Blue Horizon

by Wilbur Smith

As he returned to Louisa’s side the singing of the impis swelled to a crescendo, then ended with the stamp of hundreds of horny bare feet that rang out like a salvo of artillery. The silence after it was shocking.

  “Now it begins,” Jim said and lifted the telescope.

  The black ranks stood like a petrified forest. The only movement was the rising dawn wind ruffling the vulture feathers in their headdresses. Then Jim saw that the centre of the line was opening like the petals of a night orchid, and a column of men came through, winding like a serpent down the grassy hillside towards the laager. In stark contrast to the massed impis they wore kilts made of strips of white oxhide, and tall headdresses of snowy egret feathers. Twenty men led the column. On their hips were slung war drums made from hollowed-out logs. The rank behind them carried trumpets of kudu horn. In the centre of the column there was a massive litter whose interior was screened by leather curtains. Twenty men carried it on their shoulders, shuffling and swaying, dipping and turning.

  One of the drummers began to tap out a tattoo, which throbbed like the pulse of all the world, and the impis swayed to the rhythm. One by one the other drummers joined in and the music swelled. Then the trumpeters lifted their kudu horns, and blew a warlike fanfare. The column opened into a single file with the great litter in the centre, and halted just out of range of the barricade of the laager. The trumpets sounded a second blast that rang against the hills, then another eerie silence fell.

  By now the first rays of the rising sun played over the massed regiments. It struck sparks of light from the blades of the assegais.

  “We should strike now,” Louisa said. “We should sortie on horseback, and attack them first.”

  “They are already too close. We would only get in two or three volleys before they drove us back into the laager,” Jim told her gently. “Let them expend themselves on the barricades. I want to save the horses for what will come later.”

  Again the trumpets sang out and the bearers lowered the litter to the ground. There was another trumpet blast, and from the litter emerged a single dark shape like a hornet from its nest.

  “Bayete!” thundered the regiments. “Bayete!” The royal salute drowned the drums and trumpets. Hurriedly Jim snatched up the telescope and stared at the macabre figure.

  The woman was slim and sinuous, taller than her bodyguards in their egret headdresses. She was stark naked, but her entire body was painted in fantastic patterns. There were glaring white circles around her eyes. A straight white line ran up her throat, over her chin and nose, between her eyes and over her shaven scalp, dividing her head into hemispheres. One half was painted blue as the sky, the other half blood red. She carried a small ceremonial assegai in her right hand, the haft covered with fine designs of bead-work and tassels of lion’s mane hair.

  Whorls and swirls of white paint highlighted her breasts and her mons veneris. Diamond and arrowhead patterns enhanced the length of her slim arms and legs.

  “Manatasee!” Tegwane said softly. “The queen of death.”

  Manatasee began to dance, a slow, mesmeric movement like that of an erect cobra. She came down the hillside towards the laager, graceful and deadly. None of the men in the laager moved or spoke and stared in dread fascination.

  The impis moved forward behind her, as though she were the head of the dragon and they the monstrous body. Their weapons sparkled like reptilian scales in the low sun.

  Manatasee stopped just short of the cut line that Jim had cleared in front of the wagons. She stood with her legs apart and her back arched, thrusting her hips towards them. Behind her the drums crashed out again and the kudu-horn trumpets shrilled.

  “Now she will mark us for death.” Tegwane spoke loud enough for them all to hear, but Jim was not certain what he meant until from between her long painted legs Manatasee sent a powerful gush of urine arcing towards them.

  “She pisses upon us,” Tegwane said.

  Manatasee’s stream dwindled and as the last yellow drops fell to earth she let out a wild scream and leaped high in the air. As she landed again she aimed the point of her assegai at the laager.

  “Bulala!” she screeched. “Kill them all!” A deafening roar went up from the impis and they surged forward.

  Jim snatched up one of his London rifles, and tried to pick up the queen in the sights, but he had left it too late. As with all the others, Manatasee had held him enthralled. Before he could fire she was screened by the advancing wall of her warriors. A plumed induna had stepped in front of her, and in frustration Jim almost shot him down, but checked his trigger finger at the last instant. He knew that the sound of the shot would be echoed by his own men, and the first carefully aimed volley would be wasted before the enemy were in effective range. He lowered the rifle and strode down the barricades, calling to them: “Steady now! Let them come in close. Don’t be greedy. There will be enough for all of you.” Only Smallboy laughed at his joke. The sound was raucous and forced.

