by James Whyle
Providence the Fingo stood watching with the kid.
He does not want us to go that way.
Who?
Jinqi.
Where does he want us to go?
Providence pointed back the way they had come.
When the Lieutenant Colonel dismounted he was shaken and pale and his officers commiserated with him and the Captain called for a flask of brandy. The Lieutenant Colonel drank three deep draughts and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and consulted his map. The heathen advanced again and as the officers conferred the God-struck Lieutenant lined the irregulars up opposing and called for them to fire at will. At four hundred yards two of the enemy fell and they stopped and retreated just beyond that range and the assembled marauders cheered to see it.
The Lieutenant Colonel turned to the captain of the cavalry.
Turn their flank. Roll them up and we’ll charge the centre.
The cavalry galloped out and the giant heathen came out opposite in his bridal array with his wolf’s head bouncing and ran towards the same objective. The irregulars lifted their rifles and fired and the bullets dropped about the giant’s feet as he ran. They continued to load and fire and as the giant traversed the slope the heathen forces gathered with him and when the cavalry wheeled in they rode into a swarm of misshapen metal and five horses fell and the bugle blew the retreat and the heathen danced and cheered.
The joiner watched the cavalry coming in and tilted his head towards the Lieutenant Colonel.
All hat and no cattle.
He spat.
The sun was sinking towards the horizon and the cold wind blew and the heathen began to approach again in a solid line but they stopped when the irregulars’ rifles told again at four hundred yards. The Lieutenant Colonel gathered the officers and the Captain told him that the irregulars had ammunition for perhaps two hours more fighting if they were careful with it. The captain of the Highlanders concurred.
We go back now, said the Lieutenant Colonel. The way we came.
And so they assembled for retreat with the irregulars in the rear keeping the heathen at bay and the cavalry rode out again to secure the entrance to the ridge the column had come up by. The cavalry were halfway across the plain when there was a great cry from heathen forces to the west and a man rode forth on a white stallion at the head of three hundred riders and they galloped towards the neck where the ridge joined the plateau.
What kind of heathen is them, asked the kid.
Heathen on horses, said Evans.
The joiner shook his head.
Be blasting us with howitzers next.
The chieftain on the white horse raced across the plain but the cavalry gained the head of the ridge first and they turned and fired a volley and the chieftain held up his hand and his horsemen stopped.
The column marched beneath the covering fire of the cavalry and in this way their vanguard gained the ridge. The Captain reined his mount and took out his Dollond and trained it on the heathen leader who sat watching just out of range of the guns. He was a small and compact man and his white horse was a sturdy mountain stallion and the chieftain sat it like one who had been conceived and born there. He watched without expression as the Highlanders and the irregulars and the Fingos moved away from him down the ridge.
The gorges below were deep in shadow and the sun shone in great shafts through towering thunderheads and these shafts caught the column in an amber glow on the prominence. The invaders scurried down as though embarrassed by this grandeur and the sound of Hartung’s pipes brought little comfort to them. They descended the ridge in safety and entered the gloom of the forest with the cavalry going ahead and leading their horses by hand. The kid was thirsty and all water was long used up and he stumbled down the path with his pack heavy on his shoulders and each footfall jarred up through his knees and thighs. A fly buzzed at his ear and he put his hand there and it came away crusty with blood and plasma.
By the time the last of the Fingo levies had entered the forest the column was strung out like a thin and exhausted serpent and there came the sound of firing from the slopes above. Men began to fall and the irregulars scrambled downwards in dim light and the heathen lined the walls of the gorge on either side. They fired out of deep cover and the only clue to their location was the blasts of smoke in the undergrowth and treetops.
The kid descended before Hartung the piper and he scanned the forest on either side and once he saw a sniper in the trees above and wounded him and twice he stepped over the bodies of dead Highlanders. He stumbled on and listened to the sound of firing all up and down the line. Every time a man was wounded the column bunched up around him and the kid began to wonder if they would walk out alive.
He heard a cry behind and he turned and saw Hartung the piper calling out in fear and rising up as though levitating. The undergrowth above the track parted and Hartung was pulled through and then he was gone. The kid lifted his rifle to find a target and three Fingos came bounding down and knocked him over and there were shots from the track behind and screams and the kid rose to his feet and more Fingos came running and leaping and the kid ran with them.
They ran on towards smoke and gunfire, but the track ahead was empty and then the Fingos leapt and dropped out of sight. The kid stopped at the place and saw below him the narrow path occupied by Highlanders and irregulars and Fingo levies and all beset. There were heathens in the trees and as the kid watched more rose with a cry from the undergrowth and they threw a volley of spears and charged forward with stabbing spears in hand.
The joiner was below and he killed a man with his dirk and another struck him on the cheek with the butt of a firelock. He began to drag the joiner away for easier despatch in the undergrowth. The kid jumped with rifle in one hand and dirk in the other and landed with his knees in the heathen’s back. The heathen dropped and the kid fell on top of him and lifted his dirk but the heathen was naked and greased and writhing and he smelt of smoke and clay and the kid slid from him. He dropped the dirk and rolled away and came to his knees lifting the rifle. The heathen had risen likewise and he leapt forward and grasped the barrel and the kid pulled the trigger. The smoke came acrid from the cap and the charge caught and the bullet journeyed up the rifled bore and assumed the spin and it came forth and the heathen fell back and the tree behind him was awash.
