by Wilbur Smith
He found that much had changed in Matabeleland since old Tom Harkness had drawn his map, and Zouga noted these changes and drew his conclusions from them.
As a further exercise to pass the waiting days he began drawing up a battle plan for a campaign against the old King Mzilikazi, the requirements in men and weapons, the logistics of supply and resupply, the lines of march, and the most expedient methods of bringing the impis to battle – for Zouga was a soldier, a soldier with a dream which might one day become reality only through military action.
Unsuspecting, Gandang was flattered by Zouga’s interest and he answered every question with pride in his nation’s might and its achievements. Despite this work Zouga had given himself, the days dragged past.
‘The King will not give you audience until after the festival,’ Gandang repeated, but he was wrong.
The evening before the festival began, two elderly Indunas, blue heron feathers nodding above the silvery woollen caps of close-cropped hair, entered the camp in the acacia grove and Gandang greeted them with deep respect, listened to them attentively, and then came to Zouga.
‘They have come to take you to the King,’ he said simply.
There were three small fires burning before the King’s hut, and over the middle one crouched a wizened ape-like figure, who crooned a low incantation through toothless gums, rocking on his haunches and occasionally adding a pinch of powder, or a sprig of herb into one of the large earthenware pots that bubbled over the flames.
The witch-doctor was festooned with the grisly accoutrements of his profession, the dried skins of reptiles, the claws of eagle and leopard, the inflated bladder of a lion, the skull of ape and the teeth of crocodile, small stoppered gourds of potions and powders, the horn of duiker to be used as a blooding cup, and other unidentifiable charms and elixirs.
He was the orchestrator of the entire festival, the most important event in the Matabele calendar, the gathering of the first fruits of the harvest, the blessing of the nation’s herds, and the setting of the warlike campaigns which would occupy the amadoda during the coming dry season. Thus the assembled Indunas watched his preparations with attention and awe.
There were thirty or so men in the squatting circle of elders, the senior Indunas of the nation, the King’s privy council. The small courtyard was crowded. The tall thatched sloping side of the King’s hut towered thirty feet or so above them all, the top of it lost in darkness.
The thatching was skilfully done, with intricate patterns worked into the grass, and before the low doorway stood an armchair of European design and construction. With a small prick of recognition Zouga realized that this must be the same chair given to the King by his own grandfather Moffat, Tshedi, nearly twenty years before.
‘Bayete! Mzilikazi, the bull elephant of the Matabele.’
Gandang had coached Zouga in the correct etiquette, the formal greetings and the behaviour which the King would expect.
As Zouga crossed the narrow yard of bare earth, he intoned the King’s praise names, not shouting them aloud, not crawling on his knees as a subject would have done, for he was an Englishman and an officer of the Queen.
Nevertheless, at a distance of ten feet from the King’s chair Zouga squatted down, his own head below the level of the King’s, and waited.
The figure in the chair was much smaller than he had expected for a warrior of such fearsome reputation, and as his eyes adjusted to the gloom, Zouga saw that the King’s feet and hands were small and delicately shaped, almost feminine, but that his knees were grotesquely swollen and distorted by the gout and arthritis that was attacking them.
The King was an old man now, nobody knew how old, but he had been a fighting warrior at the turn of the century. His once fine muscles had sagged so that his belly bulged out on to his lap, the skin stretched and riven with stria like that of a pregnant woman.
His head seemed too big for the narrow shoulders, and the neck hardly strong enough to support it, but the eyes which watched Zouga intently from the seams of wrinkles and loose, bagged skin, were black and bright and lively.
‘How is my old friend Tshedi?’ the King asked in a piping high-pitched voice.
Zouga had last seen his maternal grandfather twenty years previously; the only memory that persisted was of a long flowing white beard.
‘He is well and happy,’ Zouga replied. ‘He sends you his greeting and respect.’
The old man in the armchair nodded the big ungainly head contentedly.
