Man Of War

Somervile was ever of the opinion that a man’s mortal remains meant nothing (nor, for that matter, did he believe there was anything immortal: the Parsees of Bombay put out their dead so that the vultures cold pick the body clean). But he thought not to debate the point at this exigent moment. In any case, he recognized in Armstrong’s reluctance the habitual pride of the regiment. A man who bore the numeral ‘VI’ on his shako plate was not abandoned lightly by another who bore the same.

‘Shall we carry them astride then?’

Armstrong nodded. ‘We’ve no chance of making a mile unless we’re mounted. Not if those Xhosa don’t want us to. We can get Parks and Allott across the one horse, and Jobie here fastened into the saddle. You take Danny’s trooper, sir. And I’ll have Corp. Hardy get up his carbine, and Parks’s.’

‘And the prisoner? I should like very much to interrogate him when there is opportunity.’

A bullet through the head would be the most expedient, reckoned Armstrong, but it would not serve; it had not been the way for years, not even with savages. ‘I don’t see us managing more than a trot, sir: he can keep up on his shanks.’

‘Indeed.’

Armstrong offered Wainwright the flask again. ‘You right enough for the saddle, Jobie, bonny lad?’

‘Right enough, sir,’ replied Wainwright, though shaking his head at the need of help. ‘I’ll maybe want a leg up . . .’

Piet Doorn came back down the track in the peculiar loping gait that was the Cape frontiersman’s – part jogging trot, part native bound. ‘No cattle is past this way in two days,’ he reported to Armstrong, his English heavily accented. ‘But I can smell Kaffir still. A dozen of them maybe.’

Armstrong nodded. ‘Will you ride rearguard for us, Piet?’

It was no part of a guide’s duty to ride behind, let alone to fight off attackers. But Piet Doorn relished the opportunity to reduce the odds for the burghers of the frontier, as the gamekeeper shoots vermin at every opportunity. ‘I will.’

Somervile dabbed at his brow with a red silk handkerchief. ‘But why do they attack us when there is quite evidently no cattle to be had?’

Armstrong shook his head. ‘Don’t know, sir. A mystery to me.’ Piet Doorn had a theory, however, though he shuddered at the thought of it. ‘They wants our guns. Can be no other.’

Somervile shuddered too. It was futile to suppose they wanted them merely for hunting. But if it were so, did the Xhosa intend them against the Zulu or the colonists?

‘Well they’re not having ’em unless they sign for ’em,’ said Armstrong, matter-of-factly. ‘And since these heathens can’t read or write . . .’

That half his troop couldn’t was neither here nor there. What he was saying was that he would part with firearms only – and literally – over his dead body. Others might throw down the weapons, having spiked them first, but these Xhosa, even if heathens and savages, were not incapable blacksmiths, as any who had examined their spears knew: they would soon enough fathom how to put carbines to rights again.

‘When do you ride, Serjeant-Major?’ asked Piet.

‘As soon as I can get Jobie Wainwright into the saddle.’ Armstrong turned to Somervile. ‘Sir, will you call in Corporal Hardy?’

Somervile nodded, realizing he was less use to Armstrong for the moment than was Piet Doorn. Such things were important for a man to recognize, and he was thankful he had learned the necessity of such humility in his early days in Mysore. ‘I had better despatch my mount, too. Is it safe to risk a shot d’ye think?’

Armstrong thought the word ‘safe’ hardly apt, but he saw no objection to a shot. ‘Piet?’

Piet Doorn shook his head, indicating that he too could see no reason to deny the animal a clean death.

Somervile doubled off breathily to recall the remaining able-bodied dragoon, before returning to his stricken mount. The little Arab was quietly pulling at a clump of wild ginger the other side of a bush willow tree, just out of sight of Armstrong and the others, her near foreleg off the ground, the hamstring severed. Somervile detested the business, always. For a dragoon it was, he supposed (and had indeed occasionally observed), a routine of his occupation; but for him it was somehow a debasement. He held no truck with scripture (or rather, he admired much of its poetry while disputing its authority), but he took powerfully the responsibility of dominion, and the horse was, to his mind, the noblest of ‘every living thing that moveth upon the earth’.