'Hey, you eaters of hyena dung,' he called. 'We smelt you from a thousand paces against the wind. The smell of Xhosa makes even the vultures puke." Raleigh leapt high, turning in the air and lifting the skirts of his loincloth to expose his buttocks. 'I cleanse the air of the Zulu stench with a good clean fart!" he shouted. 'Sniff that, you jackal-lovers,' and he blew a raspberry so loud and long that the Zulus facing him hissed murderously and rattled their fighting-sticks.
'Your fathers were women, your mothers were monkeys,' Joseph Dini7ulu cried, scratching his own armpits. Your grandfathers were baboons,' he imitated a simian lollop, and your grandmothers were--' Raleigh interrupted this recital of his ancestral line with a blast on the buckhorn whistle and leapt from the bank into the streambed. He landed on his feet, light as a cat, and with a bound was across. He went up the far bank so fast that Joseph Dinizulu, who had expected the exchange of pleasantries to last a little longer, fell back before his onslaught.
A dozen of the other Xhosa lads had responded to his whistle and followed him across, and Raleigh's furious attack had won a bridgehead for them on the far bank. They bunched up behind him with sticks hissing and singing, and drove into the centre of the opposing impi. The battle lust was on Raleigh Tabaka. He was invincible, his arms tireless, his hands and wrists so cunning that his sticks seemed to have separate life, finding the weak places in the guards of the Zulus who opposed him, thudding on flesh, cracking on bone, cutting open skin so that soon their sticks shone wet with blood and little droplets of it flew in the sunlight.
It seemed nothing could touch him, until abruptly something crashed into his ribs just below his raised right arm, and he gasped with pain and the sudden awareness of his own humanity. For a minute there he had been a warrior god, but suddenly he was a small boy, almost at the end of his strength, hurting very badly, and so tired that he could not mouth another challenge while before him danced Joseph Dinizulu, who seemed to have grown six inches in as many seconds. Again his fighting-stick whistled in, aimed at Raleigh's head, and only with a desperate defence he deflected it. Raleigh fell back a pace and looked around him.
He should have known better than to attack a Zulu so boldly.
They were the most treacherous and sly of all adversaries, and the stratagem of encirclement was always their master-stroke. Chaka Zulu, the mad.dog who had founded this tribe of wolves, had called the manoeuvre 'the Horns of the Bull'. The horns surrounded the enemy while the chest crushed him to death.
Joseph Dinizulu had not fallen back out of fear or surprise, it was his instinctive cunning, and Raleigh had led his dozen stalwarts into the Zulu trap. They were alone, none of the others had followed them across the stream. Over the heads of the encircling Zulus he could see them on the far bank, and Wellington Tabaka, his twin brother, stood at their head, silent and immobile.
'Wellington!" he screamed, his voice breaking with exhaustion and terror. 'Help us! We have the Zulu dog by the testicles. Come across and stab him in the chest!" That was all he had time for. Joseph Dinizulu was on him again and each stroke of his seemed more powerful than the last. Raleigh's chest was agony, and then another blow crashed through his guard and caught him across the shoulder, paralysing his right arm to the fingertips, and the stick flew from his grasp.
'Wellington!" he screamed again.. 'Help us!" and all around him his men were going down, some of them beaten to their knees, others simply dropping their sticks and cowering in the dust, screaming for mercy while the Zulu boys crowded in with their sticks rising and falling, the blows flogging into soft flesh, the Zulu war cries rising in jubilant chorus like hounds crowding in to rend the hares.
'Wellington!" He had one last glimpse of his brother across the stream and then a blow caught him on the forehead jut above his eye, and he felt the skin split as warm blood poured down his face.
Just before it blinded him he caught a last glimpse of Joseph Dinizulu's face, crazy with blood lust, and then his legs collapsed under him and he flopped face-first into the dirt, while the blows still thudded across his back and shoulders.
He must have lost consciousness for a moment, for when he rolled on to his side and wiped the blood from his eyes with the back of his hand, he saw that the Zulus had crossed the stream in a phalanx and that the remnants of his impi were racing away in wild panic towards the bluegum plantation pursued by Dinizulu's men.
He tried to push himself upright, but his senses reeled and darkness filled his head, as he toppled once again. When next he came to, he was surrounded by Zulus, jeering and mocking, covering him with insults. This time he managed to sit up, but then the tumult around him quieted and was replaced by an expectant hush. He looked up and Joseph Dinizulu pushed his way through the ranks and sneered down at him.
'Bark, Xhosa dog,' he ordered. 'Let us hear you bark and whine for mercy." Groggy, but defiant, Raleigh shook his head, and pain flared under his skull at the movement.
Joseph Dinizulu placed a bare foot on his chest and shoved hard.
He was too weak to resist and he toppled over on his back. Joseph Dinizulu stood over him, and lifted the front of his loincloth. With his other hand he drew back his foreskin exposing the pink glans, and he directed a hissing stream of urine into Raleigh's face.
'Drink that, you Xhosa dog,' he laughed. It was hot and ammoniacal and burned like acid in the open wound on his scalp - and Raleigh's rage and humiliation and hatred filled all his soul.
'My brother, it is only very seldom that I try to dissuade you from something on which you have set your mind." Hendrick Tabaka sat on the leopard-skin covering of his chair, leaning forward earnestly with his elbows on his knees. 'It is not the marriage in itself, you know how I have always urged you to take a wife, many wives, and get yourself sons - it is not the idea of a wife I disapprove of, it is this Zulu baggage that makes me lie awake at night. There are ten million other nubile young women in this land - why must you choose a Zulu? I would rather you took a black mamba into your bed." Moses Gama chuckled softly. 'Your concern for me proves your love." Then he became serious. 'Zulu is the largest tribe in southern Africa. Numbers alone would make them important, but add to that their aggressive and warlike spirit, and you will see that nothing will change in this land without Zulu. If I can form an alliance with that tribe, then all the dreams I have dreamed need not be in vain." Hendrick sighed, and grunted and shook his head.
'Come Hendrick, you have spoken with them. Have you not?" Moses insisted, and reluctantly Hendrick nodded.
'I sat four days at the kraal of Sangane Dinizulu, son of Mbejane who was the son of Gubi, who was the son of Dingaan, who was the brother of Chaka Zulu himself. He deems himself a prince of Zulu, which he is at pains to point out means "The Heavens" and he lives in grand style on the land that his old master, General Sean Courtney, left him on the hills above Ladyburg, where he keeps many wives and three hundred head of fat cattle." 'All this I know, my brother,' Moses interrupted. 'Tell me about the girl." Hendrick frowned. He liked to begin a story at the beginning and work through it, sparing no detail, until he reached the end.
'The girl,' he repeated. 'That old Zulu rogue whines that she is the moon of his night and the sun of his day, no daughter has ever been loved as he loves her - and he could never allow her to marry any man but a Zulu chief." Hendrick sighed. 'Day after day I heard the virtues of this Zulu she-jackal recounted, how beautiful she is, how talented, how she is a nurse at the government hospital, how she comes from a long line of son-bearing wives --' Hendrick broke off and spat with disgust. 'It took three days before he mentioned what had been on his mind from the first minute - the lobola, the bride price,' and Hendrick threw up his hands in a gesture of exasperation.