torches. He found his matches, struck one and held it to the tar-cloth. In a minute or so the flame had taken a good hold. ‘Follow me.’
The horses were untroubled by the torch, which was as well since every one of the party would have his hands full. By the light of the fire, Hervey distributed the reins and the other two torches, told Johnson the plan, found his bearings and with no more than a ‘good luck!’ made ready to strike out for the trail they had come by from Trompetter’s Drift.
The captive Xhosa, his hands now bound, and prompted by the point of the knife, shouted something half defiant, half pleading.
Hervey started.
‘He says what I told him to say,’ rasped Fairbrother. ‘That I’d cut his throat if any of them tried to stop us.’
‘Has he said how many of them there are?’
‘A dozen or so. But how can you believe a man with a knife at his throat?’
Hervey smiled to himself. What fortune had brought them together, this man so skilled in the ways of ruth- lessness, and of fieldcraft, and yet of such sensibility? And how had these qualities been dismissed to the Half-Pay List?
For three wearying hours they tramped – edged – along the Trompetter’s Drift trail, seeing, hearing, smelling the sudden death that lurked in the dark beyond the range of the torches, as deadly as the night cobra. The captive Xhosa kept up his distancing calls, the point of Fairbrother’s urging knife twice drawing blood, and a dozen nerve- tearing times Wainwright fired at shadowy shapes, dextrously reloading his carbine with one hand.
The close scrub at last gave way to open grass. Here, Hervey reckoned, was their best chance of remounting without the Xhosa overwhelming them in a sudden rush; and from here they could kick hard and put a safe distance behind them.
He stopped, and turned. ‘Johnson and Wainwright mount! Close up and put your pistols to the Xhosa’s head.’
It took but a few seconds.
‘Now you, Fairbrother.’
Fairbrother took the reins from Johnson and swung into the saddle, leaving Hervey with the point of his sabre at the Xhosa’s throat.
‘Pull him up!’
The three of them hauled the Xhosa astride the fifth horse.
‘Go!’
Fairbrother, with the fifth horse’s reins looped over his left arm, and his right holding the Xhosa in the saddle, kicked hard, with Johnson on the other side gripping the man as firmly.
Hervey’s horse swung round in the excitement, Hervey’s left foot dragging in the stirrup.
It was all the lurking Xhosa needed.
An ear-splitting shriek and then a shot, and then the weight of a dead man knocking him to the ground: Hervey lost grip of the reins. The horse took off with his foot still caught in the stirrup. Wainwright fired again – a Xhosa at his bridle – and then spurred after the runaway, barely able to see ahead.
Fifty yards it was before he caught the horse – close enough for the Xhosa to be at them yet. He jumped from the saddle, drew his sabre and cut the stirrup leather. Hervey, so racked as to be semi-senseless, groped for the reins and the saddle. Wainwright shouldered him astride and then made to remount.
A Xhosa ran in at him. Wainwright neither saw nor heard. Some other sense told him to parry then cut, the blade slicing deep and audibly. He vaulted into the saddle. ‘Go on, sir! Go on!’ he shouted, grabbing Hervey’s reins.
Hervey in his half-daze knew he had heard those words before.
XIX
RIFLES
Colonel Hervey stood at the end of the line of riflemen on the firing range. The practice was conducted by a former serjeant of the Ninety-fifth commissioned in the field after Waterloo and now adjutant of the Cape Mounted Rifles.
It was the first opportunity Hervey had had to observe the Rifles at drill. In his month and more’s absence, his major had seen to completing the dismounted training, and soon the recruits would begin riding school. It would be six weeks, at least, before he could take field drill, though he could make a beginning in the sand tray with his company officers.
The fortnight at the frontier had formed his thoughts very particularly. It was not merely the ambush that had shaped his thinking, but the notion of men – the Xhosa principally, but he imagined the other native tribes to be the same – the notion of their acting as individual warriors, intent on pressing home the attack in ones and twos as the country permitted. It was not unlike what he knew to be the practice in North America, but here in Africa, by all accounts, the warriors also adopted regular formations when the country was otherwise too open. After reaching Trompetter’s Drift, exhausted, the party had rested for twenty-four hours before continuing on the trail of the reiving Xhosa. Hervey had marvelled at the changing country – from close thorn to scrubby bushveld, and then to rolling grassland. He knew that if the Xhosa could be made to fight in open country then musketry and cavalry ought to defeat them roundly. If they could not be brought to battle in the open, then his volleying infantry and his well- drilled light dragoons might as well hold parades as go into close country after them.
This much might have been in the mind of Lord Charles Somerset when he set in hand the reorganization; except that Hervey had seen no reference to any cause but economy. And whatever the intention of the former governor, the fact was that the officers of the Mounted Rifles were already thinking like skirmishers – as if they were preparing for the sort of general action in which riflemen took post ahead of the red lines of muskets. Hervey was certain there was a place for that, but it was not in two-thirds of the country he had ridden over. There, it was the Rifles themselves who would have to close with the enemy, for there was no more chance of Line infantry advancing shoulder-to-shoulder than there was of discharging a single volley to effect. In truth, he had concluded, if there was to be another war on the frontier the proportion of such troops as the Rifles to those that fought in close order must be at the least three to one.
‘At two hundred yards … targets, five rounds,
The fire was ragged compared with that of volleying redcoats, but it was through no idleness or slow burn: riflemen fired as individuals, taking individual aim, firing only when their sights were properly laid, and stopping their breath to keep the aim true. Two hundred yards! Redcoats might volley at a hundred, but more likely fifty.
When the firing ended, the adjutant shouted ‘Stop’, and each man sprang to his feet.
‘In double time,
Fifty green-coated recruits, rifles at the trail, began doubling the two hundred yards to the targets. Hervey doubled too. He could not recall the last time he ran as far. In a couple of months these men would be able to fire five rounds, spring into the saddle, gallop two hundred yards and then dismount to fire another five. Such speed and accurate fire could confound an enemy ten times their number. He was convinced they were the answer – not the complete answer, but one that might shock the Xhosa out of the fastness of the bush and into the very country in which red- and bluecoats had the advantage.
He walked from target to target. There was none without five neat holes, and many where the holes were drilled in a cluster the size of a soup bowl. Here was impressive shooting, by any measure. But then many a recruit had been a cradle rifleman, schooled in marksmanship for the pot; though many more had been well-chosen
