Men of Men

He thought of Robyn as he had first seen her, standing on the deck of the American slaver Huron with her dark hair aflutter on the wind and her green eyes flashing.

He remembered her upon the rumpled sweat-soaked childbed as she struggled to give birth, and he remembered the hot slippery and totally enchanting feeling of his first infant daughter's body as it slithered from Robyn's body into his waiting hands.

He remembered the first petulant birth wail, and how beautiful Robyn had been as she smiled at him, exhausted and racked and proud.

There were other small regrets, one that he would never dandle a grandchild, another that Robyn had never come to love him the same way he loved her. Suddenly Clinton sat up straighter against the mopani, and inclined his head to listen, peering out into the utter blackness from whence the sound had come.

No, it was not really a sound, the only true sound was the rain. It was more like a vibration in the air.

Carefully, he returned the precious book to his inside pocket, then he made a trumpet of his bare hands and pressed them to the wet earth, listening intently with his ear to the funnel.

The vibration coming up from the ground was that of running feet, horny bare feet, thousands of feet, trotting to the rhythm of an impi on the march. It sounded like the very pulse of the earth.

Clinton crawled and groped his way across to where he had last seen Major Wilson lie down under his plaid.

There was no glimmering of light under the midnight clouds, and when his fingers touched coarse woven cloth, Clinton asked softly: "Is that you, Major?"

"What is it, Padre?"

"They are here, all around us, moving back to get between us and the river."

They stood-to while the dawn tried vainly to penetrate the low roof of cloud above them. The saddled horses were merely humped shapes just a little darker than the night around them. They were drawn up in a circle, with the men standing on the inside, rifles resting on the saddles as they peered out into the thick bush that surrounded them, straining for the first glimpse as the grey light settled gently, like a sprinkling of pearl dust upon their dark, wet world.

In the centre of the circle of horses, Clinton knelt in the mud. With one hand he held the reins of the grey horse, and with the other he held the Bible to his chest.

His calm voice carried clearly to every man in the dark waiting circle.

"Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name The light grew stronger; they could make out the shape of the nearest bushes. One of the horses, perhaps infected by the tension of the waiting men, whickered and scissored its ears.

"Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven Now they all heard what had alarmed the horse. The faint drumming approached from the direction of the river, growing stronger with the dawn light.

for thine is the Kingdom, the Power and the glory There was the metallic clash of a rifle breech from the silent waiting circle of dismounted men, and half a dozen gruff voices echoed Clinton's quiet "Anien!"

Then suddenly someone shouted. "Horses! Those are horses out there!" And a ragged little cheer went up as they recognized the shape of slouch hats bobbing against the sullen grey sky.

"Who is it?" Wilson challenged.

"Borrow, Sir, Captain Borrow!"

"By God, you're welcome." Wilson laughed as the column of horsemen rode out of the forest into their defensive circle. "Where is General Sint John; where are the Maxims?"

The two officers shook hands as Borrow dismounted, but he did not return Wilson's smile.

"The general is still on the south bank."

Wilson stared at him incredulous, the smile sliding off his face.

have twenty men, rifles only, no Maxims," Borrow went on.

"When will the column cross?"

"We had to swim our horses across. By now the river is ten feet deep." Borrow lowered his voice so as not to alarm the men. "They won't be coming."

"Did you make contact with the enemy?" Wilson demanded.

"We heard them all around us. They called to each other and we heard them keeping pace with us in the forest as we passed either hand."

"So they are massed between us and the river, and even if we cut our way through to the river, the ford is impassable. Is that it?"

"I am afraid so, sir."

Wilson took his hat from his head and against his thigh he beat the raindrops from its brim. Then he settled it again carefully on his head at a jaunty angle.

"Then it seems there is only one direction that we can take, one direction in which the Matabele will not expect us to move." He turned back to Borrow. "Our orders were to seize the king, and now our very lives depend on it. We must have Lobengula as a hostage. We have to go forward, and that right smartly." He raised his voice. "Troop, mount! Walk march, Trot!" They rode closed up, tense and silent. Clinton's old grey had benefited from the night's rest, and kept his place in the third file.

A young trooper rode at Clinton's right hand.

"What is your name, son?"he asked quietly.

"Dillon, sir, I mean, Reverend." He was smoothcheeked, and fresh-faced.

"How old are you, Dillon?"

"Eighteen, Reverend., They are all so young, Clinton thought. Even Major Allan Wilson himself is barely thirty years of age. If only, he thought, if only "Padre!"

Clinton looked up sharply, his attention had been wandering. They had long ago emerged from the thick bush, and were now coming up to the same spot from which they had retreated the previous evening.

The wagons were still standing abandoned beside the rude track; the tents made pale geometrical oblongs of solid canvas against the dark wet scrub.

Once again, Wilson halted the patrol, and Clinton walked the grey forward.

"Tell them we do not wish to fight" Wilson ordered.

"There is nobody here."

"Try anyway," Wilson urged. "If the wagons are deserted, then we will ride on until we catch up with the king."

Clinton rode forward, shouting as he went. "Lobengula, do not be afraid. It is me. Hlopi., There was no reply, only the flutter of the wind in the torn wagon canvas.

"Warriors of Matabele, children of Mashobane, we do not wish to fight, Clinton called again; and this time he was answered by a bellowing bull voice, haughty and angry and proud. it came out of the gloom and rain, seeming to emanate from the very air, for there was no one to be seen.

"Hau, white men! You do not wish to fight, but we do, for our eyes are red and our steel is thirsty., The last word was blown away on a great gust of sound, and the shrub about them misted over with blue gunsmoke and the air about their heads was torn by a gale of shot.

It was twenty-five years and more since Clinton had stood to receive volleyed gunfire; yet he could still dearly differentiate between the crack of high-powered rifles and the whistle of ball thrown from ancient muzzle loaders, and in the storm the "whirr-whirr" of beaten potlegs tumbling as they flew; so that, glancing up, Clinton expected to actually see one come over like a rising pheasant.

"Back! Fall back!" Wilson was shouting, and the horses were all rearing and plunging. The fire was, most of it, flying overhead. As always, the Matabele had raised their sights to the maximum; but there must have been a hundred or more of them hidden in the shrub and random bullets were scoring.

One of the troopers was hit in both eyes, the bridge of his nose shot away. He was reeling in the saddle, clutching his face with blood spurting out between his fingers.

His number two spurred in to catch him before he fell, and with an arm around his shoulder led him at a gallop back along the trail.

Young Dillon's horse was hit in the neck, and he was thrown in the mud, but he came up with his rifle in his hands, and Clinton yelled at him as he galloped back.

"Cut off your saddle-bags. You'll need every round in them, lad."

Clinton came in for the pick-up, but Wilson rode him off like a polo player.

"Your moke's half done, Padre. He'll not carry two. Get on with you!"

They tried to make a stand in the thicket where they had spent the night, but the hidden Matabele riflemen crept in so close that four of the horses went down, kicking and struggling, exposing the men who had been standing behind them, firing over their backs, and three of the men were hit. One of them, a young Afrikander from the Cape, had a pot-leg slug shatter the bone above his right elbow. The arm was hanging on a tattered ribbon of flesh, and Clinton used the sleeves of his shirt to make a sling for it.

"Well, Padre, we are for it now, and that's no mistake." The trooper grinned at him, white face speckled with his own blood, like a thrush's egg.

"We can't stand here" Wilson called. "Two wounded to a horse and a man to lead them. They'll go in the centre with those who have lost their own horses. The rest of us will ride in a box around them."

Clinton helped the young Afrikander up onto the grey's back, and one of the lads from Borrow's volunteers up behind him. The sharp slivers of his shin bone were sticking out of the meat of his leg.

