His thoughts returned to the scene at the kraal, the fear of the two boys, one killed in front of the other. Were they brothers? Where had they come from? Was the rest of the camp nearby? What gnawed at him was the tremor of excitement he’d felt in his father when the boy was lifted off his feet.

The night passed with agonising slowness and he lay there disheartened, watching the shadows dance and disappear on the walls, the light sifting slowly into the room.

He got up at cock crow and found Sanna in the circular skerm outside putting the bread pans into the clay oven, her two-year-old son, Kleintje, strapped to her back with a blanket tied in a knot under her huge breasts. He could tell by the way her bottom lip jutted out that morning that the news had spread among the Koi-na. Sanna would have something to say to him later on when they were alone. He seemed to have become the recipient for the grumbles and groans of the Koi-na who funnelled all their grievances through Sanna. The yard was coming to life with people going about their jobs; the day started with the strong smell of coffee already brewing. In the open doorway his grandfather stood looking out at the activity, lighting his pipe.

‘You are up early this morning, Oupa.’

‘I am always up at this time. Listen, son, your father be with the devil this morning. There’ll be war if he finds no milk in the beaker. We can’t wait for Twa to bless us with his presence.’

‘I’ll get some.’

‘Be quick about it, Roff. Your father’s out there inspecting the kraal. He’ll come in any time now to eat.’

Roeloff stopped by Twa’s hut to shake him awake, then headed for the kraal where he milked one of the goats. He had lots of questions for Twa, but saved them for later. His father and David were in the kitchen when he returned.

‘Where’s Twa?’ Willem Kloot asked, holding his coffee, shoving a piece of bread into his mouth. It looked like he and David were going somewhere.

‘His leg’s hurting him this morning,’ Roeloff lied. ‘He’s getting up.’

‘That bosjesman’s lazy,’ David said curtly. ‘And always Roeloff’s making excuses for him. Twa doesn’t have enough to do, that’s his problem.’

Roeloff looked at his brother taking the powder horn from the wall, the two guns. David, older by three years, had that week had his first taste of the apricot brandy his grandfather brewed, after the Sunday service his father held in the yard for the Koi-na, and thought he now had as much right as older people to criticise. He was strong-shouldered and thick-necked, with every look and mannerism of his father, down to tightening his jaw and grinding his teeth when he wanted to make a point. When he was nasty like this and spoke badly of Twa, Roeloff couldn’t stand him. He knew David did it to stir up his father. And his father needed little incitement in the state he was in. His father had a big voice and Roeloff had heard him yelling at Hennerik and the others all the way from the barn. Yelling at the workers made all the Koi-na shiver, and after the killing of the intruder, knowing the mood of the grootbaas, they would cower all day in their huts.

‘He’s not lazy,’ Roeloff countered, keeping the anger out of his voice.

David smiled.

‘See what I mean? You’re doing it again. When are you going to learn, Roff, they’re just Hottentots?’

‘Twa’s Sonqua. And it’s not Hottentot, it’s Koi-na.’

Willem Kloot looked from one son to the other, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. His look said that he didn’t have time for their nonsense that morning. He picked up his gun and turned to Oupa Harman, who’d sat quietly smoking his pipe.

‘We’re going to Jan.’

‘What for?’

‘To take care of things.’

Harman Kloot inspected his fingers as if seeing them for the first time. ‘You’ll make it worse,’ he said.

‘It has to be done. The others will come looking for them. When they see what we have, that will be the end of our sheep.’

Roeloff watched his father and David walk out to the stable and mount their horses to go to Jan Joubert on the other side of the Hantamberge. By horse, they would be back by the time the sun was halfway in the sky. What were they going to take care of? His father would never leave Kloot’s Nek at such a time if it wasn’t to consult Jan Joubert on what had happened, and Jan, with his hatred of the Sonqua, was the last person to ask for advice. Roeloff turned to his grandfather.

‘What are they going to Oom Jan for? Are they going to look for the Sonqua?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oupa should have stopped them. I can’t believe Pa shot a bosjesman. He killed him, just like that, without thinking. He was only a boy.’

‘They killed one of our sheep.’

‘But that’s a sheep. Pa killed a child.’

Oupa Harman knocked the pipe against his boot and caught the dead ash in his hand.

‘Did I tell you about the night your father was born, Roff?’

Roeloff knew what was next. His grandfather, born in the Cape, had made the arduous trek with the Steenkamps and Retiefs over perilous mountains with his bride in a tent-covered wagon to come to the Hantam. He’d heard the story several times, but there was always a new reason to tell it, and always the grit and spit of it enthralled him. But his mind was on other things now—he wanted to know where Twa had buried the body. Not in the family plot, surely, where his mother and grandmother were; his father would never allow it. He was also anxious to take a look at the boy Twa had been instructed to tie up.

‘I didn’t know there would be a baby coming when we spanned in our oxen and packed up our world’s belongings in 1760,’ Oupa Harman continued. ‘I didn’t know anything about crossing mountains with women and children and sheep. Africa’s like an old woman, Roff. Disagreeing. Unpredictable. She has little patience with fledglings and will spit you out at the first sign of weakness. But the call of the interior was very strong, and we’d heard about this river way up north where there were water and plenty of trees. No man with half a brain in his head would choose land where life had been choked out of the earth. So, with nothing more than God and our guns and a whole lot of courage, we attempted the uncivilised womb of Africa.’

Roeloff shifted in his seat. He could hear a commotion outside. He heard Hennerik’s voice, then his wife, Sanna’s raised above it. The Koi-na were in a nervous state.

