Hervey 10 - Warrior

by Allan Mallinson

  Table of Contents

  Title

  By the Same Author

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  FOREWORD

  PART ONE EX AFRICA . . . Chapter I THE LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR

  Chapter II REGIMENTAL MOURNING

  Chapter III IN PARTIBUS INFIDELIUM

  Chapter IV PRIMIPARA

  Chapter V A HUNT

  Chapter VI THE KING'S GERMAN

  PART TWO THE GATHERING STORM Chapter VII INDEFINITE LEAVE OF ABSENCE

  Chapter VIII AMOUR EN GUERRE

  Chapter IX A GOOD JUDGE OF HORSEFLESH

  Chapter X A MOST AGREEABLE THING

  Chapter XI THE CONSEQUENCES OF INACTION

  PART THREE U-SHAKA! Map

  Chapter XII THE PLACE OF KILLING

  Chapter XIII METTLE ENOUGH

  Chapter XIV ERROR'S CHAIN

  Chapter XV HE WHO IS EQUAL TO A THOUSAND WARRIORS

  Chapter XVI THE MOUNTAIN FALLS

  Chapter XVII LAMENTATIONS

  Chapter XVIII PURSUIT

  Chapter XIX DADEWETHU

  Chapter XX A SOLITARY DUTY

  Chapter XXI THE WATERS THAT COVER THE EARTH

  Chapter XXII A HANDFUL OF RIFLEMEN

  Chapter XXIII MUCH KILLING

  Chapter XXIV THE SERVICE OF THE STATE

  HISTORICAL AFTERNOTE

  MATTHEW HERVEY CURRICULUM VITAE

  Acknowledgements

  WARRIOR

  www.rbooks.co.uk

  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

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  ISBN 9781407034355

  Version 1.0

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  First published in Great Britain

  in 2008 by Bantam Press

  an imprint of Transworld Publishers

  Copyright © Allan Mallinson 2008

  Map © Red Lion Maps

  Matthew Hervey CV © Neil Gower

  Endpaper map of Cape Colony from John Tallis's Illustrated Atlas, published in London in 1851 to coincide with the Great Exhibition.

  Allan Mallinson has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book

  is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 9781407034355

  Version 1.0

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  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 well 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 t
he 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.