The Angels Weep

"She is a bride," she whispered. "Her husband is the nephew of Gandang. Take care, kanka." The man ignored her. He lifted Ruth to her feet by the neck, and twisted her face towards him.

"Take us to where the men are hiding." Ruth stared at him silently for a second, and then suddenly and explosively she spat into his face.

The frothy spittle spattered his cheeks and dripped from his chin.

Kanka!" she hissed. "Traitor jackal!" The man never stopped smiling. "That is what I wanted you to do," he told her, and hooked his finger into the string of her skirt and snapped it. The skirt fell around her ankles.

He held her by the scruff and she struggled and covered her groin with both hands. The kanka looked at her naked body and his breathing changed.

"Watch the other," he told his companion and tossed his Winchester rifle to him. The second constable caught it by the stock and prodded Imbali with the barrel until she backed up against the high granite bolder.

"Our time will come very soon," he assured her, and turned his head to watch the other couple, at the same time holding Imbali pi

The kanka dragged Ruth off the path, but for only a few paces, and the scrub that screened them was thin and leafless.

"My man will kill you," cried Ruth. They could hear everything on the path, even the sound of the kanka's ragged breathing.

"Then give me good value, if I must pay with my life," he chuckled, and then gasped with pain. "So kitten, you have sharp claws." And there was the clap of a blow on soft flesh, the sound of struggling, the bushes heaved and loose pebbles rolled away down the slope.

The constable guarding Imbali strained for a glimpse of what was happening. His lips were open and he licked them. He could make out blurred movement through the leafless branches, and then there was the sound of a body falling heavily to earth and the breath being driven violently from Ruth's lungs by a crushing weight.

"Hold still, kitten," the kanka panted. "You make me angry. Lie still," and abruptly Ruth screamed. It was the shrill ringing cry of an animal in mortal agony, repeated again and again, and the kanka grunted. "Yes. There, yes, and then snuffed like a boar at the trough, and there was a soft rhythmic slapping sound, and Ruth kept screaming.

The man guarding Imbali propped the spare rifle against the boulder and stepped off the path, and with the barrel of his own Winchester parted the branches and stared. His face seemed to swell and darken with passion, his whole attention concentrated on what he was watching.

With the second constable's attention so distracted, Imbali sidled along the granite, and then paused for an instant to gather herself before darting away. She had reached the angle of the pathway before the man turned and saw her.

"Come back!" he shouted.

"What is it?" the -kanka demanded from behind the bushes in a thick tortured voice.

"The other one, she is ru

The constable lowered the rifle. His expression was shocked and unbelieving. Slowly, hesitantly, he went down to where the girl lay.

She was on her back. Her eyes were open, and the exit wound in her flat young stomach gaped hideously, her torn entrails bulged from it.

The girl's eyes switched to his face, the terror in them flared up for an instant, and then slowly faded into utter blankness.

"She is dead." The kanka had left Ruth, and come down the path.

He had left his apron in the bushes. His blue shirt, tails flapped around his bare legs.

Both of them stared down at the dead girl.

"I did not mean it," said the kanka with the hot rifle in his hands.

"We ca

The other man was still staring into Imbali's blank eyes when the second shot rang out. He flinched to the crack of it, and lifted his head. As the echoes lapped away amongst the granite cliffs, the kanka stepped back onto the path. He ejected the spent cartridge case from the breech and it pinged against the rock.

"Now we must find a story for One-Bright-Eye, and for the indunas," he said quietly, and strapped the fur apron back around his thick waist.

They brought the two girls back to Gandang's kraal on the back of the police sergeant's grey horse. Their legs dangled down one side and their arms down the other. They had wrapped a grey blanket around their naked bodies, as though ashamed of the wounds upon them, but the blood had soaked through and dried black upon it, and the big metallic green flies swarmed joyously upon the stains.

In the centre of the kraal, the sergeant gestured to the kanka who led the grey, and he turned back and cut the line that secured the girl's ankles. The corpses were immediately unbalanced and slid head-first to the swept bare earth. They fell without dignity in an untidy tumble of bare limbs, like game brought in from the hunting veld for ski