Piet Retief Farm, Zimbabwe
July 1982
Buffel rocked backwards and forwards in his armchair. Sleep eluded him, despite his exhausted body. Sleeping in his chair was becoming a necessity. He found it easier to wake up from his nightmares in his chair than in his bed, and even if he couldn’t sleep, not sleeping at all was better than the nightmares.
He knew that peace was coming eventually. The butterfly dream had shown him that so many months ago.
Peace for Impendla.
Peace for his own conscience.
He just needed to be patient.
Mwari had showed her plan to him.
She hadn’t sent a Karoi to tell him, instead she’d entered his nightmare and shown him the way to peace.
In his dream, the angel had taken Impendla’s hand and walked with him, crossed over to the other side, and helped him on his journey to his ancestors. And all the butterflies had come from the bush from miles around and flown around them like confetti, to celebrate the release of the children’s souls from their cocoons.
If Impendla’s soul could be saved like the Karoi had saved those people who cast a stone in the deep blue water of Sinoia caves, then his dream of the angel in the cocoon was the path he needed to take.
The angel’s blonde hair was so white it shone like a halo. He’d seen it in the dreams that started the very night after she visited him with her mother.
She was the key to helping Impendla’s soul cross over.
She was the perfect age to be the sacrifice for Impendla.
Perfect.
The perfect angelic cocoon.
But he’d missed the shot.
He rubbed his hand, fisted it and looked again at where his fingers should have been.
For so long he’d learnt to compensate for the loss of them, and yet just a slight wind, a little excitement at once more taking a human life, and he’d missed the girl.
His dream had shown him that he needed the angel to be part of the ritual. But the beautiful butterfly-in-training from next door had got away.
Shooting the overprotective father and uncle had been a small compensation.
He remembered how the police had crawled over everything at the farm next door and the road on his property near the river bed where the killings of the brothers took place. They had asked everyone about what they had seen. He’d told the police he had been in the house, having a sleep.
Shilo had backed him up, saying that he was in the house snoring.
His kaffir-boy hadn’t let him down. They had been together during the Rhodesian Bush war, and were bound together by the blood spilled during their time in the PSYOPS unit.
He smiled. It was good to have someone you could trust working for you. It allowed you to pursue alternate interests.
Buffel looked down at his own disfigured hand. Before the war started, he had sacrificed his fingers, saving four other men from certain death during a routine blasting that had gone wrong at his quarry. Those same men had recognised not only his above-average strength, his tenacity and sheer stubborness not to give up, but also his temper that had ultimately given him the physical power to cut his own fingers off to free his hand, and give him time to clear the blast area, and survive. But they had also been privy to his irrational insistence that they try to find the pieces of his fingers. They had spent hours searching, but to no avail. His fingers were gone, and all that the hospital could do was neaten the amputation up, offer condolences, and praise him for saving his workers, one of whom was an ex-South African. From then on they all referred to him as Buffel.
He looked at the two fingers he’d taken from the men who had protected the angel that day. And he remembered the sight. In death the brothers had looked like he did, incomplete.
Collecting tokens from them had been an unplanned bonus.
He’d pinned them with dress pins to a piece of kaylite to dry, then he’d put them with the other trinkets he collected to decorate his cocoons. He’d get to use them one day. He’d have that butterfly moment in real life, not just in his dreams. But sometimes, like tonight, he would dig them out from their hiding place, and he would touch them, as if touching the father would bring him knowledge of where the daughter now was. As if perhaps he could lead him to her in South Africa somewhere.
One day he would get to decorate the angel with their bones, hang them around her neck as a decoration to take with her into the spirit world. She would appreciate having her father and uncle there to guide her, to be with her, as she guided Impendla and the other boys towards the light.
He tipped his head backwards and rocked again.
Perhaps one day, Mwari would reward him for his sacrifices, and his dedication, and he would allow Impendla’s soul to be saved, as it had been in his dream. Allow his friend’s spirit to fly like the butterflies they used to watch down at the dam when they were just kids. Allow him to fly free and join his ancestors in the light, instead of remaining an eternal child in a cocoon state.
Where they had been. Never to hatch. Never to know the sense of freedom and the gift of flight.
