Shaka the Great (26 page)

“It must be, Nduna.” He wags a finger at Mdlaka and Mbopa. “I do not say you are among them—in fact, I know you are not—
but I also know there are those, some of whom I regard as trusted advisers, who, even if they agree the First Fruits should be celebrated by the Bull Elephant and only the Bull Elephant, have begun muttering that it would be better if I waited another season. But did the Ndwandwes, or any of our other enemies, wait for one more season?”

It is a rhetorical question, of course, but Shaka lets his gaze rest on each of his companions in turn, as though expecting one of them to proffer an answer.

“No,” he continues, “they did not wait. They came when they came, and we acted accordingly. See this merely as yet another campaign—and one we
must
undertake if our other campaigns are to be successful. As the kingdom grows, so our grip must tighten.
Tighten!
For if, in growing, the kingdom is allowed to become flabby we will lose all that we have gained.”

They are still pondering these words when Shaka's head cook scuttles into their shelter to whisper something into the King's ear. For the Induna it's as if the world around them has suddenly returned … he can again hear the knocking of the hoes and, beyond that, the muted rumble of a city of thousands, which cannot be still even though certain observances are necessary while the King eats.

And the head cook is one of the few who would dare disturb the King …

And Shaka is leaping to his feet, the others scrambling up immediately, so as not to be left sitting in his presence.

“He's here. Mbopa, he's here! Mdlaka, what say you? He's come at last!” Glee and boyish enthusiasm. To the cook: “Send him to me. Hurry!” Rubbing his hands, he goes striding into the sun, unable to wait: “No, no, on your feet!” he calls, as Mbilini KaZiwedum's eldest son drops to his knees. “Nduna!” The warrior darts forward and helps the messenger up.

“You have something for me,” beams the King, as the Induna guides the young man toward him.

“Majesty.” The eldest son has already opened the muthi bag, and now his trembling hand moves over Shaka's palm.

“Thank you,” says Shaka. “Tell your father I say thank you!”

Leaving the cook to usher Mbilini's son out of his presence, he turns back to Mdlaka: “See?” Then to Mbopa: “I know you do not set much store by such things, but see.” To the Induna: “Do you see? I have been expecting him for several sleeps, and he arrives just as we talk of this thing. Is that not a propitious omen?”

The Induna nods.

In Shaka's palm rests the rounded seedpod from a tamboti tree.

The jumping-bean moth lays its eggs in these pods, which seem to come to life as the caterpillars inside them grow and begin to move. And when the moth emerges, it's as if it has been birthed by the tree itself.

This metamorphosis occurs in early September, the month of Umfumfu, or the Sprouting Moon. The pods and the white moths are one of the auguries that the Sky People look out for, along with the coming of the rains and the return of the Pleiades, which are known to them as Isilimela. But it's up to the headman of the EmaCubeni to monitor the progress of the season on the fringes of the Nkandla Forest, and to say when exactly the planting and sowing may commence.

And this empty pod is Mbilini's affirmation that it's time to Tatamageja, Take Up The Hoes.

Up and running, the Bull—which is
his
Bull—has risen and is on the move, and he's right here in the ranks.
We drank the King's milk together, we came from far and wide, but we were closer than brothers, for we shared the season, were of an age …

Running, now, first the slow lion-lope, your isihlangu under your arm; then the cheetah-sprint. Then the clash of shields.

Forget what the praise singers say, this is what a battle is: a monster writhing and howling in a storm of dust, blood, sweat and confusion. Comes a moment and you're no longer afraid. For what is there to be afraid of? You're part of the beast, part of the swarm, driven along on numb legs; everything has become instinct. The loud punched-in-the-stomach sound of shields clashing; stepping back to take the impact or pushing on, trusting those behind you to clear the way with their spears as your momentum grinds down in a haze of blood. And your iklwa now has a life of its own. There's only whatever's in front of you; that's all that matters. But somehow you still hear the orders. Or else someone pulls on you, gets you turned around, and it's back up the hill. And every time you have to climb higher, because the lines are becoming denuded. Shaka's lions are tearing the Ndwandwes apart, but many of them are dying in the process.

Gqokli Hill.

Suddenly he's at Gqokli Hill—a soldier in the ranks, trudging back up the slope.

And all you want to do is reach the udibis with their waterskins. Even the baying Ndwandwes behind you don't matter. Besides, they're trapped behind the bodies of their comrades. Aiee! So many bodies! Stepping over them … stepping
on
them, because there's nowhere else to stand. And every now and then one of you stops, drops to his knees by a fallen comrade who won't be making it back up the hill. And you ask: “Are you ready to
make the Journey?” The answer is always yes, and if there's no answer that's taken as a yes, too, and the
coup de grâce
is delivered.

And then you're pushing through the ranks that were held back, reforming behind them so that you might rest while they bear the brunt of the next attack.

And then the Ndwandwes are coming again, and the indunas are screaming at you to get on your feet, on your feet, because the front lines aren't holding. And you, tired as you all are, are needed to strengthen the Inkatha Shaka has woven around Gqokli Hill.

Dust choking you. Stench of sweat and fear, and shit. Bloody haze, anger made manifest. Screams and shrieks, pleas for mercy drowning in throats filling with blood. This is a feeding frenzy, and you are the carcass.

