and their spirits will wander homelessly for all time That was a terrible fate, and the King lowered his chin upon his chest, and brooded on it. Then he sighed and lifted his head. It was a small neat head and his voice was high- pitched, almost womanish, not that of a mighty conqueror and a warrior without fear. Take your spear to the traitor, my son, and when you have killed him, return to me.'
When Gandang would have crawled from his presence, the King halted him with one finger raised. When you have killed Bopa, you and those of your arnadoda who are with you when the deed is done may go in to the women.'
It was the permission for which Gandang had waited for so many years, the highest privilege, the right to go in to the women and take wives.
Gandang shouted his father's praises as he crawled backwards from the royal presence.
Then Gandang, the loyal son, had done what his father commanded. He had carried his spear of retribution swiftly across all of Matabeleland, across the Burnt Land, and along the Hyena Road until he had met Bopa returning from the east laden with the spoils he so dearly coveted.
They had met at a pass through a line of granite hills, not a day's march from where Gandang now confronted Robyn Ballantyne.
Gandang's Inyad impi (buffalo) in their ostrich plumes and civet-tail skirts, carrying the dappled black and white oxhide shields had surrounded the slave-guards formed from selected warriors of Bopa's Inhlambene impi (the Swimmers). The slavers wore white egret plumes and kilts of monkey tails, while their war shields were of chocolate-red oxhide, but right was on the side of the Inyati, and after the swift jikela (encirclement) they raced in to crush the guilty and confused slaveguards in a few terrible unholy minutes of battle.
Gandang himself had engaged the grizzle-headed but powerfully built Bopa. He was a wily, scarred fighter and veteran of a thousand such conflicts. Their shields, the one dappled black and the other red, collided with a thud like charging bulls, and they wrestled for the advantage until Gandang, the younger and stronger, with a shift of weight and feet had hooked the point of his shield under the red shield of Bopa and prised it aside to open his enemy's flank. Ngidla, I have eaten! ' Gandang sang out as he sent the broad blade cleaving between Bopa's ribs, and when it was withdrawn against the reluctant cling of flesh with a sucking noise like a man walking in thick ankledeep mud, Bopa's heart blood burst out behind it and splattered against Gandang's shield, drenching the ox tail tassels on his arms and his legs.
Thus it was for good reason that Gandang had laughed when Robyn called him 'Slaver'. I am on the King's business, he repeated. 'But what do you do here, white woman? ' He knew very little of these strange people, for he had been a child when the impis of Mzilikazi had fought them in the land to the south, and had been driven by them northwards into what was now Matabeleland.
Gandang had met only one or two of them. They had been visitors to his father's great kraal at Thabas Indunas, travellers and traders and missionaries who had been 'given the road' by the King and allowed to cross the strictly guarded frontiers.
Gandang was suspicious of them and their gaudy trade goods. He distrusted their habit of breaking pieces off the rocks along their path, he disliked their talk of a white man who lived in the sky and seemed to be in serious competition with the 'Nkulu-kulul, the great God of the Matabele.
Had he met this woman and her followers in the Burnt Land, he would have followed his orders without hesitation, and killed them all.
However, they were still ten days'march from the frontier and his interest in them was casual; he was impatient to return to his father and report to him the success of his expedition. He would not waste much further time. What is your business, woman? ' I come to tell you that the Great Queen will no longer allow human beings to be sold like cattle for a few beads.
I come to put an end to this evil business That is man's work, Gandang smiled. 'And besides, it has already been seen to.'
The woman amused him, at another time he might have enjoyed bantering with her.
He would have turned and strode from the camp when suddenly a small movement seen through a gap in the thin thatch of one of the temporary shelters caught his attention. With uncanny speed for such a big man, he ducked into the hut and pulled the girl out by her wrist; holding her at arm's length he studied Juba gravely. You are of the people, you are Matabele, he said flatly.
Juba hung her head and her face had a pale greyish sheen of terror. For a moment Robyn thought that Juba's legs would no longer bear her weight. Speak, Gandang commanded in that low but imperious. voice. 'You are Matabele! ' Juba looked up at him and her whisper was so soft that Robyn hardly caught it. Matabele, she agreed, 'of Zanzi blood.'
The warrior and the maid considered each other carefully. Juba lifted her chin, and the greyness vanished from her face.
Your father? ' Gandang asked at last. I am Juba, daughter of Ternbu Tebe. 'He is dead, and all his children, at the King's orders.'
Juba shook her head. 'My father is dead, but his wives and his children are in the land of the Sulumani beyond the sea. I alone escaped. 'Bopa! ' Gandang said the name as though it were a curse. He considered a moment. 'It is possible that your father was wrongly sentenced, for Bopa sent false accusation to the King.'
Juba made no reply, but in the silence that followed, Robyn saw a subtle change coming over the girl, something altered in the carriage of her head, she shifted her weight, thrusting out one hip, a small but provocative movement.
Her eyes, when she looked up at the tall Induna, grew wider and softer, and her lips were held slightly apart so that the pink tip of her tongue just showed between them. What is this white woman to you? ' Gandang asked, and there was just a trace of huskiness in his own voice.
He held her wrist still, and she made no effort to pull away. She is as my mother was, Juba replied, and as the Induna looked down from her face to her sweet young body the ostrich plumes fanned softly about his head, and Juba changed the angle of her shoulders slightly, offering up her breasts to his gaze. You are with her by your own will? ' Gandang insisted, and Juba nodded. So be it. ' It seemed to require an effort for the warrior to break his gaze, but he dropped Juba's wrist and turned back to Robyn. His smile was mocking once more. The slavers you seek are not far from here, white woman. You will find them at the next pass in the road.'
He went as swiftly and as silently as he had come, and his warriors followed him in a dense black column.
