by Wilbur Smith
That night she held counsel with the Hottentot Corporal, old Karanga and Juba. This camp and road have not been used for this many days, Karanga showed Robyn both hands twice with fingers spread, twenty days. "Which way did they go? " Robyn asked. She had come to have confidence in the old man's tracking ability. They were moving along the road towards the sunrise, and they have not yet returned, " quavered Karanga. It is even as he says, Juba agreed, and it must have been an effort to agree with somebody for whom she had such disdain and jealousy. "The slavers will make this the last caravan before the rains. There will be no trading after the rivers are full, and the Hyena Road will grow grass until the dry season comes again. "So there is a caravan of slavers ahead of us, Robyn mused. "If we follow the road we may overtake them."
The Hottentot Corporal interrupted. "That will not be possible, madam. They are weeks ahead of us. "Then we will meet them returnin& after having sold their slaves."
The Corporal nodded and Robyn asked him, "Will you be able to defend us, if the slavers decide to attack our column? " The and my men, the Corporal drew himself to his full height, "are a match for a hundred dirty slavers, he paused and then went on, "and you shoot like a man, madamV Robyn smiled. "All right, she nodded. "We will follow the road down to the sea."
And the Corporal grinned at her. "I am sick of this country and its savages, I long to see the cloud on Table Mountain and wash the taste of dust from my throat with good Cape Smoke once again The hyena was an old male. There were patches of fur missing from his thick shaggy coat, and his flat, almost snakelike head was covered with scars, his ears ripped away by thorns and a hundred snapping, snarling encounters over the decomposing carcasses of men and animals.
His lip had been torn up into the soft of the nostril in one of these fights and had healed askew, so that the yellow teeth in one side of his upper jaw were exposed in a hideous grin.
His teeth were worn with age, so that he could no longer crush the heavy bones that made up the bulk of hyena diet, and unable to compete, he had been driven from the hunting-pack.
There had been no human corpses along the trail since the slave column had passed weeks before, and game was scarce in this dry country. Since then the hyena had subsisted on scrapings, the fresh dung of jackal and baboon, a nest of field mice, the long-abandoned and addled egg of an ostrich which had burst in a sulphurous geyser of gas and putrefied liquid when he pawed at it.
However, even though the hyena was starving, he still stood almost three foot high at the shoulder and weighed
140 pounds.
His belly under the matted and scruffy coat was concave as that of a greyhound. From high ungainly shoulders, his spine slanted back in a bony ridge to his scraggy hindquarters.
He carried his head low, snuffling at the earth for offal and scourings, but when the scent came down on the wind to him, he lifted his head on high and flared his deformed nostrils.
There was the smell of wood smoke, of human presence, which he had grown to associate with a source of food, but sharper, clearer than all the others was a smell that made the saliva run from his twisted, scarred jaws in drooling silver ropes. He went galloping into a swayin& uneven trot up into the wind following the tantalizing drift of that odour. The scent that had attracted the old dog hyena was the cloyingly sweet taint of a gangrenous leg.
The hyena lay on the outskirts of the camp. It lay like a dog, with its chin on its front paws and its hindlegs and its bushy tail drawn up under its belly, flat behind a clump of coarse elephant grass. it watched the activity about the smoking watch fires.
Only its eyes rolled in their sockets, and the ragged stumps of its ears twitched and cocked to the cadence of human voices, and the unexpected sounds of a bucket or an axe on a stump of firewood.
Once in a while a puff of wind would bring a whiff of the scent that had first attracted the hyena, and it would snuffle it, suppressing with difficulty the little anxious cries that rose in its throat.
As the evening shadows thickened, a human figure, a half-naked black woman, left the camp, and came towards its hiding-place. The hyena gathered itself to fly but before she reached the place where it lay, Juba paused and looked about her carefully without seeing the animal, then she lifted the flap of her beaded apron, lowered herself and squatted. The hyena cringed and watched her. When she stood and returned to the camp, the creature, emboldened by the oncoming " night, crept forward and wolfed down that which Juba had left.
Its appetite was piqued and as the night fell, it inflated its chest, curled its bushy tail up over its back and uttered its drawn-out haunting cry, ascending sharply in key, "Oooo-auw! Oooo-auw! ", a cry so familiar to every man and woman in the camp that hardly one of them bothered to look up.
