Warrior

north, the velocity of the flood took the pair back towards the southern bank. Hervey would have been grateful for any landing, but then as suddenly as they had first been swept midstream, the river swung east again, and he and Pampata, like a billiard ball on and then off the cushion, were carried towards the north bank.

Not knowing how deep was the water even at the river's edge, for he could feel nothing beneath his feet, Hervey let go of the tree in faith, and grasped for the root of a lala palm projecting just far enough for him to reach with his left arm at fullest stretch.

The pain in his shoulder – whether by the leopard's claws or the great weight of water – almost made him let go. Pampata, who had not once struggled in their tumble downstream, content to place her life in the arms of this stranger whom she called brother, now saw what she must do, and with a strength that defied explanation pulled herself along his outstretched arm to the tree root. The weight that had pinned him now shed, and his right arm free at last, Hervey was able to hold on with both hands, and together they edged along the root to the bank, until at last they could drag themselves clear of the water – in utter exhaustion.

They lay a good while, side by side, without speaking. Hervey did not even open his eyes. Mbopa's men were a mile and more away; they might have been a hundred. They certainly could not know where he and Pampata were. And the sun's warmth was healing . . .

'Ukhululekile?' he asked at length.

He thought he asked if she were 'all right', if she were 'well'. He asked, however, if she were 'comfortable'.

Pampata had lost her cloak, but it was not cold lying on the ground, not in the warmth of the sun and the satisfaction of the escape. 'Ngikhona . . . I am there, mfowethu.'

She said it in a strange way: in a way that spoke of a threshold crossed.

* * *

Slowly, but very surely, as the afternoon sun replenished them, they sat up and looked about at their unexpected haven. Then, rising to their feet, they surveyed the Thukela, their saviour and (they prayed) now their guardian. They looked towards the country they must enter, a hillier, more broken country than hitherto. And then Pampata turned back to him, and pointed to his scabbard, the blood long washed away, and asked why it had run red.

He told her. And in telling her he felt ill at ease, for he had killed her fellow Zulu, for all that they would have killed both of them.

Pampata, too, seemed distracted. Her arms fell to her sides, and she gazed at him distantly.

He could not meet her gaze. Instead, he took off his tunic and offered it to her.

She thanked him, and said that she had no need, and that she could not wear the mantle of a warrior – that she was unworthy to wear it.

Hervey fumbled with his words, but managed to say that he had met no braver woman.

And in their incomprehension of each other's exact meaning, they resumed their journey, silent.

Two days and two nights they marched, sometimes wearily uphill, sometimes in a jogtrot which was easier than picking up one foot after the other. They encountered few men or boys, and only a handful of women. Even the beasts of the field hid themselves. When they did come across a herdsman, or a woman carrying water, there was no alarm – only curiosity at a woman travelling alone with so strange a thing as a man with a white face. Only once, when curiosity looked as if it might become a challenge, did Pampata have to show the little spear, and its effect was immediate and powerful; she could have possessed no better laissez-passer. And all whom they met were generous with what they carried – dried meat, honey, maize cakes, milk – so that both of them were able to journey without the declining strength which Hervey had earlier feared.

They crossed the Umhlatuzi with ease, as Pampata predicted they would. It was but a stream compared with the Thukela, for as she explained, it was not born of uKhahlamba, the barrier of spears. Like the Inonoti, it sprang – or rather, seeped – from the ground, just as blood from the finger at the prick of a thorn.

But although they had maize and meat, Hervey saw that Pampata's gait was becoming uneven. She protested it was not, and would not let him speak of it, but in the afternoon of the third day, as they climbed to the plateau of Esi-Klebeni, Shaka's birthplace, she could no longer conceal her distress, and he grasped her arm, forcing her to halt.

When he knelt and took her feet, he could scarce believe she had been able to walk at all, for there were abrasions of every degree. She hung her head a while, as if despairing, before throwing it back defiantly and saying she would use the medicine of the inyaga impi, the war doctor, pointing at the green all about them. 'Here will be u-joye,' she said insistently, 'the warrior's relief.'

And so she limped painfully about the slopes of Esi-Klebeni until they found the medicinal shrub, and Hervey picked the dark green leaves which reminded him so much of his boyhood nettling, though they were much larger, and Pampata crushed them to a fine pulp between two stones, and then Hervey smoothed the poulticepulp on the soles of her feet and between her toes, and laid her down so that the medicine could work its power.

She lay for an hour, no more, and during that time Hervey scouted for a mile along the slopes for any distant sign of Mbopa's men. But there was none. When Pampata rose and said she would continue, he told her there was no one following them – not, at least, within range of striking them unawares – and that they might lessen their speed. She bowed, but within half an hour she had resumed the pace of before. Only when a thick mist descended on the plateau did they slow, but it did not prevent their taking many a wrong turn, so that by nightfall he supposed they had made no more than half the true progress their efforts deserved.

Indeed, he was downcast, to a degree that overtook his resolution to think only of what lay ahead. No matter that the dragoons had been under Brereton's orders: they were his dragoons, his troop, Brereton merely having the temporary honour of command. He bore responsibility for their death, if only that he had not taken radical action in his doubts about Brereton's capacity for command. No one would blame him, of course (and certainly not formally); the system was the system. If Brereton was in command, then his was the responsibility. But he could not absolve himself so easily. And in Johnson's case, his was the responsibility alone. Johnson had been under his orders, not Brereton's.

There came a terrible, sick feeling in his gut. He could not care less whose was the responsibility: Johnson was dead, and that was the fact of it. His old dragoon-friend, as old a friend as Armstrong or Collins (and more intimate, in truth, for all the distance between their stations) had fallen to a Zulu spear, ill- equipped to parry on account of his long years of body-service. He ought to have been there with him. If he had been there with him, the Zulu would never have taken them by surprise.