by Wilbur Smith
Oudeman lifted his hat and scratched his bald pate. “North-east,” he grunted.
“So, if we go southwards will we catch up with Courtney?” Koots asked, in a kindly tone.
“No, but…” Oudeman’s voice trailed off.
“But what?”
“Captain, sir, without the horses we will never get back to the colony.”
Koots stood up and flicked the coffee grounds out of his mug. “The reason we are here, Oudeman, is to catch Jim Courtney, not to return to the colony. Mount!” He looked at Xhia. “Good, so! You, yellow baboon, take the spoor again and eat the wind.”
There was water in the streams and the rivers they crossed, but no grass on the veld. They rode for fifty and then a hundred leagues without finding grazing. In the larger rivers they found aquatic weeds and lily stems beneath the surface of the water. They waded out to harvest them with their bayonets, and fed them to the horses. In one steep, narrow valley the sweet-thorn trees had not been entirely stripped of their foliage. They climbed into the trees and cut down the branches that the locusts had not torn down with their weight. The horses ate the green leaves hungrily, but this was not their normal diet and they derived only small benefit from it.
By now the animals were showing all the signs of slow starvation, but Koots never wavered in his determination. He led them on across the desolation. The horses were so weakened that the riders were forced to dismount and lead them up any sharp incline to husband their strength.
The men were hungry too. The game had disappeared along with the grass. The once teeming veld was deserted. They ate the last few handfuls in the leather grain sacks, and then were reduced to any windfall that the ruined veld might provide.
With his slingshot Xhia knocked down the prehistoric blue-headed lizards that lived among the rocks, and they dug up the burrows of moles and spring-rats that were surviving on subterranean roots. They roasted them without skinning or cleaning the carcasses. This would have wasted precious nourishment. They simply threw them whole upon the coals, let the fur frizzle off, the skin blacken and burst open. Then they picked the half-cooked flesh off the tiny bones with their fingers. Xhia chewed the discarded bones like a hyena.
He discovered a treasure in an abandoned ostrich nest. There were seven ivory-coloured eggs in the rude scrape in the ground. Each egg was almost the size of his own head. He capered around the nest, screeching with excitement. “This is another gift that clever Xhia brings to you. The ostrich, which is my totem, has left this for me.” He changed his totem with as little compunction as he would take a new woman. “Without Xhia you would have perished long ago.”
He selected one of the ostrich eggs, set it on end in the sand, then looped his bowstring around the shaft of an arrow. He placed the point of the arrow on the top of the shell. By sawing the bow rapidly back and forth he spun the arrow. The point drilled neatly through the thick shell. As it broke through there was a sharp hiss of escaping gas and a yellow fountain erupted high in the air, like champagne from a bottle that had been shaken violently. Xhia clapped his open mouth over the hole and sucked out the contents of the egg.
The men around him leaped backwards, exclaiming with alarm and disgust as a sulphurous stench engulfed them.
“Mother of a mad dog!” Koots swore. “The thing is rotten.”
Xhia rolled his eyes with relish, but did not remove his mouth from the hole, lest the rest of the yellow liquid spray out on to the dry earth and be lost. He gulped it down greedily.
“Those eggs have lain there since the last breeding season—six months in the hot sun. They are so badly addled that they would poison a dog hyena.” Oudeman choked and turned away.
Xhia sat beside the nest and drank two of the eggs without pause, except to belch or chuckle with pleasure. Then he packed those that remained into his leather bag. He slung it over his shoulder and set off again along the wheel ruts of Jim Courtney’s wagon train.
The men and horses grew daily weaker and more emaciated. Only Xhia was plump and his skin shone with health and vigour. The addled ostrich eggs, the castings of owls, the dung of lions and jackals, bitter roots and herbs, the maggots of blow-flies, the larvae of wasps and hornets—food that only he could stomach—sustained him.
