by Wilbur Smith
By Tom’s reckoning they covered ten miles in that first march, and he declared a halt only after the moonless night became too dark to allow them to make out the ground under their feet. He slept only fitfully with Sarah beside him under their blankets. Soon after midnight he sprang to his feet as a ghostly cry echoed from the summit of the hill above them. It was a human voice, calling down to them in the language of the Lozi. ‘What manner of men are you?’
‘I am Klebe, your friend,’ Tom shouted back.
‘I am Aboli, husband of Falla and Zete.’ Aboli threw more wood on the fire, which flared up brightly.
‘I am Fundi, the hunter of elephants. Come down to us, men of the Lozi.’
They appeared among the dark trees, moving shadows in the firelight that materialized into human shapes. There were less than a hundred survivors of the raid, many of them women, but over fifty warriors who still carried their weapons, throwing spears and the heavy elephant bows with quivers of poisoned arrows.
They squatted in a dense mass around the fire and one at a time the elders described the attack that had caught the village by surprise, the massacre and the slave-taking that had followed.
‘Some of us were able to run into the forest, and others were out hunting or gathering roots and wild honey, so we escaped,’ they explained.
‘What of my family,’ Aboli asked.
‘They have taken Falla and Zete, and your sons Zama and Tula,’ they told him. ‘We saw them in chains when we spied upon the slavers’ caravan from afar.’
They sat all the rest of that night, reciting the long roll of those who had perished and those who had been captured. In the dawn, when it was time to resume the pursuit, Tom ordered the old men and the women back to the ruined village to bury the dead and plant crops to ward off the famine that must inevitably follow this disaster. ‘Some of my men are there. They will hunt game to feed you until the crops are ripe.’ They went back obediently, and Tom assembled the remaining Lozi warriors. He knew most of them by name, and had hunted with some. ‘We are going after the caravan. We will fight to free those who have been captured,’ he told them. ‘Will you join us?’
‘We wanted to follow them, but the Arabs have fire sticks, and we were afraid,’ they said. ‘But you also have the terrible fire sticks, so we will come with you.’
Fundi picked out the most intrepid, skilful hunters among them, and sent them to scout ahead, to discover any ambush or snare the slavers might have set. When they started out again, he kept the rest of the Lozi with them, following the well-worn slave road into the north.
They marched hard from first light of day until dark, and though the signs of the slave caravan were too old and eroded for even Fundi and Aboli to read accurately, they knew that they had covered in a day the same ground that it had taken the long files of chained slaves six days to make good. During the day they had passed the rudely thatched shelters and dead camp-fires of that number of overnight camps.
The next day they were away again at first light, and before noon they came upon the remains of the first casualties among the slaves. There were only a few bone chips and blood-caked scraps of loincloth lying beside the path, for the Arabs had removed the chains from the corpses and the forest scavengers had devoured the rest. ‘These were the weak ones,’ Fundi said. ‘They died of weariness and broken hearts. We will find many more before we catch up with the caravan.’
On each day’s march now the sign became fresher and clearer to read. Always the road was marked by the old camps where the caravan had passed the nights, and by the remains of those who had not survived the rigours of the journey.
Ten days out, and they came upon the junction of the roads, where the slave column from Lozi Land in the south joined up with another more numerous column coming in from the country of the great freshwater lakes in the west. Fundi and Aboli examined the abandoned site where the two caravans had camped the first night after they had met. ‘There are now over two thousand slaves in the column. I have counted their sleeping places.’ Aboli showed Tom where the slaves had flattened the grass when they lay down for the night. ‘Most are carrying heavy loads, some made up of food supplies, grain and dried game meat.’
‘How do you know that?’ Tom demanded.
‘Their deep heelprints in the dust show that they are burdened. Then they have discarded a few of the empty food baskets beside the cooking-fires, and left a few kernels of grain and scraps of meat in them,’ Aboli explained. ‘But they are also being forced by the Arabs to carry many ivory tusks as well.’
