‘Oh. My father’s giving him to Oom Jan. You know what Oom Jan does with them. He chains them up, he …’

‘Your father killed one last night,’ Twa said.

The accusation cut into Roeloff’s heart and he stopped with his hand on the stallion.

‘Why do you think she’s here?’ Twa continued. ‘Her people were killed. Like mine were. Like the one last night. Ask her who did it. Ask her why she’s here. You speak !Khomani; ask.’

Roeloff was stung by the words. Twa didn’t have it in him to be cruel. Roeloff led the horse into the stable and sat down. He didn’t want to believe Twa, but how else would Oom Jan and his father have got the girl? Had they really killed her people? His own father? It was hard enough to understand how he could fire into the heart of a boy; to believe he’d killed a whole family, was to believe him a murderer. His thoughts went to Zokho. Smoke in the Eyes. He liked that name. It suited her soft, slanted eyes. He’d thought all Sonqua were craggy with stained teeth, like Twa, but she was a creature of beauty, with the smoothness and colour of a bronze sun, the most exquisite female he had ever seen.

He got up and studied Toma through a crack in the door. A brave Sonqua, he thought, but the night chained up had subdued him, he seemed shrunken, his earlier spirit gone. It was quiet when Roeloff stepped out of the stable.

‘Toma?’

Toma turned at the strange voice behind him.

Roeloff held out the water mug.

The boy looked uncertainly into the blue eyes.

‘Take this,’ Roeloff said in !Khomani.

The hands reached out and Toma drank greedily.

Roeloff cut quickly into the rope around the ankles and wrists with his hunting knife. He could smell the fear, the disbelief, hear his own heart hammering in his ears.

‘Roeloff! What are you doing?!’

He stiffened. It was David coming up behind him, raising the alarm.

‘Run!’ he whispered. ‘Now!’

Their eyes locked for a moment, then Toma catapulted across the yard and was gone.

David ran into the house.

‘Pa! Roeloff freed the bosjesman! He’s running!’

Willem came out, saw the rope still in Roeloff’s hand, and took off his belt.

‘Bliksem!’ He struck him, catching him on the ear.

‘Don’t hit him, man,’ Oupa Harman stepped between them. ‘It was a mistake.’

‘Mistake? He knows what’s a mistake and what can’t be forgiven. Whose idea was it, tell me, who told you to do it?’ Willem Kloot raged.

Roeloff touched his ear with his hand and looked at the blood on his hand. He was aware of Joubert and David, the humiliation of a beating in front of strangers. The Koi-na had come out with the commotion, but seeing him on the receiving end of his father’s belt, went back into their huts. He was shamed by the indignity in front of them.

‘The bosjesman’s getting away,’ Joubert said. ‘Let’s go after him, leave the boy.’

‘I asked you a question. Whose idea was it?’

Roeloff looked up, his eyes fired with anger.

‘Whose?!’ Willem Kloot demanded.

Roeloff wouldn’t answer.

The belt licked his face and Roeloff flinched. He could tell from the way his father swung the belt that Willem Kloot would chase him around the yard. He wouldn’t give him the pleasure of dodging. Not him or anyone else.

‘It was my idea, and I’d do it again.’

Willem stopped with his hand in the air.

‘What?’

‘It was my idea and I’d do it again!’

Willem, shocked by the effrontery of his son, lashed into him with renewed rage. He whipped Roeloff until his hand dropped, exhausted, at his side. Roeloff collapsed to the ground like wet washing.

‘Are you mad?’ Oupa Harman shouted angrily. ‘You nearly killed him!’

‘He has his mother’s softness. There’s no place for it in these parts.’

‘This is softness?’ Oupa Harman lifted his grandson up in his arms. ‘He’s brave! And leave his mother out of it, the woman’s dead.’

Joubert looked at the welts rising fast and red on the boy’s arms. He didn’t agree with Willem Kloot’s actions, but agreed with the old man that the boy was brave. He liked him, even though he knew Roeloff didn’t feel the same way about him.

*

Three days north, Limp Kao sniffed at the air. There were clouds, but clouds didn’t always mean rain. He’d seen them all: thin ones, curly ones, puffy ones, ones that seemed to dodge and dart about the sky like hyenas after a hare. It was the dark ones that held promise.

‘The earth is releasing her smells,’ he said to the group waiting anxiously for his prediction.

‘I think you’re right, old father. I think this time it really will come. We’ll start out for the river.’

‘Someone’s coming,’ Kabas said suddenly.

Koerikei put his hand over his eyes and squinted into the distance. A puff of dust on the horizon turned slowly into a shimmering dot until finally a figure separated out of the rippling heat and Toma arrived, out of breath, at their sides.

‘Where’s everyone? Why have you come alone?’

‘They are dead.’

A hushed silence fell over the group.

‘Dead?’

‘Balip and I borrowed the white man’s sheep. We were caught. The white man pointed his fire stick at Balip, and he flew up in the sky. Then he landed like a rock on the ground and blood ran from his heart. They tied me up. The next day I got away. When I arrived at the camp there was only the blood and bones in the dust. The vultures had been already.’