Men of Men (49 page)

As if to confirm his words the tiny distant figure of a girl appeared suddenly out of the gulley. She was foreshortened by her height above them, and the ledge along which she climbed was not
apparent from where they stood.

She had a calabash gourd balanced on her head, with green leaves stuffed into its mouth to stop the water splashing out of it as she moved.

She disappeared over the top of the cliff.

‘So,’ grunted Bazo. ‘We must climb up to them.’

‘It would be easier to fly,’ Zama grunted. ‘That rock would daunt a baboon – or a klipspringer.’

The rock was pearly grey and marble smooth. There were streaks of lichen dashed across it, green and blue and red, like dry paint on an artist’s palette.

‘Come,’ Bazo ordered, and they began a slow measured circuit of the hill – and as they went so the armed guards on the clifftop above kept pace with them, watching every move
they made, and if they approached too close to the foot of the cliff, a hail of rocks fell upon them, striking sparks from the scree slope and caroming viciously past their heads, forcing them to
shelve their dignity as they retired in haste.

‘It is always the Mashona way,’ Zama grumbled. ‘Stones instead of spears.’

In places the cliff was riven by vertical cracks, yet none of these reached from base to crest, none of them offered a route to the summit. Bazo looked for a place that had been polished by the
paws of wild baboon or marked by the hooves of the tiny little chamois-like klipspringer which might reveal a way up the rock face, but there was none. The cliff girded the entire hill, and
transformed it into a fortress.

‘There!’ Zama pointed to a tiny irregularity in the face. ‘That is where two warriors of the swimmers’ impi tried to force a road to the top. They climbed as far as that
little bush.’ It grew in a crack in the face a hundred feet from the base of the cliff. ‘And there the ledge narrowed and gave out. They could not go on, nor could they return. They
hung there two days and three nights until their strength failed and they fell, one after the other, to be crushed like beetles on the rocks here where we stand.’

They went on, and as the sun was setting they came back to where they had started – the bivouac below the ladderway. Pemba’s people had built a ladder of long straight mopani poles,
bound together with bark rope, and they had used it to span the lowest point in the cliff – a place where a deep gully descended from the summit to within fifty feet of the surrounding plain.
Like a drawbridge, the massive ladder was cunningly counter-weighted with round ironstone boulders, so that it had only to be drawn up on its ropes – as it was now – and the mountain
stronghold was impregnable.

When the sun set. Bazo was still leaning on his long shield staring up the cliff, seemingly oblivious to the faint shouted insults of the Mashona that just reached him in the evening
silence.

‘Pustules on Lobengula’s fat buttocks.’

‘Puppies of the rabid dog Lobengula.’

‘Dried turds of the spavined Matabele elephant.’

Only when it was too dark to make out the top of the cliff did Bazo turn away – but even then he sat late beside the watch-fire, and rolled into his kaross only after the rise of the big
white star over the top of the kopje.

Even then his sleep was troubled with dreams. He dreamed of water, of streams and lakes and waterfalls.

He woke again before light and checked that his sentries were alert before he slipped from the camp and under cover of the darkness crept up to the base of the cliff – at the point
directly below the gulley choked with green growth where they had seen the girl carry water the day before.

Bazo heard the liquid chuckling, and his spirits soared. Guided by the sound he groped through the darkness, and found the spring in the base of the cliff. It filled a small natural basin of
grey rock and then overflowed to waste itself again in the dry earth of the plain. Bazo scooped a handful and it was icy cold and sweet on his tongue. The fountain came splashing out of a dark rent
in the rock face. Bazo explored it in the short time that was left before the strengthening light threatened to expose him to the sentries on the cliff above.

‘Up,’ Bazo shouted as he strode into the bivouac. ‘All of you, up!’ And his men came off their sleeping-mats, leopard swift and with the stabbing spears in their
fists.

‘What is it?’ Zama hissed.

‘We are going to dance,’ Bazo told them, and they looked from one to the other in amazed disbelief.

