The Horns of the Buffalo (32 page)

Suddenly, seemingly from nowhere, came the clatter of hooves on rock and, once again, that high-pitched yell, and Jenkins came charging down the gully. It was impossible for his shooting to be accurate while riding but his first shot hit a rock and sent a splinter into the eye of one of the Zulus who had dropped down behind Simon. The man screamed and fell to the ground, clutching his face. Another shot, this time at point-blank range, ripped through the second Zulu's shield and took him in the chest. The horse attempted to jump over the warrior whom Simon had kicked and who was now trying to climb to his feet, but a flying hoof caught his head and laid him low again. The gully between the rocks was little more than twelve feet wide and Jenkins's charge forced both Simon and his original opponent to flatten themselves against the rock as the Welshman galloped through. Simon was the first to recover. As the Zulu turned his face, wide-eyed from watching Jenkins wheel at the gully's end, Simon's spear took him just below the cheekbone and penetrated deeply. With a cry he dropped his shield to put his hand to his face and Simon struck again, this time in the breast.

For a moment Simon stood still, trembling. Then he was aware of a horse at his elbow.

‘Well done, bach sir,' cried Jenkins. ‘Couldn't 'ave done better meself. Now,' he reached down a hand, ‘climb up behind me and 'ang on for dear life. There are some of 'em still left and we'll 'ave to ride through 'em to get out of 'ere.'

With one foot on the rock face, Simon scrambled up behind the Welshman, just managing to retain his spear as he did so. They turned to ride out of the gully but three warriors appeared, assegais raised. Jenkins turned the horse about, only to find two more Zulus barring their exit.

‘Which way d'you fancy, then, sir?'

‘Go for those two. Charge straight at 'em. The Zulus are supposed to be frightened of cavalry. I'll use the spear as a lance.'

Jenkins chortled. ‘Very good, then. Excuse the noise. It's a bit Celtic like but it gees up the 'orse, an' me an' all.'

He kicked the horse's flanks savagely, let out that piercing shriek once again and the startled beast sprang towards the two Zulus, who were tentatively advancing. The spectre of the yelling black-visaged Welshman bent low over his mount and the lowered spear was too much for the warriors. They broke and fled and the horsemen were through and away on to the plain, pursued only by two thrown spears, which fell way behind them.

For four minutes they rode at the gallop, Jenkins skilfully guiding the horse between rocks, dongas and bushes while Simon clung to the sweaty back of the Welshman, both arms around his waist and the spear standing out awkwardly across them, like a tightrope walker's balancing pole, crashing through branches as they charged through the scrub. Eventually, the exhausted horse was allowed to drop to a walk and the riders studied the plain behind them. There was no sign of pursuit.

‘I think they had had enough anyway,' panted Simon. ‘We must have put down half a dozen between us.'

Jenkins grasped the hands clenched round his midriff for a moment. ‘Easier for me with a pistol than for you with just a spear.' He spoke gruffly, unable to turn so that Simon could not see his face. ‘Honestly, bach sir. You fought like a Welsh collier back there with that bit of spear, like. Old Coley with 'is bayonet couldn't 'ave done better. I'd like Mr Bloody Covington to 'ave seen you, so I would.'

The pair fell silent as the tired horse picked its way forward. Simon, strangely touched, now occasionally adjusted its course with the help of the compass.

‘It's due west we want,' he said, ‘and that's roughly the way my horse bolted. We might just find her. Once we have put some distance between us and the Zulus, we'd better look for a kopje where we might be able to find cover and yet command some sort of view of the plain. We don't want to be surprised again.'

So they made their way westward across the plain, finding cover by early afternoon and then rising very early to make as good progress as they could in the darkness. On the third day, tired and hungry, they were late rising and the sun was up before them. The fugitives had camped between two high rocks on a kopje that afforded them a good view all around. To the south-west they could see a distant high peak, not a mountain but bigger than a hill, that stood out on its own. It had a flat-topped appearance and from it Simon felt that they should be able to catch a glimpse, at least, of the Buffalo. They had decided to make for it in the morning. They had been unable to find Simon's horse and travel, therefore, had been slow. Taking it in turns to ride, their every step had been marked by the need for caution and vigilance. However, they had seen no living soul - until now.

