Temptation (7 page)

“This is Boer land,” the foremost of the riders called. He did not stammer or look intimidated at the might of the English soldiers in front of him. Percy was just forward enough in the column to hear every word carried clearly through the air.

Lieutenant-Colonel Anstruther, the commander of their regiment, riding at the head of the column, drew himself to his full height and looked down his nose at the shabbily clad riders in front of him. “We are in British territory. I have a right to pass with my men.” He looked, Percy thought, like a turkey cock, pompously gobbling his indignation at being accosted in such a fashion.

The leader of the Boer party gave a grim smile. Even at this distance, Percy could see the tension in his bearing. Every muscle in his body looked as though it was on high alert, poised for action. “If you advance any further, it will be construed as an act of war.” For all they were a small party of men, it was abundantly clear they were in deadly earnest.

Anstruther was not impressed by their threats. “I refuse to bow down to the ridiculous demands of a scruffy little would-be militia.”

“I am warning you, we will take every measure necessary to defend ourselves against what we consider an act of aggression.”

“I repeat, this is British territory, and I shall travel where I please.”

“Then the blood of your men will be on your hands.” With that parting shot from their leader, the group of riders wheeled away and rode off.

Percy watched them carefully as they rode away, the plume of dust that marked their passage disappearing every so often into the hollows of the undulating landscape.

The veld was not as flat as it appeared at first sight, but marked with small rises and falls, almost unnoticeable to the casual observer.

Percy had scarcely noticed the dips in the ground as he was walking, but watching the riders disappear and then reappear as they rode away made his belly feel as though he had eaten a plateful of live snakes for breakfast. “If you knew the country well, you could fit a whole regiment alongside the road within firing distance, and no one would suspect a thing,” he muttered uncomfortably to the sergeant-major walking alongside him.

Even now they could be surrounded by enemies and walking straight into a trap, oblivious of the danger they faced. His instincts were telling him that something was very wrong.

The sergeant-major caught the direction of his gaze and nodded. “You’re right. I don’t like it any more than you do. The whole thing smells a bit odd to me. I don’t trust them Boers further than I could kick ’em.”

Sometimes all a soldier had to go on were his instincts. Percy swung on to the back of his horse. Despite the weeping blisters on his own feet, he’d been leading his mare all day to give her foot a rest, but her lameness seemed to have disappeared as quickly as it had developed. Shaking her reins, he encouraged her into a fast trot until he came level with the lieutenant-colonel.

He saluted his superior officer. “Sir, would you like me and my men to ride ahead as a scouting party? That way we’ll be able to see any trouble that might be out there before the entire regiment is caught up in it.”

Anstruther peered down his nose as if he were examining a speck of dung on his boot, and made a dismissive gesture with one hand. “The land is as flat my mother-in-law’s chest. If the Boers try anything foolish, we shall see them come riding up to us from a mile away.”

“But—”

Anstruther cut him off before he could finish pointing out that the ground was deceptively uneven. “Boers got you rattled, have they?” he asked condescendingly.

Percy was too angry at the insinuation that he was a coward to reply.

“There’s no need to worry about them,” Anstruther continued, quite oblivious to Percy’s fury. “They are like the toothless old collie dog I left in England—their bark is worse than their bite. They’ll soon learn we’re wise to their bluster.”

“And if they take advantage of the uneven ground and attack?”

“Then we fight them off. We have ten times their firepower. They are no match for a well-trained group of Englishmen.” He gave Percy a barely veiled look of disdain that indicated how little he thought of his junior officer’s fears. “Now, off into line with you.”

Percy saluted slowly, wondering how he could convince the lieutenant-colonel that real danger lay ahead of them. As an English officer, he could not disobey a direct order from his commander, but every nerve in his body screamed that they were heading into a trap. “If you are quite sure that the Boers have no plan whatsoever behind their bravado,” he said stoutly, “then I will be happy to fall back into line at your express order.”

