One Hundred and Four Horses
A family forced to run
The horses they had to save An epic journey to freedom
MANDY RETZLAFF
William Collins
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 77–85 Fulham Palace Road London W6 8JB www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain
by William Collins in 2013
Text © 104 Horses Ltd, 2013
The author asserts her moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
Cover photographs (posed by a model) © Lara Wernet/NA/Novarc/Corbis (woman and horse); Panoramic Images/Getty Images (tree).
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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Source ISBN: 9780007477555
Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2013 ISBN: 9780007477579 Version: 2014-08-22
This book is dedicated to all our beautiful horses, and especially to those no longer with us— may their spirits run free.
Set a beggar on horseback, and he’ll outride the devil.
—GERMAN PROVERB
Contents
Prologue
Ten Years Earlier
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Mozambique
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Epilogue
Picture Sections
About the Publisher
THEY SET OUT as night was falling, but it is almost dawn and there has been no sign of my husband or our horses.
I stand on the wide veranda of the old colonial farmhouse, trying to make out shapes in the early morning gloom. Before Pat left, he told me to get some sleep, but he has done this before—midnight missions to rustle our own horses off land we no longer own—and I know how it goes. Tonight, there is no way I can close my eyes. Whenever I do, all I see are images of the terrible things that might be happening, even now: my husband, so near to me, yet surrounded by men who might block the roads and build up barricades to stop him from getting out. Consumed by thoughts like that, I can do nothing but wait.
It is September 2002, and it has been only twelve hours since the Land Rover arrived at the gates of Biri Farm, our home in Zimbabwe, southern Africa, for the past nine months. Biri Farm stands ten kilometers across the veld from where I now stand, but it might as well be in another world.
Once the Land Rover was gone, Albert handed me a letter. We had, the letter said, only four hours to leave Biri Farm. If we dared to remain, we would lose everything: our horses, our worldly possessions, even our lives. By government decree, Biri Farm was no longer a safe haven.
Now I stand in the eerie chill before dawn, wondering what has taken my husband so long. The farmhouse behind me belongs to Nick Swanepoel, a good friend and neighbor. So far, his farm, Avalon, has been safe from the chaos spreading like cancer across our beautiful country of Zimbabwe. He has agreed to shelter us for the night, to take in our herd of horses until we can spirit them to a new home, and the farmhouse is piled high with all the boxes we managed to rescue from Biri. Somewhere in there, my mother is sleeping too, barely able to comprehend the madness that has become our lives.
There are ten kilometers between here and Biri Farm, but the mist is low and I can hardly see the end of the field in front of where I stand. Pat should have been back by now. I shift nervously. All he had to do was get back onto Biri, rope up the horses, and lead them to the safety of Avalon. There was never any question, I knew, of leaving our horses behind. They are the horses of our friends, the horses of our neighbors, horses we have promised to protect. Some of them have been with us since the very beginning. Others joined us along the way. Many have already been driven from their own homes, attacked with spears or pangas—knives—or abandoned on farms as their owners fled. They are our responsibility, and we are all that stands between them and long, drawn-out deaths from cruelty and neglect.
I hear movement behind me. Knowing that it is my mother, come out to make a fuss over her daughter—even though she is well into her seventies, she will always make a fuss—I turn around, preparing to tell her that everything is fine.
“Any sign?”
I shake my head.
“They won’t be long,” she promises, though she can hardly know. “It’s a long trek with seventy horses.”
I close my eyes. When I open them again, at last I sense movement. It seems only that there is something out there, yet everything around me is black.