The Sound of Thunder (31 page)

They took the ridge a few minutes after midnight with hardly any opposition. The few Boer sentries made good time down the far slope and Sean looked down upon the Boer laagers. The camp fires glimmered in an irregular line along the valley. Men stood around them staring up at the ridge. Sean scattered them with a dozen lusty volleys, and then yelled,

“Cease firing. Eccles, get the men settled in. We are going to have visitors fairly soon. ” The Boers had built scharnzes along the crest which saved Sean’s men much inconvenience and within ten minutes the Maxims were em placed and Sean’s two hundred unwounded men waited behind walls of rough rock for the Boer counterattack. This took some time to develop for the situation necessitated a hurried War Council in the valley below. But at last they heard the first stealthy approach of the attackers.

“Here they come, Sergeant, Major. Hold your fire, please.”

The burghers worked their way up cautiously and when Sean could hear their voices whispering among the rocks he decided they were close enough and discouraged further intimacy with volleyed rifle, fire and the use of all his Maxims. The Boers replied with heat and at the height of the exchange the Hotchkiss gun joined in from the valley.

Its first shell passed but a few feet over Sean’s head, then burst in the valley behind him. The second and third shots dropped neatly among the attacking Boer riflemen and raised such a howl of protest that the gunners, their efforts not appreciated, maintained an aloof and offended silence for the rest of the night.

Sean had expected a determined night attack but it soon became clear that Leroux was fully aware of the danger of closely engaging an inferior force in the dark. He contented himself with keeping Sean awake all night, his burghers taking it in turn to come up and keep the short, range rifle duel going, and Sean began to have qualms about the wisdom of his offensive. Dawn would find him on a rocky ridge, facing a numerically superior force, with his line anchored at neither end, and short enough to be easily flanked and en filtrated He remembered Spion Kopand there was little comfort in the memory. But the alternative was to fall back on the river, and his hackles rose at the thought.

Unless relief came soon, defeat was certain, better here on the high ground than in the mud. We’ll stay, he decided.

In the dawn there was a hill but although the gunfire dwindled to an occasional crack and flash on the lower slope yet Sean could sense an increase of activity among the Boers. Ominous rustlings and the muted sounds of movement on his flanks confirmed his misgivings. But now it was too late to retreat on the river, for already the mountains were showing stark silhouettes against the dawn sky. They seemed very close, as close and unfriendly as the unseen multitude of the enemy waiting out there for the light to come.

Sean stood up. “Take the gun,” he whispered to the man beside him as he relinquished the Maxim.

All night he had fought with that wicked clumsy weapon and now his hands were claws shaped to the firing grips, and his shoulders ached intolerably. He flexed them as he moved down the line, stopping to chat with the men who lay belly, down behind the scharnz, trying to make his words of encouragement sound convincing, In their replies he sensed the respect they were fbrining for him as a fighting man. It was more than respect, closer to a tolerant affection. The same feeling old General Buller had evoked amongst his men. He made mistakes, a lot of men died when he led, but they liked him and followed cheerfully. Sean reached the end of the line.

“How’s it going?” he asked Saul softly.

“Fair enough.

“Any sign of the old Boer?”

“They’re pretty close, we heard them talking a few minutes ago. My guess is they’re as ready as we are.

“How’s your ammunition?”

“We’ve got enough to finish this business.”

To finish this business! That would be his decision. When the massacre began, how much must he make them endure before he called for quarter, and they stood up with arms raised in the most shameful of all attitudes?

“You’d better get under cover, Sean. Light’s coming fast.

“Who the hell is looking after whom, ” Sean grinned at him.

“I want no more heroics from you,” he said, and walked quickly to his station on the other flank.

The night lifted quickly from the land, and morning came as abruptly as it does only in Africa. The Boer laagers were gone.

The Hotchkiss gun was gone. Sean knew that the gun and the Boer horses had been moved back behind the new ridge which now faced their position. He knew also that the rocky ground below him was crawling with the enemy, that they were on his flanks and probably in his rear as well.

Slowly, the way a man looks at a place before he begins a long journey, Sean looked around him at the mountains and the sky and the valley. In the soft light it was very beautiful.

