The Angels Weep b-3

by Wilbur Smith

  "Are you sure of this?" he demanded eagerly, and Isazi nodded.

  "I have sat at the camp-fires of his impi, and with my own eyes have seen him, with the bullet scars shining like medals of silver upon his chest, with my own ears I have heard him harangue his amadoda, steeling them for the fighting which lies ahead." "Where is he, Isazi?

  Tell me where I can find him." "He is not alone." Isazi was not about to spoil the dramatic impact of his report by prematurely divulging the bare bones of fact. "Bazo has with him the witch, who is his woman. if Bazo is warlike, then this woman, Tanase, the favourite of the dark -spirits, is bold and ruthless, driven by such bloody cruelty that the amadoda when they look upon her beauty shudder as though it is an unspeakable ugliness." "Where are they?" Ralph repeated.

  "Bazo has with him the wildest and most reckless of the young indunas, Zama and Kamuza, and they have brought their amadoda, three thousand of the fiercest and finest. With Bazo and Tanase at their head, these imp is are as dangerous as the gut-stabbed lion, as deadly as the old bull buffalo circling in thick cover to lay for the unwary hunter-" "God damn you, Isazi, we have waited long enough." Ralph snarled at him. "Tell me where he is." Isazi looked pained and deliberately took a little snuff. His eyes watered, then he sneezed delectably and wiped his nostrils on the palm of his hand.

  "Gandang and Babiaan and Somabula are not with him Isazi took up his recital precisely at the point where Ralph had so boorishly interrupted him. "I listened while the amadoda spoke of an indaba held many weeks back at the valley of the Umlimo. They say that the old indunas decided to wait for the divine intervention of the spirits, to leave the road southwards open for the white men to leave Matabeleland and to sit upon their shields until these things come to pass." Ralph made a gesture of disgusted resignation. "Do not hurry in your telling of it, wise one," he encouraged Isazi with weighted sarcasm. "Do not spare us the smallest detail." Isazi nodded seriously, but his dark eyes sparkled and he tugged at his little goatee beard to prevent himself grinning. "The bellies of the old indunas are cooling, they recall the Shangani and Bembesi battlefields. Their spies report that the laager here at Bulawayo is guarded by the three legged guns. I tell you, Henshaw, that Bazo is the serpent's head. Cut it off and the body dies." Isazi nodded sagely.

  "Now will you tell me where Bazo is, my brave and wise old friend?" Isazi nodded again in appreciation of Ralph's change of tone.

  "He is very close," Isazi said. "Not two hours" march from where we sit." Isazi made a wide gesture that took in the darkened laager About them. "He lies with his three thousand amadoda in the Valley of the Goats." Ralph looked up at the segment of old moon that hung low down in the sky.

  "Four days to new moon," he murmured. "If Bazo plans to attack the laager here, then it will be in the dark of the moon." "Three thousand men," Harry Mellow murmured. "There are fifty of us." "Three thousand. The Moles and the Insukamini and the Svmmers-" Sergeant Ezra shook his head. "As Isazi has said, the fiercest and the finest." "We will take them," said Ralph Ballantyne calmly. "We will take them in the Valley of the Goats, two nights from now, and here is the way we will do it.-" Bazo, son of Gandang, who had denied his father and defied the greater indunas of Kumalo, passed from one watch-fire to the next and beside him moved the slim and exquisitely graceful figure of his woman,"Tanase. Bazo reached the fire and stood tall above it. The flames lit his features from below, so that the cavities of his eyes were black caverns in the depths of which his eyes glinted like the coils of a deadly reptile. The light of the camp-fire picked out in harsh detail every line and crease that suffering had riven into his face. Around his forehead was bound the simple strip of mole-skin, he did not need the feathers of heron and paradise widow birds to place the seal upon his majesty. The firelight glinted upon the great muscles of his chest and arms and his scars were the only regalia of honour that he wore.

  Tanase's beauty was even more poignant when seen beside his ravaged features. Her naked breasts were strangely incongruous in these warlike councils, but beneath their satiny swelling they were hard as battle-forged muscle, and the sudden thrust of her nipples puckered and darkened, large as the first joint of a man's little finger, were like the bosses in the centre of a war-shield.

  As she stood at Bazo's shoulder in the firelight, her gaze was as fierce as any warrior there, and she looked up at her husband with a ferocious pride as he began to speak.

  "I offer you a choice" Bazo said. "You can remain as you are, the dogs of the white men. You can stay as amah oh the lowliest of slaves, or you can become once again Amadoda. His voice was strained, it seemed to rumble up out of his throat, but it rang clearly to the highest part of the natural rocky amphitheatre, and the dark masses of warriors that filled the bowl stirred and sighed at the words.

  "The choice is yours, but it "must be made swiftly. This morning I have received runners from the south." Bazo paused, and his listeners craned forward. There were three thousand of them squatting in massed ranks, but there was no sound from them as they waited for Bazo's next words.

  "You have heard the fainthearted tell you that if we do not dispute the southern road, then the white men that are in Bulawayo will pack their wagons, take their women and go meekly down that road to the sea." Still not a sound from the listening warriors.

