A Time to Die c-13

by Wilbur Smith

  Two of them launched themselves at her head, trying to hang on to her ears, while the third rushed under her belly and attached himself to a nipple like a tubby brown leech. The lioness ignored them and once more rose on her hind legs to continue eating. The cub at her nipple managed to hang on a few seconds longer and then fell under her back paws, his dignity trampled as she tugged and heaved at the bait. He crawled out between her legs crestfallen, dusty and disheveled.

  Claudia giggled; she could not help herself, though she tried to muffle it with both hands. immediately Sean dug her hard in the short ribs.

  Only the old lioness reacted to her giggle. The rest of the pride were too preoccupied, but the lioness crouched and flattened her ears against her skull, staring fixedly down the opening at the hide.

  With those eyes on her, Claudia lost any urge to giggle again and held her breath.

  "She can't see me," she told herself without conviction. "Surely she can't see me?" But for long seconds those eyes bored into hers.

  Then the old lioness rose abruptly and slid away into the thick undergrowth beyond the bait tree. She moved like a serpent, with a sinuous flowing and gliding of the brown body. Claudia let out her breath slowly and gulped with relief.

  While the rest of the pride romped, tussled, and fed beneath the bait tree, the sun slid below the treetops; the short African twilight was on them.

  "If there is a tom with them, he will come in now," Sean breathed softly. Night was the time of the cats; the darkness made them bold and fierce. The light was going even as they watched.

  Claudia heard something beyond the grass wall beside her, a furtive brush of some creature in long grass, but the bush was full of such small sounds and she did not even turn her head. Then she heard a distinct, unmistakable sound: the footfall of some heavy creature, soft and stealthy but very close. She felt her skin crawl with the insects of fear and the prickle of it up the back of her neck.

  Quickly she turned her head.

  Her left shoulder was pressed up against the thatch wall of the hide, and there was a chink in the thatch an inch wide. Her eyes were at the same level as the hole, and through it she saw movement. For a moment she did not recognize what she was seeing, and then she knew that it was a tiny expanse of smooth tawny hide, filling the chink only inches away on the far side. As she stared in horror, the tawny pelt slid past her eyes, and now she heard something else: an animal breathing, snuffling at the far side of the thatch wall.

  instinctively she reached behind her with her free hand, never taking her eyes from the chink. Her hand was seized in a hard, cool grip. The touch that had offended her only minutes before now gave her more comfort than she had ever believed possible. She did not even marvel that she had reached for Sean's hand rather than her own papa's.

  She stared into the chink, and suddenly there was another eye beyond, a huge round eye glistening like yellow agate, a terrible inhuman eye, unblinking, burning into hers with a dead black pupil in its center, a hand span from her face.

  She wanted to scream, but her throat was closed. She wanted to leap to her feet, but her legs were dead. Her swollen bladder was like a stone in her lower belly, and before she could control it she felt a few warm drops escape. That checked her; the humiliation was greater than her terror, and she tightened her thighs and buttocks and clung to Sean's hand, still staring into that terrible yellow eye.

  The lioness sniffed again loudly, and Claudia started silently but held on. "I won't scream," she told herself.

  Again the lioness snuffled beyond the grass wall, her nostrils filled with the man-odor, and she let out an explosive grunt that seemed to rock the flimsy grass walls. Claudia caught the scream in her throat before it could escape. Then the yellow eye was gone from the chink and she heard the pad of great paws circling back around the hide.

  Claudia swiveled her head to follow the sound and looked straight into Sean's face. He was smiling. That was what shocked her after what she had just lived through; there was a devil-may care grin on his lips and mockery in those green eyes. He was laughing at her. Her terror subsided and her anger flared.

  "The swine," she thought. "The arrogant bloody swine." She knew that her face was bloodless and that her eyes were dark and wide with terror. She hated herself for it, and she hated him for being witness to it. She wanted to jerk her hand out of his grip, but she could still hear that great cat out there, still very close, circling them, and though she loathed him, she knew that without his grip she would not be able to control herself. So she held on, but turned her face away, following the furtive sounds of the lioness so Sean could not see her face.

  The lioness passed in front of the blind. Through the peephole she saw the blur of the golden body, quickly gone, and she saw also that the young lioness and the cubs, alerted by the warning grunt, had disappeared into the undergrowth. The killing ground below the bait tree was deserted.

  The light was going swiftly now. Within minutes it would be dark, and the thought of that brute in the darkness was almost too much to bear. Sean reached over her shoulder and pressed something small and hard against her lips. For a moment she resisted, then she opened and let him slide it into her mouth. It was a cube of chewing gum.

