Within minutes the last of them had disappeared along the winding narrow trail into the west.
Old Karanga was the first of the servants to return to the camp. He came in through the thorn scherm like a bashful stork on his thin legs. Where were you when I needed you? ' Robyn demanded. Nomusa, I could not trust my temper with those Matabele dogs, old Karanga quavered, but he could not meet her eyes.
Within the hour the other porters and bearers had crept down from the hills and out of the forest, all of them now endowed with amazing enthusiasm to continue the march in the opposite direction to that of the Inyati impi.
Robyn found the slavers where Gandang had promised her she would. They were scattered over the neck of the pass, they lay in knots and windrows, like leaves after the first storm of autumn. Nearly all of them had their death wounds in the chest or throat, proof that at the end they had fought like Matabele.
The victors had slit open the dead men's bellies to allow their spirits to escape, a last courtesy to men who had fought gallantly, but the vultures had used the openings to enter the belly pouches.
The birds hopped and flapped and squabbled raucously over the cadavers, tugging and dragging at them so that their dead limbs kicked and twitched as though they were still alive, and dust and loose feathers flew around them. The croaking and squawking of the birds was deafening.
In the trees and on the cliffs above the pass, the birds that had already gorged crouched somnolently, puffing out their feathers and hunching their naked scaly heads and necks upon their shoulders, digesting the contents of their bulging crops before returning to the feast.
The little caravan passed slowly, in fascinated horror at the carnage, speechless in the raucous chorus of the scavengers, stepping carefully over the ragged, dust-covered remains of brave men, reminded by them of their own mortality.
Once they had crossed the pass they hurried down the far slope with fearful backward glances. There was a stream at the bottom of the slope, a tiny trickle of clear water springing from the slope and threading its way from pool to small shaded pool. Robyn went into camp A upon the bank, and immediately called Juba to follow her.
She had to bathe herself, she felt as though death had touched her with its putrid fingertips and she needed to wash away the taint of it. She sat under the trickle of clear water, waist deep in the pool below the waterfall and let the stream flow over her head, her eyes closed trying to blank out the horrors of the battlefield. Juba was not so affected, she was no stranger to death in its most malevolent forms, and she splashed and played in the green water, completely absorbed in the moment.
At last Robyn waded to the bank, and pulled her shirt and breeches over her still-wet body. In that heat, her clothes would dry upon her within minutes, and while she twisted her wet hair into a rope on top of her head she called to Juba to come out of the pool.
In a mischievous and rebellious mood the girl ignored her, and remained rapt in her own game, singing softly as she picked wild flowers from a creeper that hung over the pool and plaited them into a necklace over her shoulders. Robyn turned away and left her, climbing back along the bank towards the camp, and the first turn hid her from view.
Now Juba looked up and hesitated. She was not certain why she had refused to obey, and she felt a little chill of disquiet at being alone. She was not yet accustomed to this new mood of hers, this strange and formless excitement, this breathless expectancy for she knew not what. With a toss of her head she returned to her song and her play.
Standing above the bank, half screened by the trailing creeper and mottled like a leopard by the slanting dappled sunlight through the leaves of the forest, a tall figure leaned against the hole of a wild fig tree and watched the girl.
He had stood there, unseen and unmoving since he had been led to the pool by the sound of splashing and singing. He had watched the two women, comparing their nakedness, the bloodless white against the luscious dark skin, the skinny angular frame against sweet and abundant flesh, the small pointed breasts tipped in the obscene pink of raw meat against the full and perfect rounds with their raised bosses, dark and shiny as newwashed coal, the narrow hips of a boy against the proud wide basin which would cradle fine sons, the mean little buttocks against the fullness and glossiness that was unmistakably woman.
Gandang was aware that by returning along the trail he was for the first time in his life neglecting his duty.
He should have been many hours' march away from this place, trotting at the head of his impi into the west, yet there was this madness in his blood, that he had not been able to deny. So he had halted his impi and returned alone along the Hyena Road. I am stealing the King's time, just as surely as Bopa stole his cattle, he told himself. 'But it is only a small part of a single day, and after all the years I have given to my father, he would not grudge me that. ' But Gandang knew that he would, favourite son or not, Mzilikazi had only one punishment for disobedience.
Gandang was risking his life to see the girl again, he was risking a traitor's death to speak a few words to a stranger, daughter of one who had himself died a traitor's death. How many men have dug their graves with their own umthondo, he mused, as he waited for the white woman to leave the pool, and when she had covered her skinny boy's body with those stiff and ugly garments and called to the lovely child in the pool to follow her, Gandang tried to reach out with his own will to hold Juba there.
The white woman, clearly piqued, turned and disappeared amongst the trees and Gandang relaxed slightly, giving himself once more to the pleasure of watching the girl in the water. The wild flowers were a pale yellow against her skin, and the waterdrops clung to her breasts and shoulders like stars against the midnight sky. Juba was singing one of the children's songs that Gandang knew so well, and he found himself humnng the chorus under his breath.
Below him the girl waded to the bank and standing in the sugar-white sand began to wipe the water from her body; still singing she bent forward to wipe her legs, encircling them with long shin pink-lined fingers and running her hands slowly down from thigh to ankle. Her back was to Gandang, and as she stooped he gasped aloud at what was revealed to him, and instantly the girl flew erect and spun to face him. She was trembling like a roused fawn, her eyes huge and dark with fright. I see you, Juba, daughter of Tembu Tebe, he said, there was a husky catch to his voice as he came down the bank to her.
The expression in her eyes changed, they glowed with golden lights like sunshine in a bowl of honey. I am a messenger of the King, and I demand the right of the road, he said, and touched her shoulder. She shivered under his fingers. He saw the little goose bumps rise upon her skin.
The 'right of the road' was a custom from the south, from the old country beside the sea. It was the same right which Senzangakhona had demanded of Nandi, the sweet one', but Senzangakhona had not respected the law, and
