by Wilbur Smith
Bakkat ran to Letee. She dropped the axe and threw herself into his embrace. They clung together for a long time, until Letee had stopped shaking and shivering. Then Bakkat asked, “Shall we go down, woman?” She nodded vehemently.
He led her to the head of the pathway, and they climbed down to the bottom of the hill. They paused beside Xhia’s corpse. He lay on his back, and his eyes were wide and staring. His own arrow-head still protruded from his chest, and his half-severed arm was twisted under his back at an impossible angle.
“This man is of the San, as we are. Why did he try to kill us?” Letee asked.
“I will tell you the story one day,” Bakkat promised her, “but for now let us leave him to his totem, the hyenas.” They turned away, and neither looked back as they broke into the quick trot that eats the wind.
Bakkat was taking his new woman to meet Somoya and Welanga.
Jim Courtney woke slowly in the semi-darkness before sunrise, and stretched voluptuously on the cardell bed. Then, instinctively he reached for Louisa. She was still asleep but she rolled over and threw an arm across his chest. She mumbled something that might have been either an endearment or a protest at being awakened.
Jim grinned and held her closer, then opened his eyes fully and started up. “Where in God’s name do you think you have been?” he roared. Louisa shot bolt upright beside him and they both stared at the two tiny figures perched on the foot of the bed, like sparrows on a fence pole.
Bakkat laughed merrily. It was so good to be back and have Somoya bellowing at him again. “I saw you and Welanga from afar,” he greeted them.
Jim’s expression softened. “I thought the lions had got you. I rode after you but I lost your spoor in the hills.”
“I have been able to teach you nothing about following tracks.” Bakkat shook his head sadly.
Both Jim and Louisa turned their attention to his companion. “Who is this?” Jim demanded.
“This is Letee, and she is my woman,” Bakkat told them.
Letee heard her name mentioned and broke into a sunny golden smile.
“She is very beautiful, and so tall,” said Louisa. Since leaving the colony she had learned to speak the patois fluently. She knew all the expressions of San courtesy.
“No, Welanga,” Bakkat contradicted her. “She is truly very small. For my sake, it is best that Letee is not encouraged to believe that she is tall. Where might such a notion lead us?”
“Is she not at least beautiful?” Louisa insisted.
Bakkat looked at his woman and nodded solemnly. “Yes, she is as beautiful as a sunbird. I dread the day she looks into a mirror for the first time, and discovers just how beautiful she is. That day might mark the beginning of my woes.”
At that Letee piped up in her sweet treble.
“What does she say?” Louisa demanded.
“She says she has never seen such hair or skin as yours. She wants to know if you are a ghost. But enough of woman’s talk.” Bakkat turned to Jim. “Somoya, a strange and terrible thing has happened.”
“What is it?” Jim became deadly serious.
“Our enemies are here. They have found us out.”
“Tell me,” Jim ordered. “We have many enemies. Which ones are these?”
“Xhia,” Bakkat answered. “Xhia stalked Letee and me. He tried to kill us.”
“Xhia!” Jim looked grave. “Keyser and Koots’s hunting dog? Is it possible? We have come three thousand leagues since we last laid eyes on him. Could he have followed us that far?”
“He has followed us, and we can be sure that he has led Keyser and Koots to us.”
“Have you seen them, those two Dutchmen?”
“No, Somoya, but they cannot be far off. Xhia would never come so far if he were alone.”
“Where is Xhia now?”
“He is dead, Somoya. I killed him.”
Jim blinked with surprise, then said in English, “So he will not be answering any questions, then.” Then he reverted to the patois: “Take your beautiful little woman with you and let Welanga and me dress without the benefit of your eyes upon us. I will talk to you again as soon as I have my breeches on.”
Bakkat was waiting by the campfire when Jim emerged from his wagon a few minutes later. Jim called him and they walked away into the forest were no one would overhear them.