He still knew that his friend rested in a dark place.
Only now he understood he needed to appease Mwari, to allow Impendla into the light. To cross over and go to his ancestors.
His minister father had always claimed that Impendla was an innocent child and God forgave and welcomed the innocent into his heaven, but Buffel wasn’t so sure about that. He believed Impendla had paid incorrectly.
It was he who should have been taken.
It was he who had disturbed the Karoi’s magic and invaded her area. It was he who had angered the Tokoloshe and yet it was Impendla, who had warned him of the dangers, who had paid the ultimate price.
For a moment, he shuddered at the thought that he’d already sold his own soul to try to save Impendla’s. The concept didn’t rest easy within him, even all these years later, his Christian upbringing and the expected morals that came with it like a megaphone in the back of his head.
But in reality, this was his punishment to bear.
He’d done nothing at the time to save his friend.
And that rested heavy like molten lead in his conscience.
The feeling of sadness lifted, and he knew that Mwari was giving him guidance. He closed his eyes, holding his trophies in his hand as the TV flickered. Its black and white images broadcast out to no one as Buffel fell asleep, still in his armchair.
He moved slightly in his sleep, grunted, and plunged into his dark recurring nightmare. The one that he had stopped having for a while, but had lately returned. The one he avoided sleep to escape from.
The bald-headed vultures circled, riding the hot air currents, gathering like dark clouds above the mission station. Soaring on the wind, they eyed something way below them, waiting for the opportune moment to drop from the sky and devour whatever carrion they could. Human or animal, they didn’t care, meat was meat and death meant a meal.
It was their way of life.
They glided lower, then rose in height again, as if they knew that although there was food they were as yet unable to gather it.
Buffel peered upwards at them through the thick green bush, knowing he was almost as invisible as his horse, Benga, who was decorated in the same green and brown foliage that surrounded them, even though his black fur already provided natural camouflage in the dense bush. ‘Scavengers. Never a good sign,’ he whispered.
Slowly he edged his horse forward, trying to glimpse the mission they knew had come under attack as recently as two hours before. The team was uncertain if they would be able to approach, if it had been abandoned or if there were still survivors they could rescue. A weight sat in his stomach, a dread.
Death had visited, that he knew.
‘Check for trip wires,’ Corporal Mike Mitchells instructed.
Together they dismounted and signalled for the four men with them to do the same.
Buffel handed Mike his reins. ‘I’ll go.’
He edged out from their position, methodically checking the ground for signs of landmines, or trip wires that would set off concealed claymores tied to trees. Those built to maim, with explosives that drove fragments of metal with maximum impact ripping through human flesh.
He held his breath, expecting the explosion that could end his life at any moment. He studied the leaves on the trees to see if anything had been tampered with, and his eyes darted to the ground beneath. Nothing appeared out of place. His trained eyes returned to the trees, his trained eyes searching deeper into the shadows to check if anything looked suspicious.
Nothing. It looked just as the African bush should.
Slowly, he walked the final fifteen metres to the clearing around the mission. Ahead of him was the mission’s eight-foot security fence. Without the modern wire fence, the property could have been the mission he had grown up on. The architecture of the whitewashed building might be different, but it looked similar in that it invited those inside to find peace within its walls. The unit of six Grey Scouts had already navigated through the orchard and fields where food was grown to feed the hungry that came to worship here, and the familiarity squeezed his heart.
A different time. A different mission.
It had been many years since he’d thought of the mission where he’d grown up. He’d been happy to leave there when he was just sixteen to forge his own way in life. Away from the tyrannical rule of any God.
He needed to concentrate on his surroundings. He needed his wits about him to stay alive. His whole focus. Once more, he looked at the ground for any signs of traps or anti-personnel mines laid there.
It looked clear.
He dropped to his stomach and used his binoculars to search the buildings.
Once whitewashed and proud, the Dutch gabled building was scarred black from mortar fire, and red brick showed through where the building had taken a direct hit, crumbling under the modern explosives. The old mission walls had fallen in, despite being made of solid local grey stone and double bricked. The cross that had once stood proudly lay face down on the ground in pieces. It now looked more like a peace sign than something you would crucify someone on.
