The Kraals of Ulundi, page 33
The Zulus had closed the intervening gap.
‘Ji! Ji!’ they chanted.
A final shot from Maria’s rifle. Another from Twinge’s pistol. Then the incoming wave caught them up, carried them back, tumbling them over each other as the spears rose and fell. McTeague could not see how Twinge met his end but he watched Maria Mestiza receive blow after blow. Tears trickled across his nose, his lip, down his cheek. She dropped, got to her knees only to drop once more. He heard every sickening puncture of her flesh, the guttural sucking noise as the blades were pulled free again.
‘USuthu! USuthu!’
Maria lay lifeless, as still as the succession of honour cuts would allow, each one causing her to twitch and dance, a strange parody of the Punta that he had once seen her perform. So, William McTeague – who had cared for little else in his lifetime – found himself moved to racking sobs; to further tears that sprang from some great hollow trough at his core. She had betrayed him to Ntshingwayo, it was true. She had betrayed him with Twinge – yet this was, he supposed, no different than the comfort he himself had sought from his other wives. But, at the end, she had not allowed him to face that awful death that the Zulus had planned for him. It was possible that she intended to kill him herself. Yet at least it would have been clean. Better than this mess in which he now languished. He would miss her, though it was likely that they would be united again soon enough. Reconcile their differences, perhaps. Dispel misunderstandings. For the Zulus did not leave their wounded foes alive for long. They would finish him.
“Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and Thy dominion endureth throughout all generations.”
The girl, he thought. I hope they spare the girl. He did not give Cornscope a second thought, however.
“So he that goeth in to his neighbour’s wife; whosoever toucheth her shall not be innocent.”
He was failing fast, struggled to move his head at all now, but finally located Amahle. Inexplicably, she had positioned herself between the warriors and Cornscope, pointing towards her lord and husband, the scarred woman lying motionless at her feet. Why, bless her! he thought. She’s running a bluff. He coughed, tasted blood on his tongue. Relying on them not knowing that Ntshingwayo has sentenced me. Playing on the King’s good name, perhaps. Then she was at his side, cradling his head, Cornscope behind her.
‘You’re a lucky beggar, Simeon,’ he croaked. ‘You deserved to die, old fellow. Have you seen Ntshingwayo?’
He had not, though Cornscope assumed that the commander had taken his men to the upper sections of the royal homestead, to deal with the threat that had come so suddenly, so directly to that sacred district. Ntshingwayo would survive, of course. He would live to fight another day. Maria Mestiza had foretold it, though she was perhaps fortunate that she had not seen the manner of her own demise. At least, he hoped not. Yet the commander, she had predicted, would die alongside Cetshwayo. And some years hence. Did that mean the war would drag on? Or that the Zulus would win? Had all his conniving at the cause and outcome of this thing been for nothing?
‘Have you seen Ntshingwayo, sweet one?’ he whispered to Amahle in IsiZulu.
‘No, lord,’ she sobbed. ‘Nor the Great Queen, Langazana.’
Then the world erupted around them. There was a searing wave of heat that rippled across the parade ground.
McTeague craned his neck, despite the pain, and saw a terrible sight. A ball of flame that climbed into the sky. And around the flames, dark shapes that danced and screamed with all the torments from the Nine Circles of Hell. The countless shades of those – the fighters, the kings, the chieftains past – charged by the Sky Lord to protect the iNkatha yeSiswe yaKwaZulu. To those spirits had fallen the task of guarding the most valuable possession of the People of Heaven. And they had failed.
Chapter Sixteen
Friday 4th July 1879
Zama was dead. His cattle lost. The iNkatha burned. They had arrived too late to save any of it. The whole valley aflame. So many of the royal homesteads destroyed and countless smaller imizi besides. People driven from their dwellings and streaming northwards towards Cetshwayo’s capital, towards the emaHlabithini plain. The Elder Queen, Langazana, turned out upon the road like a wandering beggar. That greatest of commanders, Ntshingwayo kaMahole, humbled and humiliated. Eight days previously, but Shaba’s grief and fury was still unabated, the singing and ceremony sustained all through this long night helping little with his own woes, though he sensed around him the collective healing that numbed the nation’s hurt, that cleansed bloodied pride, that restored martial mettle.
