The Angels Weep b-3

by Wilbur Smith

  "The requisition is signed by Colonel William Napier, officer commanding the Bulawayo field force. I suggest you take the matter up with him, when you reach Bulawayo." Ralph was still smiling. "In the meantime, we are rather pressed for time. We will just relieve you of the Maxim, and trouble you no further." Gifford crumpled the note, and glared impotently at Ralph, then shifted his ground.

  "You and your men appear to be wearing enemy uniform," he accused.

  "That is in contravention of the articles of war, sir. "Read the articles to the indunas, Mr. Gifford, particularly those dealing with the murder and torture of noncombatants." "There is no call for an Englishman to descend to the level of the savages he is fighting," said Gifford loftily. "I have had the honour to meet your father, Major Zouga Ballantyne. He is a gentleman. I wonder what he would say about your conduct." "My father and his fellow conspirators, all of them English gentlemen, are presently standing trial on charges of having waged war against a friendly government. However, I will certainly solicit his opinion of my conduct at the first available opportunity.

  Now if you will send your sergeant, back with us to hand over the Maxim, I will bid you good day, Mr. Gifford." They unloaded the Maxim from its cart, removed the tripod and ammunition boxes, and loaded them onto three pack-horses.

  "How did you get Napier to sign away one of his precious Maxims?"

  Harry Mellow demanded, as he clinched the straps on the pack-saddles.

  "Sleight of hand," Ralph winked at him. "The pen is mightier-" "You forged the requisition," Harry stared at him. "They'll shoot you." "They'll have to catch me first." Ralph turned and bellowed to his Scouts, "Troop, mount! Walk march, forward!" There was no doubt that he was a wizard. A wizened little fellow, not much taller than Tungata or any "of his companions, but he was painted in the most marvelous colours, zigzags of crimson and white and black across his face and chest.

  When he first appeared out of the bush beside the stream in the secret valley, the children were frozen with terror. But before they could recover their wits sufficiently to run, the little painted wizard uttered such a string of cries and grunts, imitating horse and eagle and chacma baboon, at the same time prancing and flapping and scratching, that their terror turned to fascination.

  Then from the sack over his shoulder, the wizard dug out a huge lump of rock sugar candy. He sucked it noisily, and the children who had not tasted sugar in weeks drew closer and watched him with glistening dark eyes. He proffered the lump of sugar to Tungata who edged forward, snatched it and scampered back. The little wizard laughed in such an infectious manner, that the other children laughed with him and swarmed forward to grab at the fresh lumps of candy he offered. Surrounded by laughing, clapping children, the little wizard climbed the path up the side of the valley to the rock shelter.

  The women, lulled and reassured by the sounds of happy children, came to crowd about the little wizard, to stare and giggle, and the boldest to ask him. "Who are you?" "Where do you come from?" "What is in the sack?" In reply to the last question, the wizard drew out a handful of coloured ribbons, and the younger women shrieked with feminine vanity and tied them at their wrists and throats.

  "I bring gifts and happy tidings," the wizard cackled. "Look what I bring you." There were steel combs, and small round mirrors, a little box that played sweet tinkling music they crowded about him, utterly enchanted. "Gifts and happy tidings," sang the wizard.

  "Tell us! Tell us!" they chanted.

  "The spirits of our forefathers have come to aid us. They have sent a divine wind to eat up the white men, as the rinderpest ate up the cattle. All the white men are de adV "The amakiwa are de adV "They have left behind them all these wonderful gifts. The town of Bulawayo is empty of white men, but these things are there for all to take. As much as you will but hurry, all the men and women of the Matabele are going there. There will be nothing left for those who come after.

  Look, look at these beautiful pieces of cloth, there are thousands of them. Who wants these pretty buttons, these sharp knives? Those who want them must follow me!" sang the wizard. "For the fighting is over!

  The white men are dead! The Matabele have triumphed, who wants to follow me?" "Lead us, little Father," they begged him. "We will follow you.

  Still digging out gewgaws and trifles from the sack, the painted wizard started down towards the end of the narrow valley, and the women snatched up their little ones, strapped them to their backs with strips of cloth, called to the older children and hurried after the wizard.

  "Follow me, people of MashobaneV he chirped. "Your time of greatness has come. The prophecy of the Umlimo is fulfilled. The divine wind from the north has blown the amakiwa away." Tungata, almost hysterical with excitement and dread that he would be left behind, hurried down the length of the rock shelter, until he saw the huge beloved figure squatting against the back wall of rock.

  "Grandmother," he squeaked. "The wizard has pretty things for us all. We must hurry!" OVer the millennia the stream had cut a narrow twisted exit from the bowel of the valley, with high cliffs on each side. The granite was painted with rich orange and yellow lichens.

  Compressed into this chasm the stream fell in smoking cascades of white water, before debouching into a shallower wider valley in the lower foothills.

