Blue Horizon

by Wilbur Smith

  “No! He has gone away,” she repeated, and held open the door in invitation.

  Xhia hesitated. From their previous encounters he had a clear picture of her sex in his mind. It resembled one of the succulent desert cactus flowers, with fleshy petals of a pouting purple texture. Added to that, there was an intense pleasure to be had from stirring his master’s porridge pot. Shala had once described the colonel’s manly part to Xhia. “It is like the beak of a sugar-bird. Thin and curved. It sips my nectar only lightly, then flits away.”

  The men of the San were famous for their priapism, and for penile dimensions unrelated to their diminutive stature. Shala, who had much first-hand experience in these matters, considered Xhia to be gifted beyond all his tribe.

  “Where is he?” Xhia was torn between duty and temptation.

  “He rode away yesterday with ten of his men.” She took Xhia’s hand and drew him into the kitchen, closed the door behind him and replaced the locking bar.

  “Where did they go?” he asked, as she stood before him and unwrapped her robe. Keyser delighted in dressing her in the gaudy silks of the Indies, and in pearls and other finery that he purchased at great expense from the godown of the Courtney brothers.

  “He said they were following the wagons of Bomvu, the red-haired one,” she said, and let the robe slide down her body to the floor. He drew in his breath sharply. No matter how often he saw those breasts it was always with a shock of delight.

  “Why is he following those wagons?” He reached out, took one of her breasts and squeezed it.

  She smiled dreamily and swayed closer to him. “He said they would lead him to the runaways, to Somoya, the son of the Courtneys, and the woman he stole from the shipwreck,” she answered, her voice husky. She lifted the front of his kilt and reached under it. Her eyes slanted lasciviously and she showed small white teeth as she smiled.

  “I do not have much time,” he warned her.

  “Then let us be quick,” she said, and sank to her knees in front of him.

  “Which way did he go?”

  “I watched them from the top of Signal Hill,” she replied. “They went along the coastal road towards the west.”

  She placed her elbows on the floor to brace herself and leaned forward until her extraordinary golden buttocks were raised towards the thatched ceiling. He went behind her, moved her knees apart, knelt between them and, both hands on her hips, pulled her back towards him. She gave a soft little squeal as he forced apart her fleshy petals and went in deeply.

  At the end she squealed again, but this time as though in mortal agony and then she flopped forward on to her face and lay there in the centre of the kitchen floor writhing weakly.

  Xhia stood up and adjusted his leather skirt. He picked up his quiver and bow and slung them over his shoulder.

  “When will you come back?” She sat up shakily.

  “When I can,” he promised, and went out into the night.

  As Bakkat topped the hills above High Weald, he saw that the entire estate was bustling with unusual activity. Every one of the servants seemed frantically employed. The wagon drivers and the voorlopers, the lead boys, were bringing up the trek oxen from the kraals at the far end of the main paddock. They had inspanned four full teams of twelve bullocks each, which were trudging up the road to the homestead. Another group of herders had assembled small herds of fat-tailed sheep, milking cows with their unweaned calves, and spare trek bullocks, and were driving them slowly towards the north. They were already strung out over such a distance that the furthest of the small herds were specks almost obscured by their own dust.

  “Already they are heading for the Gariep river pass to meet Somoya.” Bakkat nodded with satisfaction, and started down the hill towards the homestead.

  As soon as he entered the courtyard he saw that the preparations for departure were well advanced. On the loading ramp of the warehouse Tom Courtney was in his shirtsleeves giving orders to the men who were packing the last chests of goods into the wagon beds.

  “What is in that chest?” he demanded of one. “I don’t recognize it.”

  “The mistress told me to load it. I do not know what is in it.” The man shrugged. “Woman’s things, perhaps.”

  “Put it into the second wagon.” Tom turned, and spotted Bakkat as he entered the yard. “I saw you as soon as you came over the hill. You grow taller every day, Bakkat.”

  Bakkat grinned with pleasure, squared his shoulders and puffed out his chest a little. “I see your plan has worked, Klebe?” It was more a question than a statement.

