Company Of Spears

‘He’s still at Gaika’s hut. I’ll send word.’ He turned to find Serjeant Wainwright already standing at attention. ‘We need to alert Colonel Somerset. Will you present my compliments, tell him that Captain Fairbrother is returned, and ask if he will come here or if he wishes us to attend on him.’

‘Sir!’ Wainwright saluted and spun round, setting off towards the kraal in a brisk march that would have matched a Xhosa’s lope.

‘Now,’ said Hervey when there was no one within earshot, and sitting down in one of the camp chairs that Johnson had brought. ‘What’s the business with Dundas?’

Fairbrother settled heavily, and blew out his breath. ‘He got up to the hills in the Tambooka country the day before yesterday, about thirty miles north and east of here. He had a report of a force of Zulu advancing towards the Bashee. The Tambooka were to make a stand east of the river.’ He took another draw on the flask. ‘So he crossed the river a few hours before dusk and met Voosani, the Tambooka chief, who told him the Zulu had already taken several thousand head of cattle. Dundas said he would assist him recovering them. Why he believed that recovering the cattle was a more effective means of conveying the message to Shaka I have no notion.’ He took yet another long draw.

‘And?’

Fairbrother shook his head. ‘It might have passed with no great harm, for it seems Dundas’s original intention was to block the ford through which the Zulu intended driving off the cattle. But as they approached, apparently with just a few drovers, he decided he’d attack. The drovers were seen off easily, but then he ran into the Zulu rear guard, and it was a desperate business for a while, until powder began to tell. He reckons to have killed fifty of them, but then came word that several thousand were moving on the ford, and so Dundas got the Tambooka to recover what cattle they could, but even these had to be abandoned as the Zulu began pressing them. So Dundas decided to escort Voosani to his kraal to try to rally more warriors, which is where I found him, and he at once sent me back to alert Somerset.’

Hervey began unfolding his map. ‘How long do you think it will take us to get up to the Bashee? What is the country?’

‘The infantry won’t manage in less than a day. But why exhaust ourselves? Why not wait for the Zulu to come to us? They’ll burn the kraals and take the cattle and the corn, but it might have to be the price if we’re to be certain of stopping them. The Tambooka will flee this way. We could rally them and have another five thousand or so.’

‘Do the Zulu have muskets?’

‘The scouts didn’t speak of them.’

Hervey was trying to calculate time, distance and relative strengths. ‘Do you not think we might overawe them with a show of force – the troop and Rifles, I mean – while the infantry and the rest march up?’

‘Divide one’s force?’

Hervey raised his eyebrows. ‘In ordinary, of course, it’s folly; but in an exigency … I wish I had some better idea of how the Zulu fight.’

He and Fairbrother had talked a good deal of Shaka’s system, such as they knew it. However, the accounts came either from (as Somerset called them) rascals, freebooting Englishmen, or else from the defeated tribes, and were hardly reliable therefore, given as they usually were in wide-eyed terror or with nefarious intent. It was evident that the Zulu did not simply overwhelm their opponents by sheer numbers – a great host of savages bearing down on their peace-able neighbours like the wolf on the fold. There were, it seemed, well-formed regiments – impi – who moved quickly and under strict discipline. Their weapon was the short spear, the iklwa, which was not thrown but thrust, like the jabbing sword of the Roman legions. And there was no doubt that a Zulu warrior was possessed of singular courage. But as to what this amounted to in the field neither Hervey nor Fairbrother could tell. Of one thing, however, Hervey was sure: dash, the bold offensive action which in India could turn the tables so spectacularly when the situation looked desperate, might not serve here. For if, as the stories went, the warriors were more afraid of Shaka’s vengeance than of death at the hands of the enemy, they would not be so easily scattered as the bandits who passed for soldiers in India.

‘We have lost the element of surprise, of course,’ said Hervey, rising as he saw Somerset approaching. ‘They know there are white faces with the Xhosa now, and guns. The only thing left to dismay them is numbers or some clever manoeuvre.’

Fairbrother said nothing. What he knew of his friend’s capacity for audaciousness was considerable. From all he had read, and even more from those he had spoken to, he judged this measured response to be uncharacteristic – as well as intriguing.

Somerset was a shade unsteady and his speech not entirely even. Hervey felt only sympathy, and nodded to Johnson, who knew what was required.

Fairbrother made his report.