The older man paused for a moment at the hint of insubordination in his tone and gave a brief glance at the road in front of him. Then he sat up fractionally straighter on his horse, a slight frown creasing his brow. “I suppose it would do no harm to give the order for the ammunition to be passed out before we continue our march. It will give the men confidence and cheer their spirits to think they might have a chance to engage with the enemy.”

That was at least something, though not the order to take out a scouting party that he had been hoping for. He saluted again, rather more smartly this time, and kicked his mare into a trot.

The ammunition wagon was toward the middle of the column, where it could easily be protected if they were surprised. The company quartermaster grumbled morosely as he wrestled the heavy covers off the wagon. “Four hours time and all this lot will have to be put back again. I wonder if the colonel thought of that when he gave the orders to unpack it all.”

“I expect he thought more about the danger his soldiers could face if they were to cross the veld without any bullets in their guns,” Carterton said, in a voice that showed how little he thought of the man shirking in his duty.

The quartermaster muttered a few curses under his breath about goddamned officers sitting up on their high horses and expecting foot soldiers to do all the work, but there was little heat in his words. Despite his grumbling, he had the covers off the wagons as smartly as any commanding officer could wish, and was handing out the rifles with an ease born of long practice.

Even so, a good half hour had passed before the column of troops was once more underway.

Carterton swung back into line with the sergeant-major. His mare was favoring one of her hind legs once more. With a sigh, he reminded himself that the welfare of an officer’s horse came before his own comfort. He dismounted, grimacing as his feet hit the packed earth with a thud that scraped needles of pain across his heels. Yesterday’s march had been long and painful. Today’s was going to be worse.

Walking on and on, across a never-ending plain, put his mind to sleep. His feet followed the steps of the man in front of him without him consciously willing them to while his mind drifted off into a waking dream. Once the war in South Africa was over, his regiment would return to England, victorious.

He would marry Beatrice as soon as he could arrange for the banns to be read. As his wife, the wife of an officer, she would be able to follow the regiment when they were next posted out of England. In addition to his captain’s pay, he could, if he chose, draw a significant income from the family’s estate. He had taken pride in accepting nothing from his brother all these years—not even what he was legally entitled to. Once he was married, that would change. His wife was more important than his pride. Beatrice would not want for anything—he would delight in spoiling her.

Once they were married, he would never have to be parted from her again. They would have a parcel of children, girls as pretty as their mother, and boys with all her courage and dedication…

When the first shots rang out over the veld, he did not immediately realize they were under attack. The first thought that crossed his mind was that one of the less disciplined soldiers had spied a buzzard and decided to pick it off to add to his supper that evening. He looked around the men with some irritation, hoping it wasn’t one of his who had broken ranks. Such an infraction would have to be punished, and though he knew it was essential to keep order in the ranks, he disliked having to punish the men under his command.

Not until one of the soldiers several paces in front of him staggered in his tracks, gave a gurgle of distress, and dropped to the ground, blood dribbling from the corner of his mouth, did he understand. The man had been shot.

Sweat coated Carterton’s hands, making it hard to hold his rifle, and despite the heat, his skin was cold and clammy. The shot had come so unexpectedly, out of nowhere. One moment the man had been walking across the veld with the rest of them, and now he was on the ground.

Carterton stopped dead, his mind refusing to believe what his eyes could see. The man in front of him twitched once, and then lay still. Dead.

It was as he had feared all along—they had walked straight into a trap.

A trumpet blast from the rear of the column sounded an alarm, but the trumpeter was cut off in midblast, his warning ending abruptly when another couple of shots rang out over the veld, finding their targets with unerring accuracy.

Fear hit him with the force of a bayonet to the chest. Were all his hopes and dreams going to end here, on the high veld of South Africa, done to death by a Boer bullet?

“Shoot the bastards,” he yelled at his men. He dropped to one knee, bracing his rifle against his shoulder, blinking furiously to get the dust out of his eyes, the dust that was making them water and blurring his vision. “Aim at their hearts. If you’re a poor shot, aim at their horses.” Damn it, but the trumpeter had been barely out of his teens. Far too young to die in the dirt like a dog.

