Warrior
( Matthew Hervey - 10 )
Allan Mallinson
In South Africa, Matthew Hervey clashes with the Warrior King of the Zulus.
1828: The stability of the Cape Colony has been threatened by Xhosa tribesmen who have been making incursions across the borders. And when Hervey is told by his old friend, Sir Eyre Somervile, that the Zulu warrior king, Shaka, is about to make war on neighbouring tribes in the south of the country, he knows that matters are perilous indeed. Leaving his new wife and young daughter in England, Hervey speeds to his friend’s aid.
He and Somervile journey to meet the Zulu king, but Shaka’s royal kraal is a horrifying place. The sentinels at the gates are corpses, and it soon becomes apparent that Shaka has slaughtered thousands of his own people. Into this febrile atmosphere ride Hervey, Somervile and their escort of dragoons and mounted rifles. But the sudden death of the Zulu king plunges the region into civil war, and Hervey and his men into terrible danger.
Yet worse is to come. As Hervey leads Shaka’s queen across the veldt to safety, he knows he must cross an alien landscape where they will be hunted by wild animals — and deadly warriors.
Also by Allan Mallinson
A CLOSE RUN THING
THE NIZAM'S DAUGHTERS*
A REGIMENTAL AFFAIR
A CALL TO ARMS
THE SABRE'S EDGE
RUMOURS OF WAR
AN ACT OF COURAGE
COMPANY OF SPEARS
MAN OF WAR
*Published outside the UK under the title HONORABLE COMPANY
WARRIOR
ALLAN MALLINSON
FOREWORD
Lord Cardigan, who led the Charge of the Light Brigade, was born six years later than Matthew Hervey. But whereas Hervey joined his regiment, the 6th Light Dragoons, when he was seventeen, seeing service throughout the Peninsular War and at Waterloo, the Honourable Thomas Brudenell, as Cardigan then was, did not join the army until 1824, when he was twenty-seven. Brudenell was not entirely without military experience, however, if it could be called that: five years earlier he had formed his own troop of yeomanry cavalry to guard against Reformist demonstrations in Northamptonshire, his family seat (Deene Park). But the troop's purpose and organization gave him a ludicrously feudal attitude to soldiering, which, coupled with an intellect that not even three years at Oxford had raised to adequacy, led with exquisite inevitability to that poetic debacle of the Crimean War.
Cardigan's rise was rapid: cornet in the 8th Hussars in 1824; lieutenant in January 1825; captain in June of the following year; major in August 1830, and lieutenant-colonel, commanding the 15th Hussars, in December that same year. All these promotions were by purchase: using his vast wealth, he literally bribed his way to command in six years. The purchase system was a sort of regulator: it was meant to guarantee that officers had a financial stake in the service of the Crown, after the uncertainties of the Civil War and the Jacobite rebellions and the revolutionary notions which had so disturbed the peace on the other side of the Channel. So the price of a commission was a sort of caution money. And, in truth, the official prices were not so great as to exclude men of talent. The problem lay in the unofficial price: an officer in a smart regiment was more or less able to name his own price when he decided to sell, which was often too high for a junior in his own regiment, and so a rich one from another regiment would buy in. There was, therefore, considerable coming and going. But a smart regiment could become non-smart overnight: all it needed was a posting to India, or some other place considered unconvivial (Beau Brummell resigned from the 10th Hussars when they were posted to Manchester). Fashionable officers would exchange with others in home-stationed regiments, and since an officer could live more comfortably on his pay and a smaller private income in the tropics (and, presumably, Manchester), there was no shortage of willing exchangees. There were actually some officers who positively sought out a posting to India, since that offered the best prospect of active service.
