‘God speed you, boys!’
Then, as he trudged on in the mud that was balling to the soles of his riding boots – he began silently to pray.
On the outside of the column, another horse fell, throwing its rider over its head, and then lunged up again to stand on three legs, shivering miserably in the rain, its off-fore hanging limply as a sock on a laundry line. The trooper limped back, drawing his revolver from its webbing holster, and shot the animal between the eyes.
‘That’s a wasted bullet,’ Wilson called clearly. ‘Don’t waste any more.’
They went on slowly, and after a while Clinton became aware that they were no longer following the wagon tracks. Wilson seemed to be leading them gradually more towards the east, but it was hard to tell, for the sun was still hidden by low, grey cloud.
Then abruptly the column stopped again, and now for the first time the insistent banging of muskets from hidden skirmishers in the mopani scrub was silenced.
Wilson had led them into a lovely parklike forest, with short, green grass below the stately mopani trees. Some of these trees stood sixty feet high and their trunks were fluted and twisted as though moulded from potter’s clay.
They could see deep into the forest, between the widely spaced trunks. There, directly ahead of the patrol, stretched across their front, waited the army of Lobengula. How many thousands, it was impossible to tell, for their rearguard was hidden in the forest; and even as the little band of white men stared at their host, the Jikela began, the ‘surrounding’ which had been the Zulu way ever since great Chaka’s time.
The ‘horns’ were being spread, the youngest and swiftest warriors running out on the flanks, their naked skins burning like black fire through the forest. A net around a shoal of sardines, they were thrown out until the tips of the horns met to the rear of the band of white men – and again all movement ceased.
Facing the patrol was the ‘chest of the bull’, the hard and seasoned veterans; when the ‘horns’ tightened, it was the ‘chest’ that would close and crush, but now they waited, massed rank upon rank, silent and watchful. Their shields were of dappled black and white, their plumes were of the ostrich, jet black and frothing white, and their kilts of spotted civet tails. In their silence and stillness, it was not necessary for Wilson to raise his voice above conversational tones.
‘Well, gentlemen. We will not be going any farther – not for a while anyway. Kindly dismount and form the circle.’
Quietly the horses were led into a ring, so that they stood with their noses touching the rump of the one ahead. Behind each horse, his rider crouched with the stock of his rifle resting on the saddle, aiming across at the surrounding wall of silent, waiting black and white dappled shields.
‘Padre!’ Wilson called softly, and Clinton left the wounded whom he was tending in the centre and crossed quickly to his side.
‘I want you here to translate, if they want to parley.’
‘There will be no more talking,’ Clinton assured him, and as he said it the massed ranks of the ‘chest’ parted and a tall induna came through. Even at a distance of two hundred paces, he was an imposing figure in his plumes and tassels of valour.
‘Gandang,’ said Clinton quietly. ‘The king’s half-brother.’
For long seconds Gandang stared across at the circle of rain-streaked horses and the grim, white faces that peered over them, and then he lifted his broad assegai above his head. It was almost a gladiatorial salute, and he held it for a dozen beats of Clinton’s heart. Then his voice carried clearly to where they waited.
‘Let it begin!’ he called, and his spear arm dropped.
Instantly, the horns came racing in, tightening like a strangler’s grip on the throat.
‘Steady!’ Wilson called. ‘Hold your fire! No bullets to waste, lads! Hold your fire, wait to make sure.’
The blades came out of the thongs that held them to the grip of the shields with a rasping growl, and the war chant rose, deep and resonant:
‘Jee! Jee!’ And now the silver blades drummed on the dappled rawhide, so that the horses stamped and threw their heads.
‘Wait lads.’ The front rank was fifty yards away, sweeping in out of the gentle silky grey rain mist.
‘Pick your man! Pick your man!’ Twenty yards, chanting and drumming to the rhythm of their pounding bare feet.
‘Fire!’ Gunfire rippled around the tight little circle, not a single blast but with the spacing that told that every shot had been aimed, and the front rank of attackers melted into the soggy earth.
