"The stone falcons were stolen from the sacred places," Gandang reminded them, "and Lobengula knew then that he could no more resist the white men than his father, Mzilikazi, had been able to." Thus the king had chosen the most powerful of all the white petitioners, "Lodzi" the big blue-eyed man who had eaten up the diamond mines and who was the and una of the white queen across the sea. Hoping to make him an ally, Lobengula had entered into a treaty with Lodzi, in exchange for gold coins and guns, he had granted to him a charter to dig for the buried treasures of the earth exclusively in Lobengula's eastern dominions.
However, Lodzi had sent a great train of wagons with hard fighting men like Selous and Bakela, leading hundreds of young white men armed like soldiers to take possession of the Charter lands. Sorrowfully, Gandang recited the long list of grievances and the breaking of faith, which had culminated in the clatter of Maxim guns, in the destruction of the king's kraal at Bulawayo, and the flight of Lobengula towards the north.
Finally, he described Lobeng'ula's death. Broken-hearted and sick, the king had taken poison, and Gandang himself had laid the body in a secret cave overlooking the valley of the Zambezi, and he had placed all the king's possessions around him, his stool, his head-pillow of ivory, his sleeping mat and fur kaross, his beer pots and beef-bowls, his guns and his war shield, his battle-axe and stabbing-spear, and at the last the little clay pots of glittering diamonds he had laid at Lobengula's gout-distorted feet. When all was done, Gandang had walled up the entrance to the cave, and slaughtered the slaves who had done the work. Then he had led the shattered nation back southwards into captivity.
At the last words, Gandang's hands fell to his sides, his chin sank onto the broad scarred and muscled chest, and a desolate silence descended upon them. At last one of the indunas in the second rank spoke. He was a frail old man with all the teeth missing from his upper jaw. His lower lids drooped away from his watery eyeballs so that the inner flesh showed like pink velvet and his voice was scratchy and breathless.
"Let us choose another king he began, but Bazo interrupted him.
"A king of slaves, a king of captives?" He laughed abruptly, scornfully. "There can be no king until there is a nation once again."
The ancient and una sank back, and gummed his toothless mouth, blinking about him miserably, his mind altering direction in the way of old men.
"The cattle," he murmured, "they have taken our cattle." The others hummed in angry assent. Cattle were the only true wealth, gold and diamonds were white men's baubles, but cattle were the foundation of the nation's welfare.
"One-Bright Eye sends un blooded young bucks of our own people to lord it in the kraals,-" complained another. "One-Bright-Eye" was the Matabele name for General Mungo St. John, the Chief Native Commissioner of Matabeleland.
"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.