NINE-Pursuit
‘Oo exactly was that native, anyway, sir?’ Pegg’s face was creased with incomprehension, his voice lurching each time he thumped uncomfortably on his horse’s saddle. ‘An’ why did the commandant knife ‘im like that?’
As soon as Kemp, Morgan, Pegg and the rissaldar had joined up with the rest of the party, they had galloped off as hard as they could in the wan light of dawn, keen to find their enemy’s trail. But Lance-Corporal Pegg was perturbed. Eight months into this, his second campaign, he was hardened to most things, but after the Rhani’s escape over the fortress walls he had witnessed an act of cold brutality that he simply did not understand.
‘As far as I can gather, he was a spy—someone close to Lakshmi Bai—who’d been bribed by the commandant to tell us where she was.
