by Wilbur Smith
“This is Intepe, the lily of my heart, my granddaughter,” he cried.
Louisa had noticed her at their first meeting with the tribe, for she was the prettiest of all the women. Intepe came to her trustingly and sat patiently as Louisa washed and dressed her wound. When Louisa had finished tending Tegwane and his granddaughter, she looked around at the dead who lay half hidden in the grass.
“What must we do with all these others?” she called to Jim.
“We have finished here,” Jim replied, then glanced up at the cloudless sky where, high above, the vultures were gathering. “We will leave the rest of the work to them. Now we must hurry back to the wagons. We have much to do there before the Nguni return.”
Jim picked out the best defensive position along the river bank. Here a small tributary stream flowed down from the hills to join the main flow. It came in at an acute angle, forming a narrow wedge of ground bounded on one side by a pool of the main river. Jim plumbed the depth of the pool and found that it was deeper than a man was tall.
“The Nguni will never swim,” Tegwane assured him. “Water is perhaps the only thing they fear. They will eat neither fish nor hippopotamus, for they have an abhorrence of anything that comes from water.”
“So the pool will protect our flank and rear.” Jim was relieved. Tegwane was proving a useful source of information. He boasted that he could speak the Nguni language fluently, and that he knew their customs. If this was true, he was well worth his keep.
Jim walked along the top of the steep bank of the tributary stream. The drop was over ten feet, a wall of greasy clay that would be difficult to scale without a ladder.
“This will protect the other flank. We have only to draw up the wagons across the neck between river and stream.”
They rolled them into position, and roped the wheels together with rawhide riems, to prevent the Nguni pushing them aside and forcing a breach. In the gaps between the wagon bodies, and under the wagon beds they packed thorn-branches, leaving no space for the warriors to crawl through. In the centre of the wagon line they left a narrow gate.
Jim ordered that the horses and the other domestic animals were to be herded and grazed close by, so that within minutes they could be driven into the protection of the laager and the gateway sealed off against attack with faggots of thornbush placed ready to hand.
“Do you truly believe that the Nguni will return?” Louisa tried to hide her fear as she asked the question. “Don’t you think they might have learned by hard experience and that they will pass us by?”
“Old Tegwane knows them well. He has no doubt that they will come if only because they dearly love a fight,” Jim replied.
“How many more of them are there?” she asked. “Does Tegwane know?”
“The old man cannot count. He says only that they are many.”
Jim carefully measured and selected a spot well out in front of the wagons, where he made Smallboy and his drivers dig a shallow hole. In it he placed a fifty-pound keg of coarse black gunpowder, set a fuse of slow-match in the bung-hole and ran it back between the wheels of the centre wagon. He covered the keg with sacks of pebbles from the river bed which he hoped would scatter like musket balls when the keg exploded.
He had the men cut firing loopholes into the wall of thorns through which they could lay down enfilading fire along the front of the defences. With the grindstone Smallboy sharpened the naval cutlasses and placed them ready to hand. Then the loaded muskets were stacked beside the cutlasses, with powder kegs and shot bags and spare ramrods close by. Louisa instructed and rehearsed the voorlopers and herd-boys in loading and priming the weapons. She had some difficulty in persuading them that if one handful of gunpowder resulted in such a satisfactory explosion, two would be no improvement; it might result in a burst gun barrel and even the decapitation of whoever pulled the trigger.
The water fagies were refilled from the river pool and made ready, either to slake the thirst of fighting men or to quench the flames if the Nguni latched on to the old trick of hurling lighted torches into the laager.
Two herd-boys were placed as lookouts on the crest of the low hill from which Louisa had first spied the charnel field. Jim gave them a clay fire-pot, and ordered them to light a fire of green leaves if they saw the main Nguni impi, or warrior band, approaching. The smoke would warn the camp and, when it was lit, they could race down the hill into the laager to spread the alarm. Jim made certain that the boys came down from the hilltop and were safely in the laager each evening before nightfall. It would have been heartless to leave them out there in the dark at the mercy of wild beasts and Nguni scouts.
“The Nguni never attack at night,” Tegwane told Jim. “They say that the darkness is for cowards. A true warrior should die only in the sunlight.” Nevertheless Jim brought in his pickets and placed sentries around the periphery of the laager at nightfall, and inspected them regularly during the night to make certain that they stayed awake.
“They will come singing and beating their shields,” Tegwane said. “They wish to warn their enemy. They know that their fame precedes them, and that the sound of their voices and sight of their black headdresses fills the bellies of their enemy with fear.”
“Then we must prepare a fitting greeting for them,” Jim said.
They cleared the trees and underbrush for a hundred paces in front of the wagons, and the spans of trek oxen dragged away the felled trees. The ground was left open and bare. The attacking impi would have to cross this killing ground to reach the wagons. Then Jim paced out the distances in front of the defences, and laid a line of white river stones to mark the most effective range and spread patterns of the goose-shot. He impressed on his men that they must not open fire until the first rank of the attackers crossed this line.
When he had completed all his preparations, they settled down to wait. This was the worst time, and the slow drag of the hours was corrosive to their spirits. Jim took advantage of this delay by spending time with Tegwane, learning more about the enemy from him.