  “Within a few hours of Bomvu taking the wagons out along the west coast, Keyser and all his men were after them.” Tom laughed. “But I don’t know how soon he will realize that he is following the wrong game, and come rushing back. We have to get clear as soon as we can.”

  “Klebe, I bring evil tidings.”

  Tom saw the little man’s expression and his own smile faded. “Come! We will go where we can talk privately.” He led Bakkat into the warehouse, and listened seriously as the little man related all that had happened during his foray into the mountains. He exclaimed with relief when he heard that their guess had proved correct and Bakkat had found Tom at Majuba.

  “So Somoya, Zama and the girl will already have left Majuba, and will be riding to the meeting place on the frontier at the Hill of the Baboon’s Head,” Bakkat went on.

  “This is good news,” Tom declared. “So why do you wear such a gloomy countenance?”

  “I was followed,” Bakkat admitted. “Somebody followed me to Majuba.”

  “Who was it?” Tom could not disguise his alarm.

  “A San,” said Bakkat. “An adept of my tribe, one who could unravel my spoor. One who was watching for me to leave High Weald.”

  “Keyser’s hunting dog!” Tom exclaimed furiously.

  “Xhia,” Bakkat agreed. “He tricked me and even now he must be hurrying back to his master. Within the next day he will lead Keyser to Majuba.”

  “Does Somoya know he has been discovered by Xhia?”

  “I only discovered Xhia’s sign when I was half-way back from Majuba. I came on to warn you first,” Bakkat said. “Now I can go back to find Somoya, warn him also, and lead him out of danger.”

  “You must reach him before Keyser catches up with him.” Tom’s bluff features were twisted with anxiety.

  “Xhia must return to Majuba again before he can pick up Somoya’s outgoing tracks. Keyser and his men will travel slowly for they are unaccustomed to the mountain paths,” Bakkat explained. “He will be forced to make a wide loop to the south. On the other hand, I can cut through the mountains further north, get ahead of them and find Somoya before they do.”

  “Go swiftly, old friend,” Tom told him. “I place the life of my son in your hands.”

  Bakkat bobbed his head in farewell. “Somoya and I will be waiting for you at the Hill of the Baboon’s Head.”

  Bakkat turned to leave, but Tom called him back. “The woman—” He broke off, unable to look at the little man’s face. “Is she still with him?” he asked gruffly, and Bakkat nodded.

  “What is she—” Tom stopped, then tried to rephrase his question. “Is she…?”

  Bakkat took pity on him. “I have named her Welanga, for her hair is like sunlight.”

  “That is not what I wanted to know.”

  “I think that Welanga will walk beside him for a long, long time. Perhaps for the rest of his life. Is that what you wanted to know?”

  “Yes, Bakkat, that is exactly what I wanted to know.”

  From the loading ramp he watched Bakkat trot out of the gateway, and take the path back towards the mountains. He wondered when last the little man had rested or slept, but the question was irrelevant. Bakkat would keep on as long as his duty beckoned him.

  “Tom!” He heard Sarah call his name, and turned to see her hurrying towards him from the kitchens. To his surprise he saw that she was wearing breeches, riding boots and a wide
brimmed straw hat tied down with a red bandanna under her chin. “What was Bakkat doing here?”

  “He has found Jim.”

  “And the girl?”

  “Yes.” He nodded reluctantly. “The girl also.”

  “Then why aren’t we ready to leave yet?” she demanded.

  “We?” he asked. “We are going nowhere. But I will be ready to leave within the next hour.”

  Sarah placed her clenched fists on her hips. He knew that that was the equivalent of the first rumbling of an active volcano about to erupt. “Thomas Courtney,” she said coolly, but the light of battle shone in her eyes, “James is my son. My only child. Do you think for one moment that I will sit here in my kitchen while you ride off to bid him farewell, possibly for ever?”

  “I will give him your maternal love,” he offered, “and when I return, I will describe the girl to you in minute detail.”

  He argued a little longer, but when he rode out through the gates of High Weald Sarah rode at his side. Her chin was up, and she was trying not to smile triumphantly. She glanced sideways at him and said sweetly, “Tom Courtney, you are still the most handsome man I have ever laid eyes upon, except when you are sulking.”

