His reaction confirmed her suspicions. and she knew that what last small chance they had was finished. From now on they would be enemies, and somehow she knew that the centre of their enmity would always be the land and peoples of that faraway country between two great rivers which Zouga had named Zambezia.
At the end of the Woodstock road, on the bank of the Liesbeeck river, not far from the domed roof of the Royal Astronomical Observatory, stands the Cartwright warehouse. It is a rambling whitewashed building of a burnt Kimberley brick with a corrugated iron roof.
Against the rear wall of the main storeroom stood three articles left there in storage and for later collection by Major Morris Zouga Ballantyne, presently on passage aboard the Peninsular and Orient Steamship S. S. Bombay from India to the Pool of London. The three bulky articles were almost completely screened by the bays and hillocks of bales and crates, and of barrels and bags, which reached almost to the high ceiling.
The two huge elephant tusks formed a perfect frame with their curved yellow ivories for the third package.
The carved soapstone figure was still contained in its protective covering of plaited elephant grass and twisted bark rope. It stood upright on its wide heavy base, and it was merely chance that it faced towards the north.
The grass covering had been torn away from the head by careless handling and long months of travel on the shoulders of porters and on the buckboards of an unsprung Cape cart.
The cruel proud head of the bird of prey protruded from its wrappings. The stony sightless eyes stared across forest and mountain and desert, one thousand five hundred miles, to a walled and mined city and the words of the Umlimo's prophecy seemed to hover in the air above the graven head of the bird like living things. The white eagle has stooped on the stone falcons and cast them to earth. Now the eagle shall lift them up again and they will fly afar. There shall be no peace in the kingdoms of the Mambos or the Monomatapas until they return. For the white eagle will war with the black bull until the stone falcons return to roost.
The End
Wilbur Smith was born in Central Africa in 1933. He was educated at Michaelhouse and Rhodes University. He became a full-time writer in 1964 after the successful publication of When the Lion Feeds, and has since written twenty-four novels, meticulously researched on his numerous expeditions worldwide. His work is now translated into twenty-five languages. He normally travels from November to February, often spending a month skiing in Switzerland, and visiting Australia and New Zealand for sea fishing. During his summer break he visits environments as diverse as Alaska and the dwindling wilderness of the African interior. He has an abiding concern for the peoples and wildlife of his native continent, an interest strongly reflected in his novels.
He is married to Danielle, to whom his last twenty books have been dedicated.
The novels of Wilbur Smith
The Courtney Novels:
When the Lion Feeds
The Sound of Thunder
A Sparrow Falls
The Burning Shore
Power of the Sword
Rage
A Time to Die
The Ballantyne Novels:
A Falcon Flies
Men of Men
The Angels Weep
The Leopard Hunts in Darkness
Also:
The Dark of the Sun
Shout at the Devil
Gold Mine
The Diamond Hunters
The Sunbird
Eagle in the Sky
The Eye of the Tiger
Cry Wolf
Hungry as the Sea
Wild justice
Golden Fox
Elephant Song
River God
Power of the Sword
