Company Of Spears mh-8

by Allan Mallinson

  ‘Did you ever think of being anything but a soldier, Hervey?’

  It was a very sudden change in the degree of their intimacy. Hervey was quite taken aback. And yet, sitting here in the alien darkness, owing his life – almost certainly – to this man (and in all likelihood, too, dependent on his judgement to see them safely away), it could not be other than natural. And, indeed, welcome. ‘I don’t believe I did.’

  ‘Nor any second thoughts since, I imagine.’

  Hervey thought for a moment, and decided on candour. ‘Once, yes: nine years ago after the death of my wife. I resigned and was an ordinary subject of His Majesty – for a year and more.’

  ‘My dear Hervey,’ began Fairbrother, the tautness in his voice at once apparent, ‘I owe you the greatest of apologies for what I asked about grieving for a woman.’

  Hervey shook his head gently, as if Fairbrother might see. ‘And yet, time does bring its balm. I am able for the most part to think of her now with a happy composure. Even three years ago I could not have done so.’

  ‘And – I press you impertinently, no doubt – there has been no other claim on your affection?’

  The intimacy had progressed to a degree Hervey had not imagined possible. He found it warming. ‘I am to be married.’

  ‘Indeed! Then I am most happy for you. May I ask who is the lady?’

  ‘Of course you may ask. She is my former commanding officer’s widow. He was killed in India.’

  ‘Fighting alongside you at Bhurtpore?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Fairbrother nodded. ‘I had heard of the custom,’ he said, respectfully. ‘The widow of a fellow officer: it is most noble.’

  Hervey balked at the assumption of nobility. ‘Truly, Fairbrother, you presume too much again! I do not marry out of duty.’ He found himself hesitating. ‘That is, I do not marry out of duty to my commanding officer’s widow.’

  Fairbrother was pained. ‘I do not presume, my friend. I do not presume by speaking of noble motives that there is any absence of love. A man’s motives may be mixed, but it is not to say they are consequentially ignoble.’

  ‘I take no offence.’

  Indeed he did not. He wished only for no questioning of his feelings towards Kezia Lankester. In truth, he was only yet discovering them for himself.

  Hervey woke with a start. He seized his pistols and began making for Corporal Wainwright.

  ‘Hold fire! It is I, Fairbrother!’

  Hervey, numb with the peculiar sensation that sudden wakefulness brought, could not make out where the shouts came from, or why. ‘Wainwright?’

  ‘Here, sir!’

  He groped his way in the pitch darkness to where Corporal Wainwright crouched, carbine levelled. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It is I, Fairbrother; give me a voice!’

  Hervey hesitated. It made no sense; and yet this was the man who had saved his life. ‘Here, Fairbrother, here!’

  He repeated the call, twice, until after what seemed an age, Fairbrother reached him. Hervey could just make out a second figure. ‘What—’

  ‘Xhosa. There are two more, dead, yonder in the scrub.’ He pushed the man down, commanding him to sit: ‘Hlala phantsi!’

  ‘How in God’s name—’

  ‘Your Corporal Wainwright reported a noise,’ he said, breathless.

  ‘And you walked out and found them?’

  ‘I crawled out; circled across their line. They weren’t difficult to find. I could smell them. And they will stand erect.’ He held a long knife in his hand. He dropped to one knee and put it to the Xhosa’s neck. ‘Tell me, who are you? How many?’

  ‘Izinto azimntaka Ngqika zonke.’

  Fairbrother jabbed in the point further, almost breaking the skin. ‘Do not sport with me!’

  ‘What does he say?’ whispered Hervey.

  ‘He says it is not everyone who is a son of Gaika. It’s a saying they have: he means not everyone is fortunate.’

  Fairbrother began fingering the Xhosa’s necklace.

  ‘Lion claws. Well, well. Methinks he protests too much.’ He jabbed the Xhosa’s neck again. ‘Not everyone is a son of Gaika, but you are!’

