The Angels Weep - Smith Wilbur - Страница 99

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Slowly Ralph raised his arms above his head. He stood like that for a moment, a heroic figure glistening with fat, every muscle in his arms and chest standing proud, the kilt of civet-tails hanging to his knees, the collar of white cow tails around his neck, his charm against the death that lurked in the darkness beyond the firelight. His blackened features were twisted into a ferocious grimace that held the watchers spellbound. The dancing and singing had served its purpose well. It had distracted the anutdoda, and masked any noise that the Zulus and Hottentots might have made while moving into position around the bivouac.

Now suddenly Ralph let out a demoniacal howl that made the amadoda shudder, and he dropped his arms the signal for which Harry and Jan Cheroot were waiting.

The curtains of darkness were torn aside by the blast of massed rifle fire. The range was point-blank, the muzzles almost touching the press of dark naked bodies. It smashed into them, a single bullet churning through belly and chest and spine, bringing down four men, stopping only when the slug broke up against one of the heavy bones of pelvis or femur.

So unexpected was the assault, that the mass of warriors milled aimlessly, receiving three volleys from the repeating Winchesters, before they broke and ran. More than half of them were down already, and many of those still on their feet were wounded. They ran on top of Isazi's Zulus, and piled up against them like water on a dam wall.

Ralph heard the great shouts of Wgidla! I have eaten!" as the Zulus put in the steel, and heard the screams of the dying men.

Now at last the Matabele were rallying, closing up shoulder to shoulder to meet the thin line of Zulus and overrun it. It was the moment Ralph had waited for. He led his own Matabele racing across their rear and flung them at the naked undefended backs of the struggling warriors.

Long ago, as boys on the Kimberley diamond-workings, Bazo had taught Ralph the art of spearsmanship. Ralph had been as skilful with the broad blade as any of the Matabele youths who were his companions.

However, it was one thing to practise the long under-handed killing stroke, and another actually to send the point into living flesh.

Ralph was unprepared for the sensation of the steel in his hand running in and slowing against the sucking resistance, feeling the steel touch and grate on bone, and the haft kick in his hand as his victims bucked and convulsed at the agony. It felt like the butt of the rod when a salmon makes its first run.

Instinctively Ralph twisted the blade in the man's body, the way Bazo had taught him, maximizing the tissue damage and breaking the vacuum that held the steel then he jerked it clear, and for the first time felt the fine hot spray of blood from the wound fly into his face and splatter his right arm and chest.

He stepped over the dying man who thrashed on the earth, and sank the steel again and then again. The smell of blood and the screams maddened him, but it was a cold fierce madness that magnified his vision and slowed down the micro-seconds of mortal combat, so that he saw the counter-thrust and turned his adversary's blade aside with contemptuous ease, using the momentum of his shoulders to drive his own point through the Matabele guard and into the notch formed by the joint of his collar-bones at the base of his throat. The man's breath whistled over his severed vocal cords, and he dropped his assegai and seized Ralph's blade with his bare hands. Ralph pulled it back, and the razor edges cut to the bone of the man's fingers, and his hands fell open nervelessly as the Matabele dropped to his knees.

Ralph leaped over him and poised to thrust again. "Henshaw!" a voice screamed in his face. "It is me!" and through his madness Ralph saw the white cow-tail tassels about the neck and held the stroke, the two lines of attackers had met.

"It is over," Isazi panted, and Ralph looked about him in bewilderment. It had happened so swiftly. He shook his head to free the cold vice of fighting madness that gripped it.

They were all down, though a few of them still twisted and twitched and groaned.

"Isazi, finish them!" Ralph ordered, and watched the Zulus begin the grim work, passing quickly from body to body, feeling for the pulse below the ear and if they found it, stilling it with a quick thrust.

"Ralph," Harry came scrambling down the slope at the head of the Cape boys. "By God, that was one. "No English," Ralph warned him, then raising his voice. "We will take the horses now. Bring the spare bridles and lead-reins." There were fifty-three fine horses in the thorn bush kraal. Most of them carried the BSA Company brand. Each of the unmounted Zulus and Marabele selected a mount, and the remaining animals were put onto lead-reins.

In the meantime the Cape boys were going over the field with the speed and precision of born footpads, selecting the rifles that could be used and throwing the ancient Martini Henrys and muzzle-loaders and knobkeffies onto the fire, snapping the assegai blades in the fork of a tree. The loot they discovered, cutlery and crockery and clothing of European manufacture, proved that this impi had taken part in the depredations of the first few days of the rising. That, too, was thrown upon the flames. Within an hour of the first rifle-shot, they were moving out again. This time every man was well mounted, and the spare horses followed at a canter on the lead-reins.

They rode down the main street of Bulawayo in the uncertain grey light of predawn. In the front rank Ralph and Harry had scrubbed most of the blackening from their faces, but to make certain they did not draw the fire of a jittery sentry, they carried a flag made from Harry Mellow's white flannel undershirt.

The inhabitants of the laager tumbled out of their beds to gape and question, and then as they began to realize that this little cavalcade heralded the first retaliation against the slaughter and arson committed by the tribes, the cheering began and rose into joyous hysteria.

While Vicky and Elizabeth proudly served them a double ration breakfast under the wagon awning, Ralph and Harry received an endless string of well-wishers, of tearful widows whose husbands had perished under the Matabele assegais, bringing thanks and a half-dozen eggs or a freshly baked cake, of wistful boys come merely to stare at the heroes, and of keen young men demanding eagerly, "Is this where we sign up to join Ballantyne's Scouts?" There were shrieks of delight as Judy set about her long-suffering husband with her baton. The children in the front row clapped their hands as the blows cracked upon Punch's wooden head and his grotesquely humped back, and the bells on his cap jingled.

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