He looked down the gut of the valley towards the grass plains of the high veld His head jerked with surprise. He felt excitement lift the hair on his forearms. The mouth of the valley was blocked by a dark mass. In the uncertain light it could have been a plantation of wattle trees, oblong and regular and black against the pale grass. But this plantation was moving, changing shape, elongating. Bimarn Wood to Dunsinane.

The first rays of the sun slanted in across the crest of the ridge and lit the lance, heads into a thousand minute dazzles.

“Cavalry!” roared Sean. “By Jesus, look at them.”

The cry was taken up and thrown along the line, yelling, cheering wildly they fired down upon the tiny brown figures that were scurrying away to meet the Boer pickets who galloped in across the floor of the valley, each of them dragging a bunch of a dozen horses after them.

Then above the cheering and the gunfire, high above the sounds of hooves and the cries of panic, a bugle began to sing: “Bonnie Dundee”, sharp and clear and urgently it commanded the charge.

Sean’s rifles fell silent. The cheering faltered and stopped.

One by one his men stood up to watch as the lines of lancers moved forward. Walk. Trot. Canter. Gallop. The lance heads dropped.

Belly, high they flitted like fireflies in front of the solid dark ranks, and that terrible thing swept down upon the tangle of men and frenzied, struggling horses.

Some of the Boers were up now, wheeling away, breaking like game before the beaters.

“My God!” breathed Sean, tensing himself for the burst of sound as the charge struck home. But there was only the drum of hooves, no check, no distortion as the dark squadrons drove through the Boers.

Precisely they wheeled, and came back. Broken lances thrown aside, sabres unsheathed, bright and long.

Sean watched a burgher dodging desperately as a lancer followed him. Saw him turning at the last moment and crouching with his arms covering his head. The lancer stood in his stirrups and swung his sabre backhanded. The burgher dropped. Like a polo player the trooper pivoted his horse and rode back over the Boer, leaning low out of the saddle to sabre him again as he knelt in the grass.

“Quarter! ” growled Sean, then his voice rising shrilly in horror and disgust,

“Give them quarter! For the love of God, give them quarter!”

But cavalry gives no quarter. They butchered with dispassionate parade, ground precision. Hack and cut, turn and trample until the blades blurred redly, until the valley was strewn with the bodies of men wounded a dozen times.

Sean tore his eyes away and saw the remains of Leroux’s commando scattered into the broken ground where the big cavalry mounts could not follow.

Sean sat down on a rock and bit the end off a cheroot. The rank smoke helped cleanse his mouth of the taste of victory.

Two days later Sean led his column into Charlestown. The garrison cheered them and Sean grinned as he watched his men react. Half an hour before they had bumped along, hunched unhappily on their borrowed mounts. Now they sat erect and jaunty, eating the applause and liking the taste.

Then the grin faded from Sean’s face as he saw how his band was depleted, and he looked back at the fifteen crowded wagons that carried the wounded.

If only I’d put look, outs on the ridge.

There was an urgent summons from Acheson waiting for Sean.

He caught the northbound express twenty minutes after arriving in Charlestown, hating Saul for the hot bath in which he left him, and for the uniform which Mbejane had persuaded a plump Zulu maid to wash and iron, hating him still more venomously for the invitation to be guest of honor at the officers’ mess that night, and knowing that Saul would drink deep on Veuve Clicquot and Courvoisier which had once belonged to Sean.

When Sean arrived in Johannesburg the following morning, with soot from the locomotive adding a subtle touch to the fragrance he had gathered from two unwashed weeks in the veld, there was an orderly to meet him and conduct him to Acheson’s suite in the Grand National Hotel Major Peterson was patently taken aback by Sean’s turnout, he eyed the stains and tears and dried mud with genteel horror at the contrast they afforded to the breakfast table’s crisp white linen and splendid silver. The ripeness of Sean’s odour impaired Peterson’s appetite and he dabbed at his nose with a silk handkerchief. But Acheson seemed not to notice, he was in festive mood.

“Damned fine show, Courtney. Oh, damned fine. Proved your point entirely. We’ll not have much trouble from Leroux for some time, I warrant you. Have another egg? Peterson, pass him the bacon.

