A Time to Die c-13

by Wilbur Smith

  Sean ran the tips of his fingers up to the juncture of Claudia's thighs, and he could feel the springing mattress of her pubic hair through the cloth of her breeches. Her thighs opened slightly under his hand.

  The lion humped his back over the female in a series of convulsive, regular spasms. Then he threw back his huge, maned head and roared. The lioness roared with him and he reached down and bit her lightly in the back of the neck, a fond, possessive gesture.

  For long moments they were frozen together like that. Then the lion leaped off. At the same moment, Claudia reached down and placed her hand over Sean's. She took his little finger and twisted it back against the joint so viciously she almost dislocated it.

  Agony shot up his arm to the shoulder.

  He almost cried out in protest, but Riccardo was sitting close and though his view of his daughter's lower body was obscured by the canvas side of the chair, he would certainly guess at Sean's advances. With an effort Sean kept silent and drew his hand back, surreptitiously massaging the damaged finger. He could see the corner of Claudia's mouth was curled into a vindictive little smile.

  Across the river the lioness stood up and shook herself. Then she walked out with a slow, satisfied air onto the open riverbank.

  There she paused and looked back to where the lion was sitting on his haunches, still half hidden in the long grass.

  "Get ready, Capo." Sean was still massaging his finger.

  It was five in the afternoon, and the sun was at a perfect angle, lighting the far bank as though it were a stage. The range was a measured ninety-six yards from the mac han to the bait tree. Riccardo Monterro was the finest rifleman Sean had ever guided on safari. At that range he could place three bullets through the same hole.

  The lioness mewled seductively, and the lion stood up and followed her out onto the open riverbank. He stood behind her, broadside to the mac han across the river, lit by the golden sunlight.

  "He's a gift from heaven, Capo," Sean whispered. He tapped Riccardo's shoulder. "Take him!"

  Slowly Riccardo lifted the rifle to his shoulder. It was a.300 Weatherby Magnum. The massive cartridge under the firing pin was loaded with eighty grains of powder and a 180-grain Nosier partitioned bullet. It would cross the open river-bed at over three thousand feet per second. When it entered living flesh, it would drive a shock wave ahead of it that would turn the internal organs, lungs, and heart to jelly and suck that jelly out of a massive exit hole, blowing them in a red spray over the grass beyond where the animal stood.

  "Take him!" Sean said. Riccardo Monterro looked through the telescopic sight. The lion's body filled most of the magnified field of the lens.

  He could see the individual hairs in the dense curling bush of mane and the detail of each sculptured muscle beneath the skin.

  One inch behind the lion's shoulder, on the lateral center line of its body, was a tiny scar on the sleek hide. It was shaped like a horseshoe, a lucky horseshoe, and it made a perfect aiming point.

  He aligned the cross hairs of the sight on the scar. They bounced slightly to the elevated beat of his own heart. He took up the slack in the trigger, feeling the final resistance under his finger before the sear released and the rifle fired.

  Beside her father, Claudia sat rigid with horror. The lion turned his head and looked across the river-bed at her. The mating had touched and moved her deeply.

  "He's too glorious to die," she thought. Almost without conscious effort, she opened her mouth and screamed with all the strength of her lungs.

  "Run, damn you! Run!"

  The result stunned even her. She had not believed a living creature could react so swiftly. From lazy immobility, all three animals exploded into flight. They dissolved into golden blurs of movement.

  The oldest lioness disappeared almost instantaneously into the long grass, the cubs rushing after her. The younger lioness raced along the edge of the bank. So swift was her run that she did not seem to touch the earth; like a swallow drinking in flight, she skimmed the surface, and the lion followed her. For all his bulk and the dark mass of his mane, he moved as lightly as she did, reaching out those massively muscled legs in full stride.

  Riccardo Monterro swiveled in his chair, the rifle to his shoulder, staring into the brilliant glass lens, swinging with the cat's run.

  The lioness swerved into the grass and was gone. The lion followed her, but the instant before he disappeared, the report of the Weatherby rifle drove in on their eardrums, painful and deafening, and even in full sunlight a long tongue of flame flashed out across the river-bed.

