Later, when Tungata patrolled the perimeter of the sleeping camp, he heard a strangled little wail of pain from the darkness where Tebe and the girl lay. Then there was a sound of a blow, and the cry choked off into gentle sobbing. Tungata moved around to the opposite side of the camp, where he did not have to listen.
Before dawn Tungata drove the bus to the brink of the steep watercourse, and then, yelling with delight, the boys pushed it over the edge. The girls helped them gather branches and heap them over the vehicle until it was hidden from even a low-flying helicopter.
They moved out northwards at first light. Tebe took the point, keeping half a kilo metre ahead of the column. The schoolmaster stayed with the children, enforcing the complete silence Tebe had ordered.
Before they had covered a mile, he was sweating through the back of his shirt and his spectacles were misted over. Tungata came up behind them, carrying the AK at the trail, avoiding the footpath, staying in the dappled forest shade, stopping every few minutes to listen, and once every hour doubling back to lie beside the path and make certain they were not followed.
None of the skills of the game-ranger had deserted him. He found himself completely at ease, and in a strange sort of way he was happy.
The future had taken care of itself. He was committed at last. There were no longer any doubts, no guilty sense of duty neglected, and the warrior blood of Gandang and Bazo flowed strongly in his veins.
At noon they rested for an hour. There were no fires and they ate cold maize cake and washed it down with muddy water from a water-hole in the mopani. The water tasted of the urine of the elephants who had bathed in it during the night. When Miriam brought his ration to Tungata, she could not look into his face, and when she walked away she moved carefully, as though favouring an injury.
In the afternoon they began to descend towards the Zambezi river, and the character of the bush altered. The grand forests gave way to more open savannah, and there was profuse sign of wild game. Circling out behind the column, Tungata surprised a solitary old sable antelope bull, with ebony and salt-white body and elegant back-swept horns. He stood noble and proud. Tungata felt a strange affinity with him, and when he took the wind and went away at a gallop, he left Tungata feeling enriched and strengthened.
Tebe halted the column in the middle of the afternoon and told them, "We will be marching -all night. You must rest now." Then for Tungata he drew a sketch-map in the dust with a twig.
"This is the Zambezi. Beyond it is Zambia. They are our allies.
That is where we go. To the west is Botswana and the waterless land.
We are moving parallel to its border, but before we reach the Zambezi we must cross the road between Victoria Falls and Kazungula. The Rhodesians patrol it. We must cross it in darkness. Then beyond it, along this bank of river the Rhodesians have laid their cordon sanitaire. It is a minefield to prevent us using the drifts. It is necessary to reach it at dawn," "How do we cross the minefield?" "Our people will be waiting for us there to take us through. Now rest."
Tungata woke with a hand on his shoulder, and was instantly alert.
"The girl," Tebe whispered. "The girl Miriam, she has run." "Did the schoolteacher not stop her?" "She told him she was going to relieve herself." "She is not important,"Tungata suggested. "Let her go." "She is not important," Tebe agreed. "But the example to the others is important. Take the spoor, "he ordered.
Miriam must have known the geography of this extreme northwestern corner of Matabeleland. Instead of going back, she had struck boldly northwards on the line of their march, clearly she was hoping to reach the Kazungula road while it was still light, and then she would go in to one of the Rhodesian patrols.
"How wise we were to follow her," Tebe whispered, as soon as the line of the spoor was evident. "The bitch would have called the kanka down on us within an hour." The girl had made no attempt to hide her spoor, and Tungata followed it at a run. He was superbly fit, for he had worked beside Craig Mellow in the bloody elephant culls, and ten miles was barely far enough to roughen his breathing. Comrade Tebe matched him stride for stride, leopard-quick and with cruel bleak eyes searching ahead.
They caught Miriam two miles before she reached the road. When she saw them behind her, she simply gave up. She sank onto her knees, and trembled so uncontrollably that her teeth rattled in her jaw. They stood over her, and she could not look up at them.
"Kill her," Tebe ordered softly.
Tungata had known instinctively that it would happen this way, and yet his soul turned leaden and icy.
"We never give an order twice," Tebe said, and Tungata changed his grip on the stock of the AK.
"Not with the rifle,"Tebe said. "The road lies just beyond those trees. The Rhodesians could be here in minutes." He took a clasp-knife from his pocket and handed it to Tungata. Tungata propped his rifle against a mopani trunk, and opened the knife. He saw that the point of the blade had been snapped off, and when he tested the edge with his thumb, he found that Tebe had deliberately dulled the edge by rubbing it against a stone.
He felt appalled and sickened by what he was expected to do, and the manner in which he was expected to do it. He tried to hide his emotions, for Tebe was watching him curiously. He understood that he had been set a test, trial by cruelty, and Tungata knew that if he failed it, then he was as doomed as was the child, Miriam. Still stony-faced, Tungata pulled the leather belt from the loops of his jeans and used it to strap the girl's wrists together behind her back.
He stood behind her so that he did not have to look into the dark terrified eyes. He placed his knee between her shoulder-blades and pulled her chin back to expose the slender throat. Then he glanced once more at Tebe for a reprieve. There was no mercy there, and he began to work.
It took some minutes, with the damaged blade and the child struggling wildly, but at last the carotid artery erupted and he let her fall forward on her face. He was panting and bathed in his own rancid-smelling sweat, but the last vestiges of his previous existence as Samson Kurnalo were burned away. At last he was truly Tungata Zebiwe, the Seeker after what has been Stolen the Seeker after Vengeance.
He broke a bunch of leaves off the nearest mopani sapling and scrubbed his hands with it. Then he cleansed the blade by stabbing it into the earth. When he handed the knife back to Comrade Tebe, he met his eyes unflinchingly, and saw in them a spark of compassion and understanding.
"There is no going back now," Tebe said, softly. "At last you are truly one of us." They reached the road a little after midnight, and while the schoolmaster held the children in a quiet group in a copse beside it, Tebe and Tungata swept the verges for a kilo metre in both directions, in case the Rhodesians had laid an ambush. When they found it clear, they took the children across at the point which Tungata had chosen where hard gravel approaches would hold no signs. Then Tungata went back and carefully swept the road surface with a broom of grass.