Blue Horizon

by Wilbur Smith

  “Beshwayo drank twice as much of that infernal brew as I did. Do you not think he may have the good sense to cancel the festival?”

  “No,” said Louisa, with an angelic smile. “I do not think he will for here come his indunas to escort us.”

  They led Louisa and Jim back to the parade-ground. The open expanse was lined with dense ranks of young warriors dressed in all the finery of feathers and animal-skin kilts. They sat upon their shields, silent and still as statues carved from anthracite. At the entrance to the great kraal, carved stools were set out for Jim and Louisa beside the empty stool of the king. Behind that the king’s wives were squatting in double ranks. Many were beautiful young women, and nearly all were in some stage of gravidity, from a gentle swelling to full bloom, breasts bursting with abundance, belly buttons popping out. They exchanged knowing smiles with Louisa, and watched the antics of golden-headed George, their dark eyes swimming with the strength of their maternal feelings.

  Louisa sighed and leaned across to Jim on his stool. “Does not a woman have a peculiar type of beauty when she is to have a baby?” she asked ingenuously.

  Jim groaned. “You pick the oddest times to become subtly suggestive,” he whispered. “Think you not that one George is about all this world can stomach?”

  “She might be a girl,” Louisa pointed out.

  “Would she look like you?” Despite the glare he opened his eyes a little wider.

  “As like as not.”

  “That bears some thought,” he conceded, but at that moment there sounded from within the walls of the kraal a shattering fanfare of kudu-horn trumpets and a crash of drums. Instantly the warriors sprang to their feet and their voices echoed against the hills with the royal salute, “Bayete! Bayete!”

  The king’s musicians came out through the gates, rank upon rank, dipping and swaying, flirting their headdresses like the courtship dancing of crowned cranes, stamping until the dust powdered their legs to the knees. Then they froze in mid-step and the only movement was the ruffle of the feathers in their headdresses.

  King Beshwayo paced out through the gates. He wore a simple kilt of white cow tails, and war rattles on his ankles and wrists. His head was shaven and his skin had been polished with a mixture of fat and red-ochre clay. His tread was stately. He shimmered like a god as he walked.

  He reached his place and looked upon his subjects with such a terrible mien that they shrank before his gaze. Then, suddenly, he hurled the spear he carried into the air. Driven by his massive shoulders it rose to an impossible height. It reached its zenith and then, in a graceful parabola, fell back to peg its glittering head into the sun-baked clay of the parade-ground.

  Still there was no sound, no man or woman moved. Then a single voice broke the silence: sweetly and softly it rose from the riverbed at the far end of the parade-ground. A sigh went up from the throats of all the assembled warriors and their feathers danced as they turned their heads towards that sound.

  A line of young maidens came shuffling up and over the river bank. Each one had her hands on the hips of the girl in front of her and followed her movements with mirror-like precision. They wore very short skirts of combed grass and crowns of wild flowers. Their breasts were bare and shining with oil. They kept snaking out of the riverbed, until it seemed they were not individuals but a single sinuous creature.

  “These are the first flowers of the tribe,” Louisa said softly. “Each one has seen her moon for the first time, and now they are ready for marriage.”

  The girl who led the line of dancers reached the end of the first verse of the song, and all the others came in together with the chorus. Their voices soared high, then fell and languished, and rose again, achingly pure, cleaving the hearts of their listeners. The line of dancing virgins came to a halt before the ranks of young warriors. They turned to face them, and the song changed. The rhythm became as urgent as the act of love, the words suggestive and lewd.

  “How sharp are your spears?” they asked the warriors. “How long the shaft? How deep your thrust? Can you stab to the heart? Will blood flow when you pull out your blade from the wound?”

  Then they began to dance again, at first swaying like long grass in the wind, then throwing back their heads and laughing with white teeth and flashing eyes. They held out their breasts, one cupped in each hand, and offered them to the young men. Then they retreated and whirled away until their skirts flew waist high. They wore nothing beneath them, and they had plucked their pudenda so that their unmasked clefts were clearly defined. Then they faced away from the men, and bowed over until their foreheads touched their knees, writhing and rolling their hips.

