Soldier of the Queen (40 page)

‘They’re on Tshethoslane.’ Cosgro gained control of himself and pointed to a hill rising from the dark veldt in a blue flat-topped peak. ‘I’d better go on.’

Colby stared at him for a moment then waved him away in disgust. Cosgro didn’t need any telling, but set spurs to his horse and disappeared with his escort behind them.

There was no sense in trying to find what was left of Deyer’s party in the fading twilight, so Colby turned his column towards a small hill called Umbogitwini to his left. Heights meant safety, and up there, he could defend himself until Morrow arrived, and he wouldn’t miss the first signs of the Zulu impi.

At first light, still shivering and trying to bring life back to his cramped and frozen limbs, he stared over the lightening plain. The veldt was changing from violet to apricot and would soon become a mass of blues and greens and duns as the light grew stronger. He could see little patches of monkey thorn and a few trees but no sign of the Zulus. The column of smoke was still rising in the distance, but the plain seemed empty. Then he saw a cloud of birds – guinea fowl, he supposed – rise from the grass, and then a flicker of white like sunshine on a stream. It indicated buck running and he knew it meant the presence of Zulus.

Calling for his horse, he told Ackroyd to collect fifty men and, leaving the camp in the command of Burger, began to head towards the smoke. As they drew nearer, with scouts out in front, behind and on each flank, watching the grass for Zulu war parties, he saw a group of vultures flap awkwardly into the sky. A few more lolloped off out of sight, too gorged to fly.

There were five wagons close to a donga, all charred and burning. Deyer had made an effort to laager, but he had been overwhelmed. There was no sign of the Zulus beyond an abandoned shield and one or two assegais, and Deyer lay on his back alongside one of the wagons. He was naked, his body slit from groin to chest. Another man leaned against an anthill, also naked, his belly ripped open and swarming with ants, a spear through his body under his arm. He was skewered like a joint of meat and Colby thought immediately of Augusta’s dream.

His insides twisted with nausea, he slipped his foot from the stirrup and slid to the ground belly-to in cavalry style. The wagons had been looted and an empty gin bottle lay by one of the wheels. Clothing was scattered about and there were pools of blood everywhere. Deyer’s party seemed to have been massacred without a single survivor.

Collecting the bodies, they dug a hole and tumbled them in. The vultures had been at them and the sun had completed the destruction. It was an unpleasant and difficult job and Colby kept a mounted party well strung out and circling the camp in case the Zulus had not all disappeared.

They were on edge and nervous as they began to move slowly back to Umbogitwini. As they reached the hill, a horseman appeared, trailing a cloud of dust.

‘The column’s coming,’ he yelled. ‘You can see it from up there!’

Morrow’s face was grim as he appeared. Cosgro was with him, white-faced and nervous-looking but clearly a great deal happier with the full strength of the column round him.

‘I’ve just buried Deyer,’ Colby said.

Morrow’s mouth tightened. ‘I think you must have been a little late in reaching him, don’t you?’ he said.

Colby’s jaw set. It was Ashanti all over again, with Morrow trying to shuffle off responsibility by shoving the blame on somebody else.

‘Where are the Zulus now?’ Morrow demanded.

‘They’re on Tshethoslane. Two thousand of them, at least.’

Morrow laughed. ‘There can’t be that many. They couldn’t get that many on top. I’m going to remove them.’

‘The sides of Tshethoslane are almost unscaleable,’ Colby warned.

Morrow gave his narrow little smile. ‘Cosgro reconnoitred the place three days ago,’ he said. ‘Before you arrived. We marked two routes to the top. The eastern end lifts to a plateau where the Zulus keep cattle under a few herdsmen.’

‘I suspect there are more than a few herdsmen,’ Colby said.

Morrow dismissed the warning as if it came from someone nervous and inexperienced. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Then we’ll make it a two pronged attack. You’ll take your people up by the eastern route after dark and chase them down in the morning as soon as it’s light enough to see. I’ll be waiting at the western end. Cosgro will show you the way.’

He seemed to be assuming a great deal. ‘What about the grassland to the east?’ Colby asked. ‘How do we know there aren’t more Zulus there?’

‘It’s been reconnoitred,’ Morrow said irritably. ‘Cosgro covered it.’

‘Suppose we fail to gain the summit unopposed?’

‘You have weapons. Any more questions?’

