The Sound of Thunder (11 page)

“Now, what’s this all about? ” demanded the Colonel, turning back to Sean. Impatiently Sean repeated himself, standing out in the open and uncomfortably aware that for absence of other targets the Boers were beginning to take a very active interest in them.

“I,&

“Are you sure?”

“Dammit! Of course, I’m sure. The bridge is destroyed and they have torn up all the barbed wire fences and thrown them into the river.

You’ll never get across there. ” “Come along. ” The Colonel set off towards the nearest cottage and Sean walked beside him. Afterwards he was never certain how he had managed to cover that hundred yards without running.

“For God’s sake, put that sword away,” he growled at the colonel as they walked with the flit, spang, flit, spang of bullets around them.

“Nervous, Sergeant?” And for the first time the Colonel grinned.

“You’re damn right, I am.”

“So am I. But it would never do to let the men see that, would it?”, He steadied the scabbard on his hips and ran the sword back into it. “What’s your name, Sergeant?”

“Sean Courtney, Natal Corps of Guides. What’s yours?”

Sean ducked instinctively as a bullet cracked Past his head, and the Colonel smiled again at the familiarity.

“Acheson. John Acheson. 2nd Battalion, Scots Fusiliers.

And they reached the cottage. No longer able to restrain himself, Sean dived thankfully through the kitchen door and found Saul already there. He handed Sean a cheroot and held a match for him.

“These crazy Souties! ” he observed. “And you’re as bad as he strolling around in the middle of a battle.

“Right, Courtney. ” Acheson followed him into the kitchen.

“Let’s go over the situation.”

He listened quietly while Sean explained in detail. He had to shout to lift his voice above the whistle and crack of the Boer artillery and the roar of a thousand Lee-Metford rifles as they replied from the windows and doorways of the village. Around them the kitchen was being used as a dressing-station and the moan and whimper of wounded men added to the hubbub Of battle.

When Sean had finished Acheson turned away and strode to the window. He looked out across the railway tracks, to where the guns stood. They were drawn up in precise parade-ground formation. But now they were silent. Dribbling back towards the shelter of a deep don ga-or gully-in the rear, the surviving gunners dragged their wounded with them.

“The poor bastards,” Sean whispered, as he saw one of the retreating gunners killed, shot in the head so that his helmet was thrown spinning upwards in a brief pink cloud of blood.

The sight seemed to rouse Acheson also.

“All right,” he said. “We’ll advance on the road bridge.

Come on, Courtney. ” Behind him someone cried out, and Sean heard him fall. But he did not look round. He watched the bridge ahead of him.

Although his legs moved mechanically under him it seemed to come no nearer. The thorn trees were thicker here beside the river and they gave a little cover from the merciless marksmen on the far bank. Yet men were falling steadily, and the shrapnel raged and cracked above them.

“Let’s get across. Get the best seats on the other side, ” Saul shouted beside him.

“Come on, then,” agreed Sean and they ran together. They were first on to the bridge, with Acheson just behind them.

Bullets left bright scars on the grey painted metal, and then suddenly, miraculously, they were across. They had crossed the Tugela.

A drainage ditch beside the road and they dived into it, both of them panting. Sean looked back. Over the bridge poured a mass of khaki, all semblance of order gone as they crowded into the bottleneck and the fire from the Boers churned into them.

Once across, the leaders fanned out along the river, crouching below the dip of the bank, while behind them the slaughter on the bridge continued. A struggling mass of cursing, running angry, frightened and dying men.

“It’s a bloody abattoir.” Sean was appalled as he watched it.

Dead and wounded men were falling over the low guard rail, splashing into the brown waters of the Tugela to sink or strike out clumsily for the banks. But a steady stream of men was coming across and going to ground in the two-deep drainage ditches, and beneath the angle of the river bank.

It was clear to Sean that the attack was losing its impetus. As the men jumped down into the ditches he saw in their faces and in the way they flattened themselves into shelter that they had lost all stomach for the attack. The ordeal of the bridge had destroyed the discipline that had held their steady advance into those neatly controlled ranks; officers and men were inextricably mixed into a tired and badly frightened rabble. There was no contact between the different groups in the drainage trenches and those lying in the lee of the river banks-and already there was little cover for the men who were still coming across. The fire from the Boer positions never faltered, and now the bridge was blocked with the bodies of the fallen, so that each new wave had to climb over them, stepping on dead and wounded alike, while the storm of Boer rifle-fire lashed them like wind-driven rain.

