Birds of Prey

by Wilbur Smith

  So engrossed were they with their breakfast that none noticed Aboli or Hal until they were grabbed from behind and hoisted kicking and shrieking in the air.

  ‘Be quiet, you little baboon,’ Aboli ordered.

  ‘Slavers!’ wailed the eldest child, as he saw Hal’s white face. ‘We are taken by slavers!’

  ‘They will eat us,’ squeaked the youngest.

  ‘We are not slavers!’ Hal told them. ‘And we will not harm you.’

  This assurance merely sent the trio into fresh paroxysms of terror. ‘He is a devil who can speak the language of heaven.’

  ‘He understands all we say. He is an albino devil.’

  ‘He will surely eat us as my mother warned me.’

  Aboli held the eldest at arm’s length and glared at him. ‘What is your name, little monkey?’

  ‘See his tattoos.’ The boy howled in dread and confusion. ‘He is tattooed like the Monomatapa, the chosen of heaven.’

  ‘He is a great Mambo!’

  ‘Or the ghost of the Monomatapa who died long ago.’

  ‘I am indeed a great chief,’ Aboli agreed. ‘And you will tell me your name.’

  ‘My name is Tweti – oh, Monomatapa, spare me for I am but little. I will be only a single mouthful for your mighty jaws.’

  ‘Take me to your village, Tweti, and I will spare you and your brothers.’

  After a while the children began to believe that they would neither be eaten nor turned into slaves, and they started to smile shyly at Hal’s overtures. From there it was not long before they were giggling delightedly to have been chosen by the great tattooed chief and the strange albino to lead them to the village.

  Driving the cattle herd before them, they took a track through the hills and came out suddenly in a small village surrounded by rudimentary fields of cultivation, in which a few straggling millet plants grew. The huts were shaped like bee-hives and beautifully thatched, but they were deserted. Clay pots stood on the cooking fires before each hut and there were calves in the pens and woven baskets, weapons and accoutrements scattered where they had been dropped when the villagers fled.

  The three boys squeaked reassurances into the surrounding bush. ‘Come out! Come and see! It is a great Mambo of our tribe come back from death to visit us!’

  An old crone was the first to emerge timidly from a thicket of elephant grass. She wore only a greasy leather skirt, and her one eye socket was empty. She had but a single yellow tooth in the front of her mouth. Her dangling dugs flapped against her wrinkled belly, which was scarified with ritual tattoos.

  She took one look at Aboli’s face, then ran to prostrate herself before him. She lifted one of his feet and placed it on her head. ‘Mighty Monomatapa,’ she keened, ‘you are the chosen of heaven. I am a useless insect, a dung beetle, before your glory.’

  In singles and pairs, and then in greater numbers, the other villagers emerged from their hiding places and gathered before Aboli to kneel in obeisance and pour dust and ashes on their heads in reverence.

  ‘Do not let this adulation turn your head, oh Chosen One,’ Hal told him sourly in English.

  ‘I give you royal dispensation,’ Aboli replied, without smiling. ‘You need not kneel in my presence, nor pour dust on your head.’

  The villagers brought Aboli and Hal carved wooden stools to sit upon, and offered them gourds of soured milk mixed with fresh blood, porridge of millet, grilled wild birds, roasted termites and caterpillars seared on the coals so that their hairy coverings were burnt off.

  ‘You must eat a little of everything they offer you,’ Aboli warned Hal, ‘or else you will give great offence.’

  Hal gagged down a few mouthfuls of the blood and milk mixture, while Aboli swigged back a full gourd. Hal found the other delicacies a little more palatable, the caterpillars tasted like fresh grass juice and the termites were crisp and delicious as roasted chestnuts.

  When they had eaten, the village headman came forward on hands and knees to answer Aboli’s questions.

  ‘Where is the town of the Monomatapa?’

  ‘It is two days’ march in the direction of the setting sun.’

  ‘I need ten good men to guide me.’

  ‘As you command, O Mambo.’

  The ten men were ready within the hour, and little Tweti and his companions wept bitterly that they were not chosen for this honour but were instead sent back to the lowly task of cattle-herding.

