Текст книги "The Quest"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 41 страниц)

'Then another person joined the brotherhood.'

'Another priest?'

'I think not. This person was clad in black, not red. An airy black veil covered the features, so I was unable to tell with any certainty if it was male or female. However, from the shape of the figure beneath the robes and the grace of its movement I thought it might be a woman. She emerged from the temple each morning at sunrise. She prayed before each of the five fires, then returned to the temple precincts.'

'Did you ever see her face?'

'She was always veiled. She moved with an ethereal, haunting grace.

The other priests treated her with the greatest reverence, prostrating themselves before her. She must have been the high priestess of their sect.'

'Did you observe any significant signs in the heavens or in nature while she inhabited the temple?'

'Indeed, Magus, there were many strange celestial signs. On the day I first saw her pray at the temple fires, the evening star reversed its track through the skies. Shortly thereafter another insignificant and unnamed star swelled up into monstrous proportion and was consumed by flames.

During all her tenure in the temple strange lights of many colours danced in the northern night sky. All these omens flew in the face of nature.'

'Do you believe they were the works of the veiled woman?'

'I say only that they occurred when she arrived. It may have been mere happenstance, I do not know.'

'Was that all?' Taita asked.

Kalulu shook his head firmly. 'There was more. Nature seemed plunged into turmoil. Our crops in the field turned yellow and withered. The cattle aborted their calves. The paramount chief of our tribe was bitten by a snake and died almost at once. His senior wife gave birth to a son with two heads.'

'Dire omens.' Taita looked grave.

'There was worse to follow. The weather was disturbed. A mighty

wind blew through our town on the hill, and ripped off the roofs.1 A fire destroyed the tribal totem hut and consumed the relics and jujus of our ancestors. Hyenas dug up the corpse of the paramount chief and devoured it.'

'This was a direct onslaught on your people, your ancestors and your religion,' Taita murmured.

'Then the earth moved and shook itself like a living beast under our feet. The waters of the lake leapt into the air, boiling white and furious.

The fish shoals disappeared. The lake birds flew away towards the west. The waves crushed our canoes where they lay upon the beaches.

They ripped out our fishing nets. The people begged me to intercede with the angry gods of our tribe.'

'What could you do in the face of the elements?' Taita wondered.

'They had set you a daunting task.'

'I came to this place where we now sit. I cast a spell, the most potent in my power. I evoked the shades of our ancestors to placate the gods of the lake. But they were deaf to my pleas, and blind to the suffering of my tribe. They shook these hills on which we sit as a bull elephant shakes a ngong nut tree. The earth danced so that men could not stand upright.

Deep cracks opened like the jaws of hungry lions and swallowed men and women with their infants strapped upon their backs.' By now Kalulu was weeping. His tears dripped from his chin on to his naked chest. One of his bodyguards wiped them away with a linen cloth.

'While I watched, the waters of the lake began to roll and thunder upon the beaches with increasing fury. They leapt half-way up the cliff below us. The spray burst over me in torrents. I was blinded and deafened. I looked across at the temple. Through the clouds and the spray, I saw the black-robed figure standing alone before the gateway.

She had her arms held out towards the tumultuous lake like a wife welcoming the return of her beloved husband from the wars.' Kalulu panted for breath and struggled to control his body. His arms jerked and danced, his head shook like that of a man with the palsy. His features convulsed as though he were in a fit.

'Peace!' Taita laid a hand on his head, and slowly the dwarf calmed and relaxed, but the tears still poured down his face. 'You need not continue if this is too painful.'

'I must tell you. Only you will understand.' He took a gulp of air, then gabbled on: 'The waters opened and dark masses pushed through the waves. At first I thought they were living monsters from the depths.'_ He pointed at the nearest island. 'There was no island. The lake watersI

214

I

were open and empty. Then that mass of rock pushed through the surface. The island you look upon now was born like an infant squeezed from the womb of the lake.' His hand trembled wildly as he pointed at it. 'But that was not the end. Once again the waters were riven asunder.

Another great mass of rock rose up from the bottom of the lake. That is it! The Red Stones! They were glowing like metal from the flames of the forge. The waters hissed and turned to steam as they were pushed aside.

