Through Mines of Deception Read online

on the wheel sending sparks flashing before his eyes. He had never felt pain like it.

  “Now, I could believe that you two are just nosy prospectors,” said Schoeman, stepping back to admire his work. Lazarus felt warm blood trickling down his belly. “But something tells me that even British entrepreneurs would not be so stupid. So I must ask myself, and by extension, yourselves, what does the British government know about our interests here? Do they know where you fellows are?”

  Lazarus could see Rider squeezing his eyes shut against the pain that still lanced through his body from the first stroke. He was holding up admirably. Lazarus only hoped that he would not shame his companion by failing to keep his own resolve. In most countries that used the shambok the maximum number of strokes given was twenty. That was enough to strip flesh from bone and seriously endanger the recipient’s life. How far would this Boer go? How long could they hold out?

  A second stroke cut Rider across the ribs, drawing a long red line that instantly began to weep. Lazarus ground his teeth as his second was delivered just below his left nipple. It felt like the white bone of his ribs must surely be showing through the fire of pain that radiated throughout his flesh.

  Schoeman was clearly enjoying himself and prepared to deliver a third round without even asking any questions. But something stayed his hand at the last moment. The Boers were gaping with wide eyes at something beyond the vision of their captives.

  “The bloody livestock has broken loose!” Schoeman yelled in Afrikaans. “I’ll have the man responsible flayed and roasted!” He stormed off, wiping the blood from his shambok to bellow orders to his men, his captives temporarily forgotten.

  Lazarus and Rider found themselves left in the sun for the blood to dry and crack on their chests, the sweat of pain turning to salt on their brows. Suddenly black hands seized them and knives began cutting away their bonds.

  “Mazooku!” cried Lazarus upon recognizing the man who was freeing him.

  “And… I say, who’s this?” Lazarus heard Rider exclaim.

  It was no man who cut Rider’s bonds but a woman and a beautiful one at that. She had an athletic form barely covered by a short cow-hide skirt and vest of red cloth. Her hair was worn high in a knot, showing off her high cheekbones and full lips.

  A second native gentleman squatted a few feet away keeping a close eye on the movements of the Boers who were struggling to halt the mad stampede of cattle that rushed around the rims of the mine shafts.

  “This is Gagola, boss,” said Mazooku, indicating the woman. “And this is Umbopa. They are from the tribe that rules this area and have agreed to accompany us to their village.”

  “Very pleased to meet you,” said Rider. “And in the nick of time too.”

  “Did you have anything to do with that cattle stampede, Mazooku?” Lazarus asked.

  The Zulu grinned wide.

  “You are a champion,” Lazarus told him. He stood up and paused to catch his balance. He felt dizzy and nauseated from his wounds which still burned terribly but he was able to make a run for it if necessary.

  The cattle were still causing havoc within the compound and kept the Boers well occupied. There seemed to be nobody guarding the ramparts.

  “Not exactly British army, are they?” Rider remarked as they approached the gate. “Don’t they know a diversion when they see one?”

  “Be thankful they don’t,” said Lazarus. “For that’s our way out.”

  The five of them set upon the gates and heaved them open wide enough to slip out into the grasslands beyond. They scurried for the hills, wishing to put plenty of distance between themselves and the range of the walls as quickly as possible. Lazarus caught Rider intently studying the swaying hips and glistening skin of Gagola who walked a few paces ahead, leading the expedition.

  “I didn’t get a chance to thank you, my dear, for saving our skins back there,” said Rider in his best Zulu, jogging to match Gagola’s powerful strides. “I speak quite literally, of course.”

  Gagola studied Rider with her large, perfect eyes and said something which neither Rider nor Lazarus could make out. She seemed to have a peculiar dialect which neither of them had encountered before. Mazooku smiled and translated Rider’s words for Gagola.

  “Don’t these people speak a variant of Zulu like the rest of the Matabele?” Lazarus asked him.

  “No, boss,” the Zulu replied. “This tribe is Rozwi. They have their own speech. It is Bantu but would not be understood by somebody who knows only Zulu.”

