barricade below where Jim stood. The smell of blood was in their nostrils and their expressions were wolfish. Their baying chilled the soul and weakened the arms of the defenders.
Unable to climb the barricades in the face of the steady volleys, the warriors began to rock the central wagon on its wheels. Fifty of them heaved together, and the wagon swayed dangerously back and forth. Jim realized that soon it would reach the critical point of balance and capsize. The warriors would swarm through the breach it left. The assegais would drink deeply of blood, and the fight would be over in minutes.
Manatasee had seen the opportunity, and sensed victory almost within her grasp. She pranced in close behind the rear rank of the attackers and climbed on to a mound of rocks to see over their heads.
'Zee!' she screamed. 'Zee!' Her warriors answered her and thrust with their shoulders against the wagon truck. It teetered at the limit of its balance, seemed at any moment to be going over, then fell back on to all four wheels.
'Shikelelal' shouted the indunas. 'Again!' The warriors gathered themselves, and bent to take their grip on the axles and the chassis of the wagon.
Jim looked back at Manatasee. The mound of rocks on which she stood was the one Jim had built to cover the keg of gunpowder. He glanced under the front wheels of the wagon. The end of the slow match was still lashed to one of the spokes, and the rest of the long fuse ran back under the chassis, under the heaps of the Nguni corpses to the mound on which Manatasee stood. He had buried the fuse under only a light layer of earth. He could see that in places it had been trampled
and exposed by the feet of the attackers. Perhaps the other end of the fuse had been plucked from the bung-hole of the powder keg.
'Only one way to find out!' he told himself grimly. He snatched the next loaded musket that one of his gun boys handed him, and cocked the hammer, then ducked under the swaying body of the wagon.
If the wagon goes over now, I'll be crushed like a frog under the wheels, he thought, but he found the end of the fuse and laid it over the pan of the musket lock. He held it there with one hand and pulled the trigger. The falling flint struck a shower of sparks from the friz zen and the powder in the pan flared up in a puff of smoke. The musket jumped in his grip and the shot ploughed into the ground at his feet. The flash in the pan had ignited the fuse. It hissed and blackened, then the flame shot along its length, and disappeared into the earth, like a snake into its hole.
Jim sprang back on to the truck of the violently rocking wagon, and stared across at Manatasee. A fine slick of blood was running down her flank from the flesh wound his ball had inflicted. She saw him and pointed her assegai at his face. Her grotesquely painted features contorted with hatred, and spittle flew from her lips in a cloud and sparkled in the sunlight, as she screamed her death curses at him.
Then he saw the length of slow-match had been exposed across the last yard of trampled earth below the mound on which the queen stood. The swift flame shot along it, leaving the fuse blackened and twisted as it burned. Jim clenched his jaws and waited for the explosion. It hung fire for a terrible moment and in that pause the wagon finally toppled over, ripping a fatal gap in the barricade. Jim was thrown from his platform, and sprawled half under the wagon body. The attacking warriors shouted triumphantly and surged forward.
'Bulala!' they bellowed. 'Kill!'
Then the powder keg exploded beneath Manatasee's feet. A mighty tower of dust and stones shot higher than the treetops. The explosion tore the queen's body into three separate parts. One of her legs cartwheeled high into the air. The other, still attached to her torso, was thrown back into the ranks of her oncoming warriors, splattering them with her blood. Her head sailed like a cannon ball over the barricade and rolled across the open ground within the laager.
The blast swept over the Nguni who had overturned the wagon, and who were crowded into the gap they had opened. It cut them down, killing and maiming them and piling their corpses on to those of their comrades who had already fallen.
Jim was protected from the full force of the explosion by the body of the overturned wagon. Half dazed he came to his feet; his first concern
for Louisa. She had been with the herd-boys, and the blast had knocked her to her knees, but she jumped up again and ran to him.
'Jim, you are hurt!' she cried, and he felt something warm and wet running down from his nose into his mouth. It tasted metallic and salty. A flying splinter of rock had sliced across the bridge of his nose.
