Time Commander (The First Admiral Series) (34 page)

The protests had begun almost immediately with the Natal Native officers, who complained about how their troops would most likely take the weapons and ammunition and join the Zulus. For a moment, Billy was struck by the sheer absurdity of it. Here were the men who were supposed to lead the Native troops into battle, and, they didn’t even trust their subordinates with firearms. For a moment, Billy wondered just exactly what the Native troops thought of their officers. Maybe issuing them with weapons was a bad idea after all; they would most likely use them to shoot these men in the back.

Because Billy Caudwell was coming very close to shooting a few of those officers himself.

Having had experience of commanding a fleet that included a whole host of separate species; and a whole host of races within some of these species, Billy Caudwell had no time for their prejudice. In no uncertain terms, he told these officers and NCOs exactly what he expected of them. Red-faced with anger and resentment, the Natal Native officers and NCO’s were dismissed.

Next to complain was the Quartermaster; a tall, thick-set, powerfully-built fair-haired man with over twenty years of soldiering experience, by the name of Pullen. It came as something of a surprise to Billy to find that he actually had a reasonable objection: he had less than one hundred spare rifles to issue. Billy attempted to reassure the Quartermaster with his own belief that there would most likely be fewer than one hundred men to issue them to. However, he did order the Quartermaster to break them out of their cases and clean them all up to have them ready for issue. In the event, less than sixty Natal Native Infantry troops were considered sufficiently competent to be issued with a Martini-Henry rifle. But, as Billy Caudwell well knew, every additional rifle was going to count, and every Natal Infantryman that could carry a spear was going to be useful if the Zulus managed to reach the barricade.

There was so much still to do, and so little time in which to get it done.

Billy had hastily assigned the carpenters to driving nails through any pieces of wood they could find, and ordered a squad of ten men to round up every drinking glass, glass jar or bottle in the command. He then sent them out to the one hundred yard marker posts; that had been staked out to allow the soldiers to mark the range of their targets, where they were to smash the glass and set it onto the ground.

Billy had hoped to create a horse-shoe, several feet deep, of smashed glass, across the north face of the barricade; where he expected the main body of Zulus to attack. But, to his dismay, glasses, bottles and glass jars were in short supply. So, what Billy ended up getting was a rough and patchy string of broken glass sprinkled across most of the front of the square.

The carpenters took planks, tables, and any flat piece of wood they could find, broke them up with axes and saws, and proceeded to smash their four and six inch nails through them. These were then scattered across the same area as the broken glass, with the sharp nail points protruding upwards. This at least gave Billy coverage across the whole front of the north face of the barricade. It would be a nasty surprise for the bare-footed Zulu warriors, but the question still remained: how long would it stop them for?

At around ten o’clock, with the barricade almost half-built, lieutenant-colonel Anthony Durnford arrived at the camp. In a short and brief exchange, Billy took command of his troops. The lieutenant colonel, with the paralysed left hand, had wanted to ride out and “attack the Zulus wherever they appeared”, but was immediately silenced by Billy, who ordered every man who could fire ten rounds per minute onto the firing lines behind the barricade. With Durnford came more Natal Infantry, a Major Russell with three Congreve Rocket troughs and five squadrons of Natal Cavalry. Each of Durnford’s mounted Troopers, although black, was carrying an antiquated but, still very effective rifled carbine.

Anthony Durnford, it appeared, did not have the same reservations as many of his comrades in the British Army about arming black troops. Each of his troopers wore a tan coloured European uniform and hat. They each carried a rifled carbine, along with their tribal spears in a strange quiver-like device that they slung on their backs. Not that any of that mattered to Billy Caudwell. Durnford had brought almost two hundred and fifty trained and armed troopers with him, and more Native Infantry. Colonel Durnford, relieved of his troops, had been dispatched to Chelmsford, with a small escort, and a request for reinforcements and assistance. As a senior officer, he was far more useful in trying to convince Lord Chelmsford of the danger of the situation at Isandlwana.

