her.
Louisa was still clinging to Jim's hand. Now she lifted her face to his. 'I have not said it before, but I must say it now. I love you, my man.'
'I have said it many times before, but I say it again,' he replied. 'I love you, my little hedgehog.'
'Kiss me,' she said, and their embrace was long and fierce. Then they drew apart.
'Go to your places now,' Jim called to the men. 'Manatasee has come.'
The herd' boys brought them their breakfast from the cooking fires, and they ate their salted porridge in darkness, standing by the guns. When daylight came, it came swiftly. First the tops of the trees showed against the brightening sky, then they could make out the vague shape of the hills beyond. Suddenly Jim drew breath sharply, and Louisa started next to him.
'The hills are dark,' she whispered. The light strengthened and the singing grew with it, rising in majestic chorus. Now they could make out the mass of the regiments that lay like a deep shadow upon the pale grassland. Jim studied them through the lens of the telescope.
'How many are there?' Louisa asked softly.
'As Tegwane has said, they are many. It is not possible to count their numbers.'
'And we are only eight.' Her voice faltered.
'You have not counted the boys.' He laughed. 'Don't forget the boys.'
Jim went back to where the boys waited beside the gun racks, and spoke to each of them. Their cheeks were stuffed with goose-shot, and they held the ramrods ready, but they grinned and bobbed their heads. Children make fine soldiers, he thought. They have no fear for they think it is a game, and they obey orders.
Then he walked along the line of men who stood behind the barricades. To Bakkat he said, 'The Nguni will have seen you from afar, for you stand tall as a granite hill in their path and strike terror into their hearts.'
'Have your long whips ready,' he told Smallboy and the drivers. 'After this little fight you will have a thousand head of cattle to drive down to the coast.'
He clasped Zama's shoulder. 'I am glad that you stand beside me as you have always done. You are my right hand, old friend.'
As he returned to Louisa's side the singing of the imp is swelled to a crescendo, then ended with the stamp of hundreds of horny bare feet that rang out like a salvo of artillery. The silence after it was shocking.
'Now it begins,' Jim said and lifted the telescope.
The black ranks stood like a petrified forest. The only movement was the rising dawn wind ruffling the vulture feathers in their headdresses. Then Jim saw that the centre of the line was opening like the petals of a night orchid, and a column of men came through, winding like a serpent down the grassy hillside towards the laager. In stark contrast to the massed imp is they wore kilts made of strips of white oxhide, and tall headdresses of snowy egret feathers. Twenty men led the column. On their hips were slung war drums made from hollowed-out logs. The rank behind them carried trumpets of kudu horn. In the centre of the column there was a massive litter whose interior was screened by leather curtains. Twenty men carried it on their shoulders, shuffling and swaying, dipping and turning.
One of the drummers began to tap out a tattoo, which throbbed like the pulse of all the world, and the imp is swayed to the rhythm. One by one the other drummers joined in and the music swelled. Then the trumpeters lifted their kudu horns, and blew a warlike fanfare. The column opened into a single file with the great litter in the centre, and halted just out of range of the barricade of the laager. The trumpets sounded a second blast that rang against the hills, then another eerie silence fell.
By now the first rays of the rising sun played over the massed regiments. It struck sparks of light from the blades of the assegais.
'We should strike now,' Louisa said. 'We should sortie on horseback, and attack them first.'
'They are already too close. We would only get in two or three volleys before they drove us back into the laager,' Jim told her gently. 'Let them expend themselves on the barricades. I want to save the horses for what will come later.'
Again the trumpets sang out and the bearers lowered the litter to the ground. There was another trumpet blast, and from the litter emerged a single dark shape like a hornet from its nest.
'Bayetel' thundered the regiments. 'Bayetel' The royal salute drowned the drums and trumpets. Hurriedly Jim snatched up the telescope and stared at the macabre figure.
