by James Whyle
That night the kid and Evans sat separate at a small fire and chewed on black biscuit while beef charred on the coals. Evans turned the meat with his reaping hook and then commenced to file and polish the weapon and examine its glint in the light of the flames. The kid stared into the coals and saw there flickering and shifting the enactment of ambuscade and slaughter and other prophecies for which there are no words.
On the day following their road ran along the foot of a gaunt black cliff, its summits fringed with overhanging trees and scarlet geranium and red aloe blossoms like spearheads glowing from the forge. The kid looked up and saw standing heraldic against the blue an antelope as large as a dragoon’s stallion, taut and crowned with spiral horns that augured the void and then a whip cracked in the column. When the kid looked up again the sky was empty save for high black filaments, floating scavengers that rode on updrafts a mile above.
He marched with Evans and the joiner and the men fell to talking about how they came there. Evans was reticent about his provenance.
What happened to your ear?
Blackpool.
The kid stared at Evans for a moment but Evans said no more and the kid looked at the joiner.
You?
Needed the money. What’s your problem?
The kid said he had been a mate’s servant and the mate had difficulties with the skipper and the skipper left the Cape without them. The kid had been in need of forage when Happy Jack rolled past fed and fuelled and offering employment.
Happy Jack, said Evans.
They marched in silence for a time and watched how the dust rose and fell about the feet of the men before.
Evans looked at the joiner.
These heathens.
What about them?
They fight with spears.
Some of them.
The joiner eased the hard leather strap of his rifle upon his shoulder.
Old Thunder says they have a choice. Obey the law, or go live other side the Big Fat.
What law?
Our law.
Who’s Old Thunder?
The General.
The kid pondered. Where’s the Big Fat?
The joiner pointed to the east.
They left the cliff behind them and commenced to ascend a long steep winding road littered with the bones and carcasses of horses and bullocks. Their own animals groaned and staggered and they took the wagons up in two portions with double teams on each. The Hottentot drivers put aside their whips and brought out six-foot lengths of hide as thick as a man’s wrist at the handle and when these failed they took the tails of the oxen in their hands and sank their teeth into them and then they bent them until they broke. When the irregulars gained the summit there were twenty further carcasses left behind for the jackals and the wolves and the circling scavengers above.
They passed along the edge of a ravine guarded by sentinel euphorbias and they marched down a dusty track through clumps of spekboom. In the north were plains of red sand and bush-covered hills. The mountains stood footed in their plates and mantled in folds of blue. Beyond the peaks were unseen grasslands where snow falls sometimes and beyond them in turn plains so vast that a man can stop for three days and watch a herd of antelope pass continuous before his wondering eyes like a tide.
On the day following the irregulars rose late and proceeded by the side of the stream. In the mid-morning they came to the foot of a short steep hill and the Hottentot drivers in the rear began to make preparations for breakfast. They kindled fires and pounded coffee and rummaged in their bags for pieces of raw meat. The blackened lumps of flesh emerged studded with copper caps and dusted with crumbs of powdered biscuit. The foremost wagons were yoked once more with double teams and before they topped the hill the drivers below had devoured their charred meal and extinguished their fires and wiped their clasp knives clean of grease and ash in the sparse coils of their hair.
They marched on at a good pace and passed a military settlement burnt and looted and derelict. At the ford of a small brook a wagon broke down and the irregulars unloaded it and carried its contents to the far side and then they spoked the wagon, inch by inch, across the drift while the joiner and the driver chose a small straight tree and chopped it down and fashioned a new shaft to connect the front axle to the yokes once more.
In the heat of the afternoon they gained the summit of a low hill and saw Fort Adams below them; a dusty excuse for a citadel lying on the flatlands by the side of the upper reaches of the Nameless River. In its centre was a cluster of battered white houses and next to these a group of domed Fingo huts. The outpost was all enclosed by picketing and low mud walls mounting a few guns and old musquetoons and the sun struck the dwellings fiercely so that they shimmered.
