Shaka the Great (61 page)

“Majesty, I …”

“You will do this for me and not disobey.”

“Very well, Majesty. I … I thank you, Majesty.”

“Hai, you are drinking for me, so
I
thank
you
!”

“That's it, is it?” asks Dingane, after they've walked several paces in silence. “You have looked, you have seen the multitudes, and this is your conclusion?”

Njikiza shrugs.

“This is your considered opinion, that these Thembus are crazy?”

“Can you feel it?” asks Mdlaka, keeping his voice low. “The men are growing ever more restive.”

Mbopa nods. It's more noticeable if you don't turn around and look, for then you'll simply see men standing at ease. Keep your back to them and you're gradually aware of … not fidgeting, not muttering, but a constant churning, a shifting underfoot as if the ground's about to give way. It's as if you can hear the anguished, agitated thoughts not as words, but as a cricket buzz of unease.

“We try their discipline,” says Shaka's prime minister.

“There is no other way.”

“Just as long as it will hold.”

“It'll hold.”

Can you feel it?
Yes, here, too, heads have opened and thoughts and emotions have become as palpable as the sand under their feet, or the dust in their throats.

Only, up here, it's hunger, impatience, disdain that ease their way between the shields, to buffet the Zulus.

And, looming in the distance: the great dome of the Thembu meeting place.

But first this, for Kobo, the Buffalo's chamberlain, is standing just over the threshold of the main gate. He is a lean, pompous-seeming man, the kind who uses his height to gaze down upon one, as if that accident of birth alone confers superiority upon him.

There's no bowing of the head, no elaborate greeting, no acknowledgment he is dealing with one of the Blood. Just: “Welcome, Zulus. The Mighty Masticating Buffalo awaits you.”

To mark the occasion, the avenue has been covered with some kind of fine, silvery-white sand. No footprints sully its surface, which means either servants have followed after Kobo, smoothing his tracks
with branches, or he's come to the main entrance via another route.

So they enter the city, which is really a citadel given its position, with Kobo walking a few paces behind them. The Induna doesn't have to turn round to know the chamberlain has a self-satisfied smirk splattered across his face.

There's just one line of Thembu soldiers on either side of the avenue, but these hold back a mass of people so tightly packed they resemble a big, thick rope. These are the vassals and servants, the Induna surmises, for there's a certain glumness about them that contrasts markedly with the crowd outside. These are people used to being herded, doing what they're told, but they'll never do any more than what's expected of them. If forced to cheer, they'll obey, but the result will be an unenthusiastic imitation of the sound a man might make if he's thrown off a cliff.

Looking down, the Induna realizes there's something familiar about the way this fine, silvery-white sand coats his toes …

“So, do not think like that,” the Induna had told Dingane last night. “See this as a sign of the faith the Bull Elephant has in you. For ultimate success depends on you …”

“And you, old friend, and Njikiza and Radebe. Which is why I have no doubt we'll succeed.” Dingane grinned in the darkness, away from the fires and the picquets. “It's what happens afterward that concerns me.”

Had the Induna ever run so fast? He and Mgobozi and Radebe had arrived the next day, quickening their pace when they saw the birds in the distance, knowing they had to be circling the village, as that was the only human habitation in the vicinity capable of attracting such a hunger of vultures. And the three had set off at a sprint.

A massacre. Ash and smoke, and beaks pulling at rotting flesh. A sense of the world tilting, as the Induna's gaze took in babies piled on top of toddlers; a pregnant woman with her belly ripped open; a graybeard who had had a
stone pressed into each eye; and, as a sure sign they were confronted with the work of Thembus, a preponderance of bodies where the head had been twisted around so that unseeing eyes stared up at you over shoulder blades.

And then the smoke shifted to reveal a slender boy covered in dried blood and dust and soot.

He'd used all his reserves to get himself to this moment, and now it was all draining out of him, and suddenly he could barely put one foot in front of the other. But nothing—nothing!—was going to stop the boy now. And the Induna was on his knees, catching his udibi as the boy fell toward him.

“Aiee, look at that,” whispers Njikiza, meaning the big dome looming ever nearer. “There's a hut that's swallowed every single hut ever built, and is still growing.”

When he fails to get even a chuckle from his companions, he glances to his left, at Radebe, then to his right, where Dingane and the Induna are. All three, he realizes, are trying to examine their feet without being too obvious about it.

The Watcher of the Ford gazes down over his belly, looks up to maintain his bearings, then looks down again … and at last sees what first the Induna, and then Dingane and Radebe have spotted.

A large number of bodies were found to be missing after the massacre. Those tasked with burying the dead and pulling down the rest of the dwellings had assumed these people were burned inside the huts. They were wrong, and the four Zulus have just discovered what happened to the missing dead. They are walking on them.

This is not sand. This is human ash.

Ngoza allows his eyes to rest on each of them in turn. Radebe … the Induna … the Needy One.

“Dingane,” says the ruler of the Thembus. “Dingane KaSenzangakhona …” The Buffalo's tone is soft, ruminative, and his gaze drifts past the prince to rest on a spot outside the hut, a spot only he can see amid the dazzling glare that fills the open section and makes the stout posts seem like slender twigs.

The Induna examines the two men sitting on either side of the chief: Kobo the supercilious chamberlain, and a general called Kingale. Only he's no general, for he's too young, and he has a brooding, almost sullen air about him. He's not even listening to Ngoza. He's watching the Zulus. No, thinks the Induna, not a general but a bodyguard.

Ngoza's head snaps round. “Tell me,” he says, raising his voice to address Dingane, “these stories we hear about your king being illegitimate—are they true?” A smile. “We have heard that your father and his mother weren't married when the Beetle was conceived. And no attempt was ever made to even begin lobola negotiations. What else have we heard, Kobo?”

“Dingiswayo, Sire …”

“Ah, yes! We have heard too that Dingiswayo, that eternal, infernal meddler, sought to bully your father into acknowledging Shaka as his progeny.”

“That is, Senzangakhona's progeny, not Dingiswayo's,” adds Kobo.

“Yes, quite. Doesn't say much for Dingiswayo's opinion of your father, does it? But, then, he was sick at the time, wasn't he?”

Kobo: “Your father.”

Ngoza: “And did the Beetle help him on his way? Did Dingiswayo send him to your father's kraal, fortified with muthi so he might slaughter both your father and Sigujana, who was the rightful heir?”

The Induna knows such stories will never die. They will always be among the footprints Shaka leaves behind. They will be his bastard children: pale, weak and infirm but venerated by those who fear courage and bravery, because those are the things they themselves lack. Dingane must not allow himself to be goaded, taunted …

“How can you know for certain the Beetle really is your brother?” asks Ngoza. “How could your father know for certain that Shaka
was his son? Nandi seduced him—how many others had she done the same thing to?”

“Aiee, Sire, all this talk of mothers and fathers,” chuckles Kobo. “It's hard to imagine him being born!”

“Perhaps one day Nandi lifted a rock.”

“Or perhaps one day her shit moved,” adds the chamberlain.