‘You may present your gifts,’ he said, and there was a buzz of comment from the Indunas, and even the witch-doctor at the fire looked up as the ivory tusk was carried in by three of Gandang’s warriors, staggering under its weight, and laid before the King’s chair.
The witch-doctor clearly resented this interruption of the ritual cleansing and the diversion of interest and attention from himself, and now with two of his assistants to help him he made an officious show of carrying one of the steaming pots from the fire and placing it between the King’s feet.
Then he and his assistants raised a large kaross of stitched leopard skins and spread it like a tent over the King and his chair so the steam from the pot was trapped beneath it. Within a minute, there was a paroxysm of gasps and coughing from under the fur blanket, and when at last the witch-doctor removed it, the King was streaming sweat and choking for breath, his eyes inflamed and pouring tears, but any demons had been expelled by the coughing, and impurities washed away by the sweat and tears.
The gathering waited in respectful silence, while the King recovered his breath, and the witch-doctor withdrew to prepare the next potion. With his breath still wheezing and whistling in his throat, Mzilikazi reached into the small chest beside his chair and brought out the sealed package which Zouga had sent him.
‘Speak the words.’ The King handed it to Zouga, demanding that he read the letter.
Although he was illiterate, the King understood clearly the uses of the written word. For twenty years he had corresponded with Zouga’s grandfather, who always sent one of his mission students to deliver his letters, to read them to the King, and to record the King’s reply.
Zouga stood erect and opened the package. He read aloud, translating from the English as he went along, and adding a few small embellishments to the original text.
When he had finished, there was a respectful silence from the tribal elders, and even the King studied the tall and magnificently attired figure before him with new attention. The firelight danced on the burnished brass buttons and badges of Zouga’s dress uniform, the scarlet cloth of his coat seemed to glow like the very flames of the fire.
The witch-doctor would have intervened again, coming forward with a brew of steaming medicine for the King to swallow, but Mzilikazi waved him away irritably.
Knowing that this was the moment when the King’s interest was at its zenith, Zouga asked smoothly, ‘Does the King see these signs of my Queen? They are her special marks, and every ruler should have such a mark to prove his power and the rocklike nature of his words.’
Zouga turned and beckoned the bearer who knelt in the gateway behind him and the terrified man crawled to Zouga’s feet, not daring to look up the King, and handed to Zouga the small tea caddy that contained the carved ivory seal and the sticks of wax.
‘I have prepared one of these for the King, that his dignity and power may be known to all men.’
Mzilikazi was unable to contain his interest; he craned forward in his chair and called Zouga closer. Kneeling before him, Zouga prepared the wax, melting it on to the lid of the tea caddy with a taper lit from the fire. Then he made the impression of the seal upon it, and when it had hardened, handed it up to the King.
‘It is an elephant.’ The King recognized the beast with unconcealed amazement.
‘The great black bull elephant of the Matabele,’ Zouga agreed.
‘Speak the words.’ The King touched the lettering on the border, and commanded Zouga to translate it.
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br /> ‘Mzilikazi, Nkosi Nkulu!’
The King clapped his hands with delight, and passed the seal to his senior Induna. Soon they were all clucking and exclaiming over the imprint, the wax impression passing from hand to hand.
‘Bakela,’ the King told Zouga, ‘you must come to me again on the day following the Chawala ceremony. You and I have much to discuss.’
Then with a wave of his hand he dismissed the splendid young man from his presence, and patiently, resignedly, gave himself up to the ministrations of the hovering doctor.
The full moon rose well past midnight, and the fires were stacked with new logs to welcome it, and the singing and drumming began. No man nor woman had dared to pick a single grain of corn from the harvest before this moment, for the rise of the moon heralded the Chawala, the dance of the first fruits, and the entire nation gave itself up to rejoicing.
The ceremony began in the middle of the first morning. The massed regiments assembled before their King, filing in column into the vast arena of the cattle stockade, and the earth shook to the crash of bare feet lifted in unison, twenty-five thousand at a time, lifted to the level of the shoulder and then brought down with the full force of the muscular, hardened bodies of highly trained warriors.