They started back slowly, at the pace of the walkers, and from the thickets beside the track the muskets banged and smoked; but the Matabele were all of them well hidden. Clearly, they were taking no chances, even with this tiny band of thirty-odd men.

Clinton walked beside the grey, holding the good leg of the wounded man to prevent him slipping from the saddle. He carried the two rifles belonging to the wounded men slung over his shoulder.

"Padre!" Clinton looked up to find Wilson above him.

"We have three horses that are fresh enough to try a run for the river. I have ordered Burnham and Ingram to try and get back to the main camp and warn Sint John of our predicament. There is one horse for you. They will take you with them., "Thank you, Major," Clinton answered without a moment's hesitation. "I am a sailor and a priest, not a horseman; besides, I rather think I have work to do here.

Let somebody else go., Wilson nodded. "I expected you to say that." He pushed his horse to a trot and went up to the head of the dismal little column. Minutes later, Clinton heard the quick beat of flying hooves and he looked up to see three horsemen wheel out of the straggling line and plunge into the brush that surrounded them.

There was a chorus of angry yells and the low humming "Jee!" as the Matabele tried to head them, but Clinton saw their hats bobbing away above the low bush and he called after them.

"God speed you, boys! Then, as he trudged on in the mud that was balling to the soles of his riding boots, he began silently to pray.

On the outside of the column, another horse fell, throwing its rider over its head, and then lunged up again to stand on three legs, shivering miserably in the rain, its off-fore hanging limply as a sock on a laundry line.

The trooper limped back, drawing his revolver from its webbing holster, and shot the animal between the eyes.

"That's a wasted bullet," Wilson called clearly. "Don't waste any more."

They went on slowly, and after a while Clinton became aware that they were no longer following the wagon tracks. Wilson seemed to be leading them gradually more towards the east, but it was hard to tell, for the sun was still hidden by low, grey cloud.

Then abruptly the column stopped again, and now for the first time the insistent banging of muskets from hidden skirmishers in the mopani scrub was silenced.

Wilson had led them into a lovely parklike forest, with short, green grass below the stately mopani trees. Some of these trees stood sixty feet high and their trunks were fluted and twisted as though moulded from potter's clay.

They could see deep into the forest, between the widely spaced trunks. There, directly ahead of the patrol, stretched across their front, waited the army of Lobengula. How many thousands, it was impossible to tell, for their rearguard was hidden in the forest; and even as the little band of white men stared at their host, the likela began, the "surrounding" which had been the Zulu way ever since great Chaka's time.

The "horns" were being spread, the youngest and swiftest warriors running out on the flanks, their naked skins burning like black fire through the forest. A net around a shoal of sardines, they were thrown out until the tips of the horns met to the rear of the band of white men and again all movement ceased.

Facing the patrol was the "chest of the bull", the hard and seasoned veterans; when the "horns" tightened, it was the "chest" that would close and crush, but now they waited, massed rank upon rank, silent and watchful.

Their shields were of dappled black and white, their plumes were of the ostrich, jet black and frothing white, and their kilts of spotted civet tails. In their silence and stillness, it was not necessary for Wilson to raise his voice above conversational tones.

"Well, gentlemen. We will not be going any farther not for a while anyway. Kindly dismount and form the circle."

Quietly the horses were led into a ring, so that they stood with their noses touching the rump of the one ahead. Behind each horse, his rider crouched with the stock of his rifle resting on the saddle, aiming across at the surrounding wall of silent, waiting black and white dappled shields.

"Padre!" Wilson called softly, and Clinton left the wounded whom he was tending in the centre and crossed quickly to his side.

"I want you here to translate, if they want to parley."

"There will be no more talking," Clinton assured him, and as he said it the massed ranks of the "chest" parted and a tall induna came through. Even at a distance of two hundred paces, he was an imposing figure in his plumes and tassels of valour.

"Gandang," said Clinton quietly. "The king's halfbrother."

For long seconds Gandang stared across at the circle of rain-streaked horses and the grim, white faces that peered over them, and then he lifted his broad assegai above his head. It was almost a gladiatorial salute, and he held it for a dozen beats of Clinton's heart. Then his voice carried clearly to where they waited.

"Let it begin!" he called, and his spear arm dropped.

Instantly, the horns came racing in, tightening like a strangler's grip on the throat.

"Steady!" Wilson called. "Hold your fire! No bullets to waste, lads! Hold your fire, wait to make sure."

The blades came out of the thongs that held them to the grip of the shields with a rasping growl, and the war chant rose, deep and resonant: Jee! Jee!"And now the silver blades drummed on the dappled rawhide, so that the horses stamped and threw their heads.

Wait lads." The front rank was fifty yards away, sweeping in out of the gentle silky grey rain mist.

"Pick your man! Pick your man!" Twenty yards, chanting and drumming to the rhythm of their pounding bare feet.

"Fire!"Gunfire rippled around the tight little circle, not a single blast but with the spacing that told that every shot had been aimed, and the front rank of attackers melted into the soggy earth.

The breech blocks clashed, and the gunfire was continuous, like strings of Chinese crackers, and an echo came back, the slapping sound of lead bullets striking naked black flesh.

At two places the warriors burst into the ring, and for desperate seconds there were knots of milling men, and the banging of revolvers held point blank to chest and belly. Then the black wave lost its impetus, hesitated and finally drew back, the surviving warriors slipping back into the forest, leaving their dead scattered in the wet grass.

"We did it, we sent them off!" someone yelled, and then they were all cheering.

"A little early to celebrate," Clinton murmured drily.

"Let them shout," Wilson was reloading his pistol. "Let them keep their courage up." He looked up from the weapon at Clinton. "You'll not be joining us then?" he asked. "You were a fighting man once."

Clinton shook his head. "I killed my last man over twenty years ago, but I will look to the wounded and do anything else you want of me."

"Go around to each man. Collect all the spare ammunition. Fill the bandoliers and dole "em out as they are needed."

Clinton turned back to the centre of the circle, and there were three new men there, one was dead, shot in the head, another with a broken hip, and the third with the shaft of an assegai protruding from his chest.

"Take it out!"his voice rose as he tugged ineffectually at the handle. "Take it out! I can't stand it."

Clinton knelt in front of him and judged the angle of the blade. The point must lie near the heart. "It's better to leave it," he advised gently.

"No! No!"The man's voice rose, and the men in the outer circle looked back, their faces stricken by that hysterical shriek. "Take it out! Perhaps it was best after all, better than lingering, shrieking death to unnerve the men around him.

"Hold his shoulders," Clinton ordered quietly, and a trooper knelt behind the dying man. Clinton gripped the shaft. It was a beautiful weapon, bound in decorative patterns with hair from an elephant's tail and bright copper wire.

He pulled and the wide blade sucked with the sound of a boot in thick mud, and it came free. The trooper shrieked only once more, as his heart's blood followed the steel out in a bright torrent.

The waves of warriors came again four times before noon. Each time it seemed impossible that they could fail to overwhelm the waiting circle, but each time they swirled and broke upon it like a tide upon a rock, and then were sucked back into the forest.

After each assault the circle had to be drawn a little smaller, to take up the gaps left by fallen horses and dead and wounded men, and then the Matabele musketeers would creep in again, moving like quick and silent shadows from mopani to mopani, offering meagre targets, the bulge of a shoulder around the stem of a mopani trunk, little cotton pods of gunsmoke in the patches of green grass, the black bead of a head bobbing above the summit of one of the scattered termite nests as a warrior rose to fire.

Wilson walked quietly around the circle, talking calmly to each man in turn, stroking the muzzle of a restless horse, and then coming back into the centre.

"Are you coping, Padre?"

"We are doing fine, Major."

The dead were laid out with what little dignity was left to them, and Clinton had covered their faces with saddle blankets. There were twelve of them now, and it was only a little past noon, another seven hours of daylight.

