by Wilbur Smith
The mopani thinned out dramatically ahead of the tiny patrol, and there were low bare hills on either hand.
‘Look at them, Padre,’ Wilson called to Clinton, and gestured at the hills. ‘There must be hundreds of them.’
‘Women and old men,’ Clinton grunted. The slopes were scattered with silent watching figures. ‘The fighting men will be with the king.’
The twelve riders cantered on without a check, and the thunder muttered and shook the sky above the low, swirling clouds.
Suddenly Wilson raised his right hand high.
‘Troop, halt!’
Clinton’s grey stood, head hanging and chest heaving between his knees – and Clinton was as grateful. At his best he was no horseman, and he was unaccustomed to such hard riding.
‘Reverend Codrington to the front!’ The order was passed back, and Clinton kicked the grey into a plodding walk.
At that moment a squall of rain stung his face like a handful of thrown rock-salt, and he wiped it off with the palm of his right hand.
‘There they are!’ said Wilson tersely, and through the drizzle Clinton could make out the stained and ragged canvas tent of a wagon rising above the scrub, not more than two hundred paces ahead.
‘You know what to say, Padre.’ Wilson’s Scots accent seemed even stronger and was incongruous at this place and in these circumstances.
Clinton walked the grey forward another few paces, and then drew a deep breath.
‘Lobengula, King of the Matabele, it is me – Hlopi. These men wish you to come to GuBulawayo to parley with Daketela and Lodzi. Do you hear me, oh King?’
The silence was broken only by the scraping of a windblown branch and the rustle of the rain on the brim of Clinton’s old hat.
Then quite clearly, he heard the snick of a Martini-Henry rifle being loaded; and a young voice asked in whispered Matabele from the scrub near the wagon:
‘Must we shoot, Baba?’
A deeper, firmer voice replied in the same language. ‘Not yet. Let them come closer so there can be no mistake.’
And then the voices were blotted out by a grumbling roll of thunder overhead, and Clinton backed the grey up.
‘It is a trap, Major. There are armed Matabele in ambush about the wagons. I heard them talking.’
‘Do you think the king is there?’
‘I would not think so, but what I am sure of is that even now the main impi is circling back between us and the river.’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘It is always the Zulu way, the encirclement and then the closing in.’
‘What do you advise, Padre?’
Clinton shrugged and smiled. ‘I gave my advice on the bank of the river—’ He was interrupted by a shouted warning from the rear of the column. It was one of the Americans, his accent unmistakable.
‘There is a force moving in behind us.’
‘How many?’ Wilson shouted back.
‘Plenty, I can see their plumes.’
‘Troop, about wheel!’ Wilson ordered. ‘At the gallop, forward!’
As the horses plunged back down the rough trail, the rain that had been threatening so long burst upon them in an icy silver cascade. It slashed at their faces, and stung their eyes, and drummed on their oilskins.
‘This will cover our retreat,’ Wilson grunted, and Clinton flogged the grey’s neck with the loose end of the reins, for the old horse was falling back again.
Through the thick silver lances of falling rain, he caught a glimpse of waving war-plumes above the scrub; they were racing in to head off the patrol. At that moment the grey stumbled and Clinton was thrown onto his neck.
‘Jee!’ He heard the war chant go up, and he clung desperately to the grey’s neck as it plunged to regain its balance.
‘Come on, Padre!’ somebody yelled, as the other troopers went pounding past him in the mud and the rain.
Then his horse was running again. Clinton had lost a stirrup, and he bumped painfully on the wet saddle, clinging to the pommel for a grip, but they were through. There were no shields or plumes in the bush around them, only the twisting streamers of rain and the gloom of gathering night.
‘Are you telling me, Napier, that Major Wilson has deliberately chosen to spend the night on the far bank, despite my direct orders to return before nightfall?’ Mungo St John asked. The only light was that of a storm lantern. The rain had washed out the fires.
