The Covenant: A Novel

by James A. Michener

  ‘But if I were King of the Zulu …’ He hesitated, reluctant to share his aspirations. Lamely he concluded: ‘The Zulu are real men. By the end of the first day they’d understand my dreams.’

  In 1815 he revealed his vision of what warfare in his territory was to become. It was an engagement with the Butelezi, and everyone else supposed it was to be an ordinary confrontation, with the two chiefs seated in their chairs as thousands applauded the desultory skirmishing, but when the ground was selected and everyone was in place, a single Butelezi warrior stepped forward with mocking, insolent gestures. From Dingiswayo’s ranks a tall man, lean as lion sinew, dashed barefooted at the enemy, hooked his shield deftly into his opponent’s, twirled him about like a top, and plunged his short, terrible assegai into the heart.

  Then, with a wild yell, he bounded toward the front ranks of the Butelezi, a signal for the rest of the iziCwe to swarm upon the amazed enemy and slay them.

  Fifty enemy dead. Kraals burned. Nearly a thousand cattle led home in triumph. More than a dozen women captured. There had never before been a battle like this, and there would never again be a battle in the old style.

  As a consequence of this stunning victory, Shaka gained Dingiswayo’s favorable attention and was promoted rapidly to regimental commander, a post of honor which he should have held in quiet distinction for the remainder of his life. But such limited achievement was not what Shaka had in mind, not at all. At night he whispered to Nxumalo, ‘This Dingiswayo goes to battle as if it were a game. He returns cattle to the vanquished. Leaves them their women.’ In the darkness Nxumalo could hear him gritting his teeth. ‘This isn’t war. This is the quarreling of children.’

  ‘What would you do?’

  ‘I will bring war to the world. Real war.’

  * * *

  In 1816, when Reverend Hilary Saltwood, many miles to the southwest, was teaching the little Madagascan girl Emma the geography of Europe, Shaka’s father, chief of the Zulu, died, and after an obliging assassin had removed the son intended for the succession, Shaka at last seized command of the clan, one of the smallest, with a total population of only thirteen hundred and an army, if all the able-bodied were mustered, of three hundred, plus two hundred novices.

  It was a clan of little distinction, smaller than either the Sixolobo or the Langeni; it had no special history, had expanded its lands not at all during the preceding hundred years, and had provided no regional leadership except Shaka’s promotion to command of the iziCwe. Normally the Zulu would have remained of these dimensions, crouched along one of the better reaches of the Umfolozi River.

  But when Shaka assumed command, he moved in with an iziCwe regiment to support his takeover, and one of the first things he did was to require that every Zulu soldier throw away his three long-shafted assegais and replace them with one short stabbing weapon. He then increased the height and width of their shields, until a standing man, with knees only slightly bent, could hide his whole body behind two layers of rock-hard cowhide. But in some ways the most important thing he taught was how to dance.

  First he appointed a knobkerrie team of six, choosing the tallest, strongest and most brutal men from his new recruits. Brandishing their clubs, they would stand behind him at all future public functions, awaiting his instructions. Then he assembled his Zulu regiment at the edge of a flat piece of ground well covered with three-pronged thorns. When they stood at attention in the moonlight he stepped before them, barefooted as always.

  ‘My warriors,’ he said quietly. ‘Four times I have told you that if you want to be the greatest regiment along the Umfolozi, you have got to fight barefooted. And four times you have returned to your sandals. Now take them off. Throw them in a pile. And never let me see them again.’

  When the recruits stood barefooted before him, he said, in the same low voice, ‘Now, my warriors, we’re going to dance.’ And he led them onto the thorn-studded land and began a slow dance, accompanied by a chant they knew well. ‘Sing, my warriors!’ he cried, and as the rhythms began to throb, he danced upon the projections, which caused him no trouble, for he had made his feet tougher than leather. But for his soldiers those first tentative steps were agony, and some began to falter from a pain greater than they could bear.

  Now came Shaka’s first lesson to his Zulu. Watching hawklike, he spotted a man whose legs simply could not force his feet down onto the piercing thorns. ‘That one!’ Shaka cried, pointing at the soldier.