‘Two friendlies deceased on the mission steps,’ he relayed the information to Mike behind him. ‘Two more against the wall of the church to the right.’ He could see the splatter of red against the whiteness, and he knew they had been executed.
He’d seen this exact scene before. Almost duplicated.
This was the second mission to be attacked in a month. But it never stopped hurting his heart to see the death, the destruction. The barbaric cruelty.
‘I doubt we have any survivors here.’
Mike nodded and handed him back his reins as he remounted, and signalled into the bush for the other scouts to join them.
They rode in silence into the mission, gathered together in a defensive knot, weapons aimed in all directions. The horses packed tightly together, noses flared as if they knew the danger they were heading into.
A lone white goat with a brown head and long ears bayed as it ran out past them, its tail clamped between its legs.
They let it run.
‘Something’s still here to spook that goat,’ Zack said.
‘You bet,’ Mike replied, ‘let’s flush them out. We don’t ride these demon horses for nothing.’
Henny sniggered.
‘Its not a joke, Henny,’ Mike said, ‘the reputation of our horses being able to run through fire and enter any building is legendary, and one day fear of these horses will be the only thing that stands between you and certain death. The superstitious tales of our horses with glowing red eyes will save you from that death as some ter craps in his broekies when he sees them. Don’t underestimate the black mind that believes in magic.’
‘I know, Corporal, but to me, it’s still silly that they believe in demons—’
‘You are young. You’ll learn there is more to life than what you know at nineteen. Now you and Zack stay here,’ Mike instructed the two youngest of the group. ‘If anything happens to us, get the hell out of here, and keep riding until you get back to the trucks. Don’t look back!’
‘Yes, sir,’ the two youngsters said.
Buffel shook his head. ‘Ah, to be young and indestructible—’
‘Problem is, they haven’t leant yet that bullets don’t bounce off you, they hurt. Let’s try keep it that way!’ Mike said, then he clicked his tongue, and the four older men’s horses broke into a canter together. They thundered down on the building before splitting up. Mike took point, riding up the steps of the church and in through the once humble doors now hanging on their hinges.
Buffel took the left flank to circle around the outside of the back of the church and funnel anything there towards the church. Nick rode hard to the right and behind the missionaries’ houses, while Enoch rode further right to come around the back of the school rooms.
Buffel could hear Benga’s laboured breathing as she jumped nimbly over another body. He didn’t need to stop to check for life signs. Anyone with eyes could see half the piccaninny’s head was blown off. There was no way he was alive.
He continued his search. He entered the back of the chuch building through an archway in the rear side. He rode towards the back of the altar.
He stopped Benga and stared at the sight in front of him.
There were twenty-five children, ranging in age from about three to fifteen. Every one had been executed by a single shot to the head, then laid out next to each other. He stared at them as he dismounted.
A blinding rage tore at his heart.
The orphans.
They had killed the orphans.
Innocent children, who had no one but the priest and nuns to care for them, had been executed.
Slowly he checked each one was dead, then he joined their hands together, so that they were no longer alone in death.
His mind thought back to when he was just ten years old and how the children who died had been laid out next to each other. Each body had been so small, including Impendla’s. Someone had joined their hands.
He racked his memory to remember who.
But he couldn’t remember. It was a dark time. A time when his father said Satan was winning and he needed to believe more in God to banish the devil from their mission, their home.
Buffel shook his head, trying to dislodge the sudden memory.
He didn’t normally remember anything about that day, other than Impendla being dead. His mind had blanked it out. His father had said God’s angels had touched his head and helped him to forget so that he could live a normal, healthy life in the service of God.
The mission worker had said Mwari had spared him, but now he owed Mwari.
He didn’t believe either.
Looking at the massacre of the children, he knew that as an adult, he still didn’t.
Having grown up under the strict rod of the Christian God with the influence of the Shona peoples’ gods and superstitions, he thought perhaps he was closer to agnostic. He did believe in souls and an afterlife. He believed in something, just not what was being preached at that time.
He remounted and looked around. Mike was still sweeping for terrorists, pew by pew from the back towards the front. He saw a second door behind the altar was closed and tapped Benga’s flank, giving her permission to open it. With a splintering whack, her iron-clad hooves shattered the bolt, as she smacked it in quick succession with first her right, then left front hoof.
