The Angels Weep (54 page)

‘Are you sure of this?’ he demanded eagerly, and
Isazi nodded.

‘I have sat at the camp-fires of his impi, and with my
own eyes have seen him, with the bullet scars shining like medals
of silver upon his chest, with my own ears I have heard him
harangue his
amadoda
, steeling them for the fighting which
lies ahead.’

‘Where is he, Isazi? Tell me where I can find
him.’

‘He is not alone.’ Isazi was not about to spoil
the dramatic impact of his report by prematurely divulging the
bare bones of fact. ‘Bazo has with him the witch, who is
his woman. If Bazo is warlike, then this woman, Tanase, the
favourite of the dark spirits, is bold and ruthless, driven by
such bloody cruelty that the
amadoda
when they look upon
her beauty shudder as though it is an unspeakable
ugliness.’

‘Where are they?’ Ralph repeated.

‘Bazo has with him the wildest and most reckless of the
young indunas, Zama and Kamuza, and they have brought their
amadoda
, three thousand of the fiercest and finest. With
Bazo and Tanase at their head, these impis are as dangerous as
the gut-stabbed lion, as deadly as the old bull buffalo circling
in thick cover to lay for the unwary hunter—’

‘God damn you, Isazi, we have waited long enough.’
Ralph snarled at him. ‘Tell me where he is.’

Isazi looked pained and deliberately took a little snuff. His
eyes watered, then he sneezed delectably and wiped his nostrils
on the palm of his hand.

‘Gandang and Babiaan and Somabula are not with
him.’ Isazi took up his recital precisely at the point
where Ralph had so boorishly interrupted him. ‘I listened
while the
amadoda
spoke of an
indaba
held many
weeks back at the valley of the Umlimo. They say that the old
indunas decided to wait for the divine intervention of the
spirits, to leave the road southwards open for the white men to
leave Matabeleland and to sit upon their shields until these
things come to pass.’

Ralph made a gesture of disgusted resignation. ‘Do not
hurry in your telling of it, wise one,’ he encouraged Isazi
with weighted sarcasm. ‘Do not spare us the smallest
detail.’

Isazi nodded seriously, but his dark eyes sparkled and he
tugged at his little goatee beard to prevent himself
grinning.

‘The bellies of the old indunas are cooling, they recall
the Shangani and Bembesi battlefields. Their spies report that
the laager here at Bulawayo is guarded by the three-legged guns.
I tell you, Henshaw, that Bazo is the serpent’s head. Cut
it off and the body dies.’ Isazi nodded sagely.

‘Now will you tell me where Bazo is, my brave and wise
old friend?’

Isazi nodded again in appreciation of Ralph’s change of
tone.

‘He is very close,’ Isazi said. ‘Not two
hours’ march from where we sit.’ Isazi made a wide
gesture that took in the darkened laager about them. ‘He
lies with his three thousand
amadoda
in the Valley of the
Goats.’

Ralph looked up at the segment of old moon that hung low down
in the sky.

‘Four days to new moon,’ he murmured. ‘If
Bazo plans to attack the laager here, then it will be in the dark
of the moon.’

‘Three thousand men,’ Harry Mellow murmured.
‘There are fifty of us.’

‘Three thousand. The
Moles
and the
Insukamini
and the
Swimmers
.’ Sergeant Ezra
shook his head. ‘As Isazi has said, the fiercest and the
finest.’

‘We will take them,’ said Ralph Ballantyne calmly.
‘We will take them in the Valley of the Goats, two nights
from now, and here is the way we will do it—’

B
azo, son of
Gandang, who had denied his father and defied the greater indunas
of Kumalo, passed from one watch-fire to the next and beside him
moved the slim and exquisitely graceful figure of his woman,
Tanase.

Bazo reached the fire and stood tall above it. The flames lit
his features from below, so that the cavities of his eyes were
black caverns in the depths of which his eyes glinted like the
coils of a deadly reptile. The light of the camp-fire picked out
in harsh detail every line and crease that suffering had riven
into his face. Around his forehead was bound the simple strip of
mole-skin; he did not need the feathers of heron and paradise
widowbirds to place the seal upon his majesty. The firelight
glinted upon the great muscles of his chest and arms and his
scars were the only regalia of honour that he wore.

