Warrior

'Gradely, sir, gradely.'

'The sar'nt-major?'

'He were poorly for a bit after us fight wi' them Kaffirs, but 'e's in right fine fettle now, sir.'

Hervey saw 'Bugle' Roddis emerge purposefully from the orderly room to sound the midday watering call. Roddis had been a recruit when they came out to the Cape, but he was troop trumpeter now, since Corporal Dilke's death by the Zulu spear.

He watched him take post like a veteran. The man was not yet twenty, but he had been uncommonly steady in his first action; he had blown accurately when the lives of many had depended on it. And the dragoons had christened him, thus, 'Bugle', for the bugle rather than the trumpet was used for mounted calls on account of the carry of its extra octave.

The noon gun fired from the signal hill a mile to the north-west, though it sounded closer in the giant bowl that was Cape Town. Roddis began the call – by no means an easy one with its low 'G'.

Hervey had no great ear for music, but he knew the difference between a good and an indifferent call; and 'Bugle' sounded it well, with not once a cracked note. Here was efficiency, he marked with satisfaction. Somervile's strictures were not wholly deserved.

The troop mustered by divisions in front of their stable blocks.

'Parade state, Corporal Battle?'

It was not strictly the picket corporal's business to have the morning parade states to hand, but Battle took out his notebook. 'Seventy-five rank and file on parade, sir, and six officers. Fourteen rank and file sick. Total ninety-five, sir.'

Hervey nodded. Not too bad a muster.

'Sixty-eight troop horses and five chargers fit for duty, sir. Thirteen troopers sick. Total eighty-one, sir.'

That number again: eighty-one! A world away from Six . . . 'Thirteen sick?' he forced himself to ask.

'Sir. Nought special, though.'

By which Hervey knew he meant nothing too life-threatening. 'End of winter . . . It could be worse. Thank you, Corporal Battle. Dismiss.'

'Sir!' Battle sprang back to attention and saluted with the same vigour as before.

Hervey returned the salute less formally, and smiled to himself. Battle, he knew, wanted his third stripes more than most dragoons wanted a drink after stand-down. It must daily go hard with him to have a man five years his junior – Wainwright – give him orders. But Battle, for all his cheeriness and capability, had liked a drop or two as a younger man, and occasionally a drop too many. And so the stitches of his single tapes – always a lonely and precarious badge of very limited authority – had been unpicked two or three times before finally he had mastered his temper long enough to gain a second, which substantive authority had then induced in him a determined ambition.

Watering was not a formal parade, more a count of heads. Every man knew his duty, which did not as a rule vary from day to day, and so there was no call for the snapping and barking which characterized the morning muster. It was an occasion for the officers to speak words of encouragement or impart news. They were not on parade, but attended by custom, and Hervey now saw the little group of lieutenants and cornets, and Captain the Honourable Stafford Brereton, come out of the orderly room. They were deep in confabulation.

And then from behind the nearest stable block appeared Armstrong, marching briskly in his direction. Hervey smiled. It amused him to think how, in the space of mere moments, Corporal Battle had found and alerted the serjeant-major to the return of the officer commanding. For a second or so it made easier what was to come.

Armstrong halted and saluted – sharp, but not the exaggerated manner of Battle's. 'Good afternoon, sir! Leave to carry on, sir, please!'

'Carry on, Sar'nt-Major,' said Hervey, nodding his greeting by return.

It was good to be able to say that again, knowing that this old NCO friend (of more years' close acquaintance than most officers now with the regiment) would carry on whatever that duty – like Bathsheba's husband, faithful unto death. Except that that was the least apt of comparisons, Bathsheba and Caithlin Armstrong, for Caithlin's life had been without blemish.

He shook himself: Brereton and the officers approached.

He returned their greetings with as easy an air as he could manage, though he found himself searching Brereton's face more intently than he might normally.

There were the usual exchanges, and then Brereton said, 'It is well that you are back, Colonel. We hear rumours of a campaign.'

'Not so much a campaign as an expedition,' replied Hervey, wondering if Brereton's tone revealed disquiet. And the honour 'Colonel' discomfited him, too. It was correct enough, in that he held the rank of acting lieutenant- colonel, but the rank came with his appointment to command of the Mounted Rifles, and thereafter the substantive rank would be with the infantry; he would not now, rightly, hear the honour on the lips of a dragoon.

But what was all this compared with the calamity that was about to befall Armstrong? From the corner of his eye he could see him, watching like a hawk as the dragoons dismissed to their watering duties. Armstrong was master of his world; and in a few minutes that world would be no more. He could hardly bear the thought of what he must do – like going to an old horse with a peck of corn in one hand and a pistol in the other.

'Brereton, I would speak quietly on a matter with the sar'ntmajor, and then perhaps you would be good enough to join me in the officers' house?'

'Of course.'

Hervey left them and made his way to where Armstrong stood eyeing the farrier's struggle with one of the stallions, which needed twitching to take the tooth rasp.