Far Horizons: Tales of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror. Issue #15 June 2015 | Page 101

It took no more than a few minutes to search the area.
Nine odd marks on the ground, a single set of cart
wheels coming into the open area then turning and
leaving again. Many foot prints in the sand. Closer examination showed the marks to be stains, each several
feet across, something liquid had been spilled here and
had soaked into the ground. Not water, the sun would
have destroyed all such traces hours ago. No this was
something thicker and darker.
Captain Greyling knelt down and took a closer look,
then the smell hit him. This was blood, mostly soaked
away into the sand and dried by the sun but spilt blood
none the less.
Nine people had been killed here.
The path to the north was easily wide enough for a
cart or wagon and showed signs of having been made,
several times dirt banks had been hacked through to
keep the way open. It led to the edge of the hills and
came out no more than a few hundred yards from the
closest wall of the town, the cart tracks led from the
path straight towards the town.
Keeping low to avoid being seen the captain and his
two men made their way back to the open area and
then climbed the hill to join the guards there, the entire
group then returned to the hills and back to the patrol.
The two groups met up in the valley behind the rebel
town and both turned to make their way back to the
camp using the more open southern route.
It seemed that besieging the town would require infantry to the north, the lancers to the south and the bulk of
the force by the road. Any large body of rebels would
be easily trapped and no carts or wagons could leave
except by the road. The rebels looked to be nicely
bottled up in their own town.
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At the camp the defences were being improved. A pair
of redoubts were being dug out, one at each corner
facing the road. Each was home to one six pounder
and one Baker Simpson Rotary machine gun. Another

redoubt formed the centre on the side facing the road
and housed another pair of the Rotary machine guns.
The remaining two Baker Simpsons were placed at the
back corners of the roughly square base, each set into
its own redoubt. The redoubts were made by digging
out sections of trenches and ditches, then piling the
dirt behind them to form a raised platform. Excess dirt
and sand was packed into old grain and meal sacks
that had been bought along for this purpose, a wall of
such sand bags some four feet high surrounded the
redoubt on all sides with lower firing positions where
the sand bags were only three feet tall. Access from
inside the camp was through a single gap in the sand
bag wall just wide enough for the wheeled carriages of
the weapons.
Lines of trenches surrounded the camp and the spoil
piled up to form protective banks. Against a rabble
armed with primitive native weapons it was a solid
fortress, against modern European weapons it was sadly lacking. Something far too many within the camp
were aware of.
The levy was mostly employed digging these trenches during the day along with many of the drivers and
other civilian labourers. The British infantry worked
on the redoubts and maintained pickets and patrols of
up to a mile around the camp.
It was well past lunch when the steam engine on the
land frigate came to life, the whistle of full pressure
echoing across the camp. It had taken most of the
day to repair the damage, the sand and dust had been
mixing with the grease and forming an abrasive paste
that was wearing away at every moving part. The
naval engineers had a plentiful stock of spares but they
were running through them a lot faster than had been
planned. They barely had enough to make the return
trip.
A day or two of combat use would deplete the remaining stores and leave Greyhound immobile. Since the
closest source of such spare parts was five days away
by cart a message would need to be sent with the daily
courier. That was something that Lieutenant Houseman would need to request but he was at the observa-

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