The covenant - James A. Michener [285]
Then, with a wild yell, he bounded toward the front ranks of the Butelezi, a signal for the rest of the iziCwe to swarm upon the amazed enemy and slay them.
Fifty enemy dead. Kraals burned. Nearly a thousand cattle led home in triumph. More than a dozen women captured. There had never before been a battle like this, and there would never again be a battle in the old style.
As a consequence of this stunning victory, Shaka gained Dingiswayo's favorable attention and was promoted rapidly to regimental commander, a post of honor which he should have held in quiet distinction for the remainder of his life. But such limited achievement was not what Shaka had in mind, not at all. At night he whispered to Nxumalo, 'This Dingiswayo goes to battle as if it were a game. He returns cattle to the vanquished. Leaves them their women.' In the darkness Nxumalo could hear him gritting his teeth. 'This isn't war. This is the quarreling of children.'
'What would you do?'
'I will bring war to the world. Real war.'
In 1816, when Reverend Hilary Saltwood, many miles to the southwest, was teaching the little Madagascan girl Emma the geography of Europe, Shaka's father, chief of the Zulu, died, and after an obliging assassin had removed the son intended for the succession, Shaka at last seized command of the clan, one of the smallest, with a total population of only thirteen hundred and an army, if all the able-bodied were mustered, of three hundred, plus two hundred novices.
It was a clan of little distinction, smaller than either the Sixolobo or the Langeni; it had no special history, had expanded its lands not at all during the preceding hundred years, and had provided no regional leadership except Shaka's promotion to command of the iziCwe. Normally the Zulu would have remained of these dimensions, crouched along one of the better reaches of the Umfolozi River.
But when Shaka assumed command, he moved in with an iziCwe regiment to support his takeover, and one of the first things he did was to require that every Zulu soldier throw away his three long-shafted assegais and replace them with one short stabbing weapon. He then increased the height and width of their shields, until a standing man, with knees only slightly bent, could hide his whole body behind two layers of rock-hard cowhide. But in some ways the most important thing he taught was how to dance.
First he appointed a knobkerrie team of six, choosing the tallest, strongest and most brutal men from his new recruits. Brandishing their clubs, they would stand behind him at all future public functions, awaiting his instructions. Then he assembled his Zulu regiment at the edge of a flat piece of ground well covered with three-pronged thorns. When they stood at attention in the moonlight he stepped before them, barefooted as always.
'My warriors,' he said quietly. 'Four times I have told you that if you want to be the greatest regiment along the Umfolozi, you have got to fight barefooted. And four times you have returned to your sandals. Now take them off. Throw them in a pile. And never let me see them again.'
When the recruits stood barefooted before him, he said, in the same low voice, 'Now, my warriors, we're going to dance.' And he led them onto the thorn-studded land and began a slow dance, accompanied by a chant they knew well. 'Sing, my warriors!' he cried, and as the rhythms began to throb, he danced upon the projections, which caused him no trouble, for he had made his feet tougher than leather. But for his soldiers those first tentative steps were agony, and some began to falter from a pain greater than they could bear.
Now came Shaka's first lesson to his Zulu. Watching hawk-like,