At the limit of the eye the dark serpentine growth of riverine bush outlined the course of the father of all waters, and in the west a tall silver cloud of spray stood against the sky: it marked the place where the Zambezi river went crashing over a sheer ledge of rock in an awesome, creaming torrent, falling over three hundred feet into the narrow gorge below.
Lobengula sat upon the box of the leading wagon and looked upon all this savage grandeur with listless eyes.
The wagon was drawn by two hundred of his warriors.
The oxen were all dead, the ground had been too rugged and rocky for most of them and they had broken down and died in the traces.
Then the migration had run into the first belt of the tsetse fly, and the dreaded little insects had come to swarm on the dappled hides of the remaining bullocks and plague the men and women in Lobengula's sprawling caravan. Within weeks, the last of the fly-struck beasts was dead, and men, more resistant to the sting of the tsetse, had taken their places in the span and drawn their king onwards in his hopeless, aimless flight.
Now even they were daunted by what lay ahead, and they rested on the yokes and looked back at Lobengula.
"We will sleep here this night," said the king, and immediately the weary, starving host that followed the wagons spread out to begin the chores of making camp, the young girls to carry water in the clay pots, the men to build the temporary lean-to shelters and cut the wood for the fires, and the women to eke out the contents of the almost empty grain bags and the few shreds of dried meat that remained. The fly had killed the last of the slaughter beasts with the draught bullocks, and game was scarce and shy.
Gandang went forward to the lead wagon and saluted his half -brother.
"Your bed will be ready soon, Nkosi Nkulu."
But Lobengula was staring dreamily up at the steep rocky kopje that towered above their bivouac. The great bloated trunks of the cream-of-tartar trees had forced the black boulders apart. The little twisted branches, loaded with smooth furry pods, reached towards the uncaring sky like the maimed arms o a cripple.
"Is that a cave up there, my brother?" Lobengula asked softly. A dark cleft was riven into the rock face that girdled the crest of the hill. "I wish to go up to that cave."
Twenty men carried Lobengula on a litter of poles and furs, and he winced at each jolt, his great swollen body riddled with gout and arthritis, but his eyes were fastened on the crest high above him.
just below the rock face Gandang made a sign to the bearers and they lay the litter gently upon the rocky slope while Gandang shifted his shield onto his shoulder and freed his broad blade from its thong as he went ahead.
The cave was narrow but deep and dark. The small ledge at its mouth was littered with the furry remains and chewed bones of small animals, the hydrax and baboon, gazelle and klipspringer. The cave itself gave out the fetid odour of the cage of a carnivorous animal, and when Gandang squatted at the entrance and peered into the sombre depths, there was the sudden vicious spitting snarl of a leopard, and dimly he saw the beast move in the shadows and caught the glint of its fierce golden eyes.
Gandang moved slowly out of the sunlight, and paused to let his eyes adjust to the gloom. The leopard warned him again with a terrifying crackle of anger in the confined spaces of the cavern. It had crept closer and was lying flat upon a narrow ledge above the level of Gandang's head. He could just make out the shape of its broad adder-like brow; the ears were laid back flat and the eyes slitted with rage.
Carefully, Gandang moved into position below the ledge, for he did not want to trigger the charge until he was ready to receive it. Balanced lightly in a half crouch, with the assegai's point lifted and lined up on the enraged animal's throat, Gandang flirted his shield and called to it.
"Come, evil one! Come, devil spawn." And with another stunning burst of rage, the leopard launched itself, a blurr of gold, upon the tall dappled shield. But as it dropped, so Gandang lifted the point and took the leopard upon it, letting its own weight drive the steel through its heart; and then he rolled backwards under the shield and the cruel hooked talons raked the cured iron-hard hide unavailingly.
The blade was still buried in the leopard's chest. It coughed once, choking on its own blood, and then it wrenched itself free of the steel and bounded out through the mouth of the cavern. When Gandang followed it cautiously into the sunlight, the beautiful beast was stretched out on the rocky ledge in a spreading puddle of its own blood. It was a magnificent old male, the pelt unscarred. The sable rosettes upon its back were not much darker than the dark amber ground, that shaded down to a pure buttery cream on the underbelly. A noble animal, and only a king might wear its fur.
"The way is safe, oh King," Gandang called down the slope, and the litter-bearers carried Lobengula up and set him gently upon the ledge.
The king dismissed the bearers, and he and his halfbrother were alone on the hillside, high above this harsh and barbaric land. Lobengula looked at the dead leopard and then at the dark mouth of the cavern.
"This would be a fitting tomb for a king," said Lobengula reflectively, and Gandang could not answer him.
They were silent for a long while.
"I am a dead man," said Lobengula at last, and raised a graceful hand to still Gandang's protest. "I walk, I speak still, but my heart is dead within me."
Gandang was silent, and he could not look upon the king's face.
"Gandang, my brother. I want only peace. Will you grant me that?
When I order it, will you bring your spear to me and by piercing my dead heart let my spirit free to find that peace?"
"My King, my brother, never once have I disobeyed your order. Ever your word was the centre of my existence. Ask anything of me, my brother, anything but this.
Never can I lift my hand towards you, son of Mzilikazi, my father, grandson of Mashobane, my grandfather."
Lobengula sighed. "Oh Gandang, I am so weary and sick with grief.
If you will not give me surcease, then will you send for my senior witchdoctor?"
The witchdoctor came and listened gravely to the king's command; then he rose and went to the carcass of the leopard.
He clipped off the long, stiff, white whiskers and burned them to powder in a tiny clay pot over a small fire. To make the potion stronger still, he pounded a dozen seeds of the poison rope shrub to a paste and mixed it with the lethal ashes. Then from a stoppered buck-horn on his belt, he poured and stirred an acrid green liquid.
On his knees, with face to the ground, he wriggled towards the king like an obsequious cur-dog and placed the pot on the rocky ledge before him. As his withered claw-like fingers released the deadly vessel, Gandang rose silently behind him and drove his assegai between the witchdoctor's bony shoulder blades and out of his pigeon chest.
Then he picked up the wizened skeletal body and carried it into the recesses of the cavern. When he came back he knelt again before Lobengula.
"You are right," Lobengula nodded. "No man but you should know the manner of the king's going."
He picked up the pot and held it between his cupped pink palms.
"Now you will be the father of my poor people. Stay in peace, my brother," said Lobengula, and lifted the pot to his lips and drained it at a single draught.
Then he lay back on the litter and pulled a fur kaross over his head.
"Go sweetly, my beloved brother," said Gandang. His noble features were set like weathered granite, but as he sat beside the king's bier the tears coursed down his cheeks and wet the great battle-scarred muscles of his chest. They buried Lobengula in the cavern, sitting upright on the stone floor and wrapped in the wet green skin of the leopard. They dismantled his wagons and carried them up the hill and stacked the parts at the back of the cave.