drank fine Constantia wine and ate cold Cornish pasties, while Jan Cheroot waited upon them and regaled them with anecdotes and reminiscences of the exploits of Ballantyne's Scouts.
'There were none like us,'he declared modestly. 'Ballantyne's Scouts! The Matabele learned to know us well.' 'Oh, don't let's talk about war, 'Louise pleaded.
But Zouga asked with good-natured sarcasm, 'What happened to all your heroes? The war still goes on, and we need men like you.' 'Master Ralph changed,' said Jan Cheroot, darkly. 'He changed just like that.'
He snapped his fingers. 'From the day we caught Bazo at the Valley of the Goats, he wasn't interested any more. He never rode with the Scouts again, and within a week he had gone back to the railhead to finish building his railway. They say he will drive the first train into Bulawayo before Christmas, that's what they say.' 'Enough!' Louise declared. 'It's our first day at King's Lynn in almost a year. I will not have another word of war. Pour some wine, Jan Cheroot, and take a little sip for yourself.' Then she turned to Zouga 'Darling, can't we leave Bulawayo and come back here?' Zouga shook his head regretfully.
'I'm sorry, my love. I could not risk your precious life. The Matabele are still in rebellion, and this is so isolated-' From the back of the house came the sudden shriek and cackle of alarmed poultry.
Zouga broke off and jumped to his feet. As he reached for his rifle propped against the wall, he said softly but urgently, 'Jan Cheroot, go around the back of the stables. I'll come from the other side. 'Then to Louise, 'Wait here, but be ready to run for the horses if you hear a shot.' And the two men slipped silently away down the veranda.
Zouga reached the corner of the wall below the main bedroom, just as there was another storm of squawks and cackles, and the beating of wings. He ducked around the corner, and sprinted down the thick whitewashed walls that protected the kitchen yard, and flattened himself beside the gate. Above the cacophony of terrified chickens and the flapping of wings, he heard a voice say, 'Hold that one! Do not let it go!'. The voice was Matabele, and almost immediately a halfnaked figure ducked through the doorway beside Zouga, carrying a chicken in each hand.
One thing only prevented Zouga firing. The pendulous bare breasts that flapped against the Matabele's ribs as she ran. Zouga smashed the butt of his rifle between the woman's shoulders, knocking her to the earth, and he leaped over her body into the kitchen yard.
Beside the kitchen door stood Jan Cheroot. He held his rifle in one hand and in the other the skinny, naked, struggling body of a small black boy.
'Shall I knock his head in? 'Jan Cheroot asked.
'You are no longer a member of Ballantyne's Scouts,' Zouga told him. 'Just keep a hold on him, but don't hurt him. 'And he turned back to examine his own prisoner.
She was an elderly Matabele woman, almost on the point of starvation. She must once have been a big heavily fleshed woman, for her skin hung loosely upon her in folds and wrinkles. Once those breasts must have been the size of water melons, and almost bursting with fat, but now they were empty pouches that dangled almost to her navel. Zouga caught her wrist and hauled her to her feet. He marched her back into the kitchen yard, and he could clearly feel the bones of her arm through the wasted flesh.
Jan Cheroot was still holding the boy, and now Zouga studied him briefly. He also was skeletally thin, each rib and each knob of his spine poked through the skin, and his head seemed too big for his body, and his eyes too big for his head.
'Little bugger is starving,' said Zouga
'That's one way of getting rid of them,' Jan Cheroot agreed, and at that moment Louise stepped into the kitchen doorway with the rifle still in her hand, and her expression changed the instant she saw the black woman.
'Juba,' she said. 'Is that you, Juba?' 'Oh Balela,' the Matabele woman whimpered. 'I had thought never to see the sunshine of your face again.' 'What now!' said Zouga grimly. 'We have caught ourselves a pretty prize, Jan Cheroot. The senior wife of the great and noble and una Gandang, and this puppy must be his grandson! I didn't recognize either of them, they are on their last legs.' Tungata Zebiwe sat in his grandmother's bony lap and ate with a quiet frenzy, the total dedication of a starving animal. He ate the extra Cornish pasties from the picnic basket, then he ate the crusts that Zouga had left. Louise searched the saddlebags and found a battered tin of bully, and the child ate that also, stuffing the rich fatty meat into his mouth with both hands.
'That's right,' said Jan Cheroot sourly. 'Fatten him up now, so we have to shoot him later.' And he went off sulkily to saddle the horses for the return to Bulawayo.
