The Angels Weep - Smith Wilbur - Страница 91

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Robyn hugged the shawl around her shoulders. "Poor ignorant heathen," she said aloud. "Another witchcraft scare, they will run from their own shadows.". She turned sorrowfully away, and walked through the darkness back towards the house. There was a light burning in Elizabeth's room, and as Robyn climbed the steps of the veranda, the door opened.

"Mama! Is that you?" "What are you doing, Elizabeth?" "I thought I heard voices." Robyn hesitated, she did not want to alarm Elizabeth, but then she was a sensible child, and unlikely to go into hysteria over a bit of Matabele superstition.

"Juba was here. There must be another witchcraft scare. She ran off again." "What did she say?" "Oh, just that we should go in to Bulawayo to escape some sort of danger." Elizabeth came out onto the veranda in her nightdress, carrying the candle.

"Juba is a Christian, she doesn't dabble in witchcraft."

Elizabeth's tone was concerned. "What else did she say?" "Just that," Robyn yawned. "I'm going back to bed." She started along the veranda, and then stopped. "Oh, the others have all run off. The hospital is empty. It's most annoying." "Mama, I think we should do as Juba says."

"What do you mean by that?" "I think we should go in to Bulawayo immediately." "Elizabeth, I thought better of you." "I have an awful feeling. I think we should go. Perhaps there is real danger." "This is my home. Your father and I built it with our own hands. There is no power on earth that will force me to leave it," Robyn said firmly.

"Now go back to bed. With no help, we are going to have a busy day tomorrow." They squatted in long silent ranks in the long grass below the crest of the hills. Gandang moved quietly down the ranks, stopping occasionally to exchange a word with an old comrade in arms. To revive a memory of another waiting before a battle of long ago.

It was strange to sit upon the bare earth during the waiting time.

In the old days they would have sat on their shields, the long dappled shields of iron-hard oxhide, squatting upon them not for comfort but to hide their distinctive shape from a watchful enemy until the moment came to strike terror into his belly and steel into his heart, squatting upon them also to prevent some young buck in the throes of the divine madness from prematurely drumming upon the rawhide with his assegai and giving warning of the waiting impi.

It was strange also not to be decked out in the full regimentals of the Inyati impi, the plumes and furs and tassels of cow-tails, the war rattles at ankle and wrist, the tall headdress that turned a man into a giant. They were dressed like neophytes, like un blooded boys, with only their kilts about their waists, but the scars upon their dark bodies and the fire in their eyes gave the lie to that impression.

Gandang felt himself choking with a pride that he once thought he would never experience again. He loved them, he loved their fierceness and their valour, and though his face was quiet and expressionless, the love shone through in his eyes.

They picked it up and gave it back to him a hundred times.

"Babo!" they called him in their soft deep voices. "Father, we thought we would never fight at your shoulder again," they said. "Father, those of your sons who die today will be forever young." Across the neck of the hills a jackal wailed mournfully and was answered from close at hand. The impi was in position, lying across the Khami hills like a coiled mamba, waiting and watchful and ready.

There was a glow in the sky now. The false dawn, that would be followed by the deeper darkness before the true dawn. The deep darkness that the amadoda loved and used so well.

They stirred quietly, and grounded the shaft of assegai between their heels, ready for the order. "Up my children. It is the time of the spears." This time the order did not come, and the true dawn flushed the sky with blood. In its light the amadoda looked at each other.

One of the senior warriors, who had won Gandang's respect on fifty battlefields, spoke for all of them. He went to where Gandang sat alone to one side of the impi.

"Babo, your children are confused. Tell us why we wait." "Old friend, are your spears so thirsty for the blood of women and babes, that they cannot wait for richer fare?" "We can wait as long as you command it, Babo. But it is hard." "Old friend, I am baiting for a leopard with a tender goat," Gandang told him, and let his chin sink back on the great muscles of his chest.

The sun pushed up and gilded the tree-tops along the hills, and still Gandang did not move, and the silent ranks waited behind him in the grass.

A young warrior whispered to another. "Already the storm has begun. Everywhere else our brethren are busy. They will mock us when they hear how we sat on the hilltop--" One of the older men hissed a rebuke at him, and the young warrior fell silent, but further down the ranks another youngster shifted on his haunches and his assegai tapped against that of his neighbour. Gandang did not raise his head.

Then from the hilltop a wild francolin called. Qwaali! Qwaah!"

The sharp penetrating cry was a characteristic sound of the veld, only a sharp ear would have detected anything strange about this one.

Gandang rose to his feet. The leopard comes," he said quietly, and stalked up to the vantage point from which he could look down the full length of road that led to the town of Bulawayo. The sentry who had sounded the call of the wild pheasant pointed wordlessly with the hilt of his assegai.

There was an open coach and a troop of horsemen upon the road.

Gandang counted them, eleven riding hard, coming directly out towards the Khami hills. The figure that led them was unmistakable, even at this distance. The height in the saddle, the alert set of head, the long stirrups.

"Haul One Bright-Eye!" Gandang greeted him softly. "I have waited many long moons for you." eneral Mungo St. John had been awakened in the middle of the night. In his nightshirt he had Glistened to the hysterical outpourings of a coloured servant who had escaped from the trading-store on the Ten Mile Drift. It was a wild tale of slaughter and burning, and the man's breath smelled of good Cape brandy. "He's drunk," said Mungo St. John flatly. "Take him away, and give him a good thrashing." The first white man got into town three hours before dawn. He had been stabbed through the thigh and his left arm was broken in two places by blows from a knobkerrie. He was clinging to his horse's neck with his good arm.

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