The stones were half molten, hardening as they emerged from the depths into the air. The clouds of steam they generated were so dense as to obscure almost everything, but when they parted I saw that the temple was untouched. Every stone of the walls was in place, the roof firm. But the black-robed figure had disappeared. The priests also had gone. I never saw any of them again. The Red Stones kept swelling, like a gigantic pregnant belly, until they were the size and shape they are now, sealing off the mouth of the Nile. The river shrivelled to nothing, while the rocks and sandbanks in its bed appeared from beneath the waters.'

Kalulu gesticulated to his bodyguards. One ran forward to support his head while another held a gourd to his lips. He swallowed noisily. The liquid had a pungent smell and seemed to calm him at once. He pushed aside the gourd and went on talking to Taita.

'I was so overcome by these cataclysmic events that I ran from this hut down the slope of the bluff.' He pointed out the route he had taken.

'I was level with that clump of trees when the ground split and I was hurled into the deep trench that opened in front of me. I tried to claw my way out, but one of my legs was broken. I had almost reached the top when, like the jaws of a man-eating monster, the earth closed on me as swiftly as it had opened. Both my legs were caught, the bones crushed to fragments. I lay there for two days before survivors from Tamafupa found me. They tried to free me but my legs were trapped between two slabs of rock. I asked them to bring me a knife and an axe. While they held me, I cut off my legs, and bound up the stumps with bark cloth. When my tribe fled from this accursed place into the marshes of Kioga they carried me with them.'

'You have lived again through all the terrible events of those days,'

Taita told him. 'It has tried your strength to the limit. I have been deeply moved by all you have told me. Call your women. Let them carry you back to the safety of Tamafupa, where you must rest.'

'What will you do, Magus?'

'Colonel Meren is ready to quench the heated rockface to find out if it will shatter. I will assist him.'

The mountain of wood stacked against the rock wall had'burnt down to a pile of glowing ash. The red rock was so hot that the air around it shimmered and wavered like a desert mirage. Four gangs of men gathered around the shadoof wheels on top of the Red Stones. None had any experience of rock-breaking. However, Taita had explained it to them.

'Are you ready, Magus?' Meren's voice echoed up from the gorge.

'Ready!' Taita shouted back.

'Start pumping!' Meren cried.

The men seized the handles of the shadoofs and put their full weight behind them. Their heads bobbed up and down to the rhythm Habari beat on a native drum. The line of empty buckets dipped into the lake surface, filled, then rose to the top of the wall. There, they spilled over into the wooden trough that channelled the water over the hump of the wall to cascade down the heated rockface on the opposite side. Immediately the air was filled with dense white clouds of hissing steam that enveloped the wall and the men on top of it. Those on the handles never faltered, and water streamed over the lip. The steam billowed, and the contracting rock groaned and growled.

'Is it breaking?' Taita shouted.

At the base of the wall Meren was lost in the dense steam. His reply came back, almost drowned in the rush of water and the hiss of steam.

'I cannot see anything. Keep them pumping, Magus!'

The men on the shadoofs were tiring, and Taita replaced them with fresh teams. They kept the water pouring down the face, and gradually the hissing clouds of steam began to subside and disperse.

'Pump!' Meren roared. Taita changed the teams again, then gingerly approached the lip and peered over, but the curvature of the cliff hid the base of the wall. 'I am going down,' he called to the men on the pumps.

'Don't stop until I give the order.' He hurried to the path that led into the gorge and made his way down at his best speed. The steam had cleared sufficiently for him to make out the shapes of Meren and Fenn below. They had moved much closer to the wall, and were discussing the result of the experiment.

'Don't get too close to the rockface,' Taita called, but they did not seem to hear him. Water was still pouring down it and had washed the ashes into the dry riverbed.

'Ho, Meren! What success?' Taita called, as he hurried down the path.

Meren looked up at him, his expression so comically mournful that Taita laughed. 'Why so glum?'

'Nothing!' Meren lamented. 'All that effort in vain.' He moved into

Ithe eddies of steam and stretched out his hand towards the rock.

'Take care!' Taita shouted. 'It is still hot.' Meren pulled his hand back, then drew his sword. He reached out with the point of the bronze blade.

Fenn had moved close to his side. 'The rock is still intact,' she cried.

'No cracks.' She and Meren were only an arm's length from the steaming face when Taita came up behind them. He saw that Fenn was correct: the red rock wall was blackened by the flames but unscathed.

Meren tapped it with the point of his sword. It sounded solid. Angrily, Ihe raised the sword to deliver a harder blow and relieve his frustration.

