face was a mask of sheer astonishment and open-mouthed surprise. He stared at his friend for a few moments as if doubting his sanity. Then he said: ‘You are talking gibberish like a drunken monkey, Oh Mpushu; I beg you to make yourself clear.’
‘After I left you last night, Oh Eagle of Marimba,’ said Mpushu in his customary respectful tone of voice, ‘I went straight into the soft valleys of slumber. Then I had a dream such as I have never had before in all my life. I dreamt that you and I went into the forest to hunt this lion you see lying there. The dream was so clear that even now I am still amazed at its clarity and accuracy. In my dream we came upon the lion exactly as you see him here, and that clump of herbs between his paws was there, in clear detail. I saw you stab the lion, and just as you withdrew your spear the lion changed into the princess Marimba, your mother, and she screamed at you while lying there, blood pouring from her mouth.
‘I woke up with a start, but a few moments later I must have drifted off to sleep again. I dreamt the same dream over again – exactly the same, in every detail. Early this morning I went to see that toothless crone Namuwiza, the priestess, who told me that she too had a dream similar to mine, only longer and more detailed. She said I must prevent you at all costs from killing the lion, because if you did the whole Wakambi settlement would be wiped out this very night by a race of men who never smile, a race of men from the north. Both you and I would be slain and your immortal mother would be carried away.’
For a long time after Mpushu had finished talking, Kahawa still stared at him like a man in a deep trance. Then, dropping his weapons, the son of Marimba approached the old lion and stood looking down at him. The old lion stared indifferently up at the human youth. There were tears in Kahawa’s eyes as he turned to his friend and said, almost harshly: ‘Come, let us go.’
Simba the lion watched the two humans turn and go, watched them until the forest swallowed them and they vanished forever from his sight. Disinterestedly, he wondered just what they had come to do to him and why they left without doing it.
Simba the lion was overcome by a great weakness; he wanted to stay just where he was, come what may. He was aware of a deep sense of contentment and peace, and a pleasant weakness was slowly creeping through the valleys of his brain like heavy, soothing mist. He slowly lowered his shaggy head between his great front paws as the gathering mists in his mind made his head feel very heavy.
Softly he closed his eyes. He never opened them again.
Mpushu and his subdued, strangely silent friend Kahawa were still some distance from the hilltop settlement that was their home when the son of Marimba said to the older youth quietly: ‘Mpushu, do not look behind you now. Neither must you show any signs of fear or excitement – but we are being followed by a strange man and he is not far behind.’
‘Is . . . is he one of the Evil Ones . . . a Life Eater maybe?’ stammered Mpushu, his teeth chattering with fear.
‘I know not, Mpushu, but this much I am sure of – he is following us to find out where we stay, and at all costs we must not let him discover the settlement!’
‘What . . . what are we going to do?’
‘We must ambush him, kill or capture him,’ said Kahawa coldly. ‘I saw his face through the corner of my eye as he looked over a bush some time back, Oh Mpushu, and I know he is not one of our people. His hair, for one thing, is of a strange hair-style, with a bundle above his forehead.’
‘Where can he have come from?’
‘I do not know, but I think we have been wrong in thinking that we, the Wakambi, are the only human beings in this land. There is another race of men we have not realised existed, and that man following us is a member of this race.’
‘And this means that . . .’ gasped Mpushu.
‘This means that our first duty now is to reach the settlement and alert the people. But first we must dispose of that man behind us. Now this is what we must do . . .’
The stranger was tall and lean, and there was an inbred viciousness about him that made Marimba sick with fear. Although he was now unarmed and bound securely hand and foot with strong thongs of kudu skin, he still looked dangerous and the Wakambi warriors standing around him seemed to worry him not in the least. In fact, he looked up at them as if they were just so much useless vermin.
Mpushu and Kahawa had carried the tall stranger between them for a long distnace after knocking him unconscious with a stone when he blundered upon their ambush. They had brought him to the base of the hill of the settlement and shouted to the guards to help them with their captive. They had tied him securely and brought him to Marimba, who was trying her best to interrogate him, without any response.
‘We mean you no harm,’ she was saying; ‘we only want to know who you are . . . and from where you come.’
‘Humph,’ grunted the stranger.
‘I know you are not a Life Eater or a Night Howler,’ pleaded Marimba. ‘You are a new race of man we never knew existed. Tell me, to what race do you belong and where are the rest of your people?’
‘Huh,’ growled the stranger.
‘This creature will not answer your questions, Oh Marimba,’ cackled the toothless witch Namuwiza. ‘But I know why he was following the two young men. He is a scout for a large force of other creatures like him which is even now a quarter of a day’s journey from here . . . and coming fast.’
‘How do you know this, Oh honourable wise woman Namuwiza?’ asked the princess, turning her beautiful, troubled face to look at the scrawny hag.
The old woman cackled a weird witch-laugh: ‘Little Namuwiza dreamt it all last night, all by her sweet self . . .’
‘To me, all warriors!’ cried Kahawa fiercely. ‘All available spearmen to me! They must not catch us unprepared . . . whoever they are. All warriors to my side – recall all hunting parties from the forest. Bring out every spear, every axe in the village . . .’
The people hurried into action, inspired by their fierce leader Kahawa. Great bundles of bone-tipped spears and harpoons were brought out while blasts from horn bugles recalled the hunting parties from the forest. Men ran hither and thither spreading the word throughout the great settlement.
Oblivious to the burst of activity around her, the princess Marimba was kneeling down beside the trussed-up stranger, studying him with great interest and curiosity, not unmixed with fear and admiration. The stranger was a man such as she had never seen before – handsome and yet very evil looking: one who could, she imagined, kill thousands of fellow men without the slightest pang of pity or remorse. She saw his long narrow face with its high forehead and square jaw. She saw his thin-lipped cruel mouth with its hard wrinkles at the corners. She saw his strange-looking long nose and deepset hard eyes, from whose depths gleamed the fire of resentment. She saw the strange hair-style – the thick bundle of plaited hair gathered above the forehead and tied firmly with a fine skin cord that went around the head to another bigger bundle jutting out like a woman’s breast at the back of his head. She saw how his ears were pierced above and below, with heavy copper ear-rings that weighed them down. She saw ten necklaces made from the bones of human fingers and claws of lions and leopards adorning his neck. Lastly she saw his long spear lying some distance away where Mpushu had thrown it, with the other strange weapons the stranger
