Suddenly the flames burned up strongly and touched the trailing edges of the long velvet drapes that covered the windows.
Still kneeling before the stone statue, Jordan coughed as the first wisps of smoke enveloped him. He was mildly surprised that, after the first burning sting of it in his lungs, there was so very little pain. The image of the falcon high above him slowly receded, dimmed by the tears that filled Jordan's eyes and by the dense swirling curtains of smoke.
The flames made a low drumming roar as they caught on the wooden panelling and shot to the ceiling. One of the heavy drapes burned through, and as it fell it spread open like the wings of an immense vulture. The fiery wings of thick velvet covered Jordan's kneeling figure and their weight bore him face down to the marble floor.
Already asphyxiated by the dense blue smoke, he did not even struggle and within seconds the mound of crumpled velvet was transformed into a funeral pyre, and the flames reached up Joyously to lick against the base of the stone falcon in its high niche.
Bazo has come down from the place of the Umlimo at last,' Isazi said quietly, and Ralph could not contain 'Bhimself.
'Are you sure of this?' he demanded eagerly, and Isazi nodded.
'I have sat at the camp-fires of his impi, and with my own eyes have seen him, with the bullet scars shining like medals of silver upon his chest, with my own ears I have heard him harangue his amadoda, steeling them for the fighting which lies ahead.' 'Where is he, Isazi?
Tell me where I can find him.' 'He is not alone.' Isazi was not about to spoil the dramatic impact of his report by prematurely divulging the bare bones of fact. 'Bazo has with him the witch, who is his woman. if Bazo is warlike, then this woman, Tanase, the favourite of the dark -spirits, is bold and ruthless, driven by such bloody cruelty that the amadoda when they look upon her beauty shudder as though it is an unspeakable ugliness.' 'Where are they?' Ralph repeated.
'Bazo has with him the wildest and most reckless of the young indunas, Zama and Kamuza, and they have brought their amadoda, three thousand of the fiercest and finest. With Bazo and Tanase at their head, these imp is are as dangerous as the gut-stabbed lion, as deadly as the old bull buffalo circling in thick cover to lay for the unwary hunter-' 'God damn you, Isazi, we have waited long enough.' Ralph snarled at him. 'Tell me where he is.' Isazi looked pained and deliberately took a little snuff. His eyes watered, then he sneezed delectably and wiped his nostrils on the palm of his hand.
'Gandang and Babiaan and Somabula are not with him Isazi took up his recital precisely at the point where Ralph had so boorishly interrupted him. 'I listened while the amadoda spoke of an indaba held many weeks back at the valley of the Umlimo. They say that the old indunas decided to wait for the divine intervention of the spirits, to leave the road southwards open for the white men to leave Matabeleland and to sit upon their shields until these things come to pass.' Ralph made a gesture of disgusted resignation. 'Do not hurry in your telling of it, wise one,' he encouraged Isazi with weighted sarcasm. 'Do not spare us the smallest detail.' Isazi nodded seriously, but his dark eyes sparkled and he tugged at his little goatee beard to prevent himself grinning. 'The bellies of the old indunas are cooling, they recall the Shangani and Bembesi battlefields. Their spies report that the laager here at Bulawayo is guarded by the three legged guns. I tell you, Henshaw, that Bazo is the serpent's head. Cut it off and the body dies.' Isazi nodded sagely.
'Now will you tell me where Bazo is, my brave and wise old friend?' Isazi nodded again in appreciation of Ralph's change of tone.
'He is very close,' Isazi said. 'Not two hours' march from where we sit.' Isazi made a wide gesture that took in the darkened laager About them. 'He lies with his three thousand amadoda in the Valley of the Goats.' Ralph looked up at the segment of old moon that hung low down in the sky.
'Four days to new moon,' he murmured. 'If Bazo plans to attack the laager here, then it will be in the dark of the moon.' 'Three thousand men,' Harry Mellow murmured. 'There are fifty of us.' 'Three thousand. The Moles and the Insukamini and the Svmmers-' Sergeant Ezra shook his head. 'As Isazi has said, the fiercest and the finest.' 'We will take them,' said Ralph Ballantyne calmly. 'We will take them in the Valley of the Goats, two nights from now, and here is the way we will do it.-' Bazo, son of Gandang, who had denied his father and defied the greater indunas of Kumalo, passed from one watch-fire to the next and beside him moved the slim and exquisitely graceful figure of his woman,'Tanase. Bazo reached the fire and stood tall above it. The flames lit his features from below, so that the cavities of his eyes were black caverns in the depths of which his eyes glinted like the coils of a deadly reptile. The light of the camp-fire picked out in harsh detail every line and crease that suffering had riven into his face. Around his forehead was bound the simple strip of mole-skin, he did not need the feathers of heron and paradise widow birds to place the seal upon his majesty. The firelight glinted upon the great muscles of his chest and arms and his scars were the only regalia of honour that he wore.
