Hervey turned to see Sam Kirwan in his fore-and-aft, as incongruous a hat in the field now as once it had been commonplace. He smiled again: a happy warrior-veterinary. ‘Have you ever unsheathed that sword, Sam?’
The veterinary surgeon judged the question rhetorical.
But Hervey did not forbid it. Sam Kirwan reined up alongside Serjeant Wainwright, and opened his notebook.
Hervey at once took off back to where Corporal Wick stood resolutely observing the Zulu.
‘Still coming on, Colonel,’ said Wick as Gilbert almost stumbled to a halt next to him.
Hervey took out his telescope for one last look before the parley.
Sam Kirwan closed with him and slipped from the saddle. ‘Gilbert’s running uneven, Hervey. Let me take a look.’
Hervey had noticed nothing: any horse could stumble, and they were none of them too fresh. ‘What—’
‘Breathing’s very irregular, and the pupils are like saucers. Hervey, you’d better change horses. He looks as though he could drop at any moment.’
Hervey jammed the telescope back in its holster. ‘Very well, but after I’ve had the parley. This isn’t the time to be changing horses.’ He glanced behind.
The troop was beginning to come up the slope.
‘Time to introduce ourselves to the Zulu, I believe.’ He squeezed Gilbert’s flanks – just a touch with the lower leg – and the gelding stepped off at once.
There was no white flag. Hervey was sure it would mean nothing to the Zulu, and in any case he disliked the practice since it restricted his freedom of action. Instead the little party advanced towards what he presumed was the leading column, where he supposed he would find either the commander of this host or else an officer who would know where the commander was. Fairbrother rode at his side, and to the rear of them Wainwright and Corporal Dilke, and behind them Sam Kirwan.
They began to trot. Hervey felt at once that Gilbert had lost his spring. The horse was indeed tired; perhaps he would change to his second as soon as he got back to the ridge (Johnson, for sure, would be there waiting for him). But this slope was kind; they could take it in an easy canter down to the Zulu, and it would not tax them greatly to regain the crest afterwards – even if they had to make a run for it.
He glanced over his shoulder again. There was the troop in impressive line along the ridge, motionless, two hundred yards of blue and yellow, and white-topped. But, strangely, he found himself wishing it were a furlong of red: there were times (very few, but this was one) when he knew that Nature’s own colour of danger magnified the effect.
The black columns stopped suddenly, and then came a blood-chilling moan which almost knocked him back in the saddle. He had never heard its like – not the shouting on the battlefields of the Peninsula, nor the cheering at Waterloo, nor even the fiendish cries at Bhurtpore. It was inhuman, one voice prodigiously loud rather than many thousands, as if they somehow spoke – thought – with one mind. It was eerie; indeed it was unsettling. He prayed it would not be unnerving.
He pressed on without checking, however, or without looking behind, the canter and the slope taking him voluntarily or otherwise towards the snake-like columns. At a hundred yards the columns became things of glistening, feathered warriors, of spears and shields. Hervey knew he had seen nothing of its like. Never before, no matter how savage the enemy, had he perceived Creation so … primitive; as if from the earliest days of the Fall. He wondered how he might speak with such a people – if these primitives could be dignified by the word ‘people’. Not just speak but communicate, convey an understanding.
He slowed to a trot and then a walk, and came to a halt fifty yards from the head of the centre column. There he would wait for a propitious sign.
He waited for what felt a long age. And while he waited he began to see the remarkable uniformity of these warriors. At first he had observed merely shield upon shield; now he saw shield upon identical shield, the exact same. And they were evidently of animal hide, which uniformity spoke to him of Shaka’s powerful dominion over ‘every living thing that moveth upon the earth’. Each warrior wore an apron of bunched hide and feathers (every one the same) and a headband of spotted fur (leopardskin, perhaps?) and white streamers just above the elbow on each arm – oxtail hair probably. Hervey wondered if they fought as regularly as they looked, in close formation; or if they attacked in loose, open order, as skirmishers did. He studied the short, stabbing spear – not assegai, as he had once thought it called, but iklwa. It appeared to be their sole weapon. The blade was about a foot long, a few inches at its widest, tapering to a rounded tip, unlike the pronounced point of the bayonet or the sabre. He reckoned it would need strength to stab home with it. But such a point, driven into the gut with force, would do such damage as to confound the best surgeon’s art. The warriors held the short shafts to stab underarm. Hervey could picture the method – the shield not merely to parry, but to mask the coming thrust. He did not think it would do to face such a weapon with a sabre, dismounted.
One of the Zulu stepped forward, a thick-set, older man with a slight stoop. Hervey had not noticed him before, for he was dressed the same as the rest – except that he wore a necklace of claws.
‘Molo mhlob’am!’ said Fairbrother, saluting.
The tribesman eyed him cautiously.
Fairbrother supposed he recognized the friendly Xhosa greeting, even if the Zulu were different.
‘Yebo, sawubona!’
The words were unfamiliar, but Fairbrother fancied the raised spear was greeting enough. He would try the simplest Xhosa by return. ‘Colonel Hervey, here, commands a detachment of King George’s army.’ He indicated the royal representative.
The Zulu put the point of the spear to his chest. ‘Igama lami nguMatiwane!’
Fairbrother saluted again. ‘Ndiyavuya ukukwazi, Matiwane.’ He had learned the Zulu’s name (Matiwane); was he the cohort’s chief? He would press to know the reason for their advance. ‘You come to see your brothers the Xhosa?’
While Fairbrother continued his halting exchange, Hervey took in all that he could of the extraordinary scene. He marked that the Zulu could see the troop on the ridge, a quarter of a mile away. They watched warily, like some animal when a distant predator appeared. Perhaps the horses did indeed make them uneasy? For all Hervey knew, this Matiwane might believe the horses could leap at him in seconds, like the leopard, with many thousands more of them waiting to pounce, all hidden the other side of the hill. But even as he watched them parley he became aware that the columns were not absolutely motionless. He glanced left and right. He could not actually see the Zulu moving, only somehow that there had been movement. He glanced left and right again. The progress was now evident, as must be the purpose: the Zulu were moving to encircle them. And they would not need to complete the circle: it would only take a rush before long and their line of withdrawal would be closed. He must act at once.
He held up a hand. ‘Sharply, about turn and away!’
Fairbrother made to protest, but Hervey gave him no chance. They turned and galloped like the devil, Sam Kirwan leading.
The same blood-chilling moan followed them, like a thousand angry wasps in an echo-chamber. Hervey did not turn. He pressed Gilbert as hard as he could, but feeling with every stride that something was amiss. As they got within hailing distance of the crest at a struggling canter, the gelding stumbled once, and then again, and then tumbled on to the forearm, throwing Hervey clean from the saddle.