Great battle report but the insults you hurl on Mulehead and the One True Rule will return as vipers to strike you on your path to Chitral and the sun will surely bleach your bones along side those of the treacherous Umra Khan and Buda Khan for your cheap tricks.
After employing Tibetan Ninja Monks with cloaking ability to rescue his sister and her family from their comfortable guest quarters at the Malakand Cantonments, Capt. Shanks AKA: Gul Akbar Khan -- follower of the False Fakir Mulehead Khan, promoter of the Untrue Rules TMWBK, and notorious frontier brigand -- waxes poetic RE:"Buda Khan" and"Cheap Trick"...
This latest effrontery demands a riposte...
...with appropriate instrumental accompaniment for fans of the BUDOKAN:
MESSAGE FROM DARGAI ... MARKED URGENT ... VIA HELIOGRAPH ...
Captain. Carey, 10th Hussars and his 1st Brigade Signal team are dispatched to the heights above Malakand Pass...
Their mission: deliver BrigGnl Ruff-Husband's MESSAGE TO MAJ.GNL. WHITSEND at Peshawar...
They FLASHES the message, which is received and RELAYED by the Signal Team at Mardan...
To the Signal Team at Nowshera...
Who send it to its final destination: Peshawar Signal Detachment, regularly stationed atop the city's Railway Building...
Handy diagram of a "Helio":
MESSAGE CONTENT AS FOLLOWS:
ACTION 18 AUGUST ... ATTACKED AT DAWN ON 3 SIDES ... COMBINED AZAKAI & BUNERWAL FORCES ... INCLUDING GHAZIS ... ESTIMATE 160 TO 200 TOTAL ENEMY ... CLOSE-COMBAT ALONG SOUTH WALL ... ALL ATTACKS REPELLED ... SIGNIFICANT CASUALTIES INFLICTED ON ENEMY ... CREDIT FOR VICTORY TO MEN OF 1ST BRIGADE ... NATIVE BUGLER DIRKA GRIMM YORKS & LANCS ACTED ABOVE & BEYOND CALL OF DUTY ... 9TH GURKHA PIQUETS ATOP MALAKAND DISTINGUISHED THEMSELVES ... NO. 2 DEJARAT MT. BATTERY SCREW-GUNS PERFORMED BRILLIANTLY ... E/B RHA ARRIVED MIDST OF FIGHT & WENT STRAIGHT INTO ACTION ... PRELIMINARY ESTIMATE OUR CASUALTIES ... 16 KIA, 26 WIA ... SAD TO REPORT JEMADAR JAI HO SINGH 2ND PUNJAB CAV. PFF RETIRED KIA IN HAND-TO-HAND FIGHT AT SOUTH WALL ... BROM SISTERS SAFE & SOUND ... ENEMY COMMANDER GUL AKBAR KHAN WIA BUT RECOVERED BY HIS MEN & ESCAPED CAPTURE ... SUNLIGHT FADING ... MORE INFO TO FOLLOW VIA COURIER ... INCL. PHOTOGRAPHS ... SIGNED S.RUFF-HUSBAND, BRIG. GNL. COMMANDING 1ST BRIGADE PESHAWAR FIELD FORCE.
The night of August 17th, 1890, somewhere on the road between Nowshera and Dargai...
Earlier tonight on the road with E/B Battery Royal Horse Artillery, Neville Crisp, late of the London-based magazine "Horse and Hound," experienced his first shots fired in anger, as well as his time as the target of a charge...
In the aftermath he was assigned to look after WIA Lance Bombardier Gorman for the remainder of the ride to Dargai Cantonments...
Riding along in the improvised ambulance cart, Crisp realized he was less worried about a second ambush, or the fate of the unconscious artilleryman...
And more worried about how he would do his recent experience justice...
In his dual roles as "Correspondent-at-Large" for the Peshawar Tribune, and lifelong aspiring poet...
Crisp turned his eyes from the unconscious Lance Bombardier and looked off into the dark mountains silhouetted against the slightly less dark sky...
As he did so his mind's eye filled with short sharp recollections of the ambush...
The crash of the Lancers into the rocks laid across the road...
The crack and flash of incoming fire the next moment...
The cry of Gorman as he fell from the saddle of his limber horse...
The charge up at the head of the column...
The desperate melee that followed, which might have gone either way...
The rifle duel across the river...
And the last glimpse of the enemy before they slipped back into the darkness...
How was it all decided? Determined? 9 Pathans wounded, 1 killed, another 4 run away, 5 British and Indian wounded... the Battery emerged intact and "victorious"... by what mechanism did it occur? And what if, by some mad twist of fate or evil design... the participants no longer all agreed to abide by the same? Would that not be a far worse fate than simply Routing away, or falling WIA... or even KIA? For down that path would surely lie anarchy... and chaos!
With these thoughts in mind, Crisp pulled out his handy reporter's notebook and went to work, hopeful that when E/B and their 3rd Skinner's Horse escort reached Dargai at sunrise, he could send it with the next dispatch rider back to Peshawar from whence he had just came...
* * * * * *
FRONTIER RULES
by Neville Crisp
(with apologies to J.R.R. Tolkien)
Three Rules for the Raj-Presidencies under the sky,
Seven for the Frontier-Tribes in their Sangars of stone,
Nine for Cavagnari’s Guides who in '79 were doomed to die,
One for the Widow of Windsor alone on her throne
In the Land of Minis where the Colonials vie.
One Rule to play them all, One Rule to find them,
One Rule to bring them all and around the table bind them