And these were the words they sang, gathered in the blackness of oNdini’s grand assembly grounds, torches flickering from bhoma and watch tower.
“Who are the enemy? Who are the foes?” called the lead voice, the pitch high, the rhythm free and loose.
“Men of the Fat Queen!” replied the deeper tones of the choral singers.
“Scavenger dogs!” sang the oNdini regiments. The pattern repeated. And out in the darkness, around the rim of hills, faint at first, came the sound of a different lead voice, from the next of the Great King’s royal homesteads. Perhaps from old KwaNodwengu.
“What have they cost us? What is lost?”
A distant response from that singer’s choral section.
“Sacred Coil! Ring of Power!”
The regiments gathered there were joined in harmony with the oNdini men while further still, across the plain at kwaKhandempemvu, a third lead voice.
“Does the loss bend us? Bend our knee?”
The warriors of the three homesteads together.
“Not with your blessing, Lord-of-the-Sky!”
Away to the south, from the new KwaNodwengu settlement, a powerful solo voice.
“Show us the future, Lord-of-the-Sky!”
“We will conquer them! We will win!” the singers echoed around the slopes.
Then all the mighty host of the Great King Cetshwayo kaMpande sang the line together.
“We will conquer them! We will win!”
Before the final collective prayer rose in solemn waves that could have been heard for many miles, even reaching the ears of those who walked in the shadow world with the iNkatha itself.
“Walk with us, Sky Lord, give us our Freedom! The People of Heaven shall walk in your Light!”
As Shaba lifted his own voice within the Evil Omen, he knew that the red soldiers would hear them in their encampment on the far side of the White Patient Ox. They would hear them and quake. For there were more men assembled here in their regiments, they had been told, than even before the Battle of the Little House, eSandlwana.
On that occasion they had been gathered down there, nearer the river, at KwaNodwengu, close to the old Shakan capital of KwaBulawayo. But now they were here. At oNdini itself.
It was not circular in form but followed the shape of an ostrich egg. Between the outer and inner palisade fences, they said, stood almost two thousand dwellings, enough sleeping mats to accommodate seven thousand people when its own regiments – the warriors of the Leopard’s Lair, the Black Mamba and the Dust Raisers – were on garrison duty. It required two thousand paces to walk the outer boundary. And he knew this, for he had done it in an effort to drive out his memories of the girl.
He had found her where he knew she would be, fallen at the sacred spring of Mthonjaneni, fallen with her sisters and some of the udibi boys, fallen with a spear in her hand, fallen in an effort to prevent the red soldiers defiling the water. What did they think? he wondered. What did they say when they knew that even our young women would stand against them? For he was proud of Zama kaMandla, despite the ache in his heart, and sensed her shade close to him, here in the darkness.
Her grandfather had sought him out also. He may be old, he had said, but the warrior who had once stood at Shaka’s side on the Hill of Gqokli was still worth a dozen whites. He would help Shaba, he had promised, to avenge Zama’s death, the destruction of his homestead, the theft of their collective herds. So the old one had marched with the Mongrels, the uMxapho regiment in which his son, Mandla kaSibusiso, served as an induna. They were here tonight also, mustered at oNdini too, somewhere away to Shaba’s right in the heart of this komkhulu, Cetshwayo’s Great Place, the most modern and grand of the thirteen royal homesteads ringing the plain. It was a marvel of wonders, and most marvellous of all was the square house the King had commissioned in European style at the centre of his inner sanctum, at the highest point, a house complete with windows of glass, English and French furniture – or so it was spoken.
Cetshwayo kaMpande himself was not here, of course. In the ways of his people, the King’s role at such time was to focus his spiritual power upon the struggle at hand, his physical form guarded, at some safe location – in this case, the regiment had been told, at emLangongwenya homestead of Cetshwayo’s father, Mpande. Of course, there was no iNkatha now to help him channel his strength on their behalf, but he would carry with him all the other symbols of his might, his isigodlo, his wives; his train of shamans, medicine men and diviners. The preparations were all made, the last mission, seeking an honourable settlement with the white generals, unsuccessful.
