by Wilbur Smith
They had barely exchanged a dozen words during the ten days since he had caught up with her. in all that time he had not returned to the cave on the hilltop, and she had seen him only once when she had gone down to the river camp for supplies.
When she had sent Juba down with a tersely worded note, demanding the return of Fuller's tin chest of papers, he had sent a porter with it immediately. In fact, with such alacrity that Robyn was immediately suspicious.
This distrust was a symptom of their rapidly deteriorating relationship. She knew that she and Zouga must talk, must discuss the future, before the opportunity to talk was past.
He was waiting for her beside the green river pools, as she had asked him to be, sitting in the mottled shade beneath a wild fig tree, quietly smoking a hand-rolled cheroot of native tobacco. He stood up courteously as soon as he saw her, but his expression was reserved and his eyes guarded.
I do not have much time, Zouga dear. " Robyn tried to lessen the tension between them by using the small endearment, and Zouga nodded gravely. "I must get back to Pater. She hesitated. "I did not want to ask you to come up the hill since you find it distasteful. " She saw the green sparks in his eyes kindle immediately, and went on quickly. "We must decide what we should do now. Obviously we cannot stay on here indefinitely. "What do you suggest? "Pater is much stronger. I have subdued the malaria with quinine and the other disease, she worded it tactfully, "has responded to the mercury. It is only the leg that truly worries me now. "You told me he was dying. " Zouga reminded her levelly, and she could not help herself, despite her good intentions she flared at him. Well, I am sorry to disappoint you, then Zouga's face stiffened into a handsome, bronzed mask.
She could see the effort it took him to control his own temper, and his voice was thick with it as he answered. That's not worthy of you. "I'm sorry, she agreed, and drew a deep breath.
"Zouga, he has rallied strongly. Food and medicine, care and his own natural strength have made an immense difference.
I am even convinced that if we could get him to civilization to a skilled surgeon, we could cure the ulceration of his leg, and possibly even induce the bone to mend!
Zouga was silent for a long time, and though his face was expressionless, she could see the play of emotion in his eyes.
He spoke at last. "Father is mad She did not answer. Can you cure his mind? "No. " She shook her head. "That will get worse, but with care and skilled attention in a good hospital, we can improve his body and he could live for many years still To what purpose? " Zouga insisted. He would be comfortable and perhaps happyAnd all the world would know that he was a syphilitic madman, Zouga went on quietly for her. "Would it not be kinder to let the legend stand untarnished? No, more than that, to add to it by our own account, rather than drag back this poor diseased and demented thing for all his enemies, his numerous enemies, to mock? "Is that why you tampered with his journals? " Robyn's voice was shrill, even in her own ears. That's a dangerous accusation.
" He was losing his control also. "Can you prove it? I don't have to prove it; we both know it's so. "You cannot move him. " Zouga changed direction. "He is crippled! He could be carried on a litter. We have more than enough porters."
Which way would you take him? " Zouga demanded. He would never survive the route over which we have travelled, and the route southwards is uncharted."
Pater himself has charted the slave road in his journal.
We will follow that. It will lead us directly to the coast."
With the major objectives of the expedition unfulfilled? " Zouga.
asked quickly. The major objectives were to find Fuller Ballantyne, and report on the slave trade, both of which we can accomplish if we march down the slave road to the sea."
Robyn broke off, and then made a show of dawning comprehension. "Oh dear, how silly of me, you mean the gold and the ivory. Those were the major objectives all along, were they not, my dear brother? " We have a duty to our sponsors! And none to that poor sick old man up there? " Robyn flung out one hand dramatically, and then spoiled the effect by stamping her foot. Angry with herself as well as with him, she yelled at him. "I am taking Pater down to the coast, and quickly as I can. "I say you are not. "And I say the hell with you, Morris Zouga Ballantyne! " The oath gave her a dark pleasure, and she turned and strode away from him, long-legged in her tight-fitting breeches.