The lad who had lost his eyes in the first volley was talking to somebody from long ago in his delirium, but the words were jumbled and made little sense. Clinton had bound his head in a clean white bandage from the saddle-bag of the grey, but the bandage was now muddied, and the blood had seeped through.

Two others lay still, one breathing noisily through the hole in his throat from which the air bubbled and whistled, the other silent and pale, except for a little dry cough at intervals. He had been hit low in the back, and there was no use nor feeling in his lower body. The others, too gravely wounded to stand in the circle, were breaking open the waxed paper packages of cartridges and refilling the bandoliers.

Wilson squatted on his haunches beside Clinton.

"Ammunition?" he asked softly.

"Four hundred rounds," Clinton replied as softly.

"Less than thirty rounds a man,"Wilson calculated swiftly. "Not counting the wounded, of course."

"Well, look at it this way, Major, at least it is no longer raining."

"Do you know, Padre, I hadn't even noticed." Wilson smiled faintly, and looked up at the sky. The cloud belly had risen and at that moment a pale ghostly silhouette of the sun appeared through it; but it was without warmth and so mild that they stared at it without paining their eyes.

"You are hit, Major," Clinton exclaimed suddenly. He had not realized it until that moment. "Let me look at it., "It's almost stopped bleeding. Let it be." Wilson shook his head "Keep your bandages for those others."

He was interrupted by a shout from one of the troopers in the outer circle.

"There he is again!" And immediately firing rifles whipcracked, and the same voice swore angrily.

"The bastard, the bloody bastard "What is it, soldier?"

"That big induna, he's moving about again out there; but he's got the devil's luck, sir. We just wasted a packet of bullets on him."

As he spoke, Clinton's old grey horse threw up his head and fell on his knees, hit in the neck. He struggled to rise again, then rolled over on his side.

"Poor old fellow!" Clinton murmured, and immediately another horse reared up, thrashed frantically at the air with his fore hooves and then crashed over on his back.

"They're shooting better now," Wilson said quietly.

"I would guess that is Gandang's work," Clinton agreed.

"He's moving from sniper to sniper, setting their sights for them and coaching their fire."

"Well, it's time to close the circle again."

There were only ten horses still standing; the others lay where they had fallen, and their troopers lay belly down behind them, waiting patiently for a certain shot at one of the hundreds of elusive figures amongst the trees.

"Close up." Wilson stood and gestured to the ring of troopers. "Come in on the centre He broke off abruptly, spun in a half circle and clutched his shoulder, but still he kept his feet.

"You're hit again!" Clinton jumped up to help him and immediately both his legs were struck out from under him, and he dropped back onto the muddy earth and stared at his smashed knee caps.

It must have been one of the ancient elephant guns, the four-to-the-pounders that some of the Matabele were using. It was a weapon that threw a ball of soft lead weighing a quarter of a pound. It had hit him in one knee and torn through into the other.

Both his legs were gone; one was twisted up under his buttocks, and he was sitting on his own muddy riding boot. The other leg was reversed, the toe-cap of his boot was dug into the mud and the silver spur stuck up towards the swirling cloud belly of the sky. Gandang knelt behind the trunk of the mopani tree and snatched the Martini-Henry rifle out of the hands of a young brave; "Even a baboon remembers a lesson he is taught," Gandang fumed. "How often have you been told not to do this."

The long leaf sight on top of the blued barrel was at maximum extension, set for one thousand yards.

Under Gandang's quiet instructions, the young Matabele rested the rifle in a crotch of the mopani, and fired.

The rifle kicked back viciously, and he shouted joyously. In the little circle a big sway-backed grey horse dropped to its knees, fought briefly to rise and then flopped over on its side.

"Did you see me, my brothers?" howled the warrior.

"Did you see me kill the grey horse?"

Vamba's hands were shaking with excitement as he reloaded and rested the rifle again.

He fired, and this time a bay gelding reared up and then crashed over on its back.

Jee! sang Vamba, and brandished the smoking rifle over his head, and the war chant was taken up by a hundred other hidden riflemen, and the volley of their fire flared up.

"They are almost ready," Gandang thought, as he glimpsed another of the defenders struck down in the renewed gale of gunfire. "There can be few of them who still can shoot. Soon now it will be time to send the spears for the closing-in, and tonight I will have a victory to take to my brother the king. One little victory in all the terrible defeats, and so hard bought."

He slipped away from the shelter of the mopani trunk, and loped swiftly across towards where another of his riflemen was firing away as fast as he could re-load. Halfway there Gandang felt the jarring impact in his upper arm, but he covered the open ground to shelter without a check in his stride, and then leaned against the bole of the mopani, and examined the wound. The bullet had gone in the side of his biceps and out the back of his arm. The blood was dripping from his elbow, like thick black treacle. Gandang scooped a handful of mud and slapped it over the wounds, plugging and masking them.

Then he said scornfully to the kneeling warrior at his side. "You shoot like an old woman husking maize." And he took the rifle out of his hands.

Clinton dragged himself backwards on his elbows, and his legs slithered loosely after him through the mud. He had used the webbing belt from one of the dead men as a tourniquet, and there was very little bleeding. The numbness of the shock still persisted, so the pain was just bearable, though the sound of the shattered ends of bone grating together as he moved brought up the nausea in a bitter-acid flood in the back of his throat.

He reached the blind boy, and paused for his breathing to settle before he spoke. "The others are writing letters, afterwards somebody may find them. Is there anybody at home? I'll write for you."

The boy was silent, did not seem to have heard. An hour earlier Clinton had given him one of the precious laudanum pills from the kit which Robyn had prepared for him before he left Gubulawayo.

"Did you hear, lad?"

"I heard, Padre. I was thinking. Yes, there is a girl."

Clinton turned a fresh page of his notebook and licked the point of his pencil, and the boy thought again and mumbled shyly: "Well then, Mary. You'll have read in the papers, we had quite a scrap here today.

It's nearly over now, and I was thinking about that day on the river Clinton wrote quickly, to keep up.

"I'll be saying cheerio, then Mary. Isn't one of us afraid.

I reckon as how we just want to do it right, when the time comes Quite suddenly, Clinton found his vision blurring as he wrote the final salutation, and he glanced up at the pale beardless face. The eyes were swathed in bloody bandages, but his lips were quivering and the boy gulped hard as he finished.

"What is her name, lad? I have to address it."

"Mary Swayne. The Red Boar at Falmouth."

She was a barmaid then, Clinton thought, as he buttoned the folded page into the boy's breast pocket. She would probably laugh at the note if she ever got it, and pass it around the regulars in the saloon bar.

"Padre, I was lying," the boy whispered. "I am afraid."

"We all are." Clinton squeezed his hand. "I tell you what, lad. If you like, you can load for Dillon here. He's got eyes to shoot, but only one arm, you're got two good arms."

"Bully on you, Padre," Dillon grinned. "Why didn't we think of that."

Clinton draped a bandolier across the blind boy's legs.

There were only fifteen cartridges in the loops, and at that moment, out in the mopani, the singing started.

It was slow and deep and very beautiful, echoing and ringing through the forest. The praise song of the Inyati.

And Clinton turned his head and looked slowly around the circle.

All the horses were dead; they lay in a litter of saddlery and broken equipment, of crumpled yellow scraps of waxed paper from the ammunition packets, of empty brass cartridge cases and discarded rifles. In the confusion, only the row of dead men was orderly. How long was that row, Clinton thought, oh God, what a waste this is, what a cruel waste.

He raised his eyes, and the clouds were at last breaking up. There were valleys of sweet blue sky between the soaring ranges of cumulus. Already the sunset was licking the cloud mountains with soft, fleshy tones of pink and rose, while the depths of the billowing masses were the colour of burnt antimony and tarnished silver.

They had fought all day on this bloody patch of mud.