  Jim moved back to his place beside Louisa, nonchalant and unhurried, setting an example to the musketeers and to the boys. The front rank of the impi was sweeping up to the line of white stones. They came dancing and singing, stamping their bare feet and shaking their war rattles, beating with the bright blades upon their shields. There were no gaps between the black shields.

  I have let them come too close, Jim thought. To his fevered gaze, they seemed already within range with those deadly stabbing blades. Then he saw that they had not yet reached the stones. He steeled his nerve and shouted down the line, “Wait! Hold your fire!”

  He picked out the induna who was still in the front rank. He was horribly scarred. An axe cut ran from his scalp through his eye and down his cheek. The healed cicatrice was smooth and shiny, and over the top edge of his black shield the empty eye socket seemed to glare straight at Jim.

  “Wait!” Jim called. “Let them come.” Now he could see the separate drops of sweat sliding down the induna’s cheeks like grey seed pearls. The man’s bare feet kicked over one of the cairns of white river stones.

  “Now, fire!” Jim shouted, and the first volley was a single clap of thunder. The gunsmoke spurted out in a grey cloudbank.

  From such close quarters the rawhide shields were no protection at all. The goose-shot cut through, and the destruction was terrible. The front rank seemed to dissolve in the wash of smoke. The heavy lead pellets drove clean through flesh and bone, going on to rattle against the shields and bodies of those behind. The second rank stumbled over the dead and dying. Those warriors coming up behind were impatient to get within assegai range. They shoved forward with their shields, knocking off-balance the stunned survivors in the front rank.

  The smoking gun was snatched from Jim’s grip and a loaded musket thrust into his hands by one of the herd-boys. The second volley bellowed out with almost the same precision as the first, but then each successive volley became more ragged as some of the musketeers fired faster, served more quickly by their boys.

  Mounds of dead and wounded piled up in front of the barricades, and the warriors coming up from the rear ranks had to clamber over them. The limp corpses were treacherous footing, and slowed them down, while the muskets were changed swiftly and a continuous rolling fire thundered down the line of wagons.

  When the most determined Nguni reached the barricades they tried to tear away the thorn branches with their bare hands, but the musket fire never slackened. They climbed over their own dead and tried to scale the sides of the wagons. The relentless fire from the redoubts caught them in enfilade, and they tumbled back on to those below them.

  The narrow wedge of land between the pool of the river and the high clay bank of the stream compressed the impi as they advanced in a solid mass. Like the sweep of a scythe, every blast of shot from the muskets cut swathes through them.

  The wind was blowing from the direction of the river, into the faces of the attackers, and the gunsmoke rolled over them in a dense fog, half blinding them and confusing their attack. The sam
e wind cleared the range for the defenders.

  One of the warriors used the spokes of a wagon wheel as a ladder and succeeded in clambering over the tailboard of the central wagon. Jim was occupied with the Nguni storming the barricade directly in front of him when Louisa’s scream alerted him. As he turned, the warrior stabbed at Louisa over the side of the wagon. She jumped back but the steel point slit the front of her tunic.

  Jim dropped his empty musket and grabbed the cutlass he had pegged into the wood of the wagon, ready to hand. He sent a thrust deep into the man’s chest, under his raised right arm. As he fell back, Jim jerked his blade clear and pegged the point back into the wagon, then reached back to take the loaded musket from the boy behind him.

  “Good lad!” he grunted, and shot down the next attacker as he tried to pull himself up the side of the wagon. Jim glanced to his right and saw that Louisa had returned to her place by his side. The front of her tunic flapped open where the assegai had ripped it and a flash of her tender white skin showed in the tear.

  “You’re not hurt?” He smiled encouragement at her. Her face and arms were already blackened with the soot of gunsmoke, and her eyes were misty blue in contrast. She nodded without smiling, and took the next gun her loader handed her. She paused, let the oncoming warrior reach up to start scaling the barricade and then she fired. The recoil rocked her back on her feet, but the man cried out as the shot whipped into his face and throat and he slumped back on to the man beneath him.