‘Bayete!’ they greeted the King with the royal salute.
‘Bayete!’ the crash of feet once more.
‘Bayete!’ a third time, and then the dancing began.
One regiment at a time coming forward in swaying, singing ranks, to perform before Mzilikazi’s armchair throne. The perfect timing and execution of the intricate steps made it seem as though they were a single living organism, the shields interlocking and revolving and twisting together like the scales of some gigantic reptile, the dust rising and swirling through their ranks like smoke so that they appeared as wraiths, and their cloaks of furs and their kilts of civets’ tails and monkey-skins, of the pelts of foxes and cats, swirled about their legs so they appeared to be divorced from earth, suspended above it on the moving cloud of dust and the soft waves of fur.
From the ranks sprang the great champions and the heroes of each regiment, to giya in their pride. Leaping as high as their own heads, and stabbing furiously at the air, screaming challenge and triumph, the sweat greased their muscles and flew in explosive droplets in the sunlight.
Mzilikazi was caught up in the building sea of excitement, and he quaffed from the beer pots that the maidens brought him until his eyes rolled in his head and he could not contain himself further. He struggled from his chair, and hobbled out on his swollen and deformed legs, and the champions fell back to give him place.
‘My father is the finest dancer in all of Matabeleland,’ said Gandang, squatting beside Zouga.
The old King tried to leap, but his feet did not leave the ground. He shuffled back and forth, making little pawing gestures, hacking at the air with his toy war spear.
‘Thus I struck down Barend the Griqua, and thus his sons died.’
The nation roared.
‘The bull elephant dances, and the earth shakes.’ And the slamming of ten thousand feet goaded the King to circle in a painful and pathetic parody of the young champions’ wild gyrations.
‘Thus I spurned the tyrant Chaka, and thus I cut the plumes from the headdress of his messengers and sent them back to him,’ squealed Mzilikazi.
‘Bayete!’ thundered the nation. ‘He is the father of the world.’
Exhausted within minutes, the ancient King sank into the dust, and Gandang and two other of the King’s sons leapt to their feet from the half circle of Indunas and raced to his side.
Gently they bore him up and carried him back to his chair, and Lobengula, the King’s senior son, held a beer pot for him to drink from. The beer dribbled from his chin and ran down the King’s heaving chest.
‘Let the nation dance,’ gasped the King, and Gandang returned to Zouga’s side and squatted beside him.
‘After war, my father loves best the dance,’ he explained.
The maidens came, rank upon lovely rank, their naked skin shimmering in the glaring sunlight of noon. The tiny beaded apron that barely covered their little triangular sex was all they wore, and their singing was sweet and clear.
Mzilikazi hoisted himself from his chair once more, and hobbled out to dance with them, passing along the foremost rank, directing the singing with his ritual war-spear pointed to the skies. The King danced until he dropped once more, and was again carried back to his chair by his sons.
By nightfall, Zouga was exhausted. His sweaty neck was chafed by the high stock of his dress coat, and sweat had soaked through the thick scarlet serge in dark patches. His eyes were bloodshot and inflamed from the dust and the glare, his head ached from the cacophony of drums and the roar of Matabele voices, his tongue felt thick and furry from the draughts of sorghum beer that had been pressed upon him and his back and legs ached from the unfamiliar squatting attitude he had been forced into all that day – but the King was still dancing, hobbling and prancing and squeaking on those twisted and deformed legs of his.
The following morning Mzilikazi was on his throne again, so undaunted by the previous day’s exertions, that when the Chawala bull was loosed into the arena his sons had bodily to restrain him from rushing out to slay it with his bare hands.
A champion from each regiment had been chosen, and stripped down to a loin-cloth. They waited in squatting ranks on each side of Mzilikazi’s chair.
The bull came into the ring at the charge, horned head held high, red dust spurting from under his hooves, and his wild eyes glaring. He was pure, untainted black, with a huge humped back and glossy burnished hide.
