imagined the tusks stacked high, and tried to estimate the value of such a treasure. 'In the name of the black angel, this is another great fortune to match the Plundered herds of cattle.'
He turned and strode out of the shed. 'Sergeant!' he bellowed. Sergeant Oudeman, get the men mounted up. Kick the brown backsides
of our Arab friends. We ride at once. We must catch Jim Courtney before he reaches the coast and comes under the protection of the guns on his father's ships.'
They rode eastwards along the spoor of the cattle herds, a beaten roadway almost a mile wide, along which the cattle had grazed and trodden down the grass.
'A blind man could follow this on a moonless night,' Koots told Kadem, who rode beside him.
'What a fine bait this piglet of the great hog will make for our trap,' Kadem agreed, with grim determination. They expected to come up with the wagons and the herds of plundered cattle at any moment. However, day succeeded day, and although they rode hard and Koots took every opportunity to spy out the land ahead through his telescope they caught no glimpse of either cattle or wagons.
Each day Xhia assured them that they were gaining rapidly. From the sign he was able to tell Koots that Jim Courtney was hunting for elephant while his caravan was on the march.
'This is slowing him down?' Koots asked.
'No, no, he hunts far ahead of the wagons.'
'Then we can surprise the caravan while he is not with them to defend them.'
'We have to catch up with them first,' said Kadem, and Xhia cautioned Koots that if they approached Jim Courtney's caravan too closely before they were ready to attack it, Bakkat would immediately discover their presence. 'In just the same way as I discovered that these brown baboons,' he indicated Kadem and his Arabs disdainfully, 'were creeping up on us. Although Bakkat is no match for Xhia, the mighty hunter, in stealth and wizard-craft, neither is he a fool. I have seen his footprints and his sign where he swept his back trail every evening before the wagons went into camp.'
'How do you know it is Bakkat's sign?' Koots demanded.
'Bakkat is my enemy, and I can pick out his footprints from those or any other man that walks this land.' Then Xhia pointed out other circumstances that Koots had not taken into consideration before. The signs showed clearly that Jim Courtney had made other additions to his retinue apart from the herds of captured cattle: men, many men Xhia thought there were at least fifty and that there might be as many as a hundred additional men to face them when they attacked the wagons. Xhia had employed all his genius and wizardry to determine the character and condition of these new men.
'They are big, proud men. That I can tell by the manner in which they carry themselves, by the size of their feet and the length of their
stride,' he told Koots. 'They bear arms and are freemen, not captives or slaves. They follow Somoya willingly and they guard and care for his herds. It comes to me that these are Nguni who will fight like warriors.' Koots was learning from experience that it was best to accept the little Bushman's opinion. So far he had never been wrong in such matters.
With such quantity and quality of reinforcements added to the hard core of mounted musketeers, Jim Courtney had now mustered a formidable force which Koots dared not underestimate.
'We are outnumbered many times over. It will be a hard fight.' Koots weighed these new odds.
'Surprise,' said Kadem. 'We have the element of surprise. We can choose our time and place to attack.'
'Yes,' Koots agreed. By this time his opinion of the Arab as a warrior had been much enhanced. 'We must not waste that advantage.'
Eleven days later they came to the brink of a deep escarpment. There were tall snow-capped mountain peaks to the south, but ahead the land dropped away steeply in a confusion of hills, valleys and forest. Koots dismounted and steadied his spyglass on Xhia's shoulder. Then, suddenly, he shouted aloud as he picked out in the blue distance the even bluer tint of the ocean. 'Yes!' he cried. 'I was right all along. Jim Courtney is headed for Nativity Bay to join up with his father's ships. That is the coast less than a hundred leagues ahead.' Before he could fully articulate his satisfaction at having pursued the quest so far, something even more compelling caught Koots's eye.
In the wide expanse of land and forest below him he descried drifts of pale dust dispersed over a wide area, and when he turned the glass on these clouds he saw beneath them the movement of the massed herds of cattle, slow and dark as spilled oil spreading on the carpet of the veld.
