Company Of Spears

How the order was communicated to that blood-hotted host Hervey had no idea, but they turned as one. They had not run twenty yards, however, when the third volley caught them, a ripple of fire as the new-loaded rifles found a fleeing target.

‘Now, Fearnley, now!’ cried Hervey, as if his lieutenant might hear.

Lieutenant Fearnley was of the same mind, however. The troop surged forward, quick to the canter and then gallop.

‘Stand fast, Rifles!’ shouted Hervey as he pressed his mare forward.

The troop galloped into the left flank of the struggling Zulu, taking them by utter surprise. Hervey saw the sabres lowered – the point for infantry (the edge for cavalry) – and then the opportunity cuts as the dragoons drove through the ragged line. As he closed with the melee he picked out a crouching Zulu, shield up and iklwa menacing. He took him with a neat Cut Two from behind, severing the shield arm, before turning and taking another with the same cut, using his reach to slice the spear arm at the wrist without coming in range of the point. He galloped on towards the crest while the troop continued to sweep it left to right, Fairbrother, Sam Kirwan, Wainwright and Dilke hard on his heels. There was but one sure way to discover what lay on the other side of the hill.

The sight from the crest set the rats racing in his stomach faster than ever. Not a hundred yards off and coming fast up the slope was a line at least as long as the one they had just faced. And beyond was another, and beyond that another, and then another: five lines in all – perhaps four thousand warriors; perhaps even more.

‘Christ!’ he spat, and turned hard. ‘Sound “rally”, Corporal Dilke!’

Dilke pulled up to blow. He could do it at the gallop right enough – at a field day. But the price of blowing ill here was too great. And it was not an easy call: semi-quavers and octave leaps. He would blow till he saw the troop rallying.

He did not see the Zulu playing dead twenty yards away. He did not see him coming flat like the leopard when it runs in for its prey. Nor the fast, furious sprint to the kill. Nor the iklwa, as it stabbed at his side, under his rib cage, deep into his vitals: eight whole inches when four would have been fatal.

He let out no cry, but the ‘rally’ ceased abruptly on the long, final C.

XXV

THE COLOUR OF DANGER

Next morning

‘Very well, Mr Fearnley: exactly as before!’

Lieutenant Fearnley squinted into the low, eastern sun and touched his shako in acknowledgement.

They had been in the saddle all night. The Zulu had swept over the ridge i’mpondo zankhomo: in the ‘beast’s horns’ formation. Hervey had never seen such an envelopment before. And if he had obliged them and held his ground longer, the tips of the horns would have met and his force would have been trapped in a killing-circle. By some instinct he had sensed the danger in time, recalled the troop, remounted the Rifles and withdrawn in good order to the next piece of high ground. There he had recovered his balance, so to speak. He concluded that Matiwane had used his first cohort (ivyo, as later he would know it) to probe the strength of his unexpected adversary. He had used brave men’s breasts to discover the awful power of the rifle, and it looked as if he were prepared to use many more to overcome it. Hervey knew it would not be possible to stand again in the way he had, for Matiwane could be no fool. He was certainly not without resolve. Even with the speed of the horse in his favour, Hervey could not be sure he could afford a close action when the Zulu were so practised in enveloping.

And so his three hundred had kept watch in the moonlight, the Rifles firing the occasional harassing volley, dragoons and riflemen retiring steadily along their former line of advance, never giving the Zulu a chance to rush them or work round a flank. Sometime after midnight Matiwane had discontinued the advance in line, reverting to the single file of the ivyo, easier to control and direct. And now, at the break of the new day and the veld coming to life, as the raptors began seeking out the first columns of warm air on which to rise to their own posts of observation (how Hervey envied them their elevation), they must begin the game again, and continue until Colonel Somerset and his red-coated battalion, with the artillery, the burghers and the legions of Xhosa, came up and delivered the decisive blow.

As soon as they had broken off the first engagement, Hervey had sent back a cornet to report to Somerset, and with orders to return as soon as possible after first light with Somerset’s intentions, for he wanted as good an idea as possible how long ‘the game’ must continue. He was surprised, however, to see him galloping back now.

‘Mr Beauchamp, you were up with the larks, I perceive.’

‘Colonel,’ replied Cornet Beauchamp, saluting and trying not to appear too eager. Yesterday was his first time in action, and his mission to Colonel Somerset his first as a galloper.

Hervey, sitting at ease astride his mare, a canteen of Johnson’s best tea in his sword hand, touched his shako peak by return.

‘Colonel Somerset’s compliments, sir, and would you see the Zulu to the Ox River one league to our rear. He will give battle there.’

Hervey sat up. ‘One league? Only one league? Are you sure? Then they marched prodigiously quick!’

‘Colonel. I came on them just before midnight not five miles from the river. I would have made them earlier but my mare went lame.’

Hervey wondered why Beauchamp had not at once taken his coverman’s horse; but that could wait.

‘After I had given Colonel Somerset your report he said they would continue the march and asked me to lead – he said he was uncertain of his guides – and we reached the river at about four o’clock. The moon was gone by then but we carried out a reconnaissance of the fords, and the colonel decided that he would stand on the defensive there on the west bank. I considered that it was proper to remain with the colonel during the reconnaissance since I would then be able to inform you precisely of the situation. I set out as soon as it was expedient. Colonel.’

Hervey nodded. ‘I don’t doubt it. You did right. How many Xhosa, by the way?’

‘Colonel Somerset said seven thousand.’

Hervey sighed – to himself, but with considerable relief. ‘Very well, Mr Beauchamp; you may rejoin your troop. Smart work.’

Johnson gave the cornet tea as he reined away.

Hervey turned to Fairbrother, who was observing the flight of distant vultures. ‘You heard that? Somerset at the river but a league back!’

Fairbrother kept his telescope to his eye. ‘I did indeed. Very gratifying. Colonel Somerset has vigour; I’ll grant you that.’

‘You might sound more convinced – or convincing.’

With no Zulu in sight, Hervey now dismounted and signalled for the troop to stand down.

‘What do you look at so intently?’

‘Yon birds. I’ve observed in the past that they can be useful.’

Hervey was well enough acquainted with vultures. In India there were so many, and carrion so plentiful, it was their absence only that was remarked. ‘How so?’

‘They’re scavengers, but I’ve long observed that it is the living which first attracts them, not the dead – which they might not always see, though they must have a hawk-eye like their cousins. It is the natural order of things on the veld: the living continually become the dead.’

Hervey was unfastening the bit to give his mare a peck of corn. ‘Fairbrother, neither of us has had any sleep, so I beg you to be brief.’