In another hour it would be dark, but even now there were dark specks moving like dust motes against the high singing blue of the evening sky. The tiny specks turned in slow eddies, like a lazy whirlpool, for the vultures were still very high, waiting and watching with the infinite patience of Africa.

Clinton lowered his eyes, and across the circle Wilson was watching him.

He sat with his back against the belly of one of the dead horses. His right arm hung uselessly at his side, and the wadding over the wound in his stomach was crimson with seeping blood, but he held his revolver in his lap.

The two men held each other's gaze while the singing soared and fell and soared again.

"They'll be coming now, for the last time," Wilson said.

Clinton nodded, and then he lifted his chin, and he, too, began to sing: "Nearer my God to Thee, Nearer to Thee, " His voice was surprisingly clear and true, and Wilson was singing with him, holding the wadding to his stomach wound.

Darkness comes over me, My rest a stone The blind boy's voice cracked and quavered. Dillon was beside him; though his ankle and elbow were shot through, he lay upon his back with a rifle propped on his crossed knees, ready to fire one-handed when they came. His voice was flat and tuneless, but he winked cheekily at Clinton and grinned:

Angels to beckon me Eight of them, all that were left, every one of them wounded more than once, but all of them singing in the wilderness of the mopani forests, their voices tinny and thin, almost lost in the great crashing chords of the praise song of the Inyati regiment.

Then there was thunder in the air, the drumming of two thousand assegais on black and white dappled shields, and the thunder came rolling down upon their little circle.

Allan Wilson dragged himself to his feet to face them.

Because of his stomach wound, he could not stand erect, and the one arm dangled at his side. His service revolver made a strangely unwarlike popping sound in the roar of the war chant and the drumming blades.

Dillon was still singing, snatching the loaded rifles and firing, and singing, and grabbing the next rifle. The blind boy felt the last cartridge into a rifle breech, and passed the hot rifle back to Dillon, and then he groped for another round, his fingers becoming frantic as he realized the bandolier was empty.

"They're finished," he cried. "They are all finished!"

Dillon pushed himself erect on his one good leg, and hopped forward, holding the empty rifle by the muzzle, and he swung the butt at the wave of shields and plumes that reared over him, but the blow lacked power and was deflected harmlessly aside by one of the tall oval shields; and then quite miraculously a long, broad blade sprang from between his shoulder blades, driven through from breast bone to spine, and the silver steel was misted pink.

"I don't want to die," screamed the blind boy. "Please hold me, Padre."

And Clinton put his arm around his shoulders and squeezed with all his strength.

"It's all right, lad," he said. "It's going to be all right."

The bodies were stripped naked. Their skin, never touched by the sun, was snowy white and strangely delicate-looking, like the smooth petals of the arum lily.

Upon this whiteness, the wounds were the shocking colour of crushed mulberries.

Around the killing ground was gathered a vast concourse of warriors, some of them already wearing items of the looted uniforms, all of them still panting with the exhilaration of that last wild charge and the stabbing with which it had ended.

From the dense ranks, an old grizzle-headed warrior stepped forward with his assegai held under-handed, like a butcher's knife. He stooped over the naked corpse of Clinton Codrington. It was the time to let the spirits of the white men free, to let them escape from their bodies and fly, lest they remain on earth to trouble the living. it was time for the ritual disembowelment. The old warrior placed the point of his blade on the skin of Clinton's stomach, just above the pathetic shrivelled cluster of his genitals, and gathered himself to make the deep upward stroke.

"Hold!" A clear voice stopped him, and the warrior stood back and saluted respectfully as Gandang came striding through the parting ranks of his warriors.

In the centre of that awful field, Gandang stopped, and looked down at the naked bodies of his enemies. His face was impassive, but his eyes were terrible, as though he mourned for all the earth.

"Let them lie," he said quietly. "These were men of men, for their fathers were men before them."

Then he turned and strode back the way he had come, and his men formed up behind him and trotted away into the north.

Lobengula had come to the end of his domains. Below him the earth opened into the steep escarpment of the Zambezi valley, wild infernal place of broken rocky gorges and impenetrable thickets, of savage animals and a smouldering crushing heat.

At the limit of the eye the dark serpentine growth of riverine bush outlined the course of the father of all waters, and in the west a tall silver cloud of spray stood against the sky: it marked the place where the Zambezi river went crashing over a sheer ledge of rock in an awesome, creaming torrent, falling over three hundred feet into the narrow gorge below.

Lobengula sat upon the box of the leading wagon and looked upon all this savage grandeur with listless eyes.

The wagon was drawn by two hundred of his warriors.

The oxen were all dead, the ground had been too rugged and rocky for most of them and they had broken down and died in the traces.

Then the migration had run into the first belt of the tsetse fly, and the dreaded little insects had come to swarm on the dappled hides of the remaining bullocks and plague the men and women in Lobengula's sprawling caravan. Within weeks, the last of the fly-struck beasts was dead, and men, more resistant to the sting of the tsetse, had taken their places in the span and drawn their king onwards in his hopeless, aimless flight.

Now even they were daunted by what lay ahead, and they rested on the yokes and looked back at Lobengula.

"We will sleep here this night," said the king, and immediately the weary, starving host that followed the wagons spread out to begin the chores of making camp, the young girls to carry water in the clay pots, the men to build the temporary lean-to shelters and cut the wood for the fires, and the women to eke out the contents of the almost empty grain bags and the few shreds of dried meat that remained. The fly had killed the last of the slaughter beasts with the draught bullocks, and game was scarce and shy.

Gandang went forward to the lead wagon and saluted his half -brother.

"Your bed will be ready soon, Nkosi Nkulu."

But Lobengula was staring dreamily up at the steep rocky kopje that towered above their bivouac. The great bloated trunks of the cream-of-tartar trees had forced the black boulders apart. The little twisted branches, loaded with smooth furry pods, reached towards the uncaring sky like the maimed arms o a cripple.

"Is that a cave up there, my brother?" Lobengula asked softly. A dark cleft was riven into the rock face that girdled the crest of the hill. "I wish to go up to that cave."

Twenty men carried Lobengula on a litter of poles and furs, and he winced at each jolt, his great swollen body riddled with gout and arthritis, but his eyes were fastened on the crest high above him.

just below the rock face Gandang made a sign to the bearers and they lay the litter gently upon the rocky slope while Gandang shifted his shield onto his shoulder and freed his broad blade from its thong as he went ahead.

The cave was narrow but deep and dark. The small ledge at its mouth was littered with the furry remains and chewed bones of small animals, the hydrax and baboon, gazelle and klipspringer. The cave itself gave out the fetid odour of the cage of a carnivorous animal, and when Gandang squatted at the entrance and peered into the sombre depths, there was the sudden vicious spitting snarl of a leopard, and dimly he saw the beast move in the shadows and caught the glint of its fierce golden eyes.

Gandang moved slowly out of the sunlight, and paused to let his eyes adjust to the gloom. The leopard warned him again with a terrifying crackle of anger in the confined spaces of the cavern. It had crept closer and was lying flat upon a narrow ledge above the level of Gandang's head. He could just make out the shape of its broad adder-like brow; the ears were laid back flat and the eyes slitted with rage.

Carefully, Gandang moved into position below the ledge, for he did not want to trigger the charge until he was ready to receive it. Balanced lightly in a half crouch, with the assegai's point lifted and lined up on the enraged animal's throat, Gandang flirted his shield and called to it.

"Come, evil one! Come, devil spawn." And with another stunning burst of rage, the leopard launched itself, a blurr of gold, upon the tall dappled shield. But as it dropped, so Gandang lifted the point and took the leopard upon it, letting its own weight drive the steel through its heart; and then he rolled backwards under the shield and the cruel hooked talons raked the cured iron-hard hide unavailingly.

