Power of the Sword c-10

by Wilbur Smith

  He returned to his seat in the carriage and whispered to Moses, 'The white baboon took my knife. I need another. Moses asked no questions. It was part of the test. Hendrick must do it alone and, if he failed, accept the full consequences without expecting Moses to share them or attempt to aid him. He spoke quietly to the men around him, and within a few minutes a clasp knife was passed down the bench and slipped into Hendrick's hand.

  He returned to the latrine and worked on the retaining screws of the wire frame, careful not to scratch the paintwork around them or leave any sign that they had been tampered with. He removed all eight screws, eased the frame from its seating and set it aside.

  He waited until the tracks made a right hand bend, judging by the centrifugal force against his body as the coach turned under him, and then he glanced out of the open window.

  The train was turning away from him, the leading coaches and goods vans out of sight around the bend ahead, and he leaned out of the window and looked up.

  There was a coaming along the edge of the roof of the coach. He reached up and ran his fingers over the ridge and found a handhold. He raised himself, putting his full weight upon it, hanging on his arms, only his feet still inside the latrine window, and the rest of his body suspended outside.

  He lifted his eyes to the level of the roof and memorized the slope and layout of the top of the coach, then he lowered himself again and ducked back into the latrine. He replaced the mesh over the window but turned the screws only finger tight, then went back to his seat in the coach.

  in the early evening the white overseer and his two bossboys came through the coach with the food barrow. When he reached Hendrick he smiled at him without rancour.

  You are beautiful now, kaffir. The black maids will love to kiss that mouth. He turned and addressed the silent ranks of black men. 'If any of you want to be beautiful also, just let me know. I will do it for free. just before dark the boss-boys came back to collect the empty dishes.

  Tomorrow night you will be at Goldi, one of them told Hendrick. 'There is a white doctor there who will treat your wounds. There was a hint of sympathy in his impassive black face. It was not wise of you to anger Tshayela, the striker. You have learned a hard lesson, friend. Remember it well, all of you. He locked the door as he left the coach.

  Hendrick gazed out of the window at the sunset. In four days of travel the landscape had changed entirely as they had climbed up onto the plateau of the highveld. The grasslands were pale brown, seared by the black frosts of winter, the red earth gouged open with dongas of erosion and divided into geometrical camps with barbed-wire. The isolated homesteads seemed forlorn upon the open veld with the steel-framed windmills standing like gaunt sentinels over them, and the lean cattle were long horned and parti-coloured, red and black and white.

  Hendrick, who had lived his life in the unpeopled wilderness, found the fences cramping and restrictive. In this place you could never be out of sight of other men or their works, and the villages they passed were as sprawling and populous as Windhoek, the biggest town he had ever conceived of.

  Wait until you see Goldi,Moses told him, as the darkness fell outside and the men around them settled down for the night, wrapping their blankets over their heads for the chill of the highveld blew in through the open windows.

  Hendrick waited until the white overseer made his first round of the coaches, and when he shone the beam of his lantern into Hendrick's face made no attempt to feign sleep but blinked up at him blindly. The overseer passed on, locking the door as he left the coach.

  Hendrick rose quietly in the seat. Opposite him Moses stirred in the darkness but did not speak, and Hendrick went down the aisle and locked himself in the latrine. Quickly he loosened the screws and worked the frame off its seating.

  He set it against the bulkhead and leaned out of the window.

  The cold night air buffeted his head, and he slitted his eyes against the hot smuts that blew back from the coal-burning locomotive and stung his cheeks and forehead as he reached up and found his handholds on the ridge of the coaming.

  He drew himself upwards smoothly, and then with a kick and a heave, flung the top half of his body over the edge of the roof and shot out one arm. He found a grip on the ventilator in the middle of the curved roof and pulled himself the rest of the way on his belly.

  He lay for a while panting and with his eyes tightly closed until he got control of the pounding ache in his head. Then he raised himself to his knees and began crawling forward towards the leading edge of the roof.