The tarpaulin over the heads of the two officers flogged in the wind, spilling gouts of rainwater over them, and the lantern flame fluttered uncertainly in its glass chimney, lighting Captain Napier’s face from below so that he looked like a skull.
‘We got so close to Lobengula, General, within hail of the wagons. Major Wilson considered a retreat would not be justified. In any event, sir, the bush is swarming with the enemy. The patrol has a better chance of surviving the night by stopping in thick bush and waiting for daylight.’
‘That is Wilson’s estimate, is it?’ Mungo demanded, putting on a grim expression. Yet inwardly, he congratulated himself on such an accurate assessment of the Scotsman’s impetuous character.
‘You must reinforce the patrol, sir. You must send at least one of the Maxims across – now, this very hour.’
‘Listen carefully, Captain,’ Mungo ordered him. ‘What do you hear?’
Even over the rain and the wind there was an echo like the sound in a seashell held to the ear.
‘The river, Captain,’ Mungo told him. ‘The river is sparing!’
‘I have just forded it. You can still get across, sir. If you give the order now! If you wait until dawn, it may well be in full flood.’
‘Thank you for your advice, Napier. I will not risk the Maxims.’
‘Sir, sir – you can take at least one Maxim off its carriage. We can carry it in a blanket and swim across.’
‘Thank you, Captain. I will send Borrow across with twenty men to reinforce Wilson until morning – and this force will follow, with both Maxims, only when it is light enough to see the ford and make the crossing in safety.’
‘General St John, you are signing the death warrant of those men.’
‘Captain Napier, you are overwrought. I shall expect an apology from you when you have recovered yourself.’
Clinton sat with his back against the bole of a mopani tree. He had one hand thrust into the front of his sheepskin jacket, to hold his travelling Bible out of the rain. He wished above any other creature needs that he had light enough to read it.
All around him the rest of the tiny patrol lay stretched out on the muddy earth, bundled up in their rubber groundsheets and oilskins, though Clinton was certain that, like himself, none of them was asleep – nor would any of them sleep that night.
Clutching the Bible above his heart, he had the certain prescience of his own death, and he made the astonishing discovery that it had no terrors for him. Once, long ago, before he had discovered how close at hand was God’s comfort, he had been afraid, and now the release from fear was a blessed gift.
Sitting in darkness, he thought of love, the love of his God and his woman and his daughters – and that was all that he would regret leaving behind him.
He thought of Robyn as he had first seen her, standing on the deck of the American slaver Huron with her dark hair aflutter on the wind and her green eyes flashing.
He remembered her upon the rumpled sweat-soaked childbed as she struggled to give birth, and he remembered the hot slippery and totally enchanting feeling of his first infant daughter’s body as it slithered from Robyn’s body into his waiting hands.
He remembered the first petulant birth wail, and how beautiful Robyn had been as she smiled at him, exhausted and racked and proud.
There were other small regrets – one that he would never dandle a grandchild, another that Robyn had never come to love him the same way he loved her. Suddenly Clinton sat up straighter against the mopani, and inclined his head to listen, peering out into the utter blackn
ess from whence the sound had come.
No, it was not really a sound – the only true sound was the rain. It was more like a vibration in the air. Carefully, he returned the precious book to his inside pocket, then he made a trumpet of his bare hands and pressed them to the wet earth, listening intently with his ear to the funnel.
The vibration coming up from the ground was that of running feet, horny bare feet, thousands of feet, trotting to the rhythm of an impi on the march. It sounded like the very pulse of the earth.
Clinton crawled and groped his way across to where he had last seen Major Wilson lie down under his plaid. There was no glimmering of light under the midnight clouds, and when his fingers touched coarse woven cloth, Clinton asked softly:
‘Is that you, Major?’
‘What is it, Padre?’
‘They are here, all around us, moving back to get between us and the river.’
