Company Of Spears

weapons once we get a patrol from Fort Willshire to escort them across the Keiskama.’

Fairbrother nodded. ‘You know, Hervey, what I should really like is to meet Gaika. He is the Xhosa’s paramount chief, after all. He has questions to answer – why he breaks the 1820 treaty, for instance. Oh, I know at Graham’s-town they said Gaika has no more idea of a treaty than a monkey, but Gaika’s no fool, and he must know the consequences of what his people are doing. So why does he permit it? This is what your Somervile ought most usefully to know.’

Hervey pondered the proposition. ‘I think you are in the right. But are there not officials who speak regularly with him?’

Fairbrother smiled. ‘I very much doubt it, Hervey. This is Africa; it is not India – or even America. There has not evolved that notion of subtle dealing with the native tribes. I have read much on this, and I confess – against my better instinct – that I am sorely impressed with the method. In Canada, for instance, you have a most estimable corps of men well versed in native affairs, and there is in consequence little trouble with the Indian tribes. And in India you send fine men from Oxford. Here, those who do the King’s bidding are not in the main men you would share a gentlemanly bottle of claret with, and—’

A shot. So loud as to make every horse start. One of the pandours rolled backwards from the saddle, hitting the ground hard and with a scream like a woman. Corporal Wainwright barged past and fired into a thorn bush (he alone had seen the flash). He fired his second pistol. There was a shriek. He sprang from the saddle and began cutting at the thorn with his sabre as Hervey jumped down to tend the motionless redcoat. Without a word Johnson made to gather up the loose reins, even as the other two pandours were high-tailing back towards Trompetter’s Drift.

‘Stop! Damn you!’ shouted Fairbrother, drawing his pistol.

They neither heard nor cared.

Fairbrother sent a ball after them, but it only hastened the flight. ‘Bastard coward-Kaffirs!’ he spat.

Two spears struck the held horses. They squealed and reared. Two Xhosa, hair reddened, wide-eyed and naked but for civet aprons, rushed at them whooping wildly, clutching broken-shaft spears like short swords. Hervey sprang up and drew his sabre; Wainwright stood square to parry. But Fairbrother spurred forward, just getting in front of the dismounted pair as the Xhosa closed. He swung his mare’s quarters left into them, drawing his sabre as he did so, gaining the crucial moment’s surprise and getting in a nearside cut, almost severing an arm at the elbow before either of them could strike.

The second Xhosa thrust the spear-sword at Fairbrother’s thigh. It hit the cheroot case in his pocket and glanced off into the thick leather of the saddle arch. The Xhosa’s eyes rolled with sudden horror as Fairbrother brought the handguard of his sabre down hard into the man’s face, splitting open his nose like a ripe fruit. As the Xhosa crumpled clutching his bloody flesh, Fairbrother drove the point of his sabre deep behind the clavicle, then drew his second pistol and fired a following shot at the other man. The ball struck between the shoulders, and he fell writhing – then twitching; then still.

Fairbrother sheathed his sabre and took out his little Collier revolver. But he had no target. The Xhosa were gone as fast as they’d come.

Corporal Wainwright, hacking furiously at the thorn, shouted suddenly. ‘Here! And alive, sir!’ He pulled the terrified man from cover, and saw the hole in his shoulder.

Johnson had had to dismount to get the led horses in hand. He was struggling still, though one of them, the spearhead deep in its belly, was weakening.

Hervey saw that the pandour lay lifeless, so he closed to the wounded Xhosa instead. The ball had struck in the same place as the Burman ball had struck him, three years before. But there would be no surgeon of Mr Ritchie’s vulnerary skill to save this man’s arm; not unless they could get him to Graham’s Town, which they could not do inside of twenty-four hours – even by way of Trompetter’s Drift and with no Xhosa to trouble them. Not unless they rode through the night; even supposing they could find their way by moonlight.

Fairbrother had already calculated the odds, and the time and the distance. ‘We must back-track for Trompetter’s Drift at once,’ he began, calmly but insistently. ‘We might make a couple of leagues before nightfall, and every mile we get nearer the post is another mile further from the Xhosa, except we can’t be certain they won’t follow. We might run into the patrol, too.’ He looked hard at their captive as Wainwright dressed the wound.

‘We can’t leave him, I think,’ said Hervey.

‘Would you leave the pandour if he weren’t dead?’

‘No, indeed: not in a red coat!’

‘And an enemy of that red coat?’

‘A wounded enemy, Fairbrother. I would not chance him to the wild things here. Are you trying me?’

Fairbrother smiled grimly. ‘I am.’

And Hervey thought he knew why. Did Fairbrother imagine he might somehow think the worth of a man’s life, the effort to be expended in its preservation, was in some measure dependent on the shade of his skin? That the white – the grubby white – of a British soldier entitled him to the greater effort, more than any half-caste, and infinitely more than an ebony-coloured savage, who was so far removed from the decencies of good society as to be little more than an animal, to be killed to prevent its predation? ‘I believe you are more a soldier than you will admit. You are content to shoot a pandour in a red coat – in the back – and yet I surmise that a stricken enemy engages every last sentiment.’

‘It is not possible to shoot a fleeing man anywhere but in the back, Hervey.’ ‘

I know that!’

‘And by what right do we expect quarter, and aid, when we are fallen if we do not treat with an enemy, however base, in the same way?’

‘You push at an open door.’

Fairbrother sighed. ‘I wanted only to be sure. It has not always been the way on the frontier.’

Hervey could believe it. It had not always been the way anywhere. He looked about him: a dead redcoat, two dying horses, two pandours fled: not circumstances to be proud of. An ambush, not much less; an affair of bad scouting (or at least superior scouting on the part of the Xhosa). This was no adornment to his reputation. But much more than that, it was notice that they themselves might yet end as vulture-meat in a tract of country that could no longer boast the King’s peace. He was not afraid, however. That sort of fear did not trouble him (he would stand his ground abler than any man who might challenge him hereabouts). Rather was he suddenly aware of how much he had taken for granted – that the Xhosa, whose reputation was hardly fearsome after all, were not as the Burmans or Maharatas, the Pindarees or the Jhauts. Neither was this country desert or tropical forest, nor like anything he had seen in the Peninsula or in France, or Canada. He knew he had been worsted. Courage and address on Wainwright’s and Fairbrother’s part had saved the day. And he was already drawing his conclusions. He had proceeded to the frontier in pursuit of the reiving party as if he had been commanding a troop of His Majesty’s Cavalry of the Line. It would not serve.

XVIII

THE SUN NEVER SETS WITH OUT FRESH NEWS

Later

An hour of straining every muscle and of bending every sense to the detecting of concealed Xhosa induced a feeling of exhaustion quite unlike any Hervey could remember. Although reason told him that every mile meant greater safety, in his water he could not quite feel it. Only when the scrub began to thin – both in thickness of the thorn and its occurrence – did he begin to feel the advantage shifting back in his direction. He had been in closer country – the Burman jungle, the Canadian forest – but he had never before supposed that the country gave the natural advantage to his opponent. The Burmans had known their jungle, and the Iroquois their forest, but Hervey