lit the lance, heads into a thousand minute dazzles.
'Cavalry!' roared Sean. 'By Jesus, look at them.'
The cry was taken up and thrown along the line, yelling, cheering
wildly they fired down upon the tiny brown figures that were scurrying
away to meet the Boer pickets who galloped in across the floor of the
valley, each of them dragging a bunch of a dozen horses after them.
Then above the cheering and the gunfire, high above the sounds of
hooves and the cries of panic, a bugle began to sing: 'Bonnie Dundee',
sharp and clear and urgently it commanded the charge.
Sean's rifles fell silent. The cheering faltered and stopped.
One by one his men stood up to watch as the lines of lancers moved
forward. Walk. Trot. Canter. Gallop. The lance heads dropped.
Belly, high they flitted like fireflies in front of the solid dark
ranks, and that terrible thing swept down upon the tangle of men and
frenzied, struggling horses.
Some of the Boers were up now, wheeling away, breaking like game before
the beaters.
'My God!' breathed Sean, tensing himself for the burst of sound as the
charge struck home. But there was only the drum of hooves, no check,
no distortion as the dark squadrons drove through the Boers.
Precisely they wheeled, and came back. Broken lances thrown aside,
sabres unsheathed, bright and long.
Sean watched a burgher dodging desperately as a lancer followed him.
Saw him turning at the last moment and crouching with his arms covering
his head. The lancer stood in his stirrups and swung his sabre
backhanded. The burgher dropped. Like a polo player the trooper
pivoted his horse and rode back over the Boer, leaning low out of the
saddle to sabre him again as he knelt in the grass.
'Quarter! ' growled Sean, then his voice rising shrilly in horror and
disgust,
'Give them quarter! For the love of God, give them quarter!'
But cavalry gives no quarter. They butchered with dispassionate
parade, ground precision. Hack and cut, turn and trample until the
blades blurred redly, until the valley was strewn with the bodies of
men wounded a dozen times.
Sean tore his eyes away and saw the remains of Leroux's commando
scattered into the broken ground where the big cavalry mounts could not
follow.
Sean sat down on a rock and bit the end off a cheroot. The rank smoke
helped cleanse his mouth of the taste of victory.
Two days later Sean led his column into Charlestown. The garrison
cheered them and Sean grinned as he watched his men react. Half an
hour before they had bumped along, hunched unhappily on their borrowed
mounts. Now they sat erect and jaunty, eating the applause and liking
the taste.
Then the grin faded from Sean's face as he saw how his band was
depleted, and he looked back at the fifteen crowded wagons that carried
the wounded.
If only I'd put look, outs on the ridge.