And Shaba had been with those emissaries. Two days ago, and the King’s most trusted messengers sent to the red soldiers’ camp with the words. All previous attempts failed, confusion about the fate of those responsible for the negotiations – Amahle’s white trader husband among them. Perhaps he is dead too, he thought. And no loss to any of us. But Shaba had been chosen specifically by the Great King to accompany the final delegation – so that he and he alone, might carry the sword of the iFulentshi Prince back to the white iNkosi. He had used his brief time at the encampment to look for Klaas the Skirmisher in the hope that he might discover something of his movements, his reason for running to the red soldiers on the day that Shaba had fought the horsemen at eZunganyene. But he had seen no sign of the fellow and simply fulfilled his part with the sword. He had done so on his knees but without any admission that it was he who had killed the Frenchman. The red soldier general had taken the thing from him without a word while Shaba trembled before his enemies despite himself, afraid that the time-counter now hidden again within his civet tails might somehow betray him.
Yet it had remained silent – as silent, implacable, as the general when the emissaries told him that a herd of the King’s most prized white cattle was being sent as the ultimate peace offering. Their value incalculable. Flawless beasts. But they had never arrived at their destination, since the young warriors who held the fords refused to let them pass, had turned them back, sending angry words to Cetshwayo kaMpande. Words that Shaba echoed in his heart.
‘Do you not trust us, iNkosi,’ they had said, ‘to drive away the red soldiers? To protect you from them?’
And Cetshwayo had known then that the final bones had been cast.
*
Now the women sang, different rhythms punctuated by wild ululation, praises for the valour of their men as the regiments themselves filed from the various parade grounds and moved towards the flatter ground near the river for the next stage of their cleansing. The moon was full once more, auspicious, high and bright, the night made lighter still by the burning brands borne by many of the warriors.
‘May the shades remain with us when the sun is up,’ said Langalabelele at his side as they jogged forward in unison.
‘They were not with us yesterday,’ replied Shaba.
‘The horse soldiers?’
‘We should have trapped them.’
‘You think they have this Jesucristo with them?’
‘No, I think we should have been cleansed before we set the trap, not afterwards. The shades are never content when the rituals are disregarded.’
‘How many did you kill with your rifle, Giant Slayer?’
‘Whey!’ said Shaba, remembering the thing. ‘At first light we were on the bluffs. Above the river. The red soldiers were there. Swimming and splashing in the water. Can you believe their conceit? But there are two of them that will swim no more.’
‘Their souls remain?’
‘Yes. But I know the place. We will stay away from there.’
‘We heard the mbayimbayi speak. But not until the sun had climbed high.’
‘They seemed happy to leave us there. Until the horse soldiers came across. Dung-shirts. And the Basuto riders. They thought they could catch us, my friend. But we had seen them coming. At both drifts so they could cut us off. But by then we were no longer there.’
‘They say that it was Zibhebhu that set the trap,’ said Langalabelele.
‘It was fitting,’ Shaba replied. ‘He had pulled us all back with his own regiment, with the uMxapho, hidden in the gullies, like a great cattle-run with only one way in and one way out. Here somewhere.’ It was hard to tell in the dark. ‘So be careful. Watch where you put your feet.’
Zibhebhu’s men had carefully prepared the ground, weaving together the brown toughened grasses, plaiting the strands into loops that might snag the horses’ hooves, spilling them. Then Zibhebhu had ridden out on his own pony, a white pony that could be seen from far away, risking his own life as a general should do, going forth to challenge the dung-shirt induna – that bull of a man again with the enormous beard – to act as bait. And it had worked. For the horse soldiers followed him. Hundreds of them. All the way along the fools’ trail he left for them. A few warriors had to be sacrificed in the process, naturally. Some flocks of goats too. But the dung-shirts and Basuto riders followed.
‘Yet the trap was not sprung,’ said Langalabelele.