They stood-to while the dawn tried vainly to penetrate the low roof of cloud above them. The saddled horses were merely humped shapes just a little darker than the night around them. They were drawn up in a circle, with the men standing on the inside, rifles resting on the saddles as they peered out into the thick bush that surrounded them, straining for the first glimpse as the grey light settled gently, like a sprinkling of pearl dust upon their dark, wet world.
In the centre of the circle of horses, Clinton knelt in the mud. With one hand he held the reins of the grey horse, and with the other he held the Bible to his chest. His calm voice carried clearly to every man in the dark waiting circle.
‘Our Father which art in heaven,
Hallowed be Thy name—’
The light grew stronger; they could make out the shape of the nearest bushes. One of the horses, perhaps infected by the tension of the waiting men, whickered and scissored its ears.
‘Thy will be done
in earth, as it is in heaven—’
Now they all heard what had alarmed the horse. The faint drumming approached from the direction of the river, growing stronger with the dawn light.
‘ – for Thine is the Kingdom,
the Power and the glory—’
There was the metallic clash of a rifle breech from the silent waiting circle of dismounted men, and half a dozen gruff voices echoed Clinton’s quiet ‘Amen!’
Then suddenly someone shouted. ‘Horses! Those are horses out there!’
And a ragged little cheer went up as they recognized the shape of slouch hats bobbing against the sullen grey sky.
‘Who is it?’ Wilson challenged.
‘Borrow, Sir, Captain Borrow!’
‘By God, you’re welcome.’ Wilson laughed as the column of horsemen rode out of the forest into their defensive circle. ‘Where is General St John; where are the Maxims?’
The two officers shook hands as Borrow dismounted, but he did not return Wilson’s smile.
‘The general is still on the south bank.’
Wilson stared at him incredulous, the smile sliding off his face.
‘I have twenty men, rifles only, no Maxims,’ Borrow went on.
‘When will the column cross?’
‘We had to swim our horses across. By now the river is ten feet deep.’ Borrow lowered his voice so as not to alarm the men. ‘They won’t be coming.’
‘Did you make contact with the enemy?’ Wilson demanded.
‘We heard them all around us. They called to each other as we passed, and we heard them keeping pace with us in the forest on either hand.’
‘So they are massed between us and the river, and even if we cut our way through to the river, the ford is impassable. Is that it?’
‘I am afraid so, sir.’
Wilson took his hat from his head and against his thigh he beat the raindrops from its brim. Then he settled it again carefully on his head at a jaunty angle.
‘Then it seems there is only one direction that we can take, one direction in which the Matabele will not expect us to move.’ He turned back to Borrow. ‘Our orders were to seize the king, and now our very lives depend on it. We must have Lobengula as a hostage. We have to go forward – and that right smartly.’ He raised his voice. ‘Troop, mount! Walk march, trot!’
They rode closed up, tense and silent. Clinton’s old grey had benefited from the night’s rest, and kept his place in the third file.
A young trooper rode at Clinton’s right hand.
‘What is your name, son?’ he asked quietly.
‘Dillon, sir – I mean, Reverend.’ He was smooth-cheeked, and fresh-faced.
‘How old are you, Dillon?’
‘Eighteen, Reverend.’
They are all so young, Clinton thought. Even Major Allan Wilson himself is barely thirty years of age. If only, he thought, if only—
‘Padre!’
Clinton looked up sharply, his attention had been wandering. They had long ago emerged from the thick bush, and were now coming up to the same spot from which they had retreated the previous evening.
The wagons were still standing abandoned beside the rude track; the tents made pale geometrical oblongs of solid canvas against the dark wet scrub.
Once again, Wilson halted the patrol, and Clinton walked the grey forward.
‘Tell them we do not wish to fight,’ Wilson ordered.
‘There is nobody here.’
‘Try anyway,’ Wilson urged. ‘If the wagons are deserted, then we will ride on until we catch up with the king.’
Clinton rode forward, shouting as he went:
‘Lobengula, do not be afraid. It is me. Hlopi.’
There was no reply, only the flutter of the wind in the torn wagon canvas.
