Wilbur Smith - B3 The Angels Weep

by B3 The Angels Weep(Lit)

  "Why do you want to kill Matabele?" Ralph asked him in Sindebele, and the Hottentot answered him fluently in the same language. "It is work I understand and enjoy." Ralph nodded and turned to the next man.

  "It is possible that this one is even more closely related to me," Jan Cheroot introduced him. "His name is Taos, and his mother was a great beauty. She owned a famous shebeen at the foot of Signal Hill above Cape Town docks. At one time she and I were dear and intimate friends, but then the lady had many friends." The prospective recruit had the flat nose and high cheekbones, the oriental eyes and the same waxen smooth skin as Jan Cheroot if he was one of Jan Cheroot's bastards and had spent his boyhood in Cape Town's notorious dock land then he should be a good man in a fight. Ralph nodded.

  "Five shillings a day," he said. "And a free box to bury you in if the Matabele catch you." Jameson had taken many hundreds of horses south with him, and the Matabele had swept the horses off the farms.

  Maurice Gifford had already taken 160 mounted men down towards Gwanda to bring in any survivors who might be cut off on the outlying farms and mines, and still be holding out. While Captain George Grey had formed a troop of mounted infantry, "Grey's Scouts', with most of the mounts that remained. The four mounts that Ralph had brought in with him were fine beasts, and he had managed to buy six more at exorbitant prices, 100 pounds for an animal that would have fetched 15 pounds on a good day at Kimberley market, but there were no others. He lay awake long after midnight under the wagon worrying about it while above him Robyn and Louise slept with the two girls and the children on the wagon truck under the canvas tent.

  Ralph's eyes were closed, and a few feet away Harry Mellow was breathing deeply and regularly drowning out any small sounds. Yet even in his preoccupation, Ralph became aware of another presence near him in the darkness. He smelled it first, the taint of woodsmoke and cured animal furs and the odour of the fat with which a Matabele warrior anoints his body.

  Ralph slipped his right hand up under the saddle he was using for a pillow, and his fingers touched the cheque red walnut butt of his Webley pistol.

  "Henshaw," whispered a voice he did not recognize, and Ralph whipped his left arm around a thick corded neck and at the same moment thrust the muzzle of the pistol into the man's body.

  "Quickly," he grated.. "Who are you, before I kill you?" "They told me you were quick and strong." The man was speaking Sindebele.

  "Now I believe it." "Who are you?" "I have brought you good men and the promise of horses." Neither of them had spoken above a whisper.

  "Why do you come like a thief?" "Because I am Matabele, the white men will kill me if they find me here. I have come to take you to these men." Ralph released him carefully, and reached for his boots.

  They left the laager and slipped through the silent deserted town.

  Ralph had spoken only once more.

  "You know that I will kill you if this is treachery." "I know it, "replied the Matabele..

  He was tall, as tall as Ralph but even heavier built, and once when he glanced back at Ralph the moonlight showed the silky sheen of scar tissue slashed across his cheek beneath his right eye.

  In the yard of one of the last houses of the town, close to the open veld, yet screened from it by the wall that some house proud citizen had erected to protect his garden, there were twelve more Matabele amadoda waiting. Some of them wore fur kilts while others were dressed in ragged Western cast-offs.

  "Who are these men?" Ralph demanded. "Who are you?" "My name is Ezra, Sergeant Ezra. I was Sergeant to One-bright-Eye who the imp is killed at Khami Hills. These men are all Company police." The Company police have been disbanded and disarmed," Ralph said.

  "Yes, they have taken away our guns. They say they do not trust us. That we may go over to the rebels." "Why do you not?" Ralph said.