On the north side of the kopje, farthest from the spring in the rock cliff and from the long ladder drawbridge, they danced. While they danced, all Pemba’s people lined the clifftop to
watch them, first in puzzled silence and then yelling with ribald laughter, hurling down taunts and stones.

‘I count four hundred – without the children,’ Zama panted, as he stamped and leaped and stabbed at the air.

‘There will be enough for each of us,’ Bazo agreed, and pirouetted with his shield high over his head.

They danced until the sun was high and then Bazo led them back to the camp, and when he stretched out on his mat and fell instantly asleep, his warriors looked at Zama with exasperation, but
Zama could only shrug and turn his eyes to the sky.

An hour before sunset Bazo woke. He ate a little maize cake and drank a small gourd of sour milk, then he called for Zama and spoke quietly with him until it was almost dark.

Zama listened and nodded and his eyes shone, and while he talked, Bazo was honing the silver blade of his assegai until the light twinkled like tiny stars along its cutting edge.

At dark Bazo rose to his feet, handed his long dappled war shield to Zama and, armed only with his assegai, strode out of the bivouac. At the spring in the base of the cliff, Bazo shed his kilt
and cloak and headdress. He rolled them into a bundle and hid them in a rock crevice. Then stark naked with only his assegai tied to his back by a leather thong, he waded across the pool. The
reflection of the stars on its surface exploded into chips of light.

The water cascaded over him from the fountain in the cliff and he shuddered and gasped with the cold and then reached up into the dark rocky opening, found a fingerhold, drew a deep breath, and
then pulled himself upwards.

With a solid black jet of water racing over his head, he held his breath and wriggled frantically up into the hole in the cliff. The force of water opposed him, and it required all his strength
to go against it. Inch by inch, his chest throbbing for air, he fought his way upwards – and then just when he knew he would have to let himself be washed back into the pool, his head broke
out – and he could breathe.

He sucked air desperately, wedging shoulders and knees against the smooth water-polished rock to hold himself in the torrent. It was utterly dark, not the faintest glimmering of starlight, and
the darkness seemed to have physical weight that threatened to crush him.

He reached as high as he could and found another smooth fingerhold, and with all the strength of his arms gained another few feet, rested a moment, and then reached up again. The rock was like
glass, and in places coated with a thick beard of algae, slippery as an eel’s skin. The cold was a terrible living thing that invaded his body. His bones ached and his fingers were so numbed
that he could barely take his holds.

The water tore at him, battering his shoulders, forcing its way into his nose and mouth and ears, filling his head with its angry animal roaring. Still he went up in the irregular twisting
tunnel, sometimes horizontal, wriggling forward on his belly, the roof cracking his skull if he lifted his head too quickly to find the few precious inches of air trapped beneath it. Mostly the
tunnel climbed vertically, and he wedged with knees and elbows to hold himself against the cascade, while his skin, softened with water, was smeared and torn away in slabs against the stone; but
the inches became yards, and the minutes became hours, and still he went up.

Then the tunnel narrowed so sharply that he was trapped, cold slippery rock at each shoulder and hard heavy rock cramming down between his shoulderblades. He could not go on, nor could he go
back. He was trapped in the rocky maw of the mountain, and he screamed with terror, but his voice was lost in the thunder of water and the water gushed into his throat.

He fought with the last of his drowning, desperate strength, and suddenly he kicked himself forward into a narrow cavern where he could breathe again, and where the water swirled into little
back-eddies so that he could rest a few moments from its drag.

Even while he coughed and choked on his flooded lungs, he realized that he had lost his assegai, and he groped for it until he felt the tug of the thong on his shoulder; there was still
something tied to the other end. Hand over hand he drew in the thong and then his fingers closed on the familiar shaft and he sobbed with relief and pressed his lips to the beloved steel.

It took time for him to realize that the air in the tiny cavern was sweet, and he felt it moving like a lover’s fingers on his skin, warm and soft – warmth, that was what made his
heart soar. Warmth from the outside world, beyond this icy roaring tomb of water. He found the shaft down which the torrent was sucking air from the surface, and from somewhere came the strength to
attempt it. He climbed slowly, agonizingly, and suddenly there was a white prick of light ahead of him, distorted by racing black water.