As the column descended they were met by a party of mounted officers and soon after a carnival of naked Hottentots and Bastaards who sang and danced as they accompanied the irregulars through the gates.
The oxen were unyoked and watered and tents were pitched and the Captain and the God-struck Lieutenant were shown to their rooms which owned uneven floors of dried cow dung and rough walls of wattle-and-daub below smoke-blackened rafters and sooty thatch. When the Captain’s trunk was brought in he took from it a Dollond telescope and went to stand in the crooked doorway and trained it on the mountains to the north. He stood there for some time and then he handed the telescope to the Lieutenant.
I have seen the indifference of the Kabyles in the Atlas mountains, he said. But here we have a poorly armed throng of savages parading themselves within six miles of a garrison of the British Empire.
That night the kid shared a tent with Evans and the joiner and ten others. Evans groaned in his sleep and muttered of the lash and Norfolk Island and in the morning they woke to Herrid’s shouts and dressed and began to assemble for Sunday service. Before communion with God could commence there were shouts from the Fingo levies.
Several hundred naked men were struggling like demons in a cloud of dust. They wielded short knobbed sticks with which they struck each other blows to the head that reported like rifle shots and removed tufts of hair and skin so that blood flowed freely. A party of disputants, fearing themselves outmanoeuvred, took up their stabbing spears and entered the throng in a tight unit slashing left and right.
The Commandant ordered a field gun to be loaded with grapeshot and swung round to bear on the men but Johnny Fingo poured a palmful of black powder into the bore of an ancient musket and seated a ball above it. He placed the butt of the weapon on a hitching post and fired off a blast which echoed across the hills and the mountains and stilled the disputing warriors. They were tall men and well made and they stood silent and pale with dust and streaks of bright blood flowed down their faces. They looked like a demon horde, vigorous and powerful and struck dumb by a miracle.
V
The General arrives – Preparation for action – Into the Eastern Mountains – Strange projectiles – A charge – Chieftain on a white horse – Skirmishing in the forest – His companion, Providence – Children aflame – A hasty burial – Return to camp – Sex and death.
THE IRREGULARS WERE a week at Fort Adams during which time the General arrived on a black stallion whose shining leatherwork and trappings were much admired and the Captain received his orders. The cavalry mended their pack saddles and the kid tended his rifle and watched as the commissariat and baggage wagons rolled in. Waine was much subdued without his companion and sat staring as the Captain talked with the General and when the Captain looked at him he looked away.
Evans and the joiner stood in the shade of the wall and the kid sat at their feet and polished the bore of his rifle.
Man told me last night, said Evans, that there Hottentots fighting with the heathen. Said they know how to shoot. Said they’d put a hole in you at four hundred yards before you even know they there.
They will, said the joiner.
Evans stared at him for a moment and then he spat.
The kid sat in th
e dust and replaced his ramrod in its clips below the barrel. The weapon’s stock was warm and gleaming in the sun and his hand caressed it. He looked at the joiner.
Where are they?
Who?
Heathens.
The joiner pointed and the kid looked up at the mountains. They ranged away to the east and they displayed their jagged edges like ancient artefacts whose listed purpose is slaughter.
On a cool clear dawn the General appeared with his staff on the parade ground and the artillery, cavalry and infantry were inspected in their columns. The irregulars formed an advance guard and the scouts rode out before and a piper called Hartung squeezed a wheezing tune from a bladder of pig skin and they moved out. The long line marched from the fort and before the sun was much risen above the hills each man and beast was sucking on the dust of the one who went before.
Their way led east through grassy bottomlands and in the north the slopes were crowned with cliffs of grey basaltic rock and cut by dark pelts of forest. They crested a low hill and they heard shots and saw puffs of smoke before them. A troop of horses detached from the column and rode forward. When the kid passed the place mounted men were herding forty head of cattle back down the line towards Fort Adams. There was a heathen lying on his back in the dust by the side of the track. He was barefooted and naked apart from a bloody blanket and he clutched at a bundle of spears. His jaw was missing so that his upper teeth, white and regular and well shaped, hung in a strange grimace over the void where his chin had been.
