The dragoons, for all their relief at finding haven, tramped in wearily. Hervey hailed each of them, all but a couple by name. Corporal McCarthy was last man.
'Good morning, sor!'
Hervey's spirits lifted. The old hands might still call McCarthy (who had first been an infantryman) the footiest dragoon on a horse, but his cheeriness in all circumstances was worth three sabres. 'Corporal McCarthy, there is no serjeant here.Would you be so good as to take local rank?'
'Local rank? I will, sor. Easy come, easy go!'
Hervey smiled. McCarthy's rank had come and gone throughout his service. It was just a pity – if he could think of it as mildly as mere pity – that Collins was at Nonoti still, and Wainwright at Cape Town. With those two he would have been certain of having men about him who would instinctively make the right decision (and, as God knew it, they had precious few men here to risk making anything but the right one).
While the nigh-exhausted dragoons were doing what they could to revive themselves and their troopers, Hervey handed his torch to one of Ngwadi's men, and slipped out of the kraal to accustom his eyes to the darkness once more. There was no real need of it: if there were Zulu out there, Corporal Cox's picket would detect them. But it helped him compose his mind to the trial ahead. And trial he knew there would be. The dragoons had seen nothing on their approach march, but as Fairbrother readily conceded, this might as easily mean the Zulu hid themselves. Yesterday, Mbopa's men had been here. Where were they now? They had had a sharp check, it was true – none, though, but that Mbopa could have expected with so small a number. Hervey was certain it had been a reconnaissance in force, to test the defences of the kraal, to make Ngwadi show his strength – or lack of it. He could only presume that reinforcements were indeed marching here at warrior-speed this very moment, as the herd boys said. And if they possessed the stamina of Fairbrother's guide, they might be here now.
Every man in the kraal was standing to his arms, whether spear, rifle or sabre. They were as secure as in any of the fortresses of Spain: firing the thorn stockade could not drive them out, for even if they had been ringed with flame, the kraal was large enough for them to form in the centre (and fire-blackened thorn was no easier to penetrate). Hervey had put Welsh in charge of the inner defences, for with the admirable Corporal Cox in command of the picket work, the riflemen had no need of an officer. Welsh could communicate well enough with Ngwadi's lieutenants. Need any of them venture from the kraal, therefore? His instinct told him they must: to allow Mbopa the initiative, when there was little hope of exterior relief, was to risk a surprise they would be ill-balanced to deal with.
He congratulated himself that he had, at least, timed things as well as he had, for as the assemblage was taking post, the first shafts of sunlight were broaching the eastern horizon. He slipped back inside the kraal, and the sentries made fast the hurdle.
Slowly the darkness gave way to shadows, and then to that curious, hovering half light in which there was no colour, only shapes and forms, and from this to morning, like a stage revealed. A glorious morning, as elemental as those he had known in Bengal, the scent of the land in the air, the essence of the country in one breath . . .
And then, as if he had blinked and another curtain had risen, there was the dread sight before him: five hundred yards away, no more, a long, black line stretching for half a mile, the right flank where the sun rose, the left on a hill just high enough to overlook the kraal. Hervey had Somervile's telescope, and standing on the platform from which the sentries observed, he swept the line.
The warriors stood by their shields – five hundred men, by his rapid reckoning. Even with the return of most his dragoons, now, they would have the devil of a job of it.
Somervile came striding, although Hervey had asked him to stay at his hut, so that in a sudden alarm there could be no confusion in finding him. 'Good God!' he gasped on seeing the host, standing stock-still except to check his pistols were still in his belt.
'Somervile, I asked you—'
Four shots rang out in quick succession, thick white smoke indicating where the picket lay, prone, at the edge of the mealie planting. Hervey took up his telescope again, forgetting his irritation.
'Well done, riflemen,' he exclaimed, their marksmanship exceptional. 'Three down, perhaps a fourth – I couldn't see all the line at once.' Nor was it just their marksmanship which inspired his esteem: it was their address, for he had given them no particular orders – and the senior of them but a 'chosen man'.
Another four shots – the second barrels.
'Upon my word, I never saw better shooting. Four hit, and almost next to each other!'
The line remained still.
In half a minute the picket fired again, and then the second barrels, and with equal accuracy.
Yet the line stood rooted.
'Corporal Cox!' bellowed Hervey, keen to seize the opportunity.
The corporal came doubling. 'Sir!'
'Take out all your riflemen. Get up the briskest fire. Drive them off their perch!'
'Ay, sir!'
'Can they do the trick, Hervey?' asked Somervile, sounding doubtful.
'I have no idea. But if yon black line stands obligingly it'll be a deal whittled down in ten minutes!'
If the line merely withdrew to cover, he would be content – but even if it began to advance he would take satisfaction, for he would have forced Mbopa's hand. The initiative was a damned fine thing to gain at the beginning of an affair thus!
The line stood for a quarter of an hour. Or rather, that part of it stood which was not knocked down by Corporal Cox and his riflemen. Hervey could scarcely believe that the Zulu held their ground against such accurate fire. He swept back and forward with his 'scope, trying to find some clue to their resolution. 'Boys, in all likelihood. The first courage.' He swore beneath his breath at Mbopa's cynical play with their inexperience.
The smoke had thickened to a dense fog on the right of the line of rifles, the sun not yet hot enough to disperse it.
Hervey suddenly stiffened. What if these Zulu were a decoy? He looked about for Ngwadi, seeing him standing just outside the sango, and hailed him. 'Nkosi, your warriors, there and there,' (pointing to either flank of the firing line) 'ikhulu . . . I need a hundred.'
Ngwadi had his men assembled in moments.
Hervey jumped from the platform and ran back to the horses, loosing the mare he had ridden the day before and vaulting astride.
Fairbrother and the dragoons were saddling up as fast as they could.
'Keep them out of sight till I call!' he shouted over his shoulder, beckoning to Ngwadi to have him and his men follow as he galloped out.
'Hervey, what . . .' But all Somervile could do was watch as the press of warriors burst from the kraal, their chief at the head.
They beat Mbopa's men to the ground by a mere half-minute: for as if from out of the earth itself now sprang his best, the veterans, fifty and more on each flank, like a flash-flood. Without Ngwadi's men they would have overwhelmed the rifles in seconds.