He thrust his head forward, and the night wind struck his cheek, and he smelled woodsmoke and grass and earth redolent of the lingering warmth of the sun, and the great white star stood in the
night sky high above his head. That dreadful passage had connected the fountain at the base of the cliff to the one high above.

He did not have the strength to drag himself more than a few feet from the fountainhead, and there under a bush on the soft bed of leaf mould he lay and panted like a dog.

He must have drifted into an exhausted and cold-drugged sleep, for he woke with a start. The sky had paled. He could just see the branches of the bush above his head outlined against it. He
dragged himself out, and he found that he ached down to the bones of his spine and his skinned elbows and knees burned even at the touch of the dawn wind.

There was a narrow path, well marked by many feet from the fountainhead up the last few feet of the cliff, and as he stepped out onto it he looked down and saw far below him the moonsilver
forest and the tiny sparks that were the watch-fires of his own bivouac. As he moved, he felt his muscles easing and unknotting, felt the blood recharging his limbs.

Although he was ready for one, there was no sentry at the top of the path, and he peered out cautiously from behind the stone portals of the gully onto the tranquil village.

‘By Chaka’s teeth, they sleep like fat and lazy dogs,’ Bazo thought grimly. The doors were all tightly closed, and smoke oozed from every chink in the walls. They were half
suffocating themselves to keep out the mosquitoes. He could hear a man coughing hoarsely in the nearest hut.

He was about to slip out from behind his rocky screen when faint movement in the gloom between the huts made him sink gently down again. A dark figure scurried directly towards where he hid. He
shifted his grip on the assegai, but only a few paces from him the figure stopped.

It was swathed in a skin cloak against the pre-dawn chill, hunched up like an old woman, until it straightened and threw off the cloak. Bazo felt his breath hiss up his throat and he bit down to
stop it reaching his lips.

The naked girl was in that lovely tender stage just past puberty, on the very brink of full womanhood. There were the last vulnerable vestiges of childhood in the plump little buttocks and in
the kitten awkward way she stood with toes turned slightly inwards. She was naked and the first light touched her sable skin with a lemon glow. Then she turned her head.

She had a long slender neck and the neat little head balanced perfectly upon it. The dome of her skull was covered with an intricate pattern of closely woven plaits. Her forehead was high and
smooth, her cheekbones vaulted in the Egyptian way, her lips chiselled into perfect sweeps, symmetrical as the wings of a beautiful butterfly, and the light glinted briefly in her huge slanted eyes
as she looked about her.

Then she squatted briefly and her water tinkled against the earth. It was a sound that unaccountably filled Bazo’s chest with a swollen tender feeling, for the act was so innocent and so
natural.

She stood, and in the instant before she covered her head once more with the cloak, he had one more glimpse of her face. He knew then that he had never seen anything so beautiful in all his life
– and he stared after her as she hurried back between the huts with a peculiar aching hunger consuming his very being.

It took him many minutes to rouse himself, and then as he crept forward he found that, hard as he tried, he could not drive the girl’s image from his mind. The pathway that led from the
village to the ladder drawbridge was unmistakable. It was broad and its surface beaten smooth. There were walls of worked stone on each side of it behind which the defenders could meet any thrust
up the path. There were piles of stones at intervals along its course, placed ready to be hurled down at anybody attempting to force the ladder or fight their way up the path.

The pathway dropped steeply into the gully, and then ended on a wide level stone platform. The light was stronger now and Bazo could see that there were sentries here; two of them stood on the
lip watching the plain fifty feet below the platform, guarding the massive counterbalanced ladder. Farther back four other guards squatted around a small smoky fire, and Bazo’s saliva flooded
as he smelled the roasting maize cakes. The men were talking in the low sleepy tones of men who had stood a long watch, and their backs were turned to the gully, for they would never expect an
enemy to come from that direction.

Bazo crept closer. There was another pile of rocks at the corner of the platform, ready for the guards to hurl down the cliff. Bazo crawled into the shadows behind it.