by Max Hennessy
Where the road turned north-east towards the border, he was surprised to see Ackroyd waiting for him. He rode a roman-nosed grey and sat in the saddle with the erectness of a cavalry-trained rider, so that it wasn’t hard to imagine him, despite his thickening middle, still wearing the green regimentals and flat-topped schapka of the 19th.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Colby asked. ‘Something wrong with my wife?’
Ackroyd grinned. ‘Not on your life, sir,’ he said. ‘But she’s got my missis to look after ’er, to say nothin’ of ’alf a dozen Kaffirs. There’s also the wife of Captain Moss, of the 9th, ’oo’s with the Central Column, on one side of ’er, and on the other the wife of a naval commander from Colossus, what’s operatin’ from Durban docks. Under the circumstances, I could ’ardly let you go off to war on your own, could I?’
Colby stared at him for a moment, frowning, then as he spurred his horse past without speaking, Ackroyd quietly tagged on behind.
Rorke’s Drift was full of troops gathering for the advance, and Thesiger – Lord Chelmsford since the death of his father – had commandeered the old mission station with its little stone church and thatched houses as a base. The artillery came in and they formed camp on the ground below, a rash of hospital wagons, field bakeries, veterinary units and engineers, setting up their lines on the grassy slopes below the Oskarberg.
Resting the night at the Drift, the North Cape Horse rode on the next day to Bemba’s Kop where Wood had moved. He was suffering from a headache and a fever and greeted Colby gloomily.
‘Nice to see you, Coll,’ he said, though his tone of voice implied that Colby was just one more worry. ‘We’ve been asked to make a demonstration up here to hold down the northern tribes. I’m going to use Buller’s people to scout ahead and move north-east to the Umfalozi.’
The countryside was largely rolling plainland and was swarming with independent Zulu impis. Wood had his eye on a chain of hills across the route to Ulundi which were said to contain more Zulus, and as they moved towards the river late in January they became aware at once of large forces of black warriors in the vicinity of a stone kraal. Immediately, the atmosphere changed. Wood was an expert native fighter and he moved warily because the area could hide the enemy as securely as forests or mountains. A faint roll of ground was deceptive, and a whole impi could hide itself at a distance of a few hundred yards in a place that seemed at first glance as flat as a plate.
While the North Cape Horse flanked the position, Wood scrambled at dawn up on to the hills. By early afternoon, he was back and in a hurry.
‘There are four thousand of ’em drilling on the slopes of Hlobane,’ he said.
The presence of the Zulus appeared to worry him and when Buller brought in prisoners that evening, his anxiety increased.
‘Cetzewayo’s main impi left Ulundi on the 17th,’ Buller reported. ‘They mustered at Nodwengu and bivouacked on the White Umfalozi.’
‘Lord Chelmsford knows all that,’ Wood said. ‘I informed him some time ago. What else do they say?’
‘They’re heading for Isipezi Hill and ought to come down across Chelmsford’s route from the north-east about the 23rd.’
‘How many of them are there?’
Buller shrugged. ‘Hard to say. They count with their fingers. Twelve regiments, I think. Around twenty-four thousand.’
‘It’s already the 21st. Lord Chelmsford ought to know.’ Wood looked at Colby. ‘Didn’t you once ride over a hundred miles at ten miles an hour?’
‘Two hundred and seventy-one kilometres in thirty-one hours forty minutes, to be exact,’ Colby corrected. ‘But it was a prepared ride. We had oats, bran and beans at regular stops. And a picked horse.’
‘Think you could ride forty-odd miles in twenty-four hours with a knock-kneed Natal frontier pony?’
Colby smiled. ‘Just about.’
‘Then it had better be you who goes. I don’t want to chance this with a native rider. Inform Chelmsford that Cetzewayo’s main impi’s on its way towards him. You heard the numbers. Tell him we’ll continue to converge on Ulundi and make demonstrations to draw ’em off wherever we can.’
Colby decided to take Ackroyd with him. He had helped set up the ride in France and was a good horse-master. If anything happened to Colby he could be expected to get through himself.
