Authors: Wilbur Smith
It was all done so swiftly that Jameson had to ride hard with his band of hastily assembled volunteers to catch them before they reached the frontier of the Charterland.
He had thirty-eight men with him, and when he saw the horsemen, Bazo turned back and with the massed warriors at his back he greeted Jameson.
‘
Sakubona
,
Daketela!
I see you, Doctor! Fear not, by the king’s orders no white man will be molested.’
But the volunteers bunched their horses, and there was the snick of breech blocks and the rattle of bolts as they loaded. Thirty-eight against five hundred, and they were jumpy and
white-faced.
The little doctor spurred forward, and Ralph murmured to St John: ‘By God, the man is a bantam cock, and he’ll get us all into it yet.’
But Jameson showed no agitation as he stood in the stirrups and called: ‘Men of Matabele, why have you crossed the border?’
‘
Hau
,
Daketela!
’ Bazo answered him with mock astonishment. ‘What border is this you speak of? Surely this land, all of it, belongs to Lobengula. There are no
borders.’
‘The men you have slaughtered are under my protection.’
‘The men we killed were Mashona,’ Bazo replied scornfully. ‘And the Mashona are Lobengula’s dogs – to kill or keep as he wishes.’
‘The cattle you have stolen belong to my people.’
‘All the Mashona cattle belong to the king.’
Then St John shouted over him, ‘Careful, Jameson, there is treachery here, watch those men on your left.’
Some of Bazo’s men had pressed forward, the better to see and to hear. A few of them were armed with ancient Martini-Henry rifles, probably those with which Rhodes had paid the king for
his concession.
Jameson swung his horse to face them.
‘Back!’ he shouted. ‘Back, I say.’ He lifted his rifle to enforce his order, and one of the Matabele instinctively copied the gesture, half threatening the little group
of mounted white men with his rifle.
Mungo St John flung up his rifle, and as it touched his shoulder he fired. The shot was a thunderous burst of sound in the heated dusty air, and the heavy bullet smashed into the
Matabele’s naked chest. His rifle clattered on the ground, and a little feather of bright crimson sprayed from his chest. The warrior pirouetted slowly, almost gracefully, until they looked
into the shocking gape of the exit wound between his shoulder blades. Then the warrior collapsed, and his legs kicked convulsively.
‘Do not touch a white man!’ Bazo bellowed into the terrible silence, but not more than half a dozen of the horsemen understood the language. To the others it sounded like a killing
order. The crash of volleyed rifle fire mingled with the trample of hooves and whinny of panicky horses. The banks of blue gunsmoke blended with the billowing pale dust and the rippling plumes of
running warriors.
Bazo’s impi was streaming away into the forest, carrying their wounded with them, and slowly the rifle fire stuttered and faded, and the horses quietened. The little group sat, silent and
appalled, and stared at the Matabele dead strewn across the open ground ahead of them. They looked like the abandoned toys of a petulant child.
Ralph Ballantyne had not drawn the gold-engraved Winchester from its boot, and there was a long unlit cheroot between his white teeth. He spoke around it, smiling ironically, but his eyes were
cold and green and hard.
‘I count thirty-three of ‘em down, Doctor Jim,’ he said loudly. ‘Not a bad bag really, even though they were sitting birds.’ And he struck a Vesta against the thigh
of his riding breeches and lit the cheroot; then he gathered the reins and turned his horses’s head back towards the fort.
L
obengula turned the small canvas bag of sovereigns in his narrow graceful hands. He stood in the centre of the goat kraal, and there were only
three Matabele with him, Gandang and Somabula and Babiaan. The others he had sent away.
Before him stood a little white group. Zouga had brought Louise with him to the meeting. He had not dared leave her alone in the cottage beyond the stockade of the royal kraal, not with the mood
of the Matabele as it had been ever since Jameson’s massacre at Fort Victoria.
Facing the king also, but a little separated from the other couple, stood Robyn and Clinton Codrington.
Still fingering the bag of gold, Lobengula turned his face to Robyn.
‘See, Nomusa, these are the gold queens that you advised me to accept from Lodzi.’
‘I am deeply ashamed, oh King,’ Robyn whispered.
‘Tell me faithfully, did I give away my land when I signed the paper?’
‘No, King, you gave away only the gold beneath it.’
‘But how can men dig for gold without the land over it?’ Lobengula asked, and Robyn was silent and miserable.
