by Wilbur Smith
Then he heard a sound, dulled by distance but unmistakable. The echoes from the cliffs confirmed it, but at the same time muddled the direction so that Xhia turned his head from side to side to try to pinpoint it. “Musket shot,” he whispered. “My spirits have not deserted me. They lead me on.”
He left the spoor and climbed the nearest peak, squatted there and watched the sky. It was not long before he picked out a tiny black speck high against the blue. “Where there is gunfire, there is Death. And Death has his faithful minions.”
Another speck appeared, then many more. They coalesced into a slow-turning wheel in the sky. Xhia sprang to his feet and trotted in that direction. As he approached, the specks resolved themselves into carrion birds, soaring on fixed wings, turning their repulsive naked heads to peer down at one spot among the mountains below them.
Xhia knew well all the five varieties of vulture, from the common tawny bird of the Cape to the huge bearded vulture with its patterned throat and triangular fan of tail feathers.
“Thank you, old friends,” Xhia called up to them. Since time beyond memory these birds had led him and his tribe to the feast. As he came closer to the centre of the spinning circle, he became more furtive, creeping from rock to rock, peering all around with those sharp bright eyes. Then he heard human voices coming from the far side of the ridge ahead of him and, like a puff of smoke, Xhia seemed simply to dissolve in the air.
From his place of concealment he watched the trio loading the butchered meat on to the horses. Somoya, he knew well. His was a familiar face in the colony. Xhia had watched him win the Christmas Day races from his own master. However, the woman was a stranger. “This must be the one that Gwenyama seeks. The woman who escaped from the sinking ship.”
He chuckled when he recognized Trueheart tethered beside Drumfire. “Soon you will return to our master,” he promised the mare. Then he concentrated all his attention on the dainty figure of Bakkat and his eyes slitted with hatred.
He watched the little band finish loading the horses, and move off out of sight along the game trail that meandered down the valley. As soon as they had gone Xhia ran down to dispute what remained of the eland carcass with the vultures. There was a puddle of blood lying where Jim had cut the eland’s throat. It had coagulated to a black jelly, and Xhia scooped it up in his cupped hands, and dribbled it into his open mouth. Over the past two days he had eaten only sparingly from his food bag, and he was famished. He licked every last sticky clot from his fingers. He could not afford to spend much time on the carcass, for if Bakkat looked back he would notice that the vultures had not settled immediately, and know that something or someone was keeping them in the air. The hunters had not left much for him. There was the long rubbery tube of the small intestines, which they had not been able to carry away. He drew it through his fingers to squeeze out the liquid dung. The coating of excrement that remained gave it a pungent relish, which he savoured as he chewed. He was tempted to use a rock to crack open the massive leg bones and suck out the rich yellow marrow, but he knew that Bakkat would return to the kill, and he would not overlook such an obvious clue. Instead he used his knife to scrape off the shreds and strips of flesh that still adhered to the bones and ribcage. He stuffed these fragments into his food bag, then used a switch of dried grass to brush away his footprints. The birds would soon obliterate any small traces of his presence that he had overlooked. When Bakkat returned to sweep his back trail there would be nothing to alert him.
Chewing happily on strips of the reeking intestines, he left the carcass and went on after Bakkat and the white couple. He did not follow directly in their tracks but kept well out on the slope above the valley. At three places he anticipated the twists and turns of the valleys ahead, cut across the high ground where the horses could not go and intercepted them on the far side. From a distance he picked out the smoke from the camp at Majuba and hurried ahead. He was watching from the peak when they arrived with the horses. He knew that he should go back at once to report to his master his success in discovering the hiding-place of the fugitives, but the temptation to linger and gloat over his old enemy, Bakkat, was too great to resist.
The three men, white, black and yellow, cut the raw eland meat into thick strips, and the woman sprinkled coarse sea salt from a leather bag on to them then rubbed it in with her palms and spread out the strips on the rocks to cure. In the meantime the men threw the lumps of white fat they trimmed from the meat into a three-legged pot on the fire to render it down for cooking or making soap.
