The Angels Weep by Wilbur Smith

with a long
draught of the thick tart bubbling gruel and then he greeted his
fellow indunas in strict order of their seniority, beginning with
Somabula and going slowly down the ranks; and while he did so he
found himself mourning their pitiful shrunken numbers, only
twenty-six of them were left.
    ‘Kamuza, my cousin.’ He looked across at the
twenty-sixth and most junior of the indunas. ‘My sweetest
friend, I see you.’
    Then Bazo did something that was without precedent, he came to
his feet and looked over their heads, and went on with the formal
greetings.
    ‘I greet you, Manonda, the brave!’ he cried.
‘I see you hanging on the branch of the mkusi tree. Dead by
your own hand, choosing death rather than to live as a slave of
white men.’
    The assembled indunas glanced over their own shoulders,
following the direction of Bazo’s gaze with expressions of
superstitious awe.
    ‘Is that you, Ntabene? In life they called you the
Mountain, and like a mountain you fell on the banks of the
Shangani. I greet you, brave spirit.’
    The assembled indunas understood then. Bazo was calling the
roll of honour, and they took up the greeting in a deep
growl.
    ‘ Sakubona , Ntabene.’
    ‘I see you, Tambo. The waters of the Bembesi crossing
ran red with your blood.’
    ‘ Sakubona , Tambo,’ growled the indunas of
Kumalo.
    Bazo threw aside his cloak and began to dance. It was a
swaying sensuous dance and the sweat sprang to gloss his skin and
the gunshot wounds glowed upon his chest like dark jewels. Each
time he called the name of one of the missing indunas, he lifted
his right knee until it touched his chest, and then brought his
bare foot down with a crash upon the hard earth, and the assembly
echoed the hero’s name.
    At last Bazo sank down upon his stool, and the silence was
fraught with a kind of warlike ecstasy. Slowly all their heads
turned until they were looking at Somabula, the eldest, the most
senior. The old induna rose and faced them, and then, because
this was an indaba of the most weighty consequences, he
began to recite the history of the Matabele nation. Though they
had all heard it a thousand times since their infancy, the
indunas leaned forward avidly. There was no written word, no
archives to store this history, it must be remembered verbatim to
be passed on to their children, and their children’s
children.
    The story began in Zululand a thousand miles to the south,
with the young warrior Mzilikazi defying the mad tyrant Chaka,
and fleeing northwards with his single impi from the Zulu might.
It followed his wanderings, his battles with the forces that
Chaka sent to pursue him, his victories over the little tribes
which stood in Mzilikazi’s path. It related how he took the
young men of the conquered tribes into his impis and gave the
young women as wives to his warriors. It recorded the growth of
Mzilikazi from a fugitive and rebel, to, first, a little
chieftain, then to a great war chief, and at last to a mighty
king.
    Somabula related faithfully the terrible M’fecane , the destruction of a million souls as
Mzilikazi laid waste to the land between the Orange river and the
Limpopo. Then he went on to tell of the coming of the white men,
and the new method of waging war. He conjured up the squadrons of
sturdy little ponies with bearded men upon their backs, galloping
into gunshot range, then wheeling away to reload before the amadoda could carry the blade to them. He retold how the
impis had first met the rolling fortresses, the squares of wagons
lashed together with trek chains, the thorn branches woven into
the spokes of the wheels and into every gap in the wooden
barricade, and how the ranks of Matabele had broken and perished
upon those walls of wood and thorn.
    His voice sank mournfully as he told of the exodus northwards,
driven by the grim bearded men on horseback. He recalled how the
weaklings and the infants had died on that tragic