“Eh! hé! How sayest thou?” echoed the sorcerers.
“How say I? This is how I say,” answered the warrior, noting that some of his comrades seemed to be wavering. “For what happens in battle I will take my chance. For what happens here I have to answer to my father, and chief. His word was: let none enter, and—on the head ring of Umzilikazi—none shall enter—no, not even were it Umlimo himself.”
The speaker’s voice had risen to a roar, to which was added a shrill cry of menace and resentment from the group of sorcerers at this blasphemous utterance. Even the bold one’s comrades looked somewhat aghast. Would they ultimately yield? And yet—and yet—far away in Gandela one broken-hearted woman was wearying high Heaven day and night on behalf of him now threatened with this new and ghastly peril.
“Thy next battle will be thy last,” said Gingamanzi slowly, pointing a menacing finger at the obdurate sentinel.
“That we shall see. Hau! I seem to remember the chief of these Abantwana Mlimo, when we were doctored, promising us that Makiwa’s bullets should turn to water. Yet, at Kezane, Makiwa’s bullets were made of very hard lead. And he who told us this was Gingamanzi.”
This was a facer, and partly accounted for the secret contempt in which the sorcerers were held by many in the nation. Moreover, since the rising had begun, the fighting men had been brought into daily contact with them, to the detriment of their prestige. Then, too, they always skulked in a place of safety when fighting was to the fore—all save one, and that one Qubani. But Qubani was not present in this camp.
Now Gingamanzi was an uncommonly difficult person to put down, and lacked not readiness or assurance, else had he not filled the position he did.
“Hard lead,” he repeated when the sneering laughter of the warriors had abated. “Hard lead! Ha! Those who found them so were those who were wanting in faith. They suffered doubt as to our powers to linger in their hearts while we were doctoring them. So the múti failed in its effect.”
“Eh! Hé!” assented the residue of the sorcerers.
“Thou scoffing dog!” shrilled Gingamanzi. “Wilt thou now give passage lest worse befall thee?”