  "They were wrong and now they are proven so. Lodzi has come," said Bazo, and there was a sigh like the wind in the grass.

  "Lodzi has come," Bazo repeated. "And with him the soldiers and the guns. They gather now at the head of the iron road that Henshaw built. Soon, very soon, they will begin the march up the road which we have left open for them. Before the new moon is half grown to its full, they will be in Bulawayo, and then you will truly be aniahoh.

  You and your sons and their sons will toil in the white men's mines and herd the white men's herds." There was a growl, like a leopard when first it is roused, and it shook the dark ranks until Bazo lifted high the hand that held his silver assegai.

  "That is not to be. The Umlimo has promised us that this land will once again belong to us, but it is our task to make this prophecy into reality. The gods do not favour those who wait for fruit to fall from the tree into their open mouths. My children, we will shake the tree." "Jee!" said a single voice from the massed ranks, and immediately the humming war chant was taken up by them all.

  "Jee!" sang Bazo, stamping his right foot and stabbing the broad blade towards the moonless, sky, and his men sang with him.

  Tanase stood still as an ebony carving beside him, but her lips were parted softly, and her huge slanted eyes glowed like moons in the firelight.

  At last Bazo spread his arm again, and waited for their silence.

  "Thus it will be," he said, and again the waiting warriors strained for every word. "First we will eat up the laager at Bulawayo.

  It has always been the way of the Matabele to fall upon their enemy at that hour before the dawn, just before the first light of day. - " the warriors hummed softly in assent. -"and the white men know this is our way," Bazo went on. "Every morning, in the last deep darkness they stand to their guns, waiting for the leopard to walk into their trap.

  The Matabele always come before dawn, they tell each other.

  Always! they say, but I tell you that this time it will be different, my children." Bazo paused and looked carefully into the faces of the men who squatted in the front rank.

  "This time it will be in the hour before midnight, at the rise of the white star from the east." Standing before them in the old way, Bazo gave them their order of battle, and squatting in the black mass of half, naked bodies, his bare shoulders touching those of the and una on each side of him, his hair covered by the feather headdress and his face and body plastered with the mixture of fat and soot, Ralph Ballantyne listened to the detailed instructions.

  "At this season, the wind will rise with the rise of the white star. It will come from the east, so from the east we will come also.

  Each one of you will car
ry upon his head a bundle of thatch grass and the green leaves of the ms asa trees," Bazo told them, and anticipating what was to come, Ralph felt the nerve ends in his fingertips tingle with the shock.

  "A smoke-screen," he thought. "That's a naval tactic!" "As soon as the wind rises, we will build a great fire." Bazo confirmed it immediately. Each of you will throw his bundle upon it as he passes, and we will go forward in the darkness and the smoke. It will avail them not at all to shoot their rockets into the sky, for our smoke will blind the gunners." Ralph imagined how it might be, the warriors emerging from the impenetrable rolling bank Of smoke, not visible until they were within stabbing range, swarming over the wall of wagons or creeping between the wheels. Three thousand of them coming in silently and relentlessly even if the laager were warned and alerted, it would be almost impossible to stop them. The Maxims would be almost useless in the smoke, and the broad-bladed assegais the more effective weapon at such close range.

  A vivid image of the slaughter burned into his brain, and he remembered Cathy's corpse, and imagined beside it the mutilated remains of Jonathan and of Elizabeth, her white smooth flesh as cruelly desecrated. His rage came strongly to arm him, and he stared down into the amphitheatre at the tall heroic figure with the ravaged face, laying out the terrible details of the massacre.

  "We must leave not a single one of them. We must destroy the last reason why Lodzi should bring his soldiers. We will offer him only dead bodies, burned buildings and silver steel, if he makes the attempt." Then in his rage Ralph shouted with the other amadoda, and hummed the wild war chant, his features as contorted as theirs, and his eyes as wild.

  "The indaba is ended," Bazo told them at last. "Go now to your sleeping-mats to refresh yourself for the morrow. When you rise with the sun, let your first task be to cut, each of you, a bundle of dry grass and green leaves as heavy as you can carry." Ralph Ballantyne lay beneath his fur kaross on a sleeping-mat of woven reeds, and listened to the camp settling into sleep about him. They had withdrawn into the narrower reaches of the valley. He saw the watch-fires dwindle, and the circles of their orange light shrink in upon them. He listened to the murmur of voices subside, and the breathing of the warriors near him changing, becoming deeper and more regular.

  Here the Valley of the Goats was broken rocky defile, choked with thick thorn scrub, so that the imp is could not concentrate in one place. They were spread out in pockets, down the length of the valley, fifty men or so in each small clearing, the narrow twisted paths through the thorn scrub overshadowed by the taller trees, which formed a canopy overhead.

  The darkness became more menacing as the last fires died into powdery grey ash, and Ralph, lying beneath the fur blanket, gripped the shaft of his assegai and judged his moment.

