Thunderdome 1

The sampan rolled under the weight of the man stepping out onto the small jetty. Leaning on his cane he pushed up onto the pier leaving the two men in the small boat hanging on as it rollocked back and forth.

‘Good gods Bertie, how long has it been since we were here man? Forty years hmm? Fifty? This demned malarial deathtrap hasn’t changed a bit. Look over there, I’m sure that’s the river bend where that rat Lao Che tried to ambush us that night we were sneaking up to Sooching. Cunning yellow bastard caught us like a Covent Garden catamite with our pants down, pizzle in hand!’

‘Maybe, George,’ said Bertie, grunting as he used his own cane to climb out of the sampan. He looked out over the turgid brown river, running through a flat landscape of rice paddies intersected by a labyrinthine system of canals.  ‘It’s a long river and these rice paddies all look identical.’

‘No, no, I’m sure this is the spot. Gods, I’ll never forget that night, wild banshees came screaming out of those reeds, took out my batman with their first shot. What was his name, Tuckman? Buckman? Good man; had played rugby at Oxford with Wolseley.’

‘I think it was Dignam’

‘What? No, Dignam was in India – got himself invalided home after the Patar campaign.  Buckman it was, Thomas Buckman I remember, went straight the bottom of the Po over there. Guns going off everywhere, those cursed scythes these heathens use flashing in the moonlight. I don’t know how we survived Bertie.’

George stood leaning on his cane on the end of the pier, staring at the eddying water. Bertie hauled a bag out of the sampan.  The sampan owner pushed off the bank with the long oar, back into the current and drifted away into the heat haze.

George turned back, limping with his cane. ‘Yes yes, definitely the spot. Know this river like the inside of my pockets. I told the Colonel that. I said you need an old hand in this part of the world, not some drafted cockchafer from Luton with his mothers milk fresh on his lip. You know what he said to me Bertie? ‘I wish I had someone with your wisdom and experience fighting under the colours still’.

‘The Colonel was being polite George’.

George slammed his cane onto the wooden pier. ‘Damn your eyes Bertie, I know how brass works, you can’t strip a coolie these days without say so from the BG. No, this is our place. We’ll shufti the demned rebels and be back at HQ for tacks.’

Bertie glanced back over the barren fields. A waterbuffalo stood in a paddy a mile inland. A lone fisherman’s shack sat on the riverbank a few hundred yards downstream. The rest of the landscape was empty. ‘If there’s a rebel army here George, then they’re demned good at hiding.’

‘Bah man, this way.’

George shuffled down the jetty on his cane and turned towards the shack. Sighing, Bertie took up the duffel and slowly made his way after him.

The shack was barely a lean-to, an afterthought of scrap wood and brush designed to provide shelter from the merciless sun now high overhead.

A small cadaverous man was haunched down in the shade, cleaning a fish with a small filleting knife. He had frozen when the two men came into view, a rictus grin on his face.

‘Now here we are Bertie, a coolie who can tell us what we need. You interpret for me’ George turned to the fisherman. ‘Now man, where is Tsung Ha?’

Bertie sighed again: ‘don’t be afraid, we are your friends. We are looking for Tsung Ha.

The fisherman’s eyes darted to Bertie and then back to George.

‘fuck you old man’

‘What did he say?’

‘Uhh, he doesn’t know.’

‘Bullshit Bertie, look, he’s obviously a scout foraging for the men.’ George stepped forward, raising his cane. The fisherman ducked back, still grinning. His eyes darting from the cane to the fish to the cane again. He darted forward, knife extended burying it into George’s mid-riff, grabbed the fish and sprinted out into the fields.

George pressed his hand to the blood spurting from the wound. ‘Oh gods Bertie’, and collapsed. Bertie knelt down, lifting George’s head.

‘I bet that was Lao Che’s grandson, the bastard had the last laugh after all.’

‘I think he was just a fisherman George.’

‘Doesn’t matter now. Damn this. How does it look?’

The knife had done its work, one quick blow had shredded the linen shirt and blue ropes bulged from between George’s fingers.

‘You remember Salisbury?’

‘Oh god, that bad.’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh god.’

Blood pooled into the dirt. Against the drone of crickets in the background a mayfly buzzed though the air.

‘You know Bertie.’

“I know George.’

‘Oh god...’

Herbert leaned forward and gently kissed George on the mouth.

Like a faint drum beat, a cannon fired in the distance.