by Wilbur Smith
"You shoot better than you talk. Go. with Jan Cheroot." At another order from Ralph, every one of them reached into the leather pouch on his hip and brought out a white cow-tail tassel necklace.
They were the recognition insignia, that might prevent them killing each other in the press of the fighting. Only Ralph added another ornament to his dress. From his hip pouch he brought the strip of mole-skin and bound it around his upper arm, then he hefted the heavy assegai and lead wood knobkerrie and nodded at Ezra. "Lead!" The line of Matabele, with Ralph running in second place, trotted at a traverse across the slope of the hill. As they turned the southern buttress, they saw the red glow of a watch-fire in the valley below.
Ralph sprinted past Ezra to the front of the line. He filled his lungs and began to sing.
"Lift the rock under which sleeps the serpent. Lift the rock and let the Mamba loose.
The Mamba of Mashobane has silver fangs of steel." It was one of the fighting songs of the Insukamini impi, and behind him the line of Matabele picked, up the refrain in their deep melodious voices. It resounded from the hills and woke the camp in the valley. Naked figures, risen from the sleeping-mats, threw wood on the fires, and the red glow lit the underside of the acacia trees so they formed a canopy like a circus tent overhead.
Ezra had estimated there were forty amadoda guarding the horses, but there were more than that already gathered around the fires and every second more flocked into the bivouac, the outposts coming in to see what was causing the commotion. Ralph had planned for that. He wanted no stragglers. They must be concentrated, so that his riflemen could fire into the bunch, making one bullet do the work of three or four. Ralph trotted into the Matabele encampment.
"Who commands here?" Ralph broke off the battle-song, and demanded in a bellow. "Let the commander stand forth to hear the word I bring from Gandang." He knew from the account that Robyn had given him of the massacre on the Khami Hills that the old and una was one of the leaders of the uprising. His choice of name had the effect he had hoped for.
"I am Mazui." A warrior stepped forward respectfully. "I wait for the word of Gandang, son of Mzilikazi." "The horses are no longer safe in this place. The white men have learned where they are. At the rise of the sun we will take them deeper into the hills," Ralph told him.
"To a place that I shall show you." "It shall be done." "Where are the horses?" "They are in the kraal, guarded by my aniadoda, safe from the lions." "Bring in all your pickets Ralph ordered, and the commander shouted an order and then turned back to Ralph eagerly.
"What news is there of the fighting?" "There has been a great battle," Ralph launched into a fanciful account, miming the fighting in the traditional way, leaping and shouting and stabbing in the air with his assegai.
"Thus we came upon the rear of the horsemen, and thus and thus we stabbed them-" His own Matabele gave him a chorus of long drawn-out "Jee" and leaped and postured with him.
The audience was enraptured, beginning to stamp and sway in sympathy with Ralph and his Matabele. The sentries and pickets had come in from the periphery of the camp. No more hurrying black figures emerged from the shadows. They were all here a hundred, perhaps a hundred and twenty, not more, Ralph estimated, against his forty men.
Not unfair odds, Jan Cheroot's Cape boys were all first-rate marksmen, and Harty Mellow with a rifle was worth five ordinary men.
From close at hand, on the first slope of the hill, a nightjar called. It was a musical quavering-cry, that sounded like "Good Lord, deliver us', this pious sentiment gave the bird its popular name, the Litany bird. It was the signal which Ralph had been listening for. He felt a bleak satisfaction that Jan Cheroot had followed his orders so strictly. From the position on the slope, Jan Cheroot would have the crowd of amadoda silhouetted against the firelight.
Making it all part of the dance, Ralph whirled away, still prancing and stamping, opening a distance of twenty paces between himself and the nearest Matabele. Here Ralph ended his dance abruptly with his arms spread like a crucifix. He stood deathly still staring at his audience with wild eyes, and a silence fell upon them all.
Slowly Ralph raised his arms above his head. He stood like that for a moment, a heroic figure glistening with fat, every muscle in his arms and chest standing proud, the kilt of civet-tails hanging to his knees, the collar of white cow tails around his neck, his charm against the death that lurked in the darkness beyond the firelight. His blackened features were twisted into a ferocious grimace that held the watchers spellbound. The dancing and singing had served its purpose well. It had distracted the anutdoda, and masked any noise that the Zulus and Hottentots might have made while moving into position around the bivouac.
Now suddenly Ralph let out a demoniacal howl that made the amadoda shudder, and he dropped his arms the signal for which Harry and Jan Cheroot were waiting.
The curtains of darkness were torn aside by the blast of massed rifle fire. The range was point-blank, the muzzles almost touching the press of dark naked bodies. It smashed into them, a single bullet churning through belly and chest and spine, bringing down four men, stopping only when the slug broke up against one of the heavy bones of pelvis or femur.
So unexpected was the assault, that the mass of warriors milled aimlessly, receiving three volleys from the repeating Winchesters, before they broke and ran. More than half of them were down already, and many of those still on their feet were wounded. They ran on top of Isazi's Zulus, and piled up against them like water on a dam wall.
