The Kraals of Ulundi, page 35
‘Trample them!’ he shouted. ‘Blow them away!’
And Shaba was up with his section, the death lust upon him, one of those designated to advance just ahead of the regiment, the best marksmen, thinly spread but with their rifles ready, to keep the red soldiers pinned while the main body closed for the kill. But he had not expected the storm. He had felt the breeze earlier, yet this…? It was like walking into the wildest of winds, when you could lean forward at an impossible angle and still not fall. A hurricane here, though, of lead. Lead and sound. Sound so vile, so ugly, that it deafened him. At his side, one man after another was hurled back into the gulley. Some never even managed to climb over the top. To his left, the married men of the Dust Raisers, the uThulwana, were up too, but in a solid body of white shields, red dappled markings. A proud regiment that now incorporated some of the older amabutho, the Sulphurs and the iNkonkoni. They stood briefly to howl their war cry against the Fat Queen.
‘Mina!’ they shouted, then immediately beat spear hafts against shield hide.
‘Mina! Mina!’
Then they sprang forward into the storm.
The sound of the rifles was almost as overwhelming as their bullet storm, though Shaba ran through it, Langalabelele still close to him, but less than half his section still standing. When the regiment comes behind us, he thought, we will avenge them. Them and Zama too. Umdeni. His cattle. All the others things they had lost. He knelt near a thorn bush, fired into the red line ahead of him. Others did the same. And he saw several of the soldiers fall. It was almost impossible to miss them. Yet he needed to keep moving, try to maintain this thin screen for the ranks that would come behind. He wanted to turn, to make sure that they were, indeed, there. For he had never felt so alone in all his life, could not imagine how this hailstone downpour of metal had not already touched him.
Shaba experienced that strange sensation when all the colours of the day were suddenly muted, leaked into the soil to leave nothing but images in tones of grey and, even then, only those images upon which a warrior sensed the need to focus for his survival, seen through a narrowing tunnel of vision. But he could feel the battle fury slipping from him already. So early, he thought, though it flared again as he heard the familiar cries at his back.
‘We are the Evil Omen! We are the boys from eSandlwana!’
The drumming on shields then the shaking ground that caused all the scents of the earth, of their land, to rise and fill him. He ran on; saw more of his section fall, many of the Dust Raisers too. He was firing as he moved now, no need to stop, no cause to aim. The ground erupted not far away. A shell from the mbayimbayi. An explosion of dirt and stone. A cloud of dust hurled into the air. And floating through the cloud, slow and lazy, the heads and legs and arms of warriors. The men from the uThulwana began to fall in heaps, as though they had been tipped there like firewood, or hung as garlands, ripened fruit, on the branches of low thorn-trees. The earth itself had become crazed, torn by steel and iron, heaving and bucking, wreathed in sour smoke, crops of dead springing up wherever the shell seeds were scattered. Yet he ran on towards the square, able to see now that the line facing them was four men deep, the front two lines kneeling, the second two standing behind. Shaba dived into a hole in the ground, perhaps five paces across, scooped out by an earlier shell while the gunners were finding their range. Several others fell on top of him, converging in the tiny sanctuary. Langalabelele gripped his arm, his eyes wide, nostrils flaring.
‘This is not like the others,’ he said.
Shaba pulled his arm free.
‘What did you expect?’ he snarled, and fumbled for his pouch, drew out one of the round-headed bullets in its brass casing, pushed forward the breech lever, slid home the round. He pulled the lever home again, sighted quickly and fired. The butt jarred into his bare shoulder, the gun’s report catching him by surprise as it always did. The cordite smell acrid, stinging in his eye.