'A scratch!' he said, and hugged her to his chest. 'But thank God you are unhurt.' Still clinging together they gazed through the gap in the barricade at the carnage the explosion had wrought. The Nguni dead were lying waist deep, piled upon each other. Manatasee's imp is were in full flight, back up the grassy hillside. Most had thrown aside their shields and weapons. Their terrified voices were filled with superstitious dread as they screamed to each other, 'The wizards are immortal.'
'Manatasee is dead.'
'She is slain by the lightning of the wizards.'
'The great black cow is devoured by witchcraft.'
'Flee! We cannot prevail against them.'
'They are ghosts, and the spirits of crocodiles.'
Jim looked along the wall of the laager. Smallboy was leaning on the ramparts, staring after the routed enemy, in a stupor of exhaustion. The other men had slumped down, some in attitudes of prayer, still holding their hot, smoking muskets. Only Bakkat was indefatigable. He had climbed on to the top of one of the wagons, and was shrieking insults at the routed imp is as they fled.
'I defecate on your heads, I piss on your seed. May your sons be born with two heads. May your wives grow beards, and fire-ants eat your testicles.'
'What is the little devil telling them?' Louisa asked.
'He wishes them a fond farewell and lifelong happiness,' Jim said, and the sound of her laughter revived him.
'To horse!' he shouted at his men. 'Mount! Our hour has come.'
They stared at him dully, and he thought they might not have heard him, for his own ears still hummed with the memory of the guns.
'Come on!' he told Louisa. 'We must lead them out.' The two ran to the horse lines Bakkat jumped down from his perch and followed them. The horses were already saddled. They had been held ready for this moment. Jim and Louisa mounted, and the others came running.
Bakkat retrieved Manatasee's painted head, and spiked it on the point of a Nguni assegai. He carried it high as a Roman eagle standard. The queen's purple tongue lolled out of the corner of her mouth, and one eye was closed while the other glared white and malicious.
As the band of horsemen sallied forth through the gap the Nguni had torn in the laager wall, each carried two muskets, one in hand and the
other in the gun sheath. They had shot-belts slung over each shoulder and powder flasks tied to the pommel. Behind them came the boys, riding bareback, each leading a spare horse loaded with powder kegs, shot-bags and water bottles.
'Keep together!' Jim exhorted them. 'Don't get cut off. Like cornered jackals the Nguni are still dangerous.'
They trampled the corpses and the fallen shields under their hoofs before they reached the open grassland and spurred forward, but Jim called again: 'Steady! Keep to a trot. There are still many hours of daylight ahead of us. Don't burn up the horses!'
In a wide line abreast they swept the veld, and the muskets began to boom out as they overtook the running warriors. Most of the Nguni had thrown away their weapons and lost their headdresses. When they heard the steady pounding of the hoofs coming up behind them, they ran until their legs gave way. Then they knelt in the grass and waited like dumb animals for the blast of goose-shot.
'I cannot do this,' Louisa called desperately to Jim.
'Then tomorrow they will return and do it to you,' he warned her.
Smallboy and his men revelled and rejoiced in the slaughter. The herd- boys had to replenish their powder flasks, and refill the shot-bags. Bakkat waved the head of Manatasee on high, and shrieked with excitement as he rode down on another isolated bunch of demoralized warriors.
'He's a bloodthirsty hobgoblin,' Louisa muttered, as they followed him. But when the Nguni saw the head of their queen they wailed with despair and threw themselves down in attitudes of surrender.
Ahead of the line of avenging riders rose another series of low, rolling hills, and it was towards these that the remnants of the broken imp is were flying. Jim would not allow his men to increase their pace, and as they rode up towards the crest at a steady trot the musket fire had dwindled: the imp is were scattering away to the horizon, and offered few targets.
Jim and Louisa reined in on the crest and looked down into a wide strath, a gently sloping valley through which another river meandered. Its banks were forested with magnificent trees, and open grass meadows lay beneath them. The air was blue with smoke from the fires of a vast encampment. Hundreds of small thatched huts were laid out on the grassland with military precision. They were deserted. What remained of the imp is had fled: the tail end of the army disappearing over the far rise of the valley.
Manatasee's camp!'