“Where do they keep their women and children?”
“They do not bring them to war. Perhaps they leave them in their homeland.”
“Do they have a great store of plunder and riches?”
“They have many cattle, and they love the ivory teeth of the elephant and the hippopotamus.”
“Tell me of their cattle.”
“They have huge herds. The Nguni love their cattle like their own children. They do not slaughter them to eat their meat. Instead they tap off their blood and mix it with the milk. This is their main food.”
A calculating look came into Jim’s eyes as he listened. A prime ox fetched a hundred guilders in the colony.
“Tell me of their ivory.”
“They love ivory very much,” Tegwane replied. “Perhaps they need it for trade with the Arabs of the north or with the Bulamatari.” The name meant Breakers of Rock, a reference to the Portuguese, whose prospectors chipped the reef for traces of gold. Jim was surprised that here, in the deep interior, Tegwane had heard of these nations. He questioned him on this, and Tegwane smiled. “My father’s father knew of you crocodile wizards, and his father before him.”
Jim nodded. It was naïve of him. The Omani Arabs had been trading and slaving in Africa since the fifth century. It was a hundred and fifty years ago that Vasco da Gama landed at Mozambique island and the Portuguese had begun building their forts and trading stations on the mainland. Of course rumours of these events must have penetrated even to the most primitive tribes in the remotest corners of this vast land.
Jim showed the old man the tusks of the bull he had killed, and Tegwane was amazed. “I have never seen teeth of this size before.”
“Where do the Nguni find the ivory? Do they hunt the elephant?”
Tegwane shook his head. “The elephant is a mighty beast, and even the Nguni cannot kill him with their assegais.”
“Where, then, does the ivory come from?”
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��I have heard that there are some tribes who dig pits to trap them, or hang a spear weighted with stones in a tree over the pathway they frequent. When the elephant touches the trip-rope the spear drops and pierces him to the heart.” Tegwane paused and glanced at Bakkat who was asleep under one of the wagons. “I have also heard that those little yellow monkeys of the San sometimes kill them with their poisoned arrows. But they can kill few by these methods.”
“Then where do the Nguni get their ivory?” Jim persisted.
“Each season, especially in the time of the rains, some of the great beasts die of age or sickness or they flounder in mudholes or fall from the mountain passes. The ivory tusks lie there for any man to gather up. During my lifetime my own tribe has gathered up many.”
“What happened to the tusks of your tribe?” Jim leaned forward eagerly.
“When they slaughtered our young men, the Nguni stole them from us, as they steal them from every tribe they attack and massacre.”
“They must have a great store of ivory,” Jim said. “Where do they keep it?”
“They carry it with them,” Tegwane replied. “When they move they load the tusks on to the backs of their cattle. They have as much ivory as they have cattle to carry it. They have many cattle.”
Jim repeated the story to Louisa. “I should like to find one of these herds, each beast with a fortune in ivory strapped to its back.”
“Would it belong to you?” she asked innocently.
“The spoils of war!” he said, with righteous indignation. “Of course it would be mine.” He looked to the hills over which he expected the impis of the Nguni to appear. “When will they come?” he wondered.
The longer they had to wait, the more it played on all their nerves. Jim and Louisa passed much of the time over the chessboard, but when that palled she painted his portrait again. While he posed for her, he read aloud Robinson Crusoe. It was his favourite book. Secretly he saw himself as the resourceful hero. Although he had read it many times, he still chuckled and exclaimed at Crusoe’s adventures, and bewailed his misfortunes.
Two or three times during the day they rode out to inspect the lookouts on the hilltop and make sure the herd-boys were awake and alert, and had not wandered off in search of honey or some other childish distraction. Then they scouted the lie of the land around the laager to make certain the Nguni pickets were not creeping up on them through the gullies and the light forests that were interspersed in the grassy veld.
On the twelfth day after the massacre of the Bakwato, Jim and Louisa rode out alone. The herd-boys on the hilltop were bored and disgruntled, and Jim had to speak to them sternly to make them stay at their posts.
They came back down the hill and crossed the river at the ford. They rode out almost to the site of the massacre, but turned back before they reached it. Jim wanted to spare Louisa the harrowing memories associated with that place.
They returned to within sight of the laager, and Jim stopped to examine the defences through the lens of the telescope to see if he could pick out any weak spot he had overlooked. While he was preoccupied Louisa dismounted and looked around for some place where she could go about her private business. The ground was open here, and the grass had been grazed down by the game herds until it reached only half-way to her knees. However, she saw that close by ran a donga, a natural gully cut out by the rainwaters draining towards the river. She handed Trueheart’s reins to Jim.
“I will not be gone long,” she said, and started towards the gully. Jim opened his mouth to caution her, then thought better of it and looked away to preserve her modesty.
As Louisa approached the lip of the gully she became aware of a strange sound, a whisper, a susurration, that seemed to tremble in the air. She kept on walking, but more slowly, puzzled but not alarmed. The sound grew louder, like running water or the hum of insects. She was not certain from which direction it came.
