The Leopard Hunts in Darkness

by Wilbur Smith

  ‘Sam!’ Craig called. ‘Sarah!’

  The two of them stood up from where they had taken cover at the foot of the rocky side of the valley.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  All four of them were shaken and bruised, Sarah had a bloodied nose and a scratch on her cheek, but none of them had been seriously hurt.

  ‘What the hell do we do now?’ Craig asked, and they stood in a huddle and looked at each other helplessly.

  They ransacked the shattered carcass of the Cessna – the toolbox, the first-aid kit, the survival kit with the flashlight, a five-litre aluminium water bottle, thermal blankets and malt tablets, the pistol, the AK 47 rifle and ammunition, the map-case, and Craig unscrewed the compass from the roof of the cabin. Then they worked for an hour trying to hide all traces of the crash from a searching aircraft. Between them Tungata and Craig dragged the severed wing sections into the ravine and covered them with dried brush. They could not move the fuselage and engine section, but they heaped more branches and brush over it.

  Twice while they worked, they heard the sound of an aircraft in the distance. The resonant throb of twin engines was unmistakable.

  ‘The Dakota,’ Sally-Anne said.

  ‘They are searching for us.’

  ‘They can’t know that we are down,’ Sally-Anne protested.

  ‘No, not for certain, but they must know that we took a real beating,’ Craig pointed out. ‘They must realize that there is a good chance that we are down. They will probably send in foot patrols to scout the area, and question the villagers.’

  ‘The sooner we get out of here—’

  ‘Which way?’

  ‘May I suggest something?’ Sarah joined the discussion deferentially. ‘We need food and a guide. I think I can lead us from here to my father’s village. He will hide us until we have decided what we are going to do, until we are ready to go.’

  Craig looked at Tungata.

  ‘Makes sense – any objections, Sam? Okay, let’s do it.’

  Before they left the site of the crash, Craig took Sally-Anne aside.

  ‘Do you feel sad? It was a beautiful aircraft.’

  ‘I don’t get sentimental over machinery.’ She shook her head. ‘Once it was a great little kite, but it’s buggered and bent now. I save my sentiments for things that are more cuddly,’ and she squeezed his hand. ‘Time to move on, darling.’

  Craig carried the rifle and pointed for them, keeping half a mile ahead and marking the trail. Tungata, lacking stamina, took the drag, with the two girls in the centre.

  That evening they dug for water in a dry river-bed and sucked a malt tablet before they rolled into the thermal foil survival blankets. The girls took the first two sentry goes, while Tungata and Craig spun a coin for the more arduous later watches.

  Early the next morning, Craig cut a well-used footpath, and when Sarah came up she recognized it immediately. Two hours later they were in the cultivated valley below Vusamanzi’s hilltop village and while the rest of the party took cover in the standing maize, Sarah climbed up to find her father. When she returned an hour later the old witch-doctor was with her.

  He came directly to Tungata and went down on his arthritically swollen knees before him, and he took one of Tungata’s feet and placed it upon his silver pate. ‘Son of kings, I see you,’ he greeted him. ‘Sprig of great Mzilikazi, branch of mighty Kumalo, I am your slave.’

  ‘Stand up, old man,’ Tungata lifted him up, and used the respectful term kehla, honoured elder.

  ‘Forgive me that I do not offer refreshment,’ Vusamanzi apologized, ‘but it is not safe here. The Shona soldiers are everywhere. I must lead you to a safe place, and then you can rest and refresh yourselves. Follow me.’

  He set off at a remarkable pace on his skinny old legs, and they had to lengthen their stride to hold him in view. They walked for two hours by Craig’s wrist-watch, the last hour through dense thorn thicket and broken rocky ground. There was no defined footpath, and the heated hush of the bush and the claustrophobic crowding in of the hills was enervating and oppressive.

  ‘I do not like this place,’ Tungata told Craig softly. ‘There are no birds, no animals, there is a feeling here of evil – no, not evil, but of mystery and of menace.’

  Craig looked about him. The rocks had the blasted look of slag from the iron furnace and the trees were deformed and crooked, black as charcoal against the sun and leprous silver when the sun’s rays struck them full on. Their branches were bearded with trailing lichens, the sickly green of chlorine gas. And Tungata was correct, there were no bird sounds, no rustles of small animals in the undergrowth. Suddenly Craig felt chilled and he shivered in the sunlight.

  ‘You feel it also,’ said Tungata, and as he spoke the old man disappeared abruptly, as though he had been swallowed by the black and blasted rock. Craig hurried forward, suppressing a shudder of superstitious dread. He reached the spot where Vusamanzi had disappeared and looked around, but there was no sign of the old man.

  ‘This way.’ Vusamanzi’s voice was a sepulchral echo. ‘Beyond the turn of the rock.’

  The cliff was folded back upon itself, a narrow concealed cleft, just wide enough for a man to squeeze through. Craig stepped round the corner and paused to let his eyes adjust to the poor light.

  Vusamanzi had taken a cheap storm lantern from a shelf in the rock above his head and was filling the base with paraffin from the bottle he had carried in his pouch. He struck a match and held it to the wick.

  ‘Come,’ he invited, and led them into the passageway.

  ‘These hills are riddled with caves and secret passages,’ Sarah explained. ‘They are all dolomite formations.’

  A hundred and fifty yards further on, the passage opened into a large chamber. Soft natural light filtered in through an opening in the domed roof high above their heads. Vusamanzi extinguished the lantern and set it down on a ledge to one side of a hearth, man-made from blocks of limestone. The rock above the hearth was blackened with soot, and there was a pile of old ash upon the floor. Beside it was a neat stack of firewood.

  ‘This is a sacred place,’ Vusamanzi told them. ‘It is here that the apprentice magicians live during the training period. It was here, as a young man, that I served under my own father, and learned the ancient prophecies and the magical arts.’ He gestured to them to sit down, and all of them slumped thankfully to the rocky floor. ‘You will be safe here. The soldiers will not find you. In a week or a month, when they grow weary of searching for you, it will be safe for you to leave. Then we will find a man to guide you.’

  ‘It’s spooky,’ Sally-Anne whispered, when Craig translated this for her.

  ‘Some of my women are following us with food. They will come every second day while you are here, with food and news.’

  Two of Sarah’s half-sisters arrived at the cavern before darkness fell. They carried heavy bundles balanced upon their heads, and they set about preparing a meal immediately. Their laughter and merry chatter, the flicker of the flames on the hearth, the smell of woodsmoke and food cooking, partially dispelled the oppressive atmosphere of the cavern.

  ‘You must eat with the women,’ Craig explained to Sally-Anne. ‘It’s the custom. The old man will be very unhappy—’

  ‘He looks such an old dear, but underneath he turns out to be just another male chauvinist pig,’ she protested.

  The three men passed the beer-pot around their circle, and ate from the communal bowl in the centre and the old man spoke to Tungata between mouthfuls.

  ‘The spirits prevented our first meeting, Nkosi. We waited for you to come that night, but the Shona had taken you. It was a time of sorrow for all of us, but now the spirits have relented, they have delivered you from the Shona and brought us together at last.’ Vusamanzi looked at Craig. ‘There are things of great portent that you and I must discuss – tribal matters.’

  ‘You say that the spirits have arranged my escape from the Shona,’ Tungata replied. ‘It may be so –
but if it is, then this white man is their agent. He and his woman have risked their very lives to free me.’

  ‘Still, he is a white man,’ said the old man delicately.

  ‘His family has lived in this land for a hundred years – and he is my brother,’ said Tungata simply.

  ‘You vouch for him, Nkosi?’ the old man persisted.

  ‘Speak, old man,’ Tungata assured him. ‘We are all friends, here.’

  The magician sighed and shuffled and took another handful of food. ‘As my lord wishes,’ he agreed at last, and then abruptly, ‘You are the guardian of the old king’s tomb, are you not?’

  Tungata’s dark eyes hooded in the firelight.

  ‘What do you know of these things, old man?’ he countered.

  ‘I know that the sons of the house of Kumalo, when they reach manhood, are taken to the tomb of the king and made to swear the oath of guardianship.’

  Tungata nodded reluctantly. ‘This may be so.’

  ‘Do you know the prophecy?’ the old man demanded.

  And Tungata nodded and said, ‘That when the tribe is sorely in need, the spirit of the old king will come forth to give them succour.’

  ‘The spirit of Lobengula will come forth as a fire,’ the old man corrected him.

  ‘Yes,’ Tungata agreed. ‘Lobengula’s fire.’

  ‘And there is more, much more – do you know the rest of it, son of Kumalo?’

  ‘Tell it to me, old father.’

  ‘The prophecy goes on thus: The leopard cub will first break an oath, then break his chains. The leopard cub will first fly like an eagle, then swim like a fish. When these things have come to pass, the fire of Lobengula will be freed from the dark places and come forth to succour and save his people.’

  They were all silent, considering this conundrum.

  ‘The leopard skin is the prerogative of the house of Kumalo,’ Vusamanzi reminded them. ‘Thus the leopard cub of the prophecy would be a descendant of the royal house.’

  Tungata grunted non-committally.

  ‘I do not know that you have broken an oath,’ the old man went on, ‘but you have broken the chains with which the Shona bound you.’

  ‘Eh-heh!’ Tungata nodded, his face closed and impassive.

  ‘You escaped from Tuti in an indeki, flying like an eagle indeed,’ the old man pointed out, and again Tungata nodded, but in English he murmured to Craig, ‘The beauty of these ancient prophecies is that they can be moulded to fit nearly any circumstance. They gain a little or lose a little with each repetition, depending on the mood and the motives of the seer at the time.’ Then he reverted smoothly to Sindebele. ‘You are wise, old man, and well versed in magic, but tell us what of the swimming of the fish? I must warn you that I am not able to swim, and that the only one thing I truly fear is death by drowning. You must seek another fish.’

  Vusamanzi wiped the grease off his chin and looked smug.

  ‘There is something else I must tell you,’ Tungata went on. ‘I have entered Lobengula’s tomb. It is empty. The body of Lobengula has gone. The prophecy has been voided long, long ago.’

  The old magician showed no distress at Tungata’s words. Instead he sat back on his heels and unscrewed the stopper of the snuff-horn that hung around his neck.

  ‘If you have entered the king’s tomb, then you have broken your oath to defend it intact,’ he pointed out with a wicked twinkle of his eyes. ‘The oath-breaking of the prophecy – could that be it?’ He did not wait for a reply but poured red snuff into the palm of his hand and drew it up each nostril. He sneezed ecstatically with tears running down his withered old cheeks.

  ‘If you broke your oath, Nkosi, it was beyond your powers to prevent it. The spirits of your ancestors drove you to it and you are without blame. But, now let me explain the empty tomb.’ He paused and then seemed to take off at a tangent. ‘Have either of you heard of a man who lived long ago, a man they called Taka-Taka?’ They both nodded.

  ‘On the maternal side Taka-Taka was the great-grandfather of Pupho here.’ Tungata nodded at Craig. ‘Taka-Taka was a famous white soldier in the old days of Lobengula. He fought against the king’s impis, Taka-Taka is the sound that his machine-guns made when the warriors of the Matabele went against him.’

  ‘Old Sir Ralph Ballantyne,’ Craig agreed. ‘One of Rhodes’ righthand men, and the first prime minister of Rhodesia.’ He changed back into Sindebele. ‘Taka-Taka lies buried in the Matopos Hills close by the grave of Lodzi, of Cecil Rhodes himself.’

  ‘That is the one.’ Vusamanzi wiped the snuff from his upper lip, and the tears from his cheeks with his thumb. ‘Taka-Taka, the soldier and the robber of the sacred places of the tribe. It was he who stole the stone birds from the ruined city of Great Zimbabwe. It was he also that came into these very hills to desecrate the tomb of Lobengula, and to steal the fire-stones that hold the spirit of the king.’

  Now both Craig and Tungata leaned forward attentively. ‘I have read the book that Taka-Taka wrote describing his life—’ old Sir Ralph’s handwritten diaries were part of Craig’s personal treasure that he had left at King’s Lynn when Peter Fungabera had driven him out. ‘I have read the very words of Taka-Taka, and he does not tell of reaching Lobengula’s tomb. And what are these fire-stones you speak of?’

  The old man held up a restraining hand. ‘You go too swiftly, Pupho,’ he admonished Craig. ‘Let the son of Kumalo explain these mysteries to us. Have you heard of the fire-stones, Tungata Zebiwe, who was once Samson Kumalo?’

  ‘I have heard something of them,’ Tungata agreed cautiously. ‘I have heard that there was a huge treasure in diamonds, diamonds collected by Lobengula’s amadoda from the white man Lodzi’s mines in the south—’

  Craig started to interrupt, but Tungata silenced him. ‘I will explain later,’ he promised, and turned back to the old magician.

  ‘What you heard is the truth,’ Vusamanzi assured him. ‘There are five beer-pots filled with the fire-stones.’

  ‘And they were stolen by Sir Ralph, by Taka-Taka?’ Craig anticipated.

  Vusamanzi looked severe. ‘You should go to the women’s fire, Pupho, for you chatter like one of them.’

  Craig smothered his smile, and sat back suitably chastened while Vusamanzi rearranged his skin cloak before going on.

  ‘When Lobengula was put to earth and his tomb sealed by his half-brother and loyal induna, a man named Gandang—’

  ‘Who was my great-great-grandfather,’ Tungata murmured.

  ‘Who was your great-great-grandfather,’ the old man agreed. ‘Gandang placed all the king’s treasures with him in the tomb, and then led the vanquished tribe of Matabele back. He went back to treat with Lodzi and this man Taka-Taka, and the tribe went in to the white man’s bondage. But one man stayed in these hills, he was a famous magician named Insutsha, the arrow. He stayed to guard the king’s tomb, and he built a village near the tomb, and took wives and bred sons. Insutsha, the arrow, was my grandfather—’ they made small movements of surprise, and Vusamanzi looked complacent. ‘Yes, do you see how the spirits work? It is all planned and predestined – the three of us are bound by our history and our bloodlines, Gandang and Taka-Taka and Insutsha. The spirits have brought us, their descendants, together in their marvellous fashion.’

  ‘Sally-Anne is right – it’s bloody spooky,’ said Craig, and Vusamanzi frowned at his gauche use of a foreign language.

  ‘This Taka-Taka, as I have hinted already, was a famous rogue, with a nose like a hyena and an appetite like a vulture.’ Vusamanzi gave this summation with relish and glanced significantly at Craig.

  ‘Got it!’ Craig smiled inwardly, but kept a solemn expression.

  ‘He learned the legend of the five pots of fire-stones, and he went amongst the survivors of Gandang’s impi, the men who had been present at the time of the king’s death, and he spoke sweet and gentle words and offered gifts of cattle and gold coins – and he found a traitor, a dog of a dog who was not fit to be called Matabe
le. I will not speak the name of this piece of offal, but I spit on his unmarked and dishonoured grave.’ Vusamanzi’s spittle hit the embers of the fire with a spluttering hiss.

  ‘This dog agreed to lead Taka-Taka to the king’s burial place. But before he could do so, there was a great war between the white men, and Taka-Taka went north and fought against the German induna called Hamba-Hamba, “the one – who – marches – here – and – there – and – is – never – caught”.’

  ‘Von Lettow-Vorbeck,’ Craig translated, ‘the German commander in East Africa during the 1914-1918 war.’ And Tungata nodded agreement. ‘When the war was over Taka-Taka returned and he called the Matabele traitor, and they came into these hills with the dog of a dog leading them – four white men with Taka-Taka as their chief – and they searched for the tomb. They searched for twenty-eight days, for the traitor did not remember the exact location and the tomb was cunningly concealed. However, with his hyena nose Taka-Taka smelled it out at last, and he opened the royal tomb, and he found wagons and guns, but the king’s body and the five beer-pots for which he hungered so violently were gone!’

  ‘This I have already seen and told you,’ Tungata said. It was an anti-climax and Tungata turned one palm up in a gesture of resignation, and Craig shrugged, but Vusamanzi went on resolutely.

  ‘They say that Taka-Taka’s rage was like the first great storms of the rains. They say he roared like a man-eating lion and that his face went red and then purple and finally black.’ Vusamanzi chortled with glee. ‘They say he took his hat from his own head and threw it on the ground, then he took his gun and wanted to shoot the Matabele guide, but his white companions restrained him. So he tied the dog to a tree and beat him with a kiboko until he could see his ribs sticking out of the meat of his back, then he took back the gold coins and cattle with which he had bribed him, then he beat him again and finally, still squealing like a bull elephant in musk, Taka-Taka went away and never came back to these hills.’