Morrow’s icy contempt made Colby boil with fury. The bloody half-wit persisted in treating the business as if it were an afternoon ride from Aldershot.

‘I feel I must protest, sir,’ he growled. ‘It seems to me we shall be in danger of being caught on the hill. I feel it could be a highly dangerous situation.’

‘It’s not the business of a second-in-command to question his superior’s orders.’ Morrow’s eyes glittered. ‘I will note your protest, nevertheless. It will go in my report and we’ll leave Lord Chelmsford to decide who’s right. For the moment, sir, do as you’re told. You’ll take the Boers and one of the rocket tubes, the Natal Horse, the Mixed Irregulars and the Natal Kaffir Irregulars. It should be enough to drive them off. After that,
I’ll
deal with them.’

As the column camped in the shadow of Umbogitwini, Colby noticed that Morrow failed to place look-outs on the slopes. On his own responsibility, he sent men to the top and, as an extra precaution, placed sentries wide of his encampment. There was no question of informing Morrow of what had been done. He was sulking at the questioning of his orders and was not available.

During the night there was the sort of downpour that changed the dongas from dustpans to swirling rivers and the camp was awake early next morning, damp and shivering with cold. As they moved out, Colby separated his command into four troops and they rode in column of half-sections. There were around four hundred men but, apart from his own North Cape Horse, Colby had grave doubts about their ability. Morrow’s column wasn’t the same as Wood’s.

They stopped in the early afternoon to rest the animals and eat and soon afterwards were skirting the slopes of Tshethoselane – known to everybody by this time as Shithouse Lane. Smoke was rising from the top but, though scattered musket fire was directed at them, there was no other sign of life.

A deserted kraal was torn down to make fires to boil their coffee and, distrusting Morrow’s information, Colby allowed his men time to eat, then, as soon as it was dark, ordered the camp to be moved and the fires to be built up and left blazing. Cosgro arrived soon afterwards – with a strong escort, Colby noticed, and in a clear state of funk. He brought Morrow’s final orders.

‘They’ve changed,’ he announced. ‘He’s decided to circle the plain and wait at the bottom, after all, to ambush them as they run from your trap.’

‘A fine time to tell me all this,’ Colby growled. ‘And they won’t wait to be trapped. They don’t use horses. They can get down slopes we can’t get down.’

‘The colonel also suggested we should leave our mounts with horse-holders and go up on foot.’

Colby leaned from the saddle closer to Cosgro. ‘Would you?’ he asked.

Cosgro looked nervous. ‘I’d prefer to have a horse,’ he said.

Colby grinned. ‘After Isandhlwana,’ he said, ‘so would I.’

As the moon vanished they started up the slopes. Cosgro looked unhappy and Colby took a delight in watching him. Morrow had thought up a shocker for them that would hardly be to Cosgro’s fastidious tastes.

As the path grew steeper, they dismounted and began to lead the horses and there was a lot of muttering behind as the animals slipped and struggled, and strings of Afrikaner curses as the route petered out into a narrow trail skirting the edge of a sheer drop, much of it washed away by the previous night’s rainwater streaming from the plateau.

Burger appeared alongside Colby, almost spitting with rage. ‘Three horses have gone over the side,’ he snarled. ‘Who chose this verdomde route?’

As they reached the summit, sporadic firing broke out and several men were hit and one of them killed. The plateau proved to be more of a pasturage than they’d been led to expect, with thick bushes that blocked the view across the plain, and, sending Ackroyd ahead with three Transvaalers to reconnoitre, Colby was startled as they came hurrying back to announce that the plateau was full of Zulus.

‘It can’t be!’ Cosgro bleated.

‘It
is
,’ Ackroyd said with grim satisfaction. ‘What’s more, as far as I can see, the buggers are already slipping down the slope and getting round be’ind us.’

‘They can’t harm us much if we keep together,’ Colby said. ‘Let’s have the Cape Horse dismounted along the ridge and the Irregulars forward to watch the Zulus. They’ll probably bolt when they realise Morrow’s waiting for them.’

For more than an hour they waited for signs of Morrow’s arrival below and, when nothing happened, Colby decided to move towards the western edge of the plateau to cover the route down. He had gone only a few yards in the darkness when a burst of firing behind him made him whip round in the saddle, and a message came forward that Zulus were in contact with the tail of the column.