  "Some of your brothers have. They say a hundred of the Company police have gone over, and taken their rifles with them." "We cannot even if we had wished to." Ezra shook his head. "Have you heard of the killing of two Matabele women near the Inyati river? A woman called Ruth and another called Little Flower, Imbali?" Ralph frowned. "Yes, I remember." "It was these men, and I was their sergeant. The and una named Gandang has asked that we be taken to him alive. He wishes personally to supervise the manner of our deaths." "I want men who can kill the women of the Matabele as easily as they killed ours," said Ralph. "Now what of these horses?" "The horses captured by the Matabele at Essexvale and Belingwe are being held in the hills at a place I know of." Long before the curfew bell, they had all slipped out of the central laager singly and in pairs, Jan Cheroot and his Cape boys taking the horses with them, and by the time Ralph and Harry Mellow strolled down the main street as though they were taking the evening air before returning to the laager for dinner, the others were all gathered in the walled garden at the end of the street.

  Sergeant Ezra had brought the kilts and spears and knob-kierries, and Jan Cheroot had the big black three-legged pot of beef fat and lampblack boiled to a paste. Ralph and Harry and the Hottentots stripped naked and "smeared each other with the rancid mixture, taking care to work it in around the back of the ears, the knees and elbows, and below the eyes where pale skin might show.

  By the time the curfew bell in the Anglican church began to toll, they were all dressed in the kilts of Matabele amadoda. Ralph and Harry covered their hair, which would have betrayed them, with headdresses of black widow-bird feathers. Isazi and Jan Cheroot strapped the rawhide bootees over the hooves of the horses, while Ralph gave his final orders, speaking in Sindebele, the only language they would use during the entire raid.

  They left the town in the sudden darkness between sunset and moonrise, the hoofbeats of the horses deadened by the rawhides, and Ezra's Matabele running at the stirrups on silent bare feet. After the first hour, Ralph muttered a curt order to the Matabele and they took a stirrup-leather and hung from it, a man on each side of the horses. The pace of the march never slackened below a canter. They swept south and eastwards, until the crenellated crests of the Matopos Hills were outlined against the moon-pale sky.

  A little after midnight Ezra grunted. "This is the place!" Ralph rose in the stirrups and raised his right arm. The column bunched up and dismounted. Jan Cheroot's reputed bastard, Taos, came to take the horses, while Jan Cheroot himself checked his men's weapons.

  "I will put them against the firelight for you," Ralph whispered to him. "Watch for my signal." Then Ralph smiled at Isazi, his teeth glinting in the shiny black mask of his daubed face. "There will be no prisoners. Lie close, but beware of Jan Cheroot's bullets." "Henshaw, I want to go in with you." Harry Mellow spoke in Sindebele, and Ralph answered him in the same language.

  "You shoot better than you talk. Go. with Jan Cheroot." At another order from Ralph, every one of them reached into the leather pouch on his hip and brought out a white cow-tail tassel necklace.

  They were the recognition insignia, that might prevent them killing each other in the press of the fighting. Only Ralph added another ornament to his dress. From his hip pouch he brought the strip of mole-skin and bound it around his upper arm, then he hefted the heavy assegai and lead wood knobkerrie and nodded at Ezra. "Lead!" The line of Matabele, with Ralph running in second place, trotted at a traverse across the slope of the hill. As they turned the southern buttress, they saw the red glow of a watch-fire in the valley below.

  Ralph sprinted past Ezra to the front of the line. He filled his lungs and began to sing.

  "Lift the rock under which sleeps the serpent. Lift the rock and let the Mamba loose.

  The Mamba of Mashobane has silver fangs of steel." It was one of the fighting songs of the Insukamini impi, and behind him the line of Matabele picked, up the refrain in their deep melodious voices. It resounded from the hills and woke the camp in the valley. Naked figures, risen from the sleeping-mats, threw wood on the fires, and the red glow lit the underside of the acacia trees so they formed a canopy like a circus tent overhead.


  Ezra had estimated there were forty amadoda guarding the horses, but there were more than that already gathered around the fires and every second more flocked into the bivouac, the outposts coming in to see what was causing the commotion. Ralph had planned for that. He wanted no stragglers. They must be concentrated, so that his riflemen could fire into the bunch, making one bullet do the work of three or four. Ralph trotted into the Matabele encampment.

