The Sound of Thunder (36 page)

“Faster!” shouted Sean in agony. “Faster!” as he saw the chance of quick success slip from his grasp. Already Mausers were talking back from the lower slopes of the kopie, and the last burghers were down and scurrying into the rocks. Loose ponies turned wildly into his line, empty stirrups flapping, eyes wide with terror, forcing his men to swerve into each other, dissipating the force of the charge. A loose pack, mule with a small leather pack upon its back climbed up through the rocks until a stray bullet killed it and it rolled into a deep crevice. But nobody saw it fall, Sean felt the horse between his legs jerk and he was thrown with such violence that the stirrup leathers snapped like cotton and he went up and out, hung for a sickening moment and then swooped down to hit the ground with his chest and shoulder AND the side of his face.

While he lay in the grass the charge spent itself like a wave on the kopJe, then eddied and swirled into confusion. Dimly Sean was aware of the hooves that trampled about his head, of the sound of the Mausers and the shouts of the men who were swept by them.

“Dismount! Get down and follow them.” Saul’s voice and the tone of it roused Sean. With his hands under his chest he pushed himself into a sitting position. The side of his face burned where the skin had been smeared away, his nose was bleeding and the blood turned the earth in his mouth to a gritty paste.

His left arm was numb to the shoulder and he had lost his rifle.

Dully he tried to spit the filth from his mouth while he peered at the chaos about him, trying to make sense of it. He shook his head, to joggle the apathy from his brain, while all around him men were being cut down at point, blank range by the Mausers.

“Dismount! Dismount! ” The urgency of Saul’s voice brought Sean unsteadily to his feet.

“Get down, you bastards!” He took up the cry. “Get down and chase them. ” A horse brushed against him and he staggered but kept his balance. The trooper slid down from its back beside Sean.

“Are you all right, Colonel?” He reached out to steady Sean, AND a bullet took him in the chest below his raised arm and killed him instantly. Sean stared down at the body and felt his brain click back into focus.

“The bastards,” he snarled and snatched up the man’s rifle, then, “Come on!” he roared. “Follow me!” and he led them out of the shambles of struggling horses into the rocks.

In the next half, hour, grimly and irresistibly, they used their superior numbers to drive the Boers back up the kopje. Each outcrop of rocks was a strongpoint that had to be assaulted and carried, and paid for in blood. On a front of perhaps two hundred yards, the attack became a series of isolated skirmishes over which Sean could not maintain command. He gathered those men who were near him and boulder by boulder they fought their way towards the top, while the burghers in front of him held each position until the last moment and then fell back on the next.

The top of the kopJe was flattened into a saucer with fifty feet of steep open ground falling away on all sides, and finally sixty burghers reached this natural fortress and held it with the determination of men who knew that they fought for the last time AND they threw the British from the lip of the saucer and sent them scrambling and sliding back into the shelter of the broken rock below.

After the second repulse a heavy unnatural silence settled on the kopje.

Sean sat with his back to a rock and took the water, bottle that a corporal offered him. He rinsed the slime of blood and congealing saliva from his mouth and spat it pink on to the ground beside him.

Then he tilted the bottle and swallowed twice with his eyes tightly closed in the intense pleasure of drinking.

“Thanks. ” He passed the bottle back.

“More?” the corporal asked.

“No.” Sean shook his head and looked back down the slope.

The sun was well up now, throwing long shadows behind the horses that were grazing far out across the veld below. But at the foot of the slope lay the dead animals, most of them on their sides with legs thrust stiffly out. Blanket, rolls had burst open to litter the grass with the pathetic possessions of the dead men around them.

The men in their khaki and brown were as inconspicuous as piles of dead leaves in the grass, mostly British but with here and there a burgher lying amongst them in the fellowship of death.

“Mbejane. ” Sean spoke softly to the big Zulu who squatted beside him. “Find Nkosi Saul and bring him to see me here.”

He watched the Zulu crawl away. Mbejane had been left behind at the start of that wild gallop, but before Sean was halfway up the kopJe he had glanced back to find him kneeling two paces behind, ready with a bandolier of ammunition for the moment when Sean needed it. Neither of them had spoken until this moment. Between them words were seldom necessary.