The woman was slim and sinuous, taller than her bodyguards in their egret headdresses. She was stark naked, but her entire body was painted in fantastic patterns. There were glaring white circles around her eyes. A straight white line ran up her throat, over her chin and nose, between her eyes and over her shaven scalp, dividing her head into hemispheres. One half was painted blue as the sky, the other half blood red. She
carried a small ceremonial assegai in her right hand, the haft covered with fine designs of beadwork and tassels of lion's mane hair.
Whorls and swirls of white paint highlighted her breasts and her mons Veneris. Diamond and arrowhead patterns enhanced the length of her slim arms and legs.
'Manatasee!' Tegwane said softly. The queen of death.'
Manatasee began to dance, a slow, mesmeric movement like that of an erect cobra. She came down the hillside towards the laager, graceful and deadly. None of the men in the laager moved or spoke and stared in dread fascination.
The imp is moved forward behind her, as though she were the head of the dragon and they the monstrous body. Their weapons sparkled like reptilian scales in the low sun.
Manatasee stopped just short of the cut line that Jim had cleared in front of the wagons. She stood with her legs apart and her back arched, thrusting her hips towards them. Behind her the drums crashed out again and the kudu-horn trumpets shrilled.
'Now she will mark us for death.' Tegwane spoke loud enough for them all to hear, but Jim was not certain what he meant until from between her long painted legs Manatasee sent a powerful gush of urine arcing towards them.
'She pisses upon us,' Tegwane said.
Manatasee's stream dwindled and as the last yellow drops fell to earth she let out a wild scream and leaped high in the air. As she landed again she aimed the point of her assegai at the laager.
'Bulalal' she screeched. 'Kill them all!' A deafening roar went up from the imp is and they surged forward.
Jim snatched up one of his London rifles, and tried to pick up the queen in the sights, but he had left it too late. As with all the others, Manatasee had held him enthralled. Before he could fire she was screened by the advancing wall of her warriors. A plumed and una had stepped in front of her, and in frustration Jim almost shot him down, but checked his trigger finger at the last instant. He knew that the sound of the shot would be echoed by his own men, and the first carefully aimed volley would be wasted before the enemy were in effective range. He lowered the rifle and strode down the barricades, calling to them: 'Steady now! Let them come in close. Don't be greedy. I here will be enough for all of you.' Only Smallboy laughed at his joke, The sound was raucous and forced.
Jim moved back to his place beside Louisa, nonchalant and unhurried, setting an example to the musketeers and to the boys. The front rank of
the impi was sweeping up to the line of white stones. They came dancing and singing, stamping their bare feet and shaking their war rattles, beating with the bright blades upon their shields. There were no gaps between the black shields.
I have let them come too close, Jim thought. To his fevered gaze, they seemed already within range with those deadly stabbing blades. Then he saw that they had not yet reached the stones. He steeled his nerve and shouted down the line, 'Wait! Hold your fire!'
He picked out the and una who was still in the front rank. He was horribly scarred. An axe cut ran from his scalp through his eye and down his cheek. The healed cicatrice was smooth and shiny, and over the top edge of his black shield the empty eye socket seemed to glare straight at Jim.
'Wait!' Jim called. 'Let them come.' Now he could see the separate drops of sweat sliding down the and una cheeks like grey seed pearls. The man's bare feet kicked over one of the cairns of white river stones.
'Now, fire!' Jim shouted, and the first volley was a single clap of thunder. The gunsmoke spurted out in a grey cloud bank
From such close quarters the rawhide shields were no protection at all. The goose-shot cut through, and the destruction was terrible. The front rank seemed to dissolve in the wash of smoke. The heavy lead pellets drove clean through flesh and bone, going on to rattle against the shields and bodies of those behind. The second rank stumbled over the dead and dying. Those warriors coming up behind were impatient to get within assegai range. They shoved forward with their shields, knocking off-balance the stunned survivors in the front rank.
The smoking gun was snatched from Jim's grip and 9 loaded musket thrust into his hands by one of the herd-boys. The second volley bellowed out with almost the same precision as the first, but then each successive volley became more ragged as some of the musketeers fired faster, served more quickly by their boys.
Mounds of dead and wounded