  Jim lost track of the passage of time. It all became a blur of smoke, sweat and gunfire. The smoke choked them, the sweat ran into their eyes, and the gunfire deafened and dazed them. Then, abruptly, the warriors who, a moment before, had been swarming like hiving bees upon the barricades were gone.

  The defenders gazed about them in astonishment, seeking another target to fire at. The bank of gunsmoke drifted away, and it came as a shock to see the shattered impis running and staggering back up the hillside, dragging their wounded with them.

  “To horse! We must mount and pursue them,” Louisa called to Jim.

  He was amazed by her aggressive spirit, and that her grasp of tactics was so astute. “Wait! They are not beaten yet.” He pointed beyond the retreating impis. “Look! Manatasee still has half her forces in reserve.” Louisa shaded her eyes. Just below the crest of the high ground she saw the orderly ranks of warriors sitting on their shields, waiting for the order to attack.

  The herd-boys ran up with the water bottles. They swallowed and gasped, and drank again, spluttering in their eagerness. Jim hurried down the line, anxiously questioning each of his men.

  “Are you hurt? Are you all right?” It seemed impossible, but not one had been touched. Louisa had come closest, with the assegai thrust that had split open her tunic.

  She scrambled through the afterclap of her own wagon and, within a short while, emerged again. Her face and arms were scrubbed pink. She wore a fresh tunic, and a starched, ironed headcloth bound about her hair. She hurried to help Zama relight the cooking fires and prepare a hasty meal for the defenders. She brought Jim a pewter plate piled with hunks of bread, and cuts of grilled venison and pickles.

  “We have been fortunate,” she said, as she watched him wolf down the food. “More than once I was certain they were going to overwhelm us.”

  Jim shook his head and replied, with his mouth half full, “Even the bravest men cannot prevail against firearms. Have no fear, Hedgehog, it’s hard but in the end we will survive.”

  She saw that he spoke to encourage her rather than out of conviction, and smiled. “Whatever comes we will face it side by side.”

  As she spoke the singing started again on the hillside. The defenders, who had been stretched out in the shade of the wagons, pulled themselves to their feet, and went back to their places at the barricade. The fresh impis were moving forward through the wounded and exhausted stragglers, who were scattered back from the battlefield. Manatasee danced ahead of the advancing cohorts, surrounded by her drummers.

  Jim picked his best London rifle from the rack. He checked the priming. Louisa was watching him.

  “If I can kill the she-wolf, her pack will lose heart,” he told her.

  He stepped to the side of the wagon, and measured the shot. The range was long even for the rifle. The wind had risen and was swirling and gusting—it could blow even the heavy lead ball off its trajectory. Dust obscured the range, and Manatasee was dancing and twisting like a serpent. Jim handed the telescope to Louisa.

  “Call the strike of my shot,” he told her, and braced himself, holding the rifle at high port, waiting for the moment. The wind gusted coolly against his sweaty cheek, then dropped. At the same time a gap opened in the curtain of dust, and Manatasee raised both arms above her head, and posed in this dramatic attitude. Jim swung up the rifle and picked up her tall shape in the notch of the rear sight. He did not try to hold the picture, but let the pip of the foresight ride smoothly up her painted body. At the same time his forefinger took up the slack of the trigger, and the shot crashed out as it came level with her eyes, aiming high to allow for the drop of the ball over the range.

  For an instant Jim was unsighted by the recoil and the smoke, then he focused again. It took the heavy ball a heartbeat to cover the distance, and he saw Manatasee spin round and fall.

  “You have struck her!” Louisa screamed with excitement. “She is down.”

  A growl went up from the impis, the voice of an angry beast.

  “That will break their spirit,” Jim exulted. Then he grunted with surprise. “Sweet Jesus, I do not believe my eyes!”

  Manatasee had risen to her feet again. Even at this range Jim could see the tint of crimson on her painted skin, a rose petal of blood that ran down her flank.

  “It has grazed across her ribs.” Louisa stared through the lens. “She is only lightly wounded.”

