The Angels Weep - Smith Wilbur - Страница 113

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It has always been the way of the Matabele to fall upon their enemy at that hour before the dawn, just before the first light of day. - " the warriors hummed softly in assent. -"and the white men know this is our way," Bazo went on. "Every morning, in the last deep darkness they stand to their guns, waiting for the leopard to walk into their trap.

The Matabele always come before dawn, they tell each other.

Always! they say, but I tell you that this time it will be different, my children." Bazo paused and looked carefully into the faces of the men who squatted in the front rank.

"This time it will be in the hour before midnight, at the rise of the white star from the east." Standing before them in the old way, Bazo gave them their order of battle, and squatting in the black mass of half, naked bodies, his bare shoulders touching those of the and una on each side of him, his hair covered by the feather headdress and his face and body plastered with the mixture of fat and soot, Ralph Ballantyne listened to the detailed instructions.

"At this season, the wind will rise with the rise of the white star. It will come from the east, so from the east we will come also.

Each one of you will carry upon his head a bundle of thatch grass and the green leaves of the ms asa trees," Bazo told them, and anticipating what was to come, Ralph felt the nerve ends in his fingertips tingle with the shock.

"A smoke-screen," he thought. "That's a naval tactic!" "As soon as the wind rises, we will build a great fire." Bazo confirmed it immediately. Each of you will throw his bundle upon it as he passes, and we will go forward in the darkness and the smoke. It will avail them not at all to shoot their rockets into the sky, for our smoke will blind the gunners." Ralph imagined how it might be, the warriors emerging from the impenetrable rolling bank Of smoke, not visible until they were within stabbing range, swarming over the wall of wagons or creeping between the wheels. Three thousand of them coming in silently and relentlessly even if the laager were warned and alerted, it would be almost impossible to stop them. The Maxims would be almost useless in the smoke, and the broad-bladed assegais the more effective weapon at such close range.

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

"We must leave not a single one of them. We must destroy the last reason why Lodzi should bring his soldiers. We will offer him only dead bodies, burned buildings and silver steel, if he makes the attempt." Then in his rage Ralph shouted with the other amadoda, and hummed the wild war chant, his features as contorted as theirs, and his eyes as wild.

"The indaba is ended," Bazo told them at last. "Go now to your sleeping-mats to refresh yourself for the morrow. When you rise with the sun, let your first task be to cut, each of you, a bundle of dry grass and green leaves as heavy as you can carry." Ralph Ballantyne lay beneath his fur kaross on a sleeping-mat of woven reeds, and listened to the camp settling into sleep about him. They had withdrawn into the narrower reaches of the valley. He saw the watch-fires dwindle, and the circles of their orange light shrink in upon them. He listened to the murmur of voices subside, and the breathing of the warriors near him changing, becoming deeper and more regular.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"There are devils here!" At fifty other watch-fires down the valley, the men of Ballantyne's Scouts were stabbing and screaming with Ralph.

"Defend yourselves, there are ghosts at work!" "Topti!

Witchcraft! Beware the witches!" "Kill the witches!" "Witchcraft!

Defend yourselves!" "Run! Run! The devils are amongst us." Three thousand warriors, every one of them steeped from childhood in superstition and witch lore awakened to the screams and wild cries of dying men, and the panic-stricken warnings yelled by men come face to face with the devil's legions. They awakened in blinding suffocating darkness, and seized their weapons and struck out in terror, yelling with fright and the comrades they wounded shrieked and struck back at them.

"I am wounded. Defend yourselves from the devils. Hah! Hah!

The devils are killing me!" The night was filled with running figures that collided and stabbed and cried.

The valley is haunted!" "The devils will kill us all!" "Run!

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

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