  “Rozwi?” Lazarus exclaimed. “I thought they had all been conquered.”

  “The Rozwi pay tribute to King Lobengula of the Matabele, it is true, but they keep their culture and their language.”

  This was news to Lazarus. All he had read indicated that the once great Rozwi Kingdom which had expelled the Portuguese in the seventeenth century had been wholly obliterated when Mzilikazi – one of Shaka Zulu’s generals – had rebelled against his king and led his Matabele followers north onto the Zimbabwe Plateau. Forced even further north by Boer expansion, the Matabele had defeated the Rozwi and inherited the sole rule of this land.

  The Rozwi village consisted of grass-roofed huts contained within a kraal of thorny acacia branches. They arrived just before sunset and joined the young boys who were leading the cattle in from the fields for the night. Gagola spoke with the gatekeeper who was always a person of enormous importance in Southern African tribes and his pulsing voice singing the praises of his chief accompanied them into the kraal.

  People turned out of their huts in droves to see the strange white men who had been admitted into their village. Umbopa’s family ran to greet him, tears showing in their eyes at his return.

  It became clear that Gagola was not just a woman from the village but a woman of great status and respect. Lazarus suspected that she was one of the traditional medicine people the Zulus called sangomas; healers, diviners and witch finders.

  They were taken to the hut of the chief which was flanked by the dwellings belonging to his first and second wives. He was a barrel-chested man with bow legs and he walked with the deliberate slowness of one who is accustomed to taking as much time about things as he wished. Of all the people in the village only he and his eldest son and wives seemed displeased by the return of Umbopa and Gagola.

  They were fed beer, beef and barley while Gagola explained the situation at the mines to the chief. There were cries of outrage at the report of slavery but the chief’s face remained frozen while the sangoma talked. Lazarus got the impression he disapproved of her but suffered her presence in the village because of his people’s dependence on tradition.

  When Gagola had finished speaking, the chief relaxed into a contemplative state and dismissed them all from his hut. They were taken to another building where Gagola bade Lazarus and Rider lie down on feather pallets so she might treat their wounds. She was joined by another girl even younger than herself who seemed to be a sangoma in training.

  Rider evidently enjoyed Gagola’s delicate pasting of some poultice on his abdomen with her slender fingers. She caught him staring at her and said something which Mazooku had to translate.

  “She says you are a very brave man for trying to help her people, especially as you had to defy your own kind to do so.”

  “My own kind? Perhaps you could explain to her that the British and the Boers are as different as her people are to the Zulu,” Rider told Mazooku.

  Mazooku translated this and then said; “She thinks you are brave regardless. She has seen how terrible the white men are with their guns and their will to conquer.”

  “Well, tell her I think she is quite something herself,” said Rider, gazing into Gagola’s eyes. “When we planned to spirit away some of these fellows to reunite them with their tribe I had no idea a woman would be the one to save our bacon. And what a woman! She seems to have some authority in her tribe. I like the way she stood toe to toe with that chief of theirs.”

 
“She is a sangoma,” said Mazooku. “Even the chief must show her respect, though he is loath to do so.”

  “Yes, I noticed that,” said Lazarus. “He doesn’t seem at all pleased to have her back.”

  “There has been much disagreement between the two of them. Many of the village side with Gagola which makes Twala – that is the chief – angry. It was over the coming of the white men to these parts. Twala gave them permission to dig in those mines which are a sacred site for this tribe. It was a place of burial many centuries ago.”

  “He let them dig for gold in a sacred site?” Lazarus asked, astonished.

  “He went against the ruling of Gagola and earned the hatred of his people. But he is their leader so what is to be done?”

  “Couldn’t they rise against him? Cast him out? It’s been done in tribes before…”

  “They are frightened,” Mazooku replied. “They think the white men are in allegiance with a demon and thus so is Twala. They fear that if they displease him too much this demon will be turned on them and devour them just as it devoured their family members who work in those pits. They were sacrificed, you see. Twala sent a hundred young men and fifty young women with the white men as an offering to the demon. In return, these lands were left in peace. One of these women was Gagola, their sangoma, who went willingly to prove that this demon was nothing more than a sham conjured by the white men.”