  The warriors danced in time to the girls, working themselves into a storm of lust. They stamped until the earth jumped under their feet. They shook their shoulders. Their eyes rolled back in their skulls and froth creamed on their contorted lips. They thrust their hips into the air like mating dogs, and their engorged sexes probed rigidly through the fur strips of their kilts.

  Suddenly Beshwayo sprang high from his stool and landed on legs as straight and powerful as the trunks of two leadwood trees. “Enough!” he bellowed.

  Warriors and maidens, everyone on the parade, threw themselves to the ground and lay still as death, no sound or movement but the quivering of headdress feathers and grass skirts, the panting of their breath.

  Beshwayo strode along the ranks of girls. “These are my prime heifers,” he roared. “These are the treasures of Beshwayo.” He gazed down on them with a fierce, possessive pride.

  “They are beautiful and strong. They are full women. They are my daughters. From their hot wombs will come forth regiments of my warriors to conquer all the earth, and their sons shall shout my name to the skies. Through them my name will live for ever.” He threw back his head and let forth such a volume of sound from the barrel of his chest that it rang and echoed off the hills. “Beshwayo!”

  Not another person moved and the echoes faded away into silence. Then Beshwayo turned and strode back along the regiments of prostrated warriors. “Who are these?” The question was filled with contempt. “Are these men who grovel before me in the dust?” he bellowed, with mocking laughter. “No!” he answered himself. “Men stand tall and are full of pride. These are little children. Are these warriors?” he demanded of the sky, and laughed at the absurdity of the question. “These are not warriors. Warriors have quenched their spears in the blood of the king’s enemies. These are but snot-nosed children.” He walked down the line and spurned them with his foot.

  “Stand up, you small boys!” he cried. They leaped to their feet with the agility of acrobats, their young bodies forged to perfection by a lifetime of rigorous training. Beshwayo shook his head with contempt. He walked away. Then, suddenly, he leaped high in the air and landed with the elegance of a panther. “Stand up, my daughters,” he shouted, and the girls rose and swayed before him like a field of dark lilies.

  “See how their beauty outshines the sun. Can the king allow those unweaned calves to mount his beautiful heifers?” he harangued them. “No, for there is nothing between their legs of any account. These magnificent cows need bulls of power. Their wombs crave the seed of great warriors.”

  He strode back down the alley between them. “The sight of these young calves so displeases me that I am sending them away. They shall not look upon my heifers again until they have become bulls.”

  “Go!” he bellowed at them. “Go! And do not return until you have washed your spears in the blood of the king’s enemies. Go! And return only when you have killed your man and wear the cow tail on your right arm.” He paused and looked down on them with disdainful hauteur. “The sight of you displeases me. Be gone!”

  “Bayete!” they shouted, with a single voice, and again, “Bayete! We have heard the voice of the Black Thunder of the Sky, and we will obey.”

  In a close column they swung away, keeping perfect step, singing the praises of Beshwayo. Like a dark serpent, they wound up the s
lope of the hill and disappeared over the crest. Beshwayo strode back and took his seat on the carved stool. He was scowling hideously, but without changing his expression he said softly to Jim, “Did you see them, Somoya? They are young lions and hot for blood. These are the finest fruits of any circumcision year in all my reign. No enemy can stand against them.” He turned on his stool towards Louisa. “Did you see them, Welanga? Is there any maiden in all my realm who can resist them?”

  “They are fine young men,” she agreed.

  “Now I lack only an enemy to send them against.” Beshwayo’s scowl became even more terrifying. “I have scoured the land for twenty days’ march in every direction, and found no more fodder for my spears.”

  “I am your brother,” said Jim. “I cannot allow you to suffer such lack. I have an enemy. Because you are my brother, I shall share this enemy with you.” Beshwayo stared at him for a long moment. Then he let fly such a bellow of laughter that all his indunas and his pregnant wives cachinnated in slavish imitation of him.

