Men of Men (84 page)

‘Are you coping, Padre?’

‘We are doing fine, Major.’

The dead were laid out with what little dignity was left to them, and Clinton had covered their faces with saddle blankets. There were twelve of them now – and it was only a little past
noon, another seven hours of daylight.

The lad who had lost his eyes in the first volley was talking to somebody from long ago in his delirium, but the words were jumbled and made little sense. Clinton had bound his head in a clean
white bandage from the saddlebag of the grey – but the bandage was now muddied, and the blood had seeped through.

Two others lay still, one breathing noisily through the hole in his throat from which the air bubbled and whistled, the other silent and pale, except for a little dry cough at intervals. He had
been hit low in the back, and there was no use nor feeling in his lower body. The others, too gravely wounded to stand in the circle, were breaking open the waxed paper packages of cartridges and
refilling the bandoliers.

Wilson squatted on his haunches beside Clinton. ‘Ammunition?’ he asked softly.

‘Four hundred rounds,’ Clinton replied as softly.

‘Less than thirty rounds a man,’ Wilson calculated swiftly. ‘Not counting the wounded, of course.’

‘Well, look at it this way, Major, at least it is no longer raining.’

‘Do you know, Padre, I hadn’t even noticed.’ Wilson smiled faintly, and looked up at the sky. The cloud belly had risen and at that moment a pale ghostly silhouette of the sun
appeared through it; but it was without warmth and so mild that they stared as it without paining their eyes.

‘You are hit, Major,’ Clinton exclaimed suddenly. He had not realized it until that moment. ‘Let me look at it.’

‘It’s almost stopped bleeding. Let it be.’ Wilson shook his head. ‘Keep your bandages for those others.’

He was interrupted by a shout from one of the troopers in the outer circle.

‘There he is again!’ And immediately firing rifles whip-cracked, and the same voice swore angrily.

‘The bastard, the bloody bastard—’

‘What is it, soldier?’

‘That big induna – he’s moving about again out there; but he’s got the devil’s luck, sir. We just wasted a packet of bullets on him.’

As he spoke, Clinton’s old grey horse threw up his head and fell on his knees, hit in the neck. He struggled to rise again, then rolled over on his side.

‘Poor old fellow!’ Clinton murmured, and immediately another horse reared up, thrashed frantically at the air with his fore hooves and then crashed over on his back.

‘They’re shooting better now,’ Wilson said quietly.

‘I would guess that is Gandang’s work,’ Clinton agreed. ‘He’s moving from sniper to sniper, setting their sights for them and coaching their fire.’

‘Well, it’s time to close the circle again.’

There were only ten horses still standing; the others lay where they had fallen, and their troopers lay belly down behind them, waiting patiently for a certain shot at one of the hundreds of
elusive figures amongst the trees.

‘Close up.’ Wilson stood and gestured to the ring of troopers. ‘Come in on the centre—’

He broke off abruptly, spun in a half circle and clutched his shoulder, but still he kept his feet.

‘You’re hit again!’ Clinton jumped up to help him and immediately both his legs were struck out from under him, and he dropped back onto the muddy earth and stared at his
smashed knee caps.

It must have been one of the ancient elephant guns, the four-to-the-pounders that some of the Matabele were using. It was a weapon that threw a ball of soft lead weighing a quarter of a pound.
It had hit him in one knee and torn through into the other.

Both his legs were gone; one was twisted up under his buttocks, and he was sitting on his own muddy riding boot. The other leg was reversed, the toe-cap of his boot was dug into the mud and the
silver spur stuck up towards the swirling cloud belly of the sky.

G
andang knelt behind the trunk of the mopani tree and snatched the Martini-Henry rifle out of the hands of a young brave.

‘Even a baboon remembers a lesson he is taught,’ Gandang fumed. ‘How often have you been told not to do this.’

The long leaf sight on top of the blued barrel was at maximum extension, set for one thousand yards.

Under Gandang’s quiet instructions, the young Matabele rested the rifle in a crotch of the mopani, and fired.