He grabbed Langalabelele by his cross-belts, dragged him upright and behind him as he left the crater. A rapid glance behind showed the rest of the regiment at their heels. Some of the regiment anyhow. He wondered briefly whether the rest might still be in the gulley. But then he saw the numbers that were down. The failed and faceless dead. The mouthless ones. Those that war had turned to dung, their summers all spent, their fruits all harvested at once. The shells of the mbayimbayi were coming more often, shrieking and ripping through their lines and dripping with their blood. The warriors tripped and fell, one upon the other, their insides spilling, storage gourds, tipped and smashed, mealies trickling out upon the ground. Yet those still living were overtaking him in their haste to settle accounts.
Shaba fired and fired again, pushing his way through the heat, the smoke, the solid barrier of sound and fury that dizzied him.
*
The company’s induna ran until his lifeless legs could carry him no more, empty fingers reaching towards his necklace until the knees buckled and he crashed forward onto his shield.
“Bite the root if you have it!” Shaba remembered him saying.
The old man had been a true lion, a leader of lions. And Shaba spared a fleeting thought for that other ancient, Zama’s grandfather, wondered if he yet lived. There was a chance perhaps if, like his own company and regiment, the uMxapho had also managed to reach this zone that suddenly seemed so safe. The wall of noise from the enemy rifles, the vile storm of lead that poured from them, had not lessened. Yet there was a relative stillness, and he realised they had passed beyond the ground that the mbayimbayi could pound from their positions at the corner of the red soldiers’ square. Hope and anger filled him in equal measure. He fired; saw a soldier fall at the point where he had aimed.
‘USuthu!’ he yelled, leaping forward.
The enemy line seemed suddenly to shudder and tremble. He could almost smell their fear and uncertainty. A line of heads appeared above the rest. Horse soldiers mounting, he realised, as one of their beasts reared and snorted, plainly visible. There were white izinduna, also mounted, shouting, screaming at the wavering ranks of their men. Shaba was perhaps forty paces from them, maybe even less, and he knew now that he and his section would soon be among them. Their own fire was intensifying, though it was still ragged. Why can we not fire volleys like the whites? he wondered. But ragged or not, they still caused damage in those tightly packed ranks. More red soldiers falling. And he knew they must break the square. Now or never. The bullets from the Fat Queen’s army were lessening, men beginning to press back among their fellows, those wicked steel bayonets wavering, the unsteady looking around for reassurance or instruction, their officers still yelling at them.
‘We are the boys from eSandlwana!’ yelled Langalabelele.
The chant was taken up by those behind, and all along the line, though it was punctuated by a new sound, a strange sound that ranged alongside the musketry. Clack, clack, clack. It was so rhythmic that Shaba initially assumed it must emanate from the AmaZulu army itself. Clack, clack, clack. But his eye was drawn to the right, along the front of their advance where warriors were now being tossed aside with mechanical precision, ripened crops ready for the reaping and falling with a harvester’s efficiency. Clack, clack, clack. They crumbled, swept sideways, as the machine passed its blade further along the line, and Shaba’s eye was drawn to the source, the centre of the red soldiers’ formation, the point where the two blocks joined, the guns that he had seen earlier. Those harmless things, smaller than the mbayimbayi. It seemed to take a whole team of blue-jackets to tend them, handles to be cranked, revolving fluted barrels to be swung, raised or depressed; great sticks to be fed into their bellies. But the appetite for AmaZulu souls was unquenchable. Clack, clack, clack. The machines fed voraciously, their victims squirming and crawling upon the earth, grubbing in the dirt, gasping for air, fighting the demons come to possess them, finally drowning in their own liquids. The force of the guns’ firepower blasted and battered breast and eye, and wherever it failed to find flesh, it deluged them with clods of grass and earth. Shaba found that he was no longer moving in a straight line but, rather, running in a series of zigzags, a hunted creature. There were terrible visions around him, one warrior with both his arms shorn off at the elbows and, next to that one, a man similarly dispossessed of each leg. The raucous chorus of the heaped and groaning wounded.
