Free The Sound of Thunder by Wilbur Smith

between them were solid, compacted by time and the pressure of trouble and shared laughter into a shield of affection-so that now they were happy as only men can be together. The jokes were old jokes, and the responses almost automatic-but the excitement between them was new, in the same way that each day’s sun is new. For they were riding to war, to another meeting with death, so that everything else lost significance. Sean felt free, the thoughts and relationships with other people which had weighed him down over the past months slipped away. Like a ship clear for action he hurried with a new lightness to meet his chance.
    At the same time he could stand aside from himself and grin tolerantly at his own immaturity. By God, we’re like a couple of kids sneaking out of school. Then, following the thought further-he was suddenly thankful. Thankful that this was so; thankful that there was still this capacity to forget everything else and approach the moment in childlike anticipation. For a while this new habit of self-appraisal asserted itself, I am no longer young and I have learned much, gathered it brick by brick along the way and, trimmed each brick and cemented it into the wall. The fortress of my manhood is not yet completed, but what I have built so far is strong, Yet the purpose of a fortress is to protect and hold safely those things the are precious; if, during the building, a man loses and expends those things which he wishes to protect, then the finished fortress is a mockery. I have not lost it all, a little I have used in barter. I have traded a little faith for the knowledge of evil; exchanged a little laughter for the understanding of death; a measure of freedom for two sons (and this was a good trade)-but I know there is still something left.
    At his side Mbejane noticed the change of Sean’s mood, and he moved in front of it to turn it once more into sunshine.
    “Nkosi, we must hurry if you wish to reach your drinking place at Frere. ” With an effort Sean thrust his thoughts aside, and laughed.
    They rode on into the north, and on the third day they reached Chievely.
    Sean remembered his innocent amazement when, as a youth, he had joined Lord Chelmsford’s column at Rorke’s Drift at the beginning of the Zulu War. He had believed then no greater accumulation of men was possible. Now he looked out across the encampment of the British Army before Colenso and smiled; Chelmsford’s little force would have been lost in the artillery and ordnance park, yet beyond that the tents stretched away for two miles. Row upon row of white canvas cones with the horse lines in between-and to the rear the orderly acres of import vehicles, thousands of them, with the draught animals scattered grazing across the veld almost to the range of the eye.
    it was an impressive sight not only in its immensity but also in its neat and businesslike layout; so was the military precision of the blocks of men at drill, the massed glitter of their bayonets as they turned and marched and counter marched
    When Sean wandered into the camp and read the names of the regiments at the head of each row of tents he recognized them as the sound of glory. But the new khaki uniforms and Pith helmets had reduced them all to a homogeneous mass. Only the cavalry retained a little of the magic in the pennants that fluttered gaily at their lance-tips. A squadron trotted past him and Sean eyed their mounts with envy. Great shiny beasts, as arrogant as the men upon their backs. Horse and rider given an air of inhuman cruelty by the slender bright-tipped lance they carried.
    A dozen times Sean asked his question,
    “Where can I find the Guides” and though the answer was given in the dialects of Manchester and Lancashire, in the barely intelligible accents of Scotland and Ireland, each had a common factor-they were all singularly unhelpful.
    Once he stopped to watch a group training with one of the new Maxim mach me-guns. Clumsy, he decided, no match