Child of Storm by H. Rider Haggard (inspirational books for women .TXT) 📗
- Author: H. Rider Haggard
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“Where are the Amawombe?” I asked.
“All dead by now, I think, Baas, as we should be had not your horse bolted. Wow! but they made a great fight—one that will be told of! They have carried those three regiments away upon their spears.”
“That’s good,” I said. “But where are we going?”
“To Natal, I hope, Baas. I have had enough of the Zulus for the present. The Tugela is not far away, and we will swim it. Come on, before our hurts grow stiff.”
So we went on, till presently we reached the crest of a rise of ground overlooking the river, and there saw and heard dreadful things, for beneath us those devilish Usutu were massacring the fugitives and the camp-followers. These were being driven by the hundred to the edge of the water, there to perish on the banks or in the stream, which was black with drowned or drowning forms.
And oh! the sounds! Well, these I will not attempt to describe.
“Keep up stream,” I said shortly, and we struggled across a kind of donga, where only a few wounded men were hidden, into a somewhat denser patch of bush that had scarcely been entered by the flying Isigqosa, perhaps because here the banks of the river were very steep and difficult; also, between them its waters ran swiftly, for this was above the drift.
For a while we went on in safety, then suddenly I heard a noise. A great man plunged past me, breaking through the bush like a buffalo, and came to a halt upon a rock which overhung the Tugela, for the floods had eaten away the soil beneath.
“Umbelazi!” said Scowl, and as he spoke we saw another man following as a wild dog follows a buck.
“Saduko!” said Scowl.
I rode on. I could not help riding on, although I knew it would be safer to keep away. I reached the edge of that big rock. Saduko and Umbelazi were fighting there.
In ordinary circumstances, strong and active as he was, Saduko would have had no chance against the most powerful Zulu living. But the prince was utterly exhausted; his sides were going like a blacksmith’s bellows, or those of a fat eland bull that has been galloped to a standstill. Moreover, he seemed to me to be distraught with grief, and, lastly, he had no shield left, nothing but an assegai.
A stab from Saduko’s spear, which he partially parried, wounded him slightly on the head, and cut loose the fillet of his ostrich plume, that same plume which I had seen blown off in the morning, so that it fell to the ground. Another stab pierced his right arm, making it helpless. He snatched the assegai with his left hand, striving to continue the fight, and just at that moment we came up.
“What are you doing, Saduko?” I cried. “Does a dog bite his own master?”
He turned and stared at me; both of them stared at me.
“Aye, Macumazahn,” he answered in an icy voice, “sometimes when it is starving and that full-fed master has snatched away its bone. Nay, stand aside, Macumazahn” (for, although I was quite unarmed, I had stepped between them), “lest you should share the fate of this woman-thief.”
“Not I, Saduko,” I cried, for this sight made me mad, “unless you murder me.”
Then Umbelazi spoke in a hollow voice, sobbing out his words:
“I thank you, White Man, yet do as this snake bids you—this snake that has lived in my kraal and fed out of my cup. Let him have his fill of vengeance because of the woman who bewitched me—yes, because of the sorceress who has brought me and thousands to the dust. Have you heard, Macumazahn, of the great deed of this son of Matiwane? Have you heard that all the while he was a traitor in the pay of Cetewayo, and that he went over, with the regiments of his command, to the Usutu just when the battle hung upon the turn? Come, Traitor, here is my heart—the heart that loved and trusted you. Strike—strike hard!”
“Out of the way, Macumazahn!” hissed Saduko. But I would not stir.
He sprang at me, and, though I put up the best fight that I could in my injured state, got his hands about my throat and began to choke me. Scowl ran to help me, but his wound—for he was hurt—or his utter exhaustion took effect on him. Or perhaps it was excitement. At any rate, he fell down in a fit. I thought that all was over, when again I heard Umbelazi’s voice, and felt Saduko’s grip loosen at my throat, and sat up.
“Dog,” said the Prince, “where is your assegai?” And as he spoke he threw it from him into the river beneath, for he had picked it up while we struggled, but, as I noted, retained his own. “Now, dog, why do I not kill you, as would have been easy but now? I will tell you. Because I will not mix the blood of a traitor with my own. See!” He set the haft of his broad spear upon the rock and bent forward over the blade. “You and your witch-wife have brought me to nothing, O Saduko. My blood, and the blood of all who clung to me, is on your head. Your name shall stink for ever in the nostrils of all true men, and I whom you have betrayed—I, the Prince Umbelazi—will haunt you while you live; yes, my spirit shall enter into you, and when you die—ah! then we’ll meet again. Tell this tale to the white men, Macumazahn, my friend, on whom be honour and blessings.”
He paused, and I saw the tears gush from his eyes—tears mingled with blood from the wound in his head. Then suddenly he uttered the battle-cry of “Laba! Laba!” and let his weight fall upon the point of the spear.
It pierced him through and through. He fell on to his hands and knees. He looked up at us—oh, the piteousness of that look!—and then rolled sideways from the edge of the rock.