Ralph heard the great shouts of Wgidla! I have eaten!" as the Zulus put in the steel, and heard the screams of the dying men.
Now at last the Matabele were rallying, closing up shoulder to shoulder to meet the thin line of Zulus and overrun it. It was the moment Ralph had waited for. He led his own Matabele racing across their rear and flung them at the naked undefended backs of the struggling warriors.
Long ago, as boys on the Kimberley diamond-workings, Bazo had taught Ralph the art of spearsmanship. Ralph had been as skilful with the broad blade as any of the Matabele youths who were his companions.
However, it was one thing to practise the long under-handed killing stroke, and another actually to send the point into living flesh.
Ralph was unprepared for the sensation of the steel in his hand running in and slowing against the sucking resistance, feeling the steel touch and grate on bone, and the haft kick in his hand as his victims bucked and convulsed at the agony. It felt like the butt of the rod when a salmon makes its first run.
Instinctively Ralph twisted the blade in the man's body, the way Bazo had taught him, maximizing the tissue damage and breaking the vacuum that held the steel then he jerked it clear, and for the first time felt the fine hot spray of blood from the wound fly into his face and splatter his right arm and chest.
He stepped over the dying man who thrashed on the earth, and sank the steel again and then again. The smell of blood and the screams maddened him, but it was a cold fierce madness that magnified his vision and slowed down the micro-seconds of mortal combat, so that he saw the counter-thrust and turned his adversary's blade aside with contemptuous ease, using the momentum of his shoulders to drive his own point through the Matabele guard and into the notch formed by the joint of his collar-bones at the base of his throat. The man's breath whistled over his severed vocal cords, and he dropped his assegai and seized Ralph's blade with his bare hands. Ralph pulled it back, and the razor edges cut to the bone of the man's fingers, and his hands fell open nervelessly as the Matabele dropped to his knees.
Ralph leaped over him and poised to thrust again. "Henshaw!" a voice screamed in his face. "It is me!" and through his madness Ralph saw the white cow-tail tassels about the neck and held the stroke, the two lines of attackers had met.
"It is over," Isazi panted, and Ralph looked about him in bewilderment. It had happened so swiftly. He shook his head to free the cold vice of fighting madness that gripped it.
They were all down, though a
few of them still twisted and twitched and groaned.
"Isazi, finish them!" Ralph ordered, and watched the Zulus begin the grim work, passing quickly from body to body, feeling for the pulse below the ear and if they found it, stilling it with a quick thrust.
"Ralph," Harry came scrambling down the slope at the head of the Cape boys. "By God, that was one. "No English," Ralph warned him, then raising his voice. "We will take the horses now. Bring the spare bridles and lead-reins." There were fifty-three fine horses in the thorn bush kraal. Most of them carried the BSA Company brand. Each of the unmounted Zulus and Marabele selected a mount, and the remaining animals were put onto lead-reins.
In the meantime the Cape boys were going over the field with the speed and precision of born footpads, selecting the rifles that could be used and throwing the ancient Martini Henrys and muzzle-loaders and knobkeffies onto the fire, snapping the assegai blades in the fork of a tree. The loot they discovered, cutlery and crockery and clothing of European manufacture, proved that this impi had taken part in the depredations of the first few days of the rising. That, too, was thrown upon the flames. Within an hour of the first rifle-shot, they were moving out again. This time every man was well mounted, and the spare horses followed at a canter on the lead-reins.
They rode down the main street of Bulawayo in the uncertain grey light of predawn. In the front rank Ralph and Harry had scrubbed most of the blackening from their faces, but to make certain they did not draw the fire of a jittery sentry, they carried a flag made from Harry Mellow's white flannel undershirt.
The inhabitants of the laager tumbled out of their beds to gape and question, and then as they began to realize that this little cavalcade heralded the first retaliation against the slaughter and arson committed by the tribes, the cheering began and rose into joyous hysteria.
While Vicky and Elizabeth proudly served them a double ration breakfast under the wagon awning, Ralph and Harry received an endless string of well-wishers, of tearful widows whose husbands had perished under the Matabele assegais, bringing thanks and a half-dozen eggs or a freshly baked cake, of wistful boys come merely to stare at the heroes, and of keen young men demanding eagerly, "Is this where we sign up to join Ballantyne's Scouts?" There were shrieks of delight as Judy set about her long-suffering husband with her baton. The children in the front row clapped their hands as the blows cracked upon Punch's wooden head and his grotesquely humped back, and the bells on his cap jingled.
Swimming valiantly against the mainstream of sentiment, Jon-Jon's face was red as Punch's hooked nose and screwed up with outrage. "Hit her back!" he howled, bouncing up and down. "She's only a girl!" "Spoken like a true Ballantyne," Ralph laughed, at the same time forcibly restraining his son from leaping into the fray on the side of down-trodden mankind.
