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.
"I must delay them until dark, Bazo said. "I must turn them before they find the path." "If they will not be turned?" Tanase asked softly, and in reply Bazo merely altered his grip on the broad assegai in his right hand, and then quickly drew Tanase back off the rocky ledge, for the horsemen had halted and one of them, the taller and broader man, was carefully sweeping the hillside with a pair of binoculars.
"Where is my son?" Bazo asked. "At the cave,"Tanase replied.
"You know what to do if-" he did not have to go on, and Tanase nodded.
"I know," she said softly, and Bazo turned from her and went bounding down the steep pathway with twenty armed amadoda at his back.
At the narrow place which Bazo had marked, he stopped. He did not have to speak, but at a single gesture of his free hand his men slipped off the narrow trail and disappeared into the crevices and cracks of the gigantic boulders that stood tall on either hand. In seconds there was no sign of them, and Bazo broke off a branch from one of the dwarfed trees that grew in a rocky pocket, and he ran back, sweeping the trail of all sign that might alert a wary man to the ambush. Then he placed his assegai on a shoulder-high ledge beside the path and covered it with the green branch. It was within easy reach if he were forced to guide the white riders up the trail.
"I will try to turn them, but if I cannot, wait until they reach this place," he called to the hidden warriors. "Then do it swiftly."
His men were spread out for two hundred paces along both sides of the trail, but they were concentrated here at the bend. A good ambush must have depth to it, so if a victim breaks through the first. rank of attackers, there will be others waiting for him beyond. This was a good ambush. in bad ground on a steep narrow trail where a horse could not turn readily nor go ahead at full gallop. Bazo nodded to himself with satisfaction, then unarmed and shield less he went springing down the trail towards the plain, agile as a klipspringer over the rough track.
"It will be dark in half an hour," Harry Mellow called after Ralph. "We should find a place to camp." "There must be a path," Ralph rode with one fist on his hip and the felt hat pushed back on his head, looking up the wild cliff.
"What do you expect to find up there?" "I don't know, and that's the devil of it." Ralph grinned over his shoulder. He was unprepared and twisted off balance, so when his horse shied violently under him, he almost lost a stirrup and had to grab at the pommel of the saddle to prevent himself going over, but at the same time he yelled to Harry.
"Cover me!" and with his free hand Ralph tugged the Winchester rifle from its leather boot under his knee. His horse was rearing and skittering in a tight circle so he could not get the rifle up. He knew that he was blocking Harry's line of fire, and that for those long seconds he was completely defenceless, and he swore helplessly, anticipating a rush of dark spearmen out of the broken rock and scrub at the foot of the cliff.
Then he realized there was only one man, and that he was unarmed, and again he yelled at Harry, with even more urgency, for he had heard the clash of the breech block behind him as the American loaded and cocked.
"Hold it! Don't shoot!" The gelding reared again, but this time Ralph jerked it down and then stared at the tall black man who had stepped so silently and. unexpectedly out of the crevice of a fractured granite block.
"Who are you?" he demanded, his voice rasping with the shock, which still screwed his guts into a ball and charged his veins with a quick rush of blood. "Damn you, I nearly shot you." Ralph caught himself, and this time repeated in fluent Sindebele, the Matabele language, "Who are you?" The tall man in the plain leather cloak inclined his head slightly, but his body remained absolutely still, the empty hands hanging at his side.
"What manner of question is that," he asked gravely, "for one brother to ask another?" Ralph stared at him. Taking in the and una head ring on his brow and the gaunt features, scored and riven by the crags and deep lines of some terrible suffering, a sorrow or an illness that must have transported this man to the frontiers of hell itself.
It moved Ralph deeply to look upon that riven face, for there was something, the fierce dark eyes and the tone of the deep measured voice that was so familiar, and yet so altered as to be unrecognizable.
"Henshaw," the man spoke again, using Ralph Ballantyne's Matabele praise name. "Henshaw, the Hawk, do you not know me? Have these few short years changed us so?" Ralph shook his head in disbelief, and his voice was full of wonder. "Bazo, it is not you surely, it is not you? Did you not after all die with your impi at Shanganir Ralph kicked both feet out of the stirrups and jumped to the ground. "Bazo.
It is you!" He ran to embrace the Matabele. "My brother, my black brother," he said, and there was the lift and lilt of pure joy in his voice.
Bazo accepted the embrace quietly, his hands still hanging at his sides, and at last Ralph stood back and held him at arm's length.
"At Shaingani, after the guns were still, I left the wagons and walked out across the open pan. Your men were there, the Moles-that-burrow-under-a-mountain." That was the name that King Lobengula himself had given to Bazo's impi, Izinivukuzane Ezembintaba.
"I knew them by their red shields, by the plumes of the marabou. stork and the headbands of fur from the burrowing mole." These were the regimentals bestowed upon the impi by the old king, and Bazo's eyes turned luminous with the agony of memory as Ralph went on. "Your men were there, Bazo, lying upon each other like the fallen leaves of the forest. I searched for you, rolling the dead men onto their backs to see their faces, but there were so many of them." "So many," Bazo agreed, and only his eyes betrayed his emotion.