That evening the brigade pitched their tents on the banks of a stream and the mountains stood dark in the sky and the sun died bleeding beyond them in a great swathe of crimson. The redness faded and the darkness prevailed and the flames of the burning village flickered and shifted on the hillside. Wolves yipped and hooted and jackals howled. The air was cold and sharp. The men squatted cross-legged under their blankets around their fires and held their hands to the warmth. A wind came up and the flames spooled across the dim earth and glowing sparks spattered and trailed through the night like comets. The General issued the order for the attack and all fires were extinguished by seven o’clock and the kid lay in the silence and watched the stars pulse like beating hearts and swing in their ordained arcs across the void.
They rose in the dark and the Captain loaded his packhorse with three days’ rations and patrol tent and kettle. The irregulars pulled on their leather jackets and strapped their blankets to their packs. Commands were passed on in whispers and the column crept out to the foot of the mountains and began the ascent and rose into the foothills as the sun crested the ridge to the east. The smoke of heathen fires curled upwards from the bush across the valley.
They descended a steep slope to a river and on the rocky height opposite the arms of the heathen flashed in the sun. The irregulars waded the stream and formed up in skirmishing order on the far bank. They toiled up the ridge. There was the sound of gunfire in the east and they could see the smoke of burning homesteads. Evans and the kid climbed together and they spoke no word. They were perhaps three-quarters of the distance from the summit when there came the sound of gunfire ahead and a man next to them groaned and sat and put his hands to his groin.
The kid knelt and the wounded man stared into his eyes with a look of great bewilderment. He looked down and felt and lifted his hands red with gore and holding one of the six-inch joiner’s nails which had penetrated him. As they stared at this mystery there was a roar behind and shards of metal and rock flew through the air.
The kid lay hugging the ground for some seconds and then lifted his head to gain clarity. The wounded man lay foetal and moaning. The irregulars were staring about in alarm and calculating in which direction to flee. For a moment the doors of possibility stood open and strange enterprises hung in the balance. The Captain stood and shouted.
We die if we stay here.
The sentence emerged in an elongated wail and lead balls swarmed about him. He bounded forward alone and all watched, invader and native alike. It seemed that the mountains themselves stood aghast at the behaviour of a crazed ape and then the God-struck Lieutenant rose screaming the names of saints. The joiner jumped from the grass and another misaimed shell landed behind and the irregulars rose and charged up the slope. The kid bellowed in the throng and Evans with him and yelling obscenities.
A man before them fell with the top of his skull torn off and when his head impacted the earth his brains came out strangely onto the grass and they leapt over him and were among the rocks. The kid mounted a boulder and raised his head and looked out across the tableland. There were heathens and Hottentots fleeing for the forest and the kid took aim and fired at a leaping naked back. He saw the man fall and then a dark figure in a cloak of tiger skin galloped up out of a depression like a miracle on a white horse and lifted the wounded man and rode for the trees.
The kid’s hand lay on a rock and the rock spat splinters and a ricochet whined away and the kid saw a naked heathen holding a smoking musket some twenty yards distant. The joiner appeared behind the heathen and lifted his rifle and fired and the heathen’s naked chest exploded outwards and he fell. The kid scrambled to the grass. He stood in a fortress of ragged stone blocks, some the size of houses. There were the remains of roasted marrow bones lying on the flattened grass, and torn cartridge covers and in places the grass was stained with blood.