Wearily the band climbed another denuded hillside and came upon yet another of Jim Courtney’s camps. This one was different from the hundreds they had found before. The wagon train had paused here long enough to build grass huts and set up long smoking racks of raw timber over beds of what was by now cold black ash, most of it scattered on the wind.
“Here Somoya killed his first elephant,” Xhia announced, after only a cursory examination of the abandoned campsite.
“How do you know that?” Koots demanded, as he dismounted stiffly. He stood with clenched fists pressed into his aching back, and gazed around him.
“I know it because I am clever and you are stupid,” Xhia said, in the language of his people.
“None of that monkey talk,” Koots snarled at him. But he was too tired to cuff him. “Answer me straight!”
“They have smoked a mountain of meat on these racks, and these are the knucklebones of the elephant from which they have made a stew.” He picked a bone out of the grass. A few shreds of sinew adhered to it and Xhia gnawed at them before he went on: “I will find the rest of the carcass nearby.”
He disappeared like a tiny puff of yellow smoke, a way he had that never failed to take Koots by surprise. One moment he was standing in plain sight, the next he was gone. Koots sank down in the meagre shade of a bare tree. He did not have long to wait. Xhia appeared again, as suddenly as he had vanished, with the huge white thigh bone of a bull elephant.
“A great elephant!” he confirmed. “Somoya has become a mighty hunter, as his father was before him. He has cut the tusks from the skull. By the holes in the jawbone I can tell that each tusk was as long as two men, one standing on the shoulders of the other. They were as thick around as my chest.” He puffed it out to illustrate.
Koots had little interest in the subject, and jerked his head to indicate the abandoned huts. “How long did Somoya camp here?”
Xhia glanced at the depth of the ash in the pits, at the midden heaps and the worn footpaths between the huts, and showed the fingers of both hands twice. “Twenty days.”
“Then we have gained that much upon them,” Koots said, with grim satisfaction. “Find something for us to eat before we go on.”
Under Xhia’s direction the troopers dug up a spring-hare and a dozen blind golden moles. A pair of white-collared crows was attracted by this activity, and Oudeman brought them down with a single musket shot. The moles tasted like chicken but the flesh of the crows was disgusting, tainted with the carrion of their diet. Only Xhia ate it with relish.
They were sick with weariness, and saddle sore, and after they had eaten the scraps of flesh they rolled into their blankets just as the sun was setting. Xhia woke them with squeals of excitement, and Koots staggered to his feet with his pistol in one hand, drawn sword in the other. “To arms! On me!” he shouted, before he was fully awake. “Fix your bayonets!”
Then he stopped short and gazed into the eastern sky. It was alight with a weird glow. The Hottentots whimpered with superstitious awe and cowered in their kaross blankets. “It is a warning,” they told each other, but softly so that Koots could not hear them. “It is a warning that we should turn back to the colony, and abandon this mad chase.”
“It is the burning eye of the Kulu Kulu,” Xhia sang, and danced for the great shining deity in the sky above him. “He is watching over us. He promises rain and the return of the herds. There will be sweet green grass, and rich red meat. Soon, very soon.”
Instinctively the three Dutchmen moved closer together.
“This is the star that guided the three wise men to Bethlehem.” Koots was an atheist, but he knew the other two were devout, so he turned the phenomenon deftly to his advantage. “It is beckoning us on.”
Some in fear, others in joyous anticipation, they all watched the comet’s stately progress across the heavens. The stars paled and then disappeared, obliterated by its splendour.
Before dawn the trail of the comet stretched in an arc from one horizon to the other. Then, abruptly, it was in turn obscured by dense banks of cloud that rolled in from the east, off the warm Ocean of the Indies. As a murky day broke, thunder rolled against the hills and a blade of vivid lightning ripped open the belly of the clouds. The rain came down. The horses turned their tails into the wind and the men huddled under their tarpaulins as icy squalls swept over them. Only Xhia threw off his loincloth and pranced naked in the rain, throwing back his head and letting the waters fill his open mouth.
