Company Of Spears

had been certain it was possible to match them; here, in this strange mix of country, he half believed the Xhosa had some magic by which they transported themselves. How else had they covered the ground so quickly, and taken them unawares at the Gwalana’s head?

The wounded Xhosa had soon lost consciousness, and a fever now burned. Fairbrother had tried at first to question him, and to dull his pain and loosen his tongue with brandy; but he had learned nothing. Neither had they met the patrol from Trompetter’s Drift (it was not surprising: their charge, as Hervey himself had given it, was to scout the east bank of the river), nor even one of the routine patrols from Fort Willshire. Were the patrols diverted north, dealing with an irruption into the old Dutch areas?

The party’s one piece of fortune was that the pan-dours had returned to duty. Fairbrother had found them crouching in the scrub a mile or so from the Gwalana’s head, frightened, confused, only too pleased to see authority again and willing to submit to any punishment. Hervey had berated them in English – which they partially understood (and his manner had left no doubt) – and then Fairbrother had berated them in their own language, calling down every ancestral curse he could recall, shaming them to the point that they looked broken men.

‘Don’t let them fool you,’ he said, when at length Hervey dismissed them with but a day’s stoppage of pay. ‘They’re contrite now, but they’d run again as soon as look at you. We neither pay ‘em enough nor treat them as men, half the time. That and the Hottentot’s natural disinclination to soldiery. You have your martial races in India, do you not? Well, Hervey, these Hottentots ain’t no martial race.’

For the time being, however, the pandours worked willingly cutting thorn bushes, gathering wood, chivvied by Johnson, encouraged by Wainwright. There was perhaps an hour’s daylight left when they halted for the night – another league between them and the Xhosa, another league nearer the post at Trompetter’s Drift. If they had been capable of it. The horses were done, needing water and rest; they had led them for at least half the way. They themselves were footsore and just as weary. Half their kit and provisions they had abandoned (two horses destroyed and the priority to powder and cartridges). But they could not be certain that they were putting any distance between them and the Xhosa. Fairbrother had said he could not imagine why they would follow, but then, he had been first to admit his surprise that a Xhosa should carry a musket. Hervey had been sure they needed time to prepare for the night, to meet the Xhosa on ground of his choosing, properly disposed, ready. It was what he would have done with the Sixth in any rearguard, and he would do the same with a troop of mounted riflemen too. Thus far the prudence of the Peninsula applied as well in Africa.

When he had done all that he could for the security of the party – thorn bushes across the approaches to the bivouac, just out of spear-throwing distance, fires laid at the four points of the compass, with powder trails to each, and every man told off to an alarm post – Hervey spoke quietly to his coverman. ‘Rather a scrape, I’m afraid, Corporal Wainwright.’

‘Ay, sir.’

‘One of us must be awake at all times – you or I.’

‘Ay, sir.’

‘The pandours will stand sentry at the thorn in turn, but one or other of us will have to see they keep post.’

Corporal Wainwright nodded. He understood perfectly well. Johnson was probably as capable, but he did not have the rank, and it would be unfair. And Captain Fairbrother, for all that he had fought with as much nerve as he had ever seen, was not regiment. ‘Sir.’

‘It will be dark in half an hour. Captain Fairbrother says the Xhosa don’t as a rule attack during the night unless they’re sure of their advantage, but I wouldn’t rule out an attack at last light, perhaps to rattle us, and then a full-blown affair at dawn. So we may hear them all night, keeping us from sleep, or else they’ll use the dark to creep into position for the dawn. Either way, not a happy prospect.’

‘We’ll be right, sir.’

Hervey smiled to himself. This was not bravado, just the proper confidence of a non-commissioned officer who had learned his trade in a dozen different scrapes. ‘I would have wished those pandours had a faithful taste for scouting, that’s all. We should have a better notion of whether we’d been followed.’

‘Maybe, sir; but not certain. We’re doing only what we’d be doing anyway.’

Hervey nodded. Wainwright spoke the truth. There could never be a time to take the night’s ease for granted.

‘Do we break camp before first light if we hear nothing in the night, sir?’

It was the usual practice, so long as the enemy could not get wind of the move: not an easy thing to manage even with some distance between the lines, so to speak. Here, where the Xhosa might rush in from no further than the spear’s flight, and with the moon set, it would be the very devil of a fight. No, Hervey’s instinct was to let the dawn come, when they would then have the advantage of their firearms. He shook his head. ‘We’ll stand to as if defending our position, Corporal Wainwright.’ And then, fearing he had exposed his own doubts too much, he half smiled. ‘It’s of no matter. I do not count the Xhosa especially brave. Had they pressed a little more determinedly we should have been caught, I think. There cannot have been but the three of them.’

‘I reckoned so too, sir. But I think as I should do the scouting in the morning. If they gets behind us tonight then I don’t think the pandours’ll be right. I mightn’t know the country as well as them, but I’d do a better job if it comes to another fight.’

Hervey put a hand to Wainwright’s shoulder. ‘I don’t doubt it – than both of them combined. Very well. And you’ll take the first watch, until midnight?’

‘Sir.’

‘Good man.’ Hervey turned; but then he had second thoughts. ‘We’ve come a long way since that morning on Warminster Common, have we not, Corporal Wainwright?’

‘Sir.’ Wainwright smiled ruefully. ‘And not yet five and twenty.’

Hervey had not considered it. ‘Indeed?’

‘Tomorrow, sir.’

‘The strangest thing!’

‘There’s not been too many birthdays since the Common when I haven’t heard a shot, sir.’

‘The devil!’

‘But I reckon it must be the same with you, sir.’

Hervey knew it, but he doubted he had ever been in such position: no notion of where or how many the enemy, and so little with which to defend himself – and his reputation. He smiled back, dutifully. ‘What should we do with peace, eh, Corporal Wainwright?’

‘Ay, sir,’ replied his coverman, just as dutifully.

Hervey nodded, fixing him with a look that said everything that would not be permitted in words, and then turned and stepped sharply to where Johnson was crouching by the pack saddles.

Johnson stood and held out a mess of tea. ‘Just mashed.’

Hervey took it, again with but a nod. It had been more times than either of them could count: Johnson’s ability to make tea in the most unpromising conditions seemed rarely short of miraculous. There had been tea before dawn on the morning of Waterloo, when the rain had lashed down all night (Hervey reckoned there could have been few general officers so favoured), and Johnson had since perfected what he called his ‘patent storm kettle’, first fashioned ten years ago in an Indian bazaar. It was rather easier now to get a flame, though: no need of flint and tinder-box with Mr Walker’s new sulphur friction matches.

‘Thank you, Johnson. You must remind me, when we get back to England, to see if Welch and Stalker will give you a pension for your storm kettle.’

‘Ay, right, sir. So tha does think we’ll get back then? Ah sort o’ thought we’d end up ‘ere wi’ an ass’s thing up us arse.’

Hervey could not have suppressed the smile if he had tried. ‘Assegai.’

‘Summat sharp, any road.’

Hervey shook his head. ‘Johnson, after all we’ve seen, I don’t think we shall meet our end by a gang of cattle reivers carrying spears.’

‘Well, ah’m right glad tha’s sure on it, sir. Them spears looked the job to me. Wouldn’t ‘ave managed if Cap’n Fairbrother ‘adn’t got in first. Ah reckoned ah weren’t long for this world.’