cleared his throat.

“I’ll take care of them, sir. Don’t you worry about that.”

The surgeon scuttled off between the hammocks.

Everyone was going crazy, because everyone thought the war had not started yet, whereas the truth was that the first battle – the longest and most fatal battle – was already raging on board the ships: the waiting. Bowman knew that one must first survive the army before surviving the battlefield. He was already at the front.

He picked up his book and opened it to the passage that he always read before going into combat.

Hidden behind his sheet, one finger on the page and his lips moving silently, he deciphered the words.

But all the silver and gold, and vessels of brass and iron, are consecrated unto the Lord: they shall come into the treasury of the Lord.

So the people shouted when the priests blew with the trumpets: and it came to pass, when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, and the people shouted with a great shout, that the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city. And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword.

The Bible was the only book he had ever possessed. Bowman did not even imagine that there could be others as thick as this one, with so many stories inside. He closed his eyes and wondered why God, who made it rain on his enemies, made walls crumble and dried up rivers to help his armies, seemed so indifferent to the fate of the Company. He also wondered why he hadn’t stopped the fight earlier, and if the injured soldier, if he’d managed to disarm his opponent or even stab a blade into his belly, would even have asked that question.

All good Christians.

Bowman smiled. The fight had entertained him, and the men, no matter what the quack said, were still ready to fight. That was all they were waiting for.



The smell of vinegar rose from the just-cleaned deck, mingling with the scents of lukewarm seawater and the Joy’s putrefaction. Bowman stroked the match head against the handrail, and the flame briefly illuminated his hands and then his face as he moved it towards the tobacco. He took a drag, arched his neck and blew out the smoke, chin in the air, emptying his lungs.

To the east, along the invisible coastline, the lights of Rangoon flickered like dying stars. Beneath his feet, the men tossed and turned in their hammocks, hoping that tomorrow the wind would come, that the ship would stop listing, or that the vinegar would be turned into wine. Sentries patrolled the deck, rifles resting on shoulders, while a few officers took the air in the moonlight.

Bowman had recognised some of them during the crossing. Six or seven among the two hundred on the Joy. Officers under whom he had fought in the Punjab, in Cavendish’s regiment; others he had met at trading-post garrisons where he had been sent during the last three years.

Among the men he had saluted, not one had spoken a word to him. Maybe they were avoiding him, or maybe he had changed since the Punjab. Maybe not everyone had a memory for faces like he did. He spat in the sea as if to pass on a disease.

“Sergeant Bowman?”

He half-heartedly saluted the deck officer, lifting his pipe to his temple.

“Major Cavendish wants to see you. I must accompany you there now.”

“Cavendish?”

“Straight away, Sergeant.”

Bowman rebuttoned his stinking jacket.

Cavendish. Second-in-command of the fleet. Heir to the duchy of Devonshire. His family was one of the Company’s biggest shareholders. The only time Bowman had seen him was after the palace of Amritsar had been taken, during a promotion ceremony. Corporal Bowman, who had become a sergeant, remembered this well. Cavendish had made a speech. He’d said that the officers were the “spearheads of the Company”. Bowman had thought that a very good expression.

Cavendish was on board the Joy and wanted to see him – Arthur Bowman.

Perhaps the attack was about to be launched. Perhaps Godwin was gathering the officers to give them his orders. But Bowman was only a sergeant. He had no business in the fo’c’s’le with the general staff, and – unless there was a problem – a soldier like him would never approach a high-ranking officer.

He followed the deck officer, passing sentries and guards, walking through corridors with polished walls where the light of oil lamps was reflected. His guide knocked at a door, and a voice bade them enter. The officer opened the door, moved out of the way, and closed it behind him.

Bowman did not understand where he was. It was not the command room, just a little cabin with one window, a bunk, a map table, two chairs, and a lamp hanging from the ceiling. Behind the table, in one of the upholstered chairs, sat Major Cavendish, looking more or less as Bowman remembered him. In front of the window, smoking a cigar, was a captain in uniform. He recognised him, even if, back then, Wright had been only a lieutenant. For a second, the sergeant just stood there, before clicking his heels, saluting, and turning his back to the officers and the table.

“Sergeant Bowman at your command, sir!”

A snort of laughter behind him.

“You may turn around, Sergeant.”

“Sir! You have not put the map away, sir.”

Bowman waited. There was no sound of paper, not even the faintest movement. On a warship just before an attack, N.C.O.s had no more right than a private soldier to see military maps. Glancing at one, even inadvertently, could lead a man to the noose or into the sea with the sharks.