The rifle kicked back viciously, and he shouted joyously. In the little circle a big sway-backed grey horse dropped to its knees, fought briefly to rise and then flopped over on its side.

‘Did you see me, my brothers?’ howled the warrior. ‘Did you see me kill the grey horse?’

Vamba’s hands were shaking with excitement as he reloaded and rested the rifle again.

He fired, and this time a bay gelding reared up and then crashed over on its back.

‘Jee!’ sang Vamba, and brandished the smoking rifle over his head, and the war chant was taken up by a hundred other hidden riflemen, and the volley of their fire flared up.

‘They are almost ready,’ Gandang thought, as he glimpsed another of the defenders struck down in the renewed gale of gunfire. ‘There can be few of them who still can shoot.
Soon now it will be time to send the spears for the closing-in, and tonight I will have a victory to take to my brother the king. One little victory in all the terrible defeats – and so hard
bought.’

He slipped away from the shelter of the mopani trunk, and loped swiftly across towards where another of his riflemen was firing away as fast as he could reload. Halfway there Gandang felt the
jarring impact in his upper arm, but he covered the open ground to shelter without a check in his stride, and then leaned against the bole of the mopani, and examined the wound. The bullet had gone
in the side of his biceps and out the back of his arm. The blood was dripping from his elbow, like thick black treacle. Gandang scooped a handful of mud and slapped it over the wounds, plugging and
masking them.

Then he said scornfully to the kneeling warrior at his side. ‘You shoot like an old woman husking maize.’ And he took the rifle out of his hands.

C
linton dragged himself backwards on his elbows, and his legs slithered loosely after him through the mud. He had used the webbing belt from one
of the dead men as a tourniquet, and there was very little bleeding. The numbness of the shock still persisted, so the pain was just bearable, though the sound of the shattered ends of bone grating
together as he moved brought up the nausea in a bitter-acid flood in the back of his throat.

He reached the blind boy, and paused for his breathing to settle before he spoke. ‘The others are writing letters, afterwards somebody may find them. Is there anybody at home? I’ll
write for you.’

The boy was silent, did not seem to have heard. An hour earlier Clinton had given him one of the precious laudanum pills from the kit which Robyn had prepared for him before he left
GuBulawayo.

‘Did you hear, lad?’

‘I heard, Padre. I was thinking. Yes, there is a girl.’

Clinton turned a fresh page of his notebook and licked the point of his pencil, and the boy thought again and mumbled shyly:

Clinton wrote quickly, to keep up.

Quite suddenly, Clinton found his vision blurring as he wrote the final salutation, and he glanced up at the pale beardless face. The eyes were swathed in bloody bandages, but
his lips were quivering and the boy gulped hard as he finished.

‘What is her name, lad? I have to address it.’

‘Mary Swayne. The Red Boar at Falmouth.’

She was a barmaid then, Clinton thought, as he buttoned the folded page into the boy’s breast pocket. She would probably laugh at the note if she ever got it, and pass it around the
regulars in the saloon bar.

‘Padre, I was lying,’ the boy whispered. ‘I am afraid.’

‘We all are.’ Clinton squeezed his hand. ‘I tell you what, lad. If you like, you can load for Dillon here. He’s got eyes to shoot, but only one arm – you’ve
got two good arms.’

‘Bully on you, Padre,’ Dillon grinned. ‘Why didn’t we think of that.’

Clinton draped a bandolier across the blind boy’s legs. There were only fifteen cartridges in the loops – and at that moment, out in the mopani, the singing started.

It was slow and deep and very beautiful, echoing and ringing through the forest. The praise song of the Inyati. And Clinton turned his head and looked slowly around the circle.

All the horses were dead; they lay in a litter of saddlery and broken equipment, of crumpled yellow scraps of waxed paper from the ammunition packets, of empty brass cartridge cases and
discarded rifles. In the confusion, only the row of dead men was orderly. How long was that row, Clinton thought, oh God, what a waste this is, what a cruel waste.