Tanase's beauty was even more poignant when seen beside his ravaged features. Her naked breasts were strangely incongruous in these warlike councils, but beneath their satiny swelling they were hard as battle-forged muscle, and the sudden thrust of her nipples puckered and darkened, large as the first joint of a man's little finger, were like the bosses in the centre of a war-shield.
As she stood at Bazo's shoulder in the firelight, her gaze was as fierce as any warrior there, and she looked up at her husband with a ferocious pride as he began to speak.
'I offer you a choice' Bazo said. 'You can remain as you are, the dogs of the white men. You can stay as amah oh the lowliest of slaves, or you can become once again Amadoda. His voice was strained, it seemed to rumble up out of his throat, but it rang clearly to the highest part of the natural rocky amphitheatre, and the dark masses of warriors that filled the bowl stirred and sighed at the words.
'The choice is yours, but it 'must be made swiftly. This morning I have received runners from the south.' Bazo paused, and his listeners craned forward. There were three thousand of them squatting in massed ranks, but there was no sound from them as they waited for Bazo's next words.
'You have heard the fainthearted tell you that if we do not dispute the southern road, then the white men that are in Bulawayo will pack their wagons, take their women and go meekly down that road to the sea.' Still not a sound from the listening warriors.
'They were wrong and now they are proven so. Lodzi has come,' said Bazo, and there was a sigh like the wind in the grass.
'Lodzi has come,' Bazo repeated. 'And with him the soldiers and the guns. They gather now at the head of the iron road that Henshaw built. Soon, very soon, they will begin the march up the road which we have left open for them. Before the new moon is half grown to its full, they will be in Bulawayo, and then you will truly be aniahoh.
You and your sons and their sons will toil in the white men's mines and herd the white men's herds.' There was a growl, like a leopard when first it is roused, and it shook the dark ranks until Bazo lifted high the hand that held his silver assegai.
'That is not to be. The Umlimo has promised us that this land will once again belong to us, but it is our task to make this prophecy into reality. The gods do not favour those who wait for fruit to fall from the tree into their open mouths. My children, we will shake the tree.' 'Jee!' said a single voice from the massed ranks, and immediately the humming war chant was taken up by them all.
'Jee!' sang Bazo, stamping his right foot and stabbing the broad blade towards the moonless, sky, and his men sang with him.
Tanase stood still as an ebony carving beside him, but her lips were parted softly, and her huge slanted eyes glowed like moons in the firelight.
At last Bazo spread his arm again, and waited for their silence.
'Thus it will be,' he said, and again the waiting warriors strained for every word. 'First we will eat up the laager at Bulawayo.
It has always been the way of the Matabele to fall upon their enemy at that hour before the dawn, just before the first light of day. - ' the warriors hummed softly in assent. -'and the white men know this is our way,' Bazo went on. 'Every morning, in the last deep darkness they stand to their guns, waiting for the leopard to walk into their trap.
The Matabele always come before dawn, they tell each other.
Always! they say, but I tell you that this time it will be different, my children.' Bazo paused and looked carefully into the faces of the men who squatted in the front rank.
'This time it will be in the hour before midnight, at the rise of the white star from the east.' Standing before them in the old way, Bazo gave them their order of battle, and squatting in the black mass of half, naked bodies, his bare shoulders touching those of the and una on each side of him, his hair covered by the feather headdress and his face and body plastered with the mixture of fat and soot, Ralph Ballantyne listened to the detailed instructions.
'At this season, the wind will rise with the rise of the white star. It will come from the east, so from the east we will come also.
Each one of you will carry upon his head a bundle of thatch grass and the green leaves of the ms asa trees,' Bazo told them, and anticipating what was to come, Ralph felt the nerve ends in his fingertips tingle with the shock.
'A smoke-screen,' he thought.