Something slapped hard against his own shoulder, an impact that stung and burned, and then went numb. He could feel nothing, dropped his rifle, wondered casually whether his own arm had been severed. But he refused the urge to survey it, kept his head raised, knew that the instant he looked down, he was dead. Keep moving, he told himself. Keep moving. But he was running out of breath now. And he had no idea what he would do in the event that he even reached the enemy line. He stopped, as those around him had stopped also. For as far as he could see. They had all stopped. As though each of those that remained had simultaneously realised the futility, the inevitability. They seemed to stand for a long time, the bullets continuing to eat them – though still defiant, spears beating against shields, or being shaken in the air.
Then Langalabelele spun against him, knocking Shaba down. His friend was clutching at his stomach, a neat hole was pumping blood through his writhing fingers. His back arched from the dirt, the pain tearing at him, a wild beast within, trying to rip its way out, another man’s brains splashed across his face.
‘I am thirsty,’ Langalabelele cried. Shaba could neither help nor comfort him. He looked at his own arm finally, though he feared doing so, saw that it was still there, a simple gash in his shoulder, though bleeding profusely. He forced his fingers to move, clumsily cradled Langalabelele’s head in the crook of his elbow, squeezed the face against his chest. ‘And I am cold,’ hissed the warrior, muffled and through clenched teeth.
‘All will be well,’ said Shaba at last. He set his shield and spears aside, reached to the lobe of Langalabelele’s ear, pulled free the small wooden box that should have contained his ugwayi. Perhaps it will ease his pain, he thought, though when he shook it, the thing was empty.
‘You are with lies, my friend,’ said the other. ‘A warrior should not die with a lie in his ears.’
‘And that is the truth,’ Shaba replied, as Langalabelele’s light went out.
He set his friend down, looked around. It was over. Everywhere, the regiments were in retreat, whatever was left of them.
Shaba stood. The firing had stopped and the red soldiers were cheering, wild with elation. But he knew the thing that would come next, for he remembered the aftermath of eKhambule. He was exhausted, empty and ashamed, though he knew he must run. Find strength from somewhere. He forced his legs to move, abandoning his weapons, even the royal shield. And as he ran, he looked behind him, saw the enemy line stretch again, the Long Spear horsemen surging from the square, gathering speed, racing towards KwaNodwengu, away to the south, and gaining on the regiments, fugitives now in their own homeland.
*
Shaba fled eastward, unable to recognise even one of the many others around him climbing the ridge. And the mbayimbayi had started firing again. The rest was no more than a game of chance. Below him, and at points along the slope, there were clusters of horse soldiers. Dung-jackets, Basuto riders and black-coats. They rode in strange patterns, laughing and shouting like excited children, weaving and turning at the heels of whichever group of warriors they were pursuing, light gleaming on sword blades as they rose and fell. He looked up, saw that the sun itself had barely moved, the morning still only half gone. Had it frozen in the sky? Or had so much destruction and death been wrought in so small a space of time? Closer to him there were still clouds of filth thrown up noisily here and there, shells from the big guns laying down a creeping barrage further and further ahead of the horsemen. It was difficult, however, to make out anything either to the north or west, the smoke and distance making it hard to be precise, though it seemed that the Great King’s army was in full retreat everywhere. Yet the Hill of Umcijo, at least, was visible enough, empty, the commanders no longer there.
Only to the south could he see clearly, where a well-rehearsed dance was taking place, the regiments from the left horn-tip climbing uphill in three extended lines while the Long Spears followed behind in a line of their own, one that would surge forward now and again, catch the rear-most of the fugitives, pause, thrust, withdraw. Then the gap would re-open until the beat of the dance called them forward once more, the steps and the slaughter repeated.