It rained for a day and a night without ceasing. The earth dissolved under them, and each gully and donga became a raging river, every depression and hollow in the earth became a lake. Incessantly the rain raked them and the thunder bemused them, like a cannonade of heavy guns. Huddled in their blankets, they shivered with the wet and the cold, their guts cramped and churned with the sour fluids of starvation. At intervals the rain froze before it hit the ground, and hailstones as big as knucklebones rattled against their tarpaulins and drove the horses frantic. Some snapped their ropes and galloped away in front of the sweeping grey squall.
Then on the second day, the clouds broke up and streamed away in dirty grey tatters and the sun burst through, hot and bright. They roused themselves, mounted and sallied out to retrieve the missing horses, which were scattered away for leagues across the veld. One had been killed by a pair of young lions. The two big cats were still on the body, so Koots and Oudeman rode them down and shot both of them in furious retribution. It was another three days wasted before Koots could resume the chase. Though the rain had eroded and, in places, obliterated the wagon trail, Xhia never faltered and led them on without check.
The veld responded joyously to the rain and the hot sun that followed it. Within the first day a soft green fuzz covered the gaunt outlines of the hills, and the trees lifted their drooping bare branches. Before they had gone another hundred leagues the horses’ bellies were distended with sweet new grass, and they encountered the first influx of returning wild game.
From afar Xhia spotted a herd of over fifty hartebeest, each animal the size of a pony, their red coats shining in the sunlight, their thick horns sweeping up then twisting back, tall as a bishop’s mitre. The three Dutchmen spurred out to meet the herd. The strength of the horses was restored by the fresh grazing, and they ran them down swiftly. Musket fire boomed out across the plains.
They butchered the hartebeest where they fell, and built fires beside the carcasses. They threw bleeding hunks of flesh on to the coals and then, half crazed with hunger, they gorged on the roasted meat. Although he was sleek, well fed and only half the size of the troopers, Xhia ate more than any two of them, and for once not even Koots grudged it to him.
Kadem knelt behind a fallen log beside a rain-swollen rill of sweet water. He had laid the musket over the top of the log, with his turban folded into a cushion beneath it. Without this padding the weapon might bounce off the hardwood log at the discharge and the shot fly wide. The musket was one of those they had taken from the powder magazine in the Revenge. Rashood had only managed to steal four small powder bags. The mighty rainstorm that had drenched them for a day and a night had also soaked and caked most of the powder that remained. Kadem had crumbled and sorted the damaged remnants with his fingers, but in the end he had only been able to retrieve a single bag of the precious stuff. To conserve what remained, he had used only half a measure to charge the musket.
Through the riverine bush he watched a small herd of impala antelope feeding. They were the first game he had seen since the locust swarms had passed. They were nibbling the sprigs of new green growth that the rains had brought forth. Kadem picked out one of the rams from the herd, a velvety brown creature with lyre-shaped horns. He was an expert musketeer, but his weapon was half charged and he had loaded only a few lead pellets of goose-shot on top of the powder. For these to be effective he had to let the animal come in close. His moment came and Kadem fired. Through the whirling cloud of gunsmoke he saw the ram stagger, and then, bleating pitifully, it tottered in a circle with its front leg dangling from the shattered shoulder. Kadem dropped the musket and darted forward with the cutlass in his hand. He stunned the ram with a blow of the heavy brass pommel, then rolled it over swiftly and slit its throat while it still lived.
“In God’s Name!” He blessed it and the flesh was halal, no longer profane, fit to be eaten by believers. He whistled softly and his three followers came up the bank of the rill, from where they had hidden. Swiftly they butchered the carcass, then roasted strips of meat from either side of the spine over the small fire Kadem allowed them to build. As soon as the meat was cooked he ordered them to extinguish it. Even in this vast, uninhabited wilderness he was always careful to remain hidden. This was a part of his desert training, where almost every tribe was in a blood feud with all its neighbours.
They ate quickly and sparingly, then rolled the remaining cold cooked meat in their turbans, draped them over their shoulders and knotted them round their waists.
