A Falcon Flies (59 page)

Most evenings they could cut teeth and, having buried them, carry the bleeding heart to where they had left the porters, two men to carry the forty-pound hunk of raw flesh slung on a pole between them, a feast for the whole party. Because of the hunt, progress was slow and not always direct, but steadily Zouga identified and passed the landmarks that his father had described.

Then at last, knowing he was close, Zouga withstood the temptation to hunt, for the first time refusing to follow the fresh spoor of three fine bulls, and disappointing Jan Cheroot most grievously by doing so.

‘You should never leave a good elephant, or a warm and willing lady,' he advised dolefully, ‘because you never know where or when you are going to meet the next one.'

Jan Cheroot did not yet know the new object of their quest and Zouga's behaviour puzzled him. Zouga often caught him watching him with a quizzical sparkle in his bright little slitty eyes, but he avoided the direct question diplomatically and accepted Zouga's orders to abandon the spoor with only a little further grumbling, and they went on.

It was the porters who first baulked. Zouga never knew how they guessed, perhaps old Karanga had spoken of the Umlimo around the camp fire, or perhaps it was part of their tribal lore, although the gunbearers and most of the porters were from the Zambezi many hundreds of miles to the north. Yet Zouga had learned enough of Africa by now to recognize the strange, almost telepathic knowledge of far events and places. Whatever it was, and however they had acquired forewarning, there were thorns in the porters' feet for the first time in months.

At first Zouga was angry, and would have lived up to his nickname of ‘Bakela', the Fist, but then he realized that their reluctance to continue towards the range of bald hills that showed above the horizon was confirmation that he was on a hot scent and close to his goal.

In camp that night, he drew Jan Cheroot aside and, speaking in English, explained what he was seeking and where. He was unprepared for the sickly expression that slowly spread over Jan Cheroot's wizened yellow features.

‘
Nie wat! Ik lol nie met daai goed nie
!' The little Hottentot was driven in his superstitious terror to fall back on the bastard Cape Dutch. ‘No what! I don't mess around with that sort of thing,' he repeated in English, and Zouga smiled tauntingly across the camp fire at him.

‘Sergeant Cheroot, I have seen you run, with a bare backside, right up to a wounded bull elephant, and wave your hat to turn him when he charged.'

‘Elephants,' said Jan Cheroot without returning the smile, ‘is one thing. Witches is another thing.' Then he perked up and twinkled like a mischievous gnome.

‘Somebody must stay with the porters or they'll steal our traps and run for home.'

Zouga left them camped near a muddy little water-hole, within an hour's march of the northernmost granite kopje. At the water-hole he filled the big enamelled water bottle, and wet its thick covering of felt to keep the contents cool, slung a freshly charged powder sack on one hip and a food bag on the other, and, with the heavy smooth-bore elephant gun over his shoulder set out alone while the shadows were still long on the earth, and the grass wet with the dew.

T
he hills ahead of him were rounded domes of pearly grey granite, smooth as a bald man's pate and completely free of vegetation. As he trudged towards them across the lightly forested plain, his spirit quailed at the task ahead of him.

With each step the hills seemed to rise higher and steeper, the valleys between them deeper and more sheer, the thorny bush that choked the gorges and ravines more dense. It could take months to search all of this broken wilderness, and he did not have a guide as his father had had. Yet, in the end, it was so easy that he was irritated with his own lack of foresight.

His father had written in the journals ‘Even Mzilikazi, that sanguine tyrant, sends gifts for her oracle.'

He struck the well-defined road, leading out of the west, broad enough for two men to walk along it, and aimed directly into the maze of smooth, granite hills. It could only be the road used by the emissaries of the Matabele king.

It led Zouga up the first gentle slope of ground, and then turned abruptly into one of the gorges between peaks. The path narrowed, and jinked between huge round granite boulders, the bush so thick on each side that he had to duck below the thorny branches that interlinked to form a gloomy tunnel overhead.

