In front of him she froze in the act of striking, and Mungo Sint John took the cheroot from his mouth and he blew a perfect smoke ring, that spun upon itself until it broke in the witch's face and blew away in soft wisps.
She cackled, wildly, madly, and passed on down the line to pause in front of Robyn Codrington.
'You stink like the hyena that spawned you,' Robyn told her evenly in perfect Matabele, and the witch whirled and raced away to where Juba stood in the front line of noble matrons; she raised the switch to strike and looked back at Robyn, gloating loathsomely.
Robyn had gone white as bone, and came to her feet clutching her own bosom.
'No,' she whispered. 'Please, fair sister, let her be.'
The witch dropped her arm and came back to strut and preen in front of Robyn; then again she shrieked, whirled and rushed at Juba, this time she struck, and the tail hissed and snapped on black flesh, but at the very last second the witch had diverted her aim, and the blow flew into the startled face of the young woman who stood beside Juba.
'I smell evil,' shrieked the witch, and the woman fell to her knees. 'I smell blood.'
The witch struck again and again, the tail cutting stingingly into the woman's unprotected face until the tears started and ran down her cheeks.
The executioners came forward and pulled her to her feet. The woman's legs were paralysed, so they dragged her unprotesting before Lobengula, and he looked down on her, saddened and helplessly compassionate, before he lifted the forefinger of his right hand.
One of the executioners swung his war club, a full blow that stove in the back of the woman's skull. The bone crunched like a footstep in loose gravel, and the woman's eyes were driven from their sockets like overripe grapes by the force of it. When she fell face forward in the dust there was a bloodless depression in the back of her head into which a man could have placed his fist.
The witch scurried away to continue the hunt, and Juba looked across at Robyn. Robyn had fallen back on her chair, trembling and pale, while Clinton put an arm around her shoulders to steady her.
In the packed ranks there was another triumphant shriek, and the executioners dragged a fine-looking young warrior from his place. He threw off their hands and strode to drop on one knee before Lobengula's throne.
'Father of the nation, hear my praises. Great Thunderer, Black Bull, let me die with your name on my lips.
Oh Lobengula who drives like the wind The king lifted his finger and the club fell with the flute of a goose's wing.
The chorus of howls and shrieks was unending now as the sisters warmed to their work, and the victims were dragged out and slaughtered, until their corpses were a high mound before the king's throne, a tangle of black limbs and shattered heads, that grew and grew.
A hundred, two hundred, were added to the pile, while the sun reached its zenith and the dust and heat and terror formed a suffocating miasma, and the blue metallic flies swarmed in the staring eyes and open mouths of the dead, and the witches cavorted and giggled and struck with their rods.
Here and there a maiden, overcome with the fear and the blazing heat, fell swooning from her place and the witches pounced upon this irrefutable evidence of guilt and rained blows upon her bare back or glossy breasts, and the executioners hurried to keep pace with their dreadful task.
The sun began its slow descent towards the western horizon, and at last one at a time the witches crept back to the mountain of death they had created. They staggered with exhaustion, the dust had caked on their running sweat, but they bayed and whined like dogs as they pored over the corpses, selecting those they would take with them, back to their caves and secret places, a sliver of the womb of a virgin was a powerful fertility charm, a slice of the heart of a blooded warrior was a wonderful talisman in battle.
'Is the work done?' Lobengula asked.
'It is done, oh king.'
'Are all the evil ones dead?'
'They are all dead, son of Mzilikazi.'
'Go then, and go in peace,' Lobengula said wearily.
'Stay in peace, Great King.' They chuckled and hooted and, bearing their gruesome plunder with them, they shuffled away through the gateway of the stockade.
Three times in as many weeks Mungo Sint John petitioned the king, asking him to 'give the road' to the south, but each time the king chatted affably for an hour and then waved him away. 'I will sleep on it, One Bright Eye, but are you unhappy here? Does the beef and beer I send you not fill your belly? Perhaps you would like to go once again on the hunt?'
'I want to go south, oh King.'
'Perhaps in the next full moon, One Bright Eye, and then again perhaps after the rain has passed, or after the Chawala Ceremony, who knows? We will see in good season.'
Then one morning Louise rode out early, as had become her custom, but after she had been gone some hours Mungo realized that this time she had the rifle and bandolier of ammunition, her blanket roll and the gallon water bottle with her.
He puzzled over her behaviour for the rest of that day, but he was not alarmed until night fell and she had not returned. He sat up beside the fire all that night, and at first light he took the second mule and crossed the river to where Rudd's party was camped in grand style in a pleasant glade of the forest. They had six wagons and as many tents made of best quality waterproof canvas, each with sun flysheets.
The horses on the picket line were all blood Arabs, one of which would carry Mungo and his small bag of precious stones to the Shashi river in six days or less.
He was eyeing them hungrily, when Robyn Codrington stooped out of one of the tents. She saw him and would have gone in again, but he called to her and jumped down from the mule.
