The bleeding slowed and stopped, and Bazo hacked the rawhide bonds from Ralph's ankles and wrists and stood back.
He gestured at his own blood-sullied arms and weapon.
'Who, seeing me thus, would believe that I am a traitor to my king?' he asked softly. 'Yet the love of a brother is stronger than the duty to a king.'
Ralph dragged himself upright against the mopani trunk, holding his wounded arm against his chest and staring at the young induna.
'Go in peace, Henshaw,' whispered Bazo. 'But pray to your God for me, for I have betrayed my king and forfeited my honour.'
Then Bazo whirled and ran back across the glade of yellow grass. When he reached the trees on the far side he neither paused nor looked back, but plunged into them with a kind of reckless despair.
Ten days later, with his boots scuffed through the uppers and the legs of his breeches ripped to tatters by arrow grass and thorn, with his inflamed and infected left arm strapped to his chest by a sling of bark, his face gaunt with starvation and his body bony and wasted, Ralph staggered into the circle of wagons that were outspanned beside the Bushman wells, and Isazi shouted for Umfaan and ran to catch Ralph before he fell.
'Isazi,' Ralph croaked, 'the birds, the stone birds?'
'I have them safe, Nkosi.'
Ralph grinned wickedly, so that his dried lips cracked and his bloodshot eyes slitted.
'By your own boast, Isazi, you are a wise man. Now I tell you also, that you are beautiful to behold, as beautiful as a falcon in flight,' Ralph told him, and then reeled so that he had to catch his balance with an arm around the little Zulu's shoulders.
Lobengula sat cross-legged on his sleeping-mat, alone in his great hut. Before him was a gourd of clear spring water. He stared into it fixedly.
Long ago, when he had lived in the cave of the Matopos with Saala, the white girl, the mad old witchdoctor had instructed him in the art of the gourd. Very occasionally, after many hours' staring into the limpid water, and after the utmost exercise of his concentration and will, he had been able to see snatches of the future, faces and events, but even then they had been murky and unclear, and soon after he left the Matopos this small gift had gone from him. Sometimes still, in desperation, he resorted to the gourd, although, as it was this night, nothing moved or roiled darkly beneath the still surface of the spring water, and his concentration slipping away. Tonight he kept toying with the words of the Umlimo.
Always the oracle spoke obliquely, always her counsel was shrouded in imagery and riddles. Often it was repetitive, on at least five previous visits to the cavern the witch had spoken of 'the stars shining on the hills' and the sun that burns at midnight'. No matter how doggedly Lobengula and his senior indunas had picked at the words, and tried to unravel the meaning that was tied up in them, they had found no answer.
Now Lobengula set aside the fruitless gourd, and lay back upon his kaross to consider the third prophecy, made in the croaking raven's voice from the cliff above the cavern.
'Heed the wisdom of the vixen before that of the dogfox.'
He took each word and weighed it separately, then he considered the whole, and twisted it and studied it from every angle.
In the dawn there remained only one possible solution that had survived the night. For once the oracle seemed to have given advice that was unequivocal. It was only for him to decide which female was the 'vixen' of the oracle.
He considered each of his senior wives, and there was not one of them that had any interest in anything beyond the begetting and suckling of infants, or the baubles and ribbons that the traders brought to Gubulawayo.
Ningi, his full-blooded sister, he loved still as his one link with the mother he barely remembered. Yet now when Ningi was sober she was elephantine and slowwitted, bad-tempered and cruel. When she was filled with the traders' champagne and cognac, she was giggling and silly to begin with, and then incontinent and comatose at the end. He had spoken with her for an hour and more the previous day. Little that she had said was sensible and nothing she had said could possibly bear on the terrible pressures of Lodzi and his emissaries.
So at last Lobengula returned to what he had known all along must be the key to the riddle of the Umlimo.
'Guards!' he shouted suddenly, and there were quick and urgent footfalls, and one of his cloaked executioners stooped through the doorway and prostrated himself on the threshold.
'Go to Nomusa, the Girlchild of Mercy, bid her come to me with all speed,' said Lobengula.
Whereas I have been much molested of late by divers persons seeking and desiring to obtain grants and concessions of land and mining rights in my territories Now, therefore, for the following considerations: Item One, payment by the grantee to the grantor of 100 pounds per month in perpetuity.
Item Two, the provision by the grantee to the grantor of One Thousand Martini-Henry rifles, together with One Hundred Thousand rounds of Ammunition for the same.
Item Three, the provision by the grantee to the grantor of an armed steamboat to patrol the navigable reaches of the Zambezi river.
Now, therefore, I, Lobengula, King of the Matabele people, and Paramount Chief of Mashonaland, Monarch of all territories South of the Zambezi River and Northwards of the Shashi and Limpopo Rivers, do hereby grant Complete and exclusive charge over all metals and minerals in my Kingdom, Principalities and Dominions, together with full power to do all things that they may deem necessary to win and procure the same and to enjoy the profits and revenues, if any, derivable from the said metals and minerals.
in his fair hand, Jordan Ballantyne wrote out the document from mister Rudd's dictation.
Robyn Codrington read the text to Lobengula, and explained it to him, then she helped him attach the Great Elephant seal. Finally, she witnessed the mark that Lobengula made beside it.
'Damn me, Jordan, there's none of us here that can ride the way you can.' Rudd made no effort to conceal his
