'The Elephant comes! He comes! He comes!' It was a soft growl in all their throats.
Through the gates of the stockade filed a small procession, twenty men wearing the tassels of valour, twenty men walking proud, the blood royal of Kumalo, and at their head the huge heavy figure of the king.
Lobengula had thrown off all the European gee-gaws, the brass buttons and mirrors, the gold brocaded coat and he was dressed in the regalia of a Matabele king.
The headring was on his brow, and heron feathers in his hair. His cloak was royal leopardskin, spotted gold, and his kilt was of leopard tails. His swollen ankles, crippled with gout, were covered by the war rattles, but he mastered the agony of the disease, striding out with ponderous dignity, so the waiting impis gasped with the splendour of his presence.
'See the Great Bull whose tread shakes the earth., In his right hand he carried the toy spear of polished redwood, the spear of kingship. Now he raised the puny weapon high, and the nation came bounding upright; and the shields, the long shields that gave them their name, bloomed upon the slope of the hill, covering it like a garden of exotic deadly flowers.
'Bayete!' The royal salute roared like the surf of a winter sea breaking on a rocky headland.
'Bayete! Lobengula, son of Mzilikazi.'
After that great burst of sound, the silence was daunting but Lobengula paced slowly along the ranks, and in his eyes was the terrible sorrow of a father for the sons who must die. This was the hour which he had dreaded from the first day he took the little redwood spear in his right hand. This was the destiny which he had tried to avoid, and now it had overtaken him.
His voice boomed, and he lifted the spear and pointed to the east.
'The enemy that comes upon us now is like -' the spear shook in his hand, 'like the leopard in the goat kraal, like the white termites in the kingpost of a hut. They will not stop until all is destroyed.'
The massed regiments of Matabele growled, straining like hunting dogs against the leash, and Lobengula stopped in the centre of their lines and threw the leopardskin cloak back from his right arm.
He turned slowly until he faced into the east, where Jameson's columns were massing far over the horizon, and his spear arm went back to its full stretch. He stood poised in the classic stance of the javelin-thrower, and there was a soft susurration in the air as ten thousand lungs filled with breath and held it.
Then, with a heart-stopping shout, the cry of a man crushed under the iron wheel of his own destiny, Lobengula hurled the war spear into the east, and his shout was echoed by ten thousand throats.
'Jee! Jee!' They roared, and stabbed at the air with the broad silver blades, stabbing at the still invisible enemy.
Then the impis formed, one behind the other. Led by their indunas, their matched shields overlapping, they swept past the king, fierce in their pride, leaping high and flashing their assegais, and Lobengula saluted them: the Imbezu. and the Inyati, the Ingubu and the Izimvukuzane, the 'Moles-that-burrow-under-a-mountain', with their matt red shields held high and Bazo, the Axe, prancing at their head. They wound away into the eastern grasslands, and Lobengula could still hear their singing, faintly on the heated air, long after the last of them had disappeared from view.
A little group of indunas and guards still attended the king, but they waited below at the gate of the stockade.
Lobengula was alone upon the deserted hillside; all the dignity and regal pride had gone out of his bearing. His grossly swollen body slumped like that of a very old and sick man. His eyes were rheumy with unshed tears, and he stared out into the east without moving, listening to the fading war chants.
At last he sighed, shook himself, and hobbled forward on his crippled distorted feet.
Painfully he stooped to retrieve the little redwood spear, but he paused before his fingers touched it.
The blade of the spear of kingship had snapped through. He picked up the broken pieces and held them in his hands, and then he turned and shuffled slowly down from the Hills of the Indunas.
The Company flag stood high above the laager on a slightly crooked pole of mopani.
It had hung limply in the stupefying heat all that morning, but now as the patrol rode in across the open ground above the river bank, it unfurled briefly on a random current of air, snapped as though to draw attention to itself, and then extended its full glory for a moment, before sagging wearily once again.
At the head of the patrol, Ralph Ballantyne turned to his father who rode at his side. 'That flag makes no bones about it, Papa.'
The pretty crosses of Sint George, Sint Andrew and Sint Patrick that made up the Union Jack, had the Company insignia superimposed upon them, the lion gardant with a tusk of ivory held in its claw and the letters under it T.S.A.C.I, British South Africa Company.
'Servants of the Company first, and of the queen a good deal later.'
'You're a cynical rascal, Ralph.' Zouga could hardly suppress his smile. 'Are you suggesting that there is a man in all our Company here for personal gain rather than glory of Empire?'
'Perish the thought.' This time Ralph chuckled. 'By the way, Papa, how many land grants have you bought up so far? I am losing count, is it thirty or thirty-five?'
'This is a dream I worked for all my life, Ralph. It's coming true before our eyes, and when it does, I'll have c my fair reward, and nothing more.'
The laager was drawn up in its rigid square three hundred yards from the steep banks of the Shangani river, in the centre of a dried-out clay pan. The surface was as flat and bare as a tennis court. The clay had cracked into irregular briquettes that curled up at the edges. They crunched under the horses' hooves as Zouga led the patrol in.
They had been out for two days, scouting the road beyond the river, and Zouga was pleased to see that during his absence Sint John had taken Zouga's advice and had his axemen hack down the brush around the edges of the pan to open the field of fire. Now any attacker have to cross three hundred yards of bare clay to reach the square of
