hidden warriors. 'Then do it swiftly.'
His men were spread out for two hundred paces along both sides of the trail, but they were concentrated here at the bend. A good ambush must have depth to it, so if a victim breaks through the first. rank of attackers, there will be others waiting for him beyond. This was a good ambush. in bad ground on a steep narrow trail where a horse could not turn readily nor go ahead at full gallop. Bazo nodded to himself with satisfaction, then unarmed and shield less he went springing down the trail towards the plain, agile as a klipspringer over the rough track.
'It will be dark in half an hour,' Harry Mellow called after Ralph. 'We should find a place to camp.' 'There must be a path,' Ralph rode with one fist on his hip and the felt hat pushed back on his head, looking up the wild cliff.
'What do you expect to find up there?' 'I don't know, and that's the devil of it.' Ralph grinned over his shoulder. He was unprepared and twisted off balance, so when his horse shied violently under him, he almost lost a stirrup and had to grab at the pommel of the saddle to prevent himself going over, but at the same time he yelled to Harry.
'Cover me!' and with his free hand Ralph tugged the Winchester rifle from its leather boot under his knee. His horse was rearing and skittering in a tight circle so he could not get the rifle up. He knew that he was blocking Harry's line of fire, and that for those long seconds he was completely defenceless, and he swore helplessly, anticipating a rush of dark spearmen out of the broken rock and scrub at the foot of the cliff.
Then he realized there was only one man, and that he was unarmed, and again he yelled at Harry, with even more urgency, for he had heard the clash of the breech block behind him as the American loaded and cocked.
'Hold it! Don't shoot!' The gelding reared again, but this time Ralph jerked it down and then stared at the tall black man who had stepped so silently and. unexpectedly out of the crevice of a fractured granite block.
'Who are you?' he demanded, his voice rasping with the shock, which still screwed his guts into a ball and charged his veins with a quick rush of blood. 'Damn you, I nearly shot you.' Ralph caught himself, and this time repeated in fluent Sindebele, the Matabele language, 'Who are you?' The tall man in the plain leather cloak inclined his head slightly, but his body remained absolutely still, the empty hands hanging at his side.
'What manner of question is that,' he asked gravely, 'for one brother to ask another?' Ralph stared at him. Taking in the and una head ring on his brow and the gaunt features, scored and riven by the crags and deep lines of some terrible suffering, a sorrow or an illness that must have transported this man to the frontiers of hell itself.
It moved Ralph deeply to look upon that riven face, for there was something, the fierce dark eyes and the tone of the deep measured voice that was so familiar, and yet so altered as to be unrecognizable.
'Henshaw,' the man spoke again, using Ralph Ballantyne's Matabele praise name. 'Henshaw, the Hawk, do you not know me? Have these few short years changed us so?' Ralph shook his head in disbelief, and his voice was full of wonder. 'Bazo, it is not you surely, it is not you? Did you not after all die with your impi at Shanganir Ralph kicked both feet out of the stirrups and jumped to the ground. 'Bazo.
It is you!' He ran to embrace the Matabele. 'My brother, my black brother,' he said, and there was the lift and lilt of pure joy in his voice.
Bazo accepted the embrace quietly, his hands still hanging at his sides, and at last Ralph stood back and held him at arm's length.
'At Shaingani, after the guns were still, I left the wagons and walked out across the open pan. Your men were there, the Moles-that-burrow-under-a-mountain.' That was the name that King Lobengula himself had given to Bazo's impi, Izinivukuzane Ezembintaba.
'I knew them by their red shields, by the plumes of the marabou. stork and the headbands of fur from the burrowing mole.' These were the regimentals bestowed upon the impi by the old king, and Bazo's eyes turned luminous with the agony of memory as Ralph went on. 'Your men were there, Bazo, lying upon each other like the fallen leaves of the forest. I searched for you, rolling the dead men onto their backs to see their faces, but there were so many of them.' 'So many,' Bazo agreed, and only his eyes betrayed his emotion.
'And there was so little time to look for you,' Ralph explained quietly. 'I could only search slowly, with care, for some of your men were fanisa file.' It was an old Zulu trick to sham dead on the battlefield and wait for the enemy to come out to loot and count the kill. 'I did not want an assegai between my shoulder-blades. Then the laager broke up and the wagons rolled on towards the king's kraal. I had to leave.' 'I was there,' Bazo told him, and drew aside the leather cloak. Ralph stared at the dreadful scars, and then dropped his gaze, while Bazo covered his torso again. 'I was lying amongst the dead men.' 'And now?' Ralph asked. 'Now that it is all over, what are you doing here?' 'What does a warrior do when the war is over, when the imp is are broken and disarmed, and the king is dead?' Bazo shrugged.
