Blue Horizon c-3

by Wilbur Smith

  Louisa pulled the second musket from its sheath and kept her station at Jim's side, as they charged the knot of warriors that surrounded Tegwane. She fired again and another man dropped. Even in the exigency of the moment, Jim felt awed by her ruthlessness. This was not the girl he had thought he knew. She had just killed two men, coldly and efficiently, allowing none of the emotions that raged within her to show.

  The warriors attacking Tegwane heard the gunfire behind them. The heavy reports were sounds alien to them, and when they turned to face the line of horsemen their astonishment and bewilderment showed

  clearly on their faces, which were speckled with the blood of their victims. Jim fired only seconds after Louisa. The heavy lead goose-shot tore into one naked belly, felling the man instantly, and shattered the arm of the warrior beside him. His assegai dropped from his grip and the arm hung uselessly at his side, half severed above the elbow.

  The wounded man looked down at his dangling arm, then reached down and picked up his fallen assegai with his left hand and ran straight at Jim, who was astonished by his courage. Both his muskets were empty, and he was forced to draw the pistol from the holster on the front of his saddle. The ball hit the charging Nguni full in the throat. He made a gargling noise and blood sprayed from his severed windpipe, but his example was an inspiration to his comrades. They recovered from their surprise, left Tegwane and launched themselves at the horsemen, keening with eagerness, their faces alight with bloodlust, the rattles at their ankles buzzing with every stamp of their bare feet and thrust of their stabbing arms.

  Zama and Bakkat fired together and each killed one. Two more were struck by the volley from Smallboy and the other drivers, but their aim was wild, and even the wounded Nguni came on strongly, almost closing within range of their short assegais.

  "Back! Back to reload!" Jim shouted. The line of horsemen broke and wheeled away, galloping out of the encampment. The charge of the Nguni faltered and halted when they could not overtake the horses. Well out in the veld, Jim stopped his men and brought them under control again. "Dismount and reload!" he ordered. "Keep your mounts on the rein. You don't want to lose them now!"

  They obeyed with alacrity. With the reins secured round their shoulders they poured powder and shot into the muzzles, and rodded a handful of goose-shot down on top.

  "Smallboy and his lads may shoot like rabbits," Jim muttered to Louisa, as he primed the pan of his second musket, 'but at least they are still under control."

  Louisa worked almost as quickly and neatly as he did and she finished loading both her weapons only a little after him. The Nguni were encouraged to see them halted. With savage shouts they broke into a run again, swiftly covering the open grassland towards the group of dismounted riders.

  "At least we have drawn them away from their victims," Louisa said, as she stepped into the saddle. Jim went up on Drumfire, but the rest of the men were still busy reloading. Jim saw that Louisa was right. All of the remaining enemy warriors had joined in the chase, and were

  streaming towards them across the grassland. At the granite outcrop old Xegwane stood alone, obviously badly hurt but still alive.

  Bakkat finished priming the pan of his musket and, with the agility of a monkey, leaped into the saddle. He fell in beside Jim, but the others were still busy.

  "Follow us when you're loaded," Jim shouted, 'but hurry!" Then, to Louisa and Bakkat, "Come on! We will give them a whiff of gunsmoke to blunt their appetite." The three trotted out to meet the advancing band of warriors.

  They show no fear!" Louisa said, with reluctant admiration, as the Nguni bayed like a pack of hunting dogs and burst into a headlong charge, straight at them.

  When only a hundred paces separated them, Jim halted. From the saddle they fired deliberately. Two of the attackers collapsed; a third fell to his knees and clutched his belly. They changed muskets and fired again. Both Jim and Bakkat brought down another man each, but the strain was telling on Louisa. The muskets were far too heavy for her, and she flinched instinctively at the painful recoil. Her second shot flew high. The other Nguni closed in howling savagely. Only a few were still on their feet, but their faces were lit with battle fever, and they held their black war-shields high.

  "Back!" Jim ordered, and they turned away, almost under the shadow of the shields, and galloped towards where Zama, Smallboy and the rest of the company were at last reloaded and mounting. As they passed each other Jim shouted across at Smallboy, "Don't let them get too close. Stand off and shoot them down. We'll reload and come after you."

  While Jim's party reloaded, he saw that Smallboy was obeying his orders. He and his men were keeping their horses just ahead of the charge of the Nguni, baiting them on, stopping to fire when they were in killing range, then spurring ahead again. They were doing better now: two more of the warriors were lying lifeless in the grass. When their muskets were empty Smallboy broke off his attack and led his men back.

  By this time Jim's party had reloaded and were in the saddle again. The ranks of horsemen passed through each other as one retreated and the other went forward.

  "Pretty shooting!" Jim encouraged Smallboy. "Now it's our turn."

