classic tactics of the Matabele, the finest and most ruthless warriors that the continent of Africa had ever spawned. Here Mzilikazi's border impis kill all travellers, Tom Harkness had written.
Zouga drew himself up and stepped forward, holding up his one good arm with the palm extended towards the ring of shields. I am an Englishman. A commander of the great white Queen, Victoria. My name is Bakela, son of Manali, son of Tshedi, and I come in peace.'
From the ranks stepped a man. He was taller than Zouga and his tossing ostrich plumes turned him into a giant. He swept aside his shield, and he was lean and muscled like a gladiator. On his upper Arms he wore the tassels of cow tails, each one awarded him by his King for an act of valour. The cow tails were thick bunches, layer upon layer. His short kilt was of spotted civet cat tails, and there were more cow tails bound around his calves just below the knees. He had the handsome smooth moonface of the true Nguni, with a broad nose and full sculptured lips. His bearing was noble, the carriage of his head proud.
He looked at Zouga slowly and with grave attention.
He looked at his tattered rags, at the untidy bindings that held his damaged arm, the staff on which he leaned like an old man.
He studied Zouga's singed beard, and powder-burned cheeks, the blisters on his lips and the black scabs that clung obscenely on his swollen discoloured cheek.
Then the Matabele laughed. It was a deep musical laugh, and then he spoke. And I he said, 'am Matabele. An Induna of two thousand. My name is Gandang, son of Mzilikazi, son of the high heavens, son of Zulu, and I come with a bright spear and a red heart.'
Robyn Ballantyne realized within the first day's march that she had seriously miscalculated her father's strength and resilience when she made the decision to try for the coast. Perhaps Zouga had divined instinctively what she a trained physician should have known. That thought made her angry with herself. She found that since parting with Zouga her hostility and sense of rivalry towards him had, if anything, increased. It made her angry that he should have given the correct advice.
By noon of that first day Robyn had been forced to call a halt and to go into camp. Fuller Ballantyne was very weak, weaker than he had been when first she found him. His skin was burning hot and dry to the touch. The movement of the litter, the jolting and bumping over uneven ground had aggravated Fuller's leg. It was grotesquely swollen, and so tender that he screamed and fought at the lightest touch upon the discoloured skin.
Robyn had one of the bearers begin work on a cradle of green twigs and bark to place over the leg and keep the fur blanket off it, and then she sat by the litter applying a damp, cool cloth to her father's forehead and speaking to little Juba and the Mashona woman, not expecting nor receiving advice from them, but taking comfort from the human contact. Perhaps we should have stayed at the cave, she fretted.
'At least he would have been more comfortable there, but then for how long could we have stayed? ' She spoke her thoughts aloud. 'The rains will be on us soon.
We could not have stayed, and even if we march as slowly as this, we will still be trapped here by them. We simply must increase the pace, and yet I do not know if he can survive it.'
However, on the following day Fuller seemed stronger again, the fever had cooled, and they made a full day's march, but in the evening when they went into camp he had once more sunk very low.
When Robyn removed the dressing from the leg, it seemed to be less sensitive, and she was relieved, until she saw the colour of the skin around the ulceration.
When she lifted the soiled dressing to her nose and sniffed it, she caught the taint that her professor of medicine at St. Matthew's had taught her to watch for. It was not the usual taint of benign pus, but a more pervasive odour, the smell of a decomposing Corpse. Her alarm flared, and she threw the dressing on the fire and with dread returned to her examination of the leg.
From the inside of the groin, down the wasted thigh muscles there were the unmistakable scarlet lines beneath the thin pale skin, and the extreme sensitivity of the area seemed to have passed. It was almost as though Fuller had no further feeling in the leg.
Robyn tried to console herself that the change and mortification in the leg was unconnected with having carried him two days in a litter over rough ground. But what other reasons were there? She could find no answer.
Before the move, the ulceration had been stabilized, for it was almost eighteen months since the slaver's ball had shattered the bone.
The movement in the litter must have precipitated some serious change in the limb, and this was the result.
Robyn felt herself culpable. She should have listened to Zouga. She had brought this on her own father. Gasgangrene. She could only hope that she was wrong, but she knew she was not. The symptoms were unmistakable. She could only continue the march and hope they would reach the coast and civilization before the disease swept to its inevitable climax, but she knew that hope was futile.
She wished that she had been able to develop the same philosophical acceptance that most of her fellow physicians cultivated in the face of disease or injury which were beyond their training and ability to alleviate. But she -knew she never could, always she would be victim of this helpless sense of frustration, and this time the patient was her own father.
She bound up the leg in a hot compress and knew that it was a pathetic gesture, like trying to hold back the tide with a child's sand-castle. In the morning the leg felt cooler to the touch, and the flesh seemed to have lost resilience so that her fingers left depressions as though she had touched unleavened bread. The smell was stronger.
They made a full day's march, and Fuller was silent and comatose in the litter as Robyn walked beside it. He no longer chanted psalms and wild exhortations to the Almighty, and she thanked God that at least there was no pain.
In the late afternoon they met a broad pathway, well travelled and running east and west as far as Robyn could see it. It fitted exactly the description and the location that her father had, written of in his journal. Little Juba burst into tears and was rendered almost helpless with terror when she saw the road.
They found an encampment of deserted and dilapidated huts, that might have been those used by the slavetraders, and Robyn ordered camp there.
she left the Mashona woman and the still snivelling and shivering Juba to tend Fuller Ballantyne, and she took
