Men of Men b-2

by Wilbur Smith

  Even while he coughed and choked on his flooded lungs, he realized that he had lost his assegai, and he groped for it until he felt the tug of the thong on his shoulder; there was still something tied to the other end.

  Hand over hand he drew in the thong and then his fingers closed on the familiar shaft and he sobbed with relief and pressed his lips to the beloved steel.

  It took time for him to realize that the air in the tiny cavern was sweet, and he felt it moving like a lover's fingers on his skin, warm and soft, warmth, that was what made his heart soar. Warmth from the outside world, beyond this icy roaring tomb of water. He found the shaft down which the torrent was sucking air from the surface, and from somewhere came the strength to attempt it. He climbed slowly, agonizingly, and suddenly there was a white prick of light ahead of him, distorted by racing black water.

  He thrust his head forward, and the night wind struck his cheek, and he smelled woodsmoke and grass and earth redolent of the lingering warmth of the sun, and the great white star stood in the night sky high above his head. That dreadful passage had connected the fountain at the base of the cliff to the one high above.

  the strength to drag himself more than He did not have a few feet from the fountainhead, and there under a bush on the soft bed of leaf mould he lay and panted like a dog.

  He must have drifted into an exhausted and cold-drugged sleep, for he woke with a start. The sky had paled.

  He could just see the branches of the bush above his head outlined against it. He dragged himself out, and he ached down to the bones of his spine and found that his skinned elbows and knees burned even at the touch of the dawn wind.

  There was a narrow path, well marked by many feet from the fountainhead up the last few feet of the crest and as he stepped out onto it he looked down and saw far below him the moonsilver forest and the tiny sparks that were the watch-fires of his own bivouac. As he moved, he felt his muscles easing and unknotting, felt the blood recharging his limbs.

  Although he was ready for one, there was no sentry at the top of the path, and he peered out cautiously from behind the stone portals of the gulley onto the tranquil village.

  "By Chaka's teeth, they sleep like fat and lazy dogs," Bazo thought grimly. The doors were all tightly closed, and smoke oozed from every chink in the walls. They were half suffocating themselves to keep out the mosquitoes. He could hear a man coughing hoarsely in the nearest hut.

  He was about to slip out from behind his rocky screen when faint movement in the gloom between the huts made him sink gently down again.

  A dark figure scurried on directly towards where he hid. He shifted his assegai, but only a few paces from him the figure stopped.

  It was swathed in a skin cloak against the pre-dawn chill, bunched up like an old woman, until it straightened and threw off the cloak. Bazo felt his breath hiss up his throat and he bit down to stop it reaching his lips.

  The naked girl was in that lovely tender stage just past puberty, on the very brink of full womanhood. There were the last vulnerable vestiges of childhood in the plump little buttocks and in the kitten awkward way she stood with toes turned slightly inwards. She was naked and the first light touched her sable skin with a lemon glow. Then she turned her head.

  She had a long slender neck and the neat little head balanced perfectly upon it. The dome of her skull was covered with an intricate pattern of closely woven plaits, Her forehead was high and smooth, her cheekbones vaulted in the Egyptian way, her lips chiselled into perfect sweeps, synuretrical as the wings of a beautiful butterfly, and the light glinted briefly in her huge slanted eyes as she looked about her.

  Then she squatted briefly and her water tinkled against the earth.

  It was a sound that unaccountably filled Bazo's chest with a swollen tender feeling, for the act was so innocent and so natural.

  She stood, and in the instant before she covered her head once more with the cloak, he had one more glimpse of her face. He knew then that he had never seen anything so beautiful in all his life, and he stared after her as she hurried back between the huts with a peculiar aching hunger consuming his very being.

  It took him many minutes to rouse himself, and then as he crept forward he found that, hard as he tried, he could not drive the girl's image from his mind. The pathway that led from the village to the ladder drawbridge was unmistakable. It was broad and its surface beaten smooth. There were walls of worked stone on each side of it behind which the defenders could meet any thrust. There were piles of stones at intervals along the path. placed ready to be hurled down at anybody attempting to force the ladder or fight their way up the path.