“Tell me everything that happened,” Jim ordered. “Where and when did Xhia attack you?” He listened intently to Bakkat’s account. By the time the little man had finished, Jim’s complacency had been shaken. “Bakkat, if Keyser’s men are after us, you must find them. Can you backtrack Xhia and find where he came from?”
“That I know already. Yesterday, while Letee and I were on our way back to you, I came upon Xhia’s old spoor. He had been following me for days. Ever since I left the wagons to follow a honey-guide I found.”
“Before that?” Jim demanded. “Where did he come from before he began to follow you?”
“That way.” Bakkat pointed back at the escarpment, which was now only a faint, hazy line against the sky. “He came along our wagon tracks, as though he had been shadowing us all the way from the Gariep river.”
“Go back!” Jim ordered. “Find out if Keyser and Koots were with him. If they were, I want to know where they are now.”
“It is eight days since Xhia left,” said Captain Herminius Koots bitterly. “I truly believe he has made a run for it.”
“Why would he do that?” Oudeman asked reasonably. “Why now, when we are on the very brink of success, after all these hard and bitter months? The reward you promised him is almost in his hands.” A crafty look came into Oudeman’s eyes. It was time to remind Koots about the reward once again. “All of us have earned our share of the reward. Surely Xhia would not desert at this point, and forfeit his share?”
Koots frowned. He did not enjoy discussing the reward. These last months he had been pondering every possible expedient to avoid having to make good his promises in that regard. He turned to Kadem. “We cannot wait here longer. The fugitives will get clean away from us. We must go on after them without Xhia. Do you not agree?” Since their first meeting the two had swiftly forged an alliance of convenience. Koots had in the front of his mind Kadem’s promise to open the way for him into the favoured service of the Caliph of Oman, the power and riches that would spring from that position.
Kadem knew that Koots was his only chance of finding Dorian Courtney again. “I think you are right, Captain. We no longer need the little barbarian. We have found the enemy. Let us go forward and attack them.”
“Then we are in accord,” Koots said. “We will ride hard and get well ahead of Jim Courtney. We will lay an ambush for them on ground where we have the advantage.”
It was a simple matter for Koots to keep track of Jim’s caravan without closing in on him and disclosing his own presence. The dust kicked up by the cattle herds could be seen from leagues away. Having convinced himself that he no longer needed Xhia, Koots led his troop down the escarpment, then made a wide, cautious detour into the south to come out ten leagues ahead of the caravan. Now they started back to intercept it head-on. This way they would leave no tracks for Jim Courtney’s Bushman tracker to pick up before they had a chance to spring their ambush.
The ground was favourable to them. It was evident that Jim Courtney was following a river valley down towards the ocean. There was grazing and good water for his herds along this way. However, at one point the river was pinched into a narrow gorge where it ran through a line of rugged hills. Koots and Kadem surveyed the bottleneck from the height of the hills above.
“They will have to come through here with the wagons,” Koots said, with satisfaction. “The only other passage through these hills is four days’ travel to the south.”
“It will take them days to traverse the gorge, which means that they must laager the wagons for at least one night in its confines,” Kadem agreed. “We will be able to make a night attack. They will not be expect
ing that. The Nguni warriors they have with them will not fight in the dark. We will be the foxes in the hen coop, it will all be over before dawn breaks.”
They waited on the high ground, and at last watched the slow line of wagons enter the mouth of the gorge below them and follow the bank of the river deeper into the narrow way. Koots recognized Jim Courtney and his woman riding ahead of the lead wagon, and his smile was savage. He watched them make camp and outspan in the gut of the gorge. Koots was relieved to see that they made no attempt to laager the wagons, but merely parked them casually among the trees on the river bank, widely separated from each other. Behind the wagons the herds of cattle flowed into the mouth of the gorge. They watered at the river and the Nguni herders began to unload the ivory tusks each beast carried on its back.
