His own grandfather, Robert Moffat, had first met Mzilikazi back in . 29 and over the years the two men had become firm and trusted friends. The King relied on Moffat, whom he called Tshedi, for counsel in his dealings with the world beyond his borders and for medical treatment for the gout which plagued him as he grew older.
The route northwards to the land of the Matabele always passed through Robert Moffat's mission station at Kuruman. A prudent traveller would ask for a safe conduct from the old missionary, and the Matabele impis guarding the Burnt Land along the border would honour that safe conduct.
Indeed, the ease with which Fuller Ballantyne had moved through the wild, untamed tribes along the Zambezi river as far west as Lake Ngami, unmolested and unharmed, was in great part due to his relationship with Robert 'Tshedi' Moffat. The mantle of protection which the Matabele King spread over his old friend extended to his immediate family, and was recognized by all the tribes within range of the Matabele long arm, an arm that wielded the assegai, the terrible stabbing spear which King Chaka of the Zulu had first conceived, and with which he had conquered his known world.
In his pique at Robyn's comparison of the ancestry of his family and that of the pretty half-naked black girl, Zouga at first missed the significance of what she had told him. When it struck him, he hurried back to Robyn's cabin. Sissy, he burst out excitedly. 'If she comes from Mzilikazi country, why! that's almost a thousand miles due west of Quelimane. She must have passed through the land of Monomatapa to reach this coast. Get her to tell us about it.'
He regretted his childhood inattention to the language when his mother had taught them. He concentrated say agely now as the two girls chatted animatedly, and began recognizing some of the words, but it needed Robyn to translate the full sense for him.
Juba's father was a famous Induna, a great warrior who had fought the Boers at Mosega, and a hundred other battles since then, his shield had been thick with the tassels of cow tails, black and white, each of which signified a heroic deed.
He had been granted the headring of the Induna when he was still a young man of less than thirty summers, and had become one of the highest elders in the council of the nation. He had fifty wives, many of them of pure Zanzi blood like his own, a hundred and twelve sons and uncounted daughters. Although all the cattle of the nation belonged to the King, yet over five thousand were put in the charge of Juba's father, a mark of the King's high favour.
He was a great man, perhaps too great for his own safety. Somebody whispered the word 'treason' in the King's ear, and the King's executioners had surrounded the kraal in the dawn, and called out Juba's father.
He had stooped out through the low entrance of his thatched beehive hut, naked from the embrace of his favourite wife. Who calls? ' he cried into the dawn, and then he saw the ring of black figures, tall in their feather headdresses, but standing motionless, silent and menacing.
en the King's name, ' a voice answered him, and out of the ranks stepped a figure he recognized immediately.
It was one of the King's Indunas also, a min named Bopa a short powerful man, with a deep-muscled bare chest and a head so heavy that the broad features seemed to have been carved out of a chunk of granite from the kopies across the Nyati River.
There was no appeal, no escape, not that either consideration even passed briefly through the old Induna's mind. In the King's name. ' That was sufficient. Slowly he drew himself to his full height. Despite the grey cap of his hair, he was still a finely built warrior with broad rangy shoulders and the ridged battle scars crawled across his chest and flanks like live serpents. The Black Elephant, he began to recite the praise names of his King. 'Bayete! The Thunder of the Heavens.
The Shaker of the Earth. Bayete! ' Still calling the King's names he went down on one knee, and the King's executioner stepped up behind him.
The wives and elder children had crawled from their huts now and huddled together in dread, watching from the shadows, their voices blending in a single cry of horror and sorrow as the executioner drove his short thick- bladed assegai between the Induna's shoulder blades, and two hands breadth out of his chest. As he withdrew the blade, there was the crude sucking sound of steel leaving flesh and the old Induna's life blood spurted head high as he fell forward on to his face.
With his smeared red blade the King's executioner commanded his warriors forward, for the sentence of death included the old man's wives, every one of their sons and daughters, the household slaves and their children, every inhabitant of the large village, three hundred or more souls.
The executioners worked swiftly, but there was a change in the ancient ritual of death. The old women, the grey-headed slaves died swiftly, not honoured with the blade but clubbed to death with the heavy knobkerries that each warrior carried. The infants, and unweaned toddlers were snatched up by the ankles, and their brains were dashed from their skulls against the trunk of a tree, against the heavy poles of the cattle enclosure or against a convenient rock. It was very swift, for the warriors were highly trained and disciplined troops and this was something they had done many times before.
Yet this time there was a difference, the younger women, the adolescent children, even those on the verge of puberty, were hustled forward and the King's executioner glanced at them appraisingly, and with a gesture of the bloody spear sent them left or right.
On the left hand was swift death, while those who were sent right were forced into a trot and led away towards the east, towards the sunrise as the girl Juba explained it to Robyn. Many days we travelled, her voice sinking, the horror of it still in the dark brown eyes. 'I do not know how long it was. Those who fell were left where they lay, and we went on. , Ask her what she remembers of the country, Zouga demanded. There were rivers, the girl replied. 'Many rivers and great mountains. ' Her memories were confused, she could make no estimates of distance, they had encountered no other people, no villages nor towns, they had seen no cattle nor standing crops. Juba shook her head to each of Zouga's questions, and when he showed her the Harkness map in a forlorn hope that she might be able to point out features upon it, the child giggled in confusion. Drawn symbols on parchment were beyond her comprehension, she could not begin to relate them to features of landscape.
Tell her to go on, ' he ordered Robyn impatiently. At the end we passed through deep gorges in high mountains where the slopes were covered with tall trees, and the rivers fell with white spray, until at last we came to where the bunu, the white men, waited.'
The white men? ' Robyn demanded.
Then of your people, the girl nodded. 'With a pale skin and pale eyes. There were many men, some white and others brown or black men, but dressed as the white men were dressed, and armed with the isibarriu, with guns. ' The Matabele people knew well the power and effect of firearms, they had encountered enemies armed with them