‘Ivory?’ Tom’s interest was piqued. ‘Where would they find ivory?’
‘The Arabs have plundered it from the villages they have raided, and the Omani are also hunters, as you are.’ Fundi had joined in the discussion.
‘How can you tell this, about the ivory?’
Aboli took him to the far side of the camp-site, and pointed to marks in the earth. ‘This is where they stacked the tusks while they rested for the night.’ The long curved imprints in the earth were clear for even Tom to read.
‘There are about a hundred and sixty Arab guards and merchants with the caravan.’ Aboli led him to the thatched bomas of thorn branches that had housed the guards for the night, and pointed out the mattresses of cut grass on which they had slept. ‘One for each man, and I have also counted the footprints.’
‘How can you tell the footprints of Arab from those of slave?’ Tom wanted to know.
‘The Arabs wear sandals. Many have big dogs on leashes – here you can see the pad marks. They use them to frighten the slaves, and to catch the runaways.’
‘We have wasted almost an hour here,’ Tom cut in. ‘We know how many enemy there are to deal with. Let us go after them.’
This huge agglomeration of heavily burdened men and women moved even slower than before, and the much smaller file of pursuers, hardened by years of hunting the elephant herds, gained on them rapidly.
In the middle of the morning of the seventeenth day since leaving Bongola’s village, two of the scouts came running back to the head of the pursuit column, where Sarah marched beside Tom, matching him stride for stride on her long legs. ‘We have seen the smoke from their camp-fires ahead,’ they shouted, before they reached the head of the column.
‘Stay with Luke and Alf,’ Tom ordered Sarah, and he beckoned to Aboli. The two moved forward, falling into the steady trot they used to close in on the elephant herds in the final stage of the hunt. The Lozi scouts guided them to the top of a small granite hill from which they had a good view over miles of the country ahead.
The smoke from hundreds of small cooking-fires was scribbled against the cloudless blue of the sky not more than a few miles ahead. ‘We have them now,’ Tom exulted, and led the others down the hill at the same ground-eating trot. Within the hour they reached the deserted encampment and the fires were still smoking. The wide pathway beaten by thousands of bare feet wound away among the trees, and they ran along it.
They stopped involuntarily to a distant sound: a mournful dirge sung by a thousand voices, soft in the harsh midday sun but heartbreakingly beautiful. The slaves were singing a lament to a lost land, to the home and loved ones they would never see again.
Tom surveyed the land ahead. ‘We will circle out to the right.’ He pointed. ‘We must get ahead of the column and watch as it passes so that we know the exact numbers and the formation they are keeping.’
They came out of the edge of the trees and before them lay an open plain that reached to the horizon, the pale yellow grassland shimmering with mirage in the sunlight. Isolated kopjes lay like small islands on the wide expanse, and here and there stood a flat-topped acacia tree. Herds of game were scattered across the open plain, zebra, wildebeest and gazelle. Giraffe stretched up their stately necks to feed on the top leaves of the acacia, and here and there a rhinoceros stood, massive, horned and dark, against the pale grass.
Two or three miles out on their left flank a fine mist of dust m
arked the position of the slave caravan, and Tom and Aboli agreed quickly on their next move. One of the conical granite hills stood fairly in the path of the distant column. Its summit would afford an ideal vantage-point, but they had to move swiftly. They left the Lozi scouts hidden in the trees, and the two broke into a full run across the plain.
They were almost blown by the time they reached the foot of the little hill on the opposite side from the approaching caravan, and they threw themselves on the ground and struggled for breath. As soon as they had recovered sufficiently to sit up, they drank a few mouthfuls from the waterskin. Then they pulled themselves to their feet and climbed the rocky side of the hill.
Just below the summit they threw themselves flat once more, and peeped cautiously over the top. The head of the slave caravan was a mile distant across the grassland, and would pass close to the foot of their hill.