This was the first time that Koots had been close enough to the caravan to see the quantity of the booty. He tried to count the cattle, but in the dust and confusion that was not possible. It was like trying to count the individual fish in a shoal of sardines. He turned his spyglass on the mounds of ivory piled up on the bank of the river. Here was a treasure greater than he had allowed himself to imagine.
He watched as the cattle settled down for the night, guarded by their Nguni herders. Then, as the sun sank and the light began to fade, Koots and Kadem left their hiding-place on the high ground and sneaked back from the skyline to where Sergeant Oudeman was holding the horses.
“Good, so, Oudeman,” Koots told him as he mounted. “They are in a perfect position for the attack. We will go back now to join the others.”
They crossed the next ridgeline, then dropped down a steep game trail into the river gorge.
Bakkat watched them go. Even then he waited until the bottom limb of the sun touched the horizon before he stirred from his own place of concealment on the higher hilltop across the gorge. He was taking no chance on Koots doubling back. In the dusk he dropped swiftly and silently down the steep side of the gorge to report to Jim.
Jim listened until Bakkat had concluded. “That does it,” he said, with satisfaction. “Koots will attack tonight. Now that he has seen the cattle and the ivory, he will not be able to contain his greed. Follow them, Bakkat. Watch their every move. I will listen for your signals.”
As soon as it was dark enough to hide them from any watcher on the hilltops, Jim inspanned the wagons again and moved them into a narrow re-entrant at the foot of the hills, with steep cliffs on three sides. They worked as silently as possible, without whipcracking or shouting. In this readily defensible position they laagered the wagons securely and lashed them wheel to wheel. They drove the herd of spare horses into the centre of the square. The horses they would ride tonight were hitched to the outside of the wagons, saddled and with muskets and cutlasses in the scabbards, ready for an instant sortie.
Then Jim went out to where Inkunzi, the head herdsman, and his Nguni waited. Under Jim’s orders they bunched up the cattle and moved them quietly another three cables’ length up the gorge from the bedding ground Koots had spied out at sundown. Jim spoke to the herders and explained exactly what he wanted of them. There was some muttered protest from these men, who looked upon the cattle as their children and were highly solicitous of their welfare, but Jim snarled at them and their protests subsided.
The cattle had sensed the mood of their herders, and they were restless and fretful. Inkunzi moved among them and played them a lullaby on his reed flute. They began to settle and some couched for the night. However, they kept bunched up together; in these nervous hours they needed the mutual assurance of the herd.
Jim went back to the wagons and made sure that all his men had eaten their dinner, and that they were booted and armed, ready to ride. Then he and Louisa climbed a short way up the cliff above the laager. From there they would be able to hear Bakkat’s signals. They sat close together, sharing a woollen cape against the sudden night chill and talked quietly.
“They won’t come before moonrise,” Jim predicted.
“When is that?” Louisa asked. Earlier in the evening they had consulted the almanac together, but she asked again mainly to hear his voice.
“A few minutes before ten of the clock. We are seven days from full moon. Just enough light for it.”
At last the moonrise lightened the eastern horizon. Jim stiffened and threw off the cape. On the hills on the far side of the gorge an eagle owl hooted twice. An eagle owl never hoots twice. “That is Bakkat,” Jim said quietly. “They are coming.”
“Which side of the river?” Louisa asked, as she stood up beside him.
“They will come to where they saw the wagons at sunset, on this side of the river.” The eagle owl hooted again, much closer.
“Koots is coming on fast.” Jim turned to the path down to the laager. “Time to mount up.”
The men were waiting beside the horses, darkly muffled figures. Jim spoke a few words to each quietly. Some of the herd-boys had grown enough to be able to ride and handle a musket. The smallest, led by Izeze, the flea, would bring up the pack-horses with spare powder, shot and the waterbags, in case there was heavy fighting. Tegwane had twenty of the Nguni warriors under his command and he would stay to guard the wagons.
