The Book of War

by James Whyle

  You signed to fight the heathen?

  Yes, said the joiner.

  And we done alright, said Evans.

  When we got the chance, said the kid.

  What are you? Singing barbers?

  I beg your pardon?

  Anything down there about your souls? When you signed?

  What are you jabbering about?

  The prophet’s eyes were wet. The men exchanged glances.

  I know Jinqi. I’ve preached to him. I’ve seen him drunk in the military canteen at Fort Cox more times than I can count. Seen him kill a man for the murder of a Gaika child.

  Evans looked at the joiner and then back at the prophet.

  So?

  If he had the arms the General has, there wouldn’t be a white man left between here and Cape Agulhas.

  He doesn’t have them.

  Jinqi feels Old Thunder’s boot on his neck. The General woke more than dogs when he did that. The wrath of God lies sleeping and it’s not their land or ours. The wrath of God was hid a thousand years before men were and it waited for you to wake it. Hell is not half full yet. Not half.

  There was silence in the place and all stared at the irregulars and somewhere in the shadows a man sniggered and someone hushed him.

  The missionary replaced his hat upon his head. His words came out from the darkness beneath.

  What’s signed is signed. But you go up into the Kromme, you will reap nothing but a harvest of blood. You’ll not leave this country alive.

  The men stared at him and he turned and he stepped into the night. Evans spat and the joiner called for more brandy. The kid gestured with his thumb towards the exit.

  Who’s he?

  Elijah, said the settler.

  He’s a humbug, said the joiner.

  He spat.

  How these things play out. While the men drank in the lean-to and a fight broke out and a Welshman lost an eye to a broken bottle and the irregulars denied all knowledge to the constable, the Captain sat with the General at a white tablecloth and a servant removed the haunch of boar and port passed clockwise about the table.

  Almost as good as porcupine, said the General, referring to the boar. What happened to your eyebrows?

  I had an accident with some black powder.

  Ah, said the General. Experimenting.

  He filled his glass and a man brought to the table fresh crusty bread and some butter and a preserve of figs.

  It comes to this, said the General, it’s their law or ours. They burn witches. That is how the chieftains get rid of their rivals. Have them sniffed out for witches and burned alive. The missionaries say that if you teach them to be Christians they are no different from a white man. But your average missionary can’t find his own arse with both hands. You’ve seen the Christian Hottentots at Fort Cox. They teach them to read and they give them books and they just chew on the covers. Have you seen the thorns in this country? The heathen walks through it barefooted like an animal. I personally have hit a heathen over the head with the stock of a firelock and the wood splintered and the savage stood there and grinned at me. The border of the colony is now the Big Fat River and they have a choice.

  I have gained the impression that the heathen are saying the settlers can go and live west of the Little Fat. If they want to be Christians.

  The General sat very still and his faulty handsome face became suffused with red. Yet he seemed puzzled. He lifted his fist with finger erect and spoke through clenched teeth.

  One man. One drunken savage on a white horse.

  He rose to his feet and roared and thumped his fist on the oak and the silverware and the glasses bounced upon the white linen.

  I am the hero of Aliwal. I sat in Madison’s White House and drank his wine and ate the meal he left when he fled and then we went outside and watched it burn.

  Perhaps, said the Captain, the situation demands a degree of terror.

  This army on the march devours five hundred head of cattle a day. The continent doesn’t contain enough to feed us. You cannot win this kind of war. It’s worse than Afghanistan. I lined the chieftains up on the banks of the Big Fat. I showed them an old axe handle with a polished brass door knob screwed onto it. I told them it was the staff of peace. And I had an axe decorated with some jiggery pokery and I told them it was the staff of war. And every damn lying heathen savage of them chose peace. Jinqi lay on the ground and kissed my boot.

  The Captain was silent. The General sat. He reached for the port and poured.

  Terror?

  Yes, General.

  The General was slumped and grey and breathing deeply.

  We’re too far in, he said.