He raised his eyes, and the clouds were at last breaking up. There were valleys of sweet blue sky between the soaring ranges of cumulus. Already the sunset was licking the cloud mountains with
soft, fleshy tones of pink and rose, while the depths of the billowing masses were the colour of burnt antimony and tarnished silver.

They had fought all day on this bloody patch of mud. In another hour it would be dark, but even now there were dark specks moving like dust motes against the high singing blue of the evening
sky. The tiny specks turned in slow eddies, like a lazy whirlpool, for the vultures were still very high, waiting and watching with the infinite patience of Africa.

Clinton lowered his eyes, and across the circle Wilson was watching him.

He sat with his back against the belly of one of the dead horses. His right arm hung uselessly at his side, and the wadding over the wound in his stomach was crimson with seeping blood, but he
held his revolver in his lap.

The two men held each other’s gaze while the singing soared and fell and soared again.

‘They’ll be coming now – for the last time,’ Wilson said.

Clinton nodded, and then he lifted his chin, and he, too, began to sing:

His voice was surprisingly clear and true, and Wilson was singing with him, holding the wadding to his stomach wound.

The blind boy’s voice cracked and quavered. Dillon was beside him; though his ankle and elbow were shot through, he lay upon his back with a rifle propped on his crossed
knees, ready to fire one-handed when they came. His voice was flat and tuneless, but he winked cheekily at Clinton and grinned:

Eight of them, all that were left, every one of them wounded more than once, but all of them singing in the wilderness of the mopani forests – their voices tinny and thin,
almost lost in the great crashing chords of the praise song of the Inyati regiment.

Then there was thunder in the air, the drumming of two thousand assegais on black and white dappled shields, and the thunder came rolling down upon their little circle.

Allan Wilson dragged himself to his feet to face them. Because of his stomach wound, he could not stand erect, and the one arm dangled at his side. His service revolver made a strangely
unwarlike popping sound in the roar of the war chant and the drumming blades.

Dillon was still singing, snatching the loaded rifles and firing, and singing, and grabbing the next rifle. The blind boy fed the last cartridge into a rifle breech, and passed the hot rifle
back to Dillon, and then he groped for another round, his fingers becoming frantic as he realized the bandolier was empty.

‘They’re finished,’ he cried. ‘They are all finished!’

Dillon pushed himself erect on his one good leg, and hopped forward, holding the empty rifle by the muzzle, and he swung the butt at the wave of shields and plumes that reared over him, but the
blow lacked power and was deflected harmlessly aside by one of the tall oval shields; and then quite miraculously a long, broad blade sprang from between his shoulder blades, driven through from
breast bone to spine, and the silver steel was misted pink.

‘I don’t want to die,’ screamed the blind boy. ‘Please hold me, Padre.’

And Clinton put his arm around his shoulders and squeezed with all his strength.

‘It’s all right, lad,’ he said. ‘It’s going to be all right.’

T
he bodies were stripped naked. Their skin, never touched by the sun, was snowy white and strangely delicate-looking, like the smooth petals of
the arum lily. Upon this whiteness, the wounds were the shocking colour of crushed mulberries.

Around the killing ground was gathered a vast concourse of warriors, some of them already wearing items of the looted uniforms, all of them still panting with the exhilaration of that last wild
charge and the stabbing with which it had ended.

From the dense ranks, an old grizzle-headed warrior stepped forward with his assegai held under-handed, like a butcher’s knife. He stooped over the naked corpse of Clinton Codrington. It
was the time to let the spirits of the white men free, to let them escape from their bodies and fly, lest they remain on earth to trouble the living. It was time for the ritual disembowelment. The
old warrior placed the point of his blade on the skin of Clinton’s stomach, just above the pathetic shrivelled cluster of his genitals, and gathered himself to make the deep upward
stroke.

‘Hold!’ A clear voice stopped him, and the warrior stood back and saluted respectfully as Gandang came striding through the parting ranks of his warriors.