The breech blocks clashed, and the gunfire was continuous, like strings of Chinese crackers, and an echo came back, the slapping sound of lead bullets striking naked black flesh.
At two places the warriors burst into the ring, and for desperate seconds there were knots of milling men, and the banging of revolvers held point blank to chest and belly. Then the black wave lost its impetus, hesitated and finally drew back, the surviving warriors slipping back into the forest, leaving their dead scattered in the wet grass.
‘We did it, we sent them off!’ someone yelled, and then they were all cheering.
‘A little early to celebrate,’ Clinton murmured drily.
‘Let them shout,’ Wilson was reloading his pistol. ‘Let them keep their courage up.’ He looked up from the weapon at Clinton. ‘You’ll not be joining us then?’ he asked. ‘You were a fighting man once.’
Clinton shook his head. ‘I killed my last man over twenty-five years ago, but I will look to the wounded and do anything else you want of me.’
‘Go around to each man. Collect all the spare ammunition. Fill the bandoliers and dole ’em out as they are needed.’
Clinton turned back to the centre of the circle, and there were three new men there – one was dead, shot in the head – another with a broken hip – and the third with the shaft of an assegai protruding from his chest.
‘Take it out!’ his voice rose as he tugged ineffectually at the handle. ‘Take it out! I can’t stand it.’
Clinton knelt in front of him and judged the angle of the blade. The point must lie near the heart. ‘It’s better to leave it,’ he advised gently.
‘No! No!’ The man’s voice rose, and the men in the outer circle looked back, their faces stricken by that hysterical shriek. ‘Take it out!’
Perhaps it was best after all – better than lingering, shrieking death to unnerve the men around him.
‘Hold his shoulders,’ Clinton ordered quietly, and a trooper knelt behind the dying man. Clinton gripped the shaft. It was a beautiful weapon, bound in decorative patterns with hair from an elephant’s tail and bright copper wire.
He pulled and the wide blade sucked with the sound of a boot in thick mud, and it came free. The trooper shrieked only once more, as his heart’s blood followed the steel out in a bright torrent.
The waves of warriors came again four times before noon. Each time it seemed impossible that they could fail to overwhelm the waiting circle, but each time they swirled and broke upon it like a tide upon a rock, and then were sucked back into the forest.
After each assault the circle had to be drawn a little smaller, to take up the gaps left by fallen horses and dead and wounded men, and then the Matabele musketeers would creep in again, moving like quick and silent shadows from mopani to mopani, offering meagre targets, the bulge of a shoulder around the stem of a mopani trunk, little cotton pods of gunsmoke in the patches of green grass, the black bead of a head bobbing above the summit of one of the scattered termite nests as a warrior rose to fire.
Wilson walked quietly around the circle, talking calmly to each man in turn, stroking the muzzle of a restless horse, and then coming back into the centre.
‘Are you coping, Padre?’
‘We are doing fine, Major.’
The dead were laid out with what little dignity was left to them, and Clinton had covered their faces with saddle blankets. There were twelve of them now – and it was only a little past noon,
another seven hours of daylight.
The lad who had lost his eyes in the first volley was talking to somebody from long ago in his delirium, but the words were jumbled and made little sense. Clinton had bound his head in a clean white bandage from the saddlebag of the grey – but the bandage was now muddied, and the blood had seeped through.
Two others lay still, one breathing noisily through the hole in his throat from which the air bubbled and whistled, the other silent and pale, except for a little dry cough at intervals. He had been hit low in the back, and there was no use nor feeling in his lower body. The others, too gravely wounded to stand in the circle, were breaking open the waxed paper packages of cartridges and refilling the bandoliers.
Wilson squatted on his haunches beside Clinton. ‘Ammunition?’ he asked softly.
‘Four hundred rounds,’ Clinton replied as softly.
‘Less than thirty rounds a man,’ Wilson calculated swiftly. ‘Not counting the wounded, of course.’
‘Well, look at it this way, Major, at least it is no longer raining.’