  The Nguni warriors saw them coming and stopped. For a moment, they stood in a small, uncertain group. By now, they had realized the futility of charging to meet these strangers mounted on the back of fleet, alien animals whose speed no man on foot could match. They had

  swiftly learned the menace of the weapons that boomed out smoke and struck men down from afar with the force of witchcraft. One broke away and fled. However, Jim noted that he did not discard his shield and assegai. It was clear he meant not to yield but to fight again. His companions seemed infected by his example. They turned and ran.

  "Steady!" Jim cautioned his own men. "Don't let them draw you in." Tegwane had warned him that it was a favoured tactic of the Nguni to pretend flight, or even to feign death, to lure their enemy on.

  One of them, the slowest runner, had fallen far behind the others. Jim went after him and caught him up swiftly. As he raised the musket the warrior turned at bay. Jim saw that he was no stripling: there were silver strands in his short, curling beard, and he wore a headdress of ostrich feathers and the cow tails of honour and courage around his spear arm. He displayed a sudden burst of speed and darted towards Jim. He might have driven his assegai blade into Drumfire's flank but Jim hit him full in the face with a load of goose-shot.

  When he looked round he saw that Louisa had obeyed his order. She had not taken up the pursuit, and Bakkat and Zama had also turned back. Jim was pleased with this show of discipline and good sense: it might have been fatal to have his small force scattered across the veld. He rode back to where Louisa waited.

  As he reached her side Jim saw from her face that her rage had vanished as swiftly as it had arisen. She was looking down at one of the dead Nguni with sadness and remorse in her eyes.

  "We have driven them off, but they will return, I'm sure of that," Jim told her, and she watched the distant figures of the surviving Nguni dwindle into the golden grassland, and disappear at last over the fold of the ground.

  "It was enough," she said. "I'm glad you let them go."

  "Where did you learn to fight?" he asked.

  "If you had spent a year on the gundeck of the Meeuu, you would understand."

  At that moment Smallboy and the other drivers rode up with their muskets recharged. "We will follow them, Somoya," he cried eagerly. It was clear that he was still gripped by the ecstasy of battle.

  "No! Leave them!" Jim ordered sharply. "Manatasee and all her army are probably waiting for you over the next hill. Your place is back at the wagons. Go there now, protect the cattle, and make ready to meet another attack."

  While Smallboy and the drivers rode off, Jim led the others back to the grisly encampment. Old Tegwane was sitting on a lump of granite, nursing his injuries and crooning a soft lament for his family and the

  other women and children of his tribe, w
hose corpses were scattered around him.

  While Louisa gave him water from her flask, then washed his wounds and bound them up to staunch the bleeding, Jim went through the encampment. He approached the bodies of the fallen Nguni warily, loaded pistol at the ready. But all of them were dead: the goose-shot had inflicted terrible wounds. They were mostly big, handsome men, young and powerfully built. Their weapons were the work of skilled blacksmiths. Jim picked up one of the assegais. It had a marvelous balance in his hand and both edges were sharp enough to shave the hair from his forearm. The dead warriors all wore necklaces and bangles of carved ivory. Jim took one of these ornaments from the neck of the Nguni elder he had killed with his last shot. By the ostrich feathers in his headdress, and the white cow tails round his upper arms Jim judged that he must have been senior in the band. The ivory necklace was beautifully carved, tiny human figures threaded on to a leather thong.

  "Each figure represents a man he has killed in battle," Jim guessed. It was obvious that the Nguni placed a high value on ivory. This intrigued Jim, and he slipped the necklace into his pocket.

  As he went on through the camp he found that the Nguni had done their gruesome work thoroughly. The children had all been despatched with merciless efficiency. For most a single blow with a war club was all it had taken. Apart from Tegwane, they found only one other Bakwato still alive, the girl Louisa had saved with her first shot. She had a deep spear wound in her shoulder, but she was able to walk when Zama lifted her to her feet. Louisa saw that she was too young to have given birth to her first child, for her belly was flat and smooth, her breasts like unripe fruit. Tegwane let out a joyous cry when he saw she was still alive, and hobbled to embrace her.

  "This is Intepe, the lily of my heart, my granddaughter," he cried.

  Louisa had noticed her at their first meeting with the tribe, for she was the prettiest of all the women. Intepe came to her trustingly and sat patiently as Louisa washed and dressed her wound. When Louisa had finished tending Tegwane and his granddaughter, she looked around at the dead who lay half hidden in the grass.

  "What must we do with all these others?" she called to Jim. We have finished here," Jim replied, then glanced up at the cloudless sky where, high above, the vultures were gathering. "We will leave the rest of the work to them. Now we must hurry back to the wagons. We have much to do there before the Nguni return."