The valley was so deep that the sunlight did not penetrate to the floor, but the heat was thrown out by the granite as though it had been baked in an open fire, and the sweat soaked Zouga's shirt and slid in cool, tickling drops down his flanks. The bush thinned and the valley narrowed, and then pinched out into a narrow neck between the converging rock walls. It was a natural gateway where a few good spearsmen could have held a regiment. On a ledge high above was a small thatched watch hut, and beside it an idle blue tendril of smoke rising from a watchfire into the still hot air. But if there had been a guard he had deserted his post at Zouga's approach.

Zouga grounded the butt of his elephant gun, and leaned upon it to rest from the climb and at the same time surreptitiously to search the cliffs above him for a hidden enemy, or for the spot from which one could send the familiar boulders bounding and clanging down upon him.

The gorge was silent, hot and deserted. There was not even the chittering of birds or the murmur of insects in the undergrowth. The silence was more oppressive than the heat, and Zouga threw back his head and hallooed up at the deserted watch hut.

The echoes, boomed grotesquely back and forth across the gorge, and then descended through confused whispers to the same foreboding silence. The last white man to pass this way was the Sword of God, in person, intent on decapitating the oracle, Zouga thought bitterly. He could not expect a hero's welcome.

He shouldered the gun again and went into the natural granite gateway, his instinct telling him that the bold approach was the only one open to him. The narrow passageway was floored with crunching grey sand, full of mica chips that sparkled like diamonds even in the subdued light. The passage curved gently until he could see neither the entrance behind him nor the end of it. He wanted to hurry, for this was like a cage, or a trap, but he controlled his feet and showed neither fear nor indecision in his tread.

Around the curve the passageway fanned open, and from one wall a small freshet rippled down the granite cliff, spilled with a tiny liquid gurgle into a natural basin of rock and then overflowed to run down into the hidden valley beyond. Zouga came out of the natural gateway and paused again to stare about him. It was a pleasant valley, probably a mile long and half as wide. The rivulet watered it, and the grass was cool green.

In the centre of the valley was a huddle of neatly thatched huts, around which scratched a few scrawny fowls. He went down to them. The huts were all deserted, although there was everywhere evidence of very recent occupation, even the porridge in the cooking pot was still hot.

Three of the largest huts were crammed with treasures, leather bags of salt, tools and weapons of iron, ingots of smelted red copper, a pile of small ivory tusks, and Zouga guessed that these were the tributes and gifts sent by petitioners and supplicants to the oracle. Payments made for her intercession with the rain gods, fees for a spell cast upon an enemy, or to soften a coquette's heart.

The fact that these treasures were left unguarded was proof of the Umlimo's power, and her own belief in that power. However, if Fuller Ballantyne's journal was the truth ‘the foul and midnight hag' as he referred to her was long ago dead, and her severed skull crunched by the hyenas or bleaching somewhere in the hot African sun.

Zouga stooped out through the low entrance of the last hut, into the sunlight once more. He called again, but again there was no answer. There were people here, many of them, but to make contact with them, and then to learn from them the location of the ‘burial place of the kings' was going to be more difficult than he expected.

Leaning on the long gun he turned his attention to the steep side of the valley, and again it was the pathway that caught his eye and led it to the entrance of the cave. For the path continued beyond the village, running down the centre of the valley and climbed the far slope of the valley, then came to an abrupt end against the granite cliff. The mouth of the cave was low and wide, a narrow horizontal gash in the base of the cliff like a toad's mouth and the path led directly into it.

Zouga climbed the gentle slope to the cave entrance. He had left his food bag and water bottle at the village, and, lightly burdened, he strode upwards, tall and lithe, his beard sparkling like gold thread in the sunlight, so that any hidden watcher could not have doubted that this was a chieftain and warrior to treat with respect.

He reached the cave entrance and checked, not from fatigue, for the climb had not taxed him, but merely to take his bearings. The cave entrance was a hundred paces or so wide, and the roof so low that he could reach up and touch the rough rock.

There was a guard wall built to close off the opening, a wall of dressed granite blocks, fitted so closely that it would have been impossible to drive a knife blade between the joints, clearly the work of skilled masons, but done long ago for in places the wall had tumbled, the blocks piled upon each other in disarray.

