Torkrud, north-west frontier July 1863
Dawn brought little relief as the heat rose with the sun, baking the handful of men who sheltered behind the stone-and-mud parapets on the lookout tower. With the sun came the flies, attracted by the blood on the pile of dead bodies. The sobbing of the wounded Pashtun had ceased. He lay a few yards from the tower, his twisted body furred with flies.
"We should throw them over the side." Hassan nodded to the corpses. "Soon they will stink."
"Don"t your people hold their dead in high esteem?" Jack asked. "Don"t they value men killed in battle?"
"That is true, sahib, but these men are not Guides." Hassan dismissed the bodies as if they were so much carrion.
"We could cut off their heads." Zaman added various other anatomical details that Jack prefer