  What happened next became invariable. Two of the knobkerrie team grabbed the offender from behind, pinioning him with great force. Another dropped down and grasped his ankles, spreading his legs apart. Reaching around from in back, the burliest of the gang seized the man’s chin, and with a terrible swing of his arms, twisted it halfway around till the face was looking backward. Then an equally powerful man from in front grasped the chin and continued the awful wrenching until the man’s face was again looking forward, having made a complete circle. The face looked the same, but the man was forever altered.

  ‘Now dance!’ he cried, and twice more he detected soldiers who were less than enthusiastic, and when he designated them, the slayers descended upon them, twisting their heads about in full circles.

  Faster and faster Shaka set the beat until even he was tired. Then, with a gentleness that Nxumalo would never forget, he looked up at the moon and said, ‘My dear warriors. It’s three nights till the moon is full. Now go and harden your feet, for at the full moon after this, we shall all dance again. You have thirty-one days.’

  When they resumed, at the next full moon, only one soldier’s neck had to be twisted; the rest kept pace with Shaka until at the end all were jumping up and down on the thorns, driving them into the ground, and singing their regimental songs, and shouting with joy as they danced with their chief.

  The next day Shaka explained to his troops why the foot-hardening had been necessary: ‘We shall have an army unlike any that has ever swept along the Umfolozi. And its power will be speed. You and I will fly over the rocks, body-arms-head.’

  That would be the secret of Shaka’s irresistible army of Zulu: ‘The body is the big concentration at the center. This is all that the enemy is allowed to see. The arms are swift outreaching movements on the flanks. These are concealed from the enemy.’

  ‘And the head?’ Nxumalo asked.

  ‘You are the head, trusted friend. You’re now in charge of my best regiment, and during the first stages of a battle your men hide behind a hill, at the center. With your backs to the fighting. You sit with your faces away from battle.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Because you must not know how the battle progresses. You must be neither excited nor dismayed. At the crucial moment I’ll tell you what to do, and without thinking or trying to adjust, you roar forth and do it.’

  It was the kind of commission at which Nxumalo excelled, for it required only allegiance and blind obedience, the two virtues that characterized him. Some men require a leader in whom they can place absolute trust; in his shadow they grow strong. And Nxumalo was such a man. Convinced that Shaka was a genius, he found it rewarding to obey him, and in doing so, became the young chief’s only trusted advisor. One morning when the two stood before the regiments the difference between them was obvious. Both were dark of skin, both were battle-hardened. Shaka, only a year older, stood much taller than his aide, broader of shoulder and quicker of movement. In all ways he seemed superior, until the observer looked at Nxumalo’s stocky middle, and then he saw a powerful heaviness: a massive chest that would never tire, a belly that could stand punishment, very stout legs prepared to climb hills, and a general endurance that was unmatched. They formed a good pair: Shaka the mercurial planner, Nxumalo the stolid executor.

  Early in their strategy discussions they realized that if Shaka’s battles were to depend upon fluidity, swift communication among the various segments was vital; equally important was accuracy. So one morning they assembled the four regiments that had been form
ed, and Shaka initiated this training exercise: ‘Speed and accuracy. They’re to be the heart of our success. Now the vice-commanders of our regiments are to go one mile from here, each in a different direction, then stand and wait. Each regiment, nominate four signal-runners, place one here with me, the other three at intervals along the way. When you’re all in position, I’ll give the signal-runners here a message. And off you go. Run to the first waiting man, give him the message, and he carries it to the second, and so on till it reaches the end of the line. Then you vice-commanders dash back here and tell me what the message was. Speed and accuracy.’

  When the sixteen outlying men were in position, Shaka studied the field as if this were a real battle, and with Nxumalo and three other regimental commanders at his side, he said in a loud, clear voice, ‘Run forty paces forward. Turn and go to the three trees. Leave half your men there. Move forward eighty paces.’

