Veranda, each on his own mattress.

Some were dying and many were not but on all of them the bandages were

stained with blood and iodine. Garrick looked at his own body. His

left arm was strapped across his bare chest and he felt the ache start

beating within him, slow and steady as a funeral drum. There were

bandages around his head. I'm wounded, again he was astonished. How?

But how? You've come back to us, Cocky, cheerful Cockney from beside

him. We thought you'd gone clean bonkers Garrick turned his head and

looked at the speaker; he was a small monkey-faced man in a pair of

flannel underpants and a mummy suit of bandages.

el)ac said it was shock. He said you'd come out of it soon enough The

little man raised his voice, Hey, Doc, the hero is completely mentos

again. The doctor came quickly, tired-looking, dark under the eyes, old

with overwork. You'll do, he said, having groped and prodded. Get some

rest. They're sending you back home tomorrow. He moved away for there

were many wounded, but then he stopped and looked back. He smiled

briefly at Garrick, I doubt it will ease the pain at all but you've been

recommended for the Victoria Cross. The General endorsed your citation

yesterday. I think you'll get it. Garrick stared at the doctor as

memory come back patchily, There was fighting Garrick said. You're

bloody well tooting there was! the little man beside him guffawed. Sean

! said Garrick. My, brother! What happened to my brother? There was

silence then and Garrick saw the quick shadow of regret in the doctor's

eyes. Garrick struggled into a sitting position. And my Pa. What

happened to my father?

I'm sorry, said the doctor with simplicity, I'm afraid they were both

killed. Garrick lay on his mattress and looked down at the Drift. They

were clearing the corpses out of the shallows now, splashing as they

dragged them to the bank. He remembered the splashing as Chelmsford's

army had crossed. Sean and his father had been among the scouts who had

led the column, three troops of the Lady-burg Mounted Rifles and sixty

men of the Natal Police.

Chelmsford had used these men who knew the country over which the

initial advance was to be made.

Garrick had watched them go with relief. He could hardly believe the

good fortune that had granted him. a squirting dysentery the day before

the ultimatum expired and the army crossed the Tugela. The lucky

bastards, protested one of the other sick as they watched them go.

Garrick was without envy: he did not want to go to war, he was content

to wait here with thirty other sick men and a garrison of sixty more to

hold the Drift while Chelmsford took his army into Zululand.

Garrick had watched the scouts fan out from the Drift and disappear into

the rolling grassland, and the main body of men and wagons follow them

until they too had crawled like a python into the distance and left a

wellwom road behind them through the grass.

He remembered the slow slide of days while they waited at the Drift. He

remembered grumbling with the others when they were made to fortify the

store and the hospital with bags and biscuit tins filled with sand. He

remembered the boredom.

Then, his stomach tightening, he remembered the messenger. Horseman

coming. Garrick had seen him first. Recovered from his dysentery he

was doing sentry duty above the Drift. The General's left his

toothbrush behind, sent someone back for it, said his companion. Neither

of them stood up. They watched the speck coming across the plain

towards the river. Coming fast, said Garrick. You'd better go and call

the Captain. I suppose so, agreed the other sentry. He trotted up the

slope to the store and Garrick stood up and walked down to the edge of

the river. His peg sank deep into the mud. Captain says to send him up

to the store when he gets here. Garrick's companion came back and stood

beside him. Something funny about the way he's riding, said Garrick, he

looks tired. He must be drunk. He's falling about in the saddle like

it's Saturday night. Garrick gasped suddenly, He's bleeding, he's

wounded The horse plunged into the Drift and the rider fen forward onto

its neck; the side of his shirt was shiny black with blood, his face was

pale with pain and dust. They caught his horse as it came out of the

water and the rider tried to shout but his voice was a croak. In the

name of God prepare yourselves. The Column's been surrounded and wiped

out. They're coming, the whole black howling pack of them. They'll be

here before nightfall. My brother, said Garrick. . What happened to

my brother? Dead, said the min. Dead, they're all dead. He slid

sideways off his horse.

They came, the impis of Zulu in the formation of the bull, the great

black bull whose head and loins filled the plain and whose horns circled

left and right across the river to surround them. The pull stamped with

twenty thousand feet and sang with ten thousand throats until its voice

was the sound of the sea on a stormy day. The sunlight reflected

brightly from the spear blades as it came singing to the Tugela. Look!

Those in front are wearing the helmets of the Hussars, one of the

watchers in the hospital exclaimed. They've been looting Chelmsford's

dead. There's one wearing a dress coat and some are carrying carbines.