‘Unless something happens to you both,’ Wood pointed out dryly.
Ackroyd’s attitude was that of a man who had long suspected that the army had so far failed to use its most experienced and useful member.
‘No trouble at all, sir,’ he said. ‘I’ll arrange bran, oats, fodder and ammunition, and I’ll pick the best two nags in the outfit. We might be glad of ’em.’
Riding almost due south, they skirted the mountains, following the boundary of the disputed territory. Crossing the White Umfalozi, they found the land empty except for a few stragglers from dissident border tribes who didn’t support Cetzewayo, heading towards Utrecht. The land was rich and rolling, with small knuckly heights sticking out of the plain. The night was moonless but with the first light the mist cleared and the day became dull and heavily overcast, with an ominous sultry heat. Resting at regular intervals, watering their horses wherever possible, allowing them a little grazing and feeding them the oats and bran separately, they reached Rorke’s Drift at dawn the following day.
The mist which had been present on the higher ground had changed to fog and drizzling rain, and the place seemed deserted except for a grumbling detachment of the 24th, who had been left behind to garrison the buildings. Smith-Dorrien, a lanky, lantern-jawed subaltern of the 95th, whom Colby had met in Durban, was eating breakfast as they arrived.
‘Chelmsford’s on his way already, sir,’ he said. ‘He’s expecting an attack.’
‘He’s expecting it?’ Colby’s eyebrows rose. ‘That’s what I’ve come to tell him.’
Smith-Dorrien was busy over his plate. ‘Well, he got Wood’s message that the Zulu army had left Ulundi and the Natal Native Contingent went out yesterday with the Mounted Police, the Carbineers, the Mounted Rifles and the Buffalo Guard. They sent back to say they keep bumping into Zulus and that they thought they were somewhere in the vicinity. They were due to scout the Isipezi Hill area and I was sent down here to send up Durnford’s Irregulars. They’ve been gone some time. Chelmsford turned the column over to Pulleine and marched south-east towards Ulundi with reinforcements for the native contingent. He’s taken the 2nd/24th, four guns and some native troops. If the Zulus find him, Pulleine can easily reinforce him. Or the other way about if Pulleine’s attacked.’
‘Where’s Pulleine now?’
‘Place called Isandhlwana. Good spot. Water and wood in the valleys and a kopje at their backs for safety. South-east of Isipezi Hill.’
‘That’s the direction Wood expects the main impi to come from. Are they fortified?’
Smith-Dorrien shrugged. ‘Turning every stop into a fortified camp would halt the whole army, sir. Everybody’s quietly forgetting the regulations. There can’t be much to worry about with the better part of two Imperial battalions around.’
‘Except that everybody’s looking towards the south-east and they’re coming from the north-east.’
Smith-Dorrien swallowed his coffee and rose to his feet. ‘Perhaps I’d better be getting back,’ he said. ‘If I were you, sir, I’d go south from here and cut across country. Go along the river bank until you come to a gap in the hills and cross there. If you head due east after that you’ll hit the road about where Chelmsford ought to be. Look out for Zulus in the dongas.’
There were no spare horses and Ackroyd’s mount was beginning to founder, so Colby sent him back to Wood and turned his mare’s head south. The river followed a twisting course between highland south of the mission station until it reached wet lowlands where, crossing by a drift, he set the horse at the slopes opposite, climbing until he reached a level plain. A strange-shaped kopje lay in the distance to his left and round i
ts base he could see the white specks of Pulleine’s tents, with Isipezi Hill beyond on the skyline.
In view of Smith-Dorrien’s warning that there were Zulus in some of the dongas, he rode easily, reserving the mare’s fading strength for a sudden spurt if necessary, and held Micah Love’s murderous LeMatt in his right hand ready. By the time he had been riding for an hour, he was beginning to grow a little worried. The land seemed immense and extraordinarily quiet. There were no birds and not a scrap of game about and, wondering if this were a sign that the Zulus were around, he remembered Micah Love’s comment fifteen years before about Indian fighting. ‘The silence was the worst,’ he had said. ‘You’d be waitin’ with your heart thumpin’ and your breath caught in your throat, then suddenly they’d be all round you, shootin’ and cuttin’ and stabbin’.’