The steam clouds in which they were enveloped were moist and warm, but Taita felt a sudden intense contrast, an icy chill on his arms and face. Immediately he opened his Inner Eye. Through it he saw a tiny spot appear on the soot-blackened stone where Meren had struck it. It glowed red, then took on the shape of the cat's paw, symbol of Eos of the Dawn.

'Get back!' Taita ordered, and used the voice of power to reinforce the command. At the same time he lunged forward, seized Fenn's arm and flung her away. But his warning to Meren had come too late.

Although Meren tried to check his stroke, the point of his sword touched the glowing spot again. With a sound like shattering glass the small area of rock directly beneath the symbol of Eos exploded outwards and a blast of splinters struck him full in the face. Although most were small fragments, they were as sharp as needles. His head snapped back, he dropped the sword and clutched at his face with both hands. Blood poured between his fingers and ran down on to his chest.

Taita ran to him and caught his arm to steady him. Fenn had been thrown to the ground, but now she scrambled up and ran to help.

Between them they led Meren back from the steaming rock, found a patch of shade and sat him down.

'Stand back!' Taita ordered the men, who had followed and were now crowding forward. 'Give us room to work.' To Fenn, he said, 'Bring water.'

She ran to a gourd and brought it to him. Taita lifted Meren's hands away from his ruined face. She exclaimed with horror, but Taita cautioned her to silence with a frown.

'Am I still as beautiful?' Meren tried to grin, but his eyes were tightly closed, the lids swollen and clotted with blood.

'It's a great improvement,' Taita assured him, and began to wash away the blood. Some of the cuts were superficial, but three were deep. One ran through the bridge of his nose, the second through his upper lip, but the third and worst had pierced his right eyelid. Taita could make out a shard of stone embedded in the eye cavity.

'Fetch my medicine bag,' he ordered Fenn, who ran to where their equipment had been placed and brought back the leather satchel.

Taita opened the roll of surgical instruments and selected a pair of ivory forceps with a probe. 'Can you open your eyes?' he asked gently.

Meren made an attempt and the left lid opened a little, but although the damaged lid quivered, the right eye remained closed.

'No, Magus.' His voice was subdued.

'Is it sore?' Fenn asked timorously. 'Oh, poor Meren.' She took his hand.

'Sore? Not in the least. Your touch has made it better.'

Taita placed a square of leather between Meren's teeth. 'Bite down on that.' He closed the jaws of the forceps over the fragment of stone and, with a single firm movement, drew it out. Meren grunted and his face contorted. Taita laid aside the forceps and, with a finger on each eyelid, gently drew them apart. Behind him he heard Fenn gasp.

'Is it bad?' Meren asked.

Taita remained silent. The eyeball had burst and the bloody jelly dribbled down his cheek. Taita knew at once that Meren would never see with that eye again. Gently he prised open the lid of the other and stared into it. He saw the pupil dilate and focus normally. He held up his other hand. 'How many fingers?' he asked.

'Three,' Meren answered.

'You aren't completely blind, then,' Taita told him. Meren was a tough warrior. It was neither necessary nor advisable to shield him from the truth.

'Only half-way there?' Meren asked, his smile lopsided 'That was why the gods gave you two eyes,' Taita said, and began to bind up the ruined one with a white linen bandage.

'I hate the witch. This is her doing,' said Fenn, and began to weep softly. 'I hate her. I hate her.'

'Make a litter for the colonel,' Taita ordered the men, who waited close at hand.

'I don't need one,' Meren protested. 'I can walk.'

'The first law of the cavalry,' Taita reminded him. 'Never walk when you can ride.'

I

As soon as the litter was ready they helped Meren on to it and started back to Tamafupa. They had been moving for a short time when Fenn called to Taita: 'There are strange men up there, watching us.' She pointed across the dried-up river course. On the skyline stood a small group of men. Fenn counted them swiftly. 'Five.'

They were dressed in loincloths, but their torsos were bare. They all carried spears and clubs. Two were armed with bows. The tallest among them stood at their head. He wore a headdress of red flamingo feathers.

Their bearing was arrogant and hostile. Two of the men behind the chief seemed wounded or injured: they were being supported by their comrades.

'Magus, they have been in a fight,' Shofar, one of the litter-bearers, pointed out.