Two days later Robyn was ready to march. All exchanges between Zouga. and herself since their final meeting at the river had been in the form of written notes, and Robyn realized that her brother would be keeping copies of all this correspondence to justify his actions later.
She had briefly repudiated his written command not to attempt a march with the sick man. Zouga had listed half a dozen reasons, each neatly enumerated, why she should remain. once he had her written defiance, his next note sent up the hill in Juba's sweating little hand was magnanimous, written for future readers other than herself, Robyn decided sourly. If you insist on this folly, he began and he went on to offer her the protection of the entire force of Hottentot musketeers, with the exception of Sergeant Cheroot who had expressed a desire to remain with Zouga. Under the Corporal they would form an escort capable, as Zouga worded it "of bringing you and your charge safely to the coast, and protecting you from any hazards upon the way'.
He insisted that she take most of the remaining porters. He would keep five porters to carry his essential stores, together with his four gunbearers, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
He also ordered her to take the Sharps rifle and all the remaining stores, "leaving me only sufficient powder and shot, and the bare minimum of medicines to enable me to complete the further objectives of this expedition Which I deem to be of prime importance'.
His final note reiterated all his reasons for keeping Fuller Ballantyne on the hilltop, and asked her once more to reconsider her decision. Robyn saved him the trouble of making fair copies by simply turning over the note and scribbling on it. "My mind is made up. I will march at first light tomorrow for the coast Then she dated and signed it.
The next morning, before sun-up, Zouga sent a team of porters up the hill, carrying a litter of mopani poles.
The poles had been peeled of their rough bark and bound together with raw-hide strips from the green hide of a freshly killed roan antelope, and the body of the litter was made from the same interwoven hide strips. Fuller Ballantyne had to be strapped into the litter to prevent him throwing himself out of it.
When Robyn brought them down again, walking beside the litter to try and calm the crazy old man on it, the Hottentot escort and the porters were ready to join her on the march. Zouga was waiting also, standing a little aside as though he had already dissociated himself, but Robyn went to him directly.
At least we know each other now, " she said huskily. We may not be able to rub along together, Zouga. I doubt we ever could have, or ever will be able to, but that does not mean I do not respect you, and love you even more than I respect you."
Zouga flushed and looked away. As she should have known, such a declaration could only embarrass him. I have made sure that you have a hundred pounds of gunpowder, that is more than you could ever need, he said. Do you not wish to say farewell to Pater? " Zouga nodded stiffly, and followed her to the litter, avoiding looking at the Mashona woman who stood beside it and spoke formally to Fuller Ballantyne. Good-bye, sir. I wish you a swift safe journey and a speedy return to good health."
The wizened toothless face, revolved towards him upon its scrawny neck. The shaven head had a pale porcelain gloss in the grey dawn light, and the eyes were bird-bright, glittering with madness. God is my shepherd, I shall fear no evil, Fuller cawed, mouthing the words so they were barely understandable. Quite right, sir, Zouga nodded seriously. "No doubt at all about that. " He touched his cap in a military salute and stepped back. He nodded to the porters and they lifted the litter and moved away towards the pale orange and yellow sunrise.
Brother and sister stood side b
y side for the last time watching the column of escort and porters file past, and when the last of them had gone and only little Juba remained beside her, Robyn reached up impulsively and threw her arms around Zouga's neck, embraced him almost fiercely. I try to understand you, won't you do the same for me? " For a moment she thought he might unbend, she felt the hard erect body sway and soften, and then Zouga straightened again. This is not good-bye, he said. "Once I have done what is necessary, I shall follow you. We'll meet again Robyn dropped her arms to her sides, and stood back. Until then, she agreed wistfully, sad that he had not been able to make even a show of affectionUntil then, she repeated, and turned away. Juba followed her away into the forest, after the departing column.
Zouga waited until the singing of the porters dwindled, and the only sound was the sweet wild bird chorus that greets each dawn in Africa, and the distant melancholy whooping of a hyena slinking away to its earth.