The mare was beginning to falter now but there was no sign of Chelmsford’s group, which was surely big enough to be seen, and he wondered if he’d gone too far west. Tired himself by this time, he decided to swing north towards the road.
The day was hot despite the cloud cover, and a sticky heat seemed to rise out of the baking plain. Reaching the road by an outcrop of rocks, he paused for a moment, studying the empty land, then swung west in the direction of the camp. The mare had been ridden hard for the whole of the previous day and night with little rest and had already carried his weight that morning for several hours. But she was an army mount and knew that army camps meant food and rest and, as her pace quickened, Colby looked up to see the scattering of white tents not far away and the curious shape of the kopje.
The tents seemed busier than normal, with red-coated figures moving among them like disturbed ants. For a second he wondered if they’d had news of Cetzewayo’s main impi, then with a shock it dawned on him that the figures had black faces and that instead of Martini-Henrys they carried assegais. They were Zulu warriors – the realisation came with a gasp of incredulity – thousands of them, braying in triumph and carrying bloodied spears! Discarding their head rings and feathers, they had clapped white British sun helmets on their woolly skulls and dragged on the scarlet coats of British soldiers!
Wrenching the mare to a standstill, Colby stared ahead, his eyes almost starting from his head, totally disbelieving. The enormity of what must have happened was slow in his tired state to reach him, but when it did it struck him like a physical blow. Only a complete disaster could have allowed Zulus to be in a British camp wearing British clothes! But he found it impossible to believe such a thing had occurred and sat the trembling mare for several minutes, trying to make his tired brain accept the fact.
He was even on the point of moving slowly forward for a better look, convinced he was suffering from hallucinations, when a black face appeared alongside. As the Zulu lifted his arm to thrust with the long-bladed assegai, he came to life abruptly, shocked into action. Lifting the LeMatt, he pulled the trigger and the heavy bullet hit the Zulu in the throat, knocking him backwards, a great spurt of blood coming from his jugular. Then Colby saw other Zulus running between the rocks towards him and realised that hundreds of bodies, red-coated or in skin loin cloths, were spread everywhere through the tents.
Still unable to grasp what had happened, he dragged at the reins. The mare, eager for food, fought against him, getting her hind legs under her and stiffening her neck to iron. Savagely, he wrenched her head round and kicked wildly at her flanks until she broke into an unwilling trot away from the camp. An assegai stirred the dust in front of him and, glancing back, he realised he was closer to death at that moment than he’d ever been. Cruelly, he lashed the mare with the slack of the reins, the sound like the beating of a carpet, and as she jogged unwillingly away, he noticed a cluster of white men lying in a heap on the edge of a dip, stark pale shapes sprawled in puddles of blood among a mass of entrails. Every one of them had had his jacket and trousers opened and his body slashed from chest to groin.
Still he couldn’t believe what he saw, but then the mare faltered and he heard the running Zulus give a yell of anticipation. His heart stopped as the mare stumbled to her knees, exhausted, and, jumping from the saddle as she went down, he dragged at her frantically, knowing perfectly well that he could never escape on foot. The black figures behind him were yelling in triumph and, cursing, sweating and terrified, he got the mare to her feet and trotting after him. As she recovered a little, he mounted her again, his mind numb with shock. The base camp had fallen! The main Zulu impi had somehow come down on it when it was unprepared – it could only have been when it was unprepared! – and had slaughtered every man!
A shout lifted his head as a group of Natal Kaffirs popped up out of a donga, their weapons at the ready. He was gasping out his news to a white NCO, when a man with an Irish accent appeared at a run.
‘I know, I know,’ he panted. ‘I’ve been watching. Lord save us, there wasn’t a bloody thing I could do but watch. They came pouring over the lip of the escarpment like black treacle slithering over the edge of a plate – thousands of ’em. All we could do was send a message on to his Bloody Holiness and wait.’
