Pampata shrugged, as if to say 'who knows?'
But if she had crossed the river before, she must surely know?
Her gestures indicated that she could not say one way or the other.
'How many times have you crossed the river?'
'Kabila.'
'Twice? Only twice?' How could she know the way to Ngwadi's kraal – a hundred miles – if she had crossed the Thukela but twice?
She understood him perfectly, and looked away. 'You will not come with me?'
He almost gasped at her determination. Instead he smiled. 'I will go with you.'
They spent an hour or so foraging, though without much success. Hervey had no great appetite for the creatures that crawled or slithered out of their path, though he could easily have caught one with his sabre, and there was no game to tempt him, even if he had thought it worth risking a shot – which he did not. He wondered if there were fish in the river, although how to catch them he did not put his mind to. They found some monkey orange, with their bitter fruit, but little else beyond the odd root that might have been enjoyable had they been able to boil it. Hervey was not hungry, though. The ostrich eggs had filled his stomach, and with a rich yolk as fortifying as red meat. He would not pine for bread and beef.
Instead they sat in the shade of a lala palm, watching the Thukela, resting and gathering their strength for the morning when the river would be lower. Hervey took off his boots as Pampata washed her feet in the river, then sat beside her to wash, and soothe, his own.
'Qaphela – ingwenya,' she said, with a cautionary laugh.
Beware the crocodiles: he took his feet out.
After a while he asked her about the rock rabbit, and how she had come to know the medicine in its urine. It was an ancient knowledge, she replied, taught her by her mother. All Zulu women knew of it, though not all of them could use it to advantage.
And then she smiled, as if at a happy memory of something in her distant past, her childhood. 'Do you know why the rock rabbit has no tail?' she asked, indeed quite childlike.
Hervey returned the smile, and shook his head.
It was a long story, made longer by frequent interruptions for the sake of clarification. 'At the newness of the land,' she began, 'animals did not have tails. All were happy except ibhubesi, the king of beasts, so one day he asked them to his court to receive presents that they might look more beautiful. All the animals went to the lion's court except the rock rabbits, who preferred to bask in the sun, although they still wished for their presents, and so asked the monkeys if they would bring them for them. The lion gave presents to all who came – presents of a tail – but being very old and his sight failing, he made many mistakes, giving, for example, the elephant a very small tail, but the squirrel a very long one. The monkeys took home their tails, wishing they were not so short, and those of the rock rabbits. But when they saw the rock rabbits they refused to give them up: "We shall attach them to our own," they said, "to make them longer." Since that day the rock rabbits have had no tail, but are no longer so lazy.'
Hervey lay back against the lala palm, hands behind his head, for all the world as if he were in the garden at Horningsham. The wound was now but a dull ache. He could take his ease. 'A charming story.'
'And one that has a lesson too,' added Pampata. 'Do not send another to do one's bidding.'
This Hervey managed to understand, but not without the need to open his eyes.
'Yes, sleep, mfowethu. I will watch for us both,' said Pampata, once the parable was done.
Hervey raised a hand slightly, in thanks, and closed his eyes again. But just as he was about to succumb, he snapped to and sat up as if he had heard a distant alarm.
'What is it, mfowethu?'
'Nothing, but I forget myself.' He got up, adjusting his sabre, and the pistol at his belt. 'I must go a little way back to see how things are. Stay here. I will return before the sun falls below that hill yonder.'
Pampata looked puzzled. 'Why do you not stay here, where we cannot be seen?'
He tried to explain. 'I am a soldier, dadewethu. I cannot only hide and wait.'
She bowed, understanding what impelled the warrior, if not always why. 'I will stay here, mfowethu.'
He backtracked for half a mile, until he came to a fold in the ground which would afford him a little elevation on the otherwise flat floodplain. He ascended cautiously, for he did not want to show himself, first crawling, and then rising to his knees, and only to full height when he was sure he had seen all there was to be seen from a crouch.
But the country was empty – empty of Zulu; he knew it teemed with other life, whether he could see it or not.
He sat down. He would stay sentinel here until dusk came, and only then return to Pampata and make fast for the night.
He turned his face to the sun, taking in its strength, watching, listening – trying not to think of what had happened, but of what was to come.
After an hour he saw the vultures. Or rather, he became aware of what they did, for there had been vultures overhead since early morning. They had come together, collected, flocked, whatever it was that vultures did when they no longer patrolled alone, to circle in a slow but purposeful way above a single point. And he could not be certain of it, but the circle seemed to be advancing, just perceptibly – exactly as he had observed before Umtata, when Fairbrother had first alerted him and they had thereby detected the advancing Zulu.
But how far away they were he couldn't tell. And it might signal nothing at all, for before Umtata the vultures had flown in a sort of extended line, the formation in which the Zulu had come on. This was different. All he could do was keep watch.
Half an hour passed. They were advancing, certainly (he could now make out the wings separately from the body). And all the time they had kept up the same routine of circling. If it were a stricken animal they were intent on, it would by now have gone to ground, would it not? Why would they keep post above the Zulu? But then, why had they kept post before Umtata?
And did the Zulu – if they were Zulu – follow their trail, his and Pampata's? What trail could two people make? He tried to calculate: how long would it be before they closed on the river? He could only do so by the vultures' appearance, how it was changing, a method he'd scarcely had any practice in. Perhaps a couple of hours?
He wondered if he should alert Pampata. But what could they do? They might, he suppose, put more distance behind them, beat up- or downstream, but they would leave a trail, if they had been doing so before, and then the Zulu would hasten. And was not this the surest place to cross the Thukela, she'd said? Pampata needed to sleep; she did not need to be woken and made more fearful, especially when he couldn't be certain there were Zulu out there. No, all he could do, again, was wait – and thank God for this searching light of the veld.