  The pathway dropped steeply into the gulley, and then ended on a wide level stone platform. The light was stronger now and Bazo could see that there were sentries here; two of them stood on the lip watching the plain fifty feet below the platform, guarding the massive counterbalanced ladder. Farther back four other guards squatted around a small smoky fire, and Bazo's saliva flooded as he smelled the roasting maize cakes. The men were talking in the low sleepy tones of men who had stood a long watch, and their backs were turned to the gulley, for they would never expect an enemy to come from that direction.

  Bazo crept closer. There was another pile of rocks at the corner of the platform, ready for the guards to hurl down the cliff. Bazo crawled into the shadows behind it.

  He did not have long to wait. Very faintly on the morning wind he heard the singing. Zama had begun the dance below the cliff. The song was the fighting hymn of his regiment, and Bazo's blood thrilled in his veins.

  He felt the divine madness begin. it was a feeling that other lesser men got only from the hemp pipe.

  He felt the sweat break on his skin, and the madness mount from his belly to his heart, felt the blood swell in his throat, felt his eyes burn and bulge.

  The guards had left the fire now and crowded the edge of the cliff, peering downwards, laughing and pointing.

  "Hear Lobengula's puppies yap!"

  "Look at them dance like virgins at the Festival of First Fruits" The signal Bazo had agreed with Zama was the moment the battle song ended, but he could barely contain himself that long.

  He rose from his crouch, and his muscles twitched, his head jerked like that of a maniac, and in the dawn light his eyes were glazed like shards of ceramic pottery, the red rage of the berserker. At that instant the distant song ended.

  Bazo's cry froze the men on the edge of the cliff, it was the bellow of a heart-struck buffalo bull, the screech of the stooping eagle.

  In the paralysed moment before they could turn, Bazo, struck them.

  He charged with outstretched arms and swept four of them away into the void. They twisted and turned in the air as they fell, and they screamed the whole way down on a high receding note that was cut off abruptly at the end.

  Bazo's charge had been so headlong that he almost followed them over the brink; for a giddy moment he tottered there, and then he caught his balance and spun to strike underhand at one of the survivors. The blade went into the man's belly and out the other side, cleaving his bowels and his kidneys, and crunching through his backbone; and when Bazo jerked the steel clear, the life blood sprayed hotly onto his forearm and his chest. The last sentry ran, silently and desperately, for the pathway, and Bazo let him go.

  Bazo bounded along the edge of the cliff and reached the point where the top of the ladder was secured. The ropes that held it were of twisted and plaited bark, reinforced with liana and leather thongs. They were thick as Bazo's arm, and he changed his grip on the assegai to a chopping stroke.

  The ropes popped and crackled as he hacked through them. He grunted at each Stroke, slitting his eyes against the flying chips of wood and bark.

  Behind him he heard the babble of many voices on the pathway. The sentry would call them down like hunting dogs, but Bazo scorned to turn until the work was done.

  One rope gave, and the massive unwieldy ladder sagged and twisted.

  He
cut again, reversing his grip to swing back-handed, and the other ropes went.

  The ladder swung outwards and downwards, gathering momentum, and the timbers crackled and squealed, drowning out the voices of the men coming down behind him. The bottom of the ladder struck the scree below the cliff with a shattering crash, and some of the uprights snapped under the impact. The head of the ladder was still secured at Bazo's feet, and the whole twisted mess hung down like the rigging of a dismasted ship.

  Bazo stood long enough to watch Zama lead his warriors swarming up the dangling tangle of rope and timber. Then he turned.