By eleven fifteen, the barricade had been completed. The wagon drivers, with their oxen teams, had been sent back to Rorke’s Drift, as had the wounded, sick, and other non-combatants. With them, Billy Caudwell had sent a message for Commissary Officer Dalton to expect a Zulu attack. Billy Caudwell knew that part of the right wing of the Zulu attack would completely by-pass the Isandlwana position and head for the Buffalo River, and then into the British controlled Natal province. Rorke’s Drift would be the first military position these Zulus encountered, and he wanted to give the soldiers there as much warning as possible.

At ten minutes after mid-day, Billy and the rest of the British troops suddenly heard the great horde of Zulu warriors before they saw them. Having been discovered by British scouts on the far side of the ridge, the Zulu commanders had decided that an immediate attack was in order. Thinking that they would have the element of surprise, the Zulu commanders had pressed their warriors to quickly cover the ground towards the British camp. The Zulu had quickly organised and advanced to their attack positions. Not surprisingly, the noise of a large number of men moving forward was difficult to conceal, and unknown to the Zulu commanders, the British soldiers were already waiting for them.

“
There they are!” A man yelled the alarm that caused Billy and the other soldiers to focus their attention on the ridgeline.

On the ridgeline, the first of the black figures appeared. Through the heavy field glasses, Billy focussed on the figure that stood on the ridge and challenged the British soldiers below him. With a short, stabbing spear in his right hand and a large, white, oval ox-hide shield and war club in the other, he raised his weapons into the air and called his war cry to the sky. Billy, expecting the plumage and finery of the Zulu warrior, was rather disappointed to see that he wore little more than a dark brown loincloth. He did, however, look well-fed, muscular, and determined to inflict some damage on Billy’s soldiers. In the early afternoon sun, his oiled body shone and glistened, accentuating his powerful physique.

“Dangerous looking rogue.” Major Pulleine, standing next to Billy Caudwell, looked on with admiration.

“
Yes, Major, but he’s not bullet-proof, is he?” Billy never took his eyes away from the ridgeline, where more and more black figures started to appear.

Within a few moments the entire ridgeline was thick with thousands upon thousands of Zulu warriors.

“Well, there certainly are plenty of them!” Pulleine remarked.

“
Are there more than twenty thousand on that ridge, would you say Major?” Billy tried to sound calm, but all the while a horrible realisation was beginning to dawn in his mind.

The part of his mind that was Teg Portan knew that you did not show anxiety, fear, or lack of confidence to your subordinates on the verge of battle. Fear could spread through the ranks of an army like an infectious virus, gnawing at their fighting spirit and confidence like woodworm.

Yet, at the back of his mind was the nagging doubt that something was not quite right here. The part of his mind that was Teg Portan had told him to expect the unexpected.

It had been an article of faith that the Ganthoran Time Warrior computers would recreate the battle situation accurately. All told, the entire Zulu army should be no more than twenty-five thousand warriors, maximum. However, to the trained eye of Teg Portan, there seemed to be slightly more than that number on the ridge alone. The further two wings of the Zulu army, which would try to envelope his flanks, could add between another fifteen to twenty thousand more to this particular formation on the ridge.

“
Between fifteen and twenty thousand, I’d say, sir,” Pulleine said.

“
Stand to!” A gruff military voice barked loudly from behind Caudwell and Pulleine.

A moment later, the air was split with the sharp, strident tones of a bugle calling the soldiers to their battle positions. To get a better view, Billy and Major Pulleine climbed onto the water supply wagon at the centre of the position, whilst all around them, the remaining soldiers abandoned their duties and dashed to join their comrades in their own companies. Rifles were quickly unslung, helmets crammed onto heads, and uniform tunics were buttoned up to present a regimentally correct and precise face to the enemy. As the Zulu warriors began to crowd the ridgeline, over to his right Billy heard a lone resonating Zulu voice begin a war chant. Sweeping his field glasses in the direction of the chant-leader, he saw a group of five older, grey-haired men carrying white ox-hide shields on an outcrop of the ridge.

