The covenant - James A. Michener [25]
The task of collecting sixteen rhinoceros horns was proving much more complex than Nxumalo anticipated when he accepted the challenge, and after the Old Seeker had departed to visit other tribes who might or might not know of gold mines, the boy approached his father: 'I want to track down the rhinos.'
'So the old talker poisoned you?'
Nxumalo looked down at his feet, unwilling to admit that he had been entrapped by blandishments and singing words. 'Like the iron,' his father said. 'You went, and you dug for iron, and you found it. And when you came home with ingots . . . they didn't mean very much, not really.'
'I want to see the city,' Nxumalo said.
'And you shall. And when you come home you'll tell me, "It didn't matter very much."'
Those of Nxumalo's brothers who remained at the kraal wished him well in his quest for the rhinoceros horns but showed no interest in joining him. The tribe was essentially sedentary, with fixed villages, sturdy wattled huts and a settled agriculture. The women knew how to cultivate fields, the men how to manage cattle and tend the fat-tailed sheep. One brother directed the metalworkers who provided tools for the region and another was gaining a reputation in the district as a herbalist and diviner.
But it was Nxumalo who championed the ancient arts of hunting and tracking in the wild, and because of this he seemed the more regal figure, the young man who best preserved the historical merits of the tribe. He was the only one with much chance of tracking down eight rhinoceroses and delivering the sixteen aphrodisiac horns to Zimbabwe, so on a warm summer morning he and six helpers moved eastward toward the heavily wooded area leading to the sea.
He was an imposing lad, not yet full height but taller than most men, and the principal characteristic that struck those who saw him for the first time was power: his arms and legs were well-muscled and his torso much broader than his hips. His face was large and placid, as if he knew no anger, and when he smiled all his features participated and his shoulders moved forward, creating the impression that his entire body was enjoying whatever sensation had evoked the smile; and when his lips parted, his white teeth punctuated the grin. It was obvious that when he reached the age of eighteen he would be able to marry whom he pleased, for he was not only the chief's son but also a young prince among men.
He was so totally different from the small brown hunters who had once inhabited this area that he seemed unrelated to them, and in a way he was. Earliest man, Australopithecus, had once flourished over a large part of Africa, and as he developed into modern man, one branch settled close to the equator, where the sun placed a premium on black skin, which adjusted to its punishing rays; no primitive tribe of pale-white complexion could have prospered long in those blazing regions which produced Nxumalo's people, just as his heavily pigmented skin would have been at a severe disadvantage in the cold north, where the sun's parsimonious rays had to be carefully hoarded.
Slowly, over many centuries, Nxumalo's black ancestors, herding cattle before them and carrying seeds in their skin bags and baskets, had migrated southward, reaching the lake about four centuries after the birth of Christ. They arrived not as conquering heroes but as women and men seeking pasturage and safe enclaves; some had continued southward, but Nxumalo's tribe had fancied the encompassing hills about the lake.
As they lingered they came into contact with the small brown people, and gradually these had been pushed south or into the mountain ranges to the east. From these places the insatiable little hunters raided the kraals of Nxumalo's people, and there had to be confrontations. Some did live in peace with the invaders, trading the spoils of their hunt for tools and sanctuary, but thousands of others were turned into serfs or put to work at the mines. Association continued over centuries, and occasionally at Nxumalo's kraal some woman of his tribe would have enormous