Someone groaned and the kid turned to see a limping Hottentot wearing a braided scarlet jacket with golden epaulets and a loin cloth formed from an ape’s skin, head and forelegs hanging over his bleeding thighs. This garish figure lifted his musket and fired and an irregular, caught in the moment of charging his own weapon, looked astonished at the shattered bones of his wrist which appeared clear and white in his muscle tissue before the blood could commence to flow. The kid saw the joiner come up behind the Hottentot and take his head and twist it back and slice into the throat. The Hottentot moaned and struggled and drew breath and the blade found the air pipe and a mist of blood came from his neck as he exhaled.
Evans appeared around a rock with his reaping hook in hand and the joiner let the Hottentot fall and the three men stared down at the body which pumped blood vigorously onto the earth. The men stood frozen and staring on that summit like somnambulists caught in a dream and the wind sighed in the grasses and a small bird whirred past them and away down the hillside.
The Sergeant Major called out to them to assemble and they sat on the escarpment and the General rode up on his black mount and shook hands with the Captain and then he rode on. The Captain congratulated the irregulars on their courage under fire and they received the compliment in dumb silence.
We will attack again, said the Captain. And you will become a whispered force in this land and you will never look back. Sergeant Major.
Herrid shouted the order to form up and the men obeyed and then Herrid gave the order to advance. The irregulars looked about at each other and the God-struck Lieutenant pointed like a prophet and shouted go and they went. The balls of the enemy whined past them and they knelt and fired at the puffs of smoke that drifted from the trees and they recharged their rifles and rose on the Captain’s call and charged again.
They moved towards a wall of forest and the kid saw a naked heathen step from the undergrowth and lift an ancient musket to his shoulder as though it were an implement of magic that needed no aiming and pull the trigger. There was a cloud of smoke about the heathen’s head and then the charge ignited in the bore and the heathen fell backwards with a cry under the force of the recoil.
The kid fired and then he rose and ran again and did not stop until he had gained the trees. He loaded and fired at the scuttling retreating figures that crashed away through the undergrowth. His rifle’s smoke drifted upwards through long hanging ropes of creeper towards the canopy. The forest was alive and listening. There were distant cries and crashes in the gloom and the kid heard the Captain calling for them to continue the advance and he heard Herrid and the God-st
ruck Lieutenant passing the order down the line.
The heathen darted from cover to cover and the irregulars moved forward. A man fell next to the kid, pierced by a ball coming from above that removed his eye and cheekbone and travelled down through his neck and into his chest. He stared at the kid from his halved face like some ghoulish anatomy demonstration and he gurgled and began to drown. The kid froze in his cover and looked upwards and saw smoke drifting in the canopy. He charged his bore and seated a bullet and when the cap was home on the nipple he lifted the barrel and waited still and barely breathing. A bird called and a strange long shining dark insect with many legs weaved up a tree trunk and the kid breathed even and slow and did not move. The insect passed behind a leaf and the kid heard a branch crack to his right and saw above the flash of a spark and an explosion of smoke. He aimed below and slightly left and fired. There was a wail and a dark naked body leaned out and tumbled and bounced down through the branches and landed with a strange resonance upon the earth.
The kid stood and a Fingo levy strode past him and lifted his stabbing spear and impaled it in the sniper’s living heart. The sniper convulsed about the blade and the Fingo worked the spear loose and examined the twitching body and lifted the daghasack and hung it about his shoulder. He turned and looked at the kid, his teeth white and startling in the gloom.
I Providence, he said, and then he turned and stepped away into the trees.
The irregulars paused to re-form the line and advanced in skirmishing order once more. They came upon a cluster of huts, some domed and finely worked like great beehives and others steeply pitched like wigwams. They were built of dry wood and reeds and grass and when a Hottentot scout struck his flint the flames spread quickly and the men stepped back from the heat. A dog ran yelping and as they moved forward there were cries from behind and the kid turned to see a figure burst through a hut wall. He was all festooned with burning reeds and leaping vigorously. A number of men raised their rifles and fired simultaneously and the man fell back and the hut collapsed revealing smaller struggling figures all ablaze within.