Rivulets of fresh bright blood dribbled down the supports of the bridge in ghastly contrast to the grey paint, and the surface of the river was stained by a chocolate-brown cloud of it spreading slowly downstream. Here and there a desperate rallying voice was lifted in the hubbub of incoherent shouts and groans.

“Here the 21st. Form on me the 21st. ” “Independent fire. On the heights. Ten rounds rapid.”

“Stretcher-bearer! ” “Bill. Where are you, Bill?”

“Jesus Christ! Jesus sobbing Christ!”

“Up, you men! Get up!”

“Come on the 21st. Fix bayonets.”

Some of them were head and shoulders out of the ditch returning the Boer fire, a few were drinking from their water bottles already. A sergeant struggled with a jammed rifle and swore softly without looking up, while beside him a man sat with his back against the wall of the ditch, his legs sprawled open, and watched while the blood pumped from the wound in his belly.

Sean stood and felt the wind of a bullet slap against his cheek, while low in his stomach the slimy reptile of fear coiled itself tighter. Then he scrambled up the side of the ditch.

“Come on!” he roared and started running towards the hills.

It was open here, like a meadow, and ahead of him an old barbed wire fence sagged on rotten poles. He reached it, lifted his foot and kicked with his heel. The fence pole snapped level with the ground, the wire collapsed. He jumped over it.

“They’re not coming,” Saul shouted beside him, and Sean stopped.

The two of them were alone in the middle of the field and the Boer rifles were seeking them eagerly.

“Run, Saul!” Sean shouted and snatched off his hat. “Come on, you bastards. ” He waved at the men behind him.

A bullet missed him so narrowly that he staggered in the wind of its passage.

“This way! Follow us! Come on!” Saul had not left him. He was dancing with excitement, and flapping his arms.

“Come back.” Acheson’s voice floated across to them. He stood in the drainage ditch, showing clear from the waist up.

“Comeback, Courtney!

The attack was finished. Sean knew it in that instant, and saw the wisdom of Acheson’s decision. Further advance over the open meadowland below the heights was suicide. The resolve that had carried him this far collapsed, and his terror snapped the leash he had held upon it. He ran back blindly, sobbing, leaning forward, his elbows pumping in time to his fear-driven feet.

Then suddenly Saul was hit beside him. It took him in the head, threw him forward, his rifle spinning from his hands, squawking hoarsely with pain and surprise as he went down skidding on his belly.

And Sean ran on.

“Sean!” Saul’s voice left behind him.

“Sean!” A cry of dreadful need, and Sean closed his mind against it and ran on towards the safety of the ditch.

“Sean. Please!” and he checked and stood uncertain with the Mausers barking above and the bullets clipping the grass around him.

Leave him, shrieked Sean’s terror. Leave him. Run! Run!

Saul crawled towards him, blood on his face and his eyes fastened on Sean’s face.

“Sean!”

Leave Turn. Leave him But there was hope in that pitiful blood-smeared face, and the fingers of Saul’s hands clawed among the coarse grass roots as he dragged himself forward.

It was beyond all reason. But Sean went back to him.

Beneath the spurs of his terror Sean found the strength to lift him and run with him.

Hating him as he had never hated before, Sean blundered towards the drainage ditch carrying Saul. The acceleration of his brain slowed down the passage of time so that he seemed to run for ever.

“Damn you!” he mouthed at Saul, hating him.

“Damn you to hell! ” The words came easily from his mouth, an inarticulate expression of his terror.

Then the ground gave way beneath his feet and he fell. Together they dropped into the drainage ditch and Sean rolled away from him. He lay on his stomach and pressed his face into the earth and shook as a man shakes in high fever.

Slowly he came back from that far place where fear had driven him, and he lifted his head.

Saul sat against the bank of the ditch. His face was streaked with a mixture of blood and dirt.

“How are we doing?” Sean croaked and Saul looked at him dully.

It was bright and very hot here in the sun. Sean unscrewed the stopper of his water-bottle and held it to Saul’s lips. Saul swallowed painfully and water spilled from the corner of his mouth down his chin and on to his tunic.