  The night sky was clear; the land was silver with starlight and blue with shadow, and the wind roared about his head.

  He rose to his feet and balanced against the lurch and sway of the coach. With his feet wide apart and his knees bent he moved forward. A premonition of danger made him look up and he saw the dark shape rush at him out of the darkness and he threw himself flat just as the steel arm of one of the railway water towers flashed over his head. A second later it would have decapitated him, and he shivered with the cold and the shock of near death. After a minute he gathered himself and crawled forward again, not raising his head more than a few inches until he reached the front edge of the roof.

  He lay spreadeagled on his belly and cautiously peered over the edge. The balconies of the joining coaches were below him, the gap between the roof about the span of one of his arms. Directly under him the footplates articulated against each other as the train clattered through the curves of the line. Anybody moving from one coach to the next must pass below where Hendrick lay and he grunted with satisfaction and looked behind him.

  One of the ventilator pots was just level with his feet as he lay outstretched. He crawled back, drawing the heavy leather belt from the top of his breeches, and buckled it around the ventilator, forming a loop into which he thrust one of his feet as far as the ankle.

  Once again he stretched out on the roof, one foot securely anchored by the loop, and he reached down into the space between the coaches. He could just touch the banisters of the guard fence around the balcony. Electric bulbs in wire cages were fixed to the overhang of the balconies so the area below him was well lit.

  He drew back and lay flat on the roof, only the top of his head and his eyes showing from below. But he knew that the lights would dazzle anybody who looked upwards into the gap between the roofs and he settled down to wait like a leopard in the tree over the water hole.

  An hour passed and then another, but he judged the passage of time only by the slow rotation of the stars across the night sky. He was stiff and freezing cold as the wind thrashed his unprotected body, but he bore it stoically, never allowing himself to doze or lose concentration. Waiting was always a major part of the hunt, of the game of death, and he had played this game a hundred times before.

  Suddenly, even over the rush of the train's passage and the rhythm of the cross ties, he heard the click of steel on steel and the rattle of keys in the lock of the door below him, and he gathered himself.

  The man would step over the footplates as quickly as he could, not wanting to be in that vulnerable and exposed position for a moment longer than was necessary to make the crossing, and Hendrick would have to be quicker still.

  He heard the sliding door slam back against the jamb and the lock turn again, then an instant later the crown of the white overseer's hat appeared below him.

  Instantly Hendrick shot his body forward and dropped as far as his waist into the gap between the coaches. Only the leather belt around his ankle anchored him. Lothar had taught him the double lock, and he whipped one arm around the white man's neck, and braced his other hand in the crook of his own elbow, catching the man's head in the vice of his arms, and jerked him off his feet.

  The white man made a strangled cawing sound and droplets of spittle flew from his lips, sparkling in the electric light as Hendrick drew him upwards as though he were hoisted on the gallows tree.

  The white man's hat fell from his head and flitted away into th
e night like a black bat, and he was kicking and twisting his body violently, clawing at the thick muscled arms that were locked around his neck, his long blond hair fluttering and tumbling in the night wind. Hendrick lifted him until their eyes were inches apart, and he smiled into his face, exposing the mangled black pit of his own mouth, his shattered front teeth still stained with clotted blood, and in the reflection of the balcony lights the white man recognized him. Hendrick saw the recognition flare in his pale dilated eyes.

  Yes, my friend, he whispered. It is me, the kaffir. He drew the man up another inch and wedged the back of his neck against the edge of the roof. Then very deliberately he put pressure on his spine at the base of his skull. The white man writhed and struggled like a fish on the barbs of the harpoon, but Hendrick held him easily, staring deep into his eyes, and bent his neck backwards, lifting with his forearm under the chin.

  Hendrick felt the spine loading and locking at the pressure.

  it could give no more, and for a second longer he held him at the breaking point. Then with a jerk he pushed the man's chin up another inch and the spine snapped like a dry branch. The white man danced in the air, twitching and shuddering, and Hendrick watched the pale blue eyes glaze over, becoming opaque and lifeless, and over the rush of the wind he heard the soft spluttering release as his sphincter muscle relaxed and his bowels involuntarily voided.