‘On a moonlit night, at the foot of a dangerous pass, with thick bush behind us and a steep wall of mountain ahead, your grandmother’s water broke. Men can do anything, Roff, but when it comes to birthing babies, they’d outstare a cobra first. The light was just beginning to change, in that grey hour before dawn, and everyone was fast asleep except for Katrijn Steenkamp with your grandmother in the back of the wagon. I was slumped against a tree, in a doze by the dead fire, everything was quiet. Maybe too quiet because I opened my eyes and saw a shadow roll down the pass. It happened so fast, I thought I’d imagined it. But even as I thought this, I knew I must stay still. So I remained with my eyes half closed against the back of the tree and saw two of them head for the flock. At the same time I saw the arrows aimed at us. There was no time to warn anyone. My gun was loaded. I would have only one chance to get it right, as it would take time to reload. I was lucky. The shot caught the second bosjesman, and he tumbled over the one in front of him down the kloof, just as the first arrows thrrrrd into the canvas of the wagon. Then all hell broke loose, with Steenkamp and Retief grabbing their guns and firing, womenfolk and children screaming, the sheep looking for the first opening to bolt. I could have stopped there, because the bosjesman, alarmed by the crack of the gun and his dead friend, fled up the mountain, but someone handed me a loaded gun, and I fired again, and again, until he, too, lay dead on the rocks.’

Roeloff had heard the story of how his father was born in the middle of a raid and lay unattended between his mother’s legs, but he hadn’t known that his Oupa Harman had killed a bosjesman.

Harman Kloot looked at him, pursing his lips.

‘In a civilised country, a man can stand back and give another the benefit of the doubt, Roff. This is Africa. Here you put your own mark on the land. The warning that comes from your gut is the one that saves your life. ­Remember that.’

Chapter Two

The day was dizzyingly hot, the Bushmen quiet and listless in the stingy shade of a quiver tree. Two winters had come and gone, and morning after morning they rose to cloudless skies and dust in their throats, to a land as forlorn as their souls.

The lines and folds in Koerikei’s face contrasted with the smooth bronzeness of his hunter’s physique, making him look older than his thirty years. Sitting slightly away from the group, he looked at the desolate landscape, mottled and red, feeling the needle pricks of the hot wind on his back. The drought had killed more than the land. It had deadened their spirit, the children’s laughter, dried up the milk in the women’s breasts. And always they accepted. Always it was their destiny to wait.

He studied the despondent faces about him: his wife, Tau, lying sleepily against the tree; his brother, Kabas, ­exchanging harsh words with Nani, his wife; Kabas’s ­children asleep in the sweltering heat with ants crawling over their legs; Limp Kao carving a pipe out of bone. Only his daughter, Karees, sitting outside their skerm carefully adorning a steenbok hide with ostrich eggshell beads, made him smile. Karees had worked the hide into a fine kid, scraping off fat and other waste, and tanned it using a mixture of plant juices, bone marrow, urine and rotted brains. He had no doubt Karees had someone special in mind to be the recipient of this handsome gift. Who did his daughter have her heart on to mate?

They split up every two seasons to avoid overworking an area for game and plant food, and the rest of the clan was several days away. But dispersing hadn’t helped much. The animals had left the region, the land too shrivelled and dry to maintain them. They were themselves tempted between the big river up at the top of the world, and the mountains in the Hantam where the others had gone. They knew of several waterholes in the area. Perhaps there was game, the land there a little more merciful to animals, with thorn bushes and grass, and people with sheep.

The heat vibrated over the plain, and Koerikei rested his chin on his knees and closed his eyes. His expression softened as his mind wandered back to the dust clouds on the horizon, the thunder of hooves. There was no sound like that bleating and snorting as hordes and hordes of pale brown buck rushed the plain, a brown wave stretching across the veld as springbok trampled everything in their path in their frantic rush. But that was long ago, before the white man’s arrival and their forced migration to this parched, forsaken, and uninhabited land. Rain was the heartbeat of life, but it was withheld from them like some guarded possession. Kabas’s children had never seen it, never tasted its sweetness or witnessed the transformation of the Karoo when the wind stirred and the sky belched and fire forked the land and water rushed down on them. The dryness was pitiless, but its breaking, the smell of moist veld after rain—that forgave everything. The smallest ant, the oldest tree, the driest pan, all waited patiently under baked skies for relief. A few thin showers had brushed them briefly with hope a season before, but evaporated before reaching the ground. Why were the gods being so cruel? What stupid ancestor had angered them?

His people reclined like a pride of lions under the tree waiting for the soft shade of late afternoon. Then the women lit the fires, and Koerikei and Kabas visited the hearth of Limp Kao.

No one knew how many winters Limp Kao had seen. He was crooked and bent, the loose skin on his belly undulating like rippled desert sand. A bad leg had prevented him from hunting as a young man, making it impossible to take a wife. Stained with weather and time, he depended on the system of sharing to stay alive. The system demanded that if you couldn’t hunt, you could provide the weapon for the kill and get your due, and if one family brought home game, they had to share it with those who didn’t have. Meat was thus divided and redivided until debts and obligations were incurred and the old and crippled were also fed.

Koerikei and Kabas sat just at the edge of the circle of light. Even though they were the ones seeking counsel, they waited for Limp Kao to start.

‘These are very bad days,’ Limp Kao said, stirring the coals in his fire.

‘Very bad. We are starving, old father. No animals, nothing in the ground. We don’t know if we should go to the others down at the Hantam, or travel to the river at the top of the world.’

‘It will take many days to the river.’

‘What is your opinion, old father, on when the rains will come?’