The Burning Land

High ground

The Freestate sun blazed down on the wagon train and its ragged force of protectors.

Kobus’ men and their horses were already well on their way to the small butte they had decided to use as their position. From there, they could look all they way across the golden plains, and guard the wagon train as it crawled across the ground made rough by time and weather.

There, Kobus would make his stand.

After about half an hour the men were in sight of the ridge they had chosen. They had outridden the lumbering wagon train already, their swift mountain-bred horses easily pacing the oxen and draft horses pulling the rescued families. Kobus looked back, biting his lip; they were too far behind...The British army, large, heavy-handed and inelegant as it was, was not slow: European-bred battle chargers bore their cavalry, their infantry the best and worst men drawn from an Empire that spanned a quarter of the globe, veterans side by side with convicts, crack-shots rubbing shoulders with cut-throats. Kobus didn't know which he feared more.

And he did fear. Not for himself, but for those under his charge. He had eleven men against a thousand, them well-equipped and driven by brilliantly terrifying officers who could push a man to fury with mere words.

Kobus had never felt so impotent as then.

No. No, he’d felt worse, once. He’d felt his world be torn away at a whim, by a sneering man on a white horse. The man who chased him now. Retribution was at hand. By the time Kobus’ heart hardened with that resolve, he and the remaining soldiers of his party had reached the hill. Five hundred meters above the valley they’d ridden around, the valley the English would be forced through, under the withering fire of crack hunters with rifles that out-ranged the old Lee-Metfords the English still used. Kobus had planned this. A gamble, perhaps, but a good bet at least. So long as the British didn’t catch wind of his plan, they would be decimated.

He twisted in his saddle, glancing around approvingly, before shouting for his men, “Henk! We need a hole. A long hole, from here to there.” The man immediately set to, pulling out a trench shovel and sliding from his saddle. Dawid began doing the same, but Kobus stopped him with a call, “Dawid.”

“Yessir?” Dawid paused. He swung back up and kicked his horse over to his commander.

Kobus’ eye’s were locked on the valley as he spoke; “The wagons aren't going to get past the hills, Dawid.”

“Yes sir,” Dawid answered, slight dread creeping into his voice, “Should we ride to cover them?”

“No,” Kobus grunted, spinning back to his men, “Andries, you know the flags, correct?”

The barrel-chested corporal nodded mutely, patting the flag pouch at his side. Kobus pointed down over the ridge to the train of wagons rounding the hill they stood on. The train had already passed through the valley, but still, they were not far enough away to avoid fire. And, so, Kobus sent an order: “Tell the drivers to wheel around the hill. Have them come halfway up to us, and set up a circle. The British won’t know to go over the right-hand pass; they’ll drive up the valley, where we will hold them.”

Mutters spread as Andries waved his signal flags. The men watched the wagon train pull slowly to the right and begin the slow ascent of their hill, climbing the side facing away from the assumed British line of advance. Out of the line of fire, but not out of danger.

Kobus heard them, but did not waver. Instead, he stood in his saddle, and raised his Mauser, shouting, “Men! Brothers! We've ridden long these past days, and hard. We’ve fought like Hunters, stalked our prey and struck it’s bones. Now it is wounded; it is angry. It will come for us! But now is the time for us to fight like soldiers! We, the few and fast, against the many that stagger after us. Be we are the better: We can out-shoot, outflank and outmaneuver them, yes, even their  cavalry. From up here, with the sun behind us, they’ll never get a shot off straight. And the wagons, loaded with ammunition, and if we’re lucky even a cannonade. We don’t need to kill them all. But we can make the price they pay too steep for them to pursue us. Victory, brothers, will be getting home. I believe the women of Bloemfontein are already warming the coffee pots!”

They cheered him as he fell back to his saddle. A grim look crossed his face as the golden light filtered through the kicked-up dust of the entrenching men. A handful of Voortrekkers, farmers only, had held off ten thousand Zulu warriors at the battle of Blood River without a single lost man. Kobus knew his men could do it again, here. He hoped he hadn’t made a mistake…

*****

The dimness of the wagon’s interior did nothing to hide their unsettled glances. The british prisoners had gathered at the front of the wagon, deep in the gloom, as far away from the two mysterious figures staring intently out of the opening at the back. A tall lady all in midnight blue, and a younger child, all in white,standing with all the grim gravity of her senior, staring across the plains as the dust cloud still distant, grew in size.

In a voice far too quiet to be heard and too mature to come from the mouth of a child so young, the girl in white spoke to her companion; “They’re coming.”

Emily Hobhouse held onto the canvas arching above her, unmoving. “I did all I could, you know that. We cannot risk the lives of all those who need our help. If the worse comes, it will come at Night. They are safe, Young One.”

The girl in white nodded slowly. “Those left behind will feel the coldness we leave behind. We break the hearts of a people this night.”

And yet we heal the hearts most wanting,” Hobhouse soothed, “We right a wrong, and pave the path to righteousness.”

“Aye” The girl muttered, “But right by who?”

Hobhouse didn’t answer as the wagon swung to the right, up the hill.

*****

The line was drawn.

Kobus stood upon an embankment thrown up for his sharpest shooters, a four-man team of crack shots who could hit a running springbuck at two hundred meters. Between them rested a small four pound cannonade, crewed by three of the drivers from the now-stationary caravan just below them on the hill. The wagons were arrayed in a semicircle along the hill, whose shear sides protected the wagon’s inward-facing sides, and to an extent, the ends of the line. They were further protected by two more cannonades and well-armed, if nervous drivers. The rest of Kobus’s men were at the base of the hill on either side, mounted, ready to ride and harry any cavalry sorties there. Under the cover of the cannonades there, Kobus hoped it would be enough.

The British Army was here. Just out of range, their numbers swelled into the bottleneck of the valley, caught between the two hills, one a near insurmountable butte, and the other bristling with motivated arms all pointing in their direction.

Not that they knew that yet.

The Khakis approached slowly, their cavalry, fewer than forty fully-prepared mounts, led a marching infantry force clearly numbering in the hundreds. The British Army had thousands of horses for the war, but to find enough water for battle-chargers at a prison camp? Kobus was thankful for the first time for the aridity of his homeland.

No carts or wagons slowed the marching force; Kobus frowned at that. Surely, if they planned to chase the wagon train to the edge of the Boer Territories, they would have brought supplies? He did not dwell on this though. They seemed to have no cannon either. He sighed in relief at that; his small fortification could be easily scattered by anything upwards of a six-pounder: the British had breechloaders.

He sat low on the berm then. A British horseman rode forward, raising a glass to his eye. On of those old-fashioned, single-piece glasses the British Scouts used. Dawid raised his binoculars beside Kobus. The lieutenant spoke softly, “He doesn't see us, sir.”

Kobus remained silent, but took the firing cord of the cannonade from the shivering hands of a wagon driver. The silent force of Boers watched their enemy stumble forward into the trap.

Suddenly Dawid swore and dropped his binoculars “Willem, the traitor! He’s with the English!”. The break in the silence rattled the men around them, and somewhere, Kobus never found out where, a shot was fired.

A British man went down.

A hundred English rifles leveled at the hilltop and, at an unheard order, let storm and fury guide them.

Thus, battle was joined, and hearts across worlds cried at the loss to come.