'Hail them!' Taita ordered. Shofar shouted and waved. None of the warriors showed any reaction. Shofar shouted again. The chief in the flamingo headdress lifted his spear in a gesture of command and immediately his men disappeared from the skyline, leaving the hillside deserted.

A distant chorus of shouts broke the silence that followed their departure.

'That comes from the town.' Fenn turned quickly in that direction.

'There has been trouble.'

When they had left Taita at the Red Stones, Kalulu's bodyguards carried him down the river valley towards Tamafupa. He was in such distress that they went slowly and carefully. They halted every few hundred yards to let him drink from his gourd of medicine, to wet his face and wipe it with a damp cloth. Measured against the arc of the sun, it was almost two hours before they started the climb from the valley towards the gates of Tamafupa.

As they entered a thicket of dense kittar thorn a tall figure stepped onto the pathway. Kalulu and his women recognized him, not only by his headdress of flamingo feathers. The women lowered the litter to the ground and prostrated themselves.

'We see you, great chief,' they chorused. Kalulu struggled up on one elbow, and stared at the newcomer with trepidation. Basma was paramount chief of all the Basmara tribes that inhabited the land between Tamafupa and Kioga. Before the coming of the strangers who had built the temple and raised the Red Stones from the depths of the lake, he had been a mighty ruler. Now his tribes were scattered and his rule disrupted.

'Hail, mighty Basma,' Kalulu said respectfully. 'I am your dog.' I Basma was his bitter rival and enemy. Until this time Kalulu had been protected by his reputation and status. Even the chief of the Bslsmara had not dared to harm a shaman of his power and influence. However, Kalulu knew that ever since the damming of the Nile, Basma had been waiting for his opportunity.

'I have been watching you, wizard,' Basma said coldly.

'I am honoured that such a mighty chief would even notice my humble existence,' Kalulu murmured. Ten Basmara warriors stepped out of the thicket and formed up behind their chief.

'You have led these enemies of the tribe to Tamafupa. They have taken over my town.'

'They are not enemies,' Kalulu replied. 'They are our friends and allies.

Their leader is a great shaman, much more learned and powerful than I am. He has been sent here to destroy the Red Stones and to make the Nile flow again.'

'What feeble lies are these, you pathetic legless thing? Those men are the same sorcerers who built the temple at the mouth of the river, the same wizards who called up the wrath of the dark spirits, who caused the lake waters to boil and the earth to burst open. They are the ones who conjured up the rocks from the depths, and blocked off the great river, which is our mother and our father.'

'That is not so.' Kalulu hopped off his litter and balanced on his stumps to confront Basma. 'Those people are our friends.'

Slowly Basma raised his spear and pointed it at the dwarf. This was a gesture of condemnation. Kalulu looked at his bodyguards. They were not members of a tribe subservient to Basma, one of the many reasons he had selected them. They came from a warrior tribe far to the north.

However, when it came to a choice between himself and Basma he could not be certain in which direction their loyalty would sway. As if in answer to his unspoken question, the eight women tightened their ranks around him. Imbali, the flower, was their leader. Her body might have been carved from anthracite. Her jet skin was anointed with oil so that it glowed in the sunlight. Her arms and legs were sleek with fine flat muscle. Her breasts were high and hard, decorated with an intricate pattern of ritual scarification. Her neck was long and proud. Her eyes were fierce. She loosened the battleaxe from the loop at her waist. The others followed her example.

'Your whores will not save you now, Kalulu,' Basma sneered disdain

fully. 'Kill the wizard,' he shouted at his warriors, and hurled his spear at Kalulu.

Imbali anticipated the throw. She jumped forward, swung the battle axe in her right hand and hit the spear in mid-air, knocking it straight upwards. As it fell back she caught it neatly in her left hand and raised the point to meet the rush of warriors. The first man ran on to it, transfixing himself just below the sternum. He reeled backwards into the man coming up behind him, knocking him off balance. Then he dropped on to his back and lay kicking with the shaft of the spear standing out of his belly. Imbali leapt gracefully over his corpse, and caught the man behind him before he could recover. She swung the axe in a rising stroke that lopped off his spear-arm neatly at the elbow. She pirouetted and used the momentum to decapitate a third man as he rushed forward. The headless corpse dropped into a sitting position, the open arteries sending up a tall fountain of bright red, then flopped over and bled into the earth.