  “Show me our enemy, Somoya. Like a pair of blackmaned lions on a gazelle, you and I shall devour him.”

  Three days later, when the wagons started back for the coast, Beshwayo went with them, singing his war anthems at the head of his new regiments and their battle-hardened indunas.

  Faithful to Dorian’s orders, once the Sprite and the Revenge entered the Mozambique channel, the two ships separated. Kumrah sailed up the west coast of the island of Madagascar, and Batula along the east coast of the African mainland. They called at each of the fishing villages along the way. From the headmen of these villages they hired, for payment of beads, rolls of copper wire and other stores such as fishing line, rope and bronze nails, a motley flotilla of feluccas and outrigger fishing-dhows. By the time they met again at the rendezvous off the north tip of the long island they were like ducks followed by a straggling line of ducklings. Most of these craft were ancient and decrepit and many could only be kept afloat by constant bailing.

  Batula and Kumrah placed them in a thin screen from island to mainland, then took their own ships well to the south so that they were only just able to maintain visual contact with them. In this way they hoped to prevent the desertion of any of the frail vessels, and to receive their signals when Zayn’s convoy of war-dhows appeared on the northern horizon, without being forced to reveal their own presence. They hoped that if Zayn’s lookouts spotted one or two of these tiny vessels they would think them nothing more than innocent fishing-craft, the likes of which were common in these offshore waters.

  The weeks passed slowly in such unrewarding activity. There was constant attrition among the scouting vessels. They were unsuited for such long periods at sea. The crews mutinied against the perils, discomfort and boredom, or their boats fell apart, or the rough weather of the kaskazi drove them into port. The screen became so perilously thin that in the heavy seas or in darkness even such a large fleet as Zayn’s might slip through the holes in it unremarked.

  Batula had placed Tasuz in the most likely position, within sight of the low blue outline of the African mainland. He guessed that Zayn would keep well within reach of the Omani trading settlements that for centuries had been sited at every convenient river mouth and sheltered bay and lagoon along this coast. From these bases Zayn would be able to revictual his ships with fresh water and supplies.

  Batula fretted away these long, uneventful days. In the first light of each dawn he climbed to the main truck of the Revenge and stared into the dispersing darkness for the first sight of Tasuz’s felucca. He was never disappointed. Even in the worst weather when all the other small craft had been driven to seek shelter, Tasuz was doggedly holding his position. Although his ship seemed at times to be buried under the grey, breaking swells of the Mozambique current, his dirty lateen sail always reappeared out of the gloom.

  This morning the wind had dropped to a gentle zephyr. A bank of sea fret covered the horizon, and the current had settled into long swells that marched down from the north. Batula searched anxiously for his first sight of the felucca, but he was unprepared when the ghostly outline of the lateen sail appeared out of the mist less than a sea mile dead ahead. “She is flying the blue!” he exclaimed, with excitement. The long blue banner at her masthead writhed like a flying serpent in the gentle airs. It was the sky blue of al-Salil’s colours. “It is the signal. Tasuz has discovered the approach of the enemy fleet.”

  He was aware at once of the danger. The sea mist would disperse as soon as the sun rose, and it would be a day of bright sunshine with visibility stretching to the horizon. He could not be certain how far behind the felucca was the enemy fleet.

  He slid down the shrouds so rapidly that the rope scorched his palms, and as his feet hit the deck he shouted his orders to bring the ship about and head her southwards. Tasuz followed in his wake, but rapidly the speed of the felucca narrowed the gap. Within the hour the two ships were close together, and Tasuz shouted his report across to Batula: “There are at least five large ships coming straight down the channel. There may be others following them. I cannot tell for certain, but I thought I glimpsed beyond them the peaks of other sails just showing over the horizon.”

  “When did you last have sight of them?” Batula shouted back.

  “At last light yesterday evening.”

  “Did they hail you or try to intercept?”