  As soon as he had said this he clapped his hands, and the first signal-runners were off. With amazing speed these barefooted men, their feet inured to rocks and thorns, sped over the difficult terrain, ran up to the first waiting men, and delivered their messages. With some satisfaction, Nxumalo saw that his runners were doing rather better than the others, but this was to be expected, and when the final runners carried their messages to their waiting officers and those men began their dash back to Shaka, again Nxumalo saw that his vice-commander was in the lead.

  Running at breakneck speed, this man approached the chief, knelt and delivered the message exactly as it had been stated earlier, and so did the next two officers, but the fourth not only lagged in speed but also in the accuracy of his message; indeed, it was badly garbled.

  Shaka showed no displeasure. Instead he waited for the sixteen signal-runners to come gasping back to the center, whereupon he praised Nxumalo’s men, nodding graciously to him as he did so. The second and third teams he also praised, but when he came to the five delinquent men, he merely pointed at them, whereupon the knobkerrie team grabbed them one by one and burst open their skulls.

  ‘Speed and accuracy,’ he said grimly, leaving the field.

  Shaka placed major reliance upon Nxumalo because of his unflinching obedience. Some commanders questioned orders, but never his old companion: ‘If I told the iziCwe to swim a river, climb a mountain and fight five thousand enemy along the way, Nxumalo would do it.’ And he confessed to the other regiments that he depended upon the iziCwe as his one certain arm in battle, for its performance was terrifying.

  Shaka’s vision of the campaigns that would make him king required total war, total obedience to his personal rule, total destruction of anyone who raised even a whisper against him. He saw Dingiswayo’s limited forays as a perpetuation of the petty rivalries which allowed every minor chief a separate development that made him weak and without direction. He was determined to sweep all clans into one great Zulu nation, and to do this his warriors must move like vast herds of antelope, leaving no blade of grass untouched.

  While Shaka drilled his regiments, his mother, Nandi, asserted herself in the Zulu kraals. She became indeed the Female Elephant, trampling on those who had rejoiced at her departure years before. The long years of exile which mother and son had shared had forged an extraordinary bond of love and understanding, and now Nandi pushed her son ever forward toward the mighty destiny she saw for the outcast they had called ‘that insect.’

  Thus, when Shaka judged that his amaZulu were ready for the massive tasks ahead, he told his commanders one evening in 1816, ‘We move against the Langeni,’ and he was so determined to humble the clan which had treated his mother badly that he rehearsed his battle plan for three tiring days: ‘Nxumalo, you were a dog of the Langeni. This time your regiment will form the body. I’m giving you that position because I want total discipline. No Langeni man is to be killed unless absolutely necessary. The two flanks. You must move with greater speed than ever before and capture the enemy alive.’ Ominously, on the final evening he commissioned four additional bullies to serve in his knobkerrie team and gave one of them a club suitable for driving stakes. With all steps planned, he went to sleep.

  Shortly after dawn Nxumalo assembled the four regiments in a hollow-square formation, each in its distinctive uniform, with headdress of identifying color and large shields of different-colored cowhide.

  When all was ready, with a bright sun creeping over the hilltops, Shaka himself stepped into the center of the square, a giant of a man, completely naked, conspicuously muscled, and at a signal from Nxumalo the waiting soldiers cried ‘Bayete’ and gave foot-stomping applause.

  His three personal attendants now dressed him for battle. First they put on a loincloth apron of tanned leather, then a girdle of bright leopard skin about two inches wide fastened tightly to support an ashy gray kilt made of twisted genet fur which ended well above his knees. About his shoulders they placed a loose garland of animal tails kept so short they would not flop when he ran, and on his head a kind of crown formed by tufts of small red feathers and topped by a backward-curving blue-crane feather at least two feet long.

  He was barefooted, of course, and carried in his hands only two things: his massive shield almost as tall as himself and pure white, except for a small black dot in the middle; and his stabbing assegai with haft two feet long and iron point one foot. But what imparted a sense of awful majesty were the four adornments the attendants now attached. About each arm, just below the shoulder, an armband of white cowtails was tied, the tips reaching down to his elbows and very full, so that they fluttered when he moved. And below each knee, reaching to his ankles, a similar band was fastened, and it was these white ornamentations, combined with the stark whiteness of the shield, that caused his brown-black body to glow with imperial grandeur.

