Authors: Wilbur Smith
‘Do you remember my vision, Bazo? On the first day that
I met this man whom you call the Hawk, I warned you. Before the
birth of your son, when the veil of my virginity was still
unpierced, before the white horsemen came with their three-legged
guns that laugh like the river demons that live in the rocks
where the Zambezi river falls. When you still called him
“brother” and “friend”, I warned you
against him.’
‘I remember.’ Bazo’s own voice had sunk as
low as hers.
‘In my vision I saw you high upon a tree,
Bazo.’
‘Yes,’ he whispered, going on down the trail
without looking back at her. There was a superstitious tremor in
Bazo’s voice now, for his beautiful young wife had once
been the apprentice of the mad sorcerer, Pemba. When Bazo at the
head of his impi had stormed the sorcerer’s mountain
stronghold, he had hacked off Pemba’s head and taken Tanase
as a prize of war, but the spirits had claimed her back.
On the eve of the wedding-feast when Bazo would have taken the
virgin Tanase as his first bride, as his senior wife, an ancient
wizard had come down out of the Matopos Hills and led her away,
and Bazo had been powerless to intervene, for she had been the
daughter of the dark spirits and she had come to her destiny in
these hills.
‘The vision was so clear that I wept,’ Tanase
reminded him, and Bazo shivered.
In that secret cave in the Matopos the full power of the
spirits had descended upon Tanase, and she had become the Umlimo,
the chosen one, the oracle. It was Tanase, speaking in the weird
voices of the spirits, who had warned Lobengula of his fate. It
was Tanase who had foreseen the coming of the white men with
their wonderful machines that turned the night to noon day, and
their little mirrors that sparkled like stars upon the hills,
speeding messages vast distances across the plains. No man could
doubt that she had once had the power of the oracle, and that in
her mystic trances she had been able to see through the dark
veils of the future for the Matabele nation.
However, these strange powers had depended upon her maidenhead
remaining unpierced. She had warned Bazo of this, pleading with
him to strip her of her virginity and rid her of these terrible
powers, but he had demurred, bound by law and custom, until it
had been too late and the wizards had come down from the hills to
claim her.
At the beginning of the war which the white men had carried so
swiftly to Lobengula’s kraal at GuBulawayo, a small band
had detached from the main army; they were the hardest and
cruellest, led by Bakela the Fist, himself a hard fierce man.
They had ridden swiftly into these hills. They had followed the
secret path that Bakela had discovered twenty-five years or so
before, and galloped to the secret cavern of the Umlimo. For
Bakela knew the value of the oracle, knew how sacred she was, and
how her destruction would throw the Matabele nation into despair.
Bakela’s riders had shot down the guardians of the caverns,
and forced their way within. Two of Bakela’s troopers had
found Tanase, young and lovely and naked in the deepest recesses
of the cave, and they had violated her, savagely tearing the
maidenhead that she had once offered so lovingly to Bazo. They
had rutted upon her until her virgin blood splattered the floor
of the cavern and her screams had guided Bakela to them.
He had driven his men off her with fist and boot, and when
they were alone, he had looked down upon Tanase where she lay
bloodied and broken at his feet. Then strangely, this hard fierce
man had been overcome with compassion. Though he had ridden this
dangerous road for the sole purpose of destroying the Umlimo, yet
the bestial behaviour of his troopers had weakened his resolve,
had placed some burden of recompense upon him.
Bakela must have known that with her virginity torn from her
she had lost her powers, for he told her: ‘You, who were
Umlimo, are Umlimo no longer.’ He had accomplished her
destruction without using rifle or sword, and he turned and
strode from the dark cavern, leaving her life in exchange for her
virginity and the loss of her dark powers.
She had told the story to Bazo many times, and he knew that
the mists of time had closed before her eyes and that now they
shrouded the future from her, but no man could doubt that she had
once possessed the power of the Sight.
Thus Bazo shivered briefly, and he felt the ghost fingers
touching the nape of his neck as Tanase went on in her husky
whisper.
‘I wept, Bazo my lord, when I saw you upon the high
tree, and while I wept, the man you call Henshaw the Hawk was
looking up at you – and smiling!’
