Company Of Spears

effect.

The black columns stopped suddenly, and then came a blood-chilling moan which almost knocked him back in the saddle. He had never heard its like – not the shouting on the battlefields of the Peninsula, nor the cheering at Waterloo, nor even the fiendish cries at Bhurtpore. It was inhuman, one voice prodigiously loud rather than many thousands, as if they somehow spoke – thought – with one mind. It was eerie; indeed it was unsettling. He prayed it would not be unnerving.

He pressed on without checking, however, or without looking behind, the canter and the slope taking him voluntarily or otherwise towards the snake-like columns. At a hundred yards the columns became things of glistening, feathered warriors, of spears and shields. Hervey knew he had seen nothing of its like. Never before, no matter how savage the enemy, had he perceived Creation so … primitive; as if from the earliest days of the Fall. He wondered how he might speak with such a people – if these primitives could be dignified by the word ‘people’. Not just speak but communicate, convey an understanding.

He slowed to a trot and then a walk, and came to a halt fifty yards from the head of the centre column. There he would wait for a propitious sign.

He waited for what felt a long age. And while he waited he began to see the remarkable uniformity of these warriors. At first he had observed merely shield upon shield; now he saw shield upon identical shield, the exact same. And they were evidently of animal hide, which uniformity spoke to him of Shaka’s powerful dominion over ‘every living thing that moveth upon the earth’. Each warrior wore an apron of bunched hide and feathers (every one the same) and a headband of spotted fur (leopardskin, perhaps?) and white streamers just above the elbow on each arm – oxtail hair probably. Hervey wondered if they fought as regularly as they looked, in close formation; or if they attacked in loose, open order, as skirmishers did. He studied the short, stabbing spear – not assegai, as he had once thought it called, but iklwa. It appeared to be their sole weapon. The blade was about a foot long, a few inches at its widest, tapering to a rounded tip, unlike the pronounced point of the bayonet or the sabre. He reckoned it would need strength to stab home with it. But such a point, driven into the gut with force, would do such damage as to confound the best surgeon’s art. The warriors held the short shafts to stab underarm. Hervey could picture the method – the shield not merely to parry, but to mask the coming thrust. He did not think it would do to face such a weapon with a sabre, dismounted.

One of the Zulu stepped forward, a thick-set, older man with a slight stoop. Hervey had not noticed him before, for he was dressed the same as the rest – except that he wore a necklace of claws.

‘Molo mhlob’am!’ said Fairbrother, saluting.

The tribesman eyed him cautiously.

Fairbrother supposed he recognized the friendly Xhosa greeting, even if the Zulu were different.

‘Yebo, sawubona!’

The words were unfamiliar, but Fairbrother fancied the raised spear was greeting enough. He would try the simplest Xhosa by return. ‘Colonel Hervey, here, commands a detachment of King George’s army.’ He indicated the royal representative.

The Zulu put the point of the spear to his chest. ‘Igama lami nguMatiwane!’

Fairbrother saluted again. ‘Ndiyavuya ukukwazi, Matiwane.’ He had learned the Zulu’s name (Matiwane); was he the cohort’s chief? He would press to know the reason for their advance. ‘You come to see your brothers the Xhosa?’

While Fairbrother continued his halting exchange, Hervey took in all that he could of the extraordinary scene. He marked that the Zulu could see the troop on the ridge, a quarter of a mile away. They watched warily, like some animal when a distant predator appeared. Perhaps the horses did indeed make them uneasy? For all Hervey knew, this Matiwane might believe the horses could leap at him in seconds, like the leopard, with many thousands more of them waiting to pounce, all hidden the other side of the hill. But even as he watched them parley he became aware that the columns were not absolutely motionless. He glanced left and right. He could not actually see the Zulu moving, only somehow that there had been movement. He glanced left and right again. The progress was now evident, as must be the purpose: the Zulu were moving to encircle them. And they would not need to complete the circle: it would only take a rush before long and their line of withdrawal would be closed. He must act at once.

He held up a hand. ‘Sharply, about turn and away!’

Fairbrother made to protest, but Hervey gave him no chance. They turned and galloped like the devil, Sam Kirwan leading.

The same blood-chilling moan followed them, like a thousand angry wasps in an echo-chamber. Hervey did not turn. He pressed Gilbert as hard as he could, but feeling with every stride that something was amiss. As they got within hailing distance of the crest at a struggling canter, the gelding stumbled once, and then again, and then tumbled on to the forearm, throwing Hervey clean from the saddle.

At once Wainwright faced about, the only man between the Zulu now and his commanding officer. Corporal Dilke circled, Fairbrother turned and jumped down beside his friend, and Sam Kirwan sprang from his nappy little mare to do what he could for the fallen gelding.

‘No good, Hervey. An aneurism. He might recover, but—’

Hervey knew. The Zulu were not a furlong away, loping towards them as if the ground were as flat as a cricket field. He looked at Gilbert, his companion of many an affair. The gelding’s nostrils flared, and his eyes stared crazily. Hervey reached for one of the pistols in the saddle holsters. It was loaded, tamped, ready. He took the other, pushed it into his belt, knelt by Gilbert’s neck, lifted his head in his left arm and put the pistol into the fossa above the right eye.

‘Goodbye, old man,’ he said, softly but quite audibly. Then he pulled back the hammer and squeezed the trigger.

Before the smoke began to clear, Johnson was holding Hervey’s second horse not ten feet away. ‘Molly, sir.’

Hervey watched the last twitch of Gilbert’s shoulder, then rose and vaulted into the mare’s saddle. The Zulu were now but fifty yards away and the moan had become a deep-throated, menacing roar.

They galloped for their lives.

As they reached the temporary safety of the troop line, Fearnley gave the order to present carbines: if the Zulu did not recognize the danger in five-dozen muzzles, they would soon receive a lesson.

‘Capital, Mr Fearnley,’ gasped Hervey, still winded, but perfectly calm. ‘One volley, and then to the flank. Clear the line of the Rifles’ fire quick as you can.’

Fearnley saluted as Hervey spurred his mare between two dragoons, both of whom looked eager to practise their musketry.

He heard the volley as he galloped on to the Rifles.

‘All ready, Captain Welsh?’ he called as he pulled up beside him.

‘All ready, Colonel,’ replied Welsh, equally composed.

Hervey could not be surprised. It was the baptism of fire for the company as a whole, but enough of the riflemen had seen some sort of action. ‘Capital. They come on in single file, a dozen or so. I hope Fearnley will be able to break them up for you a little.’

‘We’ll do a little of that for ourselves too,’ said Welsh mysteriously.

Hervey looked at him, curious.

‘Did you not see the skirmishers as you galloped past?’

Hervey had not, and even when Welsh pointed them out he had difficulty seeing them. He smiled. ‘I should have known. Exactly as the Ninety-fifth would have done it.’

‘No. Better than would the Ninety-fifth. These are picked men – sharpshooters, snipers. And they have two rifles apiece.’

Hervey nodded approvingly. The black-powder smoke would too soon give away their position, but four well- aimed shots in rapid succession would surely tell. ‘How many?’

‘A dozen.’

They would serve very well. Hervey nodded again but said nothing.

And then came the most decided lump in his throat. Gilbert was not Jessye, but they’d been together a good many years … and now that handsome grey’s carcase would be defiled by a swarm of savages, hacking off that fine mane and flowing tail…