Hervey 10 - Warrior (29 page)

When he was finished, the warrior nodded his head, once, in a gesture of resolve. '
Yebo, baba!
'

Fairbrother stepped rear, to Somervile's left side, sensing they would soon have to make a dash for it.

'We fall back to the hut if they turn,' whispered Hervey, on Somervile's right. 'I'll take the headman.'

'And the other dozen spears?' whispered Fairbrother. 'Keep praying, my friend!'

The keeper now spoke quietly to the
inkwebane
.

Hervey was on the point of drawing his sabre when the cadets divided, marching round either flank of the youths and halting in front of them, so that each of the condemned could look into the eyes of his executioner.

'Good God!' spluttered Somervile. 'What a monstrous ceremony.'

'Easy,' whispered Hervey. 'There's not a thing we can do to save them. When I give the word, run like Hades for the hut!'

The old warrior raised his spear. '
U-Shaka!
'

The
inkwebane
thrust their spears forward. '
U-Shaka!
' they roared.

None of the condemned, not even the youngest, flinched. '
U-Shaka!
' they cried back resolutely.

The
inkwebane
braced, spears now inches from their deadly work, waiting the final order.

The youths and boys, their chins high, stood motionless.

The old warrior turned to the
induna
for the order.

The
induna,
his tears replaced by a look of intense pride, stepped between the errant youths and their executioners. '
Nihambe kahle!
' he growled – 'You must go well' (the Zulu parting) – and then repeated his praise: '
Ni ngama qawu
. . . You are heroes.
Sobonana futhi
. . . We shall see each other again!'

They steeled themselves visibly for the point of the spear.

'
Hlezi!
' he commanded.

The boys hesitated.

'
Hlezi!
'

They sat, crestfallen at the indignity of meeting the spear in any attitude but on their feet.

'Be done with it, man!' muttered Somervile.

Hervey grasped his arm, fearing his old friend would not be able to contain himself.

The
induna
turned, and nodded – sharp – to the old warrior.

The warrior gestured with his spear to the senior of the
inkwebane.

The cadet marched up to his general.

'
U-Shaka!
' roared the
induna.

The cadet thrust the spear into his general's chest, and Shaka's liegeman died with not a sound but that of the
iklwa
as it withdrew – the very sound that gave its name to the spear.

The cadet turned, his hands to his side. The old warrior nodded to the second of the
inkwebane,
who stepped forward and thrust his spear beneath his senior's breastbone.

Hervey and Fairbrother drew their sabres. 'Get ready, Somervile!'

The warrior barked another order.

Before Hervey could say 'Go!', the
inkwebane
turned and began marching back towards the
sango.

Somervile gasped. 'I never saw nor heard such a thing!'

Hervey sighed with the most prodigious relief.

'A noble savage,' said Fairbrother, but with a touch of irony. 'See how his courage would let him kill himself, and another, rather than face Shaka's wrath.'

XV
HE WHO IS EQUAL TO A THOUSAND WARRIORS

The following morning

They made camp that night a league to the north of the Fasimba kraal, on the round top of a little hill which afforded good observation, and with plentiful water in the stream below. The moon was near full, and the sky clear, which allowed the pickets to lie in rather closer than they would otherwise have been able to do. But without cloud, the night was cold; and dawn, when it broke at about five-thirty, was doubly welcome. They had stood-to half an hour before, in unusually wary expectation, and Hervey had kept them under arms for another half-hour after daylight while mounted patrols cleared out to rifle range and beyond. There was no sign of Zulu, however, other than smoke from the homesteads on distant hills.

They were within a morning's march of Dukuza, and Somervile had begun turning over in his mind how they would make their entrance to the royal kraal. If Shaka were in some way deranged – and he was beginning to believe it possible – was there, indeed, any future for his embassy? He had read of the work of an eminent French physician, who postulated a sort of 'insanity without delirium', in which a man acted without restraint or remorse, and yet with none of the common manifestations of derangement; it was only in scrutinizing a man's actions, therefore, that the insanity was manifest, as if some demon were working clandestinely within. He had every expectation, yet, of a civilized exchange of courtesies with Shaka, and at least the preliminaries to a proper accord if not a full-blown treaty, and he was certain that this could be more enduring than any made with the Xhosa, for Shaka exerted an absolute power in his kingdom. But to negotiate with a man who was insane . . . It was wholly without his experience.

Hervey's thoughts were no less troubled. He had not the slightest doubt (nor Fairbrother) that news of what had happened at the Fasimba kraal would by now have reached Dukuza. And, like Somervile, he feared that Shaka might perceive it that his will had been thwarted, and ascribe it to the malign intervention of the visitors from Cape Town. His mind was therefore occupied in thinking how to deploy his little command to effect, hoping as Somervile for a 'civilized exchange of courtesies', but preparing meanwhile for the worst. It certainly did not augur well that Isaacs was now too weak for the saddle, and that they would have to leave him here until the fever was sweated out. But Fairbrother's capability at the Fasimba kraal had been encouraging, so that the suggestion of delaying the march received no more than a passing moment's consideration.

The column, when it set off just after seven, was distinctly more subdued than on the day before. Though none but the five who had entered the
isigodlo
had seen the death of the
induna,
and of his executioner in turn, word had got about camp. Word always got about camp. Comprehending this full well, Hervey had spoken with the officers and serjeants so that the least lurid and speculative accounts were likely to circulate. Nevertheless, at stand-to, Private Johnson had told him that the slaughter did not bode well with the dragoons, and that they were swearing 'no quarter'.

