I
THE LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR
The spearhead sliced through the blue serge of Private Parks's tunic, driving deep into his chest. The dragoon, wide-eyed at the sudden, silent assault, tumbled from the saddle like a recruit at first riding school, dead before his feet quit the stirrups. He lay with the spear stuck fast, and barely a twitch, at the feet of his troop horse, which stood still throughout as if possessed of the same paralysing shock.
Sir Eyre Somervile, lieutenant-governor of the Cape Colony, fumbled with the cartridge for his cavalry pistol. Serjeant-Major Armstrong's sabre flashed from its scabbard. The covermen closed to Somervile's side, swords drawn, to quieten his excited little arab. Serjeant Wainwright unshipped his carbine, cocked and aimed it in a single motion, more machinelike than human, and fired.
The spearman was sent to meet his Maker with the same rude promptness of Parks's own despatch.
A second
But the impact knocked the sabre clean from Allott's hand to hang by the sword knot from his jarred wrist. Before he could recover it another Xhosa darted from the thicket and between his horse's legs, thrusting with his spear to hamstring Somervile's arab. Armstrong spurred to his side and cut savagely at the back of the Xhosa's neck as he scrambled from beneath. The razor-sharp blade left but a few bloody sinews joining head to torso. The Xhosa staggered, then fell twitching in a gory, faecal sprawl.
Somervile jumped from the saddle to check his mare's leg.
'No, sir!' cried Armstrong. 'Get back up!'
Two more Xhosa ran in. Armstrong cut down one but the other lunged straight for Somervile. The nearside coverman, Corporal Hardy, urged his trooper forward to get his sabre to the guard, but couldn't make it. An arm's reach from his quarry, the Xhosa lofted his spear. Somervile could smell the animal odour of his fury as he raised his ball-less pistol, and fired.
At an arm's length the blank discharge was enough. Flame and powder grain scored the Xhosa's face, blinding him so that he jabbed wildly but ineffectually with his spear until Corporal Hardy put him out of his frenzied agony with a cleaving slice from crown to chin.
The little arab hobbled a few steps, her off-foreleg held up pitiably as if begging. Hardy jumped from the saddle. 'Sir, here!' He grabbed Somervile by the arm and motioned for him to mount.
Somervile, more exasperated than dazed, made to protest, but Armstrong decided it. 'Get up, sir! Get astride!'
Hardy heaved Somervile's paunchy bulk into his trooper's saddle, as with a deep-throated cry more Xhosa burst from the cover of the bushwillow thicket twenty yards away.
There was no time to front with carbine or pistol; it was for each to do as he could. Serjeant Wainwright, nearest, spurred straight at them, sword and carbine in hand, reins looped over his left arm. He parried the spear on his right a split second before the one on the left thrust through his canvas barrel belt and into his side. He fired the carbine point-blank, taking off the top of the spearman's head like a badly sliced egg, and then carved deep between the shoulders of the first Xhosa with a backhand cut. His trooper halted a few strides beyond, and Wainwright slid helplessly from the saddle, leaving a broad red stripe down the grey's flank.
The remaining spearmen pressed home the attack with a courage and determination Armstrong had not seen in Xhosa before. He turned his mare just in time to get the reach with his sword arm, swinging his sabre with all his strength down behind the nearest shield, all but severing the Xhosa's wrist.
Piet Doorn, burgher-guide, coming back up the trail from checking for spoor, fired his big Hall rifle at fifty yards, felling the tallest Xhosa, but the three others sprang at Somervile and his covermen like leopards on the fold. Corporal Allott, sabre now in left hand, made not even a retaliatory cut, the spear plunging into his gut and pushing him clean from the saddle. Corporal Hardy dived between the little arab's legs to slash at the nearest bare, black heel. The Xhosa staggered momentarily but just long enough for Somervile to urge his new mount forward, tumbling and trampling him like a corn rig.
The last Xhosa hesitated, as if unsure of his target rather than whether to fight or run, in which time Armstrong had closed with him to drive the point of his blade deep into his side, bowling him over to writhe in a bloody pool which spread with uncommon speed. Now Armstrong could risk turning his back on him to despatch Somervile's tumbled assailant.
But the Xhosa had no fight left in him. His hands and eyes pleaded.
Armstrong gestured with his sabre. 'Bind him up, Corp' Hardy. We'll take him a prize.' He turned to Somervile. 'You all right, sir?' he asked in an accent so strong as to sound strangely alien.
But Somervile knew that it was action that revealed the man, and if Armstrong reverted to the Tyne in such a moment, then so be it: without his address they would none of them be alive. Could they
Armstrong was already taking stock. 'Corp' Hardy, watch rear, the way we came. Piet, go look ahead, will you? Stand sentry.'
Piet Doorn nodded as he tamped the new charge in his rifle.
Armstrong sprang from the saddle and looked in turn at Corporal Allott and Private Parks, satisfying himself there was no sign of life, before making for where Serjeant Wainwright lay.
'Jobie, Jobie!' he said sharply, shaking Wainwright's shoulder as if it were reveille.
There was no response.
Yet blood was still running from the wound. 'Come on, Jobie, lad – rouse yerself!' said Armstrong quietly but insistently, unfastening Wainwright's barrel-belt, taking off his own neckcloth to staunch the flow of blood.
Somervile was now by his side. 'Brandy, do you think, Serjeant-Major?'
