The Burning Land

Retribution amidst Liberation

The pieces finally all came together.

Kobus sat before the fence, staring across the beaten field filled with dull tents. He counted the rows to make sure he knew his position, then signaled behind him, calling up two men. One man produced a pair of pliers and started silently cutting the steel wires, and the other holding them to move them out of the way. Kobus signaled for two more men to stay at the hole in the fence and for the rest, the select band of most skilled, to continue to the tents they had been assigned to clear.

Kobus scurried low to the ground, avoiding a passing guard. These soldiers must have been blind to miss the raiders, but so it was. Kobus reached the the first tent without incident, and stopped to watch the others. Dawid nodded as he sneaked into the first tent of his row, and Kobus smiled grimly as he did the same. Pulling aside the first tent flap, he reached in slowly with his M 96 pistol drawn. Silent, sleeping bodies filled the tent to capacity, women and children all, lining the floor under dry, thin blankets. He made his way to the nearest woman and placed his hand over her mouth  she awoke with a start and looked at him, Kobus placed a finger from his free hand over his own mouth “shhh...”

She nodded, the truth dawning. He instructed her in Afrikaans to help him, and together they woke the entire tent in silence. Kobus pointed the way to the back of the tent, where he slit the canvas with his pocket-knife. After checking the surrounds, Kobus led his group to join the exodus of prisoners barely visible amidst the shadows.

Kobus broke the crowd up into a few smaller groups for the dash to the fence line. With a silent signal, he led the first group cross the field, like a buffalo crossing a crocodile-infested river. Kobus left the group in the capable hands of the Boers guarding the fence. Kobus noticed three slumped forms against the fence, propped up by their Lee-Metford rifles. He raised an eyebrow at the Boer nearest him. These British soldiers were making it too easy.

He repeated his low dash across the field, nabbing the next group, and the next, until all the women and children in the tent were safely under the command of the man tasked to to lead them to the waiting wagons.

Kobus made his way back to the rows of canvas prisons to the next tent and did the same as the first, waking the family members of the nation and leading them to the sweet promise of freedom. Kobus led another group out into the night, bundled in their blankets, but stopped when he noticed the tent up ahead, it’s wall emblazoned with a hastily painted red cross. He looked about before seeing Henk in the dark, leading his own group. Kobus gestured for his followers to tag along with his countrymen: Kobus had something to see to.

Kobus pushed into the infirmary tent, the same one he had escaped from not days earlier. He looked about, fully prepared to carry out the ill and wounded, but was surprised to see that every bed along the wall, and even the  nurses station was empty. His eyes roved about, then swept back, just making sure that...Hang on...

He pivoted back to the nursing station, and the tall woman standing there, dressed in midnight blue. She regarded him curiously as she held a child close to her body, the youngster wrapped in a pure white blanket, her auburn hair black in the darkness...

“Jakobus van de Merwe, it is good to see you again.” The Lady said, raising her chin slightly, a hint of defiance in her face.

Kobus bowed low, “The pleasure is all mine, Miss Emily Hobhouse. I must ask you to accompany me, this camp is being broken out, and it may not be safe for you or the young one.”

She smiled in the face of his formality. “Oh, Kobus, I think you’ll find we could be of much more service than you suspect. Our duty is to help those in peril, and this camp has far too many in pain for us to abandon.”

Kobus was confused, but from what he’d heard of this Englishwoman, she had always been slightly cracked. Oh yes, he’d asked after her. An aid worker, a campaigner for the end of the war, and a famous saint of the Boer families. He would not let her get caught up in what was about to happen. “Ma’am, if it’s to help you’re aiming for, I’d suggest following me. This camp will cease to exist come daybreak.”

She looked shocked. Her brows beetled into a scowl. “You will kill the English guardsmen, leave this place in ruins?”

Kobus shook his head. “Ruins yes, but if all goes to plan, I will not kill unless I have to-”

“...we shall see...”

The soft feminine voice sifted through the air that smothered it and struck him in the chest. He stared at the child in Hobhouse's arms. The child turned to face him, her eyes perfectly clear in the gloom as if alight, their gaze nearly piercing his soul. She whispered in a voice he recognized, but could never accept,”...don't turn around...”

Kobus stared at the little girl in white, his mind melting. He was only wrenched back to the world when he heard a familiar, hated voice from behind him “Game’s up, Rockspider.”

“Ahh, Mr Reedclithe, good to hear from you again.” Kobus said sarcastically.

“Impressive, Mr van de Merwe. I must say you did catch us with our trousers down...” Came the snarled reply, and the familiar scrape and click of a closing rifle bolt.

Kobus turned and faced the hulking British Private. “That was the idea. So what are you going to do with me Reedclithe?”

The man smirked and raised his rifle and, aiming at Kobus’ head “I am going to kill you Mr van de Merwe.”