Tanase’s beauty was even more poignant when seen beside
his ravaged features. Her naked breasts were strangely
incongruous in these warlike councils, but beneath their satiny
swelling they were hard as battle-forged muscle, and the sudden
thrust of her nipples puckered and dark, large as the first joint
of a man’s little finger, were like the bosses in the
centre of a war-shield.

As she stood at Bazo’s shoulder in the firelight, her
gaze was as fierce as any warrior there, and she looked up at her
husband with a ferocious pride as he began to speak.

‘I offer you a choice,’ Bazo said. ‘You can
remain as you are, the dogs of the white men. You can stay as
amaholi
, the lowliest of slaves, or you can become once
again
amadoda
—’

His voice was not raised, nor strained; it seemed to rumble up
out of his throat, but it rang clearly to the highest part of the
natural rocky amphitheatre, and the dark masses of warriors that
filled the bowl stirred and sighed at the words.

‘The choice is yours, but it must be made swiftly. This
morning I have received runners from the south.’ Bazo
paused, and his listeners craned forward. There were three
thousand of them squatting in massed ranks, but there was no
sound from them as they waited for Bazo’s next words.

‘You have heard the fainthearted tell you that if we do
not dispute the southern road, then the white men that are in
Bulawayo will pack their wagons, take their women and go meekly
down that road to the sea.’ Still not a sound from the
listening warriors.

‘They were wrong – and now they are proven so.
Lodzi has come,’ said Bazo, and there was a sigh like the
wind in the grass.

‘Lodzi has come,’ Bazo repeated. ‘And with
him the soldiers and the guns. They gather now at the head of the
iron road that Henshaw built. Soon, very soon, they will begin
the march up the road which we have left open for them. Before
the new moon is half grown to its full, they will be in Bulawayo,
and then you will truly be
amaholi
. You and your sons and
their sons will toil in the white men’s mines and herd the
white men’s herds.’

There was a growl, like a leopard when first it is roused, and
it shook the dark ranks until Bazo lifted high the hand that held
his silver assegai.

‘That is not to be. The Umlimo has promised us that this
land will once again belong to us, but it is our task to make
this prophecy into reality. The gods do not favour those who wait
for fruit to fall from the tree into their open mouths. My
children, we will shake the tree.’

‘Jee!’ said a single voice from the massed ranks,
and immediately the humming war chant was taken up by them
all.

‘Jee!’ sang Bazo, stamping his right foot and
stabbing the broad blade towards the moonless sky, and his men
sang with him.

Tanase stood still as an ebony carving beside him, but her
lips were parted softly, and her huge slanted eyes glowed like
moons in the firelight.

At last Bazo spread his arm again, and waited for their
silence. ‘Thus it will be,’ he said, and again the
waiting warriors strained for every word. ‘First we will
eat up the laager at Bulawayo. It has always been the way of the
Matabele to fall upon their enemy at that hour before the dawn,
just before the first light of day – ‘ the warriors
hummed softly in assent – ‘and the white men know
this is our way,’ Bazo went on. ‘Every morning, in
the last deep darkness they stand to their guns, waiting for the
leopard to walk into their trap. The
Matabele always come
before the dawn
, they tell each other.
Always
! they
say, but I tell you that this time it will be different, my
children.’

Bazo paused and looked carefully into the faces of the men who
squatted in the front rank.

‘This time it will be in the hour before midnight, at
the rise of the white star from the east.’

Standing before them in the old way, Bazo gave them their
order of battle, and squatting in the black mass of half-naked
bodies, his bare shoulders touching those of the
amadoda
on each side of him, his hair covered by the feather headdress
and his face and body plastered with the mixture of fat and soot,
Ralph Ballantyne listened to the detailed instructions.

‘At this season, the wind will rise with the rise of the
white star. It will come from the east, so from the east we will
come also. Each one of you will carry upon his head a bundle of
thatch grass and the green leaves of the msasa trees,’ Bazo
told them, and anticipating what was to come, Ralph felt the
nerve ends in his fingertips tingle with the shock.

‘A smoke-screen,’ he thought. ‘That’s
a naval tactic!’