It was harder to follow his own instructions than he had thought. The Boers had picked a perfect time and place for their ambush. They rode singly, rather than keeping in formation. In their mud-colored clothes, riding dun horses, they merged into the veld as if they were a part of it. He had to squint into the lowering sun to pick them out.

Just as he got one in his sights and pulled the trigger, the bastard would wheel away and his shot would be wasted. Though he was one of the best marksmen in the regiment, the best he could do was to bring down a horse or two, and take their riders out of action that way.

Few of the men under the other captains had the good sense to aim with any care. They were firing volleys into the air in the general direction of the attacking Boers, counting on the frequency and denseness of their fire to thin the number of attackers. But the Boers were already spread so thinly across the vast landscape that such tactics were utterly useless.

Carterton wanted to scream in frustration as volley after volley of British fire slammed harmlessly into the ground, while every Boer bullet found its mark in the heart of a British soldier. “Aim, you fools,” he shouted at them until his voice was hoarse. “Don’t just shoot. Aim.”

It was over almost as soon as it had begun. He had barely drawn half a dozen breaths before three quarters of the British soldiers were dead or dying on the veld, and the white flag was rising from the ruins of what remained.

He dropped his rifle and rose to his feet again, the horror of the massacre around him pulling at his soul. The Boers had picked off those riding horses first—to get rid of the chain of command. Barely a single officer was left standing, and those who were still alive were bleeding from half a dozen wounds.

Beside him, the sergeant-major had sunk to the ground, his face white and etched with pain. One of his legs was bent at an awkward angle beneath him. Young Teddy Clemens was bending over him. “It’s broken.” His voice was hoarse with gunpowder smoke, and he cleared his throat with an awkward cough. “He needs a surgeon.”

Carterton questioned him with a glance, glad to see the lad still on his feet. “And you?”

“Not a scratch on me.” The usual laughter in Teddy’s voice was absent. “I must have the luck of the devil.” He looked up and immediately jumped to his feet, ripping off his jacket as he did so. “You’re bleeding.”

Carterton looked at the boy in surprise. “I am?” He had not felt a thing while the shooting was in full swing, but now that he looked down at himself; he could see that his right side was covered in blood and his arm felt as though it was on fire.

With deft hands, Teddy tied a tourniquet around his arm to stop the blood flow. “Thank God for Beatrice, who told me what to do about stuff like this,” he muttered as he tied it in a tight knot. “Or I wouldn’t have had a clue what to do.”

Once he was bandaged up and the bleeding had stopped, the two of them splinted the sergeant-major’s leg as best they could and half carried, half dragged him to the surgeon’s cart. The Boers were too busy looting the supply wagons to pay the survivors of the massacre any heed.

“Take care, old fellow,” Carterton said with a cheerfulness he did not feel, as he and Clemens left the sergeant-major in the shade of the wagon with a flask of water. “The surgeon will have you put to rights in no time.”

The effort of carrying his friend to the surgeon had caused his arm to start bleeding again. The makeshift bandage Teddy Clemens had tied around him was heavy with blood. Despite feeling dizzy with blood loss, he followed Teddy back out into the heat to see who else of their regiment they could salvage from this bloody disaster of a battle.

So much for their glorious homecoming, Carterton thought savagely to himself later that evening, as he collapsed exhausted on to the ground. Too, too many of his men were dead, and he had done what he could for those who were hurt. It was up to God and the surgeon now whether they died of their wounds or no.

Teddy handed him a canteen of water and he drank it greedily.

The Boers, reluctant to burden themselves with prisoners, had ridden off again, after first plundering the wagons of as much food and ammunition as they could carry and extracting from the severely wounded Lieutenant-Colonel a promise that he would lead no more men into battle with them. Those left alive were not prisoners, but their situation was precarious nonetheless. They had scores of wounded men to transport, little ammunition, and not enough water to last the distance.