  The valley was filled with fine grass, the colour of a ripening wheat field. The pathway clung to the edge of the chasm, with a perilous drop to foaming white water on one hand and with the cliff rising sheer on the other. Then the gradient became more gentle and the path emerged into the quiet valley below. Rainwater had scarred the side of the lower valley with deep don gas natural entrenchments, and one of these afforded an ideal emplacement for the Maxim.

  Ralph had two of his troopers set it up with the thick water jacketed barrel just clearing the lip of the don ga There were 2,000 rounds of ammunition in the oblong boxes, stacked beside the weapon. While Harry Mellow cut branches of thorn brush to screen the Maxim, Ralph paced off the ranges in front of the don ga and set up a cairn of loose stones beside the footpath.

  He came scrambling back up the slope, and told Harry, "Set the sights for three hundred yards." Then he went down the length of the don ga giving his orders to each man, and making him repeat them to ensure there was no misunderstanding.

  "When Jan Cheroot reaches the cairn, the Maxim will fire. Wait for the Maxim, then open up on the back of the column, and move your fire forward." Sergeant Ezra nodded, and levered a cartridge into the breech of the Winchester. He screwed up his eyes, judging the wind-deflection by the swaying of the gras stops and the feel of it against his face. Then he settled his elbow on the earthen parapet -of the gulley, and laid his scarred cheek against the butt.

  Ralph retuffied along the don ga to where Harry Mellow was preparing the Maxim. He watched while Harry twisted the elevation screw to raise the barrel slightly to the 300 yard setting, and then swung the gun left and right in its tripod to make certain that the traverse was free and clear.

  "Load one," Ralph ordered, and Taos, who was loading, fed the brass tag of the cartridge-belt into the open breech. Harry let the loading handle fly back and the mechanism clattered harshly.

  "Load two!" He pumped the handle a second time, pulling the belt through, and the first round was extracted from the belt and fed smoothly into the breech.

  "Ready!" Harry looked up at Ralph. "Now all we have to do is wait." Ralph nodded, and opened the pouch on his hip. From it he took the strip of brown mole-skin and bound it carefully about his right arm above the elbow. Then they settled down to wait.

  They waited in the sunlight, and it beat down upon their greasy naked backs, until their sweat oozed from clogged pores and the flies came swarming gleefully to it. They waited while the sun made its noon, and then began to slip down the farther side of the sky.

  Abruptly, Ralph raised his head, and at the movement a little stirring rippled down the row of marksmen lining the lip of the don ga

  There was a soun
d of many voices at a distance, and they woke echoes from the lichen-stained cliffs that guarded the entrance to the gorge.

  Then there was singing, sweet children's voices, the sound of it rose and filled with each fluke of the wind and each turn in the rocky passage.

  From the entrance to the gorge a diminutive figure came dancing.

  The weird pattern of red and black and white paints disguised Jan Cheroot's flat pug-like features, and the buttery yellow of his skin, but there was no mistaking his sprightly step, and the way he carried his head at a birdlike angle. The sack of pretties that he had used as bait was long ago empty and had been discarded.

  He scampered down the path towards the stone cairn which Ralph had built, and behind him came the Matabele. So eager were they that they crowded three or four abreast, and jostled each other to keep pace with the Pied Piper that led them.

  "More then I had hoped," Ralph whispered, but Harry Mellow did not look at him. The coating of black fat covered the pallor of his face, but his eyes were stricken as he stared fixedly over the sights of the Maxim.

  The long column of Matabele was still emerging from the gorge, but Jan Cheroot was almost level with the cairn. "Ready," Ralph grated.

  Jan Cheroot reached the cairn, and then with a miraculous twinkling movement, he disappeared as though a pitfall had sucked him in.

  "Now!"said Ralph.

  Not a man in the long line of riflemen moved. They were all staring down into the valley.

  "Now!" Ralph repeated.

  The head of the column had stopped in bewilderment at Jan Cheroot's abrupt disappearance, and those behind pushed forward.

  "Open fire!" Ralph ordered.

  "I can't do it," whispered Harry, sitting behind the gun with both hands on the grips.

  "Damn you!" Ralph's voice shook. "They slit Cathy's belly open, and tore my daughter out of her womb. Kill them, damn you!" "I can't," Harry choked, and Ralph seized his shoulder and dragged him backwards.

  He dropped down behind the gun in his place, and grabbed the double pistol grips. With his forefingers he hooked the safety-locks open, and then pressed his thumbs down on the cheque red firing-button.

  The Maxim gun began its hellish fluttering roar, and the empty brass cartridge-cases spewed in a bright stream from the breech.

  Peering through the drifts of blue gunsmoke, Ralph slowly traversed the gun from left to right, sweeping the pathway from the mouth of the gorge to the stone cairn, and from the don ga on each side of him the repeating Winchesters added their thunder to the din. The gunfire almost, but not quite, drowned out the sounds from the valley below.