As Simon fed their horse with a handful of yellow grass growing high above its reach, his eye caught a quick flash of reflected sunlight to the north. With infinite care, he climbed to the top of the rock and, slowly, raised his head above its edge. For a moment, he saw nothing. Then, less than a mile away, his eye picked out a column of what looked like black ants moving quickly across the plain, sometimes disappearing as it wound its way sinuously down into a donga, then coming into view again before vanishing once more behind a hill. The flashes of light came momentarily as the sun caught a steel spearhead. Thankfully, Simon realised that the course of the column was away from their kopje. It was moving from east to west - and at a fair speed.

He called Jenkins to join him. ‘How many do you think?'

The Welshman whistled noiselessly. ‘Difficult to tell, but there must be thousands. Look, they're still coming. Maybe fifteen . . . twenty thousand.'

Simon shielded his eyes from the sun. ‘It must be the main Zulu army. They've clearly come from Ulundi. But where are they going?'

‘Well,' said Jenkins, absent-mindedly picking at his ragged moustache, ‘if they're after us, they're goin' the wrong way.'

‘No. Cetswayo's not going to send twenty thousand warriors after us. They are going to attack the British central column, for sure. So we must be quite near the army.' Simon squinted to the west and then to the south. ‘I wonder where the hell it is. I wish we had binoculars.'

He weighed the odds. The Zulus probably knew the exact position of the column. They were bound to be aware of the movement of so large a body of men within their own territory. Their capacity for making the most of natural cover meant that they could probably hide a couple of impis and take the British by surprise. But surprise or not, Chelmsford would be on his guard in enemy country and there would be a battle. The chances were that Simon and Jenkins would get caught up between the two forces like grain in a grinding mill. For a moment, he considered the chances of making directly for the Buffalo River and the comparative safety of Natal. With luck, and by keeping well away from the direction in which the Zulus were travelling, they could make it without being detected. Anyway, they were in a poor state to fight, and two men could make no difference to the outcome . . .

He shook his head and turned to Jenkins. ‘We must try and find the column and warn it before the Zulus attack.'

Jenkins blew out his cheeks but said nothing, and the two men slithered down the rock and untethered their horse. With Jenkins mounted and Simon walking a few paces ahead, they set course for that flat-topped rock that stood out above the horizon to the south-west. From it, Simon reasoned, they should be able to see the British camp if it was within a ten-mile radius. With the Zulu force only a little to the north, both knew that it would have been infinitely wiser to have stayed under cover all day. Their horse was weary and underfed - they could not afford to let it stop and graze - and with two men on its back, it would be difficult to outrun a Zulu patrol, let alone a couple of impis. The need to find the British army, however, was imperative, and neither man questioned it.

Throughout the day they made their cautious way under the hot sun, both heads continuously twisting to scan the surrounding country, Jenkins, as the best shot, holding the Colt. Once they saw a black-backed jackal slip through the long yellow grass, and the occasional purple crested loerie looked down at them from a blue sky puffed with white cloud balls. The plain seemed devoid of human life. Yet both men knew that they were not alone in that place, that somewhere near, large numbers of their own kind were marching on a collision course - encircling them, perhaps - out there in the low rolling hills and among the rocks and dried water courses.

That night they camped again without a fire, and even the man off watch lay half awake, with an ear cocked for a rustle in the grass or the crack of a broken twig.

They rose on the morning of 22 January 1879 to find that they were near the edge of a plateau, the detail of which had been obscured in the brief twilight of their encampment the night before. A half-hour's march after sun-up brought them to the tip of the escarpment, which, in fact, did not decline sharply but fell away in gentle billows to a new plain below them. To their right, the escarpment marched to the west-north-west, gradually getting higher before it fell away in the distance. It was the plain below, however, which caught their attention. To the south and a little to their right, not much more than a mile away, it was dominated by the hill whose summit they had first discerned a day and a half ago. A bare block of sandstone that glowed dully red in the morning sun, it ran away from them, stretching some 500 yards in length along a rocky outcrop and then rising to about 500 feet at the flat-topped peak. Below its east-facing side the British column had made its camp.

