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might show to good advantage on manoeuvres.
    After three hours’ shivering and fitful sleep, inadequately protected against the frost in his greatcoat, Warren got up and spent an hour walking up and down the river bank. Then the advance continued. For an hour the squadrons rode across country in column. Then, as the first light spread in the east, they halted. The officers gathered round and unfolded their maps on their saddles. ‘I think we’re here,’ Krishna said, pointing at a spot on his map. ‘That village there--you can just see some smoke rising from it--is Amarganj. The enemy will be somewhere the other side of the rise of land there.’ He pointed at a low ridge a mile to the west.
    ‘Then we ought to take that,’ Major Bholanath said, brushing up his moustaches.
    ‘I was going to order the squadrons forward in line, well separated,’ Krishna said, ‘until we made contact.’
    ‘I think we’d do best to seize that ground first, Highness,’ the old major said.
    Krishna Ram hesitated. He had done very well so far, Warren thought; now would he accept Bholanath’s suggestion--which was tactically the correct one--or insist on having his own way?
    Krishna said, ‘Very well. Take your squadron forward and capture it. But don’t show yourselves on top, uncle. I don’t want to let the enemy know we are here until we are ready.’
    A moment later C Squadron trotted out in extended order across the ploughed fields, now half hidden by tendrils of morning mist, towards the ridge. Soon the leading troops dismounted, took their rifles, and ran on up to the crest on foot. There they lay down. The reserve troop and the horseholders waited in cover a hundred yards back among scattered thorn bushes and low trees. Krishna Ram, Captain Sher Singh and Warren rode forward. Below the ridge crest Bholanath met them. Everyone dismounted, got out their field glasses, and peered west.
    Dust was rising two miles to the south-west, and from the dust an occasional flash showed steel reflecting back the morning light. ‘Infantry,’ Bholanath muttered. ‘Where’s their cavalry?’
    ‘They’ll be ahead,’ Krishna said.
    Warren, scanning the undulating plain through his binoculars, and knowing the British plan, realised that he was looking at the two reserve battalions of the brigade, which were advancing in column of route, protected, they thought, by the other two battalions spread out on a wide front ahead of them. But they were not; they were very vulnerable, provided the Ravi Lancers got closer.
    The Yuvraj said, ‘We’re almost out of range ... Do you see those two low hillocks ahead there--beyond the village? We can get there without being seen.’
    ‘Good, I’ll go,’ Bholanath said.
    ‘No, uncle. It’s Sher Singh’s turn ... Take your squadron that way, keep them behind this ridge until you reach the village, then ride up the hills from behind. C here will move to the village, where I’ll hold it in reserve until we see what the enemy do. We may be able to charge them in flank, as they deploy. Or get at their transport.’
    Sher Singh hurried back to his waiting squadron. Warren thought, I’d better be getting over to tell George Johnson what’s going to happen. He took a last look through his binoculars at the hills which were the Ravi Lancers’ objective. The shape of a building on the left hillock caught his eyes, and he said, ‘Wait a minute, Yuvraj ... that’s a shrine.’
    ‘Not a temple, sahib,’ Bholanath said, peering under a shading hand.
    ‘No,’ Warren said, ‘I can see from the architecture that it’s Muslim.’
    These people are Hindus, he thought. In Ravi a Muslim would have no rights against a Hindu ... would probably be imprisoned and tortured, as was the rule in Kashmir, if he were found slaughtering a cow--even his own cow; but this was British India. He said, ‘I think you’d better not occupy that left hill, Yuvraj. I’ll tell the other umpire why not.’
    ‘Thank you, sir.