  Hendrick swung his dangling corpse like a pendulum and as it cleared the balcony rail he let it drop into the gap between the coaches, directly into the track of the racing wheels. It was sucked away by the spinning steel like a scrap of meat into the blades of a mincing machine.

  He lay for a moment recovering his breath. He knew that the overseer's mutilated corpse would be smeared over half a mile of the railway tracks.

  He untied his belt from the ventilator and buckled it around his waist, then he crawled back along the roof of the coach until he was directly above the latrine window. He lowered his feet over the sill and with a twist dropped into the cubicle. He replaced the mesh frame over the window and tightened the screws. He went back down the coach to his seat, and Moses Gama was watching him as he wrapped the blanket around his shoulders. He nodded at his brother and pulled the corner of the blanket over his head. Within minutes he was asleep.

  He was awakened by the shouts of the boss-boys and the jolting of the coach as it was shunted off the main line. He saw the name of the small village where they had stopped painted on a white board on the platform: Vryburg', but it meant nothing to him.

  Soon the platform and the coaches were invaded by blue uniformed railway police, and all the recruits were ordered out onto the platform. They lined up, shivering and sleepy under the floodlights, answered to the roll-call. Everyone was present.

  Hendrick nudged his brother and with his chin pointed at the wheels and bogey below their coach. The hubs and axles were splattered with blood and tiny slivers and particles of raw red flesh and tissue.

  All the following day the coaches stood in the siding while the police individually subjected each of the recruits to a hectoring interrogation in the station master's office. By mid-afternoon it was obvious that they were coming to accept that the overseer's death was accidental and were losing interest in the investigation. The evidence of the locked doors and barred windows was convincing and the testimony of the boss-boys and every one of the recruits was unanimous and unshakable.

  in the late afternoon they were loaded back into the coaches and they rumbled on into the night, towards the fabulous Ridge of White Waters.

  Hendrick woke to the excited chatter of the men around him, and when he shouldered his way to the crowded window the first thing he saw was a high mountain, so big that it blocked the sky to the north, a strange and wonderful mountain, glowing with a pearly yellow light in the early sun, a mountain with a perfectly flat top and symmetrical sloping sides.

  What kind of mountain is this? Hendrick marvelled.

  A mountain taken from the belly of the earth, Moses told him. 'That is a mine dump, my brother, a mountain built by men from the rocks they dig up from below. Wherever Hendrick looked there were these flat-topped shining dumps scattered across the undulating grassland or standing along the skyline and near each of them stood tall giraffes of steel, long-necked and skeletal with giant wheels for heads, that spun endlessly against the pale highveld sky.

  Headgears, Moses told him. Below each of those is a hole that reaches down into the guts of the world, into the rock bowels that hold the yellow Gold! for which the white men sweat and lie and cheat, and often kill. As the train ran on they saw wonder followed by wonder, taller buildings than they had ever believed possible, roads that ran like rivers of steel with growling vehicles, tall chimneys that filled the sky with black thunderclouds, and multitudes upon multitudes, human beings more numerous than the springbok migrations of the Kalahari, black men in silver helmets and knee-high rubber boots, regiments of them, marching towards the tall headgears or, as the shifts changed, wearily swarming back from the shafts splashed from head to foot with yellow mud. There were white men on the streets and platforms, white women in gaily coloured dresses with remote disdainful expressions, human beings in the windows of the buildings which crowded wall to red brick wall right to the verge of the railway tracks. It was too much, too huge and diffuse for them to assimilate at one time and they gaped and exclaimed and pressed to the windows of the coach.

  Where are the women? Hendrick asked suddenly, and Moses smiled.

  Which women, brother? The black women, the women of our tribe? 'There are no women here, not the type of women you know. There are only the Isifebi, and they do it for gold.