They entered the room.
Nothing.
It was empty, a storeroom or something, with no place for anyone to be hiding from them.
They backed out together and headed for another closed door to the right.
Only this time, as they approached, the door opened and a gook ran out, shooting wildly at them with an AK-47.
Benga stayed true.
She knocked into the gook’s chest with her head, tossing him a few feet in the air. He landed on his backside, eyes wide. He rolled over onto his knees and attempted to crawl away. Benga didn’t waver when her iron-hooves bit into the flesh of his back as she trampled him underneath. The immediate danger disabled, she pranced to the side to allow Buffel to complete his task. He jumped off, kicked the AK-47 away and knelt on the enemy’s back, binding his wrists quickly and firmly with rope.
He could feel the man beneath his knee breathe and knew he still lived. At least they had one for information.
Benga’s nostrils flared.
Danger.
He’d been with her long enough to trust her reactions in any combat situation. Alert, he looked around. Mike was now standing near the dead children. He looked further, through the doors of the front of the church, just as the clearly marked mission Land Rover drove past.
Leaving the captured gook secured, he remounted Benga and ran towards the door, past Mike, who was mounting up.
Once out of the church Benga jumped down the stairs, her body supple beneath his, her hooves gripping true as they bit into the rough concrete. Buffel watched as the vehicle headed directly for Zack and Henny. Now he had a better view he could confirm that the man at the wheel was no missionary. It was clearly another gook, spraying bullets liberally towards the young ones. Instead of running, Zack and Henny were keeping their horses under control and aiming at the driver. Henny was shooting at him. Buffel saw a shot hit the seat behind the driver as Henny reloaded and tried again. Taking careful aim. Zack had frozen.
He dug his heels into Benga’s side and raced towards his fellow scouts.
Slowly he adjusted himself to lie over Benga’s neck, putting his barrel between her ears, and at her next stride he lined up the hairs on his scope on the man driving the Land Rover. He knew if he missed he could shoot one of the youngsters, or their horses, but if he didn’t, the gunman would mow down the two youngest members of their unit.
He and Mike would never forgive themselves. So far, they had lost no one from their platoon. And he didn’t want to start today … He blacked out the noise of the wind.
Henny took another shot, the sound loud breaking Buffel’s concentration.
The vehicle veered left, and slammed into a blue gum tree, the horn blowing loudly as the driver slumped against the steering wheel.
Zack and Henny were still mounted. They had kept their post. They hadn’t run as instructed by Mike. Zack’s gun was still at his shoulder.
‘You okay?’ Buffel called, as he looked at the young boys. Henny nodded. He patted his horse and drew the strap of his rifle over his shoulder, automatically adjusting his weight in the saddle to compensate for the shift in his posture.
‘Am now,’ Zack replied as he too slowly lowered his FN and flicked his safety back on, but his face said otherwise. He wore the stark expression of terror.
He was pretty sure Zack had lied about his age to join the scouts, but he was a good rider. His rapport with the horses was already legendary, and he had come into the Grey Scouts knowing how to track, and how to shoot. A farm kid used to the bush, animals, and weapons. All he needed was experience behind him and the kid would be one of the finest scouts in the whole battalion. He didn’t drink, didn’t appear to flirt with the girls, and was well liked. A sergeant major in the makings … if Buffel and Mike could keep him alive long enough.
‘Just take deep breaths. The fear will subside,’ he said quickly, ‘Settle your horse, she’s prancing.’
‘Thank you,’ Zack said as he patted his horse reassuringly. ‘I couldn’t shoot him.’
‘Because he was moving?’
‘No,’ said Zack, ‘because I knew him. He used to be one of the tobacco shed packers on our farm up in Mashonaland. I couldn’t kill him. And he just kept coming.’
‘It’s shoot to kill or be killed. You were lucky Henny had your back today. Better yet, do as you were instructed and run next time!
‘Yeah right, and be labelled a chicken?’ Zack said.
‘Better a live chicken than a dead one,’ Buffel said. ‘Henny, you did good. Zack, we are going to need more practice once we get back to base.’
