Harry: Delhi, 11 May 1857
"Sir – I've tried Lucknow and Cawnpore but neither of them have promised any relief, even though I said we was desperate for help like."
Private George Walker looked flustered and nervous, the words rolling off his tongue too quickly in his urgency to convey the situation. At eighteen, he was hardly more than a boy, having joined the army only five months ago. Nothing in his background growing up in the Somerset countryside had prepared him for a situation where he would find himself hunted, outnumbered and abandoned by his own army.
Harry eyebrows knotted together. It was not the news he had expected or hoped for, and it was certainly not they way he would have acted had he been in command.
Private Walker had been telegraphing the stations within range for help for the past twenty minutes, but though he could get through to four stations, none would make any promise of reinforcements. It appeared all of them were either in the grip of dealing with their own rebellions or too terrified that there were on the verge of similar mutinies to be willing to give up any soldiers to help the people of Delhi. It was a sad indictment on the British army that when the going got difficult, all its commanders cared about was saving their own skin instead of doing their duty. Even Meerut, the largest and best fortified of all the British stations had offered them no assistance.
"You're doing a good job, lad," Harry replied, forcing his face into a smile, though he felt like anything other than smiling. "Make sure you convey to them the gravity of the situation and that we urgently need their help."
Ruth was resting against the parapet looking down at the city beneath her. If she looked directly down the hundred metre drop made her feel dizzy, so she let her gaze roam further, scanning the streets for any sign of sepoys.
Her eyes fixed on a spot perhaps a half a mile away on the banks of the river she could see a crowd forming. She stooped to pick up the telescope she had borrowed from one of the soldiers and lifted it to her eye. She had been right to be worried – for a group of perhaps a two hundred sepoys could be seem gathered together yelling and shouting. To the west of the city by the gardens she picked out another group of men, and another in the bazaar in the city's centre.
As Harry's assistant she was well aware that of the nine hundred soldiers in Delhi, only a hundred were British. While not all of the other 800 would turn on them, and some would stand loyal, they were still horribly outnumbered.
She was caught up in her thoughts when she was startled by the sound of a colossal blast, which rumbled the very ground underneath them. In the south of the city, a massive fireball ignited.
"Good God! What on earth was that?," ventured one of the junior officers, bewildered by the sound.
Several of the soldiers and ladies rushed forward to join her on the wall. A hush fell over the fort as everyone watched in horror as fire consumed the slums on the city fringe.
Harry came forward to stand by her side.
"The arsenal," he stated. "Someone set the gunpowder stocks alight. There must be a thousand people in the shacks around the arsenal."
He lowered his voice so that it was only audible to her, "I'm afraid that their deaths will only fuel the rebel's sense of grievance."
Within a matter of minutes he was proven correct as Ruth observed that one of the groups of soldiers was making for the fort, shouting and pointing towards its walls. Ruth passed her telescope to Harry silently, her finger indicating to him the point he should observe.
Harry looked for a moment and then put down his telescope. He had made his decision.
The fort structure could not survive a continued onslaught, in places where the mortar was weakened it could be penetrated and they had not the provisions to withstand a siege anyway.
Delhi had fallen and could not be recovered with the handful of soldiers who had stayed loyal to them. They would have to take their chances and make for a British outpost.
His heart felt heavy as he surveyed the scene beneath him, the shimmering heat casting a haze over the sprawling metropolis.
So this was what it felt like to lose a city.