  The man made no sound. He dare not deny his affinity with so great a chief.

  ‘Bull’s-eye, Hervey! God only knows how many Xhosa there are in that scrub, but they’ll be powerfully determined to be in on us now. Our best chance is to set light to one of the fires so they’ll know he’ll be a dead Gaika’s son if they attack.’

  It went against Hervey’s every instinct to light up the camp when they were not being attacked: the Xhosa could stand off and observe them all night, counting the odds, reckoning an assault would be an easy affair. Yet what option did they have, for the attack must now surely come? ‘Light the fire,’ he said.

  ‘Pandours’ve ‘oofed it, sir!’ came Johnson’s cheery report.

  Corporal Wainwright fired his carbine and then reached for the pistols at his belt.

  In the flash from the second shot Hervey saw a Xhosa fall. ‘Good shooting,’ he said quietly. ‘Now the fire.’

  Wainwright struck a match, searched a few seconds for the powder trail and then lit it. The flame ran fast and strong, and the dry brushwood, sprinkled liberally with more powder, exploded in a fiery crackle.

  Fairbrother immediately began dragging his captive towards the blaze, knife still at his throat. ‘Let them have a good look first,’ he growled.

  Hervey had already decided they couldn’t sit it out, not with the two pandours gone. ‘Johnson, get the torches and bring five horses.’

  ‘Ay, sir.’

  It took him a quarter of an hour – which seemed an age. Meanwhile the fire gave a strong and steady light, so there were no false alarms. Wainwright, his carbine reloaded, turned about continuously, slowly, to cover any approach. Hervey explained his intention meanwhile: they would walk towards Trompetter’s Drift until it was safe, and then they would outdistance the Xhosa in a mounted dash. They had six torches – if Johnson could find them: one and a spare he would take himself to lead; two torches Johnson would have for Fairbrother, and the other two Wainwright would carry at the rear. The Xhosa from whose shoulder they had removed the ball would be left by the fire: there his fellow tribesmen would see him, and Hervey’s obligation to a prisoner would be discharged.

  ‘ ’Ere, sir!’

  Hervey could not see a thing except what the fire illuminated, his night eyes quite gone.

  ‘Can you come closer?’

  ‘I’ll try, but one of ’em’s being a dog!’

  Hervey edged towards the voice, sabre drawn (a pistol would need reloading). He smelled the horse sweat before he could make out the shapes. ‘Well done, Johnson. Five in hand: the sarn’t-major shall hear of it!’

  ‘That’s all right then.’

  Hervey could picture the expression on Johnson’s face. Things were becoming desperate, yet there was no cause for despair for as long as the Sixth remained the Sixth, however small a detachment or far-flung. ‘Where are the torches?’

  ‘Under t’stirrup leathers, sir – fust three on mi left.’

  Hervey felt his way until he found the end horse’s saddle, uncrossed the stirrup leathers and took one of the torches. He found his matches, struck one and held it to the tar-cloth. In a minute or so the flame had taken a good hold. ‘Follow me.’

  The horses were untroubled by the torch, which was as well since every one of the party would have his hands full. By the light of the fire, Hervey distributed the reins and the other two torches, told Johnson the plan, found his bearings and with no more than a ‘good luck!’ made ready to strike out for the trail they had come by from Trompetter’s Drift.

  The captive Xhosa, his hands now bound, and prompted by the point of the knife, shouted something half defiant, half pleading. ‘Abantu

  Hervey started.

  ‘He says what I told him to say,’ rasped Fairbrother. ‘That I’d cut his throat if any of them tried to stop us.’


  ‘Has he said how many of them there are?’

  ‘A dozen or so. But how can you believe a man with a knife at his throat?’

  Hervey smiled to himself. What fortune had brought them together, this man so skilled in the ways of ruth-lessness, and of fieldcraft, and yet of such sensibility? And how had these qualities been dismissed to the Half-Pay List?