Then Sean drank and finished panting with pleasure.

” Let’s have a look at your head. ” He lifted Saul’s hat from his head, and the blood that had accumulated around the sweat band poured in a fresh flood down Saul’s neck. Parting the sodden black hair Sean found the groove in the flesh of his scalp.

“Grazed you,” he grunted and groped for the field dressing in the pocket of Saul’s tunic. While he bound an untidy turban round Saul’s head he noticed that a strange stillness had fallen on the field, a stillness accentuated rather than broken by the murmur of voices from the men around him and the occasional report of a rifle from the heights above.

The battle was over. At least we got across the river, he thought bitterly. The only problem that now remains is getting back again.

“How’s that feel?” He had wet his handkerchief and wiped some of the blood and dust from Saul’s face. “Thank you, Sean. ” Suddenly Sean realized that Saul’s eyes were full of wan and it embarrassed him.

He looked away from them.

“Thank you for . for coming back to get me.

or get it.”

‘ll never forget. Never as long as I live.

“You’d have done the same. ” “No, I don’t think so. I wouldn’t have been able to. I was so scared, so afraid, Sean. You’d never know. You’ll never know what it’s like to be that afraid.

“For-get it, Saul. Leave it alone.”

“I’ve got to tell you. I owe it to you-from now on I owe you .

If you hadn’t come back I’d be … I’d still be out there. I owe you.”

“Shut up, damn you! ” He saw that Saul’s eyes were different, the pupils had shrunk to tiny black specks and he was shaking his head in a meaningless idiotic fashion. The bullet had con cussed him. But this could not prevent Sean’s anger. “Shut UP, he snarled. “You think I don’t know about fear. I was so scared out there-I hated you. Do you hear that? I hated you!

And then Sean’s voice softened. He had to explain to Saul and himself. He had to tell him about it, to justify it and place it securely in the scheme of things.

Suddenly he felt very old and wise. In his hands he held the key to the whole mystery of life. It was all so clear, for the first time he understood and he could explain it.

They sat close together in the sun, isolated from the men around them, and Sean’s voice sank to an urgent whisper as he tried to make Saul understand, tried to pass on to him this knowledge that embraced all truth.

Beside them lay a corporal of the Fusiliers. He lay on his back, dead, and the flies swarmed over his eyes and laid their eggs. They looked like tiny grains of rice clustered in the lashes around his dead open eyes.

Saul leaned heavily against Sean’s shoulder, now and then he shook his head in confusion as he listened to Sean. Listened to Sean’s voice tripping and stumbling then starting to hurry as his ideas broke up and crumpled, heard the desperation in it as Sean strove to retain just a few grains of all that knowledge which had been his a few moments before. Heard it peter out into silence and sorrow as he found that it was gone.

“I don’t know,” Sean admitted at last.

Then Saul spoke, his voice was dull and his eyes would not focus properly as he peered at Sean from beneath the bloodstained turban of bandages.

“Ruth,” he said. “You speak like Ruth does. Sometimes in the night when she cannot sleep she tries to tell me. Almost I understand, almost she finds it and then she stops. “I don’t know,” she says at last. “I just don’t know. “Sean jerked away from him, and stared into his face. “Ruth?”

he asked quietly.

“Ruth-my wife. You’d like her, Sean-she’d like you. So brave-she came to me through the Boer lines. All the way from Pretoria-riding alone. She came to me. I couldn’t believe it.

All that way. She just walked into camp one day and said,

“Hello, Saul. I’m here!” just like that! You’ll like her when you meet her, Sean. She’s so beautiful, so serene .

In October when the big winds blow they come for the first time on a still day. It has been hot and dry for perhaps a month, then you hear them from far away, roaring softly. The roar mounts quickly, the dust races brown on the wind and the trees lean away from it, threshing and churning their branches. You see it coming but all your preparations are nothing when it hits.

The vast roaring and the dust envelope you and you are numbed and blinded by the violence of it.

In the same way Sean saw it coming, he recognized it as the murderous rage which before had nearly killed a man, but still he could not prepare himself And then it was upon him and the roaring filled his head and narrowed his vision so that all he could see was the face of Saul Friedman. The face was in profile for Saul was sat ring back across the plain of Colenso towards the English lines.