‘Nomusa, you said that Lodzi was a man of honour. So why does he do these things to me? His young men swagger across my land and call it their own. They shoot down my warriors, and now
they gather a great army against me, with wagons and guns and thousands of soldiers. How can Lodzi do this to me, Nomusa?’
‘I cannot answer you, oh King. I deceived you as I was myself deceived.’
Lobengula sighed. ‘I believe you, Nomusa. There is still no quarrel between us. Bring your family, all your people here to my kraal that I may protect you through the dark times that lie
ahead.’
‘I do not deserve the king’s consideration.’ She choked on the words.
‘No harm will come to you, Nomusa. You have Lobengula’s word upon it.’ He turned slowly back to Zouga.
‘This gold, Bakela. Does it pay me for the blood of my young men?’ And he threw the bag at Zouga’s feet. ‘Pick up your gold, Bakela, and take it back to Lodzi.’
‘Lobengula, I am your friend – and I tell you this as a friend. If you refuse the monthly payment, then Lodzi will look upon it as a breaking of faith.’
‘Was not the killing of my young men a breaking of faith, Bakela?’ Lobengula asked sadly. ‘If it was not, then my people believe it to be so. The regiments are gathered, so
that they darken the Hills of the Indunas; they wear their plumes and carry their assegais and their guns, and their eyes are red. The blood of Matabele has been spilled, Bakela, and the enemies of
the king gather against him.’
‘Hear me, oh King, think a while before you let your young men run. What do they know of fighting Englishmen?’ Zouga was angry now, and the scar on his cheek burned red as a welt
raised by the lash of a whip.
‘My young men will eat them up,’ said Lobengula simply. ‘As did the Zulu at the Hill of the Little Hand.’
‘After the Little Hand came Ulundi,’ Zouga reminded him. ‘The earth was black with the Zulu dead, and they put chains on the legs of the Zulu King and sent him to an island far
across the sea.’
‘Bakela, it is too late. I cannot hold my young men, I have held them too long. They must run now.’
‘Your young men are brave when there are old Mashona women to stab, and young babies to disembowel, but they have never met real men.’
Gandang hissed with anger behind the king’s shoulder, but Zouga went on firmly.
‘Send them home to dally with their women and preen their feathers, for if you let them run, then you will be lucky if you live to see your kraal burning and your herds being driven
off.’
This time all three of the senior indunas hissed, and Gandang started forward impulsively, but Lobengula spread his hand to restrain him.
‘Bakela is a guest of the king,’ Lobengula said. ‘While he stands in my kraal, every hair of his head is sacred.’ But the king’s eyes had never left Zouga’s
face. ‘Go, Bakela, leave this day and take your woman with you. Go to Daketela and tell him that my impis are ready. If he crosses the Gwelo river, I will let my young men go.’
‘Lobengula, if I leave then the last link between black men and white men is broken. There will be no more talking. It will be war.’
‘Then let it be so, Bakela.’
I
t was hard riding. They took the road that Ralph Ballantyne’s wagons had recently pioneered from Fort Salisbury to GuBulawayo. They left
all their furniture and possessions in the cottage outside the stockade of the king’s kraal – and they rode light, with a blanket roll on the pommel of the saddle and a food bag on one
of the spare horses that Jan Cheroot brought up behind on a lead rein.
Louise rode like a man, astride and uncomplaining, and on the fifth day, unexpectedly, they came up with Jameson’s column in camp around the skeletal headgear of Iron Mine Hill, where the
volunteers from Salisbury and Fort Victoria had joined up.
‘Zouga, is that how Jameson is going to challenge Lobengula’s impi?’
The little encampment looked pathetically inadequate. There were two dozen wagons, and on the canvas tents of most of them Zouga could make out the insignia of Ralph’s transport company.
But he pointed to the comers of the laager.
‘Machine-guns,’ he said. ‘Six of them, and they are worth five hundred men each. They have field guns also, look at their emplacements.’
‘Oh Zouga, do you have to go with them?’
‘You know that I do.’
They rode down into the camp, and as they passed the pickets there was a hail that startled the sentries and made Louise’s horse shy and skitter.
‘Papa!’ Ralph came hurrying from the nearest wagon.
‘My boy.’ Zouga jumped down from the saddle, and they embraced happily. ‘I should have known you would be wherever there was something doing.’
Louise bent from the saddle and Ralph brushed her cheek with his fine moustache.
‘I still find it difficult to believe that I have a stepmother so young and beautiful.’
