The Last Pantheon by Tade Thompson & Nick Wood

Author:Tade Thompson & Nick Wood [Thompson, Tade & Wood, Nick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: NewCon Press
Published: 2024-04-09T00:00:00+00:00

Ten

1800 to 1828

Kwa-Zulu Natal Midlands.

The boy grew up a bastard, but Dingiswayo – as the elder allowed himself to be known then – recognised something special in that boy. As the boy became a young man, he was prone to angry outbursts to be sure, rising as he did to the frequent challenges of his fully parented peers. One day, he had even run a twelve miles return journey through thorn-tree foothills, to head off and return seven cattle from the neighbouring Langeni tribe – having silently cut the throat of one of their herders.

So, when that fiery bastard became a full man, his circumcision scars long healed, the elder gave him an ibutho lempi, his fighting regiment.

This should channel his energies constructively, thought the elder, saying only aloud: “Be careful with your men, Shaka, their lives and their families are in your keeping.”

The young man respectfully avoided his gaze, as if indeed restrained and finally maturing, “Yes, my Chief.”

But, in ongoing skirmishes with the neighbouring tribes, Shaka retained his impulsive and reckless manner, somehow knowing the best times to do so, being almost always victorious. On the death of their father, Sigujano – Shaka’s half-brother – was the rightful heir to the vacant throne, but Shaka was aided by the elder, Dingiswayo, to seize military control. He was taken by surprise, however, when Shaka had his brother executed.

How can you kill your own brother? thought the elder, wondering as to what might be happening to his own younger brother, up North for millennia now.

The elder, using vestiges of his mental manipulation, eventually feigned his own murder as Dingiswayo at the hands of Zwide, the Chief from the Ndwanwe clan – and waited to see what would happen. He now observed the proceedings as Shaka’s bodyguard, his own features additionally altered by the slightest of projected imaginal suggestions.

And, as months rolled into years, King Shaka shaped his people around him, the Bodyguard watching, always watching – but sometimes fighting, reining in his strength, so as not to alarm those around him too much, particularly the King.

For the King was building an empire.

Shaka had quickly stopped the initiation rights for boys to men, manhood no longer stemming from wasted strength in circumcision rites, but in active age-cohort regiments, along with training and strategy, military strategy. And weapons, new weapons – throwing spears that are lost on the battlefield, the assegais, were moved to a secondary weapon – a new short stabbing spear, an ikiwa, was adopted, alongside a bigger cowhide shield that was used offensively, after Shaka had showed the superiority of these new weapons in bloody training bouts that included some men – even friends – dying.

“From now on, a man who loses his ikiwa in battle will lose his life,” said the King, as his impi warriors and empire grew rapidly. For this was the start of Mfecane, the ‘crushing’, the making of a mighty people who expanded into occupying a huge geographical space, absorbing many, yet leaving many others dead or fleeing into the expanses before them.

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