‘Warriors of Matabele – children of Mashobane, we do not wish to fight—’ Clinton called again; and this time he was answered by a bellowing bull voice, haughty and angry and proud. It came out of the gloom and rain, seeming to emanate from the very air, for there was no man to be seen.
‘Hau, white men! You do not wish to fight – but we do, for our eyes are red and our steel is thirsty.’
The last word was blown away on a great gust of sound, and the shrub about them misted over with blue gunsmoke and the air about their heads was torn by a gale of shot.
It was twenty-five years and more since Clinton had stood to receive volleyed gunfire; yet he could still clearly differentiate between the crack of high-powered rifles and the whistle of ball thrown from ancient muzzle loaders, and in the storm the ‘whirr-whirr’ of beaten pot-legs tumbling as they flew; so that, glancing up, Clinton expected to actually see one come over like a rising pheasant.
‘Back! Fall back!’ Wilson was shouting, and the horses were all rearing and plunging. The fire was, most of it, flying overhead. As always, the Matabele had raised their sights to the maximum; but there must have been a hundred or more of them hidden in the shrub and random bullets were scoring.
One of the troopers was hit in both eyes, the bridge of his nose shot away. He was reeling in the saddle, clutching his face with blood spurting out between his fingers. His number two spurred in to catch him before he fell, and with an arm around his shoulder led him at a gallop back along the trail.
Young Dillon’s horse was hit in the neck, and he was thrown in the mud, but he came up with his rifle in his hands, and Clinton yelled at him as he galloped back.
‘Cut off your saddle-bags. You’ll need every round in them, lad.’
Clinton came in for the pick-up, but Wilson rode him off like a polo player.
‘Your moke’s half done, Padre. He’ll not carry two. Get on with you!’
They tried to make a stand in the thicket where they had spent the night, but the hidden Matabele riflemen crept in so close that four of the horses went down, kicking and struggling, exposing the men who had been standing behind them, firing over their backs, and three of the men were hit. One of them, a young Afrikander from the Cape, had a pot-leg slug shatter the bone above his right elbow. The arm was hanging on a tattered ribbon of flesh, a
nd Clinton used the sleeves of his shirt to make a sling for it.
‘Well, Padre, we are for it now – and that’s no mistake.’ The trooper grinned at him, white face speckled with his own blood, like a thrush’s egg.
‘We can’t stand here,’ Wilson called. ‘Two wounded to a horse and a man to lead them. They’ll go in the centre with those who have lost their own horses. The rest of us will ride in a box around them.’
Clinton helped the young Afrikander up onto the grey’s back, and one of the lads from Borrow’s volunteers up behind him. The sharp slivers of his shin bone were sticking out of the meat of his leg.
They started back slowly, at the pace of the walkers, and from the thickets beside the track the muskets banged and smoked; but the Matabele were all of them well hidden. Clearly, they were taking no chances, even with this tiny band of thirty-odd men.
Clinton walked beside the grey, holding the good leg of the wounded man to prevent him slipping from the saddle. He carried the two rifles belonging to the wounded men slung over his shoulder.
‘Padre!’ Clinton looked up to find Wilson above him. ‘We have three horses that are fresh enough to try a run for the river. I have ordered Burnham and Ingram to try and get back to the main camp and warn St John of our predicament. There is one horse for you. They will take you with them.’
‘Thank you, Major,’ Clinton answered without a moment’s hesitation. ‘I am a sailor and a priest, not a horseman; besides, I rather think I have work to do here. Let somebody else go.’
Wilson nodded. ‘I expected you to say that.’ He pushed his horse to a trot and went up to the head of the dismal little column. Minutes later, Clinton heard the quick beat of flying hooves and he looked up to see three horsemen wheel out of the straggling line and plunge into the brush that surrounded them.
There was a chorus of angry yells and the low humming ‘Jee!’ as the Matabele tried to head them off, but Clinton saw their hats bobbing away above the low bush, and he called after them.