The kid looked for the joiner and saw that he lay on his back and his eyes were open and he was alive. A Fingo dropped among them and then another. The shot heathen was looking down in incomprehension at the carnage of his bowels when Providence stepped in with a stabbing spear and inserted it above his groin and sawed upwards to the wound hole. When the man was opened Providence withdrew the spear and reached in with his free hand and eviscerated the heathen who watched his own disembowelment like one who is puzzled by the weather or the behaviour of his cattle.
There came from above more Fingos and the kid took the joiner’s hand and the joiner stood and the descending Fingos carried them like a tide as they fought through the bottleneck. They scrambled and slipped on the rock which was slick with blood and as the sun descended they left the enemy behind and came at last to the edge of the forest.
They staggered through the night with no pipe playing and few men spoke and when they did their tones were low and by the time they came to the ruined farmhouse the only sounds were the footfalls of the horses and the groans of the wounded. Those that had saved some portion of their rations ate it then and those that hadn’t laid their heads on their packs and slept. The Lieutenant Colonel conferred with the officers and a mounted express was despatched to Reed Fountain for powder and ball.
At three o’clock the wagon returned and the men were roused and the ammunition issued and the column reached Reed Fountain as the sun first caught the ramparts of the Kromme.
XI
The heathen rampant – An interrogation – Hintsa – The kid’s ear – Clayton’s first misfortune – Columns of fire – Return to Fort Cox – A bath witho
ut wine – Procreation of the beast – Providence makes a purchase – Considering the Mfengu – Gibbering heads – Murder – A warning.
ON THE DAY FOLLOWING the Lieutenant Colonel rode for Gatestown to confer with the General and the irregulars remained in camp. The Captain set up his table in the enclosure in front of his tent and wrote in his book. Word came of a heathen victory in the bush on the Big Fat where a party of thirty-seven settler levies had been cut off and hunted down with dogs and slaughtered. Throughout the lowlands servants were deserting and joining the heathen. There were rumours of a force of five thousand warriors assembling to take Gatestown itself and word also that churches and chapels there had been set aside as places of refuge for women and children and then the scouts came in with a heathen woman and told the Captain that she had news of Hartung the piper.
The woman was brought before the Captain and Johnny Fingo and Providence stood by to translate. They told the Captain that the woman was a heathen of the N’pai clan. She had lived before the war with the sister of her father in the bottomlands between Fort Cox and the Kromme. When the prophet called them to slay and eat they slaughtered their dun cattle and moved up into the gorges. Her three sons had been blessed by the prophet and they went to fight with Jinqi and they had been living when the woman came away from the Kromme these three days hence.
What does she know about Hartung?
Johnny Fingo questioned the woman and the woman answered with many words and then Johnny Fingo turned to the Captain.
She says the Hottentots killed him.
Ask her how she knows.
She says she heard it.
She lie, said Providence. He lifted his arm and brought his open hand down in a short clubbing cuff on the woman’s face. The woman lifted her arms and wailed and Providence cuffed her with either hand like a bear. The Captain showed his palm and Providence stopped.
Ask her what happened.
Johnny Fingo did as told and once more the woman answered at length.
She says that he was taken to Jinqi. Jinqi sent for his son, Kona, and some Hottentots. They took the white man away and they took his clothes. She says she saw a man wear the white man’s coat. It was a dark coat, but she cannot say what colour. She says the Hottentots cut his arms and legs. The flesh was not all cut off. It was hanging to the body. She says they kept him two days in the sun. They cut off something. They put it in his mouth.
Cut off what?
Johnny Fingo conferred with the woman and with Providence and Providence reached for his groin and took his great dark parts in his hand.
Here, he said.
The Captain looked at the woman.
They put it in his mouth?
Him eat, said Providence.
There were doves calling and the dust was warm in the sun and the men looked at Providence and the woman looked at the dust. The Captain lifted his chin and made a constricted sound in his throat as though something itched there.
Ask her what happened then.
Johnny Fingo obeyed and the woman spoke to the dust.
She says they killed him after many days.
How?
By shooting. She did not see this, but she heard the men talk.
She see, said Providence.
She says she heard that the white man spoke and said they must not kill him. She heard that the women danced around him and they were happy. They beat him with knobbed sticks. She heard the men and women singing when they were dancing around him.
She heard them herself?
Yes.
She lie before, said Providence.
She says the man had his hands tied behind him. He was lying in the sun all day and he was in the hut at night. She was getting gum from the trees on the day the Hottentots first cut him. He was tied with cow skin. They tied him to a tree. She says she heard when they cut his arms and legs he was bleeding very much. He was lying on his side. He was screaming while he was cut. Every day they cut off a finger. One piece each day.
The story was finished and it was hot in the camp and most were sleeping and doves called in the bush and a horse snorted and blew air through its lips.
Ask her why she left the Kromme.
Johnny Fingo asked the question and the woman lifted her head and looked at the Captain and spoke simply and did not blink.
