Man Of War

Piet Doorn, burgher-guide, coming back up the trail from checking for spoor, fired his big Hall rifle at fifty yards, felling the tallest Xhosa, but the three others sprang at Somervile and his covermen like leopards on the fold. Corporal Allott, sabre now in left hand, made not even a retaliatory cut, the spear plunging into his gut and pushing him clean from the saddle. Corporal Hardy dived between the little Arab’s legs to slash at the nearest bare, black heel. The Xhosa staggered momentarily but just long enough for Somervile to urge his new mount forward, tumbling and trampling him like a corn rig.

The last Xhosa hesitated, as if unsure of his target rather than whether to fight or run, in which time Armstrong had closed with him to drive the point of his blade deep into his side, bowling him over to writhe in a bloody pool which spread with uncommon speed. Now Armstrong could risk turning his back on him to despatch Somervile’s tumbled assailant.

But the Xhosa had no fight left in him. His hands and eyes pleaded.

Armstrong gestured with his sabre. ‘Bind him up, Corp. Hardy. We’ll take him a prize.’ He turned to Somervile. ‘You all right, sir?’ he asked in an accent so strong as to sound strangely alien.

But Somervile knew that it was action that revealed the man, and if Armstrong reverted to the Tyne in such a moment, then so be it: without his address they would none of them be alive. Could they stay alive? ‘I am well, Serjeant-Major. The others?’

Armstrong was already taking stock. ‘Corp. Hardy, watch rear, the way we came. Piet, go look ahead, will you? Stand sentry.’

Piet Doorn nodded as he tamped the new charge in his rifle.

Armstrong sprang from the saddle and looked in turn at Corporal Allott and Private Parks, satisfying himself there was no sign of life, before making for where Serjeant Wainwright lay.

‘Jobie, Jobie!’ he said sharply, shaking Wainwright’s shoulder as if it were reveille.

There was no response.

Yet blood was still running from the wound. ‘Come on Jobie, lad – rouse yerself!’ said Armstrong quietly but insistently, unfastening Wainwright’s barrel-belt, taking off his own neckcloth to staunch the flow of blood.

Somervile was now by his side. ‘Brandy, do you think, Serjeant-Major?’

‘Ay sir. Anything that’ll bring ’im to,’ replied Armstrong, taking the flask.

It was not easy to guess how much blood Wainwright had lost – in Armstrong’s experience it always looked more than it was – but to lose consciousness . . .

He lifted Wainwright’s head and put the flask to his mouth, tipping it high to let the brandy pour in copiously.

A spasm of choking signalled that Wainwright was at least fighting. ‘That’s it, Jobie, lad!’ He poured in more.

Another fit of choking brought back up the contents of the flask, and Wainwright’s eyes flickered open at last.

Somervile rose, and shook his head. It had been a deuced ill-considered thing, he reckoned. He was not a military man (although he wore the ribbon of the Bath star for his soldierly bearing during the Vellore mutiny), but he knew it to be a sound principle not to divide one’s force unless it were necessary. And it had not been necessary: he was perfectly capable of holding his own with pistol and sword! Captain Brereton, the officer in temporary command of E Troop, 6th Light Dragoons, had had no need of sending him to the rear so – into the very jaws, indeed, of the wretched Xhosa reiving party they were meant to be evading! What manner of tactician was this new-come captain?

Sweat poured down Somervile’s brow, though the day was not hot. His hat was lost, his neckcloth gone, and his coat was fastened with but its single remaining button. But exhilaration, alarm and anger were in him combined to unusual degree: he was at once all for battle and for retreat. For this was no warfare like that he had seen in India. This was more the hunting of savage beasts, the leopard or the tiger. Or rather, the contest with beasts, for he and his escort had been the prey.

Were these men, these Bantu, Kaffirs, Xhosa – whatever their rightful name – were they cognitive, as the natives of the Indies? Or did they act merely from instinction, as the psalmist had it, like the horse, or the mule, ‘which have no understanding, whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle’? What parley could there be with such primitives, who had not even the accomplishment of writing? Parley, though, depended first on surviving. They had beaten off one attack, but another . . .