He thrust his head forward, and the night wind struck his cheek, and he smelled woodsmoke and grass and earth redolent of the lingering warmth of the sun, and the great white star stood in the night sky high above his head. That dreadful passage had connected the fountain at the base of the cliff to the one high above.
the strength to drag himself more than He did not have a few feet from the fountainhead, and there under a bush on the soft bed of leaf mould he lay and panted like a dog.
He must have drifted into an exhausted and cold-drugged sleep, for he woke with a start. The sky had paled.
He could just see the branches of the bush above his head outlined against it. He dragged himself out, and he ached down to the bones of his spine and found that his skinned elbows and knees burned even at the touch of the dawn wind.
There was a narrow path, well marked by many feet from the fountainhead up the last few feet of the crest and as he stepped out onto it he looked down and saw far below him the moonsilver forest and the tiny sparks that were the watch-fires of his own bivouac. As he moved, he felt his muscles easing and unknotting, felt the blood recharging his limbs.
Although he was ready for one, there was no sentry at the top of the path, and he peered out cautiously from behind the stone portals of the gulley onto the tranquil village.
"By Chaka's teeth, they sleep like fat and lazy dogs," Bazo thought grimly. The doors were all tightly closed, and smoke oozed from every chink in the walls. They were half suffocating themselves to keep out the mosquitoes. He could hear a man coughing hoarsely in the nearest hut.
He was about to slip out from behind his rocky screen when faint movement in the gloom between the huts made him sink gently down again.
A dark figure scurried on directly towards where he hid. He shifted his assegai, but only a few paces from him the figure stopped.
It was swathed in a skin cloak against the pre-dawn chill, bunched up like an old woman, until it straightened and threw off the cloak. Bazo felt his breath hiss up his throat and he bit down to stop it reaching his lips.
The naked girl was in that lovely tender stage just past puberty, on the very brink of full womanhood. There were the last vulnerable vestiges of childhood in the plump little buttocks and in the kitten awkward way she stood with toes turned slightly inwards. She was naked and the first light touched her sable skin with a lemon glow. Then she turned her head.
She had a long slender neck and the neat little head balanced perfectly upon it. The dome of her skull was covered with an intricate pattern of closely woven plaits, Her forehead was high and smooth, her cheekbones vaulted in the Egyptian way, her lips chiselled into perfect sweeps, synuretrical as the wings of a beautiful butterfly, and the light glinted briefly in her huge slanted eyes as she looked about her.
Then she squatted briefly and her water tinkled against the earth.
It was a sound that unaccountably filled Bazo's chest with a swollen tender feeling, for the act was so innocent and so natural.
She stood, and in the instant before she covered her head once more with the cloak, he had one more glimpse of her face. He knew then that he had never seen anything so beautiful in all his life, and he stared after her as she hurried back between the huts with a peculiar aching hunger consuming his very being.
It took him many minutes to rouse himself, and then as he crept forward he found that, hard as he tried, he could not drive the girl's image from his mind. The pathway that led from the village to the ladder drawbridge was unmistakable. It was broad and its surface beaten smooth. There were walls of worked stone on each side of it behind which the defenders could meet any thrust. There were piles of stones at intervals along the path. placed ready to be hurled down at anybody attempting to force the ladder or fight their way up the path.
The pathway dropped steeply into the gulley, and then ended on a wide level stone platform. The light was stronger now and Bazo could see that there were sentries here; two of them stood on the lip watching the plain fifty feet below the platform, guarding the massive counterbalanced ladder. Farther back four other guards squatted around a small smoky fire, and Bazo's saliva flooded as he smelled the roasting maize cakes. The men were talking in the low sleepy tones of men who had stood a long watch, and their backs were turned to the gulley, for they would never expect an enemy to come from that direction.
Bazo crept closer. There was another pile of rocks at the corner of the platform, ready for the guards to hurl down the cliff. Bazo crawled into the shadows behind it.
He did not have long to wait. Very faintly on the morning wind he heard the singing. Zama had begun the dance below the cliff. The song was the fighting hymn of his regiment, and Bazo's blood thrilled in his veins.
He felt the divine madness begin. it was a feeling that other lesser men got only from the hemp pipe.
He felt the sweat break on his skin, and the madness mount from his belly to his heart, felt the blood swell in his throat, felt his eyes burn and bulge.
The guards had left the fire now and crowded the edge of the cliff, peering downwards, laughing and pointing.
"Hear Lobengula's puppies yap!"
"Look at them dance like virgins at the Festival of First Fruits" The signal Bazo had agreed with Zama was the moment the battle song ended, but he could barely contain himself that long.
He rose from his crouch, and his muscles twitched, his head jerked like that of a maniac, and in the dawn light his eyes were glazed like shards of ceramic pottery, the red rage of the berserker. At that instant the distant song ended.
Bazo's cry froze the men on the edge of the cliff, it was the bellow of a heart-struck buffalo bull, the screech of the stooping eagle.
In the paralysed moment before they could turn, Bazo, struck them.
He charged with outstretched arms and swept four of them away into the void. They twisted and turned in the air as they fell, and they screamed the whole way down on a high receding note that was cut off abruptly at the end.
Bazo's charge had been so headlong that he almost followed them over the brink; for a giddy moment he tottered there, and then he caught his balance and spun to strike underhand at one of the survivors. The blade went into the man's belly and out the other side, cleaving his bowels and his kidneys, and crunching through his backbone; and when Bazo jerked the steel clear, the life blood sprayed hotly onto his forearm and his chest. The last sentry ran, silently and desperately, for the pathway, and Bazo let him go.
Bazo bounded along the edge of the cliff and reached the point where the top of the ladder was secured. The ropes that held it were of twisted and plaited bark, reinforced with liana and leather thongs. They were thick as Bazo's arm, and he changed his grip on the assegai to a chopping stroke.
The ropes popped and crackled as he hacked through them. He grunted at each Stroke, slitting his eyes against the flying chips of wood and bark.
Behind him he heard the babble of many voices on the pathway. The sentry would call them down like hunting dogs, but Bazo scorned to turn until the work was done.
One rope gave, and the massive unwieldy ladder sagged and twisted.
He cut again, reversing his grip to swing back-handed, and the other ropes went.
The ladder swung outwards and downwards, gathering momentum, and the timbers crackled and squealed, drowning out the voices of the men coming down behind him. The bottom of the ladder struck the scree below the cliff with a shattering crash, and some of the uprights snapped under the impact. The head of the ladder was still secured at Bazo's feet, and the whole twisted mess hung down like the rigging of a dismasted ship.