  "The man has gone mad." She was bewildered. "Chewing gum at a time like this?" But as she crunched down onto the cube she realized that her saliva had dried out and that the inside of her mouth was as seared and puckered as if she had bitten into a green persimmon. At the taste of spearmint her saliva flowed again, but she was so angry with Sean that she felt no gratitude. He had known her mouth was dry with terror, and she resented it fiercely. The lioness growled in the semidarkness behind the hide, and Claudia thought longingly of the Toyota parked a mile back up the track. Almost echoing her thought, her father asked softly, "When did you tell the gun bearers to bring the truck?"

  "After the last of the shooting light," Sean answered him quietly.

  "Another fifteen or twenty minutes."

  The lioness heard their voices and growled again threateningly.

  "Cheeky bitch," Sean said cheerfully. "Snarly Sue in person."

  "Shut up!" Claudia hissed at him. "She'll find us."

  "Oh, she knows we're here now," Sean replied. He raised his voice and called, "Get away with you, you silly old bitch, go on back to your babies."

  Claudia jerked her hand out of his grip. "Damn you! You'll get us killed."

  But the loud human voice had alarmed the cat, and for minutes there was silence beyond the grass wall. Sean took up the short, ugly, double-barreled rifle propped against the wall beside him and placed it across his lap. He opened the breech of the.577 Nitro Express and slid the fat brass cartridges out of the chambers, changing them for two others from the loops on the left breast of his jacket. It was a little superstitious ritual of his, that changing of cartridges; he always performed it at the beginning of a hunt.

  "Now listen to me, Capo," he addressed Riccardo. "If we kill that old whore without good reason, the game department is going to pull my license. "Good reason" is when she has already chewed somebody's arm off, not before. Do you hear me?"

  "I hear you." Riccardo nodded.

  All right, don't shoot until I tell you, or by God I'll shoot you."

  They grinned at each other in the half light, and Claudia realized with disbelief that the two of them were enjoying themselves. These two crazy oafs were actually having fun.

  "By the time Job arrives with the truck it will be pitch dark, and Job can't get the truck up to the hide. We'll have to go down to it in the river-bed. You go first, Capo, then Claudia between us. Stay close together, and whatever you do, don't run! For the love of God, don't anybody run!"

  Now they heard the lioness again, padding softly around them.

  She growled once more, and almost immediately was answered from the far side of the hide. The young lioness was out there now.

  "The gang's all here," Sean commented. The sound of voices and the old liones
s's growls had summoned the rest of the pride, and the hunters had become the hunted, trapped in the hide. The darkness was almost complete. The sunset was merely a dun red furnace glow on the western horizon.

  "Where is the truck?" Claudia whispered.

  Sean said, "It's coming." Then his voice changed. "Down!" he said sharply. "Get down!" And though she had heard nothing, she dropped out of the canvas chair and crouched on the ground.

  The lioness had crept up to the front wall again, almost soundlessly, and now she flung herself at it, roaring furiously as she tore at the flimsy structure with her front claws. With horror Claudia realized that it was coming in on top of her.

  "Keep your heads down," Sean shouted, lifting the double barreled rifle just as the wall burst open. He fired, a stunning burst of sound as the muzzle blast swept through the hide and lit the interior with flame, brilliant as a flashbulb.

  "He's killed the brute." Despite her hatred of blood sport, Claudia felt a guilty relief, but it was short-lived. The shot had merely startled the cat and driven her off for the moment. Claudia heard the lioness gallop away into the undergrowth, snarling viciously.

  "You missed," she accused him breathlessly, the stink of burnt gunpowder in her nostrils.

  "Wasn't trying to hurt her." Sean opened the rifle and reloaded from the cartridge loops on his breast. "Just a warning shot over her bows."

  "There's the truck coming." Riccardo's voice was level and unconcerned. Claudia's ears were still singing from the crash of gunfire, but she could make out the distant beat of the Toyota's diesel engine through it.

  "Job heard the shot." Sean stood up. "He's coming early. All right, let's get ready to move out."

  Claudia scrambled up eagerly, then looked over the low grass wall of the roofless hide into the dark, forbidding forest around her and remembered the track that led down to the dry river-bed that served as a road. They would have to travel almost a quarter of a mile in darkness to reach safety. Her spirit quailed at the prospect.

  In the trees not fifty yards away, the lioness roared again.

  "Noisy brighter," Sean chuckled, and took Claudia's elbow to guide her to the door. This time she did not try to pull away, but instead found herself clinging to his arm.

  "Take hold of Capo's belt." Gently he disengaged her hand and guided it to her father's belt at the small of his back.

  "Hold on," he told her. "And remember, whatever happens, don't run. It will put them onto you instantly. Cat with mouse, they can't resist it."

