The White Shield Part 29

"Turn, Great Great One, brother of Dingane!" I cried.

Mhlangana turned; and, as he did so, zip! went my casting spear. Then he laughed. It was quivering in his shield--the great white shield which was like my own.

"Take back thy spear, thou whom I know not!" he cried; and I, it was all I could do to catch the a.s.segai as he had done, or, rather, to turn it off.

"Ha! bearer of the other white shield!" I cried. "It may be that my day is done, but so is thine." And I hurled at him another a.s.segai.

This struck him in the side, wounding him, for I saw the blood flow.

"_Bayete_, brother King!" he called out mockingly. And then I knew that he mistook me for Umzilikazi.

We got within striking distance, but he was a little above me, and, covered by his shield, I could hardly reach him. I sprang upward, driving at him with a long-handled spear, and our shields clashed, as we met in full shock. _Whau_! they crashed together, the two white shields, but I felt I had wounded him again, and he began to totter. A moment more, and Dingane would have reigned sole King, when, I know not how it came about, but the whole crowd of Mhlangana's picked men swept furiously down upon us, rolling us back, themselves pressed down by the other half of my regiment of Scorpions driving them from above. Then I could no longer see Mhlangana, for the gully was filled with men, fighting, struggling, stabbing, and the air was resonant with groans and hissing, and the slapping of the hide shields together, as warriors met in mortal shock, each fighting now to his own hand.

But the pursuers had by this time become the pursued; for, in turn, a great body of the Zulu force had surged up the ridge, and was driving The Scorpions before it. We were hemmed in completely now. We were cut off from the pa.s.s, through which the bulk of us might have escaped-- others covering the retreat--for below, the other horn of Mhlangana's force had closed in, and was merely waiting--waiting grimly until we should be driven down upon its spears. Then the Amandebeli would be no longer a nation.

In despair, still keeping our ranks close, we retreated slowly, fighting our way step by step, up the outermost of the three rifts. We could not escape, for now were we hemmed in on either side by rocks. Our tongues were swollen by thirst, and we panted like dogs. Many of us were gashed with wounds, and streaming with blood; but those who fell were immediately speared and ripped by the men of Mhlangana. Our shields were hacked and bent and our weapons dripping. Still the Zulu host seemed to hesitate, and now a voice cried from its ranks--

"Ho! leopards who are securely trapped! Come forth! Yield now to the mercy of the Great Great One! Come forth, thou Umzilikazi, who callest thyself King, and place thy neck beneath the paw of the Lion of Zulu!"

I can recall the thrill of delight which ran through me, even in that moment of death, _Nkose_ on being again hailed as King; for it was clear that Mhlangana, seeing me in the forefront of the battle, waving the pure white shield, had mistaken me for Umzilikazi, though the Great Great One himself was far above us on the mountain crest, waiting and watching. But I answered fiercely defiant--

"Come, now, and place it there thyself, Mhlangana. But few of thy _impi_ shall return to Dingane by the time that is done."

A roar of fierce laughter went up from the bravest and staunchest of my followers. But most were silent, gloomily silent, and the silence was ominous. I even heard murmurs among some as to the uselessness of further resistance, since we and our enemies were of the same blood, and we might as well live to fight in the army of Dingane, who would spare us, as die in that of Umzilikazi, who was already a dead king.

Leaping up, I sprang upon the nearest of these, and with one blow of my broad spear--the King's a.s.segai--laid him dead at my feet. Then, rolling my eyes over my dispirited remnant, I cried--

"Who is of the base blood of slaves to talk of yielding? Have The Scorpions no sting left? We will die as we have lived--stinging."

Our enemies, thinking we were deliberating surrender, remained halted below in silence. As I finished speaking, there rang out once more, soft and clear upon the air, from the heights above, that wild, sweet voice--

"Great is small, Little is great.

Great shall fall In the coming Fate.

"Who may fear?

Who to-day will yield?

None who hear The Song of the Shield!"

"_Ou_!" cried the warriors, their hands to their mouths. "The shield!

The Song of the Shield again!"

"Hear ye what the words say?" I cried. "'None who hear,' Now, those hear not the sound, wherefore it is we who need not fear. Behold it, the white shield!" I cried again, in ringing tones, holding it aloft.

"We will die beneath it. But we yield not!"

"The white shield! We will die beneath it!" they chorused, springing up, freshly heartened. But I restrained them, for I wished to parley with Mhlangana and his leaders, only, however, to gain time in order that, being rested, we might recommence that unequal fight with renewed vigour. And then, to my unbounded surprise, I, looking up, beheld from where the King sat on the heights above the signal to move downward--the signal to charge.

_Au_! I hardly knew whether I were dreaming or already dead. To charge? It was madness! Why, that host whose spears awaited us was four times as great as our own, fresh and untired, and thirsting for battle. It would eat us up in a moment. Umzilikazi's brain must have turned at the impending fall of his power. Such an order was that of a general gone mad. Or had the enemy, unknown to us, surprised and captured the King, subst.i.tuting others, even as we had done in the matter of Mhlangana's outpost, who were signalling us to our sure and easy destruction. All these thoughts flashed through my mind like scorching fire: yet, even while this was so, I was already issuing my directions, for with ourselves in those days, _Nkose_, an order was given to be obeyed, not to be questioned.

And as we marched down--quietly at first--to fling ourselves in full charge upon the Zulu host, we could hardly believe our ears. The sound of a war-song rose upon the air, nearer and nearer, as though sung by men coming up the great pa.s.s--

"_Yaingahlabi!

Leyo 'Nkunzi! Yai ukufa_!"