  Everything here is for gold. Once again they were shunted off the main line into a fenced enclosure in which the long white barrack buildings stood in endless rows and the signboard above the gates read: WITWATERSRAND NATIVE LABOUR ASSOCIATION CENTRAL RAND INDUCTION CENTRE From the coaches they were led to a long shed by a couple of grinning boss-boys and instructed to strip to the buff.

  The lines of naked black men shuffled forward under the paternal eyes of the boss-boys, who treated them in a friendly jocular fashion.

  Some of you have brought your livestock with you, they joked. 'Goats on your scalp, and cattle in your pubic hairs, and dipping the paint brushes they wielded into buckets of bluebutter ointment, they plastered the heads and crotches of the recruits.

  Rub it in, they ordered. We don't want your lice and crabs and itchy crawlies. And the recruits entered into the spirit of the occasion and roared with laughter as they smeared each other with the sticky butter.

  At the end of the shed they were each handed a small square of blue mottled carbolic soap.

  Your mothers may think you smell like the mimosa in flower, but even the goats shudder when you pass upwind. The boss-boys laughed and shoved them under the hot showers.

  The doctors were waiting for them when they emerged, scrubbed and still naked, and this time the medical examinations were exhaustive. Their chests were sounded and all their bodily apertures probed and scrutinized.

  "What happened to your mouth, and your head? one doctor demanded of Hendrick. No, don't tell me. I don't want to know. He had seen injuries like these before. Those bloody animals in charge of the trains. All, right, we will send you to the dentist to have those stumps pulled, too late to stitch the head, you'll have a couple of lovely scars!

  Apart from that, you are a beauty. He slapped Hendrick's hard shiny black muscles. We'll put you down for underground work, and you'll get the underground bonus., They were issued grey overalls and hobnailed boots, and then given a gargantuan meal, as much as they could eat.

  It is not like I thought it would be. Hendrick spooned stew into his mouth. Good food, white men who smile, no beatings, not like the train. Brother, only a fool starves and beats his oxen, and these white men are not fools. One of the other Ovambo men took Moses empty dish to the kitchen and returned with it refilled. It was no longer nece
ssary for him to give orders for such menial services.

  His wants were taken care of by the men around him as if by birthright. Already the death of the white overseer, Tshayela, the striker, had been embroidered and built into a legend by many repetitions, reinforcing the stature and authority of Moses Gama and his lieutenant; men walked softly around them and inclined their heads respectfully when either Moses or Hendrick spoke directly to them.

  At dawn the next morning they were roused from their bunks in the barrack rooms and after a huge breakfast of maize cake and maas, the thick clotted sour milk, they were led to the long iron-roofed classroom.

  Then of forty different tribes come from every corner of the land to Goldi, men speaking forty different languages, from Zulu to Tswana, from Herero to Basuto, and only one in a thousand of them understands a word of English or of Afrikaans, Moses explained softly to his brother as the other men respectfully made room for them on one of the classroom benches. Now they will teach us the special language of Goldi, the tongue by which all men, whether black or white, and of whatever tribe, speak to each other here. A venerable old Zulu boss-boy, his pate covered with a cap of shining silver wool, was their instructor in the lingua franca of the gold mines, Fanakalo. The name was taken from its own vocabulary and meant literally like this, like that', the phrase that the recruits would have urged upon them frequently over the weeks ahead: Do it like this! Work like that! Sebenza fanakalo! The Zulu instructor on the raised dais was surrounded by all the accoutrements of the miner's trade, set out on display so that he could touch each item with his pointer and the recruits would chant the name of it in unison. Helmets and lanterns, hammers and picks, jumper bars and scrapers, safety rails and rigs, they would know them all intimately before they stood their first shift.

  But now the old Zulu touched his own chest and said: AUna! Then pointed at his class and said: Wena! And Moses led them in the chant: The! You! Head! said the instructor and Arm! and Leg! He touched his own body and his pupils imitated him enthusiastically.