Twist, then hook the other man's shield, sweep it aside and stab … plunge on forward. Twist, hook … and that wasn't even a man whose stomach found your blade. He was a screaming mouth. He was an assegai. He was frightened desperation. He was you. A reflection of you in turbulent waters, shattering and re-forming, as you confront the reflection behind him.

And again the bastard on the summit sends you down.

I am that bastard …

And, with that thought, the sounds of battle fade away. The killing continues, but there's a parting and he's running down a path between the screaming men …

And there's the udibi, the Induna's udibi, appearing in front of him, but looking as he was at the time of Gqokli Hill. Just a child Shaka had set to watch for a smoke signal from a distant hill, so that his attention might be diverted from the slaughter on the slopes …

What's he doing down here? Shaka tries to stop but it's too late, and he goes crashing into—and somehow passes through—the udibi.

And all is still. And he is now outside KwaBulawayo, and there's the Induna. And, without knowing how he knows, he realizes he's seeing something with the udibi's eyes. Something important.

The Induna. And men from Mhlangana's kraal. A second group: four men in all. Those four fools tricked by the bandit. And Mhlangana's soldiers are herding a fifth man into their midst. Can't see his face; just his profile
as he looks away, then the scars on his back, one of them standing out like a big pink worm …

In his hut, Shaka wills the scene to repeat itself. What is he missing?

What did the udibi, now older, see?

Mhlangana … does it have something to do with Shaka's brother?

Forget the other group. Look at the men he lent to the Induna.

Is there something about one of them?

Or is it the fact they are Mhlangana's men … ?

Is this to do with Mhlangana?

But why the return to Gqokli Hill?

That day, Mhlangana had been with Dingane, who was guiding the women and children and old-timers to the safety of the Nkandla Forest. And so both brothers were safely out of the way, where his mother and Mnkabayi, and a hand-picked contingent of Fasimbas, could see to it that they didn't get up to any mischief …

Shaka turns his attention back to the five men now being led toward KwaBulawayo by his brother's men, and finds himself back in his hut …

And the Induna reaches down, grabs his hand and pulls him up.

The sky is a cavern, and fog hangs from the ceiling like thick, heavy cobwebs.

Dusty, clinging layers spun by the night.

He was almost at the summit, had leaned against the rock shelf to regain his breath, to clear his head.

Always running …

A shifting—a displacement—above him.

He looked up.

The grayness, these dusty, clinging layers, had thinned, parted …

And there, stepping out of the mist to stand peering down at him, was the Induna.

This Shadow of Shaka who, he knows, has come to kill him.

Oh, the irony!
He chuckles mirthlessly, like the scratching of a rat in the fog.

And the Induna bends forward, extends his hand and pulls Dingane up.

“So it was you,” says the prince. “Out there, just now.”

Yes, says the Induna: burdened as he was, he had to run to overtake the prince, couldn't wait for a less risky moment, as they were close to their destination.

“How did you know where I was going, since I didn't know myself?” asks Dingane.

Although it's shrouded in fog, the prince will recognize this place if he just steps this way, says the Induna.

The Needy One follows his friend for a few paces, then finds himself nodding as he spots the fault line that has become a cleft in the rock face.

“Do you remember now?” asks the Induna. “This is where we would come to escape your father's wrath.”

“And more,” murmurs Dingane. It was where two lonely boys came to share their doubts and fears, the dread and frustration that seem to dog one's days when one feels one is old enough to be treated as something other than a child, yet still fears bullies, ghost stories and girls, and all those inarticulate terrors that lurk on the edges of one's life at that age. That age when one realizes there's a world beyond the world one knows. One that can be just as strange and incomprehensible to the adults who seek to confine and constrain one, and you realize that the protection they offer—and you sometimes seek out, just like a child—is largely illusory.

Among the People Of The Sky, a human being's inner feelings and emotions are known as umxwele, the same term being used to describe the inner parts of the throat. This place was their umxwele, their throat.

Then again, decides Dingane, even in the darkness the elongated oval resembles the opening to a vagina.

But he hasn't been here for so long!

“I still can't see how you could have known,” murmurs the prince.

“Your question is both of the Earth and of the Sky,” says the Induna.

“What?”

“Nothing. It is nothing. I knew the direction you had taken, and I remembered this place …” Remembered, too, that the prince faced more or less the same dilemma; for they were two men heading out into the night, both unsure of where to go. Heading for the one place he knew Dingane was familiar with, as a refuge that would at least suffice until dawn, was surely better than blundering through the darkness. If he was wrong, and if this hadn't been Dingane's destination all along, or if the vaguely familiar topography didn't reawaken old memories to make this his destination, it was as good a place as any to wait until daybreak, when he could start the daunting task of seeking out the prince's spoor.

“All the same,” says Dingane, “I feel as if I have been bewitched and all of this is planned. Hai, perhaps it is really as I suspected before … ?”

“What is that?”

That he is dead, and someone has turned him into an impundulu.

“You are alive,” says the Induna, “and you haven't been bewitched.”

“Which could merely mean you too are bewitched,” points out the prince.

“Then they have failed!”

“How so?”

“Do the bewitched know they are bewitched?” Isn't that the whole point of putting a hex on someone, so that they may suffer, or do your bidding without realizing it?

“Hai, perhaps you are right.” There's a pause while Dingane appears to mull this over. Then, just as the Induna is about to explain to him how—although they can't risk a fire—he has seen to it they will be warm enough, the prince says: “Another question, old friend. Why are we talking about such things?”