Company Of Spears

Horse-holders now galloped forward to where the other sharpshooters lay. The picked riflemen sprang up and into the saddle, and spurred back to the line in a display that Hervey was sure would have delighted the duke himself.

‘Smart work, Captain Welsh; smart work.’

‘Thank you, Colonel. I will pass on your approbation at the first opportunity,’ said the Rifles captain, as if he were being dismissed at the end of a field day.

The Zulu came on steadily in the same loping gait. Hervey felt his stomach tightening again. The range was now two hundred yards: it was time for the Rifles to do their real work.

He did not have to say anything. Captain Welsh had primed his men well: ‘In your own time, three rounds: Fire!‘

The first round was a near-perfect volley. Every man had taken and held his aim, waiting the order, so that as soon as it came twelve-dozen trigger-fingers squeezed as one. The powder-smoke hung low in the still air, but not as thick as it would have been with a company of muskets (the rifles were in open order). The fire-effect was visible at once. Hervey was astonished. Every round seemed to have found its mark.

But the Zulu line did not falter. The second volley came not five seconds later, more ragged this time, but just as accurate, so that a quarter of the Zulu host now lay dead or writhing at the bottom of the slope. It would be half a minute before the third, final, round, while the riflemen reloaded. Hervey cursed that they could not have another two volleys as quick: the French for sure would have reeled in the face of such fire; the Burmans and the Jhauts would have taken to their heels.

The volley made him start. It had come in seconds only, along the entire line … He looked at Welsh, amazed.

‘The horse-holders’ rifles. Better used than in a saddle bucket.’

He wished he had thought of it himself.

‘Now for the final round!’ said the captain keenly.

But the Zulu would not face it. On the crest of the ridge Matiwane’s spear was raised.

How the order was communicated to that blood-hotted host Hervey had no idea, but they turned as one. They had not run twenty yards, however, when the third volley caught them, a ripple of fire as the new-loaded rifles found a fleeing target.

‘Now, Fearnley, now!’ cried Hervey, as if his lieutenant might hear.

Lieutenant Fearnley was of the same mind, however. The troop surged forward, quick to the canter and then gallop.

‘Stand fast, Rifles!’ shouted Hervey as he pressed his mare forward.

The troop galloped into the left flank of the struggling Zulu, taking them by utter surprise. Hervey saw the sabres lowered – the point for infantry (the edge for cavalry) – and then the opportunity cuts as the dragoons drove through the ragged line. As he closed with the melee he picked out a crouching Zulu, shield up and iklwa menacing. He took him with a neat Cut Two from behind, severing the shield arm, before turning and taking another with the same cut, using his reach to slice the spear arm at the wrist without coming in range of the point. He galloped on towards the crest while the troop continued to sweep it left to right, Fairbrother, Sam Kirwan, Wainwright and Dilke hard on his heels. There was but one sure way to discover what lay on the other side of the hill.

The sight from the crest set the rats racing in his stomach faster than ever. Not a hundred yards off and coming fast up the slope was a line at least as long as the one they had just faced. And beyond was another, and beyond that another, and then another: five lines in all – perhaps four thousand warriors; perhaps even more.

‘Christ!’ he spat, and turned hard. ‘Sound “rally”, Corporal Dilke!’

Dilke pulled up to blow. He could do it at the gallop right enough – at a field day. But the price of blowing ill here was too great. And it was not an easy call: semi-quavers and octave leaps. He would blow till he saw the troop rallying.

He did not see the Zulu playing dead twenty yards away. He did not see him coming flat like the leopard when it runs in for its prey. Nor the fast, furious sprint to the kill. Nor the iklwa, as it stabbed at his side, under his rib cage, deep into his vitals: eight whole inches when four would have been fatal.

He let out no cry, but the ‘rally’ ceased abruptly on the long, final C.

XXV

THE COLOUR OF DANGER

Next morning

‘Very well, Mr Fearnley: exactly as before!’

Lieutenant Fearnley squinted into the low, eastern sun and touched his shako in acknowledgement.