The light was increasing as he started back, but almost at once he heard yelling and was surrounded by running men. ‘They’re all round us,’ someone shouted in his face through the darkness. ‘Hundreds of ’em!’

The firing behind them had increased and there seemed to be more coming from the plain; Morrow had either found the Zulus or the Zulus had found Morrow.

Moving among the panicking men, Colby lashed out with fists and boots and riding crop until they stopped yelling and settled back to firing on the sniping Zulus who were now edging up the path they’d used. Then, as the light increased further, beyond the puffs of smoke that marked where they were, he saw the plain come into view. About three miles away several columns of Zulus were heading towards them and, snatching up his glasses, he could see yelling black faces, assegais beating against shields, and feathers blowing in the speed of their advance. The situation had changed in a second. There were enough warriors in the plain to overwhelm them and anybody caught on Tshethoslane was going to be trapped.

The columns were already opening out into the Zulu battle formation of a head with horns, the tips spreading out to flank the kopje. The massed warriors, their black skins glistening, their red and white shields flickering in the increasing light, had moved to north and south of the hill and there would clearly be no escape for anyone unless they moved fast. Then, down on the plain, he saw Morrow’s troops in confusion among the scrub. He had foolishly broken up his column and his men were scattered in groups about the bush, the most distant of them already pounding westwards in terror before the advancing Zulus.

‘God damn Morrow,’ he snarled. ‘He’s humbugged me again!’

The plateau terminated at the western end in a steep narrow path, muddy and dangerous after the rain. It descended in a series of switchback drops to the plain and was flanked by enormous rocks that lay in a ragged fringe choked by shrubs and vines. Everywhere else, the sides of the hill fell away in sheer precipices.

‘Is this what you call a route down?’ Colby snapped at Cosgro. ‘We’re riding horses, not mountain goats!’ He called Burger, his second-in-command, to him. There was nothing they could expect from Morrow. Having got them into a terrifying situation, he was in no position to help.

‘Let’s have the Kaffirs away,’ he said. ‘They have no horses and can make their own way down.’ Swinging round to Ackroyd, he jerked a hand to the west. ‘You go with ’em, Tyas!’

‘I’m stayin’ with you,’ Ackroyd insisted.

‘I’m damned if you are! There are women and children in Pietermaritzburg who’ll need you if anything happens to me.’

Ackroyd gazed at him for a second then he turned to the edge of the plateau. Without hesitating, he led his horse over and began the terrifying descent of the muddy path.

As the Kaffirs moved off the western rim, the Cape Horse began to pull back, still in good order. Mounting their horses, they began to ride across the top of the kopje towards the path. But, though they held their formation, the ill-trained units from Morrow’s column were already drifting after them, firing as they went at the Zulus who were sniping from behind the rocks. Reaching for his horse as the last of his men hurried past, Colby found himself surrounded by black figures. As they appeared in front of him, he fired at them and saw one of them fall, but not before a razor-sharp assegai had opened his arm. As he cantered towards the western lip of the plateau, more Zulus came pouring over the edge in a disorganised bunch, and digging in his spurs, he gave the horse its head and headed for a gap in their line.

The shooting had broken the Kaffir contingent into a disorganised mob and they were sliding down the slippery path to the plain and scattering in all directions. The left horn of the Zulu impi was already almost round the hill and warriors were appearing from the folds and crevices of the ground to attack, while those who had circled the upper plateau were filtering down the baboon trails and working their way along the slopes to join in the butchery.

With the entire command packed into the end of the plateau, intermingled with bellowing Zulu cattle, it was becoming impossible to move. The frightened Kaffirs prevented an orderly retreat, but braver men were setting their horses at the path and going down in ones and twos. As he reached the edge, Colby saw a horse slip and roll over the edge, carrying three others and their riders with it.

A descent with horses seemed impossible, yet without a horse they were going to certain death on the plain, and more men urged their mounts at the slope, driven on by constant showers of bullets. Turning to form a rearguard, Colby was knocked flying by a group of bellowing terrified cattle and rolled over the edge of the plateau to a small ridge below. Bruised and dazed, he scrambled to his feet to see Cosgro pushing his way through the press of men. He was using his fists to fight his way clear and Colby turned from the line he was forming to hold back the Zulus, to knock him flying with a tremendous clout at the side of the head.