A Falcon Flies (68 page)

She wished that she had been able to cut the words in marble. She wished that she had been able to embalm his body and carry it back to rest where it belonged in the great Abbey of Westminster. She wished that he had recognized and known who she was just once before he died, she wished she had been able to allay his suffering, and she was consumed with grief and guilt.

For three days she maintained the camp astride the Hyena Road, and she spent those days sitting listlessly beside the mound of newly turned earth under the mukusi tree. She drove old Karanga and even little Juba away, for she needed to be alone.

On the third day she knelt beside the grave and she spoke aloud. ‘I make an oath to your memory, my dear father. I swear that I will devote my entire life to this land and its people, just as you did before me.'

Then she rose to her feet and her jaw-line hardened. The time for mourning was past. Now her duty lay plain before her – to follow this Hyena Road to the sea, and then to bear witness before all the world against the monsters who used it.

W
hen the lions are hunting, the prey animals seem able to sense it. They are seized by a restlessness and will graze for only seconds at a time before throwing up their horned heads and freezing into that peculiar antelope stillness, only the wide trumpet-shaped ears moving incessantly; then, skittering like thrown dice, they rearrange themselves upon the grassy plains, snorting and nervous, aware of danger but uncertain of its exact source.

Old Karanga had the same instinct bred into him for he was Mashona, an eater of dirt, and as such he was natural prey. He was the first to become aware that there were Matabele somewhere close at hand. He became silent, nervous and watchful, and it infected the other bearers.

Robyn saw him pick a broken ostrich plume from the grass beside the path and study it gravely, puckering his lips and hissing quietly to himself. It had not fallen from the wing of a bird.

That night he voiced his fears to Robyn.

‘They are here, the stabbers of women, the abductors of children—' He spat into the fire with a bravado that was hollow as a dead tree trunk.

‘You are under my protection,' Robyn told him. ‘You and all the people in this caravan.'

But when they met the Matabele war party, it was without further warning, in the dawn when the Matabele always attack.

Suddenly they were there, surrounding the camp, a solid phalanx of dappled shields and nodding plumes, the blades of the broad stabbing assegai catching the early light. Old Karanga had gone in the night, and with him had gone all the other porters and bearers. Except for the Hottentots the camp was deserted.

Karanga's warning had not been in vain, however, and behind the thorn
scherm
all the Hottentot guards were standing to their muskets, with their bayonets fixed.

The encircling Matabele stood silent, and still as statues carved from black marble. There seemed to be thousands upon thousands of them – though common sense told Robyn that it was merely a trick of her heated imagination and the poor light. A hundred, at the most two hundred, she decided.

Beside her Juba whispered, ‘We are safe, Nomusa. We are beyond the Burnt Land, beyond the border of my people. They will not kill us.'

Robyn wished she was as confident, and she shivered briefly, not merely from the dawn chill.

‘See, Nomusa,' Juba insisted. ‘The baggage boys are with them, and many of the
amadoda
carry their
isibamu
(firearms). If they intended to fight, they would not so burden themselves.'

Robyn saw that the girl was right, some of the warriors had rusty trade muskets slung upon their shoulders, and she remembered from her grandfather's writings that whenever the Matabele intended serious fighting they handed their muskets, which they neither trusted nor used with any accuracy, to the baggage boys and relied entirely upon the weapon that their ancestors had forged and perfected, the assegai of Chaka Zulu.

‘The baggage boys carry trade goods, they are a trading party,' Juba whispered. The baggage boys were the young apprentice warriors, and beyond the ranks of fighting men they were still in column. As soon as Robyn recognized the boxes and bundles that the baggage boys carried balanced on their heads, her last qualms faded to be replaced by anger.

They were traders, that she was sure of now, and returning along the road from the east there was little doubt in Robyn's mind as to what they had traded for these paltry wares.