‘Do you know, Padre, I hadn’t even noticed.’ Wilson smiled faintly, and looked up at the sky. The cloud belly had risen and at that moment a pale ghostly silhouette of the sun appeared through it; but it was without warmth and so mild that they stared as it without paining their eyes.
‘You are hit, Major,’ Clinton exclaimed suddenly. He had not realized it until that moment. ‘Let me look at it.’
‘It’s almost stopped bleeding. Let it be.’ Wilson shook his head. ‘Keep your bandages for those others.’
He was interrupted by a shout from one of the troopers in the outer circle.
‘There he is again!’ And immediately firing rifles whip-cracked, and the same voice swore angrily.
‘The bastard, the bloody bastard—’
‘What is it, soldier?’
‘That big induna – he’s moving about again out there; but he’s got the devil’s luck, sir. We just wasted a packet of bullets on him.’
As he spoke, Clinton’s old grey horse threw up his head and fell on his knees, hit in the neck. He struggled to rise again, then rolled over on his side.
‘Poor old fellow!’ Clinton murmured, and immediately another horse reared up, thrashed frantically at the air with his fore hooves and then crashed over on his back.
‘They’re shooting better now,’ Wilson said quietly.
‘I would guess that is Gandang’s work,’ Clinton agreed. ‘He’s moving from sniper to sniper, setting their sights for them and coaching their fire.’
‘Well, it’s time to close the circle again.’
There were only ten horses still standing; the others lay where they had fallen, and their troopers lay belly down behind them, waiting patiently for a certain shot at one of the hundreds of elusive figures amongst the trees.
‘Close up.’ Wilson stood and gestured to the ring of troopers. ‘Come in on the centre—’
He broke off abruptly, spun in a half circle and clutched his shoulder, but still he kept his feet.
‘You’re hit again!’ Clinton jumped up to help him and immediately both his legs were struck out from under him, and he dropped back onto the muddy earth and stared at his smashed knee caps.
It must have been one of the ancient elephant guns, the four-to-the-pounders that some of the Matabele were using. It was a weapon that threw a ball of soft lead weighing a quarter of a pound. It had hit him in one knee and torn through into the other.
Both his legs were gone; one was twisted up under his buttocks, and he was sitting on his own muddy riding boot. The other leg was reversed, the toe-cap of his boot was dug into the mud and the silver spur stuck up towards the swirling cloud belly of the sky.
Gandang knelt behind the trunk of the mopani tree and snatched the Martini-Henry rifle out of the hands of a young brave.
‘Even a baboon remembers a lesson he is taught,’ Gandang fumed. ‘How often have you been told not to do this.’
The long leaf sight on top of the blued barrel was at maximum extension, set for one thousand yards.
Under Gandang’s quiet instructions, the young Matabele rested the rifle in a crotch of the mopani, and fired.
The rifle kicked back viciously, and he shouted joyously. In the little circle a big sway-backed grey horse dropped to its knees, fought briefly to rise and then flopped over on its side.
‘Did you see me, my brothers?’ howled the warrior. ‘Did you see me kill the grey horse?’
Vamba’s hands were shaking with excitement as he reloaded and rested the rifle again.
He fired, and this time a bay gelding reared up and then crashed over on its back.
‘Jee!’ sang Vamba, and brandished the smoking rifle over his head, and the war chant was taken up by a hundred other hidden riflemen, and the volley of their fire flared up.
‘They are almost ready,’ Gandang thought, as he glimpsed another of the defenders struck down in the renewed gale of gunfire. ‘There can be few of them who still can shoot. Soon now it will be time to send the spears for the closing-in, and tonight I will have a victory to take to my brother the king. One little victory in all the terrible defeats – and so hard bought.’
He slipped away from the shelter of the mopani trunk, and loped swiftly across towards where another of his riflemen was firing away as fast as he could reload. Halfway there Gandang felt the jarring impact in his upper arm, but he covered the open ground to shelter without a check in his stride, and then leaned against the bole of the mopani, and examined the wound. The bullet had gone in the side of his biceps and out the back of his arm. The blood was dripping from his elbow, like thick black treacle. Gandang scooped a handful of mud and slapped it over the wounds, plugging and masking them.