Whenever Bakkat stood up or moved apart from the others, Xhia’s eyes followed him with the malevolent gaze of a cobra. He fingered one of the arrows in his little bark quiver and dreamed of the day when he would sink the poisoned tip deep into Bakkat’s flesh.
When the butcher’s work was done, and the men were tending the horses and the mules, the white woman laid out the last strips of meat to dry. Then she left the camp and picked her way along the bank of the stream until she reached a green pool screened by the bend from the camp. She took off her bonnet and shook out her hair in a glowing cloud. Xhia was taken aback. He had never seen hair that colour and length. It was unnatural and repellent. The scalps of the women of his tribe were covered by crisp, furry peppercorns, pleasant to touch and look upon. Only a witch or some other disgusting creature would have hair like this one. He spat to ward away any evil influence she might emit.
The woman looked about her carefully, but no human eye could discover Xhia when he wished to remain concealed. Then she undressed, stepping out of the baggy clothes that covered her lower body, and stood naked at the edge of the pool. Again Xhia was repelled by her appearance. This was no female but some hermaphroditic thing. Her body was misshapen: her legs were elongated, her hips narrow, her belly concave and she had the buttocks of a starving boy. The San women gloried in their steatopygia. There was another puff of hair at the juncture of her thighs. It was the colour of the Kalahari desert sands and so fine that it did not completely screen her genitals. Her slit was like a tightly pursed mouth. There was no sign of the inner lips. The mothers of Xhia’s tribe pierced their daughters’ labia in infancy and hung stones upon them to stretch them and make them protrude attractively. In Xhia’s estimation monumental buttocks and dangling labia were signs of true feminine beauty. Only her breasts proclaimed this woman’s sex, yet they, too, were strangely shaped. They thrust out pointedly and the pale nipples pricked upwards like the ears of a startled dik-dik. Xhia covered his mouth and giggled at his own simile. “What man could want a creature like that?” he asked himself.
The woman waded out into the pool until the water reached her chin. Xhia had seen enough and the sun was sinking. He slipped back over the skyline and set off at a trot towards the flat-topped mountain, blue and ethereal in the distance, that showed above the southern horizon. He would travel on through the night to bring the news to his master.
They sat close to the small fire in the centre of the hut, for the nights were still chill. They feasted on thick steaks cut from the long back strips of the eland, and kebabs of kidney, liver and fat grilled over the coals. The rich juices greased Bakkat’s chin. When Jim sat back with a sigh of contentment, Louisa poured a mug of coffee for him. He nodded his thanks. “Won’t you take some?” he invited, but she shook her head.
“I do not like it.” This was untrue. She had developed a taste for it while she lived in Huis Brabant, but she knew how rare and expensive it was. She had seen how he treasured the small bag of beans, which would not last much longer. Her gratitude towards him, as her saviour and protector, was so strong that she did not want to deprive him of something that gave him so much pleasure. “It’s harsh and bitter,” she explained.
She went back to her place on the opposite side of the fire and watched the men’s faces in the firelight as they talked. She did not understand what they were saying for the language was strange, but the sound was melodious and lulling. She was drowsy and well fed, and had not felt
as safe and contented since she had left Amsterdam.
“I gave your message to Klebe, your father,” Bakkat told Jim. This was the first time they had mentioned the subject uppermost in both their minds. It was callow and ill-mannered to speak of important matters until the right moment for serious discussion.
“What was his reply?” Jim demanded anxiously.
“He told me to greet you in his name and in the name of your mother. He said that although you would leave a hole in their hearts that would never be filled, you must not return to High Weald. He said that the fat soldier from the castle would wait for your return with the patience of a crocodile buried in the mud of the water-hole.”
Jim nodded sadly. He had known what the consequences must be from the moment he had decided he must rescue the girl. Yet now that he heard his father confirm it, the enormity of his exile from the colony weighed like a stone. He was truly an outcast.
In the firelight Louisa saw his expression and instinctively she knew she was the cause of his grief. She looked down into the wavering flames, and her guilt was a knife under her ribs.
“What else did he say?” Jim asked softly.
“He said that the pain of parting from his only son would be too great to bear, unless he could hold you in his eye once more before you go.” Jim opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. Bakkat went on, “He knows that you intend to follow the Robbers’ Road northwards into the wilderness. He said that you will not be able to survive with such meagre stores as you were able to take with you. He intends to bring you more. He said that would be your inheritance.”
“How is that possible? I cannot go to him and he cannot come to me. The risk is too great.”
“He has already sent Bomvu, your uncle Dorian, and Mansur with two wagons laden with sacks of sand and chests filled with stones along the west coast road. This will draw Keyser away so that your father can come to meet you at an arranged place. He will have with him other wagons carrying his parting gifts to you.”
“Where is the place of meeting?” Jim asked. He felt a deep sense of relief and excitement that he might see his father. He had thought they were parted for ever. “He cannot come here to Majuba. The road through the mountains is too steep and treacherous for wagons to pass.”
“No, he will not come here.”
“Where then?” Jim asked.
“Do you remember two years ago when we travelled together to the frontiers of the colony?” Jim nodded. “We went through the mountains by the secret pass of the Gariep river.”
“I remember.” That journey had been the adventure of Jim’s life.
“Klebe will take the wagons out through that pass and meet you on the edge of the unknown lands, by the kopje shaped like the head of a baboon.”
“Yes, that was where we hunted and killed the old gemsbuck bull. It was the last camp before we returned to the colony.” The disappointment he had felt when they turned back came to him vividly. “I wanted to go on to the next horizon, and the next, until I reached the last.”
Bakkat laughed. “You were always an impatient boy, and you still are. But your father will meet you at the Hill of the Baboon’s Head. Can you find it without me to lead you, Somoya?” He mocked Jim lightly, but for once he could not draw him. “Your father will only leave High Weald when he is sure that Keyser is following Bomvu and Mansur, and when I have returned with your reply.”
“Tell my father I will meet him there.”
Bakkat stood up and reached for his quiver and bow.
“You cannot leave yet,” Jim told him. “It is still dark, and you have not rested since you left High Weald.”
“I have the stars to guide me,” Bakkat went to the door of the hut, “and Klebe told me to return at once. We will meet again at the Hill of the Baboon’s Head.” He crossed to the door of the hut, and smiled back at Jim. “Until that day go in peace, Somoya. Keep Welanga beside you always, for it seems to me that, although she is young, she will grow to be a fine woman, like your own mother.” Then he was gone into the night.
Bakkat moved as swiftly through the darkness as any of the other night creatures, but it had been late when he left Majuba, and the dawn light was already strengthening when he reached the remains of the eland carcass. He squatted beside it and searched for clues as to who and what had visited it since the previous day. The vultures were roosting, hump-backed, on the surrounding cliffs and kranzes. The ground around the carcass was littered with their feathers where they had squabbled over the scraps, and white streaks of their liquid dung painted the rocks around the kill. Their talons had raked the earth, but he was able to pick out the tracks of a number of jackal and other small wild cats and scavengers in the softened earth. There were no signs of hyena, but that was not surprising: the mountains were too high and cold for them at this season of the year. Although picked bare, the skeleton of the eland was intact. Hyena would have chewed the bones to splinters.
If there had been a human visitor, any sign of him had been obliterated. However, Bakkat was confident that he had not been followed. Few men could have untangled the trail he had laid. Then his eyes fell on the ribcage of the eland. The bones were smooth and white. Suddenly he gave a soft whistle of alarm, and his confidence wavered. He touched the bare ribs, running his finger down them one after another. The marks on them were so light that they might have been natural or the toothmarks of one of the scavengers. But Bakkat felt a sick spasm of doubt tighten his stomach muscles. The marks were too smooth and regular, not those of teeth but of a tool. Someone had scraped the flesh off the bone with a blade.