There were many emotions warring in him. Guilt that he had let a woman, however well supported, attempt the journey to the coast; worry that once she reached it, her accounts would be the first to reach London; doubt as to the authenticity of the clues which Fuller Ballantyne had left for him to follow, but overlying it all a sense of relief and excitement that he was at last answerable only to himself, free to range as fast and far as hard legs and harder determination would take him.
He shook himself, a physical purging of guilt and doubt, leaving only the excitement and soaring sense of anticipation. and he turned to where Sergeant Cheroot waited at the perimeter of the forlorn and deserted camp. When you smile, your face makes the children cry, Zouga told him, "but when you frown. . . What troubles you now, oh mighty hunter of elephants? " The little Hottentot lugubriously indicated the bulky tin box that contained Zouga's dress uniform and hat.
Say not another word, Sergeant, " Zouga warned him. But the porters complain, they have carried it so far. "And they will carry it to the gates of hell itself, if I say so. Safari! " Zouga raised his voice, elated with the sense of excitement still strongly upon him. "We march! " Zouga was prepared for wide discrepancies in the positions that his father had fixed by celestial observation, and his own. A few seconds of error in the chronometers would put them many miles out.
So he treated with suspicion the terrain features which he saw ahead and which seemed to match with uncanny accuracy the sketch maps he had copied from Fuller's journals.
Yet as each day's march that he made opened up country that fitted his father's descriptions, he became more confident, more certain that the Umlimo and the ruined city were real and that they lay not many days march ahead.
It was beautiful country they passed through, though the air was more sultry as they descended the sloping plateau towards the south and west. The long dry season, now drawing to its close, had scared the grasslands to the colour of fields of ripening wheat, and turned the foliage of the forests to a hundred shades of plum reds and soft apricots. Many of the trees were bare of all leaves, lifting arthritically contorted limbs to the sky as if beseeching it for the relief of rain.
Each day the thunderheads built up, tall silver ranges of cloud turning purple and sullen leaden blue, threatening rain, but never making good that threat, though the thunder muttered, and in the evenings the lightning flickered low on the horizon as though great armies were locked in battle far to the east.
The big game was concentrated on the remaining water, the deeper river pools and the strongest waterholes, so that each day's march was through a wonderland of wild animals.
In one herd Zouga counted thirty-two giraffe, from the old slink-bull almost black with age, his long neck taller than the trees on which he fed, to the pale beige splotched calves on their disproportionately long legs, galloping away in that slow rocking gait with their long tufted tails twisted up over their backs.
Every clearing had its family of rhinoceros, the cows with the distinctively long slender nose horn, running their calves ahead of them, guiding them with a touch of the horn on the flank. There were herds of Cape buffalo, a thousand strong, flowing in a black dense mass across the open glades, steaming with pale dust like the lava from an active volcano.
Then there were elephant. There was not one day they did not cut fresh spoor, veritable roads through the forest, tall trees pushed down or still standing but stripped of their bark so the trunks were naked and weeping with fresh sap, the earth beneath them strewn with chewed twigs and bunches of picked leaves only just beginning to wither, the huge piles of fibrous dung standing like monuments to the passing of the great grey beasts, and the baboon and the plump brown pheasant scratching and foraging enthusiastically in them for the half digested wild nuts and other tidbits.
Zouga could seldom resist him when Jan Cheroot looked up from his examination of the pad marks and said, "A big bull, this one, walking heavy in the front quarters. Good teeth, I'd stake my sister's virtue on it. "A commodity which was staked and lost many years ago, Zouga observed drily. "But we will follow, none the less."
Most evenings they could cut teeth and, having buried them, carry the bleeding heart to where they had left the porters, two men to carry the forty-pound hunk of raw flesh slung on a pole between them, a feast for the whole party. Because of the hunt, progress was slow and not always direct, but steadily Zouga identified and passed the landmarks that his father had described.
Then at last, knowing he was close, Zouga withstood the temptation to hunt, for the first time refusing to follow the fresh spoor of three fine bulls, and disappointing Jan Cheroot most grievously by doing so. You should never leave a good elephant, or a warm and willing lady, he advised dolefully, "because you never know where or when you are going to meet the next one."
