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

Now it was her turn to shudder, and she turned towards him and clung to his broad smooth chest, hiding her face against it so that her voice was muffled and he could hardly catch her next words.

"I did not wish to be chosen, I hate and fear what still lies ahead of me if I follow that road."

"Pemba is dead."

"You do not understand. Pemba was but a little wizard already he had taught me almost all he knew. Then I would have been called by the one whose name I dare not speak aloud. That call will still come, and I shall not be able to deny it."

"You are under my protection."

"There is only one way you can protect me, Bazo Lord."

"How?"

"Make me worthless to them. Destroy this gift which is such a terrible burden."

"How?"

"As you destroyed Pemba with the stabbing spear of steel, destroy it with your great spear of flesh, tear my veil and let this thing pass from me."

she felt him, hot and fierce, pressing against her, and her body seemed to melt and become pliant and yielding.

"Ah yes, Lord. Make me as other women, so that I may feel your noble belly on mine in the nights, that I may feel your son kick in my womb and tug at my breast when I give him suck., "All these things you will have, Tanase." Bazo's voice was hoarse with his wanting. "When we reach Gubulawayo the king will reward me, and give me leave to go in to the women, and take a wife."

Lord, it is dangerous to wait."

"i will not rut on you like a slave girl. You will be the first and senior of all my wives."

"Lord,"

"Enough, Tanase, tempt me no further, for what you feel, hard though it may be, is not stone but flesh only."

INKOSI, you do not know the power of the wizards.

Save me from them."

"I know the law and custom of Matabele, and that is all a man should know and heed."

Bazo's scout came in at a dead run, the sweat snaking down his back and chest, and he shouted his report the moment he came up to the head of the column.

Bazo whirled and barked three sharp orders. Immediately the column closed up, and the captives were forced to squat with a dozen warriors standing guard over them.

The rest of the Matabele formed up behind Bazo and he led them away at that gait between a trot and a ran which lifted the dust to their knees.

Bazo picked his ambush with an unerring eye. He chose a place where broken ground and thick bush allowed only one passage through, and the single horseman rode into it. The long shields were suddenly all around him, fencing him in as his dun-coloured pony snorted and skittered.

The rifle was half-way drawn from the leather boot at the horseman's knee when Bazo stopped him with a shout.

"Too late for that. You were dead, and the jackals feasting already. You grow careless, despite all that I taught you, Henshaw."

Ralph let the rifle slide back into its scabbard, and he threw up his hands, pleasure and chagrin warnng on his face.

"Shake any tree and a Matabele falls out of it., His voice was mock-mournful, and he swung down off Tom's sturdy back and strode to meet Bazo.

"I expected to see the induna's ring on your forehead already, oh mighty slayer of Mashona," he laughed as they embraced.

"Soon, Little Hawk, very soon. But you, I thought your wagon would be heavy with ivory "Done, Little Axe, already done." Ralph stepped back and looked at him. In the months since they had parted, both men had changed.

In Bazo there remained no trace of the young trim labourer who had worked his shifts in the pit and eaten Zouga Ballantyne's rations. Here was a warrior and a prince, tall and plumed and proud.

Ralph was no longer the callow lad, his every action ordered by his father. Instead he was a grown man, with a jaunty lift to his chin and a self-assured set to his shoulder. Yet though his clothes were travel-worn an stained the training of Zouga Ballantyne still showed, for they were recently washed and his jaws had been clean shaven that very morning. They looked at each other and the affection between them was tempered and hardened with respect.

"I shot a young buffalo cow, not two hours ago."

"Yes," Bazo nodded. "It was the shot which brought us."

"Then I am glad of it. The buffalo meat is fat, and there is enough even for a hungry Matabele."

Bazo glanced at the sun. "Though I am in haste, on the king's business, my prisoners are in need of rest. We will help you eat your buffalo, Henshaw, but in the dawn we will go on."

"Then there is much to talk about, and little time to do so."

There was the pop of a trek-whip, and Bazo glanced beyond Ralph's shoulder to see the oxen come plodding between the trees and the wagon lurching and wallowing behind them.

"You still keep bad company,"Bazo scolded with a grin as he recognized Umfaan at the head of the span and Isazi, the little Zulu, on the flank, "but the load you carry is welcome."

From the wagon box hung the raw quarters and shoulders of the freshly-butchered buffalo carcass.

"We have not tasted fresh meat since we left the king's kraal."

Ralph and Bazo sat at a separate fire apart from their retinues, where they could talk freely.

"The king agreed to buy the guns and bottles that I carried up from Kimberley," Ralph told Bazo, "and he paid me generously., He did not go on to describe to Bazo the currency in which he had been paid. He did not describe his own astonishment when Lobengula had offered him an uncut diamond, a big bright first-water stone.

His surprise had immediately been tempered by conscience; he had no doubts about where that stone had come from. His conscience lasted about as long as his surprise, and he haggled with gusto, forcing up the price to six stones, which he had picked with an eye trained by many years on the diggings. He knew they would be worth 10,000 pounds when he got them back to civilization.

Thus in a single stroke he had paid for the wagon and team, his entire debt to Diamond Lil, interest and all and was already many thousands of pounds in profit.

"Then I asked Lobengula to let me hunt elephant, and he laughed and said I was too young and that the elephant would eat me up. He kept me waiting outside his kraal for ten days."

"If he kept you such a short time, then you have found favour with the king," Bazo interrupted. "Some white men have waited from the beginning of the dry season to the middle of the wet, merely for permission to take the road out of Matabeleland."

"Ten days was long enough for me," Ralph granted.

"But when I asked him in which part of his lands I was allowed to hunt, he laughed again and said, "The elephant will be in so little danger from you, Little Hawk, that you may go where you wish, and kill as many as are stupid or lame enough to let you."

Bazo chuckled delightedly. "And how many lame stupid elephant have you found so far, Henshaw?"

"I have fifty good tusks in the wagon already., "Fifty!" Bazo's chuckles died and he stared at Ralph in amazement; then he stood up and crossed to the wagon.

He untied one of the straps and lifted the canvas cover to peer in at the load, while Isazi looked up from his cooking fire, frowned and called to Ralph.

"This boy's great-grandfather, Mashobane, was a thief, his grandfather, Mzilikazi was a traitor, you have every reason to trust him with our ivory, Henshaw."

Bazo did not look at him, but glanced up into the trees.

"The monkeys hereabout make a frightful chatter," he murmured, and then came back to Ralph.