  X

  Return to Reed Fountain – Fireflies – The Kromme – First sight of Mount Misery – An army of horribles – Headless on the heights – Jones and the kid – Jinqi’s strategy – Retreat – Ambush – Hartung taken – An evisceration.

  THE IRREGULARS LEFT on the day following with a six-pounder gun carriage and limber and a train of wagons laden with biscuit and rice and coffee and salt and tobacco. The wagons were delivered to Fort Cox and they proceeded thence with great vigilance and they knew they were watched. Often they saw the smoke of heathen fires and once near the ford of a river they saw clear in the dust the barefoot tracks of perhaps a hundred warriors and the scouts deduced they had been made only hours before when morning dew was still wet on the ground. The tracks led to a patch of thorny bush which commanded the road and the Captain threw out flank patrols of Fingos in advance but no attack came.

  They regained Reed Fountain and daily patrols were sent out and they encountered signs of the heathen’s presence, but they never saw him. On a clear cool morning the kid went out with Providence the Fingo to guard the slaughter cattle and they came to a place where a man had stood during the night and watched the encampment.

  Where are they, asked the kid.

  Providence pointed to the dark face of the Kromme.

  Maybe if you look you can find him.

  They heard word that the General was busy in the districts between Gatestown and the coast. There were homesteads burning far to their rear in country settled these thirty years and the Captain cried out for action and there came to them a Lieutenant Colonel Gaunt and a regiment of Highlanders and the piper by the name of Hartung. The kid polished the bore of his rifle and Evans sharpened his reaping hook and they marched out on the evening of the 7th of September in the year 1851.

  They proceeded in darkness across the plain and it was the Lieutenant Colonel’s intention that they march in secret but their movements were strangely signalled because their way was lit by fireflies. The pulsing lights flitted around their feet and flew up and lodged in their beards and on their hats and on their weapons and jackets and the men appeared like new-minted constellations ready to rise up and join their companions in the heavens and throb there in the aching darkness of the void.

  They marched for seven miles and they halted at the ruins of a farmhouse. The horses were picketed to the broken fence of an orchard and the men lay down by companies in the farmyard and those that were fortunate made pillows of dried cow dung. There were no fires lit and the Captain and the God-struck Lieutenant groped about in the ruins and made their beds on heaps of broken slate and brick ends in a blackened chamber.

  At midnight they were joined by a party of the Cape Corps from Fort Cox and this brought their numbers to five hundred and fifty infantry and one hundred and three mounted men. Scouts came in with word of heathen activity and at two o’clock in the morning they left that place and marched for seven miles to another where the scouts decided that they had been misled by the artful tracks of men walking backwards and the Lieutenant Colonel ordered them to counter-march east along the mountains.

  They halted to breakfast in the chilly dawn in a wooded glen and mist hung oddly among the trees. They were shivering and chewing on biscuit when the guards cried out and men reached for their weapons but the approaching f
orce was a party of Fingo levies from Fort Cox. They brought a despatch for the Lieutenant Colonel and he read it and then he stared up at the Kromme.

  They marched out towards those highlands and after an hour the ground steepened and the sun rose like a wobbling red egg yolk. The air did not stir and the dust fell back to the ground from their feet. They climbed steadily and in two hours they gained the edge of a forest which spread upwards into a long narrow ravine. The trees were tall and the air was cool beneath and when the column halted and the scouts conferred the kid noted that the whole gorge was strangely quiet apart from their murmuring.

  The path became steep and narrow and they moved up it in single file and they spoke no word. They climbed and scrambled and after some hours they came out of the ravine into the sunlight and turned along the grassy crest of a ridge that rose up to the plateau. On each side the earth dropped away in a wood-fringed precipice and their bases were out of sight in the gorges below. They ascended along the narrow prominence and the air was cool and clean in the kid’s nostrils and they came out finally onto the highlands and Mount Misery loomed to the north. The men assembled in their companies and the Lieutenant Colonel called the officers to him.