  For three wearying hours they tramped – edged – along the Trompetter’s Drift trail, seeing, hearing, smelling the sudden death that lurked in the dark beyond the range of the torches, as deadly as the night cobra. The captive Xhosa kept up his distancing calls, the point of Fairbrother’s urging knife twice drawing blood, and a dozen nerve-tearing times Wainwright fired at shadowy shapes, dextrously reloading his carbine with one hand.

  The close scrub at last gave way to open grass. Here, Hervey reckoned, was their best chance of remounting without the Xhosa overwhelming them in a sudden rush; and from here they could kick hard and put a safe distance behind them.

  He stopped, and turned. ‘Johnson and Wainwright mount! Close up and put your pistols to the Xhosa’s head.’

  It took but a few seconds.

  ‘Now you, Fairbrother.’

  Fairbrother took the reins from Johnson and swung into the saddle, leaving Hervey with the point of his sabre at the Xhosa’s throat.

  ‘Pull him up!’

  The three of them hauled the Xhosa astride the fifth horse.

  ‘Go!’

  Fairbrother, with the fifth horse’s reins looped over his left arm, and his right holding the Xhosa in the saddle, kicked hard, with Johnson on the other side gripping the man as firmly.

  Hervey’s horse swung round in the excitement, Hervey’s left foot dragging in the stirrup.

  It was all the lurking Xhosa needed.

  An ear-splitting shriek and then a shot, and then the weight of a dead man knocking him to the ground: Hervey lost grip of the reins. The horse took off with his foot still caught in the stirrup. Wainwright fired again – a Xhosa at his bridle – and then spurred after the runaway, barely able to see ahead.

  Fifty yards it was before he caught the horse – close enough for the Xhosa to be at them yet. He jumped from the saddle, drew his sabre and cut the stirrup leather. Hervey, so racked as to be semi-senseless, groped for the reins and the saddle. Wainwright shouldered him astride and then made to remount.

  A Xhosa ran in at him. Wainwright neither saw nor heard. Some other sense told him to parry then cut, the blade slicing deep and audibly. He vaulted into the saddle. ‘Go on, sir! Go on!’ he shouted, grabbing Hervey’s reins.

  Hervey in his half-daze knew he had heard those words before.

  XIX

  RIFLES

  Cape Town, three weeks later, 14 September

  Colonel Hervey stood at the end of the line of riflemen on the firing range. The practice was conducted by a former serjeant of the Ninety-fifth commissioned in the field after Waterloo and now adjutant of the Cape Mounted Rifles.

  It was the first opportunity Hervey had had to observe the Rifles at drill. In his month and more’s absence, his major had seen to completing the dismounted training, and soon the recruits would begin riding school. It would be six weeks, at least, before he could take field drill, though he could make a beginning in the sand tray with his company officers.

  The fortnight at the frontier had formed his thoughts very particularly. It was not merely the ambush that had shaped his thinking, but the notion of men – the Xhosa principally, but he imagined the other native tribes to be the same – the notion of their acting as individual warriors, intent on pressing home the attack in ones and twos as the country permitted. It was not unlike what he knew to be the practice in North America, but here in Africa, by all accounts, the warriors also adopted regular formations when the country was otherwise too open. After reaching Trompetter’s Drift, exhausted, the party had rested for twenty-four hours before continuing on the trail of the reiving Xhosa. Hervey had marvelled at the changing country – from close thorn to scrubby bushveld, and then to rolling grassland. He knew that if the Xhosa could be made to fight in open country then musketry and cavalry ought to defeat them roundly. If they could not be brought to battle in the open, then his volleying infantry and his well-drilled light dragoons might as well hold parades as go into close country after them.