Gradually the activity about the camp fires subsided, the sound of human voices became drowsy and intermittent, the fires faded, the flames sinking and the darkness crept in upon the camp, and the hyena crept in with it.
Twice a sudden loud voice put it to trembling flight and it galloped away into the bush, only to gather its courage at the renewed silence and creep back. It was long after midnight when the beast found a weak place in the protective schenn of thorn branches about the camp and quietly, furtively pushed its way through the opening.
The smell led it directly to an open-sided, thatched shelter in the centre of the enclosure, and with its belly low to the earth the huge dog-like animal slunk closer and fearfully closer.
Robyn had fallen asleep beside her father's litter, still fully dressed and in a sitting position; she merely let her head fall forward on to her crossed arms and then overwhelmed by fatigue and worry and guilt she at last succumbed.
She awoke to the old man's shrill shrieks. There was complete darkness blanketing the camp, and Robyn thought for a moment that she was blinded by a nightmare. She scrambled wildly to her feet, not certain where she was and she stumbled over the litter. Her outflung arms brushed against something big and hairy, something that stank of death and excrement, a smell that blended sickeningly with the stench of her father's leg.
She screamed also, and the animal growled, a muffled sound through clenched jaws like a wolfhound with a bone. Fuller's shrieks and her screams had roused the camp, and somebody plunged a torch of dried grass into the ashes of the watch fire. It burst into flames, and after the utter blackness the orange light seemed bright as noonday.
The huge hump-backed animal had dragged Fuller from his litter in a welter of blankets and clothing. It had a grip on his lower body, and Robyn heard the sharp crack of bone splintering in those terrible jaws. The sound maddened her and she snatched up an axe that lay beside the pile of firewood and struck out at the dark misshapen body, feeling the axe strike solidly, and the hyena let out a choking howl.
The darkness and its own starvation had emboldened it. It had the taste in its mouth now, seeping through the blankets into its locked jaws and it would not relinquish its prey.
It turned and snapped at Robyn, its huge round eyes glowing yellow in the light of the flames and those terrible yellowed fangs clashing like the snap of a steel man-trap, closing on the axe handle inches from her fingers, jerking it out of her hand. Then it turned back to its prey, and once more locked its jaws onto the frail body. Fuller was so wasted that he was light as a child and the hyena dragged him swiftly towards the opening in the thorn scherm.
Still screaming for help, Robyn stumbled after them and seized her father's shoulders, while the hyena had him by the belly. The woman and the animal fought over him the blunted yellow teeth ripping and tearing through the lining of Fuller's belly as the hyena strained back on its hindquarters, the neck stretched out at the pull.
The Hottentot Corporal dressed only in unlaced breeches, but brandishing his musket, ran towards them in the firelight. Help me, screamed Robyn. The hyena had reached the thorn fence, her feet were slipping in the loose dust, she was not able to hold Fuller. Don't shoot! Robyn screamed. "Don't shooo, The danger from the musket
was as great as from the animal.
The Corporal ran forward, reversing the musket and swung the butt at the hyena's head. It struck with a sharp crack of wood on bone, and the hyena released its grip. Finally, its natural cowardice overcame its greed. it turned and shambled through the opening in the thorn hedge and disappeared into the night. Oh, sweet merciful God, Robyn whispered as they carried Fuller back to the litter, "has he not suffered enough?
Fuller Ballantyne lived out that night, but an hour after dawn that tenacious and tough old man at last relinguished his grip on life without having regained consciousness. It was as though a legend had passed, and an age had died with him. It left Robyn feeling numbed and disbelieving and she washed and dressed the frail and rotting husk for burial.
She buried him at the foot of a tall mukusi tree and carved into the bark with her own hand: FULLER MORRIS BALLANTYNE 3rd Nov. I788 I7th Oct. i86oIn those days there were giants upon the earth."
She wished that she had been able to cut the words in marble. She wished that she had been able to embalm his body and carry it back to rest where it belonged in the great Abbey of Westminster. She wished that he had recognized and known who she was just once before he died, she wished she had been able to allay his suffering, and she was consumed with grief and guilt.