  “I am not sulking. I never sulk,” he said sulkily.

  “I will race you to the ford,” she said. “Winner may claim a kiss.” She tickled the mare’s rump with the switch she carried, and bounded forward. Tom tried to hold the stallion, but he danced in a circle, eager to be after them.

  “Damn it! All right then.” Tom let him have his head. He had given the mare too much of a start, and Sarah was an expert horsewoman.

  She was waiting for him at the ford, with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes. “Where is my kiss?” she asked. He leaned out of the saddle to take her in a bear-hug. “That is just an instalment,” he promised, as he set her back in the saddle. “You will get the main payment tonight.”

  Jim had a well-developed sense of direction, but Bakkat knew it was not infallible. He remembered the time when Jim had slipped away from camp while everyone else was sleeping in the heat of noon. Jim had seen a small herd of gemsbuck on the horizon, and as they were short of meat he had ridden after them. Three days later, Bakkat had found him wandering in circles through the trackless hills, leading a lame horse, and half crazed with thirst.

  Jim hated to be reminded of that episode, and before they parted at Majuba he had listened with full attention while Bakkat gave him detailed directions on how to find his way through the mountains, following the well-defined game trails used for centuries past by the elephant and eland herds. One of these would lead him to a ford on the Gariep river where it debouched on to the plains at the frontier where the wilderness began. From that point the Hill of the Baboon’s Head stood out clearly on the horizon to the east. Bakkat could rely on Jim to follow those directions accurately, so he had a clear picture in his mind of where Jim might be now, and what route he must take to intercept him.

  Bakkat cut through the foothills and was well out to the north before he turned back into the main range, and went up between tall umber-coloured cliffs into the high valleys. On the fifth day after leaving High Weald he cut their sign. With two steel-shod horses and six heavily laden mules they had left a well-trodden spoor. Before noon he had caught up with Jim’s party. He did not announce himself, but instead circled out ahead of them to wait beside the path they must follow.

  Bakkat watched Jim coming down the path at the head of the file. As Drumfire came level with his hiding-place, he popped up from behind his boulder like the ajinni from the lamp and shouted shrilly, “I see you, Somoya!” Drumfire was so startled that he shied wildly. Jim, also taken by surprise, was thrown on to his neck, and Bakkat shrieked with laughter at the joke. Jim recovered his balance instantly and rode after him as Bakkat darted away down the game path, still hooting with laughter. Jim snatched off his hat, leaned out of the saddle and slapped him with it round the head and shoulders.

  “You horrible little man! You are so small, so tiny, so minute that I did not even see you.” These insults sent Bakkat into such paroxysms of mirth that he fell and rolled on the earth.

  When Bakkat had recovered sufficiently to stand up again, Jim looked him over carefully while they greeted each other with a little more formality. Now it was apparent how finely drawn Bakkat was. Even though his tribe were famous for their fortitude and endurance, over the past week Bakkat had run over a hundred leagues through mountainous terrain, without allowing himself time to eat or drink adequately, or to sleep for more than a few hours. Instead of being golden and glossy, his skin was as grey and dusty as the ashes of last night’s campfire. His head looked like a skull, and his gaunt cheekbones stood proud. His eyes had sunk deeply into their sockets. A Bushman’s buttocks are like the camel’s hump: when he is well-fed and rested they are majestic, and sway independently as he walks. Bakkat’s backside had collapsed into folds of loose skin that dangled out of the back of his kilt. His legs and arms were as thin as the limbs of a praying mantis.

  “Zama,” Jim called as he brought up the string of mules. “Unload one of the chagga bags.”

  When Bakkat started to make his report, Jim silenced him. “Eat and drink first,” he ordered, “and then sleep. We can talk later.”

  Zama dragged up one of the leather bags filled with chagga made from the eland meat. The salted strips had been half dried in the sun, then packed so tightly into the bag that the air and the flies could not get to them. The first African travellers had probably taken the idea from the pemmican of the North American Indians. Treated like this the meat would not putrefy, but keep indefinitely. It retained much of its moisture, and though the taste was high and gamy, the salt disguised the tang of rot. It was a taste that, in circumstances of need, could be readily acquired.