  The trail they followed towards the west led through open forests of tall, graceful trees interspersed with wide expanses of savannah grasslands. They began to encounter more herds of the humped cattle herded by small naked boys. The cattle grazed in close and unlikely truce with herds of wild antelope. Some of the game were almost equine, but with coats of strawberry roan or midnight sable, and horns that swept back like Oriental scimitars to touch their flanks.

  Several times in the forests they saw elephants, small breeding herds of cows and calves. Once they passed within a cable’s length of a gaunt bull standing under a flat-topped thorn tree in the middle of the open savannah. This patriarch showed little fear of them but spread his tattered ears like battle standards and raised his curved tusks high to peer at them with small eyes.

  ‘It would take two strong men to carry one of those tusks,’ Aboli said, ‘and in the markets of Zanzibar they would fetch thirty English pounds apiece.’

  They passed many small villages of thatched bee-hive huts, similar to the one in which Tweti lived. Obviously, the news of their arrival had gone ahead of them for the inhabitants came out to stare in awe at Aboli’s tattoos and then to prostrate themselves before him and cover themselves with dust.

  Each of the local chieftains pleaded with Aboli to honour his village by spending the night in the new hut his people had built especially for him as soon as they had heard of his coming. They offered food and drink, calabashes of the blood and milk mixture and bubbling clay pots of millet beer.

  They presented gifts, iron spear- and axe-heads, a small elephant tusk, tanned leather cloaks and bags. Aboli touched each of these to signal his acceptance then returned them to the giver.

  They brought him girls to choose from, pretty little nymphs with copper-wire bangles on their wrists and ankles, and tiny aprons of coloured trade beads that barely concealed their pudenda. The girls giggled and covered their mouths with dainty pink-palmed hands and ogled Aboli with huge dark eyes, liquid with awe. Their plump pubescent breasts were shining with cow fat and red clay, and their buttocks were bare and round and joggled with each disappointed pace as Aboli sent them away. They looked back at him over a bare shoulder with longing and reverence. What prestige they would have enjoyed if they had been chosen by the Monomatapa.

  On the second day they approached another range of hills, but these were more rugged and their sides were sheer granite. As they drew closer they saw that the summit of each hill was fortified with stone walls.

  ‘Yonder is the great town of the Monomatapa. It is built upon the hill tops to resist the attacks of the slavers, and his regiments of warriors are always at the ready to repel them.’

  A throng of people came down to welcome them, hundreds of men and women wearing all their finery of beads and carved ivory jewellery. The elders wore headdresses of ostrich feathers and skirts of cow tails. All the men were armed with spears, and war bows were slung upon their backs. They groaned with awe as they saw Aboli’s face and flung themselves down before him so that he could tread upon their quivering bodies.

  Borne along by this throng, they slowly ascended the pathway to the summit of the highest hill, passing through a series of gateways. At each gate part of the crowd about them fell back until, as they approached the final glacis before the fortress that crowned the summit, they were accompanied only by a handful of chieftains, warriors and councillors of the highest rank, wearing all the regalia and finery of their office.

  Even these paused at the final gateway, and one noble ancient with silver hair and aqui
line eye took Aboli by the hand and led him into the inner courtyard. Hal shrugged off the councillors who sought to restrain him and strode into the inner courtyard at Aboli’s side.

  The floor was of clay that had been mixed with blood and cow dung and then screeded until it dried like polished red marble. Huts surrounded this courtyard, but many times larger than Hal had seen before, and the thatching was of new golden grass, intricate and splendid. The doorway of each hut was decorated by what seemed, at first glance, to be orbs of ivory, and it was only when they were half-way across the courtyard that Hal realized they were human skulls, and that tall pyramids formed of hundreds stood at spaced intervals around the perimeter.

  Beside each skull pyramid was planted a tall pole and on the sharpened point of these stakes a man or woman had been impaled through the anus. Most of these victims were long dead and stank, but one or two still twitched or groaned pitifully.