She glanced back at Jim, but he was gazing through the lens, not looking in her direction. It was clear that he had not heard the sound. She hesitated then stepped to the lip of the donga and looked down into it. As she did so, the sound rose to an angry buzz as though she had disturbed a nest of hornets.
The gully below her was closely packed with rank upon rank of Nguni warriors. They were sitting on their shields, but each man had his stabbing assegai in his right hand and they were pointing the blades at her, and at the same time shaking the weapons, a slight trembling movement that agitated the war rattles on each wrist. This gave off the buzzing sound that had troubled her. The small movement also set the glossy black feathers in their headdresses dancing. Their naked torsos were anointed with fat so that they shone like washed coal. The whites of their eyes staring up at her were the only contrast in this seething expanse of black. It seemed to Louisa that she was gazing down on an enormous dragon coiled in its lair, black scales glittering, angry and venomous, poised to strike.
She whirled and ran. “Jim! Beware! They are here!”
Jim looked back, startled by her cry. He saw no sign of danger, only Louisa racing towards him with her face working with terror.
“What is it?” he called, and at that moment the ground seemed to open behind the running girl and from it erupted a mass of warriors. Their bare feet beat upon the hard earth and the war rattles on their ankles crashed in unison. They drummed on their black war-shields with the assegais, a deafening roar, and they shouted, “Bulala! Bulala amathagati! Kill! Kill the wizards!”
Louisa fled before this rolling tide. She ran like a whippet, nimble and quick, but one of her pursuers was quicker still. He was tall and lean, made taller by the headdress. The muscle started proud in his belly and shoulders, as he bounded after her. He threw aside his shield to unburden himself. Although Louisa had a lead of twenty paces or more, he was overhauling her swiftly. The haft of his assegai rested lightly on his shoulder, but the long blade was pointed forward, poised for the thrust between her shoulder-blades. Jim had a fleeting memory of the Bakwato girl run through in this way, the blade appearing magically out of the middle of her breast, smeared pink with her heart’s blood.
He sent Drumfire into full gallop and, dragging Trueheart on the rein behind him, raced to meet Louisa. But he saw that the leading warrior was already too close. She would not have time to mount before he was on her, his blade transfixed through her body. He did not slow or check Drumfire’s charge. They brushed past Louisa so closely that her hair fluttered in the wind of their passing. Jim tossed her Trueheart’s reins.
“Get up and away!” he shouted as he went by. He had only one musket with him, for he had not expected a fight. He could not afford to waste that single shot. The light ball of the pistol might only wound and not kill cleanly. There was no latitude for error here. He had seen the warrior throw aside his shield. He jerked the naval cutlass from its scabbard. Under the eye of Aboli and his father he had practised with this weapon until he mastered the Manual of Arms. He did not brandish the blade to warn his man. He charged Drumfire straight at the Nguni, and saw him check and change his grip on the assegai. His dark eyes locked on Jim’s face. Jim knew by his haughty expression that he would not deign to wound the horse under him, but would take him on man to man. He watched for the assegai thrust, leaning forward to meet it. The Nguni struck, and Jim dropped the cutlass into the classic counter, sweeping aside the point of the assegai, then reversed and, as he passed, he swung the cutlass back-handed. Smallboy had put a fine edge on the steel and it was sharp as a butcher’s cleaver. Jim swept it across the back of the warrior’s neck, and felt the hilt jar in his hand as it sheared cleanly through his vertebrae. The man dropped as though a gallows’ trap had opened under him.
At the pressure of his knees Drumfire spun round like a weathercock in a fluke of wind. He saw that Louisa was having difficulty trying to mount Trueheart. The mare had smelt the Nguni and seen the ranks racing towards them. She was skittering sideways and throwing her head wildly. Holding on to the reins Louisa was being pul
led off her feet.
Jim sheathed the bloody cutlass, and turned Drumfire in behind her. Leaning from the saddle he grabbed a handful of the baggy seat of her breeches and boosted her up into the saddle. Then he steadied her with a hand on her arm as they galloped back knee to knee. As soon as they were clear he drew his pistol and fired a shot into the air, to alert the sentries at the laager. As soon as he saw that they had heard it, he told Louisa, “Ride back! Warn them to get the animals into the laager. Send Bakkat and Smallboy to help me delay them.”
To his relief she had the good sense not to argue, and raced away, pushing Trueheart to the top of her speed. He turned back to face the charging warriors, drew the musket from its sheath and walked Drumfire towards them. He picked out the induna in the front rank who was leading them. Tegwane had told him how to recognize the captains. “They are always older men, and they wear ostrich plumes in their headdress and white cow tails on their arms.”
He touched Drumfire with his toes and broke into a trot, heading directly for the induna. By now the Nguni must have understood the terrible menace of the firearms, but the man showed no fear: he increased the speed of his charge, and lifted his shield to clear his spear arm, his face twisted with the ferocity of his war-cry.
“Bulala! Kill! Kill!” Behind him his men surged forward. Jim let him come in close, then fired. Still at full run the induna went down, the assegai flew from his hand and he rolled in the grass. The spread of shot caught the two men directly behind him, and sent them tumbling too.