‘As soon as the wind rises, we will build a great
fire.’ Bazo confirmed it immediately. ‘Each of you
will throw his bundle upon it as he passes, and we will go
forward in the darkness and the smoke. It will avail them not at
all to shoot their rockets into the sky, for our smoke will blind
the gunners.’

Ralph imagined how it might be, the warriors emerging from the
impenetrable rolling bank of smoke, not visible until they were
within stabbing range, swarming over the wall of wagons or
creeping between the wheels. Three thousand of them coming in
silently and relentlessly – even if the laager were warned
and alerted, it would be almost impossible to stop them. The
Maxims would be almost useless in the smoke, and the broad-bladed
assegais the more effective weapon at such close range.

A vivid image of the slaughter burned into his brain, and he
remembered Cathy’s corpse, and imagined beside it the
mutilated remains of Jonathan and of Elizabeth, her white smooth
flesh as cruelly desecrated. His rage came strongly to arm him,
and he stared down into the amphitheatre at the tall heroic
figure with the ravaged face, laying out the terrible details of
the massacre.

‘We must leave not a single one of them. We must destroy
the last reason why Lodzi should bring his soldiers. We will
offer him only dead bodies, burned buildings and silver steel, if
he makes the attempt.’

Then in his rage Ralph shouted with the other
amadoda
,
and hummed the wild war chant, his features as contorted as
theirs, and his eyes as wild.

‘The
indaba
is ended,’ Bazo told them at
last. ‘Go now to your sleeping-mats to refresh yourself for
the morrow. When you rise with the sun, let your first task be to
cut, each of you, a bundle of dry grass and green leaves as heavy
as you can carry.’

R
alph
Ballantyne lay beneath his fur kaross on a sleeping-mat of woven
reeds, and listened to the camp settling into sleep about him.
They had withdrawn into the narrower reaches of the valley. He
saw the watch-fires dwindle, and the circles of their orange
light shrink in upon them. He listened to the murmur of voices
subside, and the breathing of the warriors near him changing,
becoming deeper and more regular.

Here the Valley of the Goats was broken rocky defile, choked
with thick thorn scrub, so that the impis could not concentrate
in one place. They were spread out in pockets, down the length of
the valley, fifty men or so in each small clearing, the narrow
twisted paths through the thorn scrub overshadowed by the taller
trees, which formed a canopy overhead.

The darkness became more menacing as the last fires died into
powdery grey ash, and Ralph, lying beneath the fur blanket,
gripped the haft of his assegai and judged his moment.

It came at last, and Ralph drew back the kaross stealthily. On
all fours he crept to where the nearest warrior lay, groping
gently for him. His fingers touched the bare skin of an arm. The
warrior started awake at the touch, and sat bolt upright.

‘Who is it?’ he asked in a thick guttural voice,
rough with sleep, and Ralph stabbed him in the stomach.

The man screamed. It was a cry of ringing mortal agony that
bounded from the rocky sides of the valley, cutting through the
silences of the night watch, and Ralph bellowed with him.

‘Devils! Devils are killing me!’ He rolled over
and stabbed another warrior, wounding him so he yelled in
surprise and pain.

‘There are devils here!’

At fifty other watch-fires down the valley, the men of
Ballantyne’s Scouts were stabbing and screaming with
Ralph.

‘Defend yourselves, there are ghosts at work!’

‘
Tagati
! Witchcraft! Beware the
witches!’

‘Kill the witches!’

‘Witchcraft! Defend yourselves!’

‘Run! Run! The devils are amongst us.’

Three thousand warriors, every one of them steeped from
childhood in superstition and witchlore, awakened to the screams
and wild cries of dying men, and the panic-stricken warnings
yelled by men come face to face with the devil’s legions.
They awakened in blinding suffocating darkness, and seized their
weapons and struck out in terror, yelling with fright and the
comrades they wounded shrieked and struck back at them.

‘I am wounded. Defend yourselves from the devils. Hah!
Hah! The devils are killing me!’

The night was filled with running figures that collided and
stabbed and cried.

‘The valley is haunted!’

‘The devils will kill us all!’

‘Run! Run!’

Then from the head of the valley rose such a monstrous
iron-lunged braying, such a cacophony that it could only be the
voice of the great demon himself.
Tokoloshe
, the eater of
men. It was a sound that drove terrified men over the last
frontier of reason, into the realms of witless insensate
pandemonium.