Kobus stared down the barrel, his mind whirling through his options, if he acted now, he might be able to-

Don’t

He heard, but tried to grab the rifle anyway. Only, he couldn’t move. At all. He found himself feet from a loaded bullet with his name written on it. But that voice...The angel.

Reedclithe didn’t let him think further. The Brit yanked the trigger violently, but Kobus couldn’t bring himself to be surprised when nothing happened: He’d seen the faint silver glow over the breach. Reedclithe frowned and pulled the bolt open, ejecting the round and loading another. He re-aimed and-

-hit the ground with a dull thud. The private’s unconscious body fell to the ground to reveal Dawid Van Rensburg standing just behind him.

“Sir! Some woman in a purple dress warned me you might need some help here and...wait...” Dawid looked part Kobus at Emily Hobhouse, confusion playing across his features.

“Pick him up Dawid, I want to have a chat with that one,” Kobus Instructed, ignoring his comrades uncertainty, “Miss Emily, please, let’s go.” She nodded, and the child in her arms buried her face in the deep blue dress of her caretaker. Kobus tried not to think about it.

Dawid hoisted the British soldier to his shoulders and dog-trotted into the night as Kobus led Emily into the night air. He wasn’t sure whether to take her hand or run screaming from the pair, but he settled for standing a few feet behind her, letting her follow Dawid among the tents.

The sounds of gunfire started to ring out.

“Dawid, I think that is our cue to leave...”

The party started to run to the hole in the fence.

Kobus saw that there were six men on a hill providing covering fire to the men still getting out of the camp and the man left at the hole. As Kobus and Dawid sprinted through the gap, he tapped the mans shoulder and shouted “That’s it, we need to go!”

The men reached the line of men firing to keep the British from giving case. He grabbed Dawid’s shoulder, shouting over the crack of mauser fire, “Did we get all the families out?!”

“Dawid nodded as he raised his own rifle. “Henk and Andries are setting the breakers now!”

As he spoke, smoke began to rise over the southern edge of the camp, the breeze stoking up flames to follow it. The fire jumped from tent to tent, melting into the treated canvas and burning it up in hot, vicious bites. Kobus turned back to the men around him, firing over the camp. “Good work men!, Listen for the signal to retreat.”

Kobus and Dawid scurried to the wagons. Dawid tied up Private Reedclithe and dropped him into the last wagon in line, the one that held only a few woman, all staring hatefully at the British prisoners from the day before, who cowered at their end. With the sudden addition of Reedclithe, they cowered further into one another. Reedclithe had been notorious as a henchman, apparently.

Kobus turned to Hobhouse and the girl in white, still clutched to each other as they watched the spreading flames. Emily turned her wet eyes to Kobus. “You said you’d do no harm...”

“Ma’am, I didn’t,” Kobus rumbled, “But I can’t deny my men, and in case you have failed to notice, this is a war: they knew the risks. But we did as little as we could, I swear. Now please, would you get into the wagon? We need to prepare.” He watched as the tall lady in blue nodded and climbed lithely into the wagon. Kobus hesitated before lifting the girl up to her guardians’ waiting arms. Even as Emily held the child close in the wagon’s dim interior, the girl’s eyes never left kobus’s. Kobus stared back for a minute, before breaking his gaze and shouting out, “Why am I still seeing wagons?! MOVE!”

The drivers quickly put space between themselves and the camp, heading for their headquarters across the plains, taking a winding route that would hide them among the buttes and conical hills. Kobus gave the wagons a decent head-start before letting out an almighty whistle that could be heard for miles around. in minutes, eleven men had assembled at his position. Kobus noticed that someone was missing and asked “Who’s not here?!”

“It’s Geldenhuis, Willem isn’t here, sir!”

“Shit...Well, we don't have time to wait now, the Brits could get organized in minutes. We have to move. Ugh...We’ll raise a glass to the man later. But now we need to distract the Khaki’s and keep them away from the wagons, mount UP!”

Kobus looked back at the camp, calculating. Already, he could see the faces of shocked British troops rising from the shattered remnants of their prison camp. Soldiers in khaki uniforms began running about and trying to salvage what they could, or pull the injured from the burning wreckage. And then, He rode out. On his white charger, pistol brandished in the air, Luck galloped over the struggling soldiers and glared at the retreating Boer force, nothing but a few soldiers and some wagons, that had utterly destroyed his stranglehold on the Boer Republics. His eyes blazed with rage.

Kobus flipped him off and swung into the saddle.

The men around him mounted their horses as well, and spun to prepare a fall-back line. The families had to get away, and that meant the British had to be held where they were. Kobus looked across the plains to where the wagons were disappearing, carrying all the missing women and children, the British prisoners, and Hobhouse, with that little girl in white, and his mind set one thought in stone:

Luck would never get them.