who am a man betrayed. What do I care who love none and now have no
children? Still, it is true that I might have fled to Natal with the
cattle and there have led a fat and easy life. But ease and plenty I do
not desire who would live and fall as a warrior should.

"Never again, mayhap, shall I see the Ghost-Mountain where the wolves
ravened and the old Witch sits in stone waiting for the world to die,
or sleep in the town of the People of the Axe. What do I want with wives
and oxen while I have _Inkosikaas_ the Groan-maker and she is true to
me?" he added, shaking the ancient axe above his head so that the sun
gleamed upon the curved blade and the hollow gouge or point at the back
beyond the shaft socket. "Where the Axe goes, there go the strength and
virtue of the Axe, O Macumazahn."

"It is a strange weapon," I said.

"Aye, a strange and an old, forged far away, says Zikali, by a
warrior-wizard hundreds of years ago, a great fighter who was also the
first of smiths and who sits in the Under-world waiting for it to return
to his hand when its work is finished beneath the sun. That will be
soon, Macumazahn, since Zikali told me that I am the last Holder of the
Axe."

"Did you then see the Opener-of-Roads?" I asked.

"Aye, I saw him. He it was who told me which way to go to escape from
Zululand. Also he laughed when he heard how the flooded rivers brought
you to my kraal, and sent you a message in which he said that the spirit
of a snake had told him that you tried to throw the Great Medicine into
a pool, but were stopped by that snake, whilst it was still alive. This,