  Jim picked out the best defensive position along the river bank. Here a small tributary stream flowed down from the hills to join the main flow. It came in at an acute angle, forming a narrow wedge of ground bounded on one side by a pool of the main river. Jim plumbed the depth of the pool and found that it was deeper than a man was tall.

  The Nguni will never swim," Tegwane assured him. "Water is perhaps the only thing they fear. They will eat neither fish nor hippopotamus, for they have an abhorrence of anything that comes from water."

  "So the pool will protect our flank and rear." Jim was relieved. Tegwane was proving a useful source of information. He boasted that he could speak the Nguni language fluently, and that he knew their customs. If this was true, he was well worth his keep.

  Jim walked along the top of the steep bank of the tributary stream. The drop was over ten feet, a wall of greasy clay that would be difficult to scale without a ladder.

  This will protect the other flank. We have only to draw up the wagons across the neck between river and stream."

  They rolled them into position, and roped the wheels together with rawhide ri ems to prevent the Nguni pushing them aside and forcing a breach. In the gaps between the wagon bodies, and under the wagon beds they packed thorn-branches, leaving no space for the warriors to crawl through. In the centre of the wagon line they left a narrow gate.

  Jim ordered that the horses and the other domestic animals were to be herded and grazed close by, so that within minutes they could be driven into the protection of the laager and the gateway sealed off against attack with faggots of thornbush placed ready to hand.

  "Do you truly believe that the Nguni will return?" Louisa tried to hide her fear as she asked the question. "Don't you think they might have learned by hard experience and that they will pass us by?"

  "Old Tegwane knows them well. He has no doubt that they will come if only because they dearly love a fight," Jim replied.

  "How many more of them are there?" she asked. "Does Tegwane know?"

  The old man cannot count. He says only that they are many."

  Jim carefully measured and selected a spot well out in front of the wagons, where he made Smallboy and his drivers dig a shallow hole. In it he placed a fifty-pound keg of coarse black gunpowder, set a fuse of slow-match in the bung-hole and ran it back between the wheels of the

  centre wagon. He covered the keg with sacks of pebbles from the river bed which he hoped would scatter like musket balls when the keg exploded.

  He had the men cut firing loopholes into the wall of thorns through which they could lay down enfilading fire along the front of the defences. With the grindstone Smallboy sharpened the naval cutlasses and placed them ready to hand. Then the loaded muskets were stacked beside the cutlasses, with powder kegs and shot bags and spare ramrods close by. Louisa instructed and rehearsed the voorlopers and herd-boys in loading and priming the weapons. She had some difficulty in persuading them that if one handful of gunpowder resulted in such a satisfactory explosion, two would be no improvement; it might result in a burst gun barrel and even the decapitation of whoever pulled the trigger.

  The water fagies were refilled from the river pool and made ready, either to slake the thirst of fighting men or to quench the flames if the Nguni latched on to the old trick of hurling lighted torches into the laager.

  Two herd-boys were placed as lookouts on the crest of the low hill from which Louisa had first spied the charnel field. Jim gave them a clay fire-pot, and ordered them to light a fire of green leaves if they saw the main Nguni impi, or warrior band, approaching. The smoke would warn the camp and, when it was lit, they could race down the hill into the laager to spread the alarm. Jim made certain that the boys came down from the hilltop and were safely in the laager each evening before nightfall. It would have been heartless to leave them out there in the dark at the mercy of wild beasts and Nguni scouts.

  The Nguni never attack at night," Tegwane told Jim. "They say that the darkness is for cowards. A true warrior should die only in the sunlight." Nevertheless Jim brought in his pickets and placed sentries around the periphery of the laager at nightfall, and inspected them regularly during the night to make certain that they stayed awake.

  They will come singing and beating their shields," Tegwane said. They wish to warn their enemy. They know that their fame precedes them, and that the sound of their voices and sight of their black headdresses fills the bellies of their enemy with fear."

  Then we must prepare a fitting greeting for them," Jim said.

  They cleared the trees and underbrush for a hundred paces in front of the wagons, and the spans of trek oxen dragged away the felled trees. The ground was left open and bare. The attacking impi would have to cross this killing ground to reach the wagons. Then Jim paced out the distances in front of the defences, and laid a line of white river stones

  to mark the most effective range and spread patterns of the goose-shot. He impressed on his men that they must not open fire until the first rank of the attackers crossed this line.

  When he had completed all his preparations, they settled down to wait. This was the worst time, and the slow drag of the hours was corrosive to their spirits. Jim took advantage of this delay by spending time with Tegwane, learning more about the enemy from him.

  "Where do they keep their women and children?"

  "They do not bring them to war. Perhaps they leave them in their homeland."

  "Do they have a great store of plunder and riches?"

  "They have many cattle, and they love the ivory teeth of the elephant and the hippopotamus."