  They were coming down the pathway, a solid phalanx of black bodies and sparkling weapons; but their advance was hesitant enough for Bazo to race forward and reach the narrow gap in the wall before the leaders did. With solid rock to guard his flanks, he laughed at them, and it was a sound to stop them dead, those in front pushing back and those behind struggling forward.

  one of them threw a long spear and it clashed sparks from the wall at the level of Bazo's head. He drove forward and stabbed into the press of bodies caught in the narrow gut between the stone walls. The screams and moans goaded him, and the blood from the gaping wounds splattered his face and sprayed into his open mouth, a ghastly draught that maddened him further.

  They broke and fled, leaving four of their number writhing and twisting on the pathway.

  Bazo glanced behind him. None of his Matabele had reached the head of the ladder yet. He looked back up the pathway and saw that the real men were coming.

  These would be the picked warriors, the best spearmen , there was no mistaking their superiority over the rabble that Bazo had just scattered; they were bigger and more powerful in body, their expressions grim and determined, and their formation ordered and controlled.

  They came down in massed ranks to where Bazo stood, their shields raised, their spears poised, and at their head danced a skinny wizened old man with a face ravaged by some terrible disease, his nose and ears rotted away and his cheeks and forehead covered with silver white blotches.

  He was hung about the waist and neck with the accoutrements of his magical trade, and he shrieked and gibbered like an enraged ape.

  "Kill the Matabele dog."

  Bazo was naked, without a shield, but he hefted the assegai and stood to meet them and their horrid master and he laughed again, the wild joyous laughter of a man who was living a lifetime in his last few seconds.

  "Bazo!" The cry reached him, even through his rage, and he turned.

  Zama had crawled onto the platform, blown from that long scrambling climb up the swinging twisted ladder.

  He rose on his knees and sent the great dappled shield skimming across the platform. Like a falcon coming to bate it settled on Bazo's shoulder, and Bazo laughed and went springing forward.

  His assegai drove through the wizard's rotting flesh as though it were soft as a boiled yam, and Pemba screeched one last time.

  "Bazo, wait! Leave some of them for us!" The shouts of his fifty Matabele behind him, as they scrambled onto the platform, and then Zama's muscled shoulder was touching his as they locked shields and swept the pathway, the way the flash floods of summer scour the dry riverbeds.

  It was a beautiful stabbing, a glory which men would sing about. The assegais seemed to hold their keen edge no matter how often they were buried and the spear arms never tired despite the heavy work. The line of Matabele swept the hilltop from end to end, roaring their frustration when the last of Pemba's men threw down their spears and leapt out over the cliff, grudging them that easy death for the assegais were still thirsty and the madness was still on them.

  Then they turned and went back through the village, ransacking the huts, throwing a toddling infant high and catching it on the point as it fell, or sending the steel full length out between the withered dugs of some scurrying crone, for the divine madness does not pass swiftly.

  With his shoulder, Bazo smashed open another hut, and Zama leaped in at his side, both of them were painted from throat to knee with red running crimson, their contorted faces hideous, blood-glutted masks. Someone tried to escape from the dark interior of the hut.

  "Mine!" roared Zama and sped his long steel, and the low early sun struck a ray through the open doorway, sparkling on Zama's assegai and falling in the same instant on the huge slanted terrified eyes and high Egyptian cheekbones of the girl he was killing.

  Zama's steel clashed against Bazo's great shield and was deflected past the girl's cheek by the width of a finger, so that the stroke died in the air. Before Zama could strike again Bazo stood over the girl, spreading the shield over her the way a heron covers its chick with a wing, and he snarled at Zama like a leopard whose cub is menaced.

  After the first weary day of the return march, while the long file of roped captives was settling exhausted and miserable beneath the grove of msasa trees, Bazo strode down the line and stopped beside the girl.

  "You!"he said, and with a careless stroke of his assegai severed the thong at her neck. "Cook my meal!"

  While she worked over the fire, Bazo joked loudly with Zama and his men, trying to prevent his eyes from straying from their faces. He ate what she cooked without showing either pleasure or displeasure, while she knelt at a respectful distance and watched every mouthful he took.

  Then suddenly when he had finished eating, she came gliding to his side with that disconcerting silent grace, and she lifted the bunch of wilted leaves from the swollen and crusted spear wound in Bazo's flank.