Sean fingered the raw graze on his face and listened to the murmured conversation of the men around him. Twice he heard clearly the voices of Boers from the saucer above them and once he heard a burgher laugh , They were very close, and Sean moved uneasily against the rock.

Within minutes Mbejane was back with Saul crawling behind him.

When he saw Sean, Saul’s expression changed quickly.

“Your face! Are you all right?”

“Cut mySElf shaving.” Sean grinned at him. “Have a seat.

Make yourself comfortable.”

Saul crawled the last few yards and settled himself against Sean’s rock. “Now what?” he asked.

“Ten minutes’ rest, then we’re going up again,” Sean told him.

“But this time with a little more purpose. I want you to work around the back of the kopje with half the men. Take Eccles with you.

We’ll rush their whole perimeter at the same moment. When you’re in position fire three shots in quick succession then count slowly to twenty. I’ll back you from this side. ” “Good.” Saul nodded. “It’ll take me a little while to get round, don’t be impatient.” And he was smiling as he rose to his knees and leaned forward to touch Sean’s shoulder.

Sean would always remember him like that: big mouth creased at the corners, smiling with white teeth through three days’ growth of beard, slouch hat pushed to the back of his head, so his hair fell forward on to his forehead, and sunburned skin flaking from the tip of his nose.

The rock behind them was cracked through. If Saul had not leaned forward to make that gesture of affection he would not have exposed himself.

The sniper on the ridge had seen the brim of his hat above the rock and he held his aim into the crack. At the moment that Saul’s fingers touched Sean’s shoulder his head moved across the gap and the Boer fired.

The bullet hit Saul in the right temple, slanted diagonally back through his head and came out behind his left ear.

Their faces were but eighteen inches apart and Sean was smiling into Saul’s eyes as the bullet hit. Saul’s whole head was distorted by the impact, swelling and bursting like a balloon.

His lips stretched so that for an instant his smile was a hideous rubbery thing and then he was snatched away and thrown sideways down the slope. He slid to a stop with his head and shoulders mercifully covered by a tuft of the Coarse grey grass that grew among the rocks, but his trunk shivered and his legs danced and kicked convulsively.

For a slow count of ten Sean did not move nor did his expression alter. It took him that long to believe what he had seen Then his face seemed to crumple.

“Saul!” His voice was a croak.

“Saul!” It rose higher, sharp with the realization of his loss He came slowly to hIS knees. Now Saul’s body was still, Very still and relaxed.

Again Sean opened his mouth but this time the sound he uttered was without form. The way an old bull buffalo bellows at the heart shot, that way Sean gave expression to his grief. A low shuddering cry that carried to the men in the rocks around him and to the Boers in the saucer above.

He made no attempt to touch Saul. He stared at him.

“Nkosi. ” Mbenjane was appalled at what he saw on Sean’s face.

His tunic was stiff with his own dried blood. The graze across his cheek was swollen and inflamed and it wept pale lymph. But it was the eyes that alarmed Mbejane.

“N’Kosi.” Mbejane tried to restrain him, but Sean did not bear.

His eyes were glazing over with the madness that had taken the place of his grief. His head hunched down on his shoulders and he growled like an animal.

“Take them! Take the bastards!” And he went up and over the rock in a twisting leap with the bayoneted rifle held against his chest.

“Come on! ” he roared and went up the slope so fast that only one bullet hit him. But it did not stop him and he was over the lip, roaring and clubbing and hacking with the bayonet.

From the rocks four hundred of his men swarmed up after him and boiled over the lip of the saucer. But before they reached Sean he was face to face with Jan Paulus Leroux.

This time it was no match. Jan Paulus was wasted and sick.

A gaunt skeleton of the man he had been. His rifle was empty and he fumbled with the reload. He looked up and recognized Sean. Saw him tall and splattered with blood. Saw the bayonet in his hands and the madness in his eyes.

“Sean!” He said and lifted the empty rifle to meet the bayonet.

But he could not hold it. With Sean’s weight behind it the bayonet glanced off the stock and went on. Jan Paulus felt the tingling slide of the steel through his reluctant flesh and he went over backwards with the bayonet in him.

“Sean,” he cried from his back. Sean stood over him and plucked the bayonet out. He lifted it high with both hands, his whole body poised to drive it down again.