  He placed a map on a camp table and aligned it to the compass.

  Jinqi is in the western gorge and expecting our attack from below. In the morning we descend from the north. Take him in the rear.

  An officer of the Highlanders laughed and the Captain lifted his Dollond and scanned the land northwards. They stood as if on an island almost cut off by opposing ravines from a greater grassy plain beyond. The natural entrance to the western ravine was on the northern mainland plains and its southern side was guarded by sheer cliffs. The bridge to the mainland was a spur covered in forest and Mount Misery rose above it on the right like the curved back of a snarling hound. A track led onto the forested bridge at its mouth and there the Captain counted twenty heathen warriors armed with muskets. He gave the eyeglass to the Lieutenant Colonel.

  The Lieutenant Colonel was a burly man with a red beard. He stared through the Dollond for some time and when he lowered it his face was red also and the officers standing about were hesitant to offer opinion. While the Lieutenant Colonel considered his strategy they posted guards in the tall grass on slight ridges to east and west. Fires were lit and horses knee-haltered and the irregulars stood about the flames and drank coffee. A cold wind sprang up and they edged close to the coals where the soup bubbled and they were glad when Hartung the piper picked up his instrument and filled the bladder and squeezed out a tribal tune.

  An irregular called Smith had just embarked on the diffident beginnings of a sailor’s jig, sketching in the openings of a caper, when there were shouts from the guards. The horses were brought in and the untasted soup was poured to the ground and the kettles lashed to the pack horses. The Captain rode up to the western sentries. From all around that side of the Kromme Heights he saw heathen warriors coming towards him.

  The Captain rode back down and shouted orders and the irregulars scrambled up in skirmishing order and joined the advance guard in the cover of the high grass just over the little rise. The kid stood there for a moment and he saw how the afternoon sun played on Mount Misery and how it swept across those high and glowing grasslands and how it glinted on the wave of weapons that came towards him. He unclipped his rod from his barrel and placed it in the earth and rested his forestock on it and steadied his breathing. He felt the weight of the trigger’s spring and when the call came to fire he saw his target spin and fall at a range of four hundred yards but the dark figures ran on. The dark horde came on shouting and leaping and each man carried a short stabbing spear and a quiver of throwing spears and most bore a musket besides. Many were naked and some wore the uniforms of the Cape Corps or Hottentot levies and one was a giant garbed in the threadbare remains of a settler’s white bridal gown. He had a necklace of bones and an apron of wolf skin and as he leapt across the plain the wolf jaws gnashed at his groin as though living.

  The army of horribles came on and the kid knelt in the grass and when his weapon was charged and the cap home on the nipple he rose and the plain was empty and the wind moaned. The kid stood there as if he were the last being alive on the spinning globe. He felt the earth swing in its arc through the imponderable geometry of time and then he knelt again and looked to the right and caught through the grasses the eye of the irregular called Jones.

  The wind whispered and there was no sound besides and they waited. Jones took his hand from his rifle and opened it towards the kid in a gesture of enquiry and the kid raised his eyebrows and pointed through the grasses to where he knew the heathen must be. They heard dry grass stalks crack and looked for the sound and saw an irregular stand and then Jones stood also. The first man’s nose imploded and there came the sound of a shot fired and the man swayed for a moment and blood dripped from the hole. A volley of lead buzzed through their position and the dead man fell. Jones turned to the kid and as he did so a spear pierced his haunch to the depth of twelve inches and he twisted to grasp it but the shaft moved with him and he cried out and fell from the kid’s sight.