  "Who commands here?" Ralph broke off the battle-song, and demanded in a bellow. "Let the commander stand forth to hear the word I bring from Gandang." He knew from the account that Robyn had given him of the massacre on the Khami Hills that the old and una was one of the leaders of the uprising. His choice of name had the effect he had hoped for.

  "I am Mazui." A warrior stepped forward respectfully. "I wait for the word of Gandang, son of Mzilikazi." "The horses are no longer safe in this place. The white men have learned where they are. At the rise of the sun we will take them deeper into the hills," Ralph told him.

  "To a place that I shall show you." "It shall be done." "Where are the horses?" "They are in the kraal, guarded by my aniadoda, safe from the lions." "Bring in all your pickets Ralph ordered, and the commander shouted an order and then turned back to Ralph eagerly.

  "What news is there of the fighting?" "There has been a great battle," Ralph launched into a fanciful account, miming the fighting in the traditional way, leaping and shouting and stabbing in the air with his assegai.

  "Thus we came upon the rear of the horsemen, and thus and thus we stabbed them-" His own Matabele gave him a chorus of long drawn-out "Jee" and leaped and postured with him.

  The audience was enraptured, beginning to stamp and sway in sympathy with Ralph and his Matabele. The sentries and pickets had come in from the periphery of the camp. No more hurrying black figures emerged from the shadows. They were all here a hundred, perhaps a hundred and twenty, not more, Ralph estimated, against his forty men.

  Not unfair odds, Jan Cheroot's Cape boys were all first-rate marksmen, and Harty Mellow with a rifle was worth five ordinary men.

  From close at hand, on the first slope of the hill, a nightjar called. It was a musical quavering-cry, that sounded like "Good Lord, deliver us', this pious sentiment gave the bird its popular name, the Litany bird. It was the signal which Ralph had been listening for. He felt a bleak satisfaction that Jan Cheroot had followed his orders so strictly. From the position on the slope, Jan Cheroot would have the crowd of amadoda silhouetted against the firelight.

  Making it all part of the dance, Ralph whirled away, still prancing and stamping, opening a distance of twenty paces between himself and the nearest Matabele. Here Ralph ended his dance abruptly with his arms spread like a crucifix. He stood deathly still staring at his audience with wild eyes, and a silence fell upon them all.

  Slowly Ralph raised his arms above his head. He stood like that for a moment, a heroic figure glistening with fat, every muscle in his arms and chest standing proud, the kilt of civet-tails hanging to his knees, the collar of white cow tails around his neck, his charm against the death that lurked in the darkness beyond the firelight. His blackened features were twisted into a ferocious grimace that held the watchers spellbound. The dancing and singing had served its purpose well. It had distracted the anutdoda, and masked any noise that the Zulus and Hottentots might have made while moving into position around the bivouac.

  Now suddenly Ralph let out a demoniacal howl that made the amadoda shudder, and he dropped his arms the signal for which Harry and Jan Cheroot were waiting.

  The curtains of darkness were torn aside by the blast of massed rifle fire. The range was point-blank, the muzzles almost touching the press of dark naked bodies. It smashed into them, a single bullet churning through belly and chest and spine, bringing down four men, stopping only when the slug broke up against one of the heavy bones of pelvis or femur.

  So unexpected was the assault, that the mass of warriors milled aimlessly, receiving three volleys from the repeating Winchesters, before they broke and ran. More than half of them were down already, and many of those still on their feet were wounded. They ran on top of Isazi's Zulus, and piled up against them like water on a dam wall.

  Ralph heard the great shouts of Wgidla! I have eaten!" as the Zulus put in the steel, and heard the screams of the dying men.

  Now at last the Matabele were rallying, closing up shoulder to shoulder to meet the thin line of Zulus and overrun it. It was the moment Ralph had waited for. He led his own Matabele racing across their rear and flung them at the naked undefended backs of the struggling warriors.

  Long ago, as boys on the Kimberley diamond-workings, Bazo had taught Ralph the art of spearsmanship. Ralph had been as skilful with the broad blade as any of the Matabele youths who were his companions.