They stared at each other. The British charge swept past them and they were alone. One man wounded in the grass and the other wounded above him with the bayoneted rifle and the madness still on him.

The vanquished in the grass, who had fought and suffered and sacrificed the lives of those he loved. victor above him, who had fought and suffered and sacrificed the lives of those he loved.

The game was war. The prize was a land. The penalty for defeat was death.

“Maak dit klaar! Make it finished! ” Leroux told him quietly The madness went out in Sean like the flame of a candle. He lowered the bayoneted rifle and let it drop. The weakness of his wound caught up with him and he staggered. With surprise he looked down at his belly and clasped his hands over the wound, and then he sank down to sit beside Jan Paulus In the saucer. the fight was over.

“We’re ready to move, sir. Eccles stood beside the scotch cart and looked down at Sean. A massive scowl concealed his concern. “Are you comfortable?”

Sean ignored the question. “Who is in charge of the burial details, Eccles?”

“Smith, sir.”

“You have told him about Saul, about Captain Friedman?”

“Yes, sir. They will bury him separately.”

Sean lifted himself painfully on to an elbow and for a minute stared at the two gangs working bare to the waist on the COMmunal graves. Beyond them lay the rows of blanket, wrapped bundles. A fine day’s work, he thought bitterly.

“Shall we start, sir?” Eccles asked.

“You’ve given Smith my orders? Burghers to be buried with their comrades, our men with theirs?”

“It’s all taken care of, sir.”

Sean lay back on the bedding that covered the floor of the scotch cart

“Please send my servant to me, Eccles.”

While he waited for Mbejane, Sean tried to avoid contact with the man who lay beside him in the scotch cart He knew Jan Paulus was watching him.

“Sean, Menheer, who will say the words for my men?”

“We have no Chaplain. ” Sean did not look at him.

“I could say them. ” “General Leroux, it will be another two hours before the work is completed. You are wounded, and it is my duty to get this column with the other wounded back to Vereeniging as soon as I can. We are leaving the burial detail and when they’re finished they’ll catch us up. ” Sean spoke lying on his back staring up at the sky.

“Menheer, I demand, ” Jan Paulus began, but Sean turned angrily towards him.

“Listen, Leroux. I’ve told you what I’m going to do. The graves will be carefully marked, and later the War Graves Commission will send a Chaplain. ” There was very little room in the scotch cart and they were both big men. Now, as they glared at each other their faces were a foot apart. Sean would have said more, but as he opened his mouth the wound in his guts caught him and he gasped. The sweat broke out heavily across his forehead.

“Are you all right?” Jan Paulus’s expression altered.

“I’ll feel better once we get to Vereeniging. ” “Ja, you’re right. We must go,” agreed Leroux.

Eccles came back with Mbejane.

“Nkosi, you sent for me?”

“Mbejane, I want you to stay here and mark the place where they bury Nkosi Saul. Remember it well, for later you must be able to bring me back to it,” Sean mumbled.

“Nkosi. ” Mbejane went away.

“Very well, Eccles. You can start.”

It was a long column. Behind the van rode the prisoners, many of them mounted two up. Then followed the wounded, each in a horse litter of poles and blankets, behind them the scotch cart and finally Eccles and two hundred troopers of the rear guard Their progress was slow and dismal.

In the scotch cart neither of them spoke again. They lay in pain, bracing themselves against the jolt and lurch, with the sun beating down mercilessly upon them.

In that dreamlike state induced by pain and loss of blood, Sean was thinking of Saul. At times he would convince himself that it had not happened and he would experience a rush of relief as though he had woken from a nightmare to find it was not reality. Saul was alive after all. Then his mind would focus with clarity and Saul was dead again. Saul was wrapped in a blanket with the earth above him, and all they had planned was down there with him. Then Sean would grapple once more with the unanswerable.

“Ruth! ” he cried aloud, so that Jan Paulus beside him stirred uneasily.

“Are you all right, Sean?”

But Sean did not hear him. Now there was Ruth. Now there was Ruth alone. He felt joy then in his loss, joy quickly swamped with guilt. For an instant he had been glad that Saul was dead, and his treachery sickened him and ached like the bullet in his guts. But still there was Ruth, and Saul was dead. I must not think of it like that. I must not think! And he struggled up into a sitting position and clung to the side of the scotch cart