Shaba was thankful to be beyond their reach, though he felt like a coward, barely injured and here among so many walking wounded, struggling up through the long grasses and gullies. A man with sightless eyes stretched out to him, slipping and sliding on a pool of blood, reaching with his toes, no longer able to see the path he should take. Some clutched at gut wounds as they fled, each of them emitting the same rhythmic groan and calling for water. Those with broken arms or shattered shoulders adopted a careful gait of their own. And men with injuries to their buttocks crawled universally on all fours, one of them with the sharp white edge of a rump bone protruding from his arse. Most of them could not survive, he knew, and would soon join the ranks of those already departed here – the grinning dead, or those with terror now fixed forever on their faces – or those for whom the journey was almost complete, though not quite, the whiteness in their quarter-open eyes a measure of their distance along the path toward the Land of Shades. And even those with diminishing sight could not avert their partial gaze from the vultures that had now come so much closer, a few already landed, but hopping in circles, pinions spread wide, seeking those who were truly dead and far from the company of the still living. What has this valley done to you, Lord-of-the-Sky, Shaba wondered, that you require such payment?
Shaba grabbed a handful of grass and hauled himself up, over the lip of a gulley, heard the welcome sound of a stream somewhere near, fell upon its bank and doused water on the dirt and rifle powder that grimed his face, drank greedily to quench his thirst. He believed for a moment that he might be the only one to have survived the slaughter, then realised that all survivors must always imagine themselves unique, alone. And he was far from alone. Clusters of the wandering wounded were here ahead of him and, a few paces away, one young warrior tried to push himself free of two others who had collapsed on top of him, died there.
‘Water!’ the boy moaned, unable to extricate himself or reach the spring.
Shaba cupped his hands, gathered some of the cool liquid and carried it carefully to the wounded warrior, held it to his lips. The man lapped greedily at his palms, then laid his head upon the grass. Shaba lifted first one corpse from him, then the other, but the warrior was badly shot through the ribs and beyond further help. Yet several others had taken up the same plea, the torment of their thirst made even more intolerable by the stream’s proximity and the impossibility of reaching it.
He looked around for something in which to carry the water and eventually found a blackened goatskin bottle on the body of an udibi boy. He filled it and began the slow process of moving from group to group. At first he moved cautiously, watching for any sign of the red soldiers’ approach. He could hear them, though not see them from within the udonga; feel the explosions from the mbayimbayi too, a shell occasionally screaming through the sky above this ridge, exploding in the air to rain chunks of iron and steel among the already stricken. And sometimes a stray bullet would whine overhead as though it had a life of its own. What does their song mean? he wondered. Why will this battle not rest now? But the thing still twitched and writhed and moaned as much as its victims. So Shaba passed among them, dispensing a few drops of pity here, a few more there. But it was a futile task, for the women of all these would be left behind to warble their grief, to clutch and grasp at their children.
*
The barking alerted him. He had been tending a warrior of the Dust Raisers who slipped in and out of consciousness. A spread-winged vulture balanced close at hand, studying the wounded man with all the intensity of an inyanga trying to divine the root of a patient’s illness. It shook its ugly, naked head from time to time, flapped backwards whenever the warrior opened his eyes or Shaba shook his fist, tossed a stone. But the creature refused to abandon its carrion.
‘Vultures above and vultures below,’ Shaba whispered, then froze when he heard the yapping. He curled closer to the dying man, peering over his heaving chest and saw that, barely a spear’s cast away, six horsemen had crested the ridge behind him. He should not have stayed so long. He cursed himself. They were Basuto riders, those dung-shirts of the abeSuthu that fought for the red soldiers, broad-brimmed hats with red bands around the crown. They were commanded, it seemed, by a white induna, a man with a pale blue jacket who directed his slave-boys to a couple of beaten veterans. Shaba had given them water earlier and they were more exhausted by age than by their wounds. But the dog jumped around them, a white thing like that which had tried to defend the French Prince – the foolish animal that Langalabelele had speared. Foolish, thought Shaba, yet it was the only living beast that tried to save the iFulentshi that day! But this one was simply a sniffer for the Basuto riders. They were pressing the old men with questions now, their IsiZulu good, for though their own tongue was very different, it was still a language of the Bantu, the People, those who inhabited these southern lands.
