The covenant - James A. Michener [360]
When he saw fresh hordes descending upon him and realized that they might stumble upon his hidden daughter, he ran before them, leading away from her tree, and as the warriors overtook him, each stabbed at him with an assegai. But still he ran, to lead them as far away as possible, and shouting to warn the other wagons. When he felt his knees failing and blood choking his lungs, he turned to face his assailants, grabbed at their assegais, and died of many wounds.
Balthazar Bronk, who had so relentlessly denied him his ordination, had managed, as such men often do, to be at the far end of the encampment, where the Zulu did not reach.
Tjaart arrived at Blaauwkrantz before dawn, and searching in the ghostly light, he and Paulus saw the awful desolation: men hacked to pieces, women and children chopped down, brown and black servants who had surrendered their lives defending the people for whom they worked. 'Father!' Paulus cried. 'Our wagons!'
Recognizing the burned-out frames, Tjaart rushed overand found his family massacred: Jakoba lay with six dead Zulu at her feet, Minna with three, all the servants, their bodies slashed by assegais. But no Sybilla. And no Theunis.
'Child!' Tjaart roared, hoping that she might somehow have escaped. There was no response, so he started shouting for Theunis, cursing him for having run away and deserted his women.
'Goddamn you, Nel!' he bellowed, and then suddenly he was surrounded by women, jabbering that Theunis had saved their lives: 'He was dying, but he ran nearly half a mile, shouting to us, warning us . . .'
'He was stabbed so many times . . .'
'Was Sybilla with him?'
'He was alone with the spears.' They led him to where the crookbackt sick-comforter lay, uncovered, and Tjaart fell beside him and cried, 'Theunis, where is your daughter?'
Paulus de Groot, now six, looked at the dead body of his second mother, then at Aunt Minna, and he was about to move on to see where Uncle Theunis lay when he sensed a movement among the trees, and although he was terrified by the dreadful things of this night, he walked toward the sound, and there beneath a tree sat Sybilla. She had witnessed everything that happened, but she knew from what her father had told her in those last moments that she must not make a sound.
She made none now, and even when Paulus reached down to take her hands, she followed him mutely, and with Paulus walking backward and guiding her, they left the tree and started to where Tjaart was grieving over the body of her father. But when Paulus had her well on the way, she suddenly halted, pulling her hands free, and when she was thus released she walked purposefully to where her mother and Ouma Jakoba lay. When she stood over them she did not weep, nor did she kneel to kiss them. She simply stood there, and after a while she turned to her friend Paulus and placed her hands again in his. Vaguely she had always known that his father and mother had been killed, and now she knew that hers had died, too. He was the person she could trust. He was the one who understood.
They were standing thus when someone informed Tjaart that his granddaughter was alive. 'Sybilla!' he shouted, but when he dashed back to lift her in his arms, crying, 'Thank God, thank God!' she merely looked at him. Her father had warned her not to speak, and it would be some days before she did.
As soon as Jakoba and the Nels were buried, Tjaart headed for the far end of the wagon line to ascertain what had happened to the Ryk Naudes, and as