Nomvula

23 - The Lands That Divide Us

Nomvula watched Ndlovu slowly sit up and set both his hands on his knees. "Ndoda and Buhle."

She could see him picking at the seams of what that truly meant, turning it over in his head and running a razor-sharp mind along the pale, soft belly.

Ndlovu stroked his beard as the duel carried on in the background. "Dumani can threaten you with your son's life because he knows you would not raise arms against him."

"You once killed a King for refusing to ally with you." Nomvula forced her fists to unknot. "What more would you do if harm came to your daughter's husband?"

"Rein yourself in, Queen, you are too forward. I've agreed to nothing."

"So agree or rebuff."

The weight in Ndlovu's gaze was only a few feathers lighter than that in an Old One's. "Tell me, how does a pacifist come to suggest so much violence."

"An aggressive pacifist," Nomvula said over the slap of a club striking flesh. "And it is the suggestion of violence with which I keep absolute peace."

Ndlovu shook his head, his eyes briefly flicking to the fighting. "That makes no sense."

"I've seen enough violence to know that it is only marginally easier to purge from the soul than the need to eat and be intimate." A second slap of flesh, and a sharp crack, wood on bone. "My people prosper because I buy rare crops from around the world and grow them here at home. I invite master glassworkers and miners and shipwrights and pay them handsomely for their hands and knowledge." The thud of a body hitting the deck, and the mad shuffle to scramble away. "Over and above our millet and sorghum, I grow more citrus and olives and cotton and barley than my people would know what to do with if their numbers tripled. I have a daughter whose mind shames most, one son who is braver than death is certain, and another who has more compassion than you have power..."

Some of the gathered watchers were whistling now, clearly seeing the end. Nomvula stared at the wall that raised the upper deck above the lower.

"...and all this my ancestors gave me because I have the ships to keep you out of my lands, the food to keep the Inner Plains from contesting my borders, and the foresight to always keep the axe above my enemy's head, though I would weep to see his blood spilled. Does that make sense?"

Ndlovu shook his head. "To you, I suspect it almost does."

"The offer, Chief. Do you accept? Do you deny?" Nomvula's shoulder was cold with the invisible shadow that lay its head there, the shadow of Lang'womkhonto. "Are you my in-law or my enemy?"

"In truth, Queen, I am– Hey!" Ndlovu burst to his feet with the power in his legs. "His shield is fallen, that is a yield!"

Nomvula couldn't stop herself. She stood and turned in time to see Dumani kick the shield of the shepard son across the deck and advance. The boy was bent low, holding his stomach with an arm that was swollen at the elbow and the wrist. The club in his other hand hung limply in his grip.

The few men between Dumani and where Nomvula stood stepped aside, but Ndlovu made no move forward, lest he shame the boy by physically intervening before the words of yielding were officially spoke.

"It is done. Step back, General, and leave the boy his pride."

Dumani circled around so that he could face the boy and Ndlovu at the same time. His bald head was shiny with sweat, but his eyes were cold as dead embers. "I challenged him, therefore he fights by my home's rules, Chief. It is first blood and he is not bleeding."

"You are on my land and that is not how it goes," Ndlovu warned.

"We are on a river, you laggard." Dumani's smile stretched like a wound opening. "This is neutral ground."

Nomvula kept her peace. Any insult to the Great Elephant was in her favour, and if the boy had to bleed a little to save three entire nations, then she would make sure he went home with more riches than he could count in this lifetime. She felt for the vial of plaster paste hidden in a fold in her shirt as Ndlovu spoke the words she was secretly thinking.

"First blood, then." Ndlovu's fingers flexed, but he made no move forward. "Be done with it, the both of you."

"Then let's make it fair," Dumani said, tossing his own shield aside.

The boy had done well to keep in the fight this long, and he did his ancestors proud by showing a little more spirit. With only his club in hand, he made a couple of quick shuffling steps towards Dumani and feinted his club with clever flicks of the wrist before aiming a blow at the General's mouth. A hit to the lip would end this folly.

Dumani caught the club in his free and wretched it free, so that he had both now. He tossed them aside, then ruined everything.

Ndlovu's strength was true to the animal of his ancestry. An elephant's strength was the certainty of the earth beneath flat feet, the weight of falling trees, the slow, sure power of that which was – in both mind and body – far above any other beast of the field. When he had lifted Buhle onto the deck, he had done so casually but carefully, with strength but also with a respect for how his strength affected the world around him. Of that, Ndlovu had always been sure.

When Dumani lifted the boy by his legs, he did so roughly and with great malice. He almost slipped under the force he thrust the boy into the air with, and his hands were more like claws as they grabbed the boy's hair and loincloth, and drove him, upside down and flailing, into the deck. His neck folded under the weight of his body. Only the guffaws and yelling of the crew kept the snap of his bones from Nomvula's stunned ears.

But then the wind turned and there was silence. With deliberate slowness, Dumani knelt by the boy's head, his eyes never leaving Ndlovu, and with the nail of his thumb drew a line across the boy's cheek, just deep enough to draw three beads of blood.