Cavendish spoke to the captain:

“Wright, I have the feeling you’ve made the right choice this time.”

Wright did not reply. In a firmer tone of voice, Cavendish said again:

“Turn around, Sergeant.”

Bowman swivelled, his gaze still lifted above the table.

“Sergeant, you are going to look at that map which scares you so much and tell me what it represents.”

Bowman blinked.

“I’m not scared of the map, sir. I didn’t know I was authorised to look at it, sir.”

“Well, you are. Tell me what it represents.”

Bowman lowered his eyes, glancing quickly at Captain Wright, then at Cavendish, before resting his gaze on the map.

From where he stood, the map was upside down and he could not read the names, but he saw a sea, a coastline, a large green stain, and in the middle of it the twisting blue line of a river. He tried to focus on the words, but they were printed too small.

“I don’t know, sir. But I would guess it is the kingdom of Ava.”

“Precisely, Sergeant. And what is that river?”

Bowman lifted his head to the ceiling.

“Sir, I’m not sure, but I would imagine it’s the Irrawaddy.”

“Correct once again. What could you tell me about that river, Sergeant?”

Bowman gulped.

“I . . . I don’t understand, sir.”

“What do you know about that river?”

“It’s the route to Ava, sir.”

Cavendish smiled.

“What else?”

“I don’t know, sir . . . It’s the route to Ava . . . And the monsoon is coming.”

“The monsoon . . . What does that mean, Sergeant, the monsoon?”

Silence again. Bowman felt his legs giving way beneath him.

“Sir! The rain, that means that the fleet can’t sail up the river.”

Cavendish looked at the map for a moment, preoccupied, then stood up.

“Sergeant, I was told by Captain Wright that you were aboard and he recommended that I meet you. He told me you were a brave fighter, almost . . . How did you put it, Wright? Ah, yes! ‘Recklessly bold’. The captain said you fought like a lion under his orders during the attack on the palace of Amritsar. What do you say to that, Sergeant?”

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

“Do you agree with Captain Wright?”

“Sir! It was a hell of an attack, with sabres and bayonets, but I was only obeying orders, sir.”

“Ah! That is what I wanted to hear you say, Sergeant. You obeyed orders. And you mounted the assault with your bayonet! Wonderful! So you are a good soldier, and you are brave.”

Cavendish paced around the cabin, hands behind his back, then finally came to a halt beneath the halo of the lamp and put his hands on the map.

“Sergeant, I have given it some thought and I am going to assign you this mission. Captain Wright will conclude this interview.”

Cavendish went out without saluting or saying another word, slamming the door behind him and leaving Captain Wright alone with Bowman.

Wright took one last drag on his cigar and threw it out of the window.

“It’s a stroke of luck that you should be on board this ship, Bowman.”

“The kind of luck you don’t always get when you want it, sir.”

Wright turned around.

“What do you mean by that, Sergeant?”

“Sir! It’s a manner of speaking. Nothing special, sir.”

The captain observed Bowman for a moment.

“Tomorrow, before noon, a Company dinghy will come here to fetch us, from the Joy. You will be under my orders, second-in-command of the expedition. Thirty men, twenty of whom will arrive tomorrow with the sloop, and ten others – ten trustworthy men whom you must choose from among the soldiers on the Joy. Be on deck tomorrow morning, kitbag packed, no weapons, ready to not come back.”

Wright turned towards the window.

“You are one of the most violent men I have ever commanded, Bowman. You obey orders and you make others obey you. It is for those qualities that I recommended you to Major Cavendish, and that he decided to choose you. I hope you will repay the trust we are putting in you. Not a word to anyone. Dismissed, Sergeant.”

Bowman stood stock-still, as if his shoes were nailed to the wooden boards. The cabin spun before his eyes. He tore his feet from the floor, moved towards the door, found himself in the corridor and walked outside. Under the black moon, mouth wide open, he took deep, gasping breaths. The air was warm, humid, stale, too thick to relieve his dizziness.

He did not know why or how it would happen, but he knew he had just been condemned to death. It had not taken place on a battlefield or during an assault on an enemy base, but before a map, a duke too busy to finish his sentences and a cigar-smoking captain. And in place of a sentence, he had been given an order.

He walked over to the railing, leaned his hands on it and stared out at the lights of Rangoon in the distance. He stayed there for an hour, breathing that coffin air, before going back down to the first deck, w