"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. Gandang 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 re-load. 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.
Clinton 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: "Well then, Mary. You'll have read in the papers, we had quite a scrap here today.
It's nearly over now, and I was thinking about that day on the river Clinton wrote quickly, to keep up.
"I'll be saying cheerio, then Mary. Isn't one of us afraid.
I reckon as how we just want to do it right, when the time comes 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're 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.