A heavy splash, and that was the end of Umbelazi the Fallen—Umbelazi, about whom Mameena had cast her net.
A sad story in truth. Although it happened so many years ago I weep as I write it—I weep as Umbelazi wept.
UMBEZI AND THE BLOOD ROYAL
After this I think that some of the Usutu came up, for it seemed to me that I heard Saduko say:
“Touch not Macumazahn or his servant. They are my prisoners. He who harms them dies, with all his House.”
So they put me, fainting, on my horse, and Scowl they carried away upon a shield.
When I came to I found myself in a little cave, or rather beneath some overhanging rocks, at the side of a kopje, and with me Scowl, who had recovered from his fit, but seemed in a very bewildered condition. Indeed, neither then nor afterwards did he remember anything of the death of Umbelazi, nor did I ever tell him that tale. Like many others, he thought that the Prince had been drowned in trying to swim the Tugela.
“Are they going to kill us?” I asked of him, since, from the triumphant shouting without, I knew that we must be in the midst of the victorious Usutu.
“I don’t know, Baas,” he answered. “I hope not; after we have gone through so much it would be a pity. Better to have died at the beginning of the battle.”
I nodded my head in assent, and just at that moment a Zulu, who had very evidently been fighting, entered the place carrying a dish of toasted lumps of beef and a gourd of water.
“Cetewayo sends you these, Macumazahn,” he said, “and is sorry that there is no milk or beer. When you have eaten a guard waits without to escort you to him.” And he went.
“Well,” I said to Scowl, “if they were going to kill us, they would scarcely take the trouble to feed us first. So let us keep up our hearts and eat.”
“Who knows?” answered poor Scowl, as he crammed a lump of beef into his big mouth. “Still, it is better to die on a full than on an empty stomach.”
So we ate and drank, and, as we were suffering more from exhaustion than from our hurts, which were not really serious, our strength came back to us. As we finished the last lump of meat, which, although it had been only half cooked upon the point of an assegai, tasted very good, the Zulu put his head into the mouth of the shelter and asked if we were ready. I nodded, and, supporting each other, Scowl and I limped from the place. Outside were about fifty soldiers, who greeted us with a shout that, although it was mixed with laughter at our pitiable appearance, struck me as not altogether unfriendly. Amongst these men was my horse, which stood with its head hanging down, looking very depressed. I was helped on to its back, and, Scowl clinging to the stirrup leather, we were led a distance of about a quarter of a mile to Cetewayo.
We found him seated, in the full blaze of the evening sun, on the eastern slope of one of the land-waves of the veld, with the open plain in front of him. It was a strange and savage scene. There sat the victorious prince, surrounded by his captains and indunas, while before him rushed the triumphant regiments, shouting his titles in the most extravagant language. Izimbongi also—that is, professional praisers—were running up and down before him dressed in all sorts of finery, telling his deeds, calling him “Eater-up-of-the-Earth,” and yelling out the names of those great ones who had been killed in the battle.
Meanwhile parties of bearers were coming up continually, carrying dead men of distinction upon shields and laying them out in rows, as game is laid out at the end of a day’s shooting in England. It seems that Cetewayo had taken a fancy to see them, and, being too tired to walk over the field of battle, ordered that this should be done. Among these, by the way, I saw the body of my old friend, Maputa, the general of the Amawombe, and noted that it was literally riddled with spear thrusts, every one of them in front; also that his quaint face still wore a smile.
At the head of these lines of corpses were laid six dead, all men of large size, in whom I recognised the brothers of Umbelazi, who had fought on his side, and the half-brothers of Cetewayo. Among them were those three princes upon whom the dust had fallen when Zikali, the prophet, smelt out Masapo, the husband of Mameena.
Dismounting from my horse, with the help of Scowl, I limped through and over the corpses of these fallen royalties, cut in the Zulu fashion to free their spirits, which otherwise, as they believed, would haunt the slayers, and stood in front of Cetewayo.
“Siyakubona, Macumazahn,” he said, stretching out his hand to me, which I took, though I could not find it in my heart to wish him “good day.”
“I hear that you were leading the Amawombe, whom my father, the King, sent down to help Umbelazi, and I am very glad that you have escaped alive. Also my heart is proud of the fight that they made, for you know, Macumazahn, once, next to the King, I was general of that regiment, though afterwards we quarrelled. Still, I am pleased that they did so well, and I have given orders that every one of them who remains alive is to be spared, that they may be officers of a new Amawombe which I shall raise. Do you know, Macumazahn, that you have nearly wiped out three whole regiments of the Usutu, killing many more people than did all my brother’s army, the Isigqosa? Oh, you are a great man. Had it not been for the loyalty”—this word was spoken with just a tinge of sarcasm—“of Saduko yonder, you would have won the day for Umbelazi. Well, now that this quarrel is finished, if you will stay with me I will make you general of a whole division of the King’s army, since henceforth I shall have a voice in affairs.”
“You are mistaken, O Son of Panda,” I answered; “the splendour of the Amawombe’s great stand against a multitude
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