Free The Angels Weep by Wilbur Smith Page B

bare feet. Dancing and chanting, the guardians of the Umlimo
led the two wanderers into the village, and then disappeared,
slipping away into the thatched huts.
    However, they were not alone. In the centre of the village
stood a setenghi , an airy open-sided hut of white mopani
poles, and a roof of neat thatch. In the shade of the setenghi there were men waiting, but these were entirely
different from the strange throng which had met them at the
entrance of the village.
    Each of these men sat upon a low carved stool. Though some of
them were grossly fat and others skinny and stooped, they were
all of them surrounded by an almost palpable air of dignity and
authority. Though some were white-headed with snowy woollen
beards and deeply wrinkled faces and others were in the prime of
their life and powers, they all of them wore upon their heads the
simple black headring of gum and clay.
    Here assembled in the secret valley of the Umlimo were what
was left of the leaders of the Matabele nation, men who had once
stood at the head of the fighting impis as they formed the
bull-formation of encircling horns and crushing chest. Some of
them, the eldest, remembered the exodus from the south driven by
the mounted Boer horsemen; they had fought as young men under
great Mzilikazi himself and still wore with pride the tassels of
honour which he had awarded to them.
    All of them had sat upon the councils of King Lobengula, son
of great Mzilikazi, and had been on the Hills of the Indunas that
fateful day when the king had stood before the assembled
regiments and had faced eastward, the direction from which the
column of wagons and white soldiers was entering Matabeleland.
They had shouted the royal salute ‘Bayete!’ as
Lobengula poised his great swollen body on gout-distorted legs
and then defiantly hurled the toy spear of kingship at the
invaders who were still out of sight beyond the blue horizon.
These were the indunas who had led their fighting men past the
king in review singing his praises and the battle hymns of the
regiments, saluting Lobengula for the last time, and then going
out to where the Maxim guns waited for them behind the
wagon-sides and plaited thorn bush walls of the white men’s
laager.
    In the midst of this distinguished assembly sat three men
– the three surviving sons of Mzilikazi, the noblest and
most revered of all the indunas. Somabula, on the left, was the
eldest, victor of a hundred fierce battles, the warrior for whom
the lovely Somabula forests had been named. On the right was
Babiaan, wise and brave. The honourable scars laced his torso and
limbs. However, it was the man in the centre who rose from his
ornately carved stool of wild ebony and came out into the
sunlight.
    ‘Gandang, my father, I see you and my heart
sings,’ cried Bazo.
    ‘I see you, my son,’ said Gandang, his handsome
face made almost beautiful by the joy that lit it, and when Bazo
knelt before him, he touched his head in blessing, and then
raised him up with his own hand.
    ‘Baba!’ Tanase clapped her hands respectfully
before her face, and when Gandang nodded his acknowledgement, she
withdrew quietly to the nearest hut, where she could listen from
behind the thin reed wall.
    It was not for a woman to attend the high councils of the
nation. In the time of the kings, a lesser woman would have been
speared to death for daring to approach an indaba such as
this. Tanase, however, was the one that had once been the Umlimo,
and she was still the mouth-piece of the chosen one. Besides
which, the world was changing, the kings had passed, the old
customs were dying with them, and this woman wielded more power
than any but the highest of the assembled indunas. Nevertheless,
she made the gesture of retiring to the closed hut, so as not to
offend the memory of the old ways.
    Gandang clapped his hands and the slaves brought a stool and a
baked clay beerpot to Bazo. Bazo refreshed himself