Company Of Spears

At that moment one of the pandours started suddenly, scuttling back a good ten feet from the bush he was posted next to. Hervey reached for his pistol, but it was soon evident the man had given himself a fright.

Fairbrother continued calmly sipping his brandy. ‘To the man who is afraid, everything rustles.’

Hervey laid down his pistol, and looked at him ruefully. ‘Colony lore, or your own observation?’

‘Sophocles.’

‘Oh.’ Hervey half smiled. ‘You would get on famously in the Sixth.’

‘I think not.’

Hervey tutted. ‘I shan’t indulge you in your self-disregard. You would be received handsomely for what you did at the river.’

Fairbrother finished his brandy, and Hervey poured him more. ‘You are not a poet, Colonel?’

Hervey braced himself: Fairbrother was the most intriguing mix of superiority and resentment he had known, a man who had sat with his books in Cape Town for … how many years he didn’t rightly know, and yet able to comport himself in the field as if he had been continually on campaign. Neither did it seem to him a contemptuous sort of courage, a display of scorn for the fears of the common herd, despite the Sophocles. When this sojourn at the frontier was over, Hervey was determined that Edward Fairbrother should have some proper place in the military society of the Cape. It was not merely a matter of desert, but of resource.

‘I am not a poet. Though I am fond of Milton.’

Fairbrother nodded gravely. ‘I was rather minded of Wordsworth.’

‘I confess I’ve never read him.’

‘Really? You astonish me, Colonel Hervey. So martial a man, Wordsworth.’

Hervey frowned incredulously. ‘Martial? I thought him pastoral.’

‘In part, of course. But he was an enthusiastic militiaman, as I have read.’

‘I did not know it. Good.’

‘So you will not know “The Happy Warrior”?’

‘No.’

‘ “Who is the Happy Warrior? Who is he that every man in arms should wish to be?” ’

‘And the answer?’

‘The answer is contained in but a single sentence.’

‘Then it must be trite.’

‘Ah, indeed you are the man I thought! A single sentence, but of many dozen lines!’

‘Then I would have no more of it now, unless it contains anything of defence against the Xhosa. I shall read it when we return to the Cape.’

Fairbrother smiled. ‘I leave the comfort of my hearth and the solace of my books, come within a trice of death, and shall pass the night in anticipation of a murderous onslaught, and yet I am content to do so in the company of a happy warrior.’

‘And a Collier revolver.’

Fairbrother smiled even broader. ‘Yes, I confess I am excessively content to be in the company of Mr Collier.’

‘Then tell me, what do you believe the Xhosa will do?’

Fairbrother sighed as he took another sip of his brandy. ‘The Xhosa are a simple people, Hervey. They are superstitious, as are all the native tribes, but they aren’t troubled greatly by the spirits of their ancestors, as the Bushmen are. They will not have a fear of the night, only inasmuch as they might meet a leopard. And unlike their cousins the Zulu, of whom you will have heard, they fear death’ (he smiled wryly) ‘which is to our advantage, of course.’

‘But they do not fear it any more at night than day.’

‘No. Indeed, if anything, they are quite animated by the coming of the night. They have a saying: alitshonanga lingenandaba – the sun never sets without fresh news.’

It was not what Hervey wanted to hear. ‘I don’t think our Xhosa will see the morning.’

Fairbrother thought for some time before speaking. ‘We should try to take out the ball from his shoulder.’

Hervey looked bemused. ‘I once had a ball taken from mine, but I knew very little of it. Do you know how it is done?’

‘I have seen a ball removed, yes. Several, indeed.’

It was not the same as knowing what to do, but he was in part encouraged. ‘Shall you try?’

Fairbrother rose. ‘Bring the bottle.’

They removed the bloody dressing from the unconscious Xhosa. He did not stir. Fairbrother decided not to force brandy into him, giving the bottle back to Hervey instead.

‘If he wakes, pour this down his throat in as big a measure as you can.’

The light was beginning to fail, but it made no difference, for Fairbrother had no surgeon’s instruments and therefore no need of light. His would be all probing with the finger, hoping he could identify iron from bone. How he would extract the ball he had no idea: only when he saw how deep it lay might he begin thinking.

‘At least the wound’s clean,’ he said, rolling up his sleeves. ‘There’s no cloth and such taken in by the ball, as far as I can see. It’s that which makes a wound putrid.’

He found the ball easily enough, and not deep. At least, he was fairly sure it was the ball; he would need more light to be certain.

‘His pulse is very weak,’ said Hervey, thinking that so deep a sleep must be close to death.