The blade was still buried in the leopard's chest. It coughed once, choking on its own blood, and then it wrenched itself free of the steel and bounded out through the mouth of the cavern. When Gandang followed it cautiously into the sunlight, the beautiful beast was stretched out on the rocky ledge in a spreading puddle of its own blood. It was a magnificent old male, the pelt unscarred. The sable rosettes upon its back were not much darker than the dark amber ground, that shaded down to a pure buttery cream on the underbelly. A noble animal, and only a king might wear its fur.

"The way is safe, oh King," Gandang called down the slope, and the litter-bearers carried Lobengula up and set him gently upon the ledge.

The king dismissed the bearers, and he and his halfbrother were alone on the hillside, high above this harsh and barbaric land. Lobengula looked at the dead leopard and then at the dark mouth of the cavern.

"This would be a fitting tomb for a king," said Lobengula reflectively, and Gandang could not answer him.

They were silent for a long while.

"I am a dead man," said Lobengula at last, and raised a graceful hand to still Gandang's protest. "I walk, I speak still, but my heart is dead within me."

Gandang was silent, and he could not look upon the king's face.

"Gandang, my brother. I want only peace. Will you grant me that?

When I order it, will you bring your spear to me and by piercing my dead heart let my spirit free to find that peace?"

"My King, my brother, never once have I disobeyed your order. Ever your word was the centre of my existence. Ask anything of me, my brother, anything but this.

Never can I lift my hand towards you, son of Mzilikazi, my father, grandson of Mashobane, my grandfather."

Lobengula sighed. "Oh Gandang, I am so weary and sick with grief.

If you will not give me surcease, then will you send for my senior witchdoctor?"

The witchdoctor came and listened gravely to the king's command; then he rose and went to the carcass of the leopard.

He clipped off the long, stiff, white whiskers and burned them to powder in a tiny clay pot over a small fire. To make the potion stronger still, he pounded a dozen seeds of the poison rope shrub to a paste and mixed it with the lethal ashes. Then from a stoppered buck-horn on his belt, he poured and stirred an acrid green liquid.

On his knees, with face to the ground, he wriggled towards the king like an obsequious cur-dog and placed the pot on the rocky ledge before him. As his withered claw-like fingers released the deadly vessel, Gandang rose silently behind him and drove his assegai between the witchdoctor's bony shoulder blades and out of his pigeon chest.

Then he picked up the wizened skeletal body and carried it into the recesses of the cavern. When he came back he knelt again before Lobengula.

"You are right," Lobengula nodded. "No man but you should know the manner of the king's going."

He picked up the pot and held it between his cupped pink palms.

"Now you will be the father of my poor people. Stay in peace, my brother," said Lobengula, and lifted the pot to his lips and drained it at a single draught.

Then he lay back on the litter and pulled a fur kaross over his head.

"Go sweetly, my beloved brother," said Gandang. His noble features were set like weathered granite, but as he sat beside the king's bier the tears coursed down his cheeks and wet the great battle-scarred muscles of his chest. They buried Lobengula in the cavern, sitting upright on the stone floor and wrapped in the wet green skin of the leopard. They dismantled his wagons and carried them up the hill and stacked the parts at the back of the cave.

They piled Lobengula's tusks of yellow ivory at each hand, and at his feet Gandang placed his toy spear of kingship and his beer pots and eating plates, his knives and mirrors and snuff-horn, his beads and ornaments, a bag of salt and another of grain for the journey, and finally the little sealed clay pots of uncut diamonds to pay his way into the spirit world of his forefathers.

Under Gandang's supervision, they sealed the mouth of the cavern with heavy slabs of black ironstone, then, dolefully singing the king's praises, they went back down the hill.

There were no cattle to slaughter for the funeral feast, nor grain for the beer pots. Gandang called the leaders of the mourning people to him.

"A mountain has fallen," he said simply. "And an age is past. I have left behind me my wife and my son and the land that I loved. Without those things a man is nothing. I am going back. No man need follow me. Each must choose his own path, but mine is south again to Gubulawayo and the magical hills of the Matopos, to meet and talk with this man Lodzi."

In the morning, when Gandang started southwards again, he looked back and saw what was left of the Matabele nation straggling along behind him, no longer a great and warlike people, but a bewildered and broken rabble.

Robyn Codrington stood on the cool shaded verandah of Khami Mission. It had rained that morning, and the air was washed sparkling clean and the wet earth smelled like newly baked bread as the bright sunshine warmed it.

Robyn wore the black ribbons of mourning sewn on her sleeves.

"Why do you come here?" she demanded quietly, but unsmilingly, of the man who mounted the front steps of the verandah.

"I had no choice," Mungo Sint John answered her. He stopped on the top step, and studied her for a moment without any trace of mockery on his face.

Her skin was scrubbed and fresh, devoid of either rouge or powder.

It was smooth and fine-textured. There was no pouching below her clear green eyes, no blurring of her jawline, and her hair drawn back from her temples and forehead was innocent of silver lacing. Her body was small-breasted and narrow-hipped, tall and supple, but when she saw the direction of his gaze, the line of Robyn's lips hardened and set.

"I should be grateful, sir, if you would state your business and leave."

"Robyn, I am sorry, but perhaps it is best that the uncertainty is over."

In the four months since the return of @ the flying column from the Shangani, a dozen rumours. had come out of the bush.

That fateful morning, Mungo Sint John's column, cut off by the flooded river, had heard heavy firing on the opposite bank. Then almost immediately they had themselves come under fierce attack by elements of the Matabele army. They had been forced to retire, a long weary fighting retreat in the rain that had taken weeks of starvation and privation, until at last the harrying impis had let them go, but not before the gun carriages had been abandoned and half the horses lost.

Nobody had known what had happened to Allan Wilson's patrol on the north bank of the Shangani, but then the word had reached Gubulawayo that the little band had cut their way through the impis, gained the Zambezi, and rafted down it to the Portuguese settlement of Tete, three hundred miles downstream. Later that was denied by the Portuguese and hopes plunged, to be revived again when a Matabele induna coming in to surrender suggested that the white men had been taken prisoner by the Inyati regiment, rumour, denial and counter-rumour for four harrowing months, and now Mungo Sint John was standing before Robyn.

"It's certain," he said. "I did not want a stranger to bring the news to you."

"They are dead," she said flatly.

"All of them. Dawson reached the battlefield and found them."

"He would not have been able to recognize them or be certain of how many bodies. Not after all these months, not after the hyena and vultures, "

"Robyn, please." Mungo held out a hand to her, but she recoiled from him.

"I won't believe it, Clinton could have escaped."

"In the bush Dawson met the senior induna of the Matabele. He is coming in with all his people to surrender. He described to Dawson the patrol's last stand, and how in the end they all died."

"Clinton could have, " She was very pale, shaking her head firmly.

"Robyn, it was Gandang. He knew your husband-well.

"Hlopi" he called him, the man with white hair. He saw him lying with the other dead. It is certain. There can be no more hope."

"You can go now," she said, and then quite suddenly she was weeping. Standing very erect and chewing her lower lip to try and stop herself, but her face had crumpled and the rims of her eyelids turned rosy-pink with grief.

"I cannot leave you like this," he said and limped down the stoep towards her.

"Don't come near me," she husked through her tears, and she retreated before him. "Please don't touch me."

He came on, lean and rangy as an old torn-leopard; but the cruel and swarthy planes of his face had softened with an expression she had never seen upon them before, and his one good eye held her swimming green ones with a deep and tender concern.

"Don't, oh please don't, "Now she held up both hands as if to ward him off, and she turned her face away. She had reached the end of the verandah; her back was pressed to the door of the bedroom which Cathy and Salina had once shared, and she began to pray, her voice muffled by her own tears.

"Oh Gentle Jesus, help me to be strong-" His hands fell upon her shoulders; they were hard as bone and cool through the thin cotton of her blouse. She shuddered, and gasped.