‘Slavers!' she snapped. ‘In God's name and mercy, these are the slavers we seek, returning from their filthy business. Juba, go and hide immediately,' she ordered,

Then, with her Sharps rifle tucked under her arm, she stepped out through the opening in the wall of thorn bush, and the nearest warriors in the circle lowered their shields a little and stared at her curiously. This small change in attitude confirmed Juba's guess, their intentions were not warlike.

‘Where is your Induna?' Robyn called, her voice sharp with her anger, and now their curiosity gave way to astonishment. Their ranks swayed and rustled, until a man came from amongst them, one of the most impressive men she had ever laid eyes upon.

There was no mistaking his nobility of bearing, the arrogance and pride of a warrior tried in battle and covered in honours. He stopped before her and when he spoke his voice was low and calm. He did not have to raise it to be heard.

‘Where is your husband, white woman?' he asked. ‘Or your father?'

‘I speak for myself, and all my people.'

‘But you are a woman,' the tall Induna contradicted her.

‘And you are a slaver,' Robyn flared at him, ‘a dealer in women and children.'

The warrior stared at her for a moment, then lifted his chin and laughed, it was a low clear musical sound.

‘Not only a woman,' he laughed, ‘but an insolent one also.'

He shifted his shield on to his shoulder and strode past her. He was so tall that Robyn had to lift her chin to look up at him. He moved with a sinuous balance and assurance of carriage. The muscles in his back shone as though they were covered in black velvet, the tall plumes of his headdress nodded and the war rattles on his ankles whispered with each pace.

Swiftly he moved through the gap in the thorn hedge and at Robyn's gesture the Hottentot Corporal lifted the point of his bayonet into the ‘present' position and stepped back to let the Induna pass.

With a sweeping gaze the Induna took in the condition of the camp and laughed again.

‘Your bearers have run,' he said. ‘Those Mashona jackals can smell a real man a day's march away.'

Robyn had followed him into the camp and now she demanded with anger that was not feigned,

‘By what right do you enter my kraal and terrify my people?'

The Induna turned back to her.

‘I am the King's man,' he said. ‘On the King's business.' As though that was all the explanation that was necessary.

Gandang, the Induna, was a son of Mzilikazi, the King and Paramount Chief of the Matabele and all the subservient tribes.

His mother was of pure Zanzi blood, the old pure blood of the south, but she was a junior wife and as such, Gandang would never aspire to his father's estate.

However, he was one of his father's favourites. Mzilikazi, who mistrusted nearly all of his sons, and most of his hundreds of wives, trusted this son, not only because he was beautiful and clever and a warrior without fear, but because he lived in strict accordance with the law and custom of his people, and because of his unquestioned and oft-proven loyalty to his father and his King.

For this and for his deeds, he was covered in honours to which the ox-tail tassels on his arms and his legs bore witness. At four and twenty summers, he was the youngest
indoda
ever to be granted the head-ring of the Induna and a place on the high council of the nation, where his voice was listened to with serious attention even by the old grey pates.

The ageing King, crippled with gout, turned more and more towards this tall and straight young man when there was a difficult task, or a bitter battle in the offing.

So when Mzilikazi learned of the treachery of one of his Indunas, a man who commanded the border guards of the south and eastern strip of the Burnt Land, he had not hesitated before summoning Gandang, the trusted son.

‘Bopa, son of Bakweg, is a traitor.'

It was a mark of Gandang's favour that his father condescended to explain his orders as he issued them.

‘At first, as he was ordered, he slew those who trespassed in the Burnt Land, then he grew greedy. Instead of killing, he took them as cattle and sold them in the east to the
Putukezi
(Portuguese) and the
Sulumani
(Arabs) and sent word to me that they were dead.' The old King shifted his swollen and painful joints and took snuff, before going on,

‘Then because Bopa was a greedy man, and the men with whom he deals are greedy also, he began to seek other cattle to trade. On his own account, and secretly, he began to raid the tribes beyond the Burnt Land.'

Gandang, kneeling before his father, had hissed with astonishment. It was contrary to law and custom, for the tribes of the Mashona beyond the Burnt Land were the King's ‘cattle', to be raided only at the King's direction. For another to usurp the powers and gather the booty that belonged to the King was the worst form of treason.

