Instantly the warriors sprang to
their feet and their voices echoed against the hills with the royal salute, 'Bayetel Bayetel'
The king's musicians came out through the gates, rank upon rank, dipping and swaying, flirting their headdresses like the courtship dancing of crowned cranes, stamping until the dust powdered their legs to the knees. Then they froze in mid-step and the only movement was the ruffle of the feathers in their headdresses.
King Beshwayo paced out through the gates. He wore a simple kilt of white cow tails, and war rattles on his ankles and wrists. His head was shaven and his skin had been polished with a mixture of fat and red ochre clay. His tread was stately. He shimmered like a god as he walked.
He reached his place and looked upon his subjects with such a terrible when that they shrank before his gaze. Then, suddenly, he hurled the spear he carried into the air. Driven by his massive shoulders it rose to an impossible height. It reached its zenith and then, in a graceful parabola, fell back to peg its glittering head into the sun-baked clay of the parade- ground.
Still there was no sound, no man or woman moved. Then a single voice broke the silence: sweetly and softly it rose from the riverbed at the far end of the parade-ground. A sigh went up from the throats of all the assembled warriors and their feathers danced as they turned their heads towards that sound.
A line of young maidens came shuffling up and over the river bank. Each one had her hands on the hips of the girl in front of her and followed her movements with mirror- like precision. They wore very short skirts of combed grass and crowns of wild flowers. Their breasts were bare and shining with oil. They kept snaking out of the riverbed, until it seemed they were not individuals but a single sinuous creature.
These are the first flowers of the tribe,' Louisa said softly. 'Each one has seen her moon for the first time, and now they are ready for marriage.'
The girl who led the line of dancers reached the end of the first verse of the song, and all the others came in together with the chorus. Their voices soared high, then fell and languished, and rose again, achingly pure, cleaving the hearts of their listeners. The line of dancing virgins came to a halt before the ranks of young warriors. They turned to face them, and the song changed. The rhythm became as urgent as the act of love, the words suggestive and lewd.
How sharp are your spears?' they asked the warriors. 'How long the shaft? How deep your thrust? Can you stab to the heart? Will blood flow when you pull out your blade from the wound?'
Then they began to dance again, at first swaying like long grass in the wind, then throwing back their heads and laughing with white teeth and flashing eyes. They held out their breasts, one cupped in each hand, and offered them to the young men. Then they retreated and whirled away until their skirts flew waist high. They wore nothing beneath them, and they had plucked their pudenda so that their unmasked clefts were clearly defined. Then they faced away from the men, and bowed over until their foreheads touched their knees, writhing and rolling their hips.
The warriors danced in time to the girls, working themselves into a storm of lust. They stamped until the earth jumped under their feet. They shook their shoulders. Their eyes rolled back in their skulls and froth creamed on their contorted lips. They thrust their hips into the air like mating dogs, and their engorged sexes probed rigidly through the fur strips of their kilts.
Suddenly Beshwayo sprang high from his stool and landed on legs as straight and powerful as the trunks of two lead wood trees. 'Enough!' he bellowed.
Warriors and maidens, everyone on the parade, threw themselves to the ground and lay still as death, no sound or movement but the quivering of headdress feathers and grass skirts, the panting of their breath.
Beshwayo strode along the ranks of girls. These are my prime heifers,' he roared. 'These are the treasures of Beshwayo.' He gazed down on them with a fierce, possessive pride.
They are beautiful and strong. They are full women. They are my daughters. From their hot wombs will come forth regiments of my warriors to conquer all the earth, and their sons shall shout my name to the skies. Through them my name will live for ever.' He threw back his head and let forth such a volume of sound from the barrel of his chest that it rang and echoed off the hills. 'Beshwayo!'
Not another person moved and the echoes faded away into silence. Then Beshwayo turned and strode back along the regiments of prostrated warriors. 'Who are these?' The question was filled with contempt. 'Are these men who grovel before me in the dust?' he bellowed, with mocking laughter. 'No!' he answered himself. Then stand tall and are full of pride. These are little children. Are these warriors?' he demanded of the sky, and laughed at the absurdity of the question. These are not warriors. Warriors have quenched their spears in the blood of the king's enemies. These are but snot-nosed children.' He walked down the line and spurned them with his foot.
'Stand up, you small boys!' he cried. They leaped to their feet with
the agility of acrobats, their young bodies forged to perfection by a lifetime of rigorous training. Beshwayo shook his head with contempt. He walked away. Then, suddenly, he leaped high in the air and landed with the elegance of a panther. 'Stand up, my daughters,' he shouted, and the girls rose and swayed before him like a field of dark lilies.
'See how their beauty outshines the sun. Can the king allow those unweaned calves to mount his beautiful heifers?' he harangued them. 'No, for there is nothing between their legs of any account. These magnificent cows need bulls of power. Their wombs crave the seed of great warriors.'
He strode back down the alley between them. 'The sight of these young calves so displeases me that I am sending them away. They shall not look upon my heifers again until they have become bulls.' 'Go!' he bellowed at them. 'Go! And do not return until you have washed your spears in the blood of the king's enemies. Go! And return only when you have killed your man and wear the cow tail on your right arm.' He paused and looked down on them with disdainful hauteur. 'The sight of you displeases me. Be gone!'
'Bayetel' they shouted, with a single voice, and again, 'Bayetel We have heard the voice of the Black Thunder of the Sky, and we will obey.'
In a close column they swung away, keeping perfect step, singing the praises of Beshwayo. Like a dark serpent, they wound up the slope of the hill and disappeared over the crest. Beshwayo strode back and took his seat on the carved stool. He was scowling hideously, but without changing his expression he said softly to Jim, 'Did you see them, Somoya? They are young lions and hot for blood. These are the finest fruits of any circumcision year in all my reign. No enemy can stand against them.' He turned on his stool towards Louisa. 'Did you see them, Welanga? Is there any maiden in all my realm who can resist them?'
They are fine young men,' she agreed.
'Now I lack only an enemy to send them against.' Beshwayo's scowl became even more terrifying. 'I have scoured the land for twenty days' march in every direction, and found no more fodder for my spears.'
'I am your brother,' said Jim. 'I cannot allow you to suffer such lack. I have an enemy. Because you are my brother, I shall share this enemy with you.' Beshwayo stared at him for a long moment. Then he let fly such a bellow of laughter that all his indunas and his pregnant wives cachinnated in slavish imitation of him.
Show me our enemy, Somoya. Like a pair of black-maned lions on a gazelle, you and I shall devour him.'
Three days later, when the wagons started back for the coast, Beshwayo went with them, singing his war anthems at the head of his new regiments and their battle-hardened indunas.
Faithful to Dorian's orders, once the Sprite and the Revenge entered the Mozambique channel, the two ships separated. Kumrah sailed up the west coast of the island of Madagascar, and Batula along the east coast of the African mainland. They called at each of the fishing villages along the way. From the headmen of these villages they hired, for payment of beads, rolls of copper wire and other stores such as fishing line, rope and bronze nails, a motley flotilla of feluccas and outrigger fishing-dhows. By the time they met again at the rendezvous off the north tip of the long island they were like ducks followed by a straggling line of ducklings. Most of these craft were ancient and decrepit and many could only be kept afloat by constant bailing.
Batula and Kumrah placed them in a thin screen from island to mainland, then took their own ships well to the south so that they were only just able to maintain visual contact with them. In this way they hoped to prevent the desertion of any of the frail vessels, and to receive their signals when Zayn's convoy of war-dhows appeared on the northern horizon, without being forced to reveal their own presence. They hoped that if Zayn's lookouts spotted one or two of these tiny vessels they would think them nothing more than innocent fishing-craft, the likes of which were common in these offshore waters.
The weeks passed slowly in such unrewarding activity. There was constant attrition among the scouting vessels. They were unsuited for such long periods at sea. The crews mutinied against the perils, discomfort and boredom, or their boats fell apart, or the rough weather of the kasha(r) drove them into port. The screen became so perilously thin that in the heavy seas or in darkness even such a large fleet as Zayn's might slip through the holes in it unremarked.
Batula had placed Tasuz in the most likely position, within sight of the low blue outline of the African mainland. He guessed that Zayn