  The old man stopped them in the centre of the courtyard. Hal and Aboli stood in silence for a while, until a weird cacophony of primitive musical instruments and discordant human voices issued from the largest and most imposing hut facing them. A procession of creatures came forth into the sunlight. They crawled and wriggled like insects on the polished clay surface, and their bodies and faces were daubed with coloured clay and painted in fantastic patterns. They were hung with charms, amulets and magical fetishes, skins of reptiles, bones and skulls of man and animal, and all the gruesome paraphernalia of the wizard and the witch. They whined and howled and gibbered, and rolled their eyes and chattered their teeth, and beat on drums and twanged single-stringed harps.

  Two women followed them. Both were stark naked, the first a mature female with full and bountiful breast, her belly marked with the stria of childbearing. The other was a girl, slim and graceful with a sweet moon face and startlingly white teeth behind full lips. She was the loveliest of any that Hal had laid eyes upon since they had entered the land of the Monomatapa. Her waist was narrow and her hips full and her skin was like black satin. She knelt on hands and knees with her buttocks turned towards them. Hal shifted uneasily as the deepest folds of her privy parts were exposed to his gaze. Even in these circumstances of danger and uncertainty he found himself aroused by her nubility.

  ‘Show no emotion,’ Aboli warned him softly, without moving his lips. ‘As you love life, remain unmoved.’

  The wizards fell silent and for a space everyone was still. Then, out of the hut stooped a massively corpulent figure clad in a leopardskin cloak. Upon his head was a tall hat of the same dappled fur, which exaggerated his already magisterial height.

  He paused in the doorway and glared at them. All the company of wizards and witches crouching at his feet moaned with amazement and covered their eyes, as if his beauty and majesty had blinded them.

  Hal stared back at him. It was difficult to follow Aboli’s advice to remain expressionless, for the features of the Monomatapa were tattooed in exactly the same pattern and style as the face he had known from childhood, the great round face of Aboli.

  Aboli broke the silence. ‘I see you, great Mambo. I see you, my brother. I see you, N’Pofho, son of my father.’

  The Monomatapa’s eyes narrowed slightly, but his patterned features remained as if carved in ebony. With slow and stately stride he crossed to where the naked girl knelt and seated himself upon her arched back as though she were a stool. He continued to glare at Aboli and Hal, and the silence drew out.

  Suddenly he made an impatient gesture to the woman who stood beside him. She took one of her own breasts in her hand and, placing the engorged nipple between his thick lips, gave him suck. He drank from her, his throat bobbing, then pushed her away and wiped his mouth with the palm of his hand. Refreshed by this warm draught, he looked to his principal soothsayer. ‘Speak to me of these strangers, Sweswe!’ he commanded. ‘Make me a prophecy, O beloved of the dark spirits!’

  The oldest and ugliest of the wizards sprang to his feet and began a wild gyrating, whirling dance. He shrieked and leaped high in the air, shaking the rattle in his hand. ‘Treason!’ he screamed, and frothy spittle splattered from his lips. ‘Sacrilege! Who dares claim blood ties with the Son of the Heavens?’ He pranced in front of Aboli like a wizened ape on skinny shanks. ‘I smell the stink of treachery!’ He hurled his rattle at Aboli’s feet and snatched a cow’s-tail whisk from his belt. ‘I smell sedition!’ He brandished the whisk, and began to tremble in every muscle. ‘What devil is this who dares to imitate the sacred Tattoo?’ His eyes rolled back in his skull until only the whites showed. ‘Beware! For the ghost of your father, the great Holomima, demands the blood sacrifice!’ he shrieked, and gathered himself to spring full at Aboli’s face to strike him with the magician’s whisk.

  Aboli was faster. The cutlass sprang from the scabbard on his belt as though it were a living thing. It flashed in the sunlight as he cut back-handed. The wizard’s head was severed cleanly from his trunk and rolled down his back. It lay on the polished clay gazing with wide astonished eyes at the sky, and the lips writhing and twitching as they tried to utter the next wild denunciation.

  The headless body stood, for a moment, on trembling legs. A fountain of blood from the severed neck spouted high in the air, the whisk fell from the hand and the body collapsed slowly on top of its own head.

  ‘The ghost of our father Holomima demands the blood sacrifice,’ said Aboli softly. ‘And lo! I, Aboli his son, have given it to him.’