As long as all this buying and selling over-price didn't frighten the horses, the authorities were generally content. Periodically there were attempts to enforce the regulation prices, but never very vigorously and always without success. Enforcement was scarcely in the interests of anyone above the rank of cornet who had paid a penny more than the regulation, for he, not unreasonably, hoped to recoup his outlay when he 'sold out'. No one wanted negative equity. Besides, there were always ways for an able but impecunious officer to advance: (free) promotions in the field following the death of his senior, or in reward for some outstanding service; or the system of brevets, and acting and local rank. However, the army was getting smaller, and actual command, as opposed to appointments on the staff, was going to the men with large fortunes – at least in the Guards, the cavalry and some of the better-favoured infantry regiments of the Line; competition for command of the Forty-something Foot on a yellow-fevered island in the West Indies was not so intense. So it all sorted itself out in the end – more or less. But how was the British army to be sure of having capable generals if all that was needed to rise to command of a regiment was deep pockets and aristocratic connections?
Thomas Brudenell, Lord Cardigan, was the most infamous example of the mess into which the army was getting itself during the decades after Waterloo, but there were other contenders for that dubious distinction. Brudenell does not feature in the pages of this latest chronicle of the life of Major (Acting Lieutenant-Colonel) Matthew Hervey, but the man who ordered him to charge at Balaklava, his brother-in-law Lord Bingham, later Earl of Lucan, is remarked on. Bingham had joined the army after Waterloo, straight from school, but before buying command of the 17th Lancers for a record sum, and before he was thirty, he had seen no active service. Indeed, he had spent remarkably little time at actual duty. After command of the Seventeenth, Bingham went onto half-pay – another anomaly of the purchase system, whereby a man could retire from active soldiering, but if he had the right connections could continue to be promoted. Between 1837 and 1854, Bingham went from lieutenant-colonel to lieutenant-general (four ranks higher) without so much as attending a field day.
Today's National Curriculum, with its stress on 'empathizing' in the study of history, would no doubt phrase the exam question thus: 'How would you feel, as a veteran of real fighting, to have men promoted over you merely because they had money?' And doubtless there would be an A* for the candidate who wrote of how wretched he would feel, the victim of aristocratic oppression, but that he could do nothing for fear of the lash or whatever it was that officers were punished with. But the sort of student who gained a top grade in the old 'O' Levels would write something along the lines of 'but there again, the Duke of Wellington's rise had not been so very different from the Earl of Lucan's . . .'
* * *
It is 1828, and Matthew Hervey is thirty-seven. He is major (second in command) of the 6th Light Dragoons, though still nominally in command of a troop on detachment to the Cape Colony; and he has acting lieutenant-colonel's rank for command of the recently raised Cape Mounted Rifles. He has just made a textbook marriage, and his old friend and mentor, Daniel Coates, has left him a deal of money with which to advance himself. He is at a crossroads, a watershed, a pivot point – whichever is the most appropriate word for that magic number thirty-seven – which even in today's army is still the age at which a man's career is best sounded. Matthew Hervey has come a long way since that day in 1808 when the second son of the Horningsham parsonage, straight from Shrewsbury School, joined his regiment. Like Cromwell, he carried with him his Prayer Book on campaign; although unlike Cromwell, his religion was never militant, rather that of the clean young Englishman. Now, in this tenth instalment of the Hervey chronicles, the Prayer Book is altogether less we
ll thumbed, though the sabre is no less bloody.
PART ONE
EX AFRICA . . .
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 machinelike 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 bushwillow 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.
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 illconsidered 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 . . .
It had been his, Somervile's, idea to make this reconnaissance of the frontier. He had wanted to see for himself the country, and the settlers who were often more cause for annoyance to Cape Town than were the native peoples. And of course those very people – Bantu, Kaffirs, Xhosa (it would be so very useful to have these names, at least, unconfused) – about whom he had read much that was contrary, and over whom his friend Colonel Matthew Hervey had lately gained some mastery. But Hervey was not with him. He was on leave, in England, recovering from his wounds and the remittent fever, and about to marry. Somervile had not wanted to undertake the reconnaissance without him, yet he could not wait for ever on his friend's return to duty: it was autumn, and although the winters here were nothing to those of India, the nights could be bitter chill, and the rains in the mountains of the interior could swell the rivers of the frontier into impassable torrents.
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