Carefully picked from all the King’s herds, he was the finest animal in the whole of Matabeleland and he made an arrogant circuit of the arena, stepping high, snorting and dropping his head to hook with curved horns at anything in his path.
The King, held by his sons, but struggling against their grip, was almost incoherent with excitement, and now he lifted his spear and his arms shook violently as he screamed, ‘Bulala inkunzi! Kill the bull!’
The waiting men leapt to their feet, saluted the King, and then raced out, spreading into a half-moon shape line, instinctively adopting the jikela, the movement of encirclement.
The black bull swung to meet them, came up short on locked front legs, his head swinging as he measured his charge; then the great rounded quarters bunched under him and he surged forward, picking a man in the centre of the line and thundering down on him.
The man he had chosen stood his ground, spreading his arms in a welcoming gesture and the bull dropped his head and hit him. Clearly Zouga heard the brittle snap of bone as the warrior absorbed the shock of impact against his chest, and then locked his arms around the animal’s neck and held on.
The bull tried to toss him, hooking and throwing his head high, but the man held on, and was cruelly thrown about, but his body blocked the bull’s sight and brought him to a halt. The racing line closed about him instantly, and abruptly the bull’s great humped body was smothered by the rush of naked black men.
For long seconds the bull struggled to remain upright, but they bore him down and tore his legs out from under him so he hit the dusty earth with a heavy thump and a groaning bellow. A dozen men seized the long horns, and, using their leverage, began to twist them against the massive inert weight of his pinned body. Slowly, sweating and straining, they forced his head around, and the bull kicked his hooves in the air, his bellows becoming more desperate and strangled.
The King leapt up and down in his chair, screaming with excitement, and the roar of voices was like the sound of surf on a gale-driven coast of rock.
Inch by inch, the huge horned head revolved, and then suddenly there was no longer resistance. Zouga heard the crack of the vertebrae, sharp as a musket shot even above the thunder of the assembled nation. The horned head flicked through another half turn, the legs stiffened skywards for a moment, and the bull’s bowels voided i
n a liquid green stream.
The sweat-drenched warriors lifted the carcass shoulder high and bore it bodily across the arena to lay it at Mzilikazi’s feet.
On the third and last day of the ceremony, Mzilikazi stalked out into the centre of the cattle-pen. He made a frail and bent figure in the vast open space, and the noon sun burned down from above so that there was almost no shadow under him. The nation was quiet, forty thousand human beings watching one old man and there was not a whisper, nor a sound of breathing.
In the centre of the arena Mzilikazi paused and raised his war-spear above his head. The watching ranks stiffened as he revolved slowly, and then stopped facing towards the south. He drew back his spear arm, poised for a moment while the tension in the watchers was a palpable emanation from forty thousand charged bodies.
Then the King gave a little hop, and began slowly to revolve, the crowd sighed and swayed and then grew silent as again the King poised with his blade pointed towards the east. Then another little hop as he teased them deliberately, drawing out the moment with the timing of a natural showman.
Then suddenly his spear arm shot forward and the tiny toylike weapon flew from his hand in a high sparkling parabola, and dropped to bury its point in the baked earth.
‘To the north!’ thundered the nation. ‘Bayete! The great bull has chosen the north!’
‘We go northwards to raid the Makololo,’ Gan-dang told Zouga. ‘I will leave with my impi in the dawn.’ He paused, and then smiled briefly. ‘We will meet again, Bakela.’
‘If the gods are kind,’ Zouga agreed, and Gandang laid one hand on his shoulder, squeezed briefly, and then turned away.
Slowly, without looking back, Gandang walked away into the darkness which was clamorous with the singing and the sound of the drums.
‘Your guns would be terrible weapons if they did not have to be reloaded,’ Mzilikazi piped in his queru-lous old man’s voice. ‘But to fight with them a man must have fast horse, so that he may fire and then gallop away to reload.’