The white bell tents shone brightly on the dull plain. They had been pitched in a straggling line running NNE to SSW at the base of the rock, the line bulging at the centre to encompass a cluster of wagons. Faint blue spirals of smoke curled into the sky from a score of campfires and the sun glinted intermittently on cooking pots and the other accoutrements of an army in the field. Faintly, despite the distance, the two men heard the low grunts of bullocks and the clash of utensils.

To Simon's eye there was something wrong, something indefinable. Then he got it. ‘My God!' he exclaimed. ‘They haven't laagered the camp.' True enough, there were no barriers - no rough thorn bush zariba, no trenches, no line of wagons erected on the periphery of the camp to halt a rush of attackers. The most elementary precaution to protect a column encamped deep in enemy territory had not been taken. What languid halfwit had neglected to protect the camp in the presence of the enemy? Covington? Surely it couldn't be an officer with the experience and seniority of Chelmsford?

Jenkins grunted and elbowed Simon. ‘Look.' He pointed to the east. There, where the plain melted into a low line of foothills, a long column of soldiers - cavalry, wagons and marching infantry - could just be seen disappearing into the blue haze of the morning. As they watched, the last riders slipped from view.

‘What on earth's going on?' murmured Simon. ‘That's more than a patrol. Why has he split the command like that?'

‘I don't know, bach sir, but we'd better get down there damned quick and tell them about them black fellers.'

The two men now both mounted the horse and urged the beast down the escarpment. There was no track and the descent was more difficult than it looked. It was some time, then, before they met the first British soldier on the plain, a mounted vedette who looked at them in amazement as the doubly burdened horse plodded towards him.

‘Who the hell are you?' he demanded, his carbine at the ready.

‘Lieutenant Fonthill and Private Jenkins of the 2nd 24th,' responded Simon briskly, doing his best to sit erect with one arm around Jenkins's midriff. ‘We need to see the CO immediately. Who is in command here?'

The cavalryman, a volunteer member of the Newcastle Mounted Rifles, looked unimpressed. ‘You don't look like soldiers to me, man,' he said, covering them with his carbine. ‘Where have you come from?'

‘It's none of your damned business,' snapped Simon. ‘Put that bloody thing down. There are twenty thousand Zulus just behind us and I'm damned if I'm going to be held up by some part-time soldier. Now, who is the officer in command and is he in camp?'

The patrolman lowered his carbine. ‘Lieutenant Colonel Henry Pulleine, er, sir. The General has moved out this morning, so Colonel Pulleine is left in charge of the camp.'

Nodding with a grin, Jenkins urged the tired horse on. About 300 yards from the camp they saw a second column of about 500 men, half of them mounted and most of them black, march out in good order towards the east. The black infantrymen wore red bandannas around their heads. Behind them, moving more slowly, rode a small contingent of white troops, pulling three strange box-like contraptions on wheels behind them.

‘Rockets,' said Simon. ‘Now where the hell are
they
going?'

‘I suppose,' said Jenkins over his shoulder as they approached the edge of the tent line, ‘I'll 'ave to stop callin' you bach, now that we're back in the army, like.'

‘Quite right. Try and sit up straight and get a move on.'

Watched by dozens of curious eyes, the pair threaded their way through the lines of the camp. Looking about him, Simon felt a faint but growing unease. He could not define the reason. Pickets were out, guards were mounted, soldiers were relaxing but properly dressed and rifles were leaning in regulation pyramids, ready to be snatched at the call of a bugle. He could smell coffee and hear a farrier at work on a horseshoe. All very normal for a column in the field, normal for a base camp awaiting the return of its commander - but a normality more suited to Salisbury Plain than an isolated unit camped deep in enemy territory.