Have pity. I beg you. Let me be."

He took her chin in the cup of his hand and forced her face up to his.

"Will you give me no peace, ever?" she mumbled brokenly, and then his mouth covered hers and she could not speak again. Slowly the rigidity went out of her body, and she swayed against him. She sobbed once, and began to slump into the embrace of his hard muscled arms. He caught her behind the knees, and around the shoulders, and lifted her like a sleeping child against his chest.

He kicked open the door to the bedroom, stepped through and pushed it closed with his heel.

There was a dustsheet on the bed, but no pillow or eiderdown. He laid her upon it, and knelt beside her, still holding her to his chest.

"He was a saint," she choked. "And you sent him to his death. You are the very devil."

Then with the shaking, frantic fingers of a drowning woman, she unfastened the mother-of-pearl buttons down the front of his linen shirt.

"His chest was hard and smooth, the olive skin covered with crisp, dark curls. She pressed her open lips to it, breathing deeply the man-smell of him.

"Forgive me," she sobbed. "Oh God, forgive me."

From his cubbyhole beside the pantries, Jordan Ballantyne could overlook the cavernous kitchens of Groote Schuur.

There were three chefs at work over the gleaming, anthracite-burning Aga ranges, and one of them hurried across to Jordan with the enamelled double-boiler and a silver spoon. With it Jordan tasted the Beamaise sauce that would go with the galjoen. The galjoen was a fish of the stormy Cape waters; fancifully its shape could be likened to that of a Spanish galleon, and its delicate greenish flesh was one of the great African delicacies.

"Perfect," Jordan nodded. "Parfait, Monsieur Galliard, comme toujours." The little Frenchman scurried away beaming, and Jordan turned to the heavy teak door leading to the wine cellars below the kitchens.

Jordan had personally decanted the port that afternoon, ten bottles of the forty-year-old Vilanova de Gaia of the 1853 vintage; it had faded to the beautiful tawny colour of wild honey. Now a Malay waiter in long white Kanzu robes, with crimson sash and pillbox fez, came up the stone steps, reverently carrying the first Waterford glass decanter on a Georgian silver tray.

Jordan poured a thimbleful into the chased silver tastevin which he wore on the chain about his neck. He sipped, rolled it on his tongue and then drew breath sharply through pursed lips to let the wine declare itself.

"I was right," he murmured. "What a fortunate purchase."

Jordan opened the heavy leatherbound wine register, and noted with pleasure that they still had twelve dozen bottles of the Vilanova, after he had deducted today's decanting. In the "remarks" column he wrote. "Extraordinary. Keep for best," and then turned back to the Malay steward.

"So then, Ramallah, we will offer a choice of Sherry Finos Palma or Madeira with the soup, with the fish the Chablis or the 1889 Krug -" Quickly Jordan ran down the menu, and then dismissed him. "The company will be coming through presently, kindly see that everyone takes their places now."

The twelve waiters stood with their backs to the oak panelling of the dining-hall, their white-gloved hands clasped in front of them, expressionless as guardsmen, and Jordan gave each one a quick appraisal as he passed, looking for a stain on the brilliant white robes or a sloppily knotted sash.

At the head of the long table, he paused. The service was the silver gilt queen's pattern presented to mister Rhodes by the directors of the Chartered Company, the glass was long, finely stemmed Venetian, lipped with twenty-two carat gold to complement the gilt. There were twenty-two settings this evening, and Jordan had agonized over the seating arrangements. Finally he had decided to place Doctor Jameson at the bottom of the table and put Sir Henry Loch, the High Commissioner, on mister Rhodes" right. He nodded his satisfaction at that arrangement, and took one of the Alphonso Havanas from the silver humidor and sniffed it before crackling it against his ear, that too was perfect; he replaced it and took one last lingering look around the hall.

The flowers had been arranged by Jordan's own hands, great banks of protea blooms from the slopes of Table Mountain. In the centrepiece, yellow English roses from the gardens of Groote Schuur, and of course mister Rhodes' favourite flowers, the lovely blue plumbago blossom.

From beyond the double doors came the clatter of many feet on the marble floor of the hall and, the high, almost querulous, voice which Jordan knew and loved so well carried to him.

"And we shall just have to square the old man." Jordan smiled fondly at the words, the old man was certainly Kruger, the President of the Boer Republic, and "square" was still one of the central words in mister Rhodes" vocabulary. just before the doors swung open to admit the company of brilliant and famous men clad in sombre dinner jackets, Jordan slipped out of the hall, back to his little cubbyhole, but he raised the hatch beside his desk an inch, so that he could hear the conversation at the long, glittering table in the hall beyond.

It gave him a glorious feeling of power, to be sitting so close to the centre of all this and to listen to the pulse of history beating, to know that it was within him subtly to alter and direct, and to do so in secrecy. A word here, a hint there, even something so trivial as the placing of two powerful men side by side at the long dinner table.

On occasions, in privacy, mister Rhodes would actually ask, "What do you think, Jordan?" and would listen attentively to his reply.

The tumultuous excitement of this life had become a drug to Jordan, and barely a day passed that he did not drink the heady draught to the fill. There were special moments that he treasured and whose memory he stored. When the meal ended, and the company settled down to the port and cigars, Jordan could sit alone and gloat over these special memories of his.

He remembered that it had been he who had written out that legendary cheque in his own fair hand for mister Rhodes to sign the day that they had bought out the Kimberley Central Company. The amount had been 5,338,650 pounds, the largest cheque ever drawn anywhere in the world.

He remembered sitting in the visitor's gallery of Parliament as mister Rhodes rose to make his acceptance speech as Prime Minister of Cape Colony, how mister Rhodes had looked up and caught his eye and smiled before he began speaking.

He remembered after that wild ride down from Matabeleland when he had handed the Rudd Concession with Lobengula's seal upon it to mister Rhodes, how he had clasped Jordan's shoulder and with those pale blue eyes conveyed in an instant more than a thousand carefully chosen words ever could.

He remembered riding beside mister Rhodes" carriage down the Mall to Buckingham Palace and dinner with the queen, while the Union Castle mailship delayed its sacred sailing by twenty-four hours to wait for them.

This very morning had added another memory to Jordan's store, for he had read aloud the cable from Queen Victoria to "Our well-beloved Cecil John Rhodes", appointing him one of Her Majesty's Privy Councillors.

Jordan started back to the present.

It was after midnight, and in the dining-hall mister Rhodes was abruptly breaking up the dinner in his characteristic fashion.

"Well, gentlemen, I'll bid you all a good night's rest."

Quickly Jordan rose from his desk and slipped down the servants" passageway.

At the end he opened the door a crack and anxiously watched the burly, appealingly awkward figure mount the stairs. The company had done justice to Jordan's choice of wine, but still mister Rhodes" tread was steady enough. Though he stumbled once at the top of the sweeping marble staircase, he caught his balance, and Jordan shook his head with relief.

When the last servant left, Jordan locked the wine, cellar and the pantry. There was a silver tray left upon his desk, and on it a glass of the Vilanova and two water biscuits spread thickly with salted Beluga caviar. Jordan carried the tray through the silent mansion. A single candle burned in the lofty entrance hall. It stood upon the massive carved teak table in the centre of the floor.

Jordan paced slowly across the chequer board of black and white marble paving, like a priest approaching the altar, and reverently he laid the silver tray upon the table. Then he looked up at the carved image high in its shadowy niche, and his lips moved as he silently began the invocation to the bird goddess, Panes.

When he had finished, he stood silent and expectant in the fluttering light of the candle, and the great house slept around him. The falcon-headed goddess stared with cruel blind eyes into the north, a thousand miles and more towards an ancient land, now blessed, or cursed, with a new name, Rhodesia.