'Juba, little Dove,' Louise asked, 'are all the children like this?' 'The food is finished, 'Juba nodded. 'All the children are like this, though some of the little ones are dead already.' 'Juba is it not time that we women put an end to the foolishness of our men, before all the children are dead?' 'It is time, Balela,'Juba agreed. 'Time and past time.' 'Who is this woman? 'Mr Rhodes asked, in that exasperated high-pitched voice that betrayed his agitation, and he peered at Zouga His eyes seemed to have taken a new prominence as though they were being squeezed out of his skull.
'She is the senior wife of Gandang.' 'Gandang he commanded the impi that massacred Wilson's patrol on the Shangani?' 'He was a half-brother to Loberigula. With Babiaan and Somabula he is the senior of all the indunas.' 'I don't suppose there is anything to lose by talking to them,' Mr. Rhodes shrugged. 'This business will destroy us all if it goes on much longer. Tell this woman to take a message back that the indunas must lay down their arms and come in to Bulawayo.'
'I'm sorry, Mr. Rhodes,' Zouga told him. 'They won't do that. They have had an indaba in the hills, all the indunas have spoken, and there is only one way.' 'What is that, Ballantyne?' 'They want you to go to them.' 'personally?' Mr. Rhodes asked softly.
'We will speak only to Lodzi, and he must come to us unarmed. He must come into the Matopos without the soldiers. He may bring three other men with him, but none of them must carry a weapon. If they do, we kill them immediately.' Zouga repeated the message that Juba had brought out of the hills for him, and Mr. Rhodes closed his eyes and covered them with the palm of his hand. His voice wheezed painfully in his chest, so that Zouga had to lean forward to catch his words.
'In their power,' he said. 'Alone and unarmed, completely in their power.' Mr. Rhodes dropped his hand and stood up. He moved heavily to the opening of the tent. He clasped his hands behind his back, and rocked back on his heels. Outside in the hot dusty noon, a bugle sang the advance, and there was the distant sound of a cavalry troop leaving the laager, hooves and the rattle of lance butts in their hard leather boots.
Mr. Rhodes turned back to Zouga 'Can we afford to trust them?' he asked.
'Can we afford not to, Mr. Rhodes?' They left the horses at the place that had been agreed, in one of the myriad valleys in the granite hills that reared into broken crests and dropped into deep troughs like the frozen surf whipped up by a wild Atlantic gale. Zouga Ballantyne led from there, taking the twisted narrow footpath through dense brush, moving slowly and looking back every few paces at the shambling, bearlike figure that followed him.
When the path began to climb, Zouga stopped and waited for him to regain his breath. Mr. Rhodes' face had taken on a bluish mottled appearance, and he was sweating heavily. However, after only a few minutes, he waved Zouga onwards impatiently.
Close behind Mr. Rhodes followed the two others that the indunas had stipulated. One was a journalist Mr. Rhodes was too much of a showman to miss an opportunity such as this and the other was a doctor, for he realized that the assegais, of the Matabele were not the only threat he faced, on this gruelling journey.
The shimmering heat of the Matopos Hills made the air above the granite surfaces dance and waver as though they were the plates of a wood-fired iron stove. The silence had a cloying suffocating texture that seemed almost tangible, and the sudden sharp bird calls that cut through it every few minutes served only to emphasize its intensity.
The scrub pressed in closely on each side of the track, and once Zouga saw a branch tremble and stir when there was no breeze. He strode on upwards with a measured pace, as though he were leading the guard of honour at a military funeral. The path turned sharply into a vertical crack in the highest point of the granite wall, and here Zouga waited again.
Mr. Rhodes reached him and leaned against the heated granite with his shoulder while he wiped his face and neck with a white handkerchief. He could not speak for many minutes and then he gasped, 'Do you think they. will come, Ballantyne?' Farther down the valley, from the thickest bush, a robin called and Zouga inclined his head to listen. It was almost convincing mimicry.
'They are here before us, Mr. Rhodes. The hills are alive with Matabele,' and he looked for fear in the pale blue eyes. When he found none, he murmured quietly, almost shyly, 'You are a brave man, sir.' 'A pragmatic one, Ballantyne.' And a smile twisted the swollen disease-ravaged face. 'It's always better to talk than to fight.' 'I hope the Matabele agree.' Zouga returned his smile and they went on into the vertical crack in the granite, passing swiftly through shadow into the sunlight once more, and below them was a basin in the granite. It was ringed by high ramparts of broken granite, and bare of any cover.
Zouga looked down into the little circular valley and all his soldier's instincts were offended.
'It's a trap,' he said. 'A natural