T
hey ate cold
bully beef straight from the cans, using the blade of a hunting
knife to spoon it out, and passing the cans from hand to hand.
There was no coffee, so they washed down the glutinous mess with
sun-warmed draughts from the felt-covered water bottles, and then
Ralph shared out his remaining cheroots with Harry Mellow and
Bazo. They lit them with burning twigs from the fire and smoked
in silence for a long time.
Close at hand a hyena warbled and sobbed in the darkness,
drawn by the firelight and the smell of food, while further out
across the plain, the lions were hunting, sweeping towards the
moonrise, not roaring before the kill but coughing throatily to
keep in contact with the other animals in the pride.
Tanase, with the child on her lap, sat at the edge of the
firelight, aloof from the men, and they ignored her. It would
have offended Bazo if they had paid undue attention to her, but
now Ralph took the cheroot from his mouth and glanced in her
direction.
‘What is your son’s name?’ he asked Bazo,
and there was a heartbeat of hesitation before Bazo replied.
‘He is called Tungata Zebiwe.’
Ralph frowned quickly, but checked the harsh words that rose
to his lips. Instead he said, ‘He is a fine boy.’
Bazo held out his hand towards the child, but Tanase
restrained him for a moment with a quiet ferocity.
‘Let him come to me,’ Bazo ordered sharply, and
reluctantly Tanase let the sleepy child stagger to his father and
climb into his arms.
He was a pretty, dark toffee colour, with a pot belly and
chubby limbs. Except for the bracelets of copper wire at his
wrists and a single string of beads around his waist, he was
stark naked. His hair was a dark fluffy cap and his eyes were
owlish with sleep as he stared at Ralph.
‘Tungata Zebiwe,’ Ralph repeated his name, and
then leaned across to stroke his head. The child made no attempt
to pull away, nor did he show any trace of alarm, but in the
shadows Tanase hissed softly and reached out as if to take the
child back, then dropped her hand again.
‘The Seeker after what has been stolen,’ Ralph
translated the child’s name, and caught the mother’s
dark eyes. ‘The Seeker after justice – that is a
heavy duty to place upon one so young,’ he said quietly.
‘You would make him an avenger of injustice inflicted
before his birth?’
Then smoothly Ralph seemed to change to a different
subject.
‘Do you remember, Bazo, the day we first met? You were a
green youth sent by your father and his brother the king to work
on the diamond fields. I was even younger and greener, when my
father and I found you in the veld and he signed you to a
three-year labour contract, before any other digger could put his
brand on you.’
The lines of suffering and sorrow that marred Bazo’s
features seemed to smooth away as he smiled, and for a few
moments he was that young guileless and carefree youth again.
‘It was only later I found out that the reason Lobengula
sent you and thousands of other young bucks like you to the
fields was to bring home as many fat diamonds as you could
steal.’ They both laughed, Ralph ruefully and Bazo with a
vestige of his youthful glee.
‘Lobengula must have hidden a great treasure somewhere.
Jameson never did find those diamonds when he captured
GuBulawayo.’
‘Do you remember the hunting falcon, Scipio?’ Bazo
asked.
‘And the giant spider that won us our first gold
sovereigns at the Kimberley spider-fights,’ Ralph
continued, and they chatted animatedly, recalling how they had
worked shoulder to shoulder in the great diamond pit, and the mad
diversions with which they had broken the dreadful monotony of
that brutal labour.
Not understanding the language, Harry Mellow rolled in his
blanket and pulled the corner of it over his head. In the shadows
Tanase sat, still as a beautiful ebony carving, not smiling when
the men laughed but with her eyes fastened on their lips as they
spoke.
Abruptly Ralph changed the subject again. ‘I have a son
also,’ he said. ‘He was born before the war, so he is
a year or two older than yours.’
The laughter dried immediately, and although Bazo’s
expression was neutral, his eyes were wary.
‘They could be friends, as we are friends,’ Ralph
suggested, and Tanase looked protectively towards her son, but
Bazo did not reply.
‘You and I could work side by side once more,’
Ralph went on. ‘Soon I will have a rich gold mine in the
forests yonder, and I will need a senior induna in charge of the
hundreds of men who will come to work.’
‘I am a warrior,’ said Bazo, ‘no longer a
mine labourer.’