In consequence, Hervey rode the first mile or so with Brereton, and then with Serjeant-Major Collins, to explain his design for disposing the column when they encountered the Zulu. The force would divide into three. The lieutenant-governor's party would be no more than a dozen: Corporal Battle would be Somervile's coverman, Corporals McCarthy and French would be his, with Corporal Brayshaw covering Fairbrother. He would need Trumpeter Roddis, too, for he must be able to rely on the best of calls to communicate his orders to the other two groups, as well as Johnson and three of the most experienced dragoons. This would be the group that would enter Shaka's kraal. The second would be a supporting group, Captain Welsh's Mounted Riflemen. These would attempt to position themselves so as to be at the immediate support of the first group. Bearing in mind what had happened at the Fasimba kraal, Hervey explained that he wanted the Rifles to be but one fence from them at all times (Isaacs did not know how many stockades there were at Dukuza, but he thought there were at least two). The third group, the rest of the dragoons, under Brereton's command, would remain outside the kraal to be able to judge how best to support the groups within, and to have a free hand in doing so.

Brereton said he understood perfectly, but in a manner that made Hervey uneasy, for he seemed not to receive it with the same relish that he himself would have. And so he rode with him a little longer, rehearsing the various exigencies and how they might deal with them. He would have liked Collins to hear, too, but that would have been to undermine Brereton's own authority – and not least his confidence. In any case, he knew he could trust to Collins's 'cavalry eye'. Exactly as he would have been able to trust to Armstrong's.

'Upon my word, did you ever see such a sight?' Somervile was standing in the stirrups, shielding his eyes against the sun, taking in the sheer size of distant Dukuza. 'And not a thing but that might be taken down like canvas. Not a stone – nor even a nail, I'll warrant. A metaphor, perhaps: the true nature of Shaka's power?'

Hervey was not much amenable to metaphors this morning. The here and now of a hundred or so men and horses was amply engaging him. He took out his telescope, and tried to humour his old friend nevertheless. 'I am reminded of stout Cortez.'

Somervile arched an eyebrow.

They were halted on yet another of the hilltops which afforded an outlook of half a mile or so to the next; except that now before them was the seat of the king of the Zulu. The kraal was vast, encompassing both valley and hillside. How many huts were contained within its enormous perimeter, he could not estimate (Isaacs had said a thousand, but he could have believed it twice that number). In the centre lay the great cattle byre, empty at this time of day, but five times, at least, the size of that at the Fasimba kraal. And beyond, on the highest point of the hillside, like the dome of the Roman Pantheon, was Shaka's
ndlunkulu,
palace-hut. The whole kraal, indeed, radiated a brooding regal presence – something in the scale of it, the enclosing, subduing, of so immense an area of wilderness, and yet where Nature should be the pre-eminent savage force. Hervey had seen many a place where the walls were taller, wider, longer, but they did not stand out as remarkably as here, because even in the empty tracts, in India, or Spain, they stood in a landscape which belonged unquestionably to man. The very primitiveness of this place made it somehow more powerful.

' "And Joshua and all Israel made as if they were beaten before them, and fled by the way of the wilderness." '

'I mark well enough the passage, Hervey,' replied Somervile, sinking back into the saddle. 'But I would put no store by Joshua's stratagem here. Shaka would not be tempted from such a fastness, I think.'

'I fear that if we are drawn into its depth. . .'

'Surely your spirit is not failing you, Colonel?'

'It is not. But neither is my reason.'

There was another cause of his disquiet, however. Hervey's scheme required some degree of adroitness on the part of Brereton in holding his troop aloof but in contact with the Rifles. With Welsh's men drawn deep into the kraal, it would be hard enough for the best of officers to judge this rightly.

Somervile was not inclined to see much hazard in entering. Indeed, he saw their vulnerability as a positive advantage, for was not this Shaka a king? He would receive a delegation from a fellow king with the utmost correctness. They would have ample time to withdraw if he showed displeasure, and under the natural laws which protected such a delegation; for not to allow them such rights would surely risk undermining his own status in the eyes of his people?

Hervey conceded the logic, and was by no means reluctant in doing so; all that he had heard did indeed suggest that Shaka could behave with the most kingly decorum. Supposing, that is, that Shaka was not insane. 'Might we not first test the water, so to speak: draw up the troop and have Shaka inspect them – but outside the kraal?'

'I think not, Hervey. I see that it might serve, but if we are bidden to the royal quarters then we have no alternative but to accede. It would be folly otherwise, even to hesitate, for that might show us fearful, or give mortal offence. I am persuaded that we must trust to the normal usages of diplomacy.'

Hervey, sighing deeply but to himself, acknowledged the order with a touch to his shako peak.

Dukuza, regal as it appeared from that first vantage point, took on a meaner aspect as they came closer. It was not merely that its construction was so primitive, lacking fine craft and ennobling colour, it was the abounding image and odour of death. The whitened bones of all manner of beasts, the carcasses of slaughtered cattle and game picked over by the scavengers of the bush, lay scattered for a quarter of a mile, and the skulls of elephants, on poles, marked the processional way to the sango. But the true horror was human not animal: the impalings, hundreds of them, like crucifixions along the Appian Way. Hervey had seen much carnage, and every dragoon had seen the gibbet at the crossroads, but here was a veritable religion of death. The column fell into a deep silence.

A furlong from the
sango,
Hervey held up a hand. 'This will serve.'

Somervile reined to a halt. He surveyed the ground, and sighed. 'The heathen in his blindness!'

'What?'

He turned to his old friend. ' "From Greenland's icy mountains", Hervey. You were singing to yourself, were you not?'