‘I second that,’ Mike said from behind him.
But as he turned Benga towards Mike, he heard two shots, each shot followed by a sickening fleshy thunk. And then another two.
Time stood still.
He whirled Benga around to the youngsters. Henny was lying on the ground. His face had been blown away. Zack clutched at his chest, slowly slumping forward to topple off his horse. Buffel threw himself to the ground, just as a bullet whizzed closely past him. He could hear its hollow sound.
‘Down!’ he instructed Benga. She immediately listened and collapsed her legs, lying flat next to him, her head against the ground. The whites of her eyes were large, showing her fear, but she knew to trust her master. Mike and his horse were already on the ground, but they were unharmed.
Buffel drew his trusty FN into position and crawled on his stomach closer to his horse. All the while he searched the bush for where the shots had come from. Another flash from a barrel as the gook took a shot at him and Mike, giving away his position, and Buffel and Mike opened fire together with automatic setting, mowing anything in the vicinity down.
Buffel heard his bullets hit true, but crawled closer to check the gook was dead.
He was.
Buffel pumped the rest of the clip of bullets into him just in case.
Then he turned and looked at the boys lying on the hard ground.
He’d lost them. Two boys down.
They had trusted him.
Just like Impendla all those years ago.
Now they were dead.
Rage bubbled up like lava inside him, while an inhuman noise came out of his mouth.
He took his rope from behind his saddle, and tied the gook’s feet together. Then he hung him upside-down from a branch in the tree just inside the security fence of the mission. He stripped his clothes off, then he carved the dead man’s already bleeding body with the same cuts that the Karoi had made to the children’s bodies, so many years ago.
It was as if Impendla and his Mwari were now in charge of his actions. As if Nyamhika Nehanda herself guided his moves. Once that first gook was strung up in the tree, he fetched the other one from the Land Rover. He searched in the back and found more rope. Then he hoisted him up on his shoulder and easily carried him to the tree. Performing the same ritual, he made sure he bound the gook’s rifle to his side, just as the Karoi had done with Impendla so many years before.
This area was cursed.
No one must ever come here again. The mission was never to be resettled.
He went in search of more bodies.
‘Buffel, snap out if it! Now! That’s an order!’ A voice commanded from a distance, but then he felt someone slapped him hard across the face. His cheek stung. Not so much of a distance …
Buffel’s eyes took a moment to focus on the camo-clad assailant in front of him. Then he charged like a bull out of a chute with cows in the paddock, right at his assailant.
But the assailant was smaller, quicker than him as he stepped aside, and Buffel passed by. The assailant quickly disarmed him of his bush knife with one clean sweep against his body. Shaking his head at the loss, Buffel turned back for another pass at his assailant, but he heard the distinctive sound of a rifle being loaded.
‘Don’t take another step, soldier!’
Buffel stepped forward slowly.
The assailant shot at the ground just in front of Buffel’s feet. Sand scattered up his shins and over his shoes, and then Buffel felt a sensation wash over him as if a million Matabele ants had climbed over his skin. Buffel looked at his attacker.
‘Fuck Mike, why are you shooting at me?’ he asked.
‘You don’t know? Look around you. Look in the tree!’ Mike demanded.
Buffel looked around.
Buffel saw the six bodies hung like cocoons in a jungle, and he saw the fresh blood as it congealed on the black bodies hanging in the tree. Each dangled by their feet by rope, with their weapons tied at their sides.
‘What the fuck!’ Buffel said. ‘When did a sangoma visit here?’
Mike was staring at him. ‘No fucking sangoma. This was you!’
Buffel sank to his knees. The memories flooded back into his conscious brain.
The smell.
The tree.
The Karoi killing his dog.
Him dropping his father’s rifle.
Impendla swinging by his feet in the tree like a cocoon, suspended between death and the other side.
Death. Impendla was dead.
It was as if he was ten years old again, and he was reliving the execution of his best friend.
Now he knew why his brain had locked the memories away.
Now he knew what was inside of him.
‘Impendla. Oh my God. It’s like Impendla said, the Nyamhika Nehanda is inside of me.’