For three days she maintained the camp astride the Hyena Road, and she spent those days sitting listlessly beside the mound of newly turned earth under the mukusi tree. She drove old Karanga and even little Juba away, for she needed to be alone.
On the third day she knelt beside the grave and she spoke aloud. "I make an oath to your memory, my dear father. I swear that I will devote my entire life to this land and its people, just as you did before me."
Then she rose to her feet and her jaw-line hardened.
The time for mourning was past. Now her duty lay plain before her, to follow this Hyena Road to the sea, and then to bear witness before all the world against the monsters who used it.
When the lions are hunting, the prey animals seem able to sense it. They are seized by a restlessness and will graze for only seconds at a time before throwing up their homed heads and freezing into that peculiar antelope stillness, only the wide trumpet-shaped ears moving incessantly; then, skittering like thrown dice, they rearrange themselves upon the grassy plains, snorting and nervous, aware of danger but uncertain of its exact source.
Old Karanga had the same instinct bred into him for he was Mashona, an eater of dirt, and as such he was natural prey. He was the first to become aware that there were Matabele somewhere close at hand. He became silent, nervous and watchful, and it infected the other bearers.
Robyn saw him pick a broken ostrich plume from the grass beside the path and study it gravely, puckering his lips and hissing quietly to himself. it had not fallen from the wing of a bird.
That night he voiced his fears to Robyn. They are here, the stabbers of women, the abductors of children-" He spat into the fire with a bravado that was hollow as a dead tree-trunk. You are under my protection, Robyn told him. "You and all the people in this caravan."
But when they met the Matabele war party, it was without further warning, in the dawn when the Matabele always attack.
Suddenly they were there, surrounding the camp, a solid phalanx of dappled shields and nodding plumes, the blades of the broad stabbing assegai catching the early light. Old Karanga had gone in the night, and with him had gone all the other porters and bearers. Except for the Hottentots the camp was deserted.
Karanga's warning had not been in vain, however, and behind the thorn scherm all the Hottentot guards were standing to their muskets, with their bayonets fixed.
The encircling Matabele stood silent, and still as statues carved from black marble. There seemed to be thousands upon thousands of them, though common sense told Robyn that it was merely a trick of her heated imagination and the poor light. A hundred, at the most two hundred, she decided.
Beside her Juba whispered, "We are safe, Nomusa. We are beyond the Burnt Land, beyond the border of my people. They will not kill us."
Robyn wished she was as confident, and she shivered briefly, not merely from the dawn chill. See, Nomusa, Juba insisted.
"The baggage boys are with them, and many of the amadoda carry their isibamu (firearms). If they intended to fight, they would not so burden themselves."
Robyn saw that the girl was right, some of the warriors had rusty trade muskets slung upon their shoulders, and she remembered from her grandfather's writings that whenever the Matabele intended serious fighting they handed their muskets, which they neither trusted nor used with any accuracy, to the baggage boys and relied entirely upon the weapon that their ancestors had forged and perfected, the assegai of Chaka. Zulu. The baggage boys carry trade goods, they are a trading party, Juba whispered. The baggage boys were the young apprentice warriors, and beyond the ranks of fighting men they were still in column. As soon as Robyn recognized the boxes and bundles that the baggage boys carried balanced on their heads, her last qualms faded to be replaced by anger.
They were traders, that she was sure of now, and returning along the road from the east there was little doubt in Robyn's mind as to what they had traded for these paltry wares. Slavers! " she snapped. "In God's name and mercy, these are the slavers we seek, returning from their filthy business. Juba, go and hide immediately, she ordered, Then, with her Sharps rifle tucked under her arm, she stepped out through the opening in the wall of Thorn bush, and the nearest warriors in the circle lowered their shields a little and stared at her curiously. This small change in attitude confirmed Juba's guess, their intentions were not warlike. Where is your Induna? " Robyn called, her voice sharp with her anger, and now their curiosity gave way to astonishment, Their ranks swayed and rustled, until a man came from amongst them, one of the most impressive men she had ever laid eyes upon.
There was no mistaking his nobility of bearing, the arrogance and pride of a warrior tried in battle and covered in honours. He stopped before her and when he spoke his voice was low and calm. He did not have to raise it to be heard. Where is your husband, white woman? " he asked.