Jordan waited quietly, staring up at the bird like a worshipper before a statue of the Virgin, and then suddenly in the silence, from the bottom of the gardens, where grew the tall dark oak trees that Governor van der Stel had planted almost two hundred years before, came the sad and eerie cry of an eagle owl. Jordan relaxed and backed away from the offering that he left upon the table. Then he turned and went up the marble staircase.

In his own small room he quickly stripped off his clothing that was impregnated with the odours of the kitchen.

Naked, he sponged down his body with cold water, admiring his own lithe form in the full-length mirror on the far wall. He scrubbed himself dry with a rough towel, and then rinsed his hands in eau-de-Cologne.

With a pair of silver-backed brushes he burnished his hair until his curls shone like whorls of pure gold wire in the lamplight; then he slipped his arms into the brocaded gown of midnight blue satin, belted it around his waist, picked up the lamp to light his way and stepped out into the passage.

He closed the door to his bedroom quietly and listened for a few seconds. The house was still silent, their guests slept. On silent, bare feet, Jordan glided down the thick carpet to the double doors at the end of the passage to tap lightly on one of the panels, twice then twice again, and a voice called to him softly, "Enter!"

"These are a pastoral people. You cannot take their herds away from them." Robyn Ballantyne spoke with a low controlled intensity, but her face was pale and her eyes sparkled with furious green lights.

"Please, won't you be seated, Robyn."

Mungo Sint John indicated the chair of rough raw lumber, one of the few furnishings in this adobe mud hut that was the office of the Administrator of Matabeleland. "You will be more comfortable, and I will feel more at ease."

Nothing could make him appear more at ease, she thought wryly. He lolled back in his swivel chair, and his booted ankles were crossed on the desk in front of him. He was in shirtsleeves, without a tie or cravat, and his waistcoat was unbuttoned.

"Thank you, General. I shall continue to stand until I receive your answer."

"The costs of the relief of Matabeleland and the conduct of the war were born entirely by the Chartered Company. Even you must see that there must be reparation."

"You have taken everything. My brother, Zouga Ballantyne, has rounded up over a hundred and twenty-five thousand head of Matabele cattle, "

"The war cost us a hundred thousand pounds."

"All right." Robyn nodded. "If you will not listen to the voice of humanity, then perhaps hard cash will convince you. The Matabele people are scattered and bewildered; their tribal organizations have broken down; the smallpox is rife amongst them "A conquered nation always suffers privation, Robyn.

Oh, do sit down, you are giving me a crick in the neck."

"Unless you return part of their herds to them, at least enough for milk and slaughter, you are going to be faced with a famine that will cost you more than your neat little war ever did."

The smile slipped from Mungo Sint John's face, and he inclined his head slightly and studied the ash of his cigar.

"Think about this, General. When the Imperial Government realizes the extent of the famine, it will force your famous Chartered Company to feed the Matabele. What is the cost of transporting grain from the Cape? A hundred pounds a load. Or is it more now? If the famine approaches the proportions of genocide, then I will see to it that Her Majesty's Government is faced with such a public outcry, led by humanitarians like Labouchere and Blunt, that they may be obliged to revoke the charter and make Matabeleland a crown colony after all."

Mungo Sint John took his bottle off the desk and sat upright in his chair.

"Who appointed you champion of these savages, anyway?" he asked. But she ignored his question.

"I suggest, General, that you relay these thoughts to mister Rhodes before the famine takes a hold."

She gloried in the visible effort it took him to regain his equanimity.

"You may well be right, Robyn." His smile was light and mocking again. "I will point this out to the directors of the Company."

"Immediately," she insisted.

"Immediately," he capitulated, and spread his hands in a parody of helplessness. "Now is there anything else you want of me?"

"Yes," she said. "I want you to marry me."

He stood up slowly and stared at her.

"You may not believe this, my dear, but nothing would give me greater pleasure. Yet, I am confused. I asked you that day at Khami Mission. Why now have you changed your mind?"

"I need a father for the bastard you have got on me. It was conceived four months after Clinton's death."

"A son," he said. "It will be a son." He came around the desk towards her.

"You must know that I hate you," she said.

His single eye crinkled as he smiled at her.

"Yes, and that is probably the reason that I love you."

"Never say that again," she hissed at him.

"Oh, but I must. You see I did not even realize it myself. I always believed that I was proof from such a mundane emotion as love. I was deceiving myself. You and I must now bravely face up to that fact. I love you."

"I want nothing from you but your name, and you shall have nothing from me but hatred and contempt."

"Marry me first, my love, and later we will decide who gets what from whom., "Do not touch me," she said, and Mungo Sint John kissed her full on the mouth.

It had taken almost ten full days of leisurely riding to make a circuit of the boundaries of the ranch lands that Zouga had claimed with his land grants.

It stretched eastwards from the Khami river, almost as far as the Zembesi crossing and southwards to the outskirts of Gubulawayo, an area the size of the county of Surrey, rich grasslands with stretches of parklike forests and low golden hills. Through it meandered a dozen lesser rivers and streams, which watered the herds that Zouga was already grazing.

mister Rhodes had appointed Zouga the custodian of enemy property, with powers to take possession of the royal herds of Lobengula. The hundred troopers who volunteered for the duty rounded up almost 130,000 head of prime cattle.

Half of these belonged to the Chartered Company, but that left 65,000 to be distributed as loot to the men who had ridden in to Gubulawayo with Jameson and Sint John. However, at the very last minute, mister Rhodes changed his mind, and telegraphed Sint John with instructions to redistribute 40,000 head to the Matabele tribe.

The volunteers were incensed at having lost more than a third of their rightful loot, and word was soon spreading through the improvised bars and canteens of Gubulawayo that the cattle had been given back to the tribe after threats and representations by the woman doctor of Khami Mission. Credence was given to the rumour by the fact that the same telegraph message authorized the grant of six thousand acres of land to Khami Mission.

mister Rhodes was squaring the God-botherers, and the volunteers were not going to stand for it.

Fifty troopers, all full of whisky, rode out to burn down the mission and string up the hag responsible for their loss. Zouga Ballantyne and Mungo Sint John met them at the foot of the hills, With a few salty sallies, they had them laughing; then they took it in turn to curse them fluently and roundly, and finally they drove them back to town, where they stood them a dozen rounds of drinks.

Despite the redistribution to the tribe, still the flood of cattle upon the market brought the price down to two pounds a head, and Zouga used half the proceeds of the Ballantyne diamond to buy up ten thousand of them to stock his new estates.

Now as Zouga and Louise rode together, with Jan Cheroot following them in the Scotch cart with the tent and camping equipment, they passed small herds of the cattle tended by Matabele herders that Zouga had hired.

Zouga had been able to select only the best animals, and he had graded them by colour, so that one herd might consist of all red beasts while the next of only black ones.

Ralph had contracted to bring up all the materials for the new homestead from the railhead at Kimberley, and with the same convoy would be twenty thoroughbred bulls of Hereford stock that Zouga intended running with his cows.

"This is the place," Louise exclaimed with delight.

"How can you be so certain, so soon?" Zouga laughed.

"Oh, darling it's perfect. I can spend the rest of my life looking at that view."

Below them the land fell away steeply to deep green pools of the river.

"At least there will be good water, and that bottom land will grow excellent vegetables, "

"Don't be so unromantic," she chided him. "Look at the trees.

They soared above their heads like the arched and vaulted spans of a great cathedral, and the autumn foliage was a thousand shades of reds and golds, murmurous with bees and merry with bird song.

"They will give good shade in the hot season" Zouga agreed.

"Shame on you," she laughed. "If you cannot see their beauty, then look at the Thabas Indunas."

The Hills of the Indunas were whalebacked and dreaming blue beneath the tall silver clouds. The grassy plains between were scattered with small groups of Zouga's cattle, and of wild game, zebra and blue wildebeest.