Ha! It was our own song--the war-song of the King. Our enemies heard it, too, though the Song of the Shield had not floated to their ears, being audible to ourselves alone, for the dense ranks, which had been squatting on the ground as though to rest, sprang into life, and heads were eagerly turned in the direction of this new force. We, however, hoped but little from this, for those who had been left to guard the defile under Gasibona would be but a mere mouthful in the open field of battle. But, as I saw the shields of the foremost emerging from between the cliffs, I glanced upward once more. The signal was to charge--to charge swiftly, and at once.

"Follow me now, my children!" I cried. "Follow the white shield!"

We hurled ourselves forward, and for a moment nothing was heard but the hissing of war-whistles and the rush of feet. Then--_au_! a crash as of a wave upon a hard rock. So hard had we struck them, so fierce had been the shock, that we rolled them back--at first. Hundreds lay dead and writhing, and still the burning hiss of the spear as it did its work!

At first--only at first. They came at us again. They were closing round us. I saw panic in my ranks.

"The shield! the white shield!" I roared. "Come beneath it, ye who fear."

The shrinking, their spirits renewed, answered with a wild yell. Then we "saw red" as we stabbed and struggled. Ha! they yield. Yes, that dense host was falling back before us--before us--a handful of men! A wild shout arose from its midst--a shout of dismay. And as we pressed them, giving them not a moment wherein to recover themselves, we beheld the reason.

Pouring around the end of the spur came a great cloud of dust, and through it shields and spears. We needed not the alarm and confusion of the Zulu host to tell us that these were our own people, as, indeed, they were. It was Kalipe's _impi_. Roaring the war-shout of Umzilikazi, they fell upon Mhlangana's force, and at the same time the warriors who had issued from the pa.s.s a.s.sailed it furiously upon that side. Dismay and panic now took hold of the great _impi_. Thus suddenly attacked on three sides, realising that they had under-estimated both our strength and strategy, the warriors of Dingane turned and fled by the way which was still open, yet fast closing up, and we--we purposely refrained from closing quite their way because we could slay more of them in their flight, and with small loss to our own side, whereas, did we hem them in--these fierce and desperate Zulu lions--there was no foretelling the issue of the fray, for even yet they were equal to us in numbers. Panic alone was their destruction.

But although we thus left a way open for them to flee, we pressed them hard--_au_! we pressed them hard. We smote them as they fled, striking them down by scores, but I and Kalipe, and the other war-captains were too wary to allow this to continue, even if we had not seen the King's signal of recall. So, singing in mockery after them the war-song of Dingane, we left the pursuit and returned in triumph.

_Au, Nkose_! that was a sight. I have seen your countrymen lying in heaps at Isandhlwana, and I have been in many a hard-fought battle since that of which I am telling. But never have I seen so vast a number of slain as that evening at the Place of the Three Rifts. They lay, here in heaps, there thickly strewn in twos and threes. Many of my kindred and friends fell there, and of our captains and valiant leaders not a few, while two whole regiments of our incorporated slaves had gone down before the Zulu spears. Far and wide they lay, and of the enemy the number of slain was as great as ourselves, and among them some of our older men recognised many whom they had known before our flight from Tshaka. But among the chiefs and leaders we found not the body of Mhlangana nor that of Silwane.

Thus we returned, weary with the flight and the pursuit, but with pride, and joy, and triumph in our hearts, for we had beaten back the most formidable of our foes, and of whom we had gone in dread ever since we had been a nation. And already, though the day was nearly done, vast clouds of vultures were gathering in the heavens, which beholding, many laughed exultantly, remembering the presage in the Song of the Shield.

But as the sun sank below the rim of the world, again the great smooth cliffs of the mountain face glowed blood-red, even as I alone had seen them glow the evening before the last, and so wonderful was this omen that many cried out that the mountain itself was bleeding afresh for those who lay slain beneath it, and that it was a place of _tagati_.

And, indeed, who shall gainsay this, remembering the strange things which it had witnessed; yet was such magic good towards us though evil to our foes, since but for the heartening result of that wild, sweet, mysterious song, and the _muti_ of the white shield, even the King's strategy, perfect as it was, could hardly have availed to save the life of a nation. And this, and nothing less, is what was accomplished that day at the Place of the Three Rifts.

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX.

LALUSINI'S CHOICE.

"So, Untuswa! My commands were those of a general gone mad?"

"Not so, Serpent of Wisdom," I answered, "for the eyes of one who sits aloft see farther than those who watch below."

"Yet the order must have seemed pa.s.sing strange. _Whau_! but these bore their part as cubs of the lion indeed," went on the King, his snuff-spoon arrested in mid-air, as he rolled his eyes in pride over the a.s.semblage of our warriors, who, squatted in rank, were resting after their hard-won victory. "I almost looked to see you give way, for the host of Dingane was terrible in its might, and ye--ye looked but a mouthful to it."

"See yonder, Great Great One," I said, pointing upward to the cliff.

"No living thing surely could find foothold there, yet thence floated forth a wondrous song, and that song saved the day, Calf of a Black Bull. For it hardened our hearts, which were already sinking, so that we fell upon our enemies each man with the strength of ten. And that song was the Song of the Shield!"

"What tale is this, Untuswa?" said the King, mockingly. "Thy song must have been piped by a bird, then, for a.s.suredly nothing human could find foothold there."

"One man may, in truth, be mistaken, Father," I answered. "Yet--ask these, ask all who followed the white shield this day."

Now a murmur arose among those who were with me attending on the King-- Xulawayo and Mgwali, and other fighting leaders.

"_Yeh-bo_!" they cried. "It is even as Untuswa has said, Father. The Song of the Shield was the same as that sung by the stranger sorceress when we went forth to war."

Umzilikazi's countenance clouded somewhat, I thought.