  Manatasee pirouetted before her impis showing herself to them, proving that she was still alive. They responded with a joyous shout and lifted their shields to salute her.

  “Bayete!” they bellowed.

  “Zee!” the queen screeched. “Zee, Amadoda!” and she began to ululate. The sound drove her impis into frenzy.

  “Zee!” they exhorted themselves and those about them, and they came down to the wagons like lava pouring from the mouth of the volcano. Manatasee still pranced at the head of the charge.

  Jim snatched up the second rifle of the pair, and fired again, trying to pick out her slender weaving figure from the flowing tide of blackness. The plumed induna at her side threw up his arms and went down, struck squarely by the ball, but Manatasee danced on. Fortified by her rage, she seemed at every instant to grow stronger.

  “Stand firm, and wait your chance,” Jim called to his men.

  The first ranks of the attackers poured across the open ground, and clambered over the mounds of the dead and wounded.

  “Now!” Jim yelled. “Hit them! Hit them hard!”

  The fusillade struck them as though they had run into a wall of stone, but those behind dragged the dead and wounded from the pile and scrambled up into the hellstorm of shot. The barrels of the muskets blistered the fingers of the musketeers when they touched them. The steel was so hot that it could have set off the gunpowder as it was poured into the muzzle. The gun barrels hissed and sizzled when the boys plunged them into the water kegs to quench them. Even in their haste they were careful not to immerse the locks and soak the flints.

  The need to cool the guns slowed up the rate of reloading, the fire slackened as the defenders at the barricades shouted desperately for fresh muskets. Some of the smaller boys were almost exhausted by the gruelling work and were beginning to panic. Louisa left her place at the barricade and ran back to steady and encourage them. “Remember your drill! Steady now, don’t try to hurry!”

  Through the haze of gunsmoke and over the heads of the attackers Jim glimpsed Manatasee again. She was close behind her impi, waving them forward to the attack. Her wild s
creams and ululation goaded them to mightier efforts. Many more of the warriors were swarming over the piles of corpses and reaching the barricade below where Jim stood. The smell of blood was in their nostrils and their expressions were wolfish. Their baying chilled the soul and weakened the arms of the defenders.

  Unable to climb the barricades in the face of the steady volleys, the warriors began to rock the central wagon on its wheels. Fifty of them heaved together, and the wagon swayed dangerously back and forth. Jim realized that soon it would reach the critical point of balance and capsize. The warriors would swarm through the breach it left. The assegais would drink deeply of blood, and the fight would be over in minutes.

  Manatasee had seen the opportunity, and sensed victory almost within her grasp. She pranced in close behind the rear rank of the attackers and climbed on to a mound of rocks to see over their heads.

  “Zee!” she screamed. “Zee!” Her warriors answered her and thrust with their shoulders against the wagon truck. It teetered at the limit of its balance, seemed at any moment to be going over, then fell back on to all four wheels.

  “Shikelela!” shouted the indunas. “Again!” The warriors gathered themselves, and bent to take their grip on the axles and the chassis of the wagon.

  Jim looked back at Manatasee. The mound of rocks on which she stood was the one Jim had built to cover the keg of gunpowder. He glanced under the front wheels of the wagon. The end of the slow match was still lashed to one of the spokes, and the rest of the long fuse ran back under the chassis, under the heaps of the Nguni corpses to the mound on which Manatasee stood. He had buried the fuse under only a light layer of earth. He could see that in places it had been trampled and exposed by the feet of the attackers. Perhaps the other end of the fuse had been plucked from the bung-hole of the powder keg.

  “Only one way to find out!” he told himself grimly. He snatched the next loaded musket that one of his gunboys handed him, and cocked the hammer, then ducked under the swaying body of the wagon.

  If the wagon goes over now, I’ll be crushed like a frog under the wheels, he thought, but he found the end of the fuse and laid it over the pan of the musket lock. He held it there with one hand and pulled the trigger. The falling flint struck a shower of sparks from the frizzen and the powder in the pan flared up in a puff of smoke. The musket jumped in his grip and the shot ploughed into the ground at his feet. The flash in the pan had ignited the fuse. It hissed and blackened, then the flame shot along its length, and disappeared into the earth, like a snake into its hole.