Hervey 08 - Company Of Spears (35 page)

‘Why do you say
my
Duke of Cumberland?’ demanded Hervey, a shade impatiently. ‘He was no more mine than yours.’

Fairbrother thought to leave explanation to another day. ‘A mere lapse of speech. But hear me continue. Nxele gave himself up to Willshire rather than have his people subjected to greater hardship, and Somerset dealt with him very ill. He put him on Robben Island, a damnable place, and he died the following year trying to escape. The Xhosa have begun speaking as if he’s immortal, which is a sign to beware. They are as a rule a level-headed people, for all their superstition.’

Hervey thought for a while. ‘I did not ask before: how did you come to speak their language?’

‘I took a fundisa, a munshi as you say in India, when the Corps first came here. It seemed a perfectly natural thing to do.’

‘Though not, I imagine, to everyone.’

‘Decidedly not. But you know, Hervey, it was far from an unpleasant labour. The Xhosa are not without their charms.’

Hervey frowned, unseen, though the tone of his voice betrayed it. ‘I confess I saw no charm today. That was a deuced near-run thing at the river. I shall ever be grateful to you.’

Hervey heard the smile in the reply: ‘My dear Hervey, think nothing of it.’

And there was just something, too, that convinced him of Fairbrother’s utter sincerity in the dismissal. His courage had been so matter of fact, his manner afterwards unassuming, retiring even. ‘Nevertheless, I would commend your valuable service when we return. I would have you meet Eyre Somervile; you and he will get on famously. And you should know that it was in Somerset’s papers that he found you recommended. Somerset may have had his faults in your regard, but on this occasion he had been keen to set the record straight.’

Fairbrother smiled again, part unbelieving. ‘As you wish.’ He finished the brandy.

They sat listening to the sounds of the night. The dusk’s chorus of cicadas had finished before they stood down (it would have been imprudent to rest arms with such a noise masking the tell-tale signals of approaching attack). An African night was eerily different from an Indian. No monkey could keep quiet in India, however black the darkness. And in forest or desert the jinnees in their temporary corporeal form – human or animal – rustled about their supernatural business. But here it was the deepest silence, and what occasional sounds there were came from a distance: yet a hunting leopard, half a mile off, might snarl at another and sound as if it were but an arm’s length away. This was the sound of emptiness, an empty land, empty even of spirits. Hervey did not believe in the jinnees, but he believed in the sounds they made, and that an Indian night was not empty but peopled by a something that could not quite be touched, yet was not so far removed from the spirit of the day. This African night was somehow barren, a desolate time when the sun had forsaken the land – just as Fairbrother had told him the Xhosa said of the beginning of war, that ‘the land is dead’.

‘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