The covenant - James A. Michener [305]
It was half a year before he found out. With an instinct for preservation, he led his family back to the east, and after a hurried march, went beyond the swath of total destruction; here in the wooded area where streams ran, only the kraals had been destroyed, not the land itself, and one afternoon they came upon the first surviving humans. They were a family of three living in trees, for they had no weapons to defend themselves against the numerous wild animals that prowled their vicinity at night. They were so wasted they could hardly speak, but they did utter one word that perplexed the travelers: 'Mzilikazi.'
'Who was pursuing him?' Nxumalo asked.
'No one. He was pursuing us.'
'Mzilikazi?'
'A monster. A life-eating monster.'
'Feed them,' Thandi said. 'Don't question them when they're starving.'
So Nxumalo's men caught antelope for the wretched ones; they ate like beasts, the boy gulping the raw meat while he protected his portion by covering it with arms and legs. When the family slowly returned to human condition Thandi allowed Nxumalo to query them again, and he said, 'Surely Mzilikazi did not do this.'
'He slaughtered everythingtrees, dogs, lions, even water lilies.'
'But why?' Nxumalo asked, unable to comprehend what he was hearing.
'He summoned our group of kraals . . . told us he wanted our cattle. We refused . . . and he started the killing.'
'But why slay everyone?'
'We didn't want to join his army. When we ran away he didn't even send his soldiers after us. They didn't care. They had enough to do killing those at hand.'
'But what was his purpose?'
'No purpose. We weren't useful to his moving army. In his rear we might cause trouble.'
'Where was he marching?'
'He didn't know, his soldiers saidthey were just marching.'
After long consultation with the men in his group, and also with his wives, it was agreed that the family should be allowed to join them; the man could help with the hunting and the boy could prove useful later on, but when the enlarged group had been on the road three days, the new man died. Nxumalo assumed that one of his own men had killed him, for immediately the wife was taken into that man's care, without much protest from her.
When they had traveled as a unit for several weeks, they came upon the ultimate horror. They had been traversing mile after mile of total desolation fifteen kraals without a sign of life, not even a guinea henwhen they came upon a small group of people living in a half-destroyed hut, and after a cursory inspection Thandi came to Nxumalo, trembling: 'They have been eating one another.'
The miserable clan was so desperate that they had resorted to cannibalism, and each wondered when the next would die, and at whose hand.
For these people there was no hope. Nxumalo would have nothing to do with themthey were untouchable. And he was about to leave them to their misery when Thandi said, 'We must stay and make them some weapons so they can kill animals. And our men must bring back some antelope to give them fair food.'
So at her insistence the group halted, and the men did go hunting, and after a while the cannibals, fourteen of them, began to fill out from their eating of antelope, and with their spears they now had a chance of fending for themselves. But despite Thandi's pleading, Nxumalo would not permit this group to join his, and when the family moved north the former cannibals stood at the edge of their desolate village, looking after them with strange expressions.
After a long time the signs of destruction diminished, and then stopped. Mzilikazi's armies had moved sharply westward, and for this Nxumalo was grateful, for it meant that he could now proceed northward without running the risk of overtaking