The chief's wife had a larger hut than Bosambo's own, communicating with her lord's through a passage of wicker and clay, and the raiders had clubbed her to silence, but Bones knew enough of surgery to see that she was in no danger.
In ten minutes the fighting regiments of the Ochori were sweeping through the forest, trackers going ahead to pick up the trail.
"Let all gods hear me," sobbed Bosambo, as he ran, "and send M'gani swiftly to M'sambo my son."
IV
"Now this is very wonderful," said Lamalana, "and it seems, O my father, no matter for a small killing, but for a sacrifice such as all men may see."
It was the hour following the dawn when the world was at its sweetest, when the chattering weaver birds went in and out of their hanging nests gossiping loudly, and faint perfumes from little morning flowers gave the air an unusual delicacy.
All the Lombobo people, the warriors and the hunters, the wives and the maidens, and even the children of tender years, lined the steep slopes of the Cup of Sacrifice. For Lamalana, deaf and blind to reason, knew that her hour was short, and that with the sun would come a man terrible in his anger ... and the soldiers who eat up opposition with fire.
"O people!" she cried.
She was stripped to the waist, stood behind the Stone of Death as though it were a counter, and the two squirming infants under her hands were so much saleable stock: "Here we bring terror to all who hate us, for one of these is the heart of Bosambo and the other is more than the heart of the-man-who-stands-for-Sandi——"