Men of Men - Smith Wilbur (книги бесплатно без txt) 📗

"Bazo!" The cry reached him, even through his rage, and he turned.

Zama had crawled onto the platform, blown from that long scrambling climb up the swinging twisted ladder.

He rose on his knees and sent the great dappled shield skimming across the platform. Like a falcon coming to bate it settled on Bazo's shoulder, and Bazo laughed and went springing forward.

His assegai drove through the wizard's rotting flesh as though it were soft as a boiled yam, and Pemba screeched one last time.

"Bazo, wait! Leave some of them for us!" The shouts of his fifty Matabele behind him, as they scrambled onto the platform, and then Zama's muscled shoulder was touching his as they locked shields and swept the pathway, the way the flash floods of summer scour the dry riverbeds.

It was a beautiful stabbing, a glory which men would sing about. The assegais seemed to hold their keen edge no matter how often they were buried and the spear arms never tired despite the heavy work. The line of Matabele swept the hilltop from end to end, roaring their frustration when the last of Pemba's men threw down their spears and leapt out over the cliff, grudging them that easy death for the assegais were still thirsty and the madness was still on them.

Then they turned and went back through the village, ransacking the huts, throwing a toddling infant high and catching it on the point as it fell, or sending the steel full length out between the withered dugs of some scurrying crone, for the divine madness does not pass swiftly.

With his shoulder, Bazo smashed open another hut, and Zama leaped in at his side, both of them were painted from throat to knee with red running crimson, their contorted faces hideous, blood-glutted masks. Someone tried to escape from the dark interior of the hut.

"Mine!" roared Zama and sped his long steel, and the low early sun struck a ray through the open doorway, sparkling on Zama's assegai and falling in the same instant on the huge slanted terrified eyes and high Egyptian cheekbones of the girl he was killing.

Zama's steel clashed against Bazo's great shield and was deflected past the girl's cheek by the width of a finger, so that the stroke died in the air. Before Zama could strike again Bazo stood over the girl, spreading the shield over her the way a heron covers its chick with a wing, and he snarled at Zama like a leopard whose cub is menaced.

After the first weary day of the return march, while the long file of roped captives was settling exhausted and miserable beneath the grove of msasa trees, Bazo strode down the line and stopped beside the girl.

"You!"he said, and with a careless stroke of his assegai severed the thong at her neck. "Cook my meal!"

While she worked over the fire, Bazo joked loudly with Zama and his men, trying to prevent his eyes from straying from their faces. He ate what she cooked without showing either pleasure or displeasure, while she knelt at a respectful distance and watched every mouthful he took.

Then suddenly when he had finished eating, she came gliding to his side with that disconcerting silent grace, and she lifted the bunch of wilted leaves from the swollen and crusted spear wound in Bazo's flank.

It was an impertinence, and he lifted his hand to strike her, and then let the hand fall. She had not flinched and her manner was assured and competent.

She cleaned the wound with deft fingers and then she unstoppered two of the little buck-horn containers that she wore on her belt and with the powder they contained made a poultice. It burned like fire for a few seconds, but then felt much easier.

Bazo made no acknowledgement, but when one of his Matabele came to rope her back with the other captives, Bazo frowned, and the man passed her by.

When Bazo lay on his sleeping-mat, she curled like a puppy at his feet. He was ready for her to try to escape once the camp settled, but after midnight she had not stirred and he fell asleep.

In the hour before dawn when he rose to check the sentries, there was frost on the grass, and he heard the girl's teeth chattering softly. He dropped his fur regimental cloak over her as he passed and she cuddled down into it quickly.

When he called for the day's march to begin, she had his bedding roll and cooking-pot balanced on her head, and a dozen times during the march, Bazo had to go back along the winding column for no reason that he could explain to Zama, and each time his steps slowed as he came up behind the girl, and he watched the play of muscle down her back, the roll of her plump black buttocks and the joggle of her glossy sable breasts. But when she turned her head and smiled shyly at him, his hauteur was frosty and he stalked back to the head of the column.

That night he permitted himself a nod of approval at the first taste of her cooking, and when she dressed the wound, he said, "The heat has gone from it."

She did not lift her eyes.

"Who taught you this skill" he insisted.

"Pemba, the wizard," she whispered.

"Why?"

"I was his apprentice."

"Why you?"

"I have the gift."

"So then, little witch, make me an oracle," Bazo laughed, and she lifted her head and he looked into those disconcerting slanted tar-bright eyes.

"Do not scoff, lord."

INKOSI, lord," she called him, but Bazo stopped laughing, and felt the spirits tickle the hair at the nape of his neck. That night, when he heard her shiver, he opened a fold of his kaross and she crept into it.

Bazo feigned sleep, but his body was tense and he was aware of each tiny movement that the girl made as she settled to sleep. It would have been so easy to reach out and hold her down with his arm across her chest while he forced his knee between hers. The thought made him twitch and grunt.

"Lord?" she whispered. "Something troubles you."

"What is your name?" he asked, for want of a reply, and found that he was whispering also.

"Tanase."

He measured it on his tongue, and it fitted "Tanase." well enough, although he recognized it was a Rozwl name, one of the splinter tribes of the Mashona, and he did not know the meaning.

"I know your name, everyone speaks it with respect," she said. "Bazo, the Axe."

"I killed your master, Pemba. I struck him down with my own hand." He did not know what compelled him to say that.

"I know," she whispered.

"Do you hate me for that, little witch?"

"I praise you for that!" Her voice shook with quiet vehemence, and her hip touched his under the kaross.

"Praise? Did you not love Pemba as a dog loves its master?"

"I hated him, and when I foresaw his death in the magic calabash, I was filled with joy."

"You saw his death?"

"I saw his death, as I saw your face, long before you came to take me."

Bazo shuddered involuntarily, and she felt it.

"You are cold, lord." She pressed a little closer to him.

Her flesh was hot and soft, he felt his own flesh respond to its touch.

"Why did you hate Pemba?"

"He was evil beyond the telling. The things he forced me to do I will never forget., "He used your body?" There was a rough edge to Bazo's question.

"Not even Pemba would dare tamper with the body of one of the chosen ones, for to tear the veil of maidenhood is to destroy the gift."

"The gift?"

"The gift of foresight which the likes of Pemba value 4 so highly., "What then did he force upon you?"

"Dark things, midnight things, torture not of the body but of the spirit."