'Mother of Satan!' he cried. 'There they are! I have them at last.' With a mighty effort he checked his warlike instinct to ride down on them immediately. Instead he cautioned himself to consider all the circumstances and eventualities that he and Kadem had discussed so earnestly over the past days.
They are moving slowly, at the speed of the grazing herds. We can afford the time to rest our own men and horses and prepare ourselves for the attack. In the meantime I will send Xhia ahead to scout Jim Courtney's dispositions, to learn his line of march, the character of his new men, and the order of battle of his horsemen.' ( Kadem nodded agreement as he surveyed the ground below them. We might circle out ahead and lie in ambush. Perhaps in a narrow pass through the hills or at a river crossing. Order Xhia to have an eye for a Place such as that.'
'Whatever happens, we must not let them join up with the ships that might already be waiting for them in Nativity Bay,' said Koots. 'We must attack before that happens, or we will be facing cannon and grapeshot as well as muskets and spears.'
Koots lowered the telescope, and grabbed Xhia by the scruff of his neck to impress upon him the seriousness of his orders. Xhia listened earnestly, and understood at least every second word that Koots growled at him.
'I will find you here when I return,' Xhia agreed, when Koots ended his harangue. Then he trotted away down the escarpment wall without looking back. He did not have to make any further preparations for the task ahead of him, for Xhia carried upon his sturdy back every possession he owned.
It was a little before noon when he set out, and late afternoon before he was close enough to the cattle herds to hear their distant lowing. He was careful to cover his own sign, and not to approach any closer. Despite his braggadocio he held Bakkat's powers in high respect. He circled round the herds to find the exact position of Somoya's wagons. The cattle had trodden the tracks and confused the sign, so it was difficult even for him to read as much from them as he wanted.
He came up level with the wagons but a league out to the north of their line of march when suddenly he stopped. His heart began to pound like the hoofbeats of a galloping herd of zebra. He stared down at the dainty little footprint in the dust.
'Bakkat,' he whispered. 'My enemy. I would know your sign anywhere, for it is imprinted on my heart.'
All Koots's orders and exhortations were wiped from his mind and he concentrated all his powers on the spoor. 'He goes quickly and with purpose. In a straight line, not pausing or hesitating. He shows no caution. If ever I can surprise him, this is the day.'
Without another thought he turned aside from his original purpose and followed the tracks of Bakkat, whom he hated above all else in his world.
In the early morning Bakkat heard the honey-guide. It was fluttering in the treetops, chittering and uttering that particular whirring sound that could mean only one thing. His mouth watered.
'I greet you, my sweet friend,' he called, and ran to stand beneath the tree in which the drab little bird was performing its seductive gyrations. Its movements became more frenzied when it saw that it had attracted Bakkat's attention. It left the branch on which it was displaying and flitted to the next tree.
Bakkat hesitated, and glanced round at the square of wagons laagered at the edge of the forest on the far side of the glade, a mile away. If he were to take the time to run back merely to tell Somoya where he was going, the bird might become discouraged and fly away before he returned. Somoya might forbid him to follow it. Bakkat smacked his lips: he could almost taste the sweet, viscous honey on his tongue. He lusted for it. 'I will not be away long,' he consoled himself. 'Somoya will not even know that I am gone. He and Welanga are probably playing with their little wooden dolls.' This was Bakkat's opinion of the carved chessmen that so often occupied the couple to the exclusion of everything around them. Bakkat ran after the bird.
The honey-guide saw him coming and sang to him as it flitted on to the next tree, then the next. Bakkat sang as he followed: 'You lead me to sweetness, and I love you for it. You are more beautiful than the sunbird, wiser than the owl, greater than the eagle. You are the lord of all birds.' Which was not true, but the honey-guide would be flattered to hear it.
Bakkat ran through the forest for the rest of that morning, and in the noonday when the forest sweltered in the heat, and all the animals and birds were silent and somnolent, the bird stopped at last in the top branches of a tam bootie tree, and changed its melody.
Bakkat understood what it was telling him: 'We have arrived. This is the place of the hive, and it overflows with golden honey. Now you and I will eat our fill.'
Bakkat stood beneath the tam bootie and threw back his head as he peered upwards. He saw the bees,
