The covenant - James A. Michener [290]
In every direction Shaka lashed out with devastating speed, devouring small clans, and one morning he cried brusquely, 'Today we destroy the Ngwane,' and within a few hours the regiments had crossed the Umfolozi River and were dashing north to the kraals of a tribe which had given repeated trouble. Without signals or warning, other than the cries of astonished herd boys who saw the amazing army approaching, the Zulu took battle position, body-arms-head, and fell upon the community.
The Ngwane, like all subsidiary tribes in this region, were stalwart men and they did not propose to lose their cattle easily, for they supposed this to be another cattle raid in which two or three men might get hurt. So they quickly formed into their rude battle formations, with their throwing assegais at the ready. They saw the body of Shaka's army, and it looked much like any traditional raiding party, but as they moved forward to engage it, they suddenly discovered that the wings were widespread, like the horns of some enraged buffalo, so that wherever they turned they confronted swift-running Zulu.
'They'll take all our cattle!' the Ngwane commander shouted, but it was not cows that the Zulu sought this time. With terrifying force they fell upon the Ngwane, stabbing and killing, and when the latter bravely tried to regroup and fight in earnest, from out of nowhere sprang the iziCwe, their brutal assegais slashing like the knives that slaughtered oxen for the sacrifice.
Under this tremendous onslaught the Ngwane defenses crumbled, and those warriors who were spared the Zulu cry 'I have eaten!' scattered and kept on running. In their flight from terror they would become outlaws, seeking in the blood of others vengeance for their own crushing defeat. The kraals from which they fled were now in ashes, their herds driven off, their boys dragooned into Zulu regiments and their women distributed among the Zulu kraals.
The old people were 'helped along to the other place,' their slayers killing them with joy, for the Zulu saw nothing cruel in shortening the days of any who were aged or infirm. But when this savage battle was over, the Ngwane had ceased to exist as a clan.
Their extinction had been made possible by the disciplined performance of the iziCwe, and when the regiments returned to the Zulu kraals, Shaka praised the men and told them, to the envy of the other warriors, 'You may now enjoy the pleasures of the road.'
Shaka had introduced his own variation of that sexual custom: no warrior could marry until his chief gave him permission, and this was usually delayed until the soldiers were in their mid-thirties and growing too old for the crack regiments. Then, in a grand ceremony, they were permitted to search the woods for a combination of vine, gut and gum, from which they made a wide headband, woven into the hair when moist and worn for the rest of life as proof of marriage.
But since it was illogical to expect grown men, and the bravest warriors at that, to remain continent till they donned their headbands, the soldiers were granted the 'pleasures' after any battle.
So Nxumalo's warriors fanned out through the community, looking for young women, and the girls, long wondering about husbands and lovers, eagerly allowed themselves to be found. For three long days the men reveled in the glades, loving the women with passion born on the battlefield, yet practicing an almost savage restraint because they knew the fearful penalty they must pay if they got the women pregnant.
Nxumalo, no less excited about the fraternizing reward than his men, had gone seeking his pleasure of the road at a kraal whose daughter he had been noticing for some time. He was now a powerfully organized man who had been in the forefront of seven battles; he had a right to assume, therefore, that one of these years he would win permission to take a wife, but he knew that in Shaka's