'I am a hunter of wild honey now.' He glanced up the cliff at where the last smoke wisps were blending into the darkening sky as the sun touched the tops of the western forest. 'I was smoking a hive when I saw you coming.' 'Ah!' Ralph nodded. 'It was that smoke that led us to YOU-' 'Then it was fortunate smoke, my brother Henshaw.' 'You still call me brother?' Ralph marvelled gently.
'When it might have been I who fired the bullets--' He did not complete the sentence, but glanced down at Bazo's chest.
'No man can be held to account for what he does in the madness of battle,' Bazo answered. 'If I had reached the wagons that day,' he shrugged, 'you might be the one who carried the scars.' 'Bazo,' Ralph gestured to Harry to ride forward, this is Harry Mellow, he is a man who understands the mystery of the earth, who can find the gold and the iron which we seek.' 'Nkosi, I see you.' Bazo greeted Harry gravely, calling him 'Lord' and not allowing his deep resentment to show for an instant. His king had died and his nation had been destroyed by, the weird passion of the white men for that accursed yellow metal.
'Bazo and I grew up together on the Kimberley diamond fields. I have never had a dearer friend,' Ralph explained quickly, and then turned impetuously back to Bazo. 'We have a little food, you will share it with us, Bazo. 'This time Ralph caught the shift in Bazo's gaze, and he insisted. 'Camp with us here. There is much to talk about.' 'I have my woman and my son with me,' Bazo answered. 'They are in the hills.' 'Bring them,' Ralph told him. 'Go quickly, before darkness, falls, and bring them down into camp.' Bazo alerted his men with the dusk call of the francolin, and one of them stepped out of the ambush onto the path. 'I will hold the white men at the foot of the hills for tonight,' Bazo told him quietly. 'Perhaps I can send them away satisfied, without trying to find the valley. However, warn the iron smiths that the kilns must be quenched by dawn tomorrow, there must be no shred of smoke.' Bazo went on giving his orders, the finished weapons and freshly smelted metal to be hidden and the paths swept clear of spoor, the iron smiths to retreat along the secret path deeper into the hills, the Matabele guards to cover their retreat. 'I will follow you when the white men have gone. Wait for me at the peak of the Blind Ape.' 'Nkosi.' They saluted him, and slipped away, silent as the night-prowling leopard, into the failing light. Bazo took the fork in the path, and when he reached the rocky spur on the prow of the hill, there was no need for him to call. Tanase was waiting for him with the boy carried on her hip, the roll of sleeping-mats upon her head and the leather grain-bag slung on her back.
'It is Henshaw,' he told her, and heard the serpentine hiss of her breath. Though he could not see her expression, he knew what it must be.
'He is the spawn of the white dog who violated the sacred places-' 'He is my friend,' Bazo said.
'You have taken the oath,' she reminded him fiercely. 'How can any white man still be your friend?' 'He was my friend, then.' 'Do you remember the vision that came to me, before the powers of divination were torn from me by this man's father?' 'Tanase,' Bazo ignored the question, 'we must go down to him. If he sees my wife and my son are with me, then there will be no suspicions. He will believe that we are indeed hunting the honey of wild bees. Follow me.' He turned back down the trail, and she followed him closely, and her voice sank to a whisper, of which he could clearly hear every word. He did not look back at her, but he listened.
'Do you remember my vision, Bazo? On the first day that I met this man whom you call the Hawk, I warned you. Before the birth of your son, when the veil of my virginity was still un pierced before the white horsemen came with their three-legged guns that laugh like the river demons that live in the rocks where the Zambezi river falls.
When you still called him 'brother' and 'friend', I warned you against him.' 'I remember.' Bazo's own voice had sunk as low as hers.
'In my vision I saw you high upon a tree, Bazo.' 'Yes,' he whispered, going on down the trail without looking back at her. There was a superstitious tremor in Bazo's voice now, for his beautiful young wife had once been the apprentice of the mad sorcerer, Pemba. When Bazo at the head of his impi had stormed the sorcerer's mountain stronghold, he had hacked off Pemba's head and taken Tanase as a prize of war, but the spirits had claimed her back.
On the eve of the wedding-feast when Bazo would have taken the virgin Tanase as his first bride, as his senior wife, an ancient wizard had come down out of the Matopos Hills and led her away, and Bazo had been powerless to intervene, for she had been the daughter of the dark spirits and she