If it were a man, he would have left the mark of boot or sandal, he thought, and made a quick cast around the carcass, wide enough to avoid the chaos created by the scavengers. Nothing! He returned to the skeleton and studied it again. Perhaps he was barefoot? he wondered. But the Hottentot wear sandals, and what would one of them be doing in the mountains in this season? They will be with their herds down in the plains. Perhaps, after all, I was followed? But only an adept could have read my sign. An adept who goes unshod? A San? One of my own kind? As he pondered it he became more anxious. Should I go on to High Weald, or should I go back to warn Somoya? He hesitated, then made his decision. I cannot go in both directions at the same time. I must go on. That is my duty. I must take my news to Klebe.
Now in the morning light he could move faster. As he ran, his dark eyes were never still and no sound or smell, however faint, eluded him. As he skirted a stand of cripplewood, whose stems were hung with beards of grey moss, his nostrils flared as he caught a whiff of faecal odour. He turned off the path to trace the source, and found it within a few paces. A single glance told him that these were the droppings of a carnivore, who had gorged recently on blood and meat: they were black, loose and foetid.
Jackal? he thought, then immediately knew that it was not. It must be human, for close by were the stained leaves with which he had cleaned himself. Only the San used the leaves of the wash-hand bush for that purpose: they were succulent and soft, and when rubbed between the palms of the hand they burst open and ran with herbal-scented juice. He knew then that the same man who had eaten at the eland carcass had defecated here, close to the path that led from Majuba down the mountains, and that the man was of the San. Apart from himself how many adepts of the San lived within the borders of the colony? His people were of the deserts and the wilderness. Then his instincts told him who it must be.
“Xhia!” he whispered. “Xhia, who is my enemy has followed me and learned my secrets. Now he runs back to his master in the castle. Soon they will ride out to Majuba with many horsemen to run down Somoya and Welanga.” He was immediately stricken by the same dreadful uncertainty. “Must I go back to warn Somoya, or go on to High Weald? How far is Xhia ahead of me?” Then he reached the same decision. “Somoya will already have left Majuba. Keyser and his troopers will move slower than Somoya. If I drink the wind, I might be able to warn both Klebe and Somoya before Keyser catches up
with them.”
He began to run as he had seldom run before, as though he were following a wounded gemsbuck, or being chased by a hungry lion.
It was late at night when Xhia reached the colony. The gates of the castle were closed and would not open again until reveille and the hoisting of the VOC flag at daybreak. But Xhia knew that, these days, Gwenyama, his master, seldom slept in his sumptuous quarters within the high stone walls. There was a fresh and irresistible attraction for him in the town.
It was the decree of the VOC council in Amsterdam that the burghers of the colony, and more especially the servants of the Company, should not have congress with the natives of the country. Like many of the other decrees of the Zeventien they were written only on paper, and Colonel Keyser kept a discreet little cottage on the far side of the Company gardens. It was situated down an unpaved lane and was screened by a tall, flowering lantana hedge. Xhia knew better than to waste time arguing with the sentries at the gates of the castle. He went directly to the colonel’s love nest, and slipped through the opening in the lantana hedge. A lamp was burning in the kitchen at the rear of the cottage, and he tapped on the window. A shadow passed between the lamp and the pane, and a female voice he recognized called, “Who is there?” Her tone was sharp and nervous.
“Shala! It is Xhia,” he called back, in the Hottentot tongue, and heard her lift the locking bar on the door. She swung it open and peered out. She was only a little taller than Xhia and looked childlike, but she was not.
“Is Gwenyama here?” Xhia asked. She shook her head. He looked at her with pleasure: the Hottentot were cousins of the San and Shala was Xhia’s ideal of a beautiful woman. Her skin glowed like amber in the lamplight, her dark eyes slanted up at the corners, her cheekbones were high and wide, and her chin was narrow so that her face was the shape of an inverted arrowhead. The dome of her head was perfectly rounded, and covered with a pelt of peppercorn curls.