Company Of Spears

‘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!’