She leave because she is starving, said Johnny Fingo.
On the day following the kid sat in the dust with Evans and the joiner and the kid could smell them although he smelt similar himself. Waine came past them from the latrines and he was thin and he carried a tang from the faecal matter that remained on him. The kid put his hand to his head and scratched. The lobe of his ear was fat as a man’s thumb and red and throbbing.
You need that lanced, said the joiner.
The kid spat and looked at him. The joiner was as long and gaunt as a Spanish mystic and his cheek where the heathen’s firelock had landed was misshapen.
You hear what they did to Hartung?
Heard they roasted him, said Evans.
That’s not what the heathen woman said.
Heathen woman wasn’t even there. They staked him to the ground and put red hot rocks on him. They cooked him.
They’ll do worse than that, said the joiner. General should never have cut old Hintsa’s head off.
Who’s Hintsa, said the kid.
King of them all, said the joiner. Was. Jinqi’s lot and the Gaika and the Tsaleka as well.
Where they live?
Who?
The Tsaleka.
Other side the Big Fat.
The kid wiped a hand across his nose.
So how can these ones go live there?
Ask the General, said Evans.
The kid felt at the lobe of his ear and his fingers came away moist and sticky and there were granules adhering like crystals of sugar or salt.
Why’d he cut Hintsa’s head off?
He was trying to make a point. Stop scratching your ear.
The kid stood guard that night for four hours with an irregular named Clayton. He wrapped his blanket around him and paced his beat and sometimes when he stopped he could hear Clayton coughing. He listened carefully to distinguish the sound because there were antelope that coughed sometimes in the night but when he heard the hawking of phlegm he knew it was Clayton. There were clouds overhead and it was very dark and once the kid caught a wild powerful smell as though of an animal that devoured carrion but when he stopped to listen there was no sound and the smell did not come again.
He paced his beat to keep warm and after a time his feet learnt the way and he walked like a dreamer aware only of his breathing and the throbbing from his ear and down the side of his neck. A sound entered his dream and he stopped and listened and heard it again and it was Clayton calling, who’s there.
The kid lifted his rifle to his waist and thumbed back the hammer. Clayton called out again and the kid felt his way through the dark towards the sound.
Password?
The kid stayed very still and listened. Clayton asked the question again and still there was no answer and the kid saw a flash and heard a shot and ran towards the sound and the thorns tore at his face as he ran.
Where are you?
Here.
He found Clayton biting through a cartridge.
Who was it?
I don’t know, said Clayton.
He guided black powder into his bore.
They listened and after a time they heard a sound in the darkness where Clayton had fired. He’s groaning something awful, said Clayton. They waited and then the noise came again. That’s a horse, said the kid. The Captain came then with four irregulars to discover the meaning of the shot, and they found the God-struck Lieutenant’s horse, which had broken its tether, lying dead in the bush.
The irregulars remained three weeks at Reed Fountain and were joined by a reinforcement of one hundred and twenty Fingo levies from The Bay and with them came an order to return to Fort Cox. On the
day following the tents were struck and the dry withered fences that had encircled the fires were piled on the coals. Flames rose then and roared into the air in great yellow columns. These columns were like the architecture of an inverse world where all is insubstantial except burning and from this roaring temple the irregulars and Fingos emerged like shimmering wraiths upon that ancient and flint-struck landscape.
The journey took two days and as they approached Fort Cox a band came out to meet them. Its tune was strange in the kid’s ear but he marched to its time and he noted the watching Hottentots and Fingos and he saw that the Hottentots did not sing or dance as they sometimes had before. The band led the irregulars through the long wide street and through the square with its vendors and traders. There were men gathered in a corner of the square and the kid saw that the disordered missionary stood there upon a wooden box and gesticulated. He saw that some of the watchers laughed but a few listened gravely. The irregulars followed the trumpets and the drums and marched out onto the further side of the town where they pitched their tents in symmetrical rows adjacent to those of the Cape Mounted Rifles.
The Captain called then for his vat and Herrid had men place it in the Captain’s quarters and fill it with containers of steaming water. The kid poured his bucket and looked about. The Captain’s chest was unpacked and a clean uniform waited hanging above polished boots from a spike in the wall. There were books bound in leather upon a shelf and paper and ink and there was a bottle of port wine and the kid’s eyes were drawn to it but Waine saw it first. A door opened and the Captain entered naked apart from a towel wrapped about his waist. The flesh of his torso glowed with whiteness but his neck and face and forearms and hands owned the hues of a dark and greasy mahogany. The Captain’s eyes were bright blue in his murky visage and his teeth were white.
Go away, he said.
The men obeyed and the Captain stood pensive for a moment in the empty room. He removed the towel and hung it over a chair. He put his hand in the water and jerked it out and shook it vigorously. He stood and looked at the great vat and his hand moved and grasped at the softness of his groin. He stared down, frowning. The strange weight of his organs, pink and soft in dark fingers. The Captain breathed in deeply and made a low sound in his chest and he looked about and saw that the port wine was missing. The Captain cried out and called for a batman and told him to tell Sergeant Major Herrid to inform the Provost Marshal.