‘It is the way I told you. The shades were unhappy with us. They caused some of the young men to charge too early. A few paces more and we would have eaten them all.’
At least I killed one more with my rifle, thought Shaba, the blade of his iklwa washed later when he went to open him. But that was later, after they had chased the horsemen back to the river. At one point he had been close enough to keep pace, to touch a hand to the withers of a sweat-streaked beast, foam flecking and streaming from its tongue and flanks, just one of the many panicked by the regiments’ attack, the horns almost closing around the fleeing soldiers. There were acts of individual bravery, of course, a few of the whites turning back at the last moment to rescue fallen comrades, although others were left to their inevitable fate. And the killing only stopped when the invaders had been driven back past KwaNodwengu where they rallied, began to fire in volleys, by turns, falling back more slowly until their friends at the drift and the mbayimbayi could give them cover. So the enemy had escaped, though it lifted the hearts of the amabutho that they had driven away so many so easily.
‘They say the shades are unhappy because we allowed the iNkatha to be burned,’ said Langalabelele. ‘And then because we let the red soldiers camp in the Valley of Kings without attacking them. When we could all see that they would have been easy to destroy. When they came straggling across the country for hour after hour.’
‘The shades may be unhappy,’ said Shaba. ‘But that does not mean they are correct. The hearts of the people were too broken after the iNkatha was burned to think about fighting. And the Sacred Coil may be lost to us for the moment but it did not fall into the hands of the Fat Queen. A setback. A warning to us all, perhaps. But not the subjugation it might have been.’
Yet despite the ritual which had commenced after the horse soldiers were chased away, there was still the doom-laden thought that perhaps this thing went even further than simple discontent among the shades. For how had the iNkatha been so easily discovered and destroyed by their enemies. It was the soul of the People of Heaven, after all. So, they had whispered, might it not be a punishment by the Sky Lord himself? If so, for what heresy on their part?
It had been in all their minds during the evening when they were gathered together for the first purification. Every warrior called forth by the izinyanga to drink the potions prepared for them, taking their allotted dose from the clay gourds and then running to the pits where the bitter mixture caused them to vomit the contents of their stomachs into the ground. Shaba could still feel the ache in his belly. He had wanted it to stop, and stop quickly. For he had not eaten properly for many days. Shortage of food, the grief of losing Zama. But it had not stopped for a long time. The retching pain of it. He had been barely conscious when the izinyanga brought up bundles of grass, dipped them in the vomit, the warrior essence, and set them aside to be woven later into the beginnings of a new iNkatha. The healing process begun.
The stomach cramps had remained with him when the black bull was brought forth, wrestled to the ground by the bare hands of the youngest warriors despite the beast’s valiant defence, three of the men gored to death in the process. Then the izinyanga had cut slices of living flesh from the animal’s shoulder, sliced and roasted its meat, flinging thin strips high above the regiments, the warriors’ frenzy building as they vied with each other to catch the smokey scraps, bite chunks from them and hurl the pieces back into the air, the process continually repeated. Shaba had not tried particularly hard to take any of the flesh but at least he had not fainted as many of those around him had done. He had been weak but was now prepared once more for the Blackness, the evil unleashed by the shedding of blood in combat, the bull finally killed only when that process was done.
‘All the same,’ said Langalabelele to him, ‘it seemed to me that the Great King knew we had made mistakes.’
Cetshwayo had addressed them simply. Shaba could see him plainly. No sign of concern in his voice. No challenges encouraged between the regiments. No boastful claims. A reminder of the task ahead. Like bringing in the crops. Like gathering the royal herd from the pasture lands. This time, the service to be rendered just to deflect the threat brought to them by the Fat Queen’s invaders. And advice. That when the battle came, they should not advance too fast. Not tire themselves too soon. That they should not attack the red soldiers if they established a fortified position or advanced in strength. Then he had led them in chanting the praise names of the commanders – Ziwedu, Mnyamana, Ntshingwayo, Zibhebhu and Sihayo – who would action his orders, turn the final battle to victory. And, at the last, he had taken his leave of them.
