Men of Men by Wilbur Smith Page B

youth’s upper arms in an affectionate salute.
    Then, turning with his fists on his hips, still smiling, Zouga shouted to Ralph. ‘Go and see if you can shoot a springbuck, or better even, a wildebeest; we’ll need plenty of meat
for tonight.’
    Ralph let out a whoop at the command, and provoked the filly with his heels, forcing her to rear again and then come down in full run, mane flying, hooves pounding as she bore away. Without
being ordered, Jan Cheroot shook his bony mare into a canter and followed the flying filly.
    The two riders returned in the dusk, and the hunt had gone well. They had found rare quarry, a bull eland so old that his neck and shoulders had turned blue with age and the swinging dewlap
almost swept the dusty earth between his stubby forelegs.
    He was as big as a prize stud bull, with a chest round as a brandy cask of Limousine oak, and Zouga guessed he would weigh not much under a ton, for he was fat and sleek; there would be a tubful
of rich white lard in the chest cavity, and thick layers of yellow fat beneath the glossy hide. He was a prize indeed, and the little band of Matabele drummed their assegai against the hide shields
and shouted with delight when they saw him.
    The bull snorted at the hubbub and broke into a lumbering gallop, trying to break away, but Ralph swung the filly to head him off and within a hundred yards the bull changed the gallop for a
short-winded trot and allowed himself to be turned back towards the group of waiting men.
    Ralph reined in the filly, kicked his feet from the stirrups and jumped easily to the earth, throwing up the carbine as he landed cat-like on his toes and seeming to fire in the same
instant.
    The bull’s head flinched at the shot, blinking the huge shining eyes convulsively as the bullet slammed into his skull between them, and he collapsed with a meaty thud that seemed to
tremble in the earth.
    The Matabele streamed out like a pack of wild dogs, swarming over the mountainous carcass, using the razor edge of their war-assegai as butchers’ knives, going for the tidbits, the tripes
and the liver, the heart and the sweet white fat.
    T he Matabele gorged on fat eland meat, grilling the tripes over the coals, threading garlands of liver and fat and succulent heart onto wet white
mimosa twigs from which they had peeled the bark, so that the melting fat sizzled and bubbled over the layers of meat.
    ‘We have killed no game since we left the forests,’ Bazo explained their ravenous appetites. Though the desert teemed with springbuck herds, they were not the type of game that a man
on foot, armed only with a stabbing spear, could run down easily.
    ‘Without meat a man’s belly is like a war drum, full of nothing except noise and wind.’
    ‘You are far from the land of the Matabele,’ Zouga agreed. ‘No Matabele has been this far south since the old king took the tribe north across the Limpopo, and in that time
even Gandang, your father, was a child.’
    ‘We are the first to make this journey,’ Bazo agreed proudly. ‘We are the point of the spear.’
    In the firelight the warriors about him looked up and their expressions echoed his pride in their achievement. They were all youths, the eldest only a few years older than Bazo, not one of them
over nineteen years of age.
    ‘Where does this long journey take you?’ Zouga asked.
    ‘To a wonderful place in the south from which a man returns with great treasures.’
    ‘What manner of treasures?’ Zouga asked again.
    ‘These.’ Bazo reached across the circle to where Ralph leaned against his saddle, using it as a pillow, and Bazo touched the polished wooden butt of the Martini-Henry that protruded
from the gun bucket.
    ‘
Isibamu –
guns!’ said Bazo.
    ‘Guns?’ Zouga asked. ‘A Matabele
indoda
with a gun?’ His voice mildly derisive. ‘Is not the assegai the weapon of the true warrior?’
    Bazo looked uncomfortable for a moment and then recovered his aplomb.
    ‘The old ways