Jan Cheroot did not yet know the new object of their quest and Zouga's behaviour puzzled him. Zouga often caught him watching him with a quizzical sparkle in his bright little slitty eyes, but he avoided the direct question diplomatically and accepted Zouga's orders to abandon the spoor with only a little further grumbling, and they went on.
it was the porters who first baulked. Zouga never knew how they guessed, perhaps old Karanga had spoken of the Umlirno around the camp fire, or perhaps it was part of their tribal lore, although the gunbearers and most of the porters were from the Zambezi many hundreds of miles to the north. Yet Zouga had learned enough of Africa by now to recognize the strange, almost telepathic knowledge of far events and places. Whatever it was, and however they had acquired forewarning, there were thorns in the porters" feet for the first time in months.
At first Zouga was angry, and would have lived up to his nickname of "Bakelal, the Fist, but then he realized that their reluctance to continue towards the range of bald hills that showed above the horizon was confirmation that he was on a hot scent and close to his goal.
In camp that night, he drew Jan Cheroot aside and, speaking in English, explained what he was seeking and where. He was unprepared for the sickly expression that slowly spread over Jan Cheroot's wizened yellow features. Nie wat! Ik lol me met daai goed nieP The little Hottentot was driven in his superstitious terror to fall back on the bastard Cape Dutch. "No what! I don't mess around with that sort of thing, he repeated in English, and Zouga smiled tauntingly across the camp fire at him. Sergeant Cheroot, I have seen you run, with a bare backside, right up to a wounded bull elephant, and wave your hat to turn him when he chargedElephants, said Jan Cheroot without returning the smile, "is one thing. Witches is another thing Then he perked up and twinkled like a mischievous gnome. Somebody must stay with the porters or they'll steal our traps and run for home."
Zouga left them camped near a muddy little waterhole, within an hour's match of the northernmost granite kopje. At the water-hole he filled the big enamelled water bottle, and wet its thick covering of felt to keep the contents cool, slung a freshly charged powder sack on one hip and a food bag on the other, and, with the heavy smooth-bore elephant gun over his shoulder set out alone while the shadows were still long
on the earth, and the grass wet with the dew.
The hills ahead of him were rounded domes of pearly grey granite, smooth as a bald man's pate and completely free of vegetation. As he trudged towards them across the lightly forested plain, his spirit quailed at the task ahead of him.
With each step the hills seemed to rise higher and steeper, the valleys between them deeper and more sheer, the thorny bush that choked the gorges and ravines more dense.
It could take months to search all of this broken wilderness, and he did not, have a guide as his father had had. Yet, in the end, it was so easy that he was irritated with his own lack of foresight.
His father had written in the journals "Even Mzilikazi, that sanguine tyrant, sends gifts for her oracle."
He struck the well-defined road, leading out of the west, broad enough for two men to walk along it, and aimed directly into the maze of smooth, granite hills. It could only be the road used by the emissaries of the Matabele king.
it led Zouga up the first gentle slope of ground, and then turned abruptly into one of the gorges between peaks. The path narrowed, and jinked between huge round granite boulders, the bush so thick on each side that he had to duck below the thorny branches that interlinked to form a gloomy tunnel overhead.
The valley was so deep that the sunlight did not penetrate to the floor, but the heat was thrown out by the granite as though it had been baked in an open fire, and the sweat soaked Zouga's shirt and slid in cool, tickling drops down his flanks. The bush thinned and the valley narrowed, and then pinched out into a narrow neck between the converging rock walls. It was a natural gateway where a few good spearsmen could have held a regiment. On a ledge high above was a small thatched watch hut, and beside it an idle blue tendril of smoke rising from a watchfire into the still hot air. But if there had been a guard he had deserted his post at Zouga's approach.
Zouga grounded the butt of his elephant gun, and leaned upon it to rest from the climb and at the same time surreptitiously to search the cliffs above him for a hidden enemy, or for the spot from which one could send the familiar boulders bounding and clanging down upon him.