  This much might have been in the mind of Lord Charles Somerset when he set in hand the reorganization; except that Hervey had seen no reference to any cause but economy. And whatever the intention of the former governor, the fact was that the officers of the Mounted Rifles were already thinking like skirmishers – as if they were preparing for the sort of general action in which riflemen took post ahead of the red lines of muskets. Hervey was certain there was a place for that, but it was not in two-thirds of the country he had ridden over. There, it was the Rifles themselves who would have to close with the enemy, for there was no more chance of Line infantry advancing shoulder-to-shoulder than there was of discharging a single volley to effect. In truth, he had concluded, if there was to be another war on the frontier the proportion of such troops as the Rifles to those that fought in close order must be at the least three to one.

  ‘At two hundred yards … targets, five rounds, shoot!’

  The fire was ragged compared with that of volleying redcoats, but it was through no idleness or slow burn: riflemen fired as individuals, taking individual aim, firing only when their sights were properly laid, and stopping their breath to keep the aim true. Two hundred yards! Redcoats might volley at a hundred, but more likely fifty.

  When the firing ended, the adjutant shouted ‘Stop’, and each man sprang to his feet.

  ‘In double time, march!’

  Fifty green-coated recruits, rifles at the trail, began doubling the two hundred yards to the targets. Hervey doubled too. He could not recall the last time he ran as far. In a couple of months these men would be able to fire five rounds, spring into the saddle, gallop two hundred yards and then dismount to fire another five. Such speed and accurate fire could confound an enemy ten times their number. He was convinced they were the answer – not the complete answer, but one that might shock the Xhosa out of the fastness of the bush and into the very country in which red- and bluecoats had the advantage.

  He walked from target to target. There was none without five neat holes, and many where the holes were drilled in a cluster the size of a soup bowl. Here was impressive shooting, by any measure. But then many a recruit had been a cradle rifleman, schooled in marksmanship for the pot; though many more had been well-chosen volunteers whom the corporals and the adjutant had coaxed in their shooting rather than drilled by sharp words and the jab of the pike staff as if they were musketeers.

  ‘Stand to your front!’

  Fifty riflemen braced up. The corporals walked along the line giving each man a new white target, a piece of white canvas in a wooden frame eighteen inches square.

  ‘Even numbers, double march!’

  Hervey watched, deciding not to distract the adjutant by asking the purpose.

  When the even numbers had doubled a hundred yards, the adjutant blew his whistle, the riflemen halted, faced about, grounded arms and held the targets aloft.

  Hervey’s mouth near fell open.

  ‘Every man a volunteer, Colonel,’ said the adjutant. ‘They do things different at the Cape.’

  Hervey shook his head: they were indeed a long way from Hounslow.

  ‘Odd numbers, prone position, two rounds in your own time, go on!’

  The adjutant explained that the riflemen had been numbered off a fortnight ago in permanent pairings, and that this was to be the final test of mutual confidence.

  Single shots rang out the length of the line, impressively deliberate. There was a pause of several seconds to let the smoke clear, while each man took aim with the second barrel, and then it was the same again: the most purposeful shooting Hervey had ever seen. He could not tell yet, of course
, how wide or high the riflemen had aimed, but he greatly admired the steadiness of the target-holders nonetheless. He would not have wished to stand at a hundred yards and have a line of redcoats fire even wide and high of him, so inaccurate was the musket!

  The adjutant blew his whistle, and the even numbers doubled back to the firing point. Hervey began examining the targets eagerly. Every one of them had two holes.

  Now the practice was repeated, odd numbers doubling out with the targets for the evens. The shoot-ing was the same, deliberate business; and when the targets came back, the results were as before.

  Hervey was minded to address the rifle-recruits, and then thought better of it: let them think this was nothing remarkable and they might achieve even more. There would certainly be need, and much of it at close-quarters. He knew he might see shooting as intelligent as this at Shorncliffe, but there was a distinct edge to what he had just witnessed. He was thoroughly heartened. He could tell Somervile that already there were the makings of a force to tackle the frontier on its own terms – could tell Somervile and General Bourke (he must make no mistake on that account).