Then he said scornfully to the kneeling warrior at his side. ‘You shoot like an old woman husking maize.’ And he took the rifle out of his hands.
Clinton dragged himself backwards on his elbows, and his legs slithered loosely after him through the mud. He had used the webbing belt from one of the dead men as a tourniquet, and there was very little bleeding. The numbness of the shock still persisted, so the pain was just bearable, though the sound of the shattered ends of bone grating together as he moved brought up the nausea in a bitter-acid flood in the back of his throat.
He reached the blind boy, and paused for his breathing to settle before he spoke. ‘The others are writing letters, afterwards somebody may find them. Is there anybody at home? I’ll write for you.’
The boy was silent, did not seem to have heard. An hour earlier Clinton had given him one of the precious laudanum pills from the kit which Robyn had prepared for him before he left GuBulawayo.
‘Did you hear, lad?’
‘I heard, Padre. I was thinking. Yes, there is a girl.’
Clinton turned a fresh page of his notebook and licked the point of his pencil, and the boy thought again and mumbled shyly:
‘Well then, Mary. You’ll have read in the papers, we had quite a scrap here today. It’s nearly over now, and I was thinking about that day on the river—’
Clinton wrote quickly, to keep up.
‘I’ll be saying cheerio, then Mary. Isn’t one of us afraid. I reckon as how we just want to do it right – when the time comes—’
Quite suddenly, Clinton found his vision blurring as he wrote the final salutation, and he glanced up at the pale beardless face. The eyes were swathed in bloody bandages, but his lips were quivering and the boy gulped hard as he finished.
‘What is her name, lad? I have to address it.’
‘Mary Swayne. The Red Boar at Falmouth.’
She was a barmaid then, Clinton thought, as he buttoned the folded page into the boy’s breast pocket. She would probably laugh at the note if she ever got it, and pass it around the regulars in the saloon bar.
‘Padre, I was lying,’ the boy whispered. ‘I am afraid.’
‘We all are.’ Clinton squeezed his hand. ‘I tell you what, lad.
If you like, you can load for Dillon here. He’s got eyes to shoot, but only one arm – you’ve got two good arms.’
‘Bully on you, Padre,’ Dillon grinned. ‘Why didn’t we think of that.’
Clinton draped a bandolier across the blind boy’s legs. There were only fifteen cartridges in the loops – and at that moment, out in the mopani, the singing started.
It was slow and deep and very beautiful, echoing and ringing through the forest. The praise song of the Inyati. And Clinton turned his head and looked slowly around the circle.
All the horses were dead; they lay in a litter of saddlery and broken equipment, of crumpled yellow scraps of waxed paper from the ammunition packets, of empty brass cartridge cases and discarded rifles. In the confusion, only the row of dead men was orderly. How long was that row, Clinton thought, oh God, what a waste this is, what a cruel waste.
He raised his eyes, and the clouds were at last breaking up. There were valleys of sweet blue sky between the soaring ranges of cumulus. Already the sunset was licking the cloud mountains with soft, fleshy tones of pink and rose, while the depths of the billowing masses were the colour of burnt antimony and tarnished silver.
They had fought all day on this bloody patch of mud. In another hour it would be dark, but even now there were dark specks moving like dust motes against the high singing blue of the evening sky. The tiny specks turned in slow eddies, like a lazy whirlpool, for the vultures were still very high, waiting and watching with the infinite patience of Africa.
Clinton lowered his eyes, and across the circle Wilson was watching him.
He sat with his back against the belly of one of the dead horses. His right arm hung uselessly at his side, and the wadding over the wound in his stomach was crimson with seeping blood, but he held his revolver in his lap.
The two men held each other’s gaze while the singing soared and fell and soared again.
‘They’ll be coming now – for the last time,’ Wilson said.
Clinton nodded, and then he lifted his chin, and he, too, began to sing: