by Wilbur Smith
He woke suddenly, aware that the wagon had rocked lightly under him. His first thought was a continuation of the last: perhaps a hyena was raiding the camp. He sat up and reached for the loaded musket that always lay beside his bed, but before his hand could fall upon the stock he froze and stared towards the afterclap.
The moon still lacked two nights of full, and he could tell by its angle that it must be after midnight. Its light threw a soft glow through the canvas curtain of the afterclap. Louisa was silhouetted against it, an ethereal fairy figure. He could not see her face, for it was in shadow, but her hair came down in a pale cascade around her shoulders.
She took a hesitant pace towards his bed. Then she stopped again. He could see by the way in which she held her head that she was shy or afraid, maybe both. “Louisa? What ails you?”
“I could not sleep,” she whispered.
“Is there anything I can do?”
She did not reply at once, but instead she came forward slowly and lay down at his side. “Please, Jim, be kind to me. Be patient with me.”
They lay in silence, without touching, their bodies rigid. Neither knew what to do next.
Louisa broke the silence. “Speak to me, Jim. Do you want me to go back to my own wagon?” It irked her that he who was usually so bold was timid now.
“No. Oh, please, no,” he blurted out.
“Then speak to me.”
“I’m not sure what you want me to say, but I will tell you all that is in my mind and heart,” he said. He thought for a while, and his voice sank to a whisper. “When first I saw you on the deck of the ship, it seemed that I had been waiting all my life for that moment.”
She sighed softly, and he felt her relax beside him, like a cat spreading herself out in the warmth of the sun. Encouraged, he went on, “I have often thought when I watch my father and mother together that for every man born God fashions a woman.”
“Adam’s rib,” she murmured.
“I believe that you are my rib,” he said. “I cannot find happiness and fulfilment without you.”
“Go on, Jim. Please don’t stop.”
“I believe that all the terrible things that happened to you before we met, and all the hardships and dangers we have endured since then, have had but one purpose. That is to test and temper us, like steel in the furnace.”
“I had not thought of that,” she said, “but now I see it is true.”
He reached out and touched her hand. It seemed to him that a spark passed between their fingertips like the crackling discharge of gunpowder in the pan. She jerked away her hand. He sensed that their moment, although close, had not yet arrived. He took back his own hand and she relaxed again.
His uncle Dorian had once given him a filly that no one else could break to the bit and saddle. It had been very much like this, weeks and months of slow progress, of advance and retreat, but in the end she had become his, as beautiful and wondrous a creature as it was possible to imagine. He had called her Windsong and had held her head as she died of the horse-sickness.
On an inspiration he told Louisa about Windsong, how he had loved her and how she had died. She lay beside him in the darkness and listened, captivated. When he came to the end of the story she wept like a child, but they were good tears, not the bitter hurting tears that had so often gone before.
Then she slept at last, still lying beside him, still not quite touching. He listened to her gentle breathing, and at last slept also.
They followed the elephant herds northwards for almost another month. It was as his father had warned him: when disturbed by man the great beasts moved hundreds of leagues to new country. They travelled at that long, striding walk that even a good horse could not match over a long distance. The entire southern continent was their domain, and the old matriarchs of the herds knew every mountain pass and every lake, river and water-hole along the way; they knew how to avoid the deserts and the desolate lands. They knew the forests that were rich in fruits and luxuriant growth, and they knew the fastness where they were safe from attack.
However, they left tracks that were clear to Bakkat’s eye, and he followed them into wilderness where even he had never ventured. The tracks led them to good water, and to the easy passes through the mountains.
Thus, they came at last to a river set in a strath of grassy veld, and the waters were sweet and clear. Jim took his sights of the noon passage of the sun on five consecutive days until he was certain he had accurately fixed their position on his father’s chart. Both he and Louisa were amazed at the great distance the leisurely turning wheels of the wagons had covered to bring them here.
They left the camp on the river bank each day and rode out to explore the country in all directions. On the sixth day they climbed to the top of a tall, rounded hill that overlooked the plains beyond the river.
“Since we left the frontier of the colony we have seen no sign of our fellow men,” Louisa remarked, “just that one wagon track almost three months ago, and the paintings of Bakkat’s tribe in the caves of the mountains.”
“It is an empty land,” Jim agreed, “and I love it so, for it and everything in it belongs to me. It makes me feel like a god.”
She smiled as she watched his enthusiasm. To her he looked indeed like a young god. The sun had burned him brown, and his arms and legs were carved from granite muscle. Despite her frequent clipping with the sheep shears, his hair had grown down to his shoulders. Accustomed to staring at far horizons, his gaze was calm and steady. His bearing displayed his confidence and authority.
She could not much longer try to deceive herself, or deny how her feelings had changed towards him in these last months. He had proved his worth a hundred times. He now stood at the centre of her existence. However, she must first throw off the brake and burden of her past—even now when she closed her eyes she could see the sinister head in the black leather mask, and the cold eyes behind the slits. Van Ritters, the master of Huis Brabant, was with her still.
Jim turned back to face her, and she averted her eyes: surely her dark thoughts must be clear for him to see in them. “Look!” she cried, and pointed across the river. “There is a field of wild daisies growing there.”
He shaded his eyes and followed the direction of her outthrust hand. “I doubt that they are flowers.” He shook his head. “They shine too bright. I think what you see is a bed of chalk stone or white quartz pebbles.”
“I am sure they are daisies, like those that grew beside the Gariep river.” Louisa pushed Trueheart forward. “Come, let’s cross to look at them. I wish to draw them.” She was already well down the hill, leaving him little choice but to follow her, although he had no great interest in flowers.
A well-trodden game path led them through a grove of wild willows to a shallow ford. They splashed through the green waters belly deep and rode up the steep cut of the far bank. They saw the mysterious white field not far ahead, glaring in the sunlight, and raced each other to it.
Louisa was a few lengths ahead, but suddenly she reined in and the laughter died on her lips. She stared down at the ground, speechless with horror. Jim stepped down from the stirrup and, leading Drumfire, walked forward slowly. The ground beneath his feet was thickly strewn with human bones. He stooped and picked up a skull from the macabre display. “A child,” he said, and turned the tiny relic in his hands. “Its head was staved in.”
“What has happened here, Jim?”
“There has been a massacre,” he answered, “and not too long ago, for although the birds have picked the skeletons clean, the hyena have not yet devoured them.”
“How did it happen?” The tragic remains had moved her, and her eyes swam with tears.
He brought the child’s skull to her, and held it up so she might examine it more closely. “The imprint of a war club. A single blow to the back of the head. ’Tis how the Nguni despatch their enemies.”
“Children also?”
“It is said that they kill for the thrill and prestige.”<
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“How many have died here?” Louisa averted her gaze from the tiny skull, and looked instead to the piled skeletons, which lay in snowdrifts and windrows. “How many?”
“We shall never know, but it seems that this was an entire tribe.” Jim laid the little skull down on the spot where he had found it.
“No wonder we found no living man on all our long journey,” she whispered. “These monsters have slain every one, and laid waste to the land.”
Jim fetched Bakkat from the wagons and he confirmed Jim’s first estimate. He picked out from among the bones evidence to paint a broader picture of the slaughter. He found the broken head and the shaft of a war club, which he called a kerrie. It had been skilfully carved from a shoot of a knobthorn bush: the bulbous root section formed a natural head for the vicious club. The weapon must have snapped in the hand of the warrior who had wielded it. He also found a handful of glass trade beads scattered in the grass. They might once have been part of a necklace. They were cylindrical in shape, red and white.
Jim knew them well: identical beads were among the goods they carried in their own wagons. He showed them to Louisa. “Beads like these have been common currency in Africa for a hundred years or more. Originally they were probably traded by the Portuguese to the northern tribes.”
Bakkat rubbed one between his fingers. “They are highly prized by the Nguni. One of the warriors might have had a string of these torn from his neck, perhaps by the dying fingers of one of his victims.”
“Who were the victims?” Louisa asked, and spread her hands to indicate the bones that lay so thickly around them.
Bakkat shrugged. “In this land men come from nowhere and depart again leaving no trace of their passing.” He tucked the beads into the pouch on his belt, which was made from the scrotum of a bull buffalo. “Except my people. We leave our pictures on the rocks so that the spirits will remember us.”
“I would like to know who they were,” Louisa said. “It is so tragic to think of the little ones who were snuffed out here, with no one to bury them or mourn their passing.”
She did not have to wait long to find out who the victims were.
The next day as the wagon train rolled northwards they saw, at a distance, the herds of wild antelope parting like the bow wave of an ocean-going vessel. Jim recognized that this was how animals reacted to the presence of human beings. He had no way of knowing what lay ahead, so he ordered Smallboy to form the wagons into a defensive square and issue a musket to each man. Then, taking Bakkat and Zama with them, he and Louisa rode out to scout the land ahead.
The grassy plain undulated like the swells of the ocean, and when they reached the next crest of higher ground and could see ahead, they reined in spontaneously and stared in silence at the strange sight that was revealed to them.
Tiny with distance a column of forlorn human figures toiled across the plain, moving so painfully slowly that they raised almost no dust. They had no domestic animals with them, and as they drew closer Jim could see through the telescope that they were carrying their meagre possessions on their heads: clay pots and calabashes, or bundles wrapped in animal skins. There was nothing hostile in their appearance, and Jim rode to meet them. As the distance narrowed more details became apparent.
The straggling file was made up almost entirely of women and their children. The infants were being carried in leather pouches slung on the backs or across the hips of their mothers. They were all wasted and thin, with legs like dried sticks. They walked with the slack, dragging gait of exhaustion. As Jim and Louisa watched, one of the skeletal women sagged to the ground. The bundle and the two small children she carried on her back were too great a burden. Her companions stopped to help her back to her feet. One held a water gourd to her mouth to allow her to drink.
It was a touching gesture. “These people are dying on their feet,” Louisa said softly. As they rode closer she counted their heads: “There are sixty-eight of them, but I may have missed some of the children.”
When they were within hail of the head of this sorry file, they stopped the horses and Jim rose in the stirrups. “Who are you, and where do you come from?”
It seemed that they were so far gone they had not seen the party until then, for Jim’s voice caused confusion and despair among them. Many of the women threw down their bundles and seized their children. They scattered back the way they had come, but their efforts at escape were pathetic, and one after another they staggered to a halt and collapsed in the grass, unable to run further. They tried to escape attention by lying flat and pulling their leather capes over their heads.
Only one had not run, an old man. He, too, was stick-thin and frail, but he straightened and stood with dignity. He let the shawl drop from his shoulders, let out a shrill, quavering war-cry and charged straight at Jim, brandishing a throwing spear. From fifty paces, out of range of his old arm, he hurled the spear, which pegged into the earth halfway between him and Jim. Then he sagged to his knees. Jim rode warily closer, alert for another warlike attack from the silver-headed ancient.
“Who are you, old father?” he repeated. He had to ask the same question in three different dialects before the man started with recognition, and answered: “I know who you are, you who ride upon the back of wild animals and speak in tongues. I know you are one of the white crocodile wizards that come out of the great waters to devour men. How else would you know the language of my people? Yet I fear you not, foul demon, for I am old and ready to die. But I will die fighting against you who would devour my daughters and my grandchildren.” He staggered to his feet and drew the axe from his belt. “Come, and we will see if you have blood in your veins like other men.”
The dialect he spoke was of the northern Lozi, which old Aboli had taught Jim. “You terrify me, bold warrior,” he told the old man gravely, “but let us put aside our weapons and talk for a while before we do battle.”
“He looks confused and terrified,” Louisa said. “The poor old man.”
“It may be that he is not accustomed to discourse with wizards and demons,” Bakkat remarked drily, “but one thing I know, if he is not fed soon the wind will blow him away.”
The old man was swaying on his bony legs. “When did you last eat, great chieftain?” Jim asked.
“I do not parley with wizards or crocodile spirits,” announced the old man, with disdain.
“If you are not hungry, then tell me, chieftain, when did your daughters and your grandchildren last eat?”
The old man’s defiance wavered. He looked back at his people, and his voice was low as he replied with simple dignity, “They are starving.”
“I can see that,” Jim said grimly.
“Jim, we must fetch food for them from the wagons,” Louisa burst out.
“It will need more than our few fish and loaves to feed this multitude. Then, when they have eaten our pantry bare, we will starve with them,” Jim answered, and turned in the saddle to survey the herds of game that were scattered across the plains in every direction. “They are starving in the midst of plenty. Their hunting skills and crude weapons will not bring down a single head of game from all this multitude,” he said, then looked back at the old man. “I will use my witchcraft not to destroy your people but to feed them.”
They left him standing and rode out across the plain. Jim picked out a herd of cow-like wildebeest, strange-looking creatures with fringes of dark mane and lunate horns, their legs too thin for their robust bodies. These were the fools of the veld, and they gambolled ahead of Bakkat and Zama as they rode in a wide circle to surround them and drive them back towards Jim and Louisa. When the herd leaders were almost within gunshot, they sensed the danger and put down their ugly heads. Snorting and kicking up their heels they ran in earnest. Drumfire and Trueheart came up on them easily. Riding in close and shooting from the saddle Jim dropped a beast with a shot from each of his guns, and Louisa brought down another with the little French rifle. They roped the carcasses by the heels and dragged
them behind the horses to where the old man was squatting in the grass.
He rose to his feet. When he realized what they had brought him, he cried out to his followers, in a quavering voice, “Meat! The devils have brought us meat! Come quickly, and bring the children.”
Timidly one old woman crept forward, while the others hung back. The two old people started work on the carcasses, using the blade of the throwing spear as a butcher’s knife. When the rest of the band saw that they were not being molested by the white devils they came swarming forward to the feast.
Louisa laughed aloud to see mothers hacking off lumps of raw meat, and chewing it to a pulp before spitting it into the mouths of their children, like mother birds feeding their chicks. When their first hunger was appeased, they built fires to roast and smoke the rest of the kill. Jim and Louisa hunted again, bringing in more prime game to provide enough smoked meat to feed even this number of mouths for some months.
Very soon the little tribe lost all fear and became so trusting that they no longer skittered away when Louisa walked among them. They even allowed her to pick up and dandle the little ones. Then the women clustered around her, touched her hair and stroked her pale skin with awe.
Jim and Bakkat sat with the old man and questioned him. “What people are you?”
“We are of the Lozi, but our totem is the Bakwato.”
“How are you called, great chieftain of the Bakwato?” Jim asked.
“Tegwane, and in truth I am but a very small chief,” he replied. The tegwane was the little fish-eating brown stork with a feathered topknot that frequented every stream and river pool.
“Where do you come from?” The old man pointed to the north. “Where are the young warriors of your tribe?”
“Slain by the Nguni,” Tegwane said, “fighting to save their families. Now I am trying to find a place where the women and children will be safe, but I fear the killers are not far behind us.”
“Tell me about these Nguni,” Jim invited. “I have heard the name spoken with fear and awe, but I have never seen them, nor met any man who has.”