Shielding Kalulu, Imbali and the other women fell back quickly and picked up the litter by its rawhide carrying straps. Then using it as a battering ram, they charged into the Basmara. Their war-cry was a shrill ululation as the axe blades whistled and fluted, then thudded into flesh and bone.

Basma's men rallied swiftly. They met the women with a wall of locked shields and threw their long spears at their heads. One went down, killed outright with a flint point through her throat. The others raised the litter and hammered it into the line of shields. Both sides heaved against each other. One of the Basmara dropped to his knees and stabbed up under the bottom edge of the litter into the belly of the girl at the centre of the line. She released her grip and reeled backwards. She tried to turn away but her assailant jerked his spear free and stabbed again, aiming for her kidneys. The blow went in deep and the girl screamed as the blade slipped alongside her spine crippling her instantly.

Kalulu's bodyguards retreated a few steps, filled the gap left by the wounded girl and held the litter steady. The Basmara raised their shields and, once more, charged shoulder to shoulder. As they crashed into the litter they stabbed up under the bottom edge of the shields, aiming for groins and bellies. The line of shields swayed back and forth. Two more girls went down, one hit in the upper thigh so that the femoral artery erupted. She fell back and tried to stem the bleeding by pushing her fingers into the wound to pinch the artery closed. While she was bowed

over her back was exposed and a Basmara stabbed her in the spine. The spearhead found the joint between her vertebrae, and her paralysed legs gave way. The man stabbed her again, but while he was concentrating on killing her, Imbali ducked under the litter and chopped deep into his skull.

The uneven pressure on the litter slewed it round. Kalulu was left unprotected on one flank. Chief Basma seized the moment: he darted out of the wall of shields, dodged around the litter and ran at him. Kalulu saw him coming and swung himself into a handstand. With amazing agility he shot towards the shelter of the nearby thicket of kittar thorns.

He had almost reached it when Basma overhauled him and stabbed him twice. 'Traitor!' the chief screamed, and the spearhead hit Kalulu in thej centre of the back. With a huge effort he managed to stay balanced on his hands. He bounced along, but Basma caught up with him again.

'Witchmonger!' he yelled and thrust again, deeply through the little man's inverted crotch and into his belly. Kalulu howled and tumbled into the thicket. Basma tried to follow up his attack, but from the corner of his eye he saw Imbali rushing at him with her axe above her head. He ducked and when her blade hissed past his ear, he swerved away from her return stroke and ran. His men saw him go and followed, pelting away down the slope.

'The sorcerer is dead!' Basma shouted.

His warriors took up the chant: 'Kalulu is dead! The familiar of devils and demons is slain!'

'Leave them to run back to the bitches that whelped them.' Imbali stopped her girls chasing them. 'We must save our master.'

By the time they found him in the thicket Kalulu was curled into a ball, whimpering with pain. Tenderly they extricated him from the hooked thorn branches and placed him on his litter. At that moment a shout from further down the slope checked them.

'It is the voice of the old man.' Imbali had recognized Taita, and ululated to direct them.

Soon Taita and Fenn came into view, followed closely by the party carrying Meren on his litter.

'Kalulu, you are wounded grievously,' Taita said gently.

'Nay, Magus, not wounded.' Kalulu shook his head painfully. 'I fear I am slain.'

'Swiftly. Take him to the camp!' Taita told Imbali and her three surviving companions. 'And you men!' He picked out four following Meren's litter. 'Your help is needed here!'

222 I

'Wait!' Kalulu seized Taita's hand to prevent him leaving. 'The man who did this is Basma, the paramount chief of Basmara.'

'Why did he attack you? You are his subject, surely?'

'Basma believes that you are of the same tribe who built the temple, and that you have come here to instigate further calamity and catastrophe.

He thinks I have joined with you to destroy the land, the rivers, the lakes and to kill all the Basmara.'

'He has gone now. Your women have driven him away.' Taita tried to reassure and calm him.

Kalulu would have none of it. 'He will return.' He reached up and seized Taita's wrist as he stooped over the litter. 'You must get into the town and prepare to defend yourselves. Basma will return with all his regiments.'

'When I leave Tamafupa, I will take you with me, Kalulu. Our pursuit of the witch cannot succeed without your help.'

'I can feel the bleeding deep in my belly. I will not be going on with you.'

Before sunset Kalulu died. The four bodyguards dug an adit into the side of a large abandoned anthill outside the stockade of Tamafupa. Taita wrapped the corpse in a sheet of unbleached linen and they laid it in the damp clay tunnel. Then they sealed it with large boulders to prevent the hyenas digging it out.