‘Where’s Chelmsford now?’
‘About five miles further on.’ The Irishman gestured towards the east.
A horse was found and, mounting it, swaying with fatigue, Colby set off along the dusty track.
Chelmsford was still reconnoitring south-east and clearly didn’t believe Colby’s news. ‘Be more explicit,’ he snapped. ‘How many Zulus were there?’
Did the bloody man expect him to go back and count them, Colby wondered irritably. Fatigue was enveloping him and his temper, never the most placid, was rising when Chelmsford spoke again.
‘It’s inconceivable that the entire force has been wiped out,’ he said. ‘Surely a part of it’s managed to fall back on Rorke’s Drift!’
Colby had his doubts and he reckoned Chelmsford’s position was perilous. His, too! He’d seen Cetzewayo’s Zulus at close quarters and what he’d seen he hadn’t much liked, and he found himself wishing to God Chelmsford would do something.
Even as his thoughts raced through his brain, Chelmsford came to life. An aide went pounding off to bring his column back, then, while Colby snatched something to eat at the side of the road, the native infantry was formed into line with mounted infantry on their flanks and began to move westwards. When Colby caught them up, Chelmsford had halted again and sent the mounted infantry forward to reconnoitre. They were just reporting back, wild-eyed and scared: thousands of Zulus were still at Isandhlwana, they said, swarming across the plain, burning the tents, looting, and dragging away their dead and wounded. As they waited, nerves like bow strings, Chelmsford’s main column appeared with the guns. Through his weariness, Colby recognised Aubrey Cosgro with the staff as the men and horses, exhausted after marching all day, limped and stumbled to a halt.
Chelmsford told them what had happened and to Colby the cheer that came in reply sounded as if it was given to bolster up their spirits. Then, with the guns in the centre and the Imperial infantry on either side, they began to move back. The heavy overcast had disappeared now and as the sun went down they could see the tall spire of the kopje silhouetted against a golden sky. By the time they had reached within a mile of the camp, however, the light had gone and all they could see was the stark outline of the mountain, with wagons standing in groups and a few figures moving over the edge of the plateau to the north, which they assumed were the last of the Zulu impi retreating.
All round them were dead men and, as they drew nearer the camp, the groups grew bigger and more widespread.
‘Christ,’ Cosgro, muttered uneasily, and somewhere in the darkness a man was intoning the Lord’s Prayer.
‘–Thy Kingdom Come
Thy will be done…’
Stupefied with tiredness, Colby was jerked awake as the guns barked. The fuses could be seen in the sky against the dark mountain before they burst in white flashes near the crest.
‘Shrapnel,’ somebody said in the shadows.
‘That ought to shift ’em.’ There was a pause. ‘They had guns in the camp. Why in Christ’s name didn’t they use ’em?’
They were aware now of thousands of expended cartridges in the grass about their feet, but there was no sound from the tents as three companies of infantry with fixed bayonets moved off into the darkness. Waiting was eerie. For all they knew, there were thousands of black shapes watching them.
Weariness was catching up on Colby and he found he kept nodding off to sleep in the saddle. As they moved forward after the infantry, the scared native contingent began to hesitate and Cosgro, grabbed their induna by his headring and pulled out his pistol.
‘You get those black bastards moving!’ he snarled. ‘Or I’ll blow your blasted brains out!’
A volley in the darkness ahead shattered the silence and there was the sound of cheering.
‘They’ve retaken the camp!’
Night had come completely when they stopped to bivouac. As they sank down someone let out a yelp, and, as a light appeared, they saw they were surrounded by scores of slaughtered oxen and horses, lying in lumpish groups. Human remains lay among them, and the exhausted men began to drag them out of the way so they could wait for daylight.
Now they had arrived, Colby had recovered. Somewhere on the slope, he could hear someone singing an African song, full of half notes and meandering phrases that went nowhere and ended in the air.