Elizabeth sat beyond Jon-Jon, with Robert on her lap. The child's sickly face was solemn and he sucked dedicatedly upon his thumb like an elderly gnome upon his pipe. In contrast, Elizabeth was radiant with a childlike joy, her cheeks flushed and her eyes shining, as she egged Judy on to further excesses.
A shining lock of her hair had come loose from the tortoiseshell comb and lay against the tender velvety skin of her temple, half curled around the lobe of her ear. Her ear was a faint Pink, and so thin and delicately shaped that the sunlight showed through it as though it were made from some rare bone-china. The same sunlight made the burgundy sparks flare like electricity in her thick dark tresses.
It drew Ralph's attention from the marionettes, and he watched her covertly over Jonathan's curly head. Her laughter was a throaty purr, natural and unashamed, and Ralph laughed again in sympathy. She turned her head and for a moment Ralph looked deeply into her eyes. It was like looking into a bowl of hot honey. He seemed to be able to see into limitless depths that were flecked with gold. Then Elizabeth dropped the veil of dark curved lashes over them, and looked back at the tiny stage, but she was no longer laughing. Instead her lower lip trembled and a dark flush of blood washed up her throat.
Feeling strangely guilty and shaken, Ralph quickly fastened his own eyes, if not his attention, on the squawking, battling marionettes.
The sketch ended, to Jonathan's vast satisfaction, with Judy being led away to some nameless but richly deserved fate by a policeman in Mr. Peel's blue helmet, and the mild bespectacled little bookkeeper of Meikles Store came out from behind his candy-striped screen with the glove puppets still upon his hands, to take his bows.
"He looks just like Mr. Kipling," Elizabeth whispered, "and he has the same bloodthirsty and violent imagination." Ralph felt a rush of gratitude towards her that she should gloss over that unexpected moment of awkwardness so gracefully. He picked up the boys, sat one upon each shoulder, and they followed the dispersing audience across the laager.
Upon his father's shoulder, Jonathan chattered like a flock of starlings, explaining to Bobby the finer points of the play which were clearly too subtle for any lesser intelligence than his own to follow.
However, both Ralph and Elizabeth walked in silence.
When they reached the wagon, Ralph slid both children to the ground and they scampered away. Halfheartedly, Elizabeth made to follow them, but stopped and turned back to him when Ralph spoke.
"I don't know what I would have done without you you've been wonderfully kind-" He hesitated. "Without Cathy-" He saw the pain in her eyes and broke off. "I just wanted to thank you." "You don't have to do that, Ralph," she answered quietly. "Anything you need I'll always be here to help." Then her reserve cracked, she started to speak again, but her lips trembled and she turned away sharply and followed the two boys into the wagon.
Ralph had paid siege prices for the bottle of whisky by scrawling a cheque on the label from a bully beef tin for 20 pounds. He took it hidden under his coat to where Isazi and Jan Cheroot and Sergeant Ezra sat together beside a fire away from their men.
They swilled. the coffee grounds out of their enamel mugs and proffered them for a good dram of the whisky and sipped in silence for a while, all of them staring into the camp-fire flames, letting the warmth of the spirit spread out through their bodies.
At last Ralph nodded at Sergeant Ezra, and the big Matabele began to speak quietly.
"Gandang and his Inyati impi are still waiting in the Khami Hills he has twelve hundred men. They are all blooded warriors, Babiaan is bivouacked below the Hills of the Indunas with six hundred. He could be here in an hour-" Quickly Ezra recounted the positions of the imp is the names of their indunas, and the mood and mettle of their warriors.
"What of Bazo and his Moles?" At last Ralph asked the question that concerned him most, and Ezra shrugged.
"We do not have word of them. I have my best men in the hills, searching for them. Nobody knows where the Moles have gone." "Where will we strike next?" Ralph asked the question rhetorically, musing as he stared in the fire. "Will it be at Babiaan in the Hills of the Indunas, or Zama with his thousand lying across the Mangiwe Road?"
Isazi coughed in polite disagreement, and when Ralph glanced up at him, he said, "Last night I sat at one of Babiaan's camp-fires, eating his meat, and listening to his men talk. They spoke of our attack upon the camp of the horses, and how the indunas had warned them in future to be on their guard against all strangers, even though they wore the furs and feathers of the fighting imp is We will not work the same trick twice." Jan Cheroot and Ezra grunted in agreement, and the little Hottentot inverted his mug to prove it empty, and glanced significantly at the bottle between Ralph's feet. Ralph poured again, and as he cupped the mug in his hands and inhaled the pungent perfume of the spirit, his mind went back to that afternoon to the laughter of the children and a lovely young girl whose hair burned with soft fires in the sunlight.
His voice was rough and ugly. "Their women and children, he said.
"They will be hidden in the caves and the secret valleys of the Matopos. Find them!" There were five small boys under the bank of the stream. They were all stark naked, and their leg
s were coated to above the knees with slick yellow clay. They laughed and squabbled good-naturedly as they dug the clay out of the bank with sharpened sticks and packed it into crudely woven reed baskets.