‘The world changes, Bazo,’ Ralph answered softly.
‘There are no longer any warriors in Matabeleland. The
shields are burned. The assegai blades are broken. The eyes are
no longer red, Bazo, for the wars are finished. The eyes are
white now, and there will be peace in this land for a thousand
years.’
Bazo was silent.
‘Come with me, Bazo. Bring your son to learn the white
man’s skills. One day he will read and write, and be a man
of consequence, not merely a hunter of wild honey. Forget this
sad name you have given him, and find another. Call him a joyous
name and bring him to meet my own son. Together they will enjoy
this beautiful land, and be brothers as we once were
brothers.’
Bazo sighed then. ‘Perhaps you are right, Henshaw. As
you say, the impis are disbanded. Those who were once warriors
now work on the roads that Lodzi is building.’ The Matabele
always had difficulty in pronouncing the sound of
‘R’, thus Rhodes was ‘Lodzi’, and Bazo
was referring to the system of conscripted labour which the Chief
Native Commissioner, General Mungo St John, had introduced in
Matabeleland. Bazo sighed again. ‘If a man must work, it is
better that he work in dignity at a task of importance with
somebody whom he respects. When will you begin to dig for your
gold, Henshaw?’
‘After the rains, Bazo. But come with me now. Bring your
woman and your son—’
Bazo held up one hand to silence him. ‘After the rains,
after the great storms, we will talk again, Henshaw,’ Bazo
said quietly, and Tanase nodded her head and for the first time
she smiled, an odd little smile of approval. Bazo was right to
dissemble and to lull Henshaw with vague promises. With her
specially trained sense of awareness, Tanase recognized that
despite the direct gaze of his green eyes and his open, almost
childlike smile, this young white man was harder and more
dangerous than even Bakela, his father.
‘After the great storms,’ Bazo had promised him,
and that had a hidden meaning. The great storm was the secret
thing that they were planning.
‘First there are things that I must do, but once they
are done, I will seek you out,’ Bazo promised.
B
azo led up the
steep gradient of the narrow pathway through the deep gut of the
granite hills. Tanase followed a dozen paces behind him. The roll
of sleeping-mats and the iron cooking-pot were carried easily on
her head, and her spine was straight and her step fluid and
smooth to balance the load. The boy skipped at her side, singing
a childish nonsense in a high piping chant. He was the only one
unaffected by the brooding menace of this dark valley. The scrub
on each side of the path was dense and armed with vicious thorn.
The silence was oppressive, for no bird sang and no small animal
rustled the leaves.
Bazo stepped lightly across the boulders in the bed of the
narrow stream that crossed the trail and paused to look back as
Tanase scooped a handful of the cool water and held it to the
boy’s lips. Then they went on.
The path ended abruptly against a sheer cliff of pearly
granite, and Bazo stopped and leaned on the light throwing-spear,
the only weapon that the white administrator in Bulawayo allowed
a black man to carry to protect himself and his family against
the predators which infested the wilderness. It was a frail
thing, not an instrument of war like the broad stabbing
assegai.
Leaning his weight on the spear, Bazo looked up the tall
cliff. There was a watchman’s thatched hut on a ledge just
below the summit, and now a quavering old man’s voice
challenged him.
‘Who dares the secret pass?’ Bazo lifted his chin
and answered in a bull-bellow which sent the echoes bouncing from
the cliffs.
‘Bazo, son of Gandang. Bazo, Induna of the Kumalo blood
royal.’
Then, not deigning to await the reply, Bazo stepped through
the convoluted portals of granite, into the passageway that split
the cliff.
The passage was narrow, barely wide enough for two grown men
to walk shoulder to shoulder, and the floor was clean white sand
with chips of bright mica that sparkled and crunched like sugar
under his bare feet. The passage twisted like a maimed serpent,
and then abruptly debouched into a sweeping valley of lush green,
bisected by a tinkling stream that spilled from the rock-face
near where Bazo stood.
The valley was a circular basin a mile or so across,
completely walled in by the high cliffs. In its centre was a tiny
village of thatched huts, but as Tanase came out of the mouth of
the secret passage and stopped beside Bazo, both of them looked
beyond the village to the opposite wall of the valley.