best horses and elected Potgieter as their leader.
Not all of it was for God and womankind; for one whispered to another, 'Even if there is no white woman, I have heard that there are fine new herds in Matabeleland.'
Then the old wizard came to Lobengula's cave and rolled his eyes and cackled.
The buni have crossed the river of crocodiles, riding on the backs of strange beasts. Many men, many men!'
Instinctively Lobengula knew why the Boer commando was coming, and he knew also what to do about it. 'Stay here, with the child,' he ordered Saala. 'I am going to my father's kraal, and I will lead his impis back here.'
But Saala was a woman, with a woman's curiosity, and blood called to blood. Vaguely she remembered that these strange white men had once been her kin.
When Lobengula had gone north to Thabas Indunas, she slung the baby on her back and crept out of the cave.
At first the distant sound of gunfire guided her, for the Boer commando was living off the abundant herds of wild game. Then later she heard the shout of voices, and the whicker of horses, sounds that awakened a terrible nostalgia in her breast.
She crept closer and closer to the bivouac, with all the stealth of a wild animal, closer still until she could clearly see the tall sun-bronzed men, dressed to throat and wrists in brown homespun, the white-brimmed felt hats on their heads, closer still until she could hear their voices lifted in praise of their God as they sang their hymns around the camp fire.
She recognized the words, and memories flooded back to her. She was no longer Saala but Sarah, and she rose from her place of hiding to go down to her people. Then she looked down at her body, and she saw that she was naked. She looked at the child on her hip, and saw that it was yellow, and its features were neither hers nor yet those of its Matabele father.
The awareness of sin came upon her, as it had done to Eve in another Paradise, and Sarah was ashamed.
She crept away, and in the dawn she stood on the top of one of those soaring granite precipices that rend the Matopos hills.
She kissed her baby and then holding the little mite to her breast she stepped out into the void.
Lobengula found them at the bottom of the cliff. He found them before the vultures did, and they were still together, Sarah's grasp on the infant had not faltered during the long plunge from the top of the precipice.
Strangely, both she and the child seemed to be merely sleeping, quiet and at peace.
At the memory Lobengula sighed now, and returned his gaze to his half-brother, the Induna Gandang who still sat across him from the fire.
If only he had been able to escape the prophecy of the Umlimo, for she had foreseen this destiny for him: Your name is Lobengula, the one who drives like the wind. Yet the winds will drive you, high as an eagle.
'Lobengula will hold the spear of Mzilikazi. Yet again the winds will drive you, down, down, down, and your nation with you.
Those were the words of that strange and beautiful woman of the cave, and already the first part of the prophecy had held true.
Mzilikazi, the mighty warrior, had died like an old woman, riddled with arthritis and dropsy and gout and liquor, in his royal hut.
His widows had wrapped him in the skin of a freshlykilled bull, and sat mourning over him for twelve days: until his remains were almost liquid with putrefaction in the summer heat.
After the mourning the regiments had carried his corpse into the Matopos Hills, the Sacred Hills, and they had seated Mzilikazi in the cave of the king. They placed all his possessions about him: his assegais, his guns, his ivory; even his wagon was taken down and the pieces piled in the crevices of the cave.
Then masons closed the opening with blocks of granite, and after the feasting and dancing the indunas of Matabele met to decide who would succeed Mzilikazi as king.
The argument and counter-argument lasted many weeks, until the indunas led by the princes of Kumalo returned into the Matopos bearing rich gifts to the cave of the Umlimo.
'Give us a king!' they pleaded.
'The one who drives like the wind!' replied the Umlimo, but Lobengula had fled, trying even at the last moment to escape his destiny.
The border impis captured him, and led him back to Thabas Indunas like a criminal to judgement. The indunas came to him one by one, and swore their allegiance and loyalty unto death.
'Black Bull of Matabele, The Thunderer, The Great Elephant. The one whose tread shakes the earth., Nkulumane was the first of his brothers to crawl before him, and Nkulumane's mother, the senior wife of Mzilikazi, followed her son on her knees.
Lobengula turned to the Black Ones who stood behind him, like hounds on the leash.
'I do not wish to look upon their faces again.'
It was Lobengula's first command, spoken like a true king, and the Black Ones took mother and son into the cattle stockade and twisted their necks, quickly and mercifully.
'He will be a great king,' the people told one another delightedly. 'Like his father.'
But Lobengula had never known happiness again. Now with a shudder he threw off the terrible burden of the past, and his voice was a deep but melodious bass. 'Rise up, Gandang my brother. Your countenance warms me like a watch-fire in the frosty night.'
They spoke then, easily and intimately, trusted companions of a lifetime, until at last Gandang passed the