  “They paid me no heed. I think they took me for a coastal trader or a fisherman. I did not alter course until darkness hid me from them.”

  Tasuz was a good man. Without arousing the suspicions of the enemy, he had been able to slip away from them and warn the two larger ships.

  “The mist is beginning to lift, effendi,” the lookout called down to the deck, and Batula saw that it was thinning and breaking up. He seized his telescope and clambered back to the main truck. He had hardly settled himself there before the mist rolled aside like a translucent curtain and the morning sun burst through.

  Swiftly he swept his lens across the northern horizon. Beyond the felucca the channel seemed deserted, a wide blue expanse of water. Madagascar was out of sight to the east. Africa was an ethereal blue shadow in the west, and outlined against it he picked out the top sails of the Sprite holding her station. They were the only two ships in sight.

  “We have run clear away from the enemy during the night.” His heart sang with relief. Then he turned his eye northwards again with more attention and studied the sharp line of the horizon.

  “Ah!” he grunted, and then, “Ah, yes!” He saw the tiny specks of white flash momentarily in the lens like the wings of a gull, then disappear. The leading ships of Zayn’s fleet were there, hull down, showing only the very tops of their sails.

  He hailed the felucca again. “Tasuz, go across to the Sprite with all speed and recall her. Fire a gun to catch her attention—” He broke off and stared across at the distant schooner. “No! You need not do it. Kumrah has already seen what we are about. He hastens to join us.”

  Perhaps Kumrah had already seen the enemy sails to the north or he might have been alerted by the Revenge’s unusual behaviour. Whatever the reason, he had come about and was heading southwards with all sail set.

  During the rest of that day the kaskazi wind increased in strength until, once more, it was blowing with its customary vigour and the ships were flying on course for Nativity Bay. By noon there was no longer any sight of Zayn’s ships on the empty sea they left behind them. By late afternoon Kumrah had steered across on a converging course and the two schooners were in close company, but Tasuz in the felucca was almost out of sight ahead.

  Batula watched his lateen sail grow tiny and disappear at last in the dusk. He stooped once more over his chart and made his calculations. “With this wind Tasuz should reach Nativity Bay in seven more days. It will take us ten, and Zayn will be three or four behind us. We will be able to bring al-Salil fair warning.”

  Zayn al-Din sat cross-legged on a bed of cushions and silk prayer mats, whi
ch were piled on the lee deck of his flagship under a canvas screen, spread to shelter him from the sun and from the wind and spray that blew back every time the Sufi thrust her shoulder into the green swells. The name of the flagship signified the mysticism central to fundamental Islamic thought. She was a ship of force, the most formidable in the entire Omani fleet. Rahmad, the captain who commanded her, had been selected by the Caliph himself for this venture.

  Rahmad prostrated himself. “Majesty, the whaleback that guards the bay in which lies the stronghold of the traitor is in sight.”

  Zayn nodded with satisfaction and dismissed him, then turned to Sir Guy Courtney, who sat opposite. “If Rahmad has brought us directly to our destination without sight of land for twenty days, he has done well. Let us see if it is truly so.” The two stood up and crossed to the weather rail. Rahmad and Laleh bowed respectfully as they approached.

  “What do you make of the landfall?” Zayn demanded of Laleh. “Is this the same bay in which you discovered the ships of al-Salil?”

  “Great one, it is the same. This is indeed the lair of al-Salil. From the height of that very headland I looked down upon the bay where he has built his fort and where he anchors his ships.”

  With a deep bow, Rahmad handed Zayn his brass telescope. Zayn al-Din balanced easily against the ship’s motion. Over the past months his sea-legs had grown strong. He levelled the telescope and studied the distant shore. Then he closed the glass with a snap and smiled. “We can be certain that our arrival has struck fear into the heart of your traitorous brother and mine. We have not been forced to grope around within sight of the shore to take our bearings. We have given him no warning of our presence and will appear suddenly before him, in all our multitudes and power. By now he must know in his heart that at last retribution has found him out.”