Thousands of tiny figures were strung out in a straggling file, reaching back almost three miles to the edge of the forest. It was exactly as Tom had pictured it from Aboli’s reading of the sign. At the head of the column rode an impressive figure on an Arab stallion. He was dressed in long green robes, and his head and face were covered in a flowing turban of the same colour. Only his eyes were left uncovered. Two stark naked black female slaves trotted beside the horse, holding a large tasselled sunshade over the rider.
The other Arabs were marching on the flanks of the column. Through the telescope Tom counted a hundred and fifty-four of them all told. A hundred and thirty-six were foot soldiers, and the others were mounted. They were all robed and heavily armed. The mounted men rode back and forth along the column, urging it on.
The slaves were too numerous to count accurately, but Tom saw that Aboli’s initial estimate of two thousand must be close to the mark. Most, both men and women, were naked. A few wore scraps of leather or ragged trade cloth around their waists. They were all fettered. The children were tied together in groups of five or six, with ropes of plaited bark or rawhide around their necks. The slavers had not used up on them their supply of chains.
The heads and bodies of all the slaves were coated grey with dust, through which sweat had streaked giving them an unearthly appearance. They were all carrying something; even the children had gourds or grain baskets balanced on their heads. The women held the bedrolls and possessions of the slave masters, or baskets and waterskins. The men brought the ivory. Through the lens of his telescope Tom saw they had hundreds of tusks between them. A few were so large that it took four men to carry one.
Closer and closer the column crept to the foot of the hill on which they lay and they could make out more details and hear the mournful singing. One of the women near the head of the line dropped the basket from her head and slumped to the ground, pulling down the three others who were chained to her. Those around her tried to lift her to her feet again, but she was too weak to stay upright.
The disturbance brought four of the slave-masters running. They gathered around the fallen girl, and Tom could hear their angry shouts as they tried to get her up again. Then one of them laid into her with a kiboko. He swung from on high, aiming first at the back of her legs and, when that had no effect, raining cutting blows across her back and buttocks. The sharp clap of the lash on bare skin carried clearly in the heated air.
At last the guards resigned themselves to the loss of another piece of trade goods. One knelt and unlocked the shackles from the girl’s wrist, then he seized her ankles and dragged her body off the path. His comrades urged the halted column forward, and they left the girl’s naked, dusty body where it lay.
Now the column was passing so close to the kopje that they could make out the faces of the slaves with the naked eye. Suddenly Aboli stiffened and grasped Tom’s arm. He pointed to the centre of the line and it took Tom a moment to see what had excited him. There, another file of children marched, boys and girls mixed indiscriminately, linked together with a long light rope around their waists. Each child carried a bundle or basket balanced on his or her head, the size and weight of each load graduated to the age and strength of the one who carried it. The boy at the head of the file was the tallest. He walked proudly and lithely where the others slumped with weariness and despair.
‘Zama,’ said Aboli. ‘My eldest son. And that is Tula behind him.’ His voice was level but his eyes held a great, burning anger. ‘There are Zete and Falla also, in the rank behind them.’ The two women were naked, chained at the necks, their breasts heavy and full of the unsucked milk left by their massacred infants.
Tom had nothing to say for his old friend’s comfort, so they lay quietly and watched the sorry procession wind past them. So slow was the pace that it took almost two hours, but the slave-masters drove them on with shouts and flicking whips.
In the wake of the column a pack of hyena and jackals followed. They gobbled up the excrement left on the veld by the dysentery-racked slaves and any other discarded waste and offal. Tom thought that the abandoned slave-girl must have died but he was wrong. When the hyena gathered around her in a circle, giggling and hooting with greedy excitement, she struggled up on one elbow and tried to rise to her feet, but the effort was too much. She collapsed and drew up her knees to her chest, covering her dusty head with bare arms.
