Warrior

'Intshe?' He did not recognize the word.

But Pampata did not look fearful. On the contrary.

'Intshe . . . It is not the best of time, but there may be amaqanda.'

He now saw. How had he not seen so large a bird? And he understood: intshe – ostrich; amaqanda – eggs? Was it the breeding season?

For the next twenty minutes they stalked it: crouching, watching, crawling, dashing, just as he had done as a boy on the Great Plain, the thrill of finding the lark's nest . . . Until at last Pampata was sure, when she rose to her feet and strode purposefully towards a scraping in the earth, perhaps six feet across, in which were eight or nine eggs, some broken, some half buried.

Pampata evidently sensed his puzzlement. 'Many ostriches share the one nest,' she explained.

They rifled the giant clutch as rudely as any wild predator. Pampata discarded several without breaking them; Hervey took one, despite her protest.

He reeled at the stench when he broke it, and threw it as far as he could. Pampata laughed – the first time he had seen her do so.

She handed him another, nodding encouragingly. He drew his sword, wanting to make a better break than the other he had managed. He cracked it cleanly, opened it in two equal halves and gave it back to her. She handed him another, and he broke it the same way.

She let the white trickle away, so that the yolk occupied almost the whole of one half-shell. Despite his hunger, he saw it was no true waste: although there was less yolk than white compared with a hen's egg, he reckoned it was at least the equal of two dozen he would have found in the henhouse in Wiltshire.

They ate their fill.

By the time the shadows were lengthening – longer now than the umbrella thorns which cast them – and the birds of the veld, large and small, were beginning to roost, Hervey calculated they had made not far short of twenty miles. He could feel it in his bones. He had but an elementary knowledge of the human skeleton and its muscles, but he knew where and how a ride across country made its demands, and likewise how that distance on foot told. Pampata showed no sign of the exertion. She seemed, indeed, to be in some sort of trance – not of the kind the witch doctor induced with his potions and spells, as if the body were possessed by some spirit of another place, but instead the product of the most singular concentration of mind (such was her determined intent to reach the kraal of Shaka's beloved). She refused rest. She said they could walk for another two hours before all light was gone, and that in a further three there would be a good moon, and that as long as there were stars to see by, they could continue their march.

Shortly after two o'clock in the morning, Hervey now believing he must insist on rest, for his own as well as Pampata's sake, they came upon a small watercourse set about with lala palms. The moon slipped behind cloud as they stumbled over the thicker tussocks of grass. It had been slipping in and out for the best part of an hour, making the business of marching by the stars ever more difficult, but Pampata had not once faltered in either pace or direction.

Hervey thought this a good place to lie up a while. The shelter of trees was always a recommendation – the soldier's instinct for a roof over his head at night. Pampata was reluctant, however. Already they had startled the roosting birds, which made off with a good deal of noise; and water, she said, especially water at which there were trees, was favoured by the spirits of warriors who had gone home to their Maker. And by nyamakaza, wild beasts.

Hervey tried as best his Xhosa would allow to suggest that the spirits of the warriors would surely approve of their journey, knowing as they must of the murder of the greatest of them (perhaps even the spirit of Shaka himself would be watching them too). And as for nyamakaza, he was ready enough to put a ball into any that had the impudence to challenge them.

But it was pitch dark. Without a moon, under the lala palms, he could make out nothing of Pampata but an indistinct form. He had never been so strangely placed – at the will and capability of a native woman, and one whom he barely knew; yet he was her safeguard, too.

He was just able to see that she stooped to drink. Perhaps she would agree to rest here? He crouched beside her, cupping his hands and taking three good measures from the clear-tasting stream.

The challenge came silent and sudden. The blow pitched him onto all fours, stunned him. And then the snarl so loud, and the breath so hot.

Pampata screamed – but not in fear. She cursed, shrieked, spat, yelled.

The leopard made off as suddenly as it had struck, leaving Hervey grasping for his pistol but not knowing where to point it.

'Come!' hissed Pampata. 'We must leave this place.'

He would not gainsay her.

They stumbled on without moonlight for half an hour, the pain in his left shoulder growing. He could feel the blood down his back – not copious, more a trickle; but a wound nevertheless. How many of the leopard's claws had torn his flesh he could not know until morning, but he knew he had been lucky. In India, a leopard spelled death unless a covering bullet could stop it quickly; and he had no reason to suppose its African cousin was any less deadly.

Pampata knew they must rest. Hervey had not told her the leopard had drawn blood, but she could hear his breathing, and it was laboured. There was a break in the clouds ahead, and it would be good to be halted when the moon lit the veld again, for they would be able to see first, rather than be seen.

They sat down, Hervey supporting himself on his right hand. 'You were brave,' he said, simply.

'I was angry.'

'Why did the leopard go? Was he afraid of a woman's shouts?'

'He was afraid already, before he struck. Afraid we would take his place.'