  “She went willingly into that hell-hole?” Rider exclaimed. “By God, that girl has some pluck!”

  “And now she has returned with Umbopa; proof that the hundred-and-fifty youths were not devoured but put to work for white man’s greed. She thanks you for providing the opportunity to return to her people. She could not have managed it without you.”

  “What will happen now?” Lazarus asked.

  Mazooku shrugged. “Twala’s authority has been severely shaken. He will seek to reestablish it but the village is angry. They feel deceived and many are turning to Gagola for the answers.”

  Gagola, upon hearing repeated mentions of her name, enquired of the Zulu what was passing between himself and his white companions. Mazooku explained to her and she began to speak in a fast, angry tone.

  “She says that Twala’s time as leader is over unless he agrees to gather his impis – that is, his regiments – and reclaim the resting place of their ancestors. The white men must die! Present company excepted, of course.”

  “Glad to hear it,” Lazarus muttered.

  Gagola and her assistant left them then for it was growing late and fires were dying to embers throughout the kraal as the villagers lay down to sleep. Lazarus and Rider bedded down too, the wounds on their bodies numb now through the power of Gagola’s medicine.

  “That is a magnificent woman,” Rider said to Lazarus in the darkness of the hut. “I don’t usually go in for the darker races but she is a very fine creature indeed. How old do you think she is?”

  “I don’t know,” said Lazarus with a yawn. “Twenty?”

  “Seems older. I mean, her body doesn’t look a day over twenty but there is something in those eyes that seems much older, like she has seen and experienced things that occurred generations before any of us were born.”

  “What on earth are you babbling about?” Lazarus asked, irritable at his companion’s desire to talk when all he wanted to do was sleep.

  “I could well imagine her as the incarnation of some Egyptian priestess come down here from the north centuries ago, working her magic over generations. Those eyes seem fathomless.”

  “You should write novels,” Lazarus told him, rolling over. “You’ve got the wild imagination for it.”

  The following morning they awoke to much noise and confusion. They pulled themselves to their feet and stepped out of their hut into the hot morning sun. All about people were in a state of great excitement. Warriors ran back and forth and assembled themselves into formations. Drums were pounded and women uttered shrill cries and danced in groups before the men. Rider sent Mazooku to find out what was going on.

  “The tribe is rallying for war!” the Zulu said on his return. “Twala has been pressured into doing something about the white men who defile the place of the ancestors. The impis have been mustered!”

  V

  The battle was over. The compound stank of blood and excrement. The heat made it rise up like a wall of fetid vileness to pollute the nostrils of those left standing. Without the walls the bodies of the tribesmen numbered in their hundreds, piled on top of each other, a jumble of black limbs, ostrich feathers and hide shields, riddled with bullet holes. The carnage reached nearly to the tops of the walls and the victors had had to trample over their fallen comrades to enter the compound.

  The slaughter within would have matched that without had there been enough Boers to redden the tips of the assegais. As it was, many lay skewered in the dust, their faces showing the agony of slow death from punctured lungs, pierced stomachs and disembowelment. Many of the Boers had escaped the massacre by scrambling down the ladders or leaping onto the derricks that vanished deep into the mines.

  The slaves gave up great cries of joy at being freed and those who were able-bodied were given assegais and shields and told to bolster the decimated army. The sick and the crippled were led outside of the compound and the stores of food and water were broken into and doled out.

  “Do you think they have a way out down there?” Rider asked Lazarus as they stood at the top of one of the pits and gazed down into the steamy blackness.

  “I doubt it,” Lazarus replied. “They’re probably running scared hoping to barricade themselves in and postpone the inevitable.”

  Twala emerged at the opposite edge of the pit and peered in. He gave the order for his warriors to smash the derricks and descend the ladders.

  “There will be no escape for the Boers,” said Mazooku. “Twala must seek them out like rats and crush them or face the scorn of his tribe.

  There was hesitation on the part of some warriors who still feared the rumors of a hungry demon that dwelled at the bottom of the pits. Cowardice is a trait despised by all the tribes of Southern Africa and, with heated encouragement from their comrades, all were soon scurrying down the ladders in eagerness.

