1854 - The Allied armies prepare to besiege the Russian stronghold in the Crimea

Harry Ryder is a maverick hero. Resentful of the army that destroyed his father and his own career, he has no time for incompetent commanders. He clashes with his superiors as fiercely as he fights the Russians.

Four men, one woman and a game of cards will change everything and alter the course of a war.

Something evil has crept into the ranks of the British Army's own officers, an unknown enemy who plans lure men to ruin on the battlefields. The only path to victory lies in uncovering the truth, but to find it and confront his own destiny Ryder must charge with the Light Brigade into the Valley of Death itself...

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Prologue

Meerut – June 1853

Everything looked the same. Heat had dried the nullah to a muddy trickle, but that was usual before the rains came, and Ensign Harry Standish crossed the bridge to the British town with the comforting sense of coming home. Under his breath he was humming ‘Widdicombe Fair’.

The Mall was its usual afternoon quiet. The doctor’s wife was reading in the shade of her veranda, and when he called ‘Hullo, Mrs Carron, I’m home!’ her hand flew to her mouth and the book dropped with a smack to the stones. She seemed too startled to return his greeting, and he guessed with amusement she hadn’t recognized him. That was fair enough. The boy who left India nine months ago was very different from the eighteen-year-old officer walking home in the triumph of his first-ever battle. He was looking forward to telling his father.

He was still humming as he passed jauntily on to their own bungalow. The white gate looked the same as always, but it bumped open unevenly at his push and he saw with surprise the base was clogged with weeds. There were more growing along the path, and as his footsteps crunched on the gravel the silence blasted back at him like a ricochet from a shot. Where the devil were the servants? Even the path ahead was dirty, its white stones speckled with a spray of earth, but as he neared the house he realized the mud was moving, the random specks resolving themselves into a glinting black trail that reached all the way to the side door of his father’s study.

Ants.

His footsteps quickened, slapping urgently up the path. He dropped his pack, knocked on the door and said, ‘Sir?’ but the ants were bolder, swarming over his boots in their haste to scurry under the crack of the door. They weren’t soldier ants, they wouldn’t attack a living man, but he kicked out in revulsion and the door shuddered ajar at the blow. He threw it open wide.

The stench hit him like a wall of heat, sickly, rotten, and tinged with the sourness of whisky. The ant trail trickled past his foot, solidified to an advancing phalanx, and drew his eyes up to the black, heaving mound spread over the floor in the cruciform shape of a man. But the head was monstrous, a gorgon’s, surrounded by dark tentacles of ants as they clustered and puddled over what he understood suddenly were sprays of blood or worse. Realization forced his gaze back to the body, following the eloquent curve of the outflung arm to the open hand and the metal object lying silently beside it. There were ants on the gun too.

His throat clenched, and he reeled back through the door, spitting and retching, only vaguely aware of footsteps approaching on the gravel. A voice called ‘Master Harry-sahib!’ and old Ramesh Kumar came hurrying towards him with a basket, but his smile of welcome congealed into anxiety at the sight of the ants and open door. ‘The colonel-sahib . . .’

‘In there,’ he said, turning away to retch again. ‘In there.’ He scrubbed his sleeve violently over his mouth and saw with curious detachment the trembling of his arm.

He heard the hoarse cry, then the slow deliberate tread as the khansamar backed out of the study to stand beside him. Thank God for Ramesh, he thought dully. The other servants might have disappeared, but the old butler would never desert them. ‘For God’s sake, Ramesh, what’s happened here?’

‘My fault, sahib,’ said the old man. ‘Never does the colonel-sahib send me out of town to market, never in twenty years, I should have known he would do this.’ His knees crunched to the ground, and Standish saw with shock that he was weeping. ‘Oh, what will we do, sahib, what will we do?’

Ramesh had three times his years and five times his wisdom, but Standish felt the burden of ‘sahib’ crash round his shoulders like a yoke. There was no senior officer here, he had no father, there was only himself to be what the old man needed. He swallowed down his own shock and said, ‘No one’s fault, Ramesh. Now get me water, we’re going to clear this before anyone sees.’

‘Han, sahib,’ said the khansamar at once, leaping up at the sound of authority. ‘Water.’ He hurried round the house for the well and Standish forced himself to go back in the room. He wouldn’t look at the thing on the floor; that wasn’t his father, wasn’t the man he’d shaken hands with every night of his childhood, wasn’t the respected Colonel Standish who would sometimes forget himself and play bears under the dining table with his boy. He looked at the room instead and only now noticed how much was missing. The bookcase was nearly empty, the candlesticks gone, nothing on the stained tablecloth but a half- empty whisky bottle and a tumbler clouded with finger marks. He lifted them off, and whipped away the cloth as Ramesh staggered back in with a bucket. ‘In the middle, Ramesh, clear me a hand-hold in the middle.’ His father’s waist and strong chest, the middle.

Ramesh threw. The water made a red streak in the black, the British army coat of which father and son had been so proud. Standish flung the tablecloth over the terrible head, bent to force his arms under the body, and lifted it with surprising ease. No need to look, no need to flinch, a man couldn’t be revolted by the body of his own father. He carried it outside with his head held high in a travesty of pride, and lowered it into the horse trough by the front gate. Little pricks of pain peppered his wrists where the ants bit, but he thrust the corpse under and watched the drowning insects float to the surface in a thick black scum. A paleness glimmered beneath, and just for a second he saw the horror of blood and bone and brain and the eaten-out cavities that had been his father’s eyes.

He swung away in shock, furiously brushing the clinging insects from his arms and coat. There were steps at the gate, Dr and Mrs Carron, but Ramesh was running past to meet them, and Standish leaned against the almond tree as he fought to control his nausea. The murmur of voices gave him a moment’s space, and he allowed himself to look at the indignity of his father’s legs hanging over the edge of the trough. Why had he never seen how thin and frail they were, never until now? A terrible emptiness began to stir in his chest, and with it the first yearning of grief.

He crushed it down ruthlessly to make his mind work. The money was gone, obviously, but it would take more than that to drive a devoted soldier to blow his brains out. What had it done to him, this army he’d given his whole life to? What had it done? He stared at the ground for answers, but saw only faint grey splashes of water already evaporating in the heat.

A woman’s voice rose over the others, Mrs Carron saying, ‘Oh, Henry, Henry, that poor boy, whatever will he do?’ He watched the dark edges of a damp patch magically shrinking, until there was nothing left but a single ant lying crippled and helpless on the burning stones.