One good turn deserves another... Laying a bit of my literary ego upon the altar anvil of The Forge. Let the hammers fly:

Msizi clutched the leather straps, holding on for life as the great umkhombe thundered across the plain. Its powerful hooves broke dry and cracked soil, sending up billowing reddish dust in its wake.

Umkhombe were familiar in his homeland, quick to anger and always in a foul mood. Larger than a bull their hefty bulk masked their swiftness, and they could easily run down a man. His people, the Zhusa, believed the spirits of fierce warriors inhabited their bodies, and even hunters dared not arouse their ire.

But like so much beyond the Southlands, these umkhombe were different from any Msizi had known. Each was almost twice as large; and instead of three horns jutting from its snout there was one—a sickle curved protrusion of bone nearly as long as a man’s arm and sharpened in the front like a blade. While the hide of all umkhombe was thick, this one must have been made of rock, for at least three Zhusa spears lay buried in its grayish skin.

Msizi felt a pang of loss at sight of the polished blades that glinted bits of sunlight. Each had belonged to a Zhusa warrior. He had watched them try to take down the giant umkhombe, only to be trampled beneath it, their decorative shields of cattle skin shattering and mingling with their crushed remains. He still did not know how he managed to survive. He only remembered crying out to the spirits, and leaping at the umkhombe as it thundered past. The ancestors must have worked through him, for he landed atop the moving beast, his spear fatally piercing the breast of its rider—whose body still remained tied to his monstrous steed.

It was worthy of retelling at the next umghubha, where Zhusa warriors displayed their skills in dance and boastful songs. But it had left Msizi in a dangerous predicament. He had almost fallen to his death from the umkhombe after slaying its rider. It was the spirits’ own luck that saved him, entangling his arms and legs in the straps that encircled the beast. Now however he was unable to break free, a captive as it continued its mad charge. He wondered if the spirits found amusement as they watched him.