‘You are my favourite son,’ she laughed. ‘But I’d love you more if you could arrange a hot bath—’
From behind the canvas screen Louise kept calling for more buckets of hot water, and Zouga had to carry them from the fire and top-up the galvanized hip-bath in which she sat with her thick,
dark braids piled on top of her head, glowing pinkly from the almost boiling water and taking full part in the conversation beyond the screen.
Ralph and Zouga sat at a camp table with a blue enamel pot of coffee and a bottle of whisky between them.
‘We have six hundred and eighty-five men all in.’
‘I warned Rhodes that he would need fifteen hundred,’ Zouga frowned.
‘Well, there are another five hundred volunteers under Major Goold-Adams ready to move off from Macloutsi.’
‘They would never get here in time to take a part in the fighting.’ Zouga shook his head. ‘What about lines of supply and reinforcements? What happens if we get into trouble
with the Matabele? What chance of a relieving force?’
Ralph grinned devilishly. ‘I am the whole commissariat – you don’t think I would split the profits with anyone else, do you?’
‘Re-supply? Relieving force?’
Ralph spread his hands in negation. ‘The doctor informs me that we don’t need them. God and Mr Rhodes are on our side.’
‘If it goes against us, it will be death and mutilation for every man, woman and child this side of the Shashi river. Lobengula’s impis are mad for war now. Neither the king nor his
indunas will be able to control them once they begin.’
‘That thought had occurred to me,’ Ralph admitted. ‘I have Cathy and Jonathan at Fort Victoria, packed and ready, old Isazi is with them and one of my best young men. I have
fresh relays of mules posted all the way from Fort Vicky to the Shashi. The hour Jameson gives the word for the column to march, my family will be on their way south.’
‘Ralph, I am taking Louise to Fort Victoria. Can she stay with Cathy and leave with her?’
‘Nobody asked me,’ Louise called from behind the screen, and there was an angry splash of water. ‘I took a vow, until death us do part – Zouga Ballantyne.’
‘You also vowed to love, honour and obey,’ Zouga reminded her, and winked at Ralph. ‘I hope you don’t suffer the same insubordination from your wife.’
‘Beat them regularly and give them plenty of babies,’ Ralph advised. ‘Of course, Louise must go with Katie, but you had better leave for Fort Vicky right away – the
Doctor is champing at the bit to settle Lobengula’s hash.’ He broke off, and gestured at a trooper who was hurrying towards their wagon across the laager. ‘And it looks as though
he has heard of your arrival at last.’
The trooper saluted Zouga breathlessly. ‘Are you Major Zouga Ballantyne, sir? Dr Jameson asks you please to come to his tent at your earliest convenience.’
D
r Jameson jumped up from the travelling-desk and bustled across the tent to meet Zouga.
‘Ballantyne, I was worried about you. Have you come directly from Lobengula? What are the chances? What force do you reckon he disposes?’ He broke off and scolded himself with a
deprecatory chuckle. ‘What am I thinking of. Let me get you a drink, man!’
He led Zouga into the tent. ‘You know General St John, of course—’ And Zouga stiffened, his face expressionless.
‘Zouga.’ Mungo St John lounged in a canvas camp chair – but he made no effort to rise or offer his hand. ‘How long it is. But you are looking well. Marriage agrees with
you – I have not had the opportunity to congratulate you.’
‘Thank you.’ Zouga nodded. Naturally he had known that Mungo was the Doctor’s Chief of Staff – but still he was not ready for his anger and bitterness at the
confrontation. This was the man who had kept Louise as a mistress, had held her tender precious body. He found that he was trembling, and he thrust the picture from his mind, but it was replaced
instantly by the image of Louise as he had found her in the desert, her skin burned off her in slabs by the sun – and it was Mungo St John who had let her go and made no effort to follow
her.
‘I have heard that your wife is in camp with you—’ St John’s single eye glowed maliciously. ‘You must dine with me tonight; it will be gratifying to discuss old
times.’
‘My wife has had a long, hard journey.’ Zouga kept his voice level; he did not want to give Mungo the satisfaction of knowing how angry he was. ‘And in the morning I am taking
her into Fort Victoria.’
‘Good!’ Jameson cut in briskly. ‘That suits my own plans – I need a trustworthy man to put a message on the telegraph line for Mr Rhodes. But now, Ballantyne, what is the
news from GuBulawayo, and how do you rate our chances?’