Intepe, Tegwane’s granddaughter, was standing beside Zama, helping him secure his equipment on Crow’s back. These days, the two spent much of their time together. Jim went to him now, and spoke low: “Zama, you are my other arm. One of us must ride beside Welanga every minute. Do not become separated from her.”
“Welanga should stay in the laager with the other women,” Zama replied.
“You are right, old friend.” Jim grinned. “She should do as I tell her, but I have never been able to find the words to convince her of that.”
The eagle owl hooted again, three times. “They are close now.” Jim looked at the gibbous moon sailing above the hills.
“Mount!” he ordered. Every man knew what he had to do. Quietly they swung up on to the horses’ backs. On Drumfire and Trueheart, Jim and Louisa led them to where Inkunzi waited with his warriors, guarding the bedded herds.
“Are you ready?” Jim asked, as he rode up. Inkunzi’s shield was on his shoulder, and his assegai glinted in the moonlight. His men pressed up close behind him.
“I will lay a feast for your hungry blades tonight. Let them eat and drink their fill,” Jim told them. “Now you know what you have to do. Let us begin.”
Quickly and silently, in an orderly, disciplined evolution, the warriors formed into an extended double rank across the breadth of the gorge, from river bank to cliff wall. The horsemen drew up behind them.
“We are ready, great lord!” Inkunzi sang out. Jim drew his pistol from the holster on the front of his saddle and fired a shot into the air. Immediately the still night was plunged into hubbub and uproar. The Nguni drummed on their shield with the blades of their assegais and shouted their war-cries. The horsemen fired their muskets and yelled like banshees. They surged forward down the gorge, and the cattle lumbered to their feet. The bulls bellowed in alarm for they were sensitive to the temper and mood of their herders. The breeding cows lowed plaintively, but when the ranks of yelling, drumming warriors bore down on them they panicked and whirled away before them.
These were all heavy beasts with great humps and swinging dewlaps. The span of their horns was twice the reach of a man’s spread arms. Over the centuries the Nguni had bred them for this attribute, so that the cattle might better defend themselves against lions and other predators. They could run like wild antelope and when threatened they would defend themselves with those great racks of horn. In a dark and solid mass they stampeded down the valley. The running warriors and galloping horsemen pressed close behind them.
Koots was well satisfied that they had made a silent approach, and that they had not been detected by Jim Courtney’s pickets. There was a good moon and, apart from the usual night sounds of birds and small nocturnal animals, all was silent and still.
Koots and Kadem were
riding stirrup to stirrup. They knew that they had still more than a mile to cover before they reached the spot on the river bank where they had seen the wagons outspanned. All of the Hottentots and the three Arabs knew exactly what to do. Before the alarm went up, they must get among the wagons and shoot down Jim Courtney’s people as they emerged. Then they could deal with the Ngunis. Even though they were greater in number, they were armed only with spears. They were the lesser threat.
“No quarter,” Koots had ordered. “Kill them all.”
“What about the women?” Oudeman asked. “I haven’t had a taste of the honey-pot since we left the colony. You promised us a go at the blonde girl.”
“If you can catch yourself a bit of poesje, well and good. But make sure all of the men are dead before you drop your pants. If not, you might get a cutlass up your arse end to help you along while you’re pumping cream.” They had all laughed. At times Koots could show the common touch and speak to them in the language they understood best.
Now the troopers pressed forward eagerly. Earlier that day, from the heights above the gorge, some had glimpsed the cattle, the ivory and the women. They had told their companions and all were fired by the promise of pillage and rape.
Suddenly a single musket shot thudded out in the darkness ahead and, without waiting for the order, the column reined in. They peered ahead uneasily.
“Son of the great whore!” Koots swore. “What was that?” He did not have long to wait for his answer. Abruptly the night was filled with uproar and clamour. None of them had ever heard before the sound of drumming on warshields, and that made it more alarming. Moments later there was a fusillade of musket fire, wild shouts and screams, the bellowing and lowing of hundreds of cattle, then the rising thunder of hoofs bearing down on them out of the night.