'Your ancestral gods will welcome you, Shaman Kalulu, for you were of the Truth.' Taita bade him farewell.

When he turned away from the tomb, the four bodyguards stood before him, and Imbali spoke for them all in the Shilluk language. 'Our master is gone. We are far from our own land, alone. You are a mighty shaman, greater even than Kalulu. We will follow you.'

Taita looked at Nakonto. 'What do you make of these women? If I enlist them, will you take them under your command?' he asked.

Nakonto considered the question solemnly. 'I have seen them fight.

I will be content to have them follow me.'

With a regal tilt of her head, Imbali acknowledged his presence and his words. 'For as long as it pleases us to do so, we will march shoulder to shoulder with this strutting Shilluk rooster, but not behind him,' she told Taita.

Her eyes were almost on a level with Nakonto's. The magnificent pair stared at each other with apparent scorn. Taita opened his Inner Eye and smiled as he saw how their auras mirrored the inclination they felt towards each other. 'Nakonto, is it agreed?' he asked.

22.3

'It is agreed.' Nakonto made another lordly gesture of acquiescence.

'For the time being.';

Fenn and the Shilluk camp-followers swept out one of the largest huts for Meren. Then Fenn burnt a handful of Taita's special herbs in the open fireplace. The aromatic smoke drove out the insects and spiders that had made the hut their home. They cut a mattress of fresh grass and laid Meren's sleeping mat upon it. He was in such pain that he could hardly raise his head to drink from the bowl that Fenn held to his lips. Taita promoted Hilto-bar-Hilto to take his place at the head of the four divisions until Meren had recovered sufficiently to assume command again.

Taita and Hilto toured the town to inspect the defences. Their first concern was to ensure that the water supply was secure. There was a deep well in the centre of the village, with a narrow circular clay staircase descending to the water, which was of good quality. Taita ordered that a party under Shofar should fill all of the gourds and waterskins in readiness for the anticipated assault by the Basmara. In the thick of the fighting, thirsty men would have no opportunity to draw from the well.

Taita's next concern was the condition of the outer stockade. They found that it was still in a reasonable state of repair, except for a few sections where termites had eaten the poles. However, it was immediately apparent that they could not hope to hold such an extended line.

Tamafupa was a big town that had once been home to a large tribe. The stockade was almost half a league in circumference. 'We will have to shorten it,' he told Hilto, 'then burn the remainder of the town to clear the approaches and enable our archers to cover the ground.'

'You have set us a daunting task, Magus,' Hilto remarked. 'We had better begin at once.'

Once Taita had marked out the new perimeter, men and women fell to. They dug out the best preserved of the stockade poles and set them up along the line Taita had surveyed. There was no time to make a permanent fortification, so they filled the gaps with branches of kittar thorn bush. They erected tall watch-towers at the four compass points of the new stockade, which commanded a good view over the valley and all the approaches.

Taita ordered bonfires to be set around the perimeter. When they were lit they would illuminate the stockade walls in the event of a night

attack. Once this was done he built an inner keep round the well, their last line of defence if the Basmara regiments broke into the town. Within this inner stronghold, he stored the remaining bags of dhurra, the spare weapons and all other valuable supplies. They built stables for the remaining horses. Windsmoke and her colt were still in good condition, but many others were sick or dying after the long hard road they had travelled.

Every evening after she had fed Meren and helped Taita change the dressing over the empty socket of his right eye, Fenn went down to visit Whirlwind and take him the dhurra cakes he loved.

Taita waited for a favourable wind before he set fire to the remains of the old town that lay outside the new stockade. The thatch and wooden walls had dried and burned rapidly, the wind blowing the flames away from the new walls. By nightfall that day the old town was levelled to a smouldering field of ashes.

'Let the Basmara attack across that open ground,' Hilto observed, with satisfaction, 'and we will shock them.'

'Now you can set up markers in front of the stockade,' Taita told him.

They placed cairns of white river stones at twenty, fifty and a hundred paces so that the archers could have the enemy accurately ranged as they sent in their attacks.

Taita sent Imbali with her companions and the other women to the dry river to cut reeds for arrow-making. He had brought bags of spare arrowheads from the armoury at Qebui fort, and when they had been used, he discovered an outcrop of flint in the hillside below the stockade.