Sean finished eating and filled his coffee cup before he made his request. “I want to be relieved of this command, I made a bloody mess of it.”

Both Acheson and Peterson stared in horror. “Good God, Courtney.

You’ve achieved a notable success, the most spectacular in months.

“Luck,” brusquely Sean interrupted. “Another two hours and we would have been wiped out. ” “Lucky officers are more valuable to me than clever ones.

Your request is refused, Colonel Courtney.” So it’s Colonel now, a bribe to get me into the dentist’s chair. Sean was mildly amused.

A knock at the door prevented Sean continuing his protestation, and an orderly came into the room and handed Acheson a message.

“Urgent dispatch from Charlestown,” he whispered.

Acheson took the paper from him and used it like a conductor’s baton as he went on talking.

“I have got three junior officers for you, men to replace your losses. You catch them for us and hold them for my cavalry That’s all I want from you. While you’re doing your bit the columns are going to start a series of new drives. This time we are going to sweep every inch of the ground between the blockhouse lines. We are going to destroy the crops and the livestock; burn the farms; take every woman, man and child off the land and put them in detainment camps. By the time we’re finished there will be nothing but bare veld out there. We will force them to operate in a vacuum, while we wear them down with a relentless series of drives and raids. ” Acheson slapped the table so that the crockery jingled. “Attrition, Courtney. From now on it’s a war of attrition ” 216 Those words had an uncomfortable familiarity for Sean. And suddenly a picture of desolation formed in his mind. He saw the land, his land, blackened with fire, and the roofless homesteads standing in the wastes. The sound of the empty winds across the land was the wailing of orphans, and the protest of a lost people.

“General Acheson, ” he began, but Acheson was reading the dispatch.

“Damn!” he snapped. “Damn and blast! Leroux again. He doubled back and caught the transport column of those same lancers who cut him up. Wiped it out and disappeared into the mountains.” Acheson laid the message on the table in front of him and stared at it.

“Courtney,” he said, “go back and, this time, catch him!”

“Breakfast is ready, Nkosi. Michael Courtney looked up from his book at the servant. “Thank you, Joseph, I’m coming now. ” These two hours of study each morning passed so quickly. He checked the clock on the shelf above his bed, half, past six already, closed the book and stood up.

While he brushed his hair he watched his reflection in the mirror without attention. His mind was fully occupied with events that would fill this new day. There was work to do.

His reflection looked back at him with serious grey eyes from a face whose lean contours were marred by the big Courtney nose. His hair was black and springy beneath the brush.

He dropped the brush and while he shrugged into his leather jacket he flipped open the book to check a passage. He read it through carefully, then turned and went out into the corridor.

Anna and Garrick Courtney were seated at opposite ends of the long dining, table of Theuniskraal and they both looked up expectantly as he entered.

Good morning, Mother. ” She held up her face for his kiss’ Good morning, Pa.”

“Hello, my boy.” Garry was wearing full dress, complete with crowns and decorations, and Michael felt a flare of irritation. It was so damned ostentatious. Also it reminded him that he was nineteen years old and there was a war going on while he sat at home on the farm.

“Are you going into town today, Pa?”

“No, I’m going to do some work on my memoirs.”

“Oh,” Michael glanced pointedly at the uniform and his father flushed slightly and applied himself to his meal.

“How are your studies, darling?” Anna broke the silence.

“Well enough, thank you, Mother.”

“I’m certain you’ll have as little trouble with the final examinations as you had with the others.” Anna smiled at him possessively and stretched out to touch his hand. Michael withdrew it quickly and laid down his fork.

“Mother, I want to talk to you about enlisting. ” Anna’s smile froze. At the end of the table Garry straightened in his chair.

“No,” he snapped with unusual violence. “We’ve been over this before. You’re still a minor and you do as you’re told. ” “The war is almost over, darling. Please think of your father and me. ” It began then. Another of those long wheedling, pleading arguments that sickened and frustrated Michael until he stood up abruptly and left the room. His horse was waiting saddled for him in the yard. He threw himself on to its back and swung its head at the gate, lifting it over, and scattering chickens as he landed. He galloped furiously away towards the main dip, tank.