  ‘We march!’ he cried as he faced his regiments, and his five hundred warriors replied, ‘Bayete!’

  Like a serpent the Zulu army snaked through the hills, and at dawn next morning the Langeni were surprised to find, upon waking, that enemy regiments surrounded their kraals. Shaka’s orders were obeyed, and the amazed Langeni, expecting their huts to be fired, their people slaughtered, found no assegai raised against them except in silent warning. Could this be Shaka, whose heralds referred to him as The-One-Who-Will-Swallow-the-Land? The answer would come with shocking clarity.

  Nxumalo was sent quietly among the huddled Langeni, nodding at one, then another, until he had identified more than thirty. These men were taken to the main kraal, where they looked up at a face that seemed strangely familiar. ‘I am Shaka, son of the Female Elephant Nandi, whom you reviled.’ He sang out the names of the tribal leaders, and as each was shoved forward, the knobkerrie team began the slaughter.

  The execution squad worked in different ways. If a victim had ever displayed one redeeming virtue, his head was swiftly and almost painlessly twisted in a complete circle. Death was instantaneous. But if there were remembered grudges, without extenuating circumstances, clubs were used, a heavy rain of blows to all parts of the body except the head, and this death was painful. The older Langeni died in this manner.

  But when Shaka pointed out those who as herd boys had tormented him, he ordered the guards to stand them aside, and in the end he had eleven, and when he looked at them, his face grew dark as a thundercloud and reason seemed to leave him, for he was a boy again, back in the fields, and when he saw his chief aide and most trusted friend, Nxumalo, he shouted, ‘You, too, were one of them!’ and the knobkerrie team seized him and threw him with the others.

  ‘Nzobo,’ he now screamed at one of the former herd boys. ‘Did you not scorn me?’

  The Langeni, now a man of substance, stood silent. ‘Take him!’ Shaka bellowed, and in that instant Nzobo was taken hold of and stripped. Then two men held him by the knees while another two bent him forward in a final, terrible bow, as if he were a suitor seeking Shaka’s approval. Another produced four bamboo skewers, each about fourteen inches long, fire-hardened and needle-sharp. One of these wa
s inserted into Nzobo’s rectum, and with a wooden pounder the last member of the knobkerrie team hammered it home deeply, slowly.

  Another, and then another, and then a fourth was hammered in, whereupon a rope was slung under the armpits of the screaming victim and he was pulled aloft to hang from the limb of a tree. After sixteen hours of mortal agony he would be dead.

  Nxumalo, seeing this horrible punishment and aware that he was destined for it, tried to make some appeal to Shaka, but the awful judgment was proceeding: ‘Mpepha, did you not throw rocks at me?’ A list of grievances, kept alive for twenty years, was hurled at the terror-stricken man, who was then stripped and skewered.

  Mqalane was next, and when he, too, dangled from the tree, Shaka was finished with the three whose long-ago behavior rankled deepest. The next eight were impaled on the poles of the cattle kraal, where he could not see them. ‘It’s repugnant to watch traitors die,’ he told his men, but now two were dragged forward whose death he would cherish. ‘Did you abuse me?’ The men nodded. For that he would forgive them, and they sighed, but then he asked, ‘Did you abuse my mother?’ and when they stood, heads down, he screamed, ‘Let them die as women!’ whereupon the death squad fell upon them and tore away their privates.

  Now only Nxumalo remained, and at him Shaka looked with loathing, but also confusion. He had been one of the herd boys; clearly Shaka remembered that, but he could not recall what exactly the Sixolobo refugee had done that merited skewering. The guards were already stripping him when the king’s mind cleared slightly and he realized that his regimental commander ought not to be included, and with humility he brushed the guards aside and stood facing Nxumalo.

  ‘What did you do against me when we were herd boys?’

  And Nxumalo replied, ‘Nothing, my Chief.’

  ‘What did you ever do for me?’

  And this time Nxumalo said, ‘I cannot speak it, Mighty One. But I will whisper it.’