Warrior

Hervey wondered how she knew these things, how the king's favourite, the best-loved of the isigodlo, could be so versed in the lore of the wilderness. He tried to form the question, but he could not summon the words. And at that moment the moon slipped from behind its masking cloud, and lit the veld like an oil lamp brought into a darkened room.

They could see for two hundred yards, for it was flat and treeless. There were grazing animals, but he could not discern what they were. He looked about with all the intent of a scout who finds himself suddenly among the enemy, yet concealed.

Pampata had taken in the prospect at once – and it bore no fears for her. But she saw that he rested on one hand, and knew at once the reason. She began examining the wound with her fingers. It spanned the whole of his shoulder blade.

'Only three – you are fortunate. But the leopard's claws are always unclean. You must have medicine.'

Hervey might have smiled. Where did she suppose they would find the surgeon?

She rose and walked off a little way. He watched her casting around, then bending, before returning with a handful of leaves.

'What is that?'

'Umhlaba,' she replied, pulling at his tunic so that he would slip his left arm from the sleeve.

He held her hand to his face so that he could smell the leaves: aloe – he was content.

She crushed them and dabbed the wound with the moist pulp, and he felt the balm at once.

'When the sun rises I will search for ncwadi,' she said, helping him put his arm back into the sleeve. 'And inconi.'

He knew neither word, but trusted in her remedy, for the aloe was already making the wound but an ache. 'Ngibonga kakhulu, Nkosazana . . . Thank you, madam.'

'Nami ngiyabonga, mfowethu . . . I, too, thank you, my brother.'

Hervey could not but feel the warmth of that change in her salutation. 'Ngiyabonga,' he repeated simply.

Pampata nodded. And then, in a little while, said, 'We must sleep.'

Hervey replied that first she should sleep, while he kept watch, and then he would wake her so that he in turn could rest. But Pampata objected. There was nothing here, in the middle of the wilderness, to keep watch on, she said. Besides, if a herd of wild beasts should choose to pass over them, they would hear them and feel the earth tremble, and wake therefore, long before they would see them. And if Mbopa's men were indeed following them, they could not do so when it was dark.

Hervey saw her reasoning, and said he was content. He took off his tunic once more, and made a pillow of it, offering one half to her. She laid down her head without a word. He, facing the opposite direction, laid down his, and, looking up at the stars as he had so many a time, thought for a fleeting moment of Georgiana, of how neglectful was his adventure, chosen or not, then closed his eyes and fell into a deeper sleep than he would have cared to own to.

Pampata woke him gently, with a hand to his sound shoulder. Hervey opened his eyes, and for once he did not instantly comprehend his situation, as invariably he comprehended in the field, alert at the first touch – Johnson's touch, more often than not. The stars had gone, the moon too, but the first fingers of light were stretching up from the eastern horizon, already seeming to bring warmth, and welcome.

He knew now where he was, and he shivered a little. The night had not been cold – not as cold as his first back at the Cape – but the ache in his shoulder was now more insistent, making him feel the need of a blanket. He raised himself on one hand again.

'Ulale kamnandi na?' It was what he had heard the Natal natives ask of him the morning after they had pitched camp ashore.

'Yes,' she replied – she had slept well. Had he?

He said – he thought he was saying – that he had slept so well that he could not believe it had been but the one night.

He began looking about, but keeping his eyes from the east and the growing glare of the breaking day. The veld was as peaceful as it had appeared by moonlight, not even much birdsong, nothing like the chorus that would have accompanied the break of an English day.

Pampata rose. 'Come,' she said, holding out a hand as if to help. 'We must find ncwadi.'

He got up by himself – stiff, but no more so than a hundred times before when he had risen unaided after a sodden night on cold ground. He breathed deep several times, as if the air had some restorative power – which it seemed indeed to have, as if it were somehow washed clean in the dark, silent hours, to begin again another day as pure as those which Adam himself had known.

It was no time for reverie. They had run, perhaps, a quarter of their course, and he supposed it would get no easier, and might very well get harder – much harder. He had not asked her: must they climb many hills, skirt many kraals, cross many rivers? Three times the distance still to go – the doubts began to press upon him.

They had been making tracks for an hour when Pampata at last saw what she was seeking, a small, undistinguished plant which she at once began uprooting.

To Hervey, the ncwadi's bulbous root looked unpromising, but Pampata crushed it first with her teeth, and then ground it in her hands – which she rubbed clean with the unwanted leaves – to make a dressing. Hervey removed his arm from the sleeve once more to let her apply the mulch. This time he felt only pain, however, for there was no balm in the root. Pampata told him it would make the wound clean, for the leopard's claws were always foul. Still, she insisted, they must find the inconi, for that could reverse any poison.

But not immediately, for when he had slipped his arm back into his tunic sleeve he saw – and with some astonishment – that she had in her hand an ostrich egg.