The Angels Weep - Smith Wilbur. Страница 19

"These Company police are armed with guns, and they show no respect for the custom and the law. They laugh at the indunas and the tribal elders, and they take the young girls into the bushes.-" "One-Bright-Eye orders all our amadoda, even those of Zanzi blood, respected warriors and the fathers of warriors to labour like lowly amah oh like dirt-eating slaves, digging his roads." The litany of their wrongs, real and fancied, was recited yet again by a succession of angry indunas, while only Somabula and Babiaan and Gandang and Bazo sat aloof. "Lodzi has burned our shields and snapped the blades of the stabbing-spears. He has refused our young men the ancient right to raid the Mashona when all the world knows that the Mashona are our dogs to kill or let live as we choose." "One-Bright Eye has disbanded the imp is and now no man knows who has the right to take a wife, nobody knows which maize field belongs to which village and the people squabble like sickly children over the few scrawny beasts that Lodzi has returned to us." "What must we do?" cried one, and then another strange and unprecedented thing happened. All of them, even Somabula, looked towards the tall scarred young man they called the Wanderer, and they waited expectantly for no one knew what.

Bazo made a sign with one hand and Tanase stooped out through the entrance of the reed hut. Clad only in the brief leather apron, slim and straight and supple, she carried the roll of sleeping-mat in her arms, and she knelt before Bazo and unrolled the mat on the earth at his feet.

The nearest indunas who could see what was concealed in the roll grunted with excitement. Bazo took it up in both hands and held it high. It caught the light, and now they all gasped. The design of the blade was by King Chaka himself-, the metal had been beaten out and polished to burning silver by the -skilled smiths of the Rozwi, and the blood wood shaft had been bound with copper wire and the coarse black hairs from the tail-tuft of a bull elephant.

"Jee!" hissed one of the indunas, the deep drawn-out war chant of the fighting imp is and the others took up the cry, swaying slightly to the force of it, their faces lighting with the first ecstasy of the fighting madness, Gandang put a halt to it. He sprang to his feet and the chant broke off as he made an abrupt gesture.

"One blade will not arm the nation, one blade will not prevail against the little three-legged guns of Lodzi." Bazo rose and stood facing his father.

"Take it in your hands, Babo," he invited, and Gandang shook his head angrily, but he could not take his eyes off the weapon.

"Feel how the heft of it can make a man of even a slave," Bazo insisted quietly, and this time Gandang stretched out his right hand.

His palm was bloodless white with tension and his fingers trembled as they closed around the grip.

"Still it is only one blade, he insisted, but he could not resist the feel of the beautiful weapon and he stabbed into the air with it.

"There are a thousand like this," Bazo whispered. "Where?"

Somabula barked.

"Tell us where, clamoured the other indunas, but Bazo goaded them.

"By the time that the first rains fall, there will be five thousand more. At fifty places in the hills the smiths are at work."

"Where?" Somabula repeated. "Where are they?" "Hidden in the caves of these hills." "Why were we not told?" Babiaan demanded.

Bazo answered, "There would have been those who doubted it could be done, those who counselled caution and delay, and there was no time for talk." Gandang nodded. "We all know he is right, defeat has turned us into chattering old women. But now," he handed the assegai to the man beside him, "feel it!" he ordered.

"How will we assemble the imp is the man asked, turning the weapon in his hands. "They are scattered and broken." "That is the task of each of you. To rebuild the imp is and to make certain that they are ready when the spears are sent out." "How will the spears reach us?" "The women will bring them, in bundles of thatching grass in rolls of sleeping-mats." "Where will we attack? Will we strike at the heart, at the great kraal the white men have built at GuBulawayo?"

"No." Bazo's voice rose fiercely. "That was the madness which destroyed us before. In our rage we forgot the way of Chaka and Mzilikazi, we attacked into the strength of the enemy, we went in across good shooting ground onto the wagons where the guns waited."

Bazo broke off, and bowed his head towards the senior indunas.

"Forgive me, Babo, the puppy should not yap before the old dog barks.

I speak out of turn." "You are no puppy, Bazo," Somabula growled.

"Speak on!" "We must be the fleas," Bazo said quietly. "We must hide in the white man's clothing and sting him in the soft places until we drive him to madness. But when he scratches, we will move on to another soft place.

"We must lurk in darkness and attack in the dawn, we must wait for him in the bad ground and probe his flanks and his rear." Bazo never raised his voice, but all of them listened avidly. "Never must we run in against the walls of the laager, and when the three-legged guns begin to laugh like old women, we must drift away like the morning mist at the first rays of the sun." "This is not war," protested Babiaan.

"It is war, Babo." Bazo contradicted, "the new kind of war, the only kind of war which we can win." "He is right," a voice called from the ranks of indunas. "That is the way it must be." They spoke up, one after the other, and no man argued against Bazo's vision, until the turn came back to Babiaan. "My brother Somabula has spoken the truth, you are no puppy, Bazo. Tell us only one thing more, when will it be?"

"That I cannot tell you." "Who can?" Bazo looked down at Tanase, who still knelt at his feet. "We have assembled in this valley for good reason," Bazo told them. "If all agree, then my woman who is an intimate of the Umlimo, and an initiate of the mysteries, will go up to the sacred cavern to take the oracle." "She must go immediately." "No, Babo." Tanase's lovely head was still bowed in deep respect. "We must wait until the Umlimo sends for us." There were places where the scars had knotted into hard lumps in Bazo's flesh. The machine-gun bullets had done deep damage. One arm, fortunately not the spear arm, was twisted and shortened, permanently deformed. After hard marching or exercise with the weapons of war, or after the nervous tension of planning and arguing and persuading others to his views, the torn and lumpy flesh often seized up in agonizing spasms.