  However, it was one thing to practise the long under-handed killing stroke, and another actually to send the point into living flesh.

  Ralph was unprepared for the sensation of the steel in his hand running in and slowing against the sucking resistance, feeling the steel touch and grate on bone, and the haft kick in his hand as his victims bucked and convulsed at the agony. It felt like the butt of the rod when a salmon makes its first run.

  Instinctively Ralph twisted the blade in the man's body, the way Bazo had taught him, maximizing the tissue damage and breaking the vacuum that held the steel then he jerked it clear, and for the first time felt the fine hot spray of blood from the wound fly into his face and splatter his right arm and chest.

  He stepped over the dying man who thrashed on the earth, and sank the steel again and then again. The smell of blood and the screams maddened him, but it was a cold fierce madness that magnified his vision and slowed down the micro-seconds of mortal combat, so that he saw the counter-thrust and turned his adversary's blade aside with contemptuous ease, using the momentum of his shoulders to drive his own point through the Matabele guard and into the notch formed by the joint of his collar-bones at the base of his throat. The man's breath whistled over his severed vocal cords, and he dropped his assegai and seized Ralph's blade with his bare hands. Ralph pulled it back, and the razor edges cut to the bone of the man's fingers, and his hands fell open nervelessly as the Matabele dropped to his knees.

  Ralph leaped over him and poised to thrust again. "Henshaw!" a voice screamed in his face. "It is me!" and through his madness Ralph saw the white cow-tail tassels about the neck and held the stroke, the two lines of attackers had met.

  "It is over," Isazi panted, and Ralph looked about him in bewilderment. It had happened so swiftly. He shook his head to free the cold vice of fighting madness that gripped it.

  They were all down, though a few of them still twisted and twitched and groaned.

  "Isazi, finish them!" Ralph ordered, and watched the Zulus begin the grim work, passing quickly from body to body, feeling for the pulse below the ear and if they found it, stilling it with a quick thrust.

  "Ralph," Harry came scrambling down the slope at the head of the Cape boys. "By God, that was one. "No English," Ralph warned him, then raising his voice. "We will take the horses now. Bring the spare bridles and lead-reins." There were fifty-three fine horses in the thorn bush kraal. Most of them carried the BSA Company brand. Each of the unmounted Zulus and Marabele selected a mount, and the remaining animals were put onto lead-reins.

  In the meantime the Cape boys were going over the field with the speed and precision of born footpads, selecting the rifles that could be used and throwing the ancient Martini Henrys and muzzle-loaders and knobkeffies onto the fire, snapping the assegai blades in the fork of a tree. The loot they discovered, cutlery and crockery and clothing of European manufacture, proved that this impi had taken part in the depredations of the first few days of the rising. That, too, was thrown upon the flames. Within an hour of the first rifle-shot, they were moving out again. This time every man was well mounted, and the spare horses followed at a canter on the lead-reins.

  They rode
down the main street of Bulawayo in the uncertain grey light of predawn. In the front rank Ralph and Harry had scrubbed most of the blackening from their faces, but to make certain they did not draw the fire of a jittery sentry, they carried a flag made from Harry Mellow's white flannel undershirt.

  The inhabitants of the laager tumbled out of their beds to gape and question, and then as they began to realize that this little cavalcade heralded the first retaliation against the slaughter and arson committed by the tribes, the cheering began and rose into joyous hysteria.

  While Vicky and Elizabeth proudly served them a double ration breakfast under the wagon awning, Ralph and Harry received an endless string of well-wishers, of tearful widows whose husbands had perished under the Matabele assegais, bringing thanks and a half-dozen eggs or a freshly baked cake, of wistful boys come merely to stare at the heroes, and of keen young men demanding eagerly, "Is this where we sign up to join Ballantyne's Scouts?" There were shrieks of delight as Judy set about her long-suffering husband with her baton. The children in the front row clapped their hands as the blows cracked upon Punch's wooden head and his grotesquely humped back, and the bells on his cap jingled.