The Angels Weep - Smith Wilbur. Страница 12

Each kiln was shaped like the torso of a heavily pregnant woman, like a fat, domed belly, in which the layers of iron ore and charcoal and limestone would be packed. At the lower end of the kiln was the crotch guarded by symbolically truncated clay thighs between which was the narrow opening into which would be introduced the buck horn nozzle of the leather bellows.

When all was ready, the head smith chopped the head off the sacrificed rooster, and passed down the line of kilns, sprinkling them with hot blood while he chanted the first of the ancient incantations to the spirit of iron.

Bazo watched with fascination, and a prickle of superstitious awe on his skin, as fire was introduced through the vaginal openings of the kilns, the magical moment of impregnation which was greeted with a joyous cry by the assembled smiths. Then the young apprentices pumped the leather bellows in a kind of religious ecstasy, singing the hymns which ensured the success of the smelting and set the rhythm for the work on the bellows. When each fell back exhausted, there was another to take his place and keep the steady blast of air driving deeply into the kiln.

A faint haze of smoke hung over the workings, like sea fret on a still summer's day, it rose to eddy slowly around the tall bald peaks of the hills. Now at last it was time to draw the smelting, and as the head smith freed the clay plug from the first kiln, a joyous shout of thanksgiving went up from the assembly at the bright glowing rush of the molten metal from the womb of the furnace.

Bazo found himself trembling with excitement and wonder, as he had when his first son had been born in one of the caves in these self-same hills.

"The birth of the blades," he whispered aloud, and in his imagination he could already hear the dinning "of the hammers as they beat out the metal, and the sizzling hiss of the quenching that would set the temper of the edge and point of the broad stabbing spears.

A touch on his shoulder startled him from his reverie, and he glanced up at the woman who stood over him, and then he smiled. She wore the leather skirt, decorated with beads, of the married woman, but there were no bangles nor bracelets on her smooth young limbs.

Her body was straight and hard, her naked breasts symmetrical and perfectly proportioned. Although she had already suckled a fine son, they were not marred by stretch marks. Her belly was concave as a greyhound's, while the skin was smooth and drum-tight. Her neck was long and graceful, her nose straight and narrow, her eyes slanted above the Egyptian arches of her cheekbones. Her features were those of a statuette from the tomb of some long-dead pharaoh.

"Tanase," said Bazo, "another thousand blades." Then he saw her expression and broke off. "What is it?"he asked with quick concern.

"Riders," she said. "Two of them. White men coming from the southern forests, and coming swiftly.". Bazo rose in a single movement, quick as a leopard alarmed by the approach of the hunters.

Only now his full height and the breadth of his shoulders were evident, for he towered a full head over the iron smiths about him. He lifted the buckhom whistle that hung on a thong about his neck and blew a single sharp blast. Immediately all the scurry and bustle amongst the kilns ceased and the master smith hurried to him.

"How long to draw the rest of the smelting and break down the kilns?" Bazo demanded. "TWO days, oh Lord," answered the iron-worker, bobbing respectfully. His eyes were bloodshot from the smoke of the furnace, and the smoke seemed to have stained his cap of white woolly hair to dingy yellow.

"You have until dawn.-" "Lord!" "Work all night, but screen the fires from the plain." Bazo turned from him and strode up the steep incline to where twenty other men waited below the granite cap of the hill.

Like Bazo, they wore only simple leather kilts, and were unarmed, but their bodies were tempered and fined down by war and the training for war, and there was the warrior's arrogance in their stance as they rose to acknowledge their and una and their eyes were bright and fierce.

There was no doubt that these were Matabele, not aniahoh dogs.

"Follow!" ordered Bazo, and led them at a trot along the lower contour of the hill. There was a narrow cave in the base of the cliff, and Bazo drew aside the hanging creepers that screened the mouth and stopped into the gloomy interior. The cave was only ten paces deep, and it ended abruptly in a scree of loose boulders.

Bazo gestured and two of his men went up to the end wall of the cave and rolled aside the boulders. In the recess beyond there was the glint of polished metal like the scales of a slumbering reptile. As Bazo moved out of the entrance, the slanting rays of the setting sun struck deeply into the cave, lighting the secret arsenal. The assegais were stacked in bundles of ten and bound together with rawhide thongs.

The two warriors lifted out a bundle, broke the thongs and swiftly passed the weapons down the line Of men, until each was armed. Bazo hefted the stabbing spear. The shaft was of polished red heartwood of mukusi, the blood-wood tree. The blade was hand-forged, wide as Bazo's palm and long as his forearm. He could have shaved the hair from the back of his hand with the honed edge.

He had felt naked until that moment, but now, with the familiar weight and balance in his hand, he was a man again. He gestured to his men to roll the boulders back into place covering the cache of bright new blades, and then he led them back along the path. On the shoulder of the hill, Tanase waited for him on the ledge of rock which commanded a wide view across the grassy plains, and beyond them the blue forests dreamed softly in the evening light.

"There, she pointed, and Bazo saw them instantly.

Two horses, moving at an easy canter. They had reached the foot of the hills and were riding along them, scouting for an easy route.

The riders peered up at the -tangle of boulders and at the smooth pearly sheets of granite which offered no foothold.

There were only two access trails to the valley of the iron smiths each of them narrow and steep, with necks which could be easily defended. Bazo turned and looked back. The smoke from the kilns was dissipating, there were only a few pale ribbons twisting along the grey granite cliffs. By morning there would be nothing to lead a curious traveller to the secret place, but there was still an hour of daylight, less perhaps, for the night comes with startling rapidity in Africa -above the Limpopo river.