These were the Zulu commanders; the izinDuna. These would be the men who would direct and motivate the younger warriors on the battlefield. Backed up by a huge organisation of medicine men and Impi, or regiment commanders, the izinDuna were the ones who would put the mettle into the warriors’ courage. If he could get rid of them, then the Zulu army would be badly disadvantaged.

Any change in tactics would have to come from the Impi commanders on the ground, and Billy Caudwell doubted that the Zulu attacks could be so co-ordinated without their izinDuna if things started to go wrong for them.

Up on the ridge, Billy saw thousands of Zulu warriors begin some kind of war dance. The warriors stamped their bare feet against the hardened ground and chanted in response to the leader. The chanting was rhythmic, as was the war dance, which indicated a highly disciplined and ordered formation. They looked confident and bold as they made stabbing motions with their short spears in the direction of the British formation, and held their shields above their heads.

This was pre-battle, the Zulu way. Get the troops motivated to attack as a group. As individuals, they would probably run away at the first sound of gunfire and the falling of the first of their comrades. Something like a herd mentality would bind them together as a unit. Even the Universal Alliance Fleet used a variation of this technique; giving the soldiers a sense of comradeship, loyalty to one another, and loyalty to their unit. Billy Caudwell also knew that the Zulu medicine men would have been visiting the Impis with powders, snuffs, and red mushrooms to solidify their herd mindset with reality-altering drugs.

The Zulu suicide warriors would be pawing at the ground, eager to get to grips with their enemies through the red mists and hazes of their chemically-induced perceptions. The Zulus would be hyping themselves up for the attack. But even the most powerful shaman’s potions could not stop a bullet or a bayonet blade.

“
What on earth are they doing, sir? Are they trying to frighten us?” a young officer asked

To Billy Caudwell, it was an entirely logical question. Trying to intimidate your opponents before a battle was a good strategy; dent their morale and reduce their willingness to resist your attacks. Frighten and terrify your opponents, and they might even run away. The whole Zulu Empire was built on their military strength. From the days of King Shaka onwards, the Impis had terrorised and intimidated this part of Southern Africa at will. The Roman Empire and the British had done much the same thing in the past, and Billy Caudwell was convinced that future empires would also continue such practices.

“No, Mr Cavaye, they’re trying to draw our attention,” Billy explained, “You’ll find that the two pincers are trying to move closer to us.”

The warriors on the ridge were now responding to the chant leader with their own series of calls which culminated in the long drawn out royalist chant of “OO-SOO-TOO-OO”, before beginning the entire war dance process all over again.

To their left, those with field glasses could see the tiny figures of the Zulu warriors moving down from the ridge behind the mountain to try to outflank the British square. Whilst, to their right, the field glasses were able to pick out more dark running figures pouring down from the ridge to try to outflank the British square along the donga that guarded their right flank. To Billy, this Zulu left flank was horribly exposed. Their right flank had the cover of the mountain, but, consequently, a greater distance to travel.

The izinDuna wanted the Zulu attacks to hit home simultaneously, to sweep the invaders away in one huge surge of shields, clubs and spears. However, the right wing of the battle formation would take time to get around the mountain. So, the cunning izinDuna were trying to hold the attention of their enemy whilst they tried to bring their right wing to closer quarters. The short, scrubby grass of the area would only really cover them if they lay down in it, which would slow their advance on the British square to a crawl.

The izinDuna must have been gambling that the “chest” of their formation and left wing could absorb any punishment the British could hand out, whilst their right wing could sweep in and deliver the killing stroke from behind the mountain. Billy Caudwell had seen through the attempted deception. The izinDuna might try to send their left wing down the donga, but risked having them shot to pieces as they climbed out of the high-sided dried-up stream bed. Whichever way the Zulus tried to slice up this battlefield, they were going to have to sustain heavy losses, and Billy hoped that the severity of these losses would convince the Zulu that they could not win this fight.