  No person in the royal enclosure spoke or moved for what seemed half a lifetime to Hal. Then the Monomatapa began to shake all over. His belly began to wobble and his tattooed jowls danced and shook. His face contorted in what seemed a berserker’s fury.

  Hal placed his hand on the hilt of his cutlass. ‘If he is truly your brother, then I will kill him for you,’ he whispered to Aboli. ‘You cover my back and we will fight our way out of here.’

  But the Monomatapa opened his mouth wide and let fly a huge shout of laughter. ‘The tattooed one has made the blood sacrifice that Sweswe demanded!’ he bellowed. Then mirth overcame him and for a long while he could not speak again. He shook with laughter, gasped for breath, hugged himself then hooted again.

  ‘Did you see him stand there with no head while his mouth tried still to speak?’ he roared, and tears of laughter rolled down his cheeks.

  The grovelling band of magicians burst out in squeaks and shrieks of sympathetic glee. ‘The heavens laugh!’ they whined. ‘And all men are happy.’

  Suddenly the Monomatapa stopped laughing. ‘Bring me Sweswe’s stupid head!’ he commanded, and the councillor who had led them here bounded forward to obey. He retrieved it and knelt before the king to hand it to him.

  The Monomatapa held the head by its matted plaits of kinky hair and stared into the wide blank eyes. He began to laugh again. ‘What stupidity not to recognize the blood of kings. How could you not know my brother Aboli by his majestic bearing and the fury of his temper?’

  He flung the dripping head at the other magicians, who scattered. ‘Learn from the stupidity of Sweswe,’ he admonished them. ‘Make no more false prophecy! Tell me no more falsehoods! Begone, all of you! Or I will ask my brother to make another blood sacrifice.’

  They fled in pandemonium, and the Monomatapa rose from his live throne and advanced upon Aboli, a huge and happy grin splitting his fat, tattooed face. ‘Aboli,’ he said, ‘my brother who was long dead and who now lives!’ and he embraced him.

  One of the elaborately thatched huts on the perimeter of the courtyard was placed at their disposal, and a procession of maidens was sent to them, bearing clay pots of hot water balanced upon their heads for the two men to bathe. Still other girls carried trays on which was piled fine raiment to replace their travel-stained clothing, beaded loincloths of tanned leather and cloaks of fur and feathers.

  When they had washed and changed into this finery, another file of girls came bearing gourds of beer, a type of mead fermented from wild honey, and the blended blood
and milk. Others brought platters of hot food.

  When they had eaten, the silver-headed councillor who had taken them into the presence of the Monomatapa came to them. With great civility and every mark of respect he squatted at Aboli’s feet. ‘Though you were far too young when last you saw me to remember me now, my name is Zama. I was the Induna of your father, the great Monomatapa Holomima.’

  ‘It grieves me, Zama, but I remember almost nothing of those days. I remember my brother N’Pofho. I remember the pain of the tattoo knife and the cut of our circumcision that we underwent together. I remember that he squealed louder than I.’

  Zama looked worried and shook his head as if to warn Aboli against such levity when speaking of the King, but his voice was level and calm. ‘All this is true, except only that the Monomatapa never squealed. I was present at the ceremony of the knife, and it was I who held your head while the hot iron seared your cheeks and trimmed the hood from your penis.’

  ‘Dimly now I think that I can remember your hands and your words of comfort. I thank you for them, Zama.’

  ‘You and N’Pofho were twins, born in the same hour. Thus it was that your father commanded that both of you were to bear the royal tattoo. It was new to custom. Never before had two royal sons been tattooed in the same ceremony.’

  ‘I remember little of my father, except how tall he was and strong. I remember how afraid I was at first of the tattoos on his face.’

  ‘He was a mighty man and fearsome,’ Zama agreed.

  ‘I remember the night he died. I remember the shouting and the firing of muskets and the terrible flames in the night.’

  ‘I was there when the slavemasters came with their chains of sorrow.’ Tears filled the old man’s eyes. ‘You were so young, Aboli. I marvel that you remember these things.’

  ‘Tell me about that night.’