  It came at last, and Ralph drew back the kaross stealthily. On all fours he crept to where the nearest warrior lay, groping gently for him. His fingers touched the bare skin of an arm. The warrior started awake at the touch, and sat bolt upright.

  "Who is it?" he asked in a thick guttural voice, rough with sleep, and Ralph stabbed him in the stomach.

  The man screamed. It was a cry of ringing mortal agony that bounded from the rocky sides of the valley, cutting through the silences of the night watch, and Ralph bellowed with him.

  "Devils! Devils are killing me!"He rolled over and stabbed another warrior, wounding him so he yelled in surprise and pain.

  "There are devils here!" At fifty other watch-fires down the valley, the men of Ballantyne's Scouts were stabbing and screaming with Ralph.

  "Defend yourselves, there are ghosts at work!" "Topti!

  Witchcraft! Beware the witches!" "Kill the witches!" "Witchcraft!

  Defend yourselves!" "Run! Run! The devils are amongst us." Three thousand warriors, every one of them steeped from childhood in superstition and witch lore awakened to the screams and wild cries of dying men, and the panic-stricken warnings yelled by men come face to face with the devil's legions. They awakened in blinding suffocating darkness, and seized their weapons and struck out in terror, yelling with fright and the comrades they wounded shrieked and struck back at them.

  "I am wounded. Defend yourselves from the devils. Hah! Hah!

  The devils are killing me!" The night was filled with running figures that collided and stabbed and cried.

  The valley is haunted!" "The devils will kill us all!" "Run!

  Run!" Then from the head of the valley rose such a monstrous iron-lunged braying, such a cacophony that it could only be the voice of the great demon himself. Tokoloshe, the eater of men. It was a sound that drove terrified men over the last frontier of reason, into the realms of witless insensate pandemonium.

  On his hands and knees, Ralph crawled down the narrow pathway, keeping below the level of the slashing spears, silhouetting the frantic figures of running men against the faint light of the stars, and when he stabbed up at them, he aimed for the groin and belly rather than the killing stroke, so that the men that he maimed added their cries to the uproar.

  From the head of the valley, Harry Mellow blew another blaring blast on the brass foghorn, and it was echoed by the screams of men blundering up the sides of the valley and escaping into the open grassland beyond.

  Ralph crept forward, listening for a single voice in the thousands. In the first few minutes hundreds of fleeing warriors, most of them unarmed, had escaped from the valley. In every direction they were disappearing into the night, and each second they were followed by others, men who would have unflinchingly charged. into the smoking muzzles of the Maxim machine-guns, but who were reduced by fear of the supernatural to mindless panic-stricken children. Their cries faded with distance, and now at last Ralph heard the voice for which he had waited.

  "Stand fast, the Moles," it roared. "Stand with Bazo. These are not demons." And Ralph crept towards the sound.

  In the clearing ahead of him, a camp-fire fed with fresh logs flared up sullenly, and Ralph recognized the tall figure with wide gaunt shoulders, and the slim woman at his side.

  "This is white men's trickery," she cried, beside her lord.

  "Wait, my children." Ralph sprang up and ran through the dense scrub to them. "Nkosi," he cried. He did not have to disguise his voice, it was rough and hoarse with dust and tension and battle-lust. "Lord Bazo, I am with you! Let us stand together against this treachery."

  "Brave comrade!" Bazo greeted him with relief as Ralph loomed out of the dark. "Stand back to back, form a ring in which each of us will guard the other, and call out to other brave men to join us." Bazo turned his back to Ralph, and drew the woman Tanase to his side. It was she who glanced back and recognized Ralph as he stooped.

  "It is Henshaw," she screamed, but her warning came too late.

  Before Bazo could turn back to face him, Ralph had changed his grip on the assegai, using it like a butcher's cleaver, and with a single stroke he hacked across the back of Bazo's legs, just above the ankles, and the Achilles" tendons parted with a soft rubbery popping sound.

  Bazo collapsed onto his knees, both legs crippled, pinned like a beetle to a board.

  Ralph seized Tanase's wrist, jerked her out of the circle of firelight, and hurled her headlong to earth. Holding her easily, he tore off her short leather skirt and placed the point of the assegai in her groin.

  "Bazo," he whispered. "Throw your spear upon the fire, or I will open your woman's secret parts as you opened those of mine." The Scouts used the first glimmerings of the new day to move slowly down the valley in an extended line, finishing the wounded Matabele. While they worked, Ralph sent Jan Cheroot back to where they had left the horses to fetch the ropes. He was back within minutes with the heavy coils of new yellow manila over the saddles of the horses that he led.

  "The Matabele have scattered back into the hills," he reported grimly. "It will take a week for them to find each other and regroup."

  "We won't wait that long." Ralph took the ropes and began making the knots. The Scouts came in as he worked. They
were scrubbing their assegai blades with handfuls of dried grass, and Sergeant Ezra told Ralph, "We lost four men, but we found Kamuza, the and una of the Swimmers, and we counted over two hundred bodies." "Get ready to pull out," Ralph ordered. "What remains to be done will not take long."