‘Yes, my son,' the King agreed with Gandang's horror. ‘But his greed was without frontiers. He hungered for the baubles and the trash which the
Sulumani
brought him, and when this supply of Mashona “cattle” was not enough, then he turned upon his own people.'

The King was silent and his expression one of deep regret, for though he was a despot with powers that were subject to neither check nor limitation, although his justice and his laws were savage, yet within those laws he was a just man.

‘Bopa sent to me messengers accusing our own people, some of them nobles of Zanzi blood, one of treachery, another of witchcraft, another of stealing from the royal herds – and I sent the messengers back to Bopa ordering him to slay the offenders. But they were not slain. They, and all their people were taken along the road that Bopa had opened to the east. Now their bodies will not be buried in this land and their spirits will wander homelessly for all time.'

That was a terrible fate, and the King lowered his chin upon his chest, and brooded on it. Then he sighed and lifted his head. It was a small neat head and his voice was high-pitched, almost womanish, not that of a mighty conqueror and a warrior without fear.

‘Take your spear to the traitor, my son, and when you have killed him, return to me.'

When Gandang would have crawled from his presence, the King halted him with one finger raised.

‘When you have killed Bopa, you and those of your
amadoda
who are with you when the deed is done may go in to the women.'

It was the permission for which Gandang had waited for so many years, the highest privilege, the right to go in to the women and take wives.

Gandang shouted his father's praises as he crawled backwards from the royal presence.

Then Gandang, the loyal son, had done what his father commanded. He had carried his spear of retribution swiftly across all of Matabeleland, across the Burnt Land, and along the Hyena Road until he had met Bopa returning from the east laden with the spoils he so dearly coveted.

They had met at a pass through a line of granite hills, not a day's march from where Gandang now confronted Robyn Ballantyne.

Gandang's
Inyati
impi (buffalo) in their ostrich plumes and civet-tail skirts, carrying the dappled black and white ox-hide shields had surrounded the slave-guards formed from selected warriors of Bopa's
Inhlambene
impi (the Swimmers). The slavers wore white egret plumes and kilts of monkey tails, while their war shields were of chocolate-red ox-hide – but right was on the side of the Inyati, and after the swift
jikela
(encirclement) they raced in to crush the guilty and confused slave-guards in a few terrible unholy minutes of battle.

Gandang himself had engaged the grizzle-headed but powerfully built Bopa. He was a wily, scarred fighter and veteran of a thousand such conflicts. Their shields, the one dappled black and the other red, collided with a thud like charging bulls, and they wrestled for the advantage until Gandang, the younger and stronger, with a shift of weight and feet had hooked the point of his shield under the red shield of Bopa and prised it aside to open his enemy's flank.

‘
Ngidla
– I have eaten!' Gandang sang out as he sent the broad blade cleaving between Bopa's ribs, and when it was withdrawn against the reluctant cling of flesh with a sucking noise like a man walking in thick ankle-deep mud, Bopa's heart blood burst out behind it and splattered against Gandang's shield, drenching the ox tail tassels on his arms and his legs.

Thus it was for good reason that Gandang had laughed when Robyn called him ‘Slaver'.

‘I am on the King's business,' he repeated. ‘But what do you do here, white woman?' He knew very little of these strange people, for he had been a child when the impis of Mzilikazi had fought them in the land to the south, and had been driven by them northwards into what was now Matabeleland.

Gandang had met only one or two of them. They had been visitors to his father's great kraal at Thabas Indunas, travellers and traders and missionaries who had been ‘given the road' by the King and allowed to cross the strictly guarded frontiers.

Gandang was suspicious of them and their gaudy trade goods. He distrusted their habit of breaking pieces off the rocks along their path, he disliked their talk of a white man who lived in the sky and seemed to be in serious competition with the ‘Nkulu-kulu', the great God of the Matabele.

Had he met this woman and her followers in the Burnt Land, he would have followed his orders without hesitation, and killed them all.