“In God’s Name, we go on.” Kadem stood up and led his three followers along the bank of the stream. It cut through a steep, rugged barrier of hills. By now their robes were stained and the hems so tattered that they seemed to have been nibbled away by rats, barely covering their knees. They had made sandals for themselves from the hides of game they had killed before the locusts came. The ground was harsh and stony underfoot. There were areas carpeted with the three-pointed devil thorns, which always presented one of their spikes uppermost. The auger points could pierce even the most leathery sole to the bone.
By now the rains had repaired most of the damage wreaked by the locust swarms. However, they had no horses and they had travelled hard on foot, from before dawn until sunset each day. Kadem had decided that they must head northwards, and try to reach one of the coastal Omani trading centres beyond the Pongola river before their powder ran out. They were still a thousand leagues or more short of their goal.
They halted again at midday, for even these indefatigable travellers must stop to pray at the appointed times. They had no prayer mats with them, but Kadem estimated the direction of Mecca from the position of the noon sun and they prostrated themselves on the rugged earth. Kadem led the prayers. They affirmed that God was one and Muhammad his last true Prophet. They asked no boon or favour in return for their faith. When their worship was completed in the pure, strict form, they squatted in the shade and ate a little more of the cold roasted venison. Kadem led the quiet conversation, then instructed them in religious and philosophical matters. At last he glanced up at the sun again. “In God’s Name, let us continue the journey.”
They rose and girded themselves, then froze together as they heard, faint but unmistakable, the sound of musket fire.
“Men! Civilized men, with muskets and powder!” Kadem whispered. “To have ventured this far inland they must have horses. All the things we need to save ourselves from perishing in this dreadful place.”
The gunfire came again. He cocked his head and slitted his wild eyes as he tried to pinpoint the source of the sound. He turned in that direction. “Follow me. Move like the wind, swift and unseen,” he said. “They must not know we are here.”
In the middle of that afternoon, Kadem found the spoor of many horses moving towards the north-east. The hoofs were shod with steel and had left clear prints in the rain-damp earth. They followed them at a trot across the plains, which danced and wavered with mirage. In the late afternoon they saw the dark smear of smoke from a campfire ahead. They went forward more cautiously. In the gathering dusk they could mak
e out the twinkle of red flames below the smoke. Closer still, Kadem saw the shapes of men moving in front of the fire. Then the wind of the day faded away, and the night breeze puffed from another direction. Kadem sniffed the air and caught the unmistakable ammoniac tang.
“Horses!” he whispered, with excitement.
Koots leaned back against the bole of the camel-thorn tree and carefully pressed shreds of crumbling dry shag into his clay pipe. His tobacco bag was made from the scrotum of a bull buffalo with a drawn string of sinew to close the mouth. It was less than half full, and he was rationing himself to this half-pipe a day. He lit it with a coal from the fire and coughed softly with pleasure as the first powerful inhalation filled his lungs.
His troopers were spread out under the surrounding trees; each man had picked his own spot to lay out his fur kaross. Their bellies were stuffed with the meat of the hartebeest, the first time in over a month that they had eaten their fill. So that they could better savour this feast, Koots had allowed an early halt to the day’s march. There was almost an hour left of daylight. In the normal run of events they would have camped only when the dusk obscured the wagon ruts they were following.
From the corner of his eye Koots picked up a flicker of movement and he glanced around quickly, then relaxed again. It was only Xhia. Even as Koots watched him he vanished into the darkening veld. A Bushman, with every hand turned against him all his life, would never lie down to sleep until he had swept his back trail. Koots knew he would make a wide circle out across the ground that they had already travelled. If an enemy was following them, Xhia would have cut his tracks.
Koots smoked his pipe down to the last crumb, savouring every breath. Then, regretfully, he knocked out the ash. With a sigh he settled down under his kaross and closed his eyes. He did not know how long he had slept, but he woke with a light touch on his cheek. As he started up Xhia made a soft, clucking sound to calm him.