With a start Buffel woke. Sweat dripped from his forehead and ran down his chest. His hands were clammy as if he’d had them clenched for too long. His breathing was hard and ragged.
The dream had been so real.
He had been back there, reliving it once again.
He sniffed the air and couldn’t smell horses.
He listened.
Silence.
He took a moment to move from his nightmare back into reality as he looked around. He was in his chair, the TV station had ended for the night and black and white snow filled the screen. There was no sound. Not even static came from the small box in the corner. No champagne frogs croaked in the dam. No jackals called in the distance.
It was too quiet.
He stood up, and his forgotten trophies fell to the floor. He walked to the window. It was dark outside when he moved the curtain. He ran his hands over his face and down his chest, patting his pocket to look for his tobacco pouch.
He took a little and slipped it into his mouth.
The familiar action of chewing his tobacco calmed him, slowed his racing blood. He moved his head from side to side, stretching it out. His neck made an unhealthy clicking sound, loud in the stillness of the night.
It had been a few years since he’d had that particular nightmare, although his sleep was constantly plagued with vivid nightmares of other times.
At first when he was transferred from the Grey Scouts to the PSYOPS unit, he’d had that day replay itself in his head every night. Followed by the bitter disappointment he’d seen in Mike’s eyes. The total horror in Nick’s and Enoch’s eyes at what he’d done to the dead ters.
But PSYOPS had sorted all that out, and made him feel special.
Different.
Needed.
Gradually, the day that forced the memories to return, his last day as a Grey Scout, faded into oblivion, and was replaced with a recurring nightmare of the day they had found Impendla cocooned in the tree. Only in his nightmare it was the voice of the dead and bloodied Impendla who called out to him. Begged him for help. Some nights it would be other faces, others he’d killed and tortured during the bush war who called out to him, but he never woke up startled from those dreams. He felt nothing for those people. They were just black kaffirs whose path of death and destruction had crossed over with his.
They were not his friends. He cared about his dreams when he dreamed of Impendla.
The others were just a waste of a peaceful night’s rest.
The power the sangoma had over the minds of the majority of the black population was incredible. Just a short time ago, before the new Zimbabwe, he’d preyed on that fear, duplicating the ritual, the sangoma’s dark magic to ensure the black population were scared, were controllable.
Once he’d remembered the ritual.
Now that he remembered, he never wanted to forget again.
He needed to make up for his memory blank, for the time he did forget and for not helping Impendla earlier.
But none of his sacrifices had helped Impendla.
Sure, they had kept the black population from misbehaving at the time, but it hadn’t eased the sorrow of the dead children from his childhood.
He needed to silence the children in his head, who still called to him for help alongside Impendla.
Only when he’d got the ritual perfect would Impendla’s soul be saved. Only when he found Tara Wright would it be completed.
He knew it wasn’t perfect yet, despite all the practice he’d had during his PSYOPS years.
The butterfly held the secret to unlocking Impendla’s cocoon … she could help him.
One butterfly.
He needed one butterfly on the edge of maturity to complete the ritual …
He frowned.
Tara Wright was out of his reach for the moment.
Perhaps he could find another girl with blonde hair and deep blue eyes.
For some reason, there were no children who lived on his farm. The workers all chose not to live with their children. It was a strange set-up, but he thought it was just as well, because if too many children were taken in one area, suspicions might begin to turn to why the sangoma was doing so many ritual killings, and the real sangoma might come looking for who was really responsible. He shuddered at he thought of a real Karoi visiting him. As an adult he was more afraid than he’d been as an innocent child.
He knew that in most tribal trust lands where he had once been active as a PSYOPS operative, the people now kept their children watched closely. No child herded the goats and cattle alone anymore. No child went unaccompanied, and even the newer white-influenced practice of having the children sleep in their own bedroom had quickly stopped. People had gone back to their traditional sleeping arrangement of the family group in one large room. Everyone under the same roof.
Because of that, he would need to go further if he was to collect his butterflies.
Hunt in new territory.
But the trust lands didn’t hold angels with blonde hair. Those were few and far between on the farmlands, too. He’d need to look in the cities.
He was due to go to South Africa to fetch his new Dorper rams for his breeding sheep. Perhaps he could kill two birds with one stone.
