The Induna's Wife

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Mitford Bertram. The Induna's Wife

Prologue

Chapter One. The Tale of the Red Death

Chapter Two “Behold the Sign!”

Chapter Three. An Ominous Parting

Chapter Four. The Abode of the Terror

Chapter Five. Gasitye the Wizard

Chapter Six. The Ghost-Bull

Chapter Seven. The Faith of a King

Chapter Eight. Gegesa’s Tale

Chapter Nine “To Slay Thee, Son of Matyobane.”

Chapter Ten. The Faith of a Slave

Chapter Eleven. The Rumble of the Elephant

Chapter Twelve. A Devouring Swarm

Chapter Thirteen. The Tongue of the Snake

Chapter Fourteen. The Head of the Snake

Chapter Fifteen. The Crushing of the Snake

Chapter Sixteen. Of a New Witch-Finding

Chapter Seventeen. The Dwelling of the Wise One

Chapter Eighteen. The Refugees of the Ngome

Chapter Nineteen. The Vengeance of the Refugees

Chapter Twenty. The Bapongqolo Return

Chapter Twenty One. The Embassy of Tambusa

Chapter Twenty Two. The Dividing of the Nation

Chapter Twenty Three. A Hard Ordeal

Chapter Twenty Four. The Stroke of Sopuza

Chapter Twenty Five. Conclusion

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There was that about the look of your oxen just now, Nkose– shadowed like black ghosts against the mist – that brought back to my old mind a strange and wonderful time. And the night is yet young. Nor will that tale take very long in telling, unless – ah, that tale is but the door opening into a still greater one; but of that we shall see – yes, we shall see.

I have already unfolded to you, Nkose, all that befell at the Place of the Three Rifts, and how at that place we met in fierce battle and rolled back the might of Dingane and thus saved the Amandebeli as a nation. Also have I told the tale of how I gained the White Shield by saving the life of a king, and how it in turn saved the life of a nation. Further have I told how I took for principal wife Lalusini, the sorceress, in whose veins ran the full blood of the House of Senzangakona, the royal House of Zululand, and whom I had first found making strange and powerful múti among the Bakoni, that disobedient people whom we stamped flat.

.....

“Enough!” he said, pointing at the two messengers with his short-handled spear. “Return ye hence. For the rest of you – hearken now, Untúswa. Send one half of thy regiment of ‘Scorpions’ under an experienced captain, that they may drive the whole of the people of Maqandi within this Ghost-Valley. Then let them draw a line across the month thereof, and slay every one who shall attempt to escape. So shall the people of Maqandi either slay this ghost or be slain by it. I care not which. Go?”

I rose to carry out the King’s orders, and upon the faces of the grovelling messengers was an awful expression of set, hopeless despair. But, before I could creep through the low doorway, a sign from Umzilikazi caused me to halt. At the same time, a frightful hubbub arose from without – the hubbub of a volume of deep, excited voices – mingled with a wild bellowing, which was enough to make a man deaf.

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