  It was an impertinence, and he lifted his hand to strike her, and then let the hand fall. She had not flinched and her manner was assured and competent.

  She cleaned the wound with deft fingers and then she unstoppered two of the little buck-horn containers that she wore on her belt and with the powder they contained made a poultice. It burned like fire for a few seconds, but then felt much easier.

  Bazo made no acknowledgement, but when one of his Matabele came to rope her back with the other captives, Bazo frowned, and the man passed her by.

  When Bazo lay on his sleeping-mat, she curled like a puppy at his feet. He was ready for her to try to escape once the camp settled, but after midnight she had not stirred and he fell asleep.

  In the hour before dawn when he rose to check the sentries, there was frost on the grass, and he heard the girl's teeth chattering softly. He dropped his fur regimental cloak over her as he passed and she cuddled down into it quickly.

  When he called for the day's march to begin, she had his bedding roll and cooking-pot balanced on her head, and a dozen times during the march, Bazo had to go back along the winding column for no reason that he could explain to Zama, and each time his steps slowed as he came up behind the girl, and he watched the play of muscle down her back, the roll of her plump black buttocks and the joggle of her glossy sable breasts. But when she turned her head and smiled shyly at him, his hauteur was frosty and he stalked back to the head of the column.

  That night he permitted himself a nod of approval at the first taste of her cooking, and when she dressed the wound, he said, "The heat has gone from it."

  She did not lift her eyes.

  "Who taught you this skill" he insisted.

  "Pemba, the wizard," she whispered.

  "Why?"

  "I was his apprentice."

  "Why you?"

  "I have the gift."

  "So then, little witch, make me an oracle," Bazo laughed, and she lifted her head and he looked into those disconcerting slanted tar-bright eyes.

  "Do not scoff, lord."

  INKOSI, lord," she called him, but Bazo stopped laughing, and felt the spirits tickle the hair at the nape of his neck. That night, when he heard her shiver, he opened a fold of his kaross and she crept into it.

  Bazo feigned sleep, but his body was tense and he was aware of each tiny movement that the girl made as she settled to sleep. It would have been so easy to reach out and hold her down with his arm across her chest while he forced h
is knee between hers. The thought made him twitch and grunt.

  "Lord?" she whispered. "Something troubles you."

  "What is your name?" he asked, for want of a reply, and found that he was whispering also.

  "Tanase."

  He measured it on his tongue, and it fitted "Tanase." well enough, although he recognized it was a Rozwl name, one of the splinter tribes of the Mashona, and he did not know the meaning.

  "I know your name, everyone speaks it with respect," she said. "Bazo, the Axe."

  "I killed your master, Pemba. I struck him down with my own hand." He did not know what compelled him to say that.

  "I know," she whispered.

  "Do you hate me for that, little witch?"

  "I praise you for that!" Her voice shook with quiet vehemence, and her hip touched his under the kaross.

  "Praise? Did you not love Pemba as a dog loves its master?"

  "I hated him, and when I foresaw his death in the magic calabash, I was filled with joy."

  "You saw his death?"

  "I saw his death, as I saw your face, long before you came to take me."

  Bazo shuddered involuntarily, and she felt it.

  "You are cold, lord." She pressed a little closer to him.

  Her flesh was hot and soft, he felt his own flesh respond to its touch.

  "Why did you hate Pemba?"

  "He was evil beyond the telling. The things he forced me to do I will never forget., "He used your body?" There was a rough edge to Bazo's question.

  "Not even Pemba would dare tamper with the body of one of the chosen ones, for to tear the veil of maidenhood is to destroy the gift."

  "The gift?"

  "The gift of foresight which the likes of Pemba value 4 so highly., "What then did he force upon you?"

  "Dark things, midnight things, torture not of the body but of the spirit."

  Now it was her turn to shudder, and she turned towards him and clung to his broad smooth chest, hiding her face against it so that her voice was muffled and he could hardly catch her next words.