The hyena pack drew back a little, but then edged forward again, circling her. One stretched out its neck and tried to sniff her foot. The girl picked up a stone, threw it, and the beast backed away. Then another of the huge doglike animals rushed at her from behind and sank its fangs into her shoulder. While she rolled and kicked in the dust, it worried her, shaking its massive head, until it had bitten out a lump of her flesh, which it swallowed, while the girl collapsed sobbing on the dusty earth. The smell of fresh blood was too much for the others to resist. Another hyena darted in and seized her foot. It ran off with her, dragging her like a sledge on her back. Tom jumped to his feet, ready to rush down the hillside to save her, but Aboli pulled him down again. ‘The Arabs are still too close.’ He pointed at the tail of the column half a mile away. ‘They will see you. There is nothing we can do for her.’
Aboli was right, of course. Tom slumped down again and watched another hyena rush in and bite into the girl’s stomach, leaning back against the drag of the first animal. They had her stretched out between them, and her wild screams carried to the men on the hilltop. Then a dozen other beasts joined in, ripping her apart, crunching her bones with their great jaws, wolfing down her flesh while her struggles weakened, then ended. Within minutes there was nothing left of her but the wet and bloody patch of earth. The pack loped on after the disappearing slave caravan.
Tom and Aboli climbed down from their vantage-point and followed after them, shadowing the caravan while the day dwindled away and the sun crept down towards the horizon. When the slave-masters ordered the night halt and the column went into bivouac, they crept even closer. Using the cover of a grove of acacia trees, they assessed the layout of the camp, carefully noting the horse lines and the bomas of the Arabs.
When the sun set and darkness fell they left the camp and hurried back. Within the hour they met up with the rest of their party coming up behind them. They built a screened fire to cook the evening meal, and while they ate hurriedly Tom held his war council and gave each of his lieutenants their orders for the night attack on the Arab camp. As soon as they had finished eating, they moved forward again.
They could see the glow of the camp-fires from two miles away across the plain, and moved in. Tom and Aboli placed each of the Lozi archers in his allotted position, and repeated their orders so that there could be no misunderstanding. Then they moved into their own positions and began the long wait. Tom wanted to attack in that darkest time between midnight and dawn, when the spirits and vigour of the Arabs would be at their lowest ebb.
Slowly the camp-fires of the caravan flickered lower, then burned down to puddles of red ash. The great Scorpion of stars, tail held high, crept down across the sky above them then sank towards t
he horizon. The voices and the singing of the slaves died away, and a profound silence settled over the encampment.
‘It is time,’ Tom said at last, and stood up. They moved in closer and made one last inspection of the encampment, making certain that nothing had altered. The only fire still burning brightly was the one at the horse lines among a grove of acacia trees on the near side of the camp.
Against the flames they saw three of the Arab guards sitting together, drinking coffee and talking quietly. They were staring into the fire. That will blind them, Tom thought grimly, and then whispered to Aboli, ‘Take the one nearest you.’
They moved in until they were at the edge of the circle of firelight. Both had kept their swords covered so there would be no reflection of firelight to alert a sentry.
‘Have at them!’ Tom slipped his blade from the scabbard and ran lightly up behind the seated Arabs. He killed the first cleanly, with a thrust in the back of the neck. Across the fire Aboli killed another. The dead man fell face forward into the fire and his turban and long bushy hair burst into flames and flared like a torch.
The third Arab let out a startled shout and started to his feet, but Tom stabbed him in the throat. The blue sword slid in sweetly and the next shout drowned, gurgling, in the man’s own blood.
Tom and Aboli crouched over their victims’ bodies, listening for the alarm, but the horse lines were set apart from the main camp and the dying Arab had made no more noise than a sleeping man in a nightmare. All was still. They moved to where the horses were tethered. Another dark shadow came to meet them from among the trees. Tom challenged with a low two-toned whistle, the call of a night-jar. The recognition signal came at once and Luke Jervis stepped forward.
‘All secure!’ he murmured, letting Tom know that the other Arabs in the horse lines had been taken care of. Tom ran to one of the horses. He had picked out the bay stallion the Arab leader had ridden that day, and marked its position in the lines. Now he untied its halter and spoke to it softly, stroking its forehead, gentling it with hand and voice. Then he swung up onto its bare back. Aboli had chosen another horse, and when he was mounted Tom whistled softly to Luke.