'They came at a run; side by side; seeming to wade through the thick swamp of mortar smoke and dust; and they appeared monstrous and inhuman in the stark light of the star shells. One of them was a huge Matabele. He had lost his helmet and his head was round and black as a cannon ball; his open mouth was a pink cave lined with ivory teeth; and his bull bellow rose above even that storm of gunfire. The other was a white man; the top of his battledress torn half off his body; exposing the pale flesh of his chest and shoulders; but his face was daubed with fiendish streaks of dark green and brown paint.' At the dawn of a new century; the pioneers of Rhodesia have staked their claims and stocked their farms in the land they have carved as their own. But in the hills; the Matabele indunas are preparing for the bloody rebellion which will scar the opponents for ever - and etch for them the same tragic legacy for generations to come...