  Sean switched on the flashlight. it was a big black Maglite, but even its powerful beam seemed puny in the immensity of the forest as he played it in a circle around them. Eyes reflected in the beam, glowing like menacing stars, many eyes out there in the dark bush; it was impossible to tell cubs from full-grown lionesses.

  "Let's go," Sean said quietly, and Riccardo started down the rough narrow track, dragging Claudia with him.

  They went slowly, bunched up tightly, Riccardo covering the van with his lighter rifle and Sean in the rear guard with the heavy rifle and the flashlight.

  Each time the flashlight beam picked up the flash of cat's eyes in the night, they seemed closer, until Claudia could make out the body of the animal behind the glowing eyes. They were pale as moths in the torchlight, nimble and restless as they circled, both lionesses closing in now, pacing swiftly through the undergrowth, watching them intently but turning their heads away whenever the powerful light hit their eyes.

  The track was steep and rough, and oh so long. Each step was an agony of impatience for Claudia as she stumbled along behind her father, not watching her footing, watching instead those pale feline shapes that paraded around them.

  "Here comes Snarly Sue!" Sean warned quietly as the old lioness screwed up her courage and came at them out of the night, grunting like a steam locomotive, deafening gusts of sound surging up her throat and out of her open mouth, her long tail lashing from side to side like a hippo-hide whip. They stopped in a tight group, and Sean swung the flashlight and the rifle onto the charging animal.

  "Get out of it!" he yelled at her. "Go on, scat!" But the lioness came on, her ears flattened against her skull, long yellow fangs and pink tongue curling between her gaping jaws.

  "Yah! Snarly Sue!" Sean howled. "I'll blow your stupid head off!"

  She broke her charge at the last possible moment, skidding to a halt on stiff front legs, ten feet from where they were bunched, and the dust swirled around her in the light.

  "Piss off!" Sean ordered her sternly. Her ears stood erect, and she turned and trotted obediently back into the forest.

  "That was a game of chicken," Sean chuckled. "She was just trying it on."

  "How did you know that?" Claudia's voice was cracked and shrill in her own ears.

  "Her tail. As long as she keeps waving it, she's only kidding.

  When she holds it stiff, then look out!"

  "Here's the truck," Riccardo said, and they could see the Toyota's headlights through the trees as it bumped up the dry river-bed below them.

  "Praise the Lord," Claudia whispered.

  "It's not over yet," Sean warned as they moved off down the track once more. "There's still Growly Gertie to deal with."

  Claudia had forgotten the younger lioness, and now she glanced around fearfully as she stumbled after her father, hanging on to his belt.

  At last they were on the bank of the river-bed, fully lit by the headlights of the parked truck, which was standing only thirty yards away with its engine running. She could make out the heads of the trackers in the front seat beyond the blaze of headlights. So close, so very close, and she could not help herself. Claudia let go of her father's belt and ran for the truck, pelting wildly through the thick loose white sand of the river-bed.

  She heard Sean shout behind her, "You bloody idiot!"

  Immediately afterward came the fearsome grunting roar of the lioness as she charged. Claudia glanced sideways as she ran, and the great cat was almost on her, coming in at an angle out of the tail reeds that lined the open river-bed. She was huge and pale in the headlights of the Toyota, snake swift, and her roaring cramped Claudia's belly and her feet dragged in the thick white sand. She saw that the charging lioness carried her tail high and stiff as a steel ramrod, and even in her terror she remembered what Sean had said and thought with icy clarity, "This time she's not going to stop.

  She's going to kill me!" For a vital instance Sean had not realized that the girl had run.

  He was backing carefully down the steep path into the river-bed, the flashlight in his left hand and the double rifle in his right. He held the rifle by the grip with the barrels tilted up over his shoulder and his thumb on the slide of the safety catch, watching the old lioness out there on the edge of the reed bed as she crawled toward them on her belly. But he was sure she was now merely going through the motions of aggression since he had stared down her mock charge. Two of the cubs were well back behind her, sitting up in the grass and watching the performance with huge eyes and candid fascination but too timid to take part. He had lost sight of the younger lioness, though he was sure she was now the main threat, but the river reeds were dense and tall.

  He had felt Claudia bump against his hip, but he thought she had stumbled, not realizing she had bumped him as she turned to run. He was still searching for the younger lioness, probing the reed beds with the flashlight beam, when he heard the crunch of Claudia's running feet in the sugary river sand. He whirled and saw her out there alone in the dry river-bed.

  "You bloody idiot!" he yelled in fury. The girl had been a constant source of irritation and dissent since she had arrived four days ago. Now she had flagrantly disobeyed his order, and he knew in an instant, even before the lioness launched her charge, that he was going to lose her. Getting a client killed or mauled was the blackest disgrace that could befall a professional hunter. It would mean the end of his career, the end of twenty years of work and striving.