  Juba could not keep pace with the younger women, nor with the racing children. She lagged further and further behind, with Tungata urging her on anxiously.

  "We will be too late, Grandmother. We must hurry." Before they reached the gorge at the end of the valley, Juba was wheezing and staggering, all her rolls of shining fat wobbling at each heavy pace, and she was seeing patches of darkness before her eyes.

  "I must rest," she panted, and sank down beside the path. The stragglers streamed past her, laughing and joshing her as they entered the gorge.

  "Ah, little Mother, do you want to climb up on my back?" Tungata waited beside her, hopping from one foot to the other, wringing his hands with impatience.

  "Oh Grandmother, just a little farther-" When at last the patches of darkness cleared from her vision, she nodded at him, and he seized her hands and threw all the weight of his tiny body into levering her upright.

  Now, as Juba hobbled along the path, they were the very last in the file, but they could hear the laughter and chanting far ahead, magnified by the funnel of the gorge. Tungata ran forward, and then drawn by his duty, skipped back to Juba's hand again.

  "Please, Grandmother oh please!" Twice more Juba was forced to stop. They were all alone now, and the sunlight did not penetrate the depths of the narrow gorge. It was shadowy and the cold coming up from the dashing white waters chilled even Tungata's high spirits.

  The two of them came around the bend, and looked out between the high granite portals into the open sunlit grassy bowl beyond.

  "There they are!" Tungata cried with relief.

  The pathway through the yellow grassland was thick with people, but, like a column of safari ants on the march that had come against an impossible obstacle, the head of the line was bunching and milling.

  "Hurry, Grandmother, we can catch up!" Juba heaved her bulk upright and hobbled towards the welcoming warm sunlight.

  At that moment the air around er head began to flutter as though a bird had been trapped within her skull. For a moment she thought that it was a symptom of her exhaustion, but then she saw the masses of human figures ahead of her begin to swirl and tumble and boil like dust-motes in a whirlwind.

  Although she had never heard it before, she had listened when the warriors who had fought at Shangani and the Bembesi crossing described the little three-legged guns that chattered like old women. Armed suddenly by reserves of strength that she never believed she possessed, Juba seized Tungata. and blundered back up the gorge like a great cow elephant in flight.

  Ralph -Ballantyne sat on the edge of his camp cot. There was a lighted candle set in its own wax on the upturned tea-chest that served as a table, and a half-filled whisky bottle and enamel mug beside it.

  Ralph frowned at the open page of his journal, trying to focus in the flickering yellow candlelight. He was drunk. The bottle had been full half an hour before. He picked up the mug and drained it, set it down and poured from the bottle again. A few drops spilled onto the empty page of his journal. He wiped them away with his thumb and studied the wet mark it left with a drunkard's ponderous concentration.

  He shook his head, to try and clear it, then he picked up his pen, dipped it and carefully wiped off the excess ink from the nib.

  He wrote laboriously and where the ink touched the wetness left by the spilled whisky, it spread in a soft blue fan shape on the paper.

  That annoyed him inordinately, and he flung the pen down and deliberately filled the enamel mug to the brim. He drank it, pausing twice for breath, and when the mug was empty, he held it between his knees, with his head bowed over it.

  After a long time, and with an obvious effort, he lifted his head again, and re-read what he had written, his lips forming the words, like a schoolboy with his first reader.

  "War makes monsters of us all." He reached for the bottle again, but knocked it on its side and the golden brown spirit glugged into a puddle on the lid of the tea-chest. He fell back on the cot and closed his eyes, his legs dangling to the floor and one arm thrown over his face protectively.

  Elizabeth had put the boys to bed in the wagon, and crawled into the cot below theirs, careful not to disturb her own mother. Ralph had not eaten dinner with the family, and he had sent Jonathan back with a rough word when he had gone across to the tent to fetch his father to the meal.

  Elizabeth lay on her side under the woollen blanket, and her eye was level with the laced-up opening in the canvas hood, so she could see out. The candle was still burning in Ralph's tent, but, in the corner of the laager, the tent that Harry and Vicky shared had been in darkness for an hour. She closed her eyes and tried to force herself to sleep, but she was so restless that beside her Robyn St. John sighed petulantly and rolled over. Elizabeth opened her eyes again and peered surreptitiously through the canvas slit. The candle was still burning in Ralph's tent.

  Gently she eased herself out from under the blanket, watching her mother the while. She picked up her shawl from the lid of the chest, and clambered silently down to the ground.

  With the shawl about her shoulders, she sat on the disselboom of the wagon. There was still only a sheet of canvas between her and where her mother lay. She could clearly hear the rhythm of Robyn's breathing. She judged when she sank deeply below the level of consciousness, for her breathing made a soft glottal rattle in the back of her throat.