Once he had a blonde-haired, blue-eyed replacement for Tara, he’d see if his ritual would help Impendla’s soul.
He peered into the darkness.
‘Shilo,’ he called out. ‘You walking around out there?’
No answer.
Then he remembered he’d fired Shilo.
He had driven him away.
Anger burnt deep down in his stomach at the betrayal he’d felt.
Panic rose in his throat that he was now alone and would have to deal with many things that Shilo had said. And it was all starting again with the return of his nightmares.
He still couldn’t quite believe what had happened. He’d trusted Shilo, and Shilo had let him down.
He shook his head as the darkness threatened to crush in on him.
It was Shilo’s fault that his butterfly had got away. He had blamed himself, yet it turned out Shilo had been there and saved Tara from his trap against the fence line.
The gate had been opened and closed. Someone had let her and her herd of horses free.
It could only have been Shilo. Yet, when confronted, Shilo had never denied that he had been there. Instead he had started yelling at him that that he was in the wrong, not Shilo.
He was a monster.
He was penga.
He thought of the tracks again. No other African on his farm had the skills or the strength and stamina to run in the bush, and to almost perfectly cover his tracks. When he’d happened upon the old footprints, deeply embedded into the mud near the river, Buffel had known.
Had known that those footprints belonged to Shilo. Known when they were made.
He remembered the first time he’d seen footprints like these, years ago, on their first mission together into Mozambique. Three sets of prints doubling back and stopping to watch him at the school. But only Riley had confronted him. He knew then that two other men had witnessed what he’d done.
He hadn’t had to wait long to find out who.
From the five men left in the paratroopers, Shilo and Kwazi had been unable to look at him the next day when everyone was called together to tell the company that Sergeant Riley had died. He knew then that they had been the ones. They couldn’t stand to be near the PSYOPS maniac.
So he’d insisted on having them with him constantly, arranged for them to become PSYOPS so he could keep an eye on them and keep them bound to him. They had learnt to serve their Captain above all else. They became part of 1st PSYOPS. They learnt that their motto of ‘Tiri Tose’ – ‘we are together’ – was forever. The acknowledgement that they were all responsible for what happened within the unit ran strongly within them. It was likely that ‘there is no escape’ became more of their motto than ‘we are together’. No one within PSYOPS would ever tell a soul about their work, as bringing shame to someone within your own company would bring shame to the whole unit.
They were brothers in arms.
You never spoke of what you had to do in the name of protecting your country. If you ever spoke about it, the others in the unit would hunt you down, and silence you.
The war had ended soon afterwards, only two and a bit years later, but by then Buffel knew that Kwazi was never going to be a problem to him and would never talk. He’d built up too much wealth that he didn’t want to lose. He was a strong man mentally, clever, but his weakness was his wealth. Threaten that, and Kwazi would do whatever he was told.
But Shilo was different.
Silent. With no family, no wealth. He knew with certainty that Shilo had to be kept close to him, because Shilo possessed a moral compass bigger than that on a Portuguese exploring vessel, and he’d always shown compassion in the end. He was a natural born hero.
If there was ever a war commission for reconciliation, Buffel suspected that Shilo would be the troopie talking and helping to ease the masses. Calming the people, making things seem right when they were wrong.
Shilo was now a loose cannon, because Buffel had tossed him out into the world in a temper tantrum that even a two-year-old would find it hard to rival.
He’d made a huge mistake making Shilo leave.
But Shilo had wanted to leave.
Buffel shook his head at his own confusion, not sure where the truth was. He walked to his television and turned the knob slowly to the off position. The loud click in the quiet night was foreign and intrusive. In the dark he made his way to his bedroom.
He dragged an old rucksack and his duffel bag out the cupboard and began packing.
He had work to do if was going to save Impendla’s soul.
But first he needed to track down Shilo, and silence him forever, because unlike the military massacres that were forgiven under the new regime that now ran Zimbabwe, leaving a credible witness to his shooting of two civilians was a different kettle of fish.
Only after that could he again search for the butterfly Tara Wright, with the white hair, whose mother had taken her from Zimbabwe, and moved her into South Africa.
He would find her.
He would save Impendla.