  The descent into the mines was marked by tiers with ladders leading from one to the next. Each level they descended seemed darker than the last until they felt like they had entered Hades itself. Here oil lamps lit the way and several tunnels led off from the tier nearest the bottom. From one of them the steam billowed as if from the nostril of a slumbering dragon.

  Licking their lips nervously and gripping their spears tight, the warriors advanced with Rider, Mazooku and Lazarus among them, their own weapons held ready. It was not long before trouble found them.

  It came in the form of gunshots and two tribesmen fell dead. The warriors stepped back a few paces, alarmed by the gunfire in such close quarters and from enemies unseen. But Umbopa, who had fought more valiantly than anyone in the battle, cried out encouragement and urged his comrades on.

  The group split up into units wherever the tunnel divided until the army was naught but small groups plunging into unknown darkness. Lazarus could see the danger in this but it was too late. The warriors were out for blood and none cared for safety in numbers so long as there was honor to be won and death to be dealt.

  Lazarus, Rider and Mazooku stuck with Umbopa and a handful of other warriors. They found themselves passing dripping stalactites that resembled an ice fortress even here in the sweltering heat. Lazarus noted the timber supports with interest. They must have been placed there in ancient times for now, with the ever creeping growth of stalactites and stalagmites, they had become encased in limestone and the wood was petrified, frozen for all time.

  Tunnels opened into caves which were linked by yet more tunnels and the colors were a dazzling kaleidoscope of reds, oranges, turquoises and pinks. There was the azure and bright green of copper, the dusty rose of manganese and of course, f
lecks of brownish yellow hinting at the gold for which the mines had been dug.

  The sound of gunfire and the screams of Boers slaughtered by assegais echoed throughout the tunnels and Lazarus realized that all of the mine shafts must be linked down here in this kingdom beneath the earth. Umbopa led them through the fug of steam, advancing wherever it was thickest.

  The detritus of the abandoned mine work cluttered the tunnels. Pickaxes, shovels and overturned carts, their contents scattered, were obstacles over which they clambered. Eventually, they entered the cavern that contained the steam drill.

  Gun fire lit the place up from several spots on both sides of the gargantuan piece of machinery. The Boers were making their last stand defending their expensive dream. The warriors took cover wherever it could be found, none wanting to go up against the guns when the men who wielded them could not be seen.

  Lazarus and Rider opened fire whenever the brimmed hat of a Boer poked up from behind the machinery of the drill. Rider dropped two with his Winchester and, deciding to go out in a blaze of glory rather than be picked off like antelope, the remaining Boers charged, firing as they went.

  Mazooku felled one with a hefty swing from his isagila, caving in the man’s skull and knocking him dead. Lazarus, feeling the old panic of battle upon him once more, fired at the Boer closest to him. It was Piet Schoeman. The bullet tore through his chest and he reeled backwards, landing dead on the dusty floor.

  The remaining Boers fell prey to the assegais of the warriors who stabbed them, knocked them down and kept on stabbing until the screaming stopped. Through the haze of sweat, steam and blood, they all gazed on the massive drilling machine that loomed in the darkness.

  “There’s your demon,” said Rider. Mazooku did not need to translate for Umbopa all the others who had been enslaved in these mines knew very well that there had never been any demon, only the devilish machinery of white men.

  Umbopa gazed at the machine with disgust. Then, without any command given, the warriors attacked it simultaneously, not with their spears but with their bare hands. They tore at its controls, yanked its pistons out of shape and scattered the coals of its furnace to scorch the metal. Steam jetted from the ruptured hose and two of the warriors were scalded horribly causing Lazarus and Rider to yell out caution. The warriors proceeded more carefully but no less energetically until the massive drill lay in pieces, bent and ruined beyond repair.

  Their work complete, most of the warriors began to file out of the tunnels where the welcome glow of sunlight beckoned. Umbopa wanted to press on to see that the place of their ancestors had been left untouched.

  When they finally emerged in what must have been the largest cavern in the mines, Lazarus stopped wondering why the