The path led into one of these gaps, and disappeared into the gloom beyond. It was a most unwelcoming entrance. Going in he would have the light at his back, and his eyes would be unaccustomed to the poor light, there would be many places where a man could wait with spear or axe. Zouga felt his first ardour cooling as he peered into that forbidding opening, and he called again in the Matabele language.

‘I come in peace!'

He was answered almost immediately, in a childish piping voice speaking the same language, close behind his shoulder, so close that his heart tripped, and he whirled.

‘White is the colour of mourning and death,' piped the voice, and Zouga looked about him in confusion. There was no child, no human, no animal even, the valley behind him was deserted, silent. The voice had emanated from the very air.

Zouga felt his mouth drying, and the skin on his forearms and at the base of his skull crawled with the loathsome little insects of fear, and while he stared another voice screeched from the cliff above him.

‘White is the colour of war.'

It was the voice of an old woman, a very old woman, quavering and shrill. Zouga's heart jumped again, and then raced as he looked up. The cliff face was bare and smooth. His heart was fluttering against his ribs like a trapped bird, and his breath rasped and sawed in his throat.

‘White is the colour of slavery,' sang a young girl's voice, filling the air about his head, having no direction and no substance, sweet and liquid as the burble of running water.

‘She spoke in the voices of Belial and Beelzebub, the hideous voices of Azazel and Beliar, all Satan's myriad alter-egos,' his father had written, and Zouga felt the slow leaden spread of superstitious terror weighing down his legs.

Another voice, roaring like a bull, boomed from the mouth of the cave. ‘The white eagle has cast down the stone falcons.'

He took a long slow breath, to bring his mutinous body under control, and he cast his mind back deliberately to a childhood memory. Brighton pier on August bank holiday, the small boy clutching his Uncle William's hand and staring up in wonder at the magician on the stage who made a doll come to life and speak in a quaint piping voice, answering the voice from the box too small to contain even a rabbit. The memory steadied him, and he laughed. It was a clear firm laugh, surprising himself even.

‘Keep your tricks for the children, Umlimo. I come in peace to speak with you as a man.'

There was no reply, though he thought he caught the silken whisper of bare feet on stone, coming from the darkness beyond the turned stone wall.

‘See me, Umlimo! I lay aside my weapons.'

He unslung the powder bag and dropped it at his feet, and then he laid the elephant gun across it and holding his empty hands before him advanced slowly into the cave.

As he reached the step in the wall, there was the crackling spitting snarl of an angry leopard from the shadows just ahead of him. It was a terrible sound, fierce and real, but Zouga had himself in hand now. He did not miss a pace but stooped under the sill through the gap, and straightened on the far side.

He waited for a minute while his eyes adjusted, and he could make out shapes and planes in the gloom. There were no other voices or animal sounds. There was a faint source of light somewhere ahead of him in the depths of the cave, and he could now make out a way amongst the scree and fallen rock that choked the cave, in some places as high as the low roof.

Zouga began to pick his way carefully forward. The light grew stronger, and Zouga realized that it was a single beam of sunlight, shining through a narrow crack in the roof.

Looking up, he stumbled and put out a hand to save himself. It was not rock that he touched but something sticklike that moved beneath his touch. There was a rattle, and a loose dry rush of debris. Zouga caught his balance and glanced down. A disembodied human skull gaped up at him from empty black eye sockets, the cheekbones still covered with a parchment of dried skin.

With a jolting little shock Zouga realized that what he had taken for loose scree and rock was instead piles of human remains, dried and desiccated corpses, lying in mounds and heaps, choking the passages and deepest recesses of the cave, here and there a single body, crouched or sprawled alone, bone shining dully from gaps in its covering of dark dried skin or through the rotting leather garments.

‘That reeking charnel house,' Fuller Ballantyne had called it.

Instinctively Zouga wiped the hand that had touched the long-dead skeleton, and then went on towards the light. There was the smell of smoke now, and of human presence, and another sweet mousy odour that was hauntingly familiar but which Zouga could not place at that moment. The floor of the cave sloped downwards under his feet, and he turned a rocky shoulder and looked down into a small natural amphitheatre, with a floor of smooth granite.