Warrior

He took the cartridge bag from the saddle and began reloading as he walked back towards the slaughter.

He fired three times – and three more Zulu fell. Only when he was too close to reload again did he perceive the danger, or that there was no dragoon still standing.

Hervey, hearing the first shot, had made to rise, but stopped himself just in time as warriors began running from the isigodlo in alarm.

One shot: what was Brereton doing?

And then three more.

But all he could do was wait – and trust to Brereton to deal with whatever it was.

They lay a long ten minutes. When at last he thought it safe enough, they began to crawl towards the inner line of huts. From here they were able to work their way, one hut to another, to the edge of the isigodlo, and thence dash, crouching, round its thorn fence to the serving-girls' entrance in the outer thorn fence on the far side of the kraal. They crawled on hands and knees for three hundred yards, and then another hundred, leopard-like, through the long, ungrazed grass just without the kraal, which was reserved for the serving-girls to gather flowers, to a bushy rise to the north-west. He reckoned he might be able to see the troop from here.

He peered above the waist-high grass, but could see nothing. What was Brereton doing? All he had told him to do was watch the kraal. Had he taken off in pursuit of Mbopa's men?

They crawled onto the forward slope, to a wild pear tree. He rose to his feet, out of sight of the kraal, to gain a clearer view.

He froze. His gut felt as if it had been torn open. Even without his telescope he could see – Zulu, a hundred and more, stripping the dead like the peasants at Waterloo. Here and there a troop horse stood obligingly. The rest were vulture meat.

There would be no human survivors. This much he knew. And Johnson would be there. What could have happened that twenty men were overwhelmed, and but a few shots? If some had got away, where were they now? Why could they not show themselves? The Zulu could not touch them beyond a spear's throw. Why, in that case, had those who escaped not just retired out of range to fight back with the carbine? Even if Brereton had lost his head there was Serjeant Hardy . . . No; Hardy was with Somervile. He had insisted that Hardy go as first cover. But there was Connell . . .

He lowered himself to his forearms again, his face drained of all colour, his eyes misted. Johnson – his old friend, Georgiana's old friend, Henrietta's: he had not drawn a sabre or carbine in years. This was no sort of death for his old friend. It was no death for anyone. Not a soldier's death with but four shots. Had they been duped? Had the Zulu approached them under parley flag, and then turned on them treacherously? How could he know? How would he ever know, unless he caught Mbopa and made him speak the truth?

Pampata had also observed; and she saw his look. She pulled at his shoulder. 'Come.'

Slowly, reluctantly, but knowing that he must, he did as Pampata bid, numb with the sense that a part of him had been torn away . . .

They were on their feet now, stumbling down a gulley towards a thicket of fig trees, Pampata leading. When they reached the bottom, a startled bush pig shot from the undergrowth, and between them, faster than Hervey could draw his sword or even sidestep. It jolted him awake like a carriage wheel in a pothole. He looked about, sabre in hand, as if wishing for an opponent with whom to test it, then turned for the cover of the fig trees, where Pampata was already concealing herself. Here he could think over his – their – predicament, see what actions lay open to them, decide his plan.

His first thoughts were whether Mbopa's men would be looking for them. Had he been observed with the half troop, before they had slipped into the kraal? If he had been, then Mbopa would soon discover that his body did not lie with the others. And what of Pampata? Would Mbopa know that she had come into the camp last night? He was thankful that her overalls and cape – mere functionals when she had put them on – served as some disguise. He concluded it was unlikely that Mbopa would suppose he was at large, but that his henchmen would be trying to find Pampata. That, indeed, was what she had said last night, that Mbopa would hunt her down – as he would Shaka's child?

But Pampata was not merely concealing herself; she was plucking fruit, filling the pouch that hung at her waist. He asked her why she did this, for the figs were unripened, hard as iron, and she answered – as far as he understood her – that if they chewed the pith of the fig it would ward off sleep, and that they would have need of its fortification if they were to travel to Ngwadi's kraal.

This assumption, Ngwadi's kraal their destination, he balked at. Somervile had not too many hours' start on them, and if there were any loose horses they would likely as not be following, for horses had a sort of sixth, herding, sense. Perhaps he would be able to catch one of them. In any case, Somervile would stay a while at Nonoti, the chief minister's kraal. He and Pampata would be able to make the ten miles or so before dark, and he was sure Somervile would not risk a night march from Nonoti. And even if Somervile did press on to Ngwadi's kraal, without resting at Nonoti, then he and Pampata would at least have Ngomane's protection, a man they could trust.

Except he was not certain he could trust this chief minister. That Pampata did was reassuring, but it was not definitive. It was only natural that she should be seeking someone of her own tribe in whom to trust, for it was not enough for the white man alone to be her protector. And what would be the outcome if they were to go to Nonoti, finding that Somervile had left already? They would not know the success or otherwise of his embassy until it was too late. And so, reluctantly, like Pampata he concluded that the safest course was that which was most arduous – Ngwadi's kraal.

'How do you know the way?' he tried.

In truth, Pampata had no difficulty with his Xhosa, for what they had to speak of was so elementary that the words were almost the same as her Zulu. And her Zulu, once he had accustomed his ear to the pronunciation, was not so very difficult to follow – especially since she seemed to have infinite patience in making herself understood.

She replied that she knew every hill and stream, that she could take him there by night, even.

He studied her for a moment; a considerable moment. A hundred miles was a prodigious distance. But it was not such an impossible thing to believe, perhaps, for did he not know the Great Plain in Wiltshire as well? It was not a hundred miles – not even fifty – but its folds and ridges, which might look the same to a stranger's eye, were to