"They are close enough, Zouga nodded. "When Ralph's construction company finally reaches Gubulawayo with the railway line, then we shall be a few hours" ride from the railhead and all the amenities of civilization."

"So you will build me a home here, on this very spot?"

"Not until you give it a name., "What would you like to call it, my darling husband?"

"I'd like to have a touch of the old country, King's Lynn was where I spent my childhood."

"That's it then."

"King's Lynn." Zouga tested the name. "Yes, that will do very nicely. Now you shall have the home you want."

Louise took his hand, and they walked down under the trees towards the river.

A man and a woman came down the narrow winding pathway through the thick riverine bush.

The man carried his shield on his left shoulder, with the broad-bladed assegai secured to it by the rawhide thongs; but his right arm was shortened and deformed, twisted out from his shoulder as though the bone had been broken and badly set.

There was no superfluous flesh upon his powerfully boned frame; the rack of his ribs showed through, and his skin lacked the lustre of health. It was the dull lifeless colour of lamp-black, as though he had just risen from a long sick bed. On his trunk and back gleamed the satiny rosettes of freshly healed gunshot wounds, like newly-minted coins of pure blue cobalt.

The woman who followed him was young and straight.

Her eyes were slanted and her features those of an Egyptian princess. Her breasts were fat and full with milk, and her infant son was strapped tightly to her back so that his head would not jerk or wobble to her long, swinging gait.

Bazo reached the bank of the river and turned to his wife.

"We will rest here, Tanase."

She loosened the knot and swung the child onto her hip. She took one of her swollen nipples between thumb and forefinger until milk spurted from it, and then she touched it to the boy's lips. Immediately he began to feed with little pig-like snuffles and grunts.

"When will we reach the next village?" she asked.

"When the sun is there." Bazo pointed halfway down the sky. "Are you not weary of the road, we have travelled so far, so long."

"I will never weary, not until we have delivered the word to every man and woman and child in Matabeleland," she replied, and she began to joggle the baby and croon to it: "Tungata is your name, for you will be a seeker.

"Zebiwe is your name, for what you will seek is that which has been stolen from you and your people.

"Drink my words Tungata Zebiwe, even as you drink my milk. Remember them all your days, Tungata, and teach them to your own children. Remember the wounds on your father's breast, and the wounds in your mother's heart, and teach your children to hate."

She changed the infant to her other hip, and her other breast, and she went on crooning until he had drunk his fill and his little head drooped sleepily. Then she slung him upon her back once more, and they crossed the river and went on.

They reached the village an hour before the setting of the sun. There were less than a hundred people living in the scattered huts. They saw the young couple from afar and a dozen of the men came out to greet them with respect and lead them in.

The women brought them grilled maize cakes and thick soured milk in calabash gourds, and the children came to stare at the strangers and to whisper to one another. "These are the wanderers, these are the people from the Hills of the Matopos."

When they had eaten, and the sun had set, the villagers built up the fire. Tanase stood in the firelight, and they squatted in a circle about her, silent and intent.

"I am called Tanase," she said. "And once I was the Umlimo., There was a low gasp of shock at her mention of that name.

"I was the Umlimo," Tanase repeated. "But then the powers of the spirits were taken from me."

They sighed softly and stirred like dead leaves when a random breeze passes.

"There is another who is now the Umlimo, and lives in the secret place in the hills, for the Umlimo never dies."

There was a little hum of assent.

"Now I am the voice of the Umlimo only. I am the messenger who brings you the word of the Umlimo.

Listen well, my children, for the Umlimo prophesies thus." She paused and now the silence was charged with religious terror.

"When the noon sun goes dark with wings, and the trees are bare of leaves in the springtime, then warriors of Matabele put an edge to your steel."

Tanase paused and the firelight gleamed on the hundreds of eyes that watched her.

"When the cattle lie with their heads twisted to touch their flank and cannot rise, then will be the time to rise up and to strike with the steel."

She spread her arms like a crucifix and cried out: "That is the prophecy. Harken to it, children of Mashobane; Harken to the voice of the Umlimo. For the Matabele will be great once again."

In the dawn the two wanderers, carrying the infant who was named the "Seeker after what has been stolen", went on towards the next village, where the elders came out to greet them.

In the southern springtime of 1896 on the shores of a lake near the southern extremity of the Rift Valley, that mighty geological fault which splits the African Continental Shield like an axe stroke, a bizarre hatching occurred.

The huge egg masses of schistocerca gregaria, the desert locust, that were buried in the loose earth along the border of the lake, released countless multitudes of flightless nymphs. The eggs had been laid by females in the solitary phase of the locust's life cycle; but so vast was the hatching of their progeny that the earth could not contain them, and though they spread out over an area of almost fifty square miles, they were forced to crawl upon one another's backs.

The constant agitation and stimulation of contact with other nymphs wrought a miraculous change in this teeming tide of insects. Their colour turned to a vivid orange and midnight black, unlike their parents" drab brown.

Their metabolic rate surged and they became hyperactive and nervous. Their legs grew longer and stronger, their gregarious instincts more powerful, so that they flowed in a compact body that seemed to be a single monstrous organism. They had entered the gregarious phase of the life cycle, and when at last they moulted fox the last time and their newly-fledged wings had dried, the entire swarm took spontaneously to the air.

In that first baptism of flight, they were spurred by their high body temperature, which was raised further by their muscular activity. They could not stop until the cool of evening, and then they settled in such dense swarms that the branches of the forest snapped under their weight. They fed voraciously all night, and in the morning the rising heat spurred them into flight once more.

They rose in a cloud so dense that the sound of their wings was the drumming roar of hurricane winds. "the trees they left behind were stripped completely of their tender springtime foliage. As they passed overhead, their wings eclipsed the noonday sun, and a deep shadow fell over the land.

They were headed south towards the Zambezi river.

From the Great Sud where the infant Nile river weaves its way through fathomless swamps of floating papyrus, southwards over the wide savannahs of eastern and central Africa, down to the Zambezi and beyond, roamed vast herds of buffalo.

They had never been hunted by the primitive tribes who preferred easier game; only a few Europeans with sophisticated weapons had ventured into these remote lands, and even the lions which followed the herds could not check their natural multiplication.

The grasslands were black with the huge bovine black beasts. Twenty or thirty thousand strong, the herds were so dense that the animals in the rear literally starved, for the pasture was destroyed before they could reach it.

Weakened by their own vast multitudes, they were ripe for the pestilence that came out of the north.

It was the same plague that Moses" God had inflicted on the Pharaoh of Egypt, the rinderpest, the peste bovine, a virus disease which attacks cattle and all other ruminants. The stricken animals were blinded by the discharge of thick mucus from their eyes. It poured in ropes from their gaping jaws and nostrils to contaminate the pastures and infect any other animal that passed over them.

Their emaciated bodies were wracked by spasms of profuse diarrhoea and dysentery. When at last they dropped, the convulsions twisted their heads back upon their tortured necks, so that their noses touched one of their flanks, and they could never rise again.

So swift was the passage of the disease that a herd of ten thousand great homed black beasts was wiped out between dawn and sunset. Their carcasses lay so thickly that they touched each other, and the characteristic fetid odour of the disease mingled with the stench of rotting flesh; for although the vultures gorged, they could not devour one thousandth part of this dreadful harvest of death.

Swiftly, carried by the vultures and the blundering, bellowing herds, the plague swept southwards towards the Zambezi river.

On the banks of that mighty river Tanase stood beside another watch-fire and repeated the prophecy of the Umlimo: "When the noon sun goes dark with wings, and the trees are bare of leaves in the springtime "When the cattle lie with their heads twisted to touch their flank, and cannot rise Thus she cried, and the people of the Matabele listened and took new heart and looked to their steel.

The End