  The kid waited and listened and then he stood and fired into a glimpse of smoke and carnage and he knelt again and charged his weapon and his hands were sweating and slipped on the barrel. A Highlander ran past and nearly tripped over him and there were shouts and cries and acrid smoke moved on the wind and the kid heard Jones groaning. He seated another bullet and felt for a cap and placed it and he cocked the weapon and he took his dirk in his left hand. He stood again and saw men fighting hand to hand. He saw the Captain calling for the combined forces to consolidate behind the shelter of the ridge. He saw a warrior swing a cavalry sword and a Highlander’s head part from his shoulders and drop into the grass. The Highlander’s firelock fell from his hand and he stood there and dark streams of blood, two taller and two shorter, wavered up from his severed neck. The kid knelt and sheathed the dirk and rose with his rifle in hand. The Highlander was gone and the heathen with the sword was turning and the kid lifted his gun and felt a sting at his ear as a ball hummed past and he fired and knelt again and he heard Jones calling help me, help me.

  The kid hid there in the grass and death was all about him and he saw a black beetle that hid also beneath a rock and Jones said help me, please help me. The kid slung his rifle over his shoulder and crawled through the grass and found Jones lying on his stomach with his face in the earth and his hand reaching back for the shaft of the spear.

  I can’t walk, he said. Take it out.

  The kid sat and took the shaft in his hand. There was slaughter all around them and they were alone and hidden in the tall blonde grass and the din. The kid pulled and felt the spearhead move against bone and Jones cried out but the spear did not come free. A man leapt past shouting back, back and Jones said take it out, take it out. The kid stood quickly and saw irregulars and Highlanders retreating past him to the top of the ridge and the heathen coming on. He knelt again and put his foot against Jones’ back and took the shaft of the spear in both hands and pulled and the spearhead shifted. He twisted it and pulled again and it came free with a sound like that made by a man’s boot withdrawing from thick mud. Blood began to pulse from the wound. The sun shone brightly on the red blood and then a cloud passed overhead and the blood looked like dark treacle on the crushed blonde grass.

  The kid heard a sound and looked up and saw a warrior standing six yards distant and aiming a firelock at him. The kid dropped the spear and grasped his rifle and he began to rise and he saw the spark flash in the heathen’s pan and he saw the smoke explode obscuring the heathen’s face and he knew that he was dead. The smoke went on the wind and the warrior stood there waiting and the kid waited also and then a spinning ball of lead took the heathen in the throat and the side of his neck sprayed outwards and he fell out of sight.

  The kid knelt and he slung his rifle over his shoulder and he took Jones under his armpits.

&n
bsp; Can you walk?

  Jones tried to stand but he could not. The kid took him by the collar of his jacket and he hunched down on two feet and one hand and began to drag Jones up the slope. Jones’ wound caught on the stones and the sharp dry grass and pumped blood. The kid was breathing heavily when he came to the place where the grasses stopped. He left Jones and crawled forward a little and parted the grasses and looked up the slope. He could see the barrels of the irregulars’ guns on the top of the rise. The line exploded with puffs of smoke and the kid saw that it was holding and that the heathen were being kept beyond the range of their throwing spears.

  He crawled back and Jones’ face was very white and blood was pooling under him. A ball hummed past them and the kid stood and faced his own lines and shouted don’t shoot, don’t shoot. He took Jones by the collar and dragged him and as they emerged from the grass heathens cried for them to be shot but the irregulars covered them and the kid dragged Jones through the lines and left him there and then he found his water canteen and he drank it entire.

  There was no surgeon in the company but there was a man who had been a barber and he was called and he tried to stanch Jones’ bleeding but the blade had cut through a deep artery and the blood kept pulsing out onto the grass until Jones was dead and they buried him where he lay.

  At this time the Lieutenant Colonel assembled his forces so that they commanded the ground by which they could approach the bridge and access the mouth of the western gorge. And heathen forces began to gather at the entrance to that bridge. The Lieutenant Colonel cursed and shouted and rode out towards the enemy at the head of the cavalry. They fired off a volley from a distance of two hundred yards and as they turned the Lieutenant Colonel’s horse sank to its knees and the Lieutenant Colonel tumbled forwards onto the grass. The heathen cheered and danced and the Lieutenant Colonel scrambled and was rescued and retreated clinging to a rider’s back like a saved maiden.