  Bakkat sat in the shade by the mountain stream and, with a heap of the black chagga sticks in front of him, began to eat. After Louisa had bathed in one of the pools further downstream she came to sit beside Jim and they watched Bakkat eat.

  After a while she asked, “How much more can he take in?”

  “He is only now starting to get the taste for it,” Jim said.

  Much later she said, “Look at his stomach. It’s beginning to swell.”

  Bakkat stood up and went to kneel at the pool. “He has finished!” Louisa said. “I thought he would go on until he burst.”

  “No.” Jim shook his head. “He just needs to wash it down to make room for the next course.”

  Bakkat returned from the pool, water dripping from his chin, and fell on the pile of chagga with undiminished appetite. Louisa clapped her hands and laughed with amazement. “He is so tiny, it does not seem possible! He is never going to stop.”

  But at last he did. With an apparent effort he forced down one last mouthful. Then he sat cross-legged and glassy eyed and hiccuped loudly.

  “He looks as though he is eight months along with child.” Jim pointed out his bulging stomach. Louisa blushed at such an intimate and improper reference, but she could not hold back her smile. It was an apt description. Bakkat smiled at her, then collapsed sideways, curled himself into a ball and began to snore.

  In the morning his cheeks had filled out miraculously and his buttocks, although not yet restored to their former grandeur, showed a distinct bulge under his kilt. He set upon a breakfast of chagga with renewed gusto and, thus fortified, was ready to make his report to Jim.

  Jim listened mostly in silence. When Bakkat told him of discovering the evidence that Xhia had followed them into the mountains, that he would certainly bring Keyser to Majuba, that they would follow their spoor from there, Jim looked worried. But then Bakkat gave him his father’s message of love and support. The dark clouds around Jim seemed to lift, and his face lit with the familiar smile. When Bakkat had finished, they were both silent for a while. Then Jim stood up and went down to the pool. He sat on a rotten tree stump, and brooded heavily. He broke off a lump of rotten bark, picked
out the white wood maggots he had exposed and flicked them into the water. A large yellow fish rose to the surface and, in a swirl of water, gobbled them down. At last he came back to where Bakkat waited patiently, and squatted, facing him. “We cannot go on to the Gariep with Keyser following us. We will lead him straight to my father and the wagons.” Bakkat nodded. “We must lead him away, and throw him off the spoor.”

  “You have wisdom and understanding far beyond your tender years, Somoya.”

  Jim picked up the sarcasm in his voice. He leaned across and gave Bakkat an affectionate cuff. “Tell me then, Prince of the Polecat Clan of the San, what must we do?”

  Bakkat led them in a wide, meandering circle, away from the Gariep, back the way they had come, following game trails and crossing from one valley to the other until they arrived back above the Majuba camp. They did not approach within half a league of the stone and thatch hut, but camped instead behind the eastern watershed of the valley. They made no fire but ate their food cold and slept wrapped in jackal-skin karosses. During the day the men took turns to climb to the high ground with Jim’s telescope and watch the camp at Majuba for Xhia, Keyser and his troopers to arrive.

  “They cannot match my speed through these mountains,” Bakkat boasted. “They will not arrive until the day after tomorrow. But until then we must keep well hidden for Xhia has the eyes of a vulture and the instincts of a hyena.”

  Jim and Bakkat built a hide of dead cripplewood branches and grass below the crest. Bakkat examined it from all angles to make certain that it was invisible. When he was satisfied, he cautioned Jim and Zama not to use the telescope when the sun was at an angle to reflect from the lens. Jim set himself the first morning shift in the lookout hide.

  He had settled down comfortably and sunk softly into a pleasant reverie. He thought about his father’s promise of wagons and supplies. With this help, his dreams of a journey to the ends of this vast land might become reality. He thought about the adventures he and Louisa would experience, and the wonders they would find in that unexplored wilderness. He remembered the legends of riverbeds lined with gold nuggets, of the vast ivory herds, the deserts paved with glittering diamonds.