Company Of Spears

They sat listening to the sounds of the night. The dusk’s chorus of cicadas had finished before they stood down (it would have been imprudent to rest arms with such a noise masking the tell-tale signals of approaching attack). An African night was eerily different from an Indian. No monkey could keep quiet in India, however black the darkness. And in forest or desert the jinnees in their temporary corporeal form – human or animal – rustled about their supernatural business. But here it was the deepest silence, and what occasional sounds there were came from a distance: yet a hunting leopard, half a mile off, might snarl at another and sound as if it were but an arm’s length away. This was the sound of emptiness, an empty land, empty even of spirits. Hervey did not believe in the jinnees, but he believed in the sounds they made, and that an Indian night was not empty but peopled by a something that could not quite be touched, yet was not so far removed from the spirit of the day. This African night was somehow barren, a desolate time when the sun had forsaken the land – just as Fairbrother had told him the Xhosa said of the beginning of war, that ‘the land is dead’.

‘Did you ever think of being anything but a soldier, Hervey?’

It was a very sudden change in the degree of their intimacy. Hervey was quite taken aback. And yet, sitting here in the alien darkness, owing his life – almost certainly – to this man (and in all likelihood, too, dependent on his judgement to see them safely away), it could not be other than natural. And, indeed, welcome. ‘I don’t believe I did.’

‘Nor any second thoughts since, I imagine.’

Hervey thought for a moment, and decided on candour. ‘Once, yes: nine years ago after the death of my wife. I resigned and was an ordinary subject of His Majesty – for a year and more.’

‘My dear Hervey,’ began Fairbrother, the tautness in his voice at once apparent, ‘I owe you the greatest of apologies for what I asked about grieving for a woman.’

Hervey shook his head gently, as if Fairbrother might see. ‘And yet, time does bring its balm. I am able for the most part to think of her now with a happy composure. Even three years ago I could not have done so.’

‘And – I press you impertinently, no doubt – there has been no other claim on your affection?’

The intimacy had progressed to a degree Hervey had not imagined possible. He found it warming. ‘I am to be married.’

‘Indeed! Then I am most happy for you. May I ask who is the lady?’

‘Of course you may ask. She is my former commanding officer’s widow. He was killed in India.’

‘Fighting alongside you at Bhurtpore?’

‘Yes.’

Fairbrother nodded. ‘I had heard of the custom,’ he said, respectfully. ‘The widow of a fellow officer: it is most noble.’

Hervey balked at the assumption of nobility. ‘Truly, Fairbrother, you presume too much again! I do not marry out of duty.’ He found himself hesitating. ‘That is, I do not marry out of duty to my commanding officer’s widow.’

Fairbrother was pained. ‘I do not presume, my friend. I do not presume by speaking of noble motives that there is any absence of love. A man’s motives may be mixed, but it is not to say they are consequentially ignoble.’

‘I take no offence.’

Indeed he did not. He wished only for no questioning of his feelings towards Kezia Lankester. In truth, he was only yet discovering them for himself.

Hervey woke with a start. He seized his pistols and began making for Corporal Wainwright.

‘Hold fire! It is I, Fairbrother!’

Hervey, numb with the peculiar sensation that sudden wakefulness brought, could not make out where the shouts came from, or why. ‘Wainwright?’

‘Here, sir!’

He groped his way in the pitch darkness to where Corporal Wainwright crouched, carbine levelled. ‘What is it?’

‘It is I, Fairbrother; give me a voice!’

Hervey hesitated. It made no sense; and yet this was the man who had saved his life. ‘Here, Fairbrother, here!’

He repeated the call, twice, until after what seemed an age, Fairbrother reached him. Hervey could just make out a second figure. ‘What—’

‘Xhosa. There are two more, dead, yonder in the scrub.’ He pushed the man down, commanding him to sit: ‘Hlala phantsi!’

‘How in God’s name—’

‘Your Corporal Wainwright reported a noise,’ he said, breathless.

‘And you walked out and found them?’

‘I crawled out; circled across their line. They weren’t difficult to find. I could smell them. And they will stand erect.’ He held a long knife in his hand. He dropped to one knee and put it to the Xhosa’s neck. ‘Tell me, who are you? How many?’

‘Izinto azimntaka Ngqika zonke.’

Fairbrother jabbed in the point further, almost breaking the skin. ‘Do not sport with me!’

‘What does he say?’ whispered Hervey.

‘He says it is not everyone who is a son of Gaika. It’s a saying they have: he means not everyone is fortunate.’

Fairbrother began fingering the Xhosa’s necklace.