Man Of War

This, then, is the army in which Matthew Hervey is making his way – a slow, sometimes disheartening progress, but with the advantage of knowing that he serves among friends who face the same odds, and with NCOs with whom he has, so to speak, grown up. The strength of the army was this regimental system, because the regiment was largely self-supporting and self-healing. It remains so today. It is threatened more than ever before, however. For who that has not served in a regiment, directly or indirectly, can truly appreciate its strength? Certainly not the Treasury, and, I begin to doubt, even ‘the War Office’.

WARRIOR

is the new novel featuring

Matthew Hervey and the 6th Light Dragoons

Here’s an exclusive extract

I

THE LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR

The eastern frontier, Cape Colony, April 1828

The spearhead sliced through the blue serge of Private Parks’s tunic, driving deep into his chest. The dragoon, wide-eyed at the sudden, silent assault, tumbled from the saddle like a recruit at first riding school, dead before his feet quit the stirrups. He lay with the spear stuck fast, and barely a twitch, at the feet of his troop horse, which stood still throughout as if possessed of the same paralysing shock.

Sir Eyre Somervile, lieutenant-governor of the Cape Colony, fumbled with the cartridge for his cavalry pistol. Serjeant-Major Armstrong’s sabre flashed from its scabbard. The covermen closed to Somervile’s side, swords drawn, to quieten his excited little arab. Serjeant Wainwright unshipped his carbine, cocked and aimed it in a single motion, more machine-like than human, and fired.

The spearman was sent to meet his maker with the same rude promptness of Parks’s own despatch.

A second assegai winged from the thicket, higher than the first (and thus better seen). Corporal Allott, the coverman on Somervile’s offside, thrust up his sabre – ‘head protect’ – just catching the shaft at the binding to deflect it clear of his charge, who then dropped his cartridge ball and cursed most foully.

But the impact knocked the sabre clean from Allott’s hand to hang by the sword knot from his jarred wrist. Before he could recover it another Xhosa darted from the thicket and between his horse’s legs, thrusting with his spear to hamstring Somervile’s Arab. Armstrong spurred to his side and cut savagely at the back of the Xhosa’s neck as he scrambled from beneath. The razor-sharp blade left but a few bloody sinews joining head to torso. The Xhosa staggered, then fell twitching in a gory, faecal sprawl.

Somervile jumped from the saddle to check his mare’s leg.

‘No, sir!’ cried Armstrong. ‘Get back up!’

Two more Xhosa ran in. Armstrong cut down one but the other lunged straight for Somervile. The nearside coverman, Corporal Hardy, urged his trooper forward to get his sabre to the guard, but couldn’t make it. An arm’s reach from his quarry, the Xhosa lofted his spear. Somervile could smell the animal odour of his fury as he raised his ball-less pistol, and fired.

At an arm’s length the blank discharge was enough. Flame and powder grain scored the Xhosa’s face, blinding him so that he jabbed wildly but ineffectually with his spear until Corporal Hardy put him out of his frenzied agony with a cleaving slice from crown to chin.

The little Arab hobbled a few steps, her off-foreleg held up pitiably as if begging. Hardy jumped from the saddle. ‘Sir, here!’ He grabbed Somervile by the arm and motioned for him to mount.

Somervile, more exasperated than dazed, made to protest, but Armstrong decided it. ‘Get up, sir! Get astride!’

Hardy heaved Somervile’s paunchy bulk into his trooper’s saddle, as with a deep-throated cry more Xhosa burst from the cover of the bush willow thicket twenty yards away.

There was no time to front with carbine or pistol; it was for each to do as he could. Serjeant Wainwright, nearest, spurred straight at them, sword and carbine in hand, reins looped over his left arm. He parried the spear on his right a split second before the one on the left thrust through his canvas barrel belt and into his side. He fired the carbine point-blank, taking off the top of the spearman’s head like a badly sliced egg, and then carved deep between the shoulders of the first Xhosa with a backhand cut. His trooper halted a few strides beyond, and Wainwright slid helplessly from the saddle, leaving a broad red stripe down the grey’s flank.

The remaining spearmen pressed home the attack with a courage and determination Armstrong had not seen in Xhosa before. He turned his mare just in time to get the reach with his sword arm, swinging his sabre with all his strength down behind the nearest shield, all but severing the Xhosa’s wrist.