"Or your father? II speak for myself, and all my peopleBut you are a woman, the tall Induna contradicted her. And you are a slaver, Robyn flared at him, "a dealer in women and children The warrior stared at her for a moment, then lifted his chin and laughed, it was a low clear musical sound. Not only a woman, he laughed, "but an insolent one also."
He shifted his shield on to his shoulder and strode past her. He was so tall that Robyn had to Ifft her chin to look up at him. He moved with a sinuous balance and assurance of carriage. The muscles in his back shone as though they were covered in black velvet, the tall plumes of his headdress nodded and the war rattles on his ankles whispered with each pace.
Swiftly he moved through the gap in the thorn hedge and at Robyn's gesture the Hottentot Corporal lifted the point of his bayonet into the "present" position and stepped back to let the Induna pass.
With a sweeping gaze the Induna took in the condition of the camp and laughed again. Your bearers have run, he said. "Those Mashona jackals can smell a real man a day's march away Robyn had followed him into the camp and now she demanded with anger that was not feigned, By what right do you enter my kraal and terrify my people!
The Induna turned back to her. I am the King's man, he said. "On the King's business. " As though that was all the explanation that was necessary.
Gandang, the Induna, was a son of Mzilikazi, the King and Paramount Chief of the Matabele and all the subservient tribes.
His mother was of pure Zanzi blood, the old pure blood of the south, but she was a junior wife and as such, Gandang would never aspire to his father's estate.
However, he was one of his father's favourites. Mzilikazi, who mistrusted nearly all of his sons, and most of his hundreds of wives, trusted this son, not only because he was beautiful and clever and a warrior without fear, but because he lived in strict accordance with
the law and custom of his people, and because of his unquestioned and oft-proven loyalty to his father and his King.
For this and for his deeds, he was covered in honours to which the ox-tail tassels on his arms and his legs bore witness. At four and twenty summers, he was the youngest indoda ever to be granted the head-ring of the Induna and a place on the high council of the nation, where his voice was listened to with serious attention even by the old grey pates.
The ageing King, crippled with gout, turned more and more towards this tall and straight young man when there was a difficult task, or a bitter battle in the offing.
So when Mzilikazi learned of the treachery of one of his Indunas, a man who commanded the border guards of the south and eastern strip of the Burnt Land, he had not hesitated before summoning Gandang, the trusted son. Bopa, son of Bakweg, is a traitor."
It was a mark of Gandang's favour that his father condescended to explain his orders as he issued them. At first, as he was ordered, he slew those who trespassed in the Burnt Land, then he grew greedy. Instead of killing, he took them as cattle and sold them in the east to the Putukezi (Portuguese) and the Sulumani (Arabs) and sent word to me that they were dead. " The old King shifted his swollen and painful joints and took snuff, before going on, Then because Bopa was a greedy man, and the men with whom he deals are greedy also, he began to seek other cattle to trade. On his own account, and secretly, he began to raid the tribes beyond the Burnt Land Gandang, kneeling before his father, had hissed with astonishment. It was contrary to law and custom, for the tribes of the Mashona beyond the Burnt Land were the King's "cattle', to be raided only at the King's direction.
For another to usurp the powers and gather the booty that belonged to the King was the worst form of treason.
Yes, my son, the King agreed with Gandang's horror. But his greed was without frontiers. He hungered for the baubles and the trash which the Sulumani brought him, and when this supply of Mashona "cattle" was not enough, then he turned upon his own people The King was silent and his expression one of deep regret, for though he was a despot with powers that were subject to neither check nor limitation, although his justice and his laws were savage, yet within those laws he was a just man. Bopa sent to me messengers accusing our own people, some of them nobles of Zanzi blood, one of treachery, another of witchcraft, another of stealing from the royal herds, and I sent the messengers back to Bopa ordering him to slay the offenders. But they were not slain. They, and all their people were taken along the road that Bopa had opened to the east. Now their bodies will not be buried in this land and their spirits will wander homelessly for all time That was a terrible fate, and the King lowered his chin upon his chest, and brooded on it. Then he sighed and lifted his head. It was a small neat head and his voice was high-pitched, almost womanish, not that of a mighty conqueror and a warrior without fear. Take your spear to the traitor, my son, and when you have killed him, return to me."