  The lion stumbled in his run and with a single, loud cough vanished into the grass. In the silence, their ears sang with the memory of gunfire, and they stared out at the empty clearing, subdued and appalled.

  "Nice work, ducky!" Sean said softly.

  "I'm not sorry," she said defiantly. Her father reloaded the rifle with a savage movement that sent the empty brass case spinning and sparkling away in the sunlight. He stood up, rocking the flimsy mac han and without a glance at his daughter he climbed down the makeshift ladder.

  Sean picked up his.577 double rifle and followed him down.

  They stood at the bottom of the tree. Riccardo unbuttoned the flap of his breast pocket and offered Sean a Havana from his pigskin cigar case. Neither of them usually smoked during the day, but now Sean accepted one and bit off the tip.

  They lit their cigars and smoked for a while in silence. Then Sean said quietly, "Call your shot, Capo."

  Riccardo was a marksman of such expertise that he could tell precisely where his bullet had gone the moment after he fired it.

  Now he hesitated, then said grudgingly, "That cat was motoring.

  I was too quick. I didn't lead him enough."

  "Gutshot?" Sean asked.

  "Yeah." Riccardo nodded. "Gutshot."

  "Shit," said Sean. "Shit, and shit again."

  They looked across at the dense stand of long grass and tangled thorny patches of undergrowth on the far bank.

  It was ten minutes before the Toyota arrived, summoned by that single gunshot. Job, Shadrach, and Matatu were grinning with expectation. They had hunted six safaris with Riccardo Monterro, and they had never known him to miss. They jumped out of the Toyota and peered across the river. Their grins faded slowly and were replaced by expressions of deepest gloom as Sean said, "Intumbu! In the guts!"

  The three of them went back to the Toyota and began to prepare for the follow-up In silence.

  Sean squinted up at the sun. "Dark in an hour," he said. "We haven't got time to let the wound stiffen."

  "We could leave him until the morning," Riccardo suggested.

  "He'll be sick by then."

  Sean shook his head. "If he dies in there, the hyena will get him.

  No trophy. Besides which, we can't leave the poor beggar to suffer all night."

  They fell silent as Claudia climbed down the ladder from the mac han When she reached ground level, she would not look at them but tossed the plait of dark hair over her shoulder defiantly and marched across to the Toyota. She climbed into the front seat and folded her arms across her small breasts, staring ahead grimly.

  "I'm sorry," Riccardo said. "I've known her for twenty-six years.

  I should have guessed she'd pull one like that."

  "You don't have to come, Capo." Sean did not answer him directly.

  "Stay with Claudia. I'll go across and get the job done.

  That's what you pay me for."

  It was Riccardo's turn to ignore the remark. "I'll carry the Rigby," he said. i "Make sure you're loaded with soft-nosed bullets," Sean advised.

  "Of course." They walked side by side to the Toyota, and Riccardo changed the lighter Weatherby for the big Rigby. He opened the breech to check that there were soft-nosed mushrooming bullets in the magazine, then filled the loops on his cartridge belt from a fresh packet.

  Sean leaned against the side of the Toyota and changed the cartridges in his big double rif
le for others from the loops on the breast of his bush jacket.

  "Poor bloody animal," he said. Although he was looking at Riccardo, he was speaking to Claudia. "It would have been a good clean kill, but now he's in the grass there, still alive with half his guts shot away. It's the most painful wound there is." He saw the girl wince and her cheek pale. She would not look at him.

  "We'll be lucky if someone doesn't get killed," Sean went on with ghoulish relish. "It will probably be Matatu. He has to go ahead on the spoor, and the little beggar always refuses to run. If it's anybody, it will be Matatu that gets it today."

  Despite herself, Claudia glanced piteously at the little Ndorobo.

  "Cut it out, Sean," Riccardo ordered. "She knows how stupid she's been."

  "I wonder." He snapped the rifle "Does she?" Sean asked.

  closed. "Okay, Capo, wear your leather jacket. If the lion gets you down, it may protect you a little. Not much, but a little."

  The three blacks were waiting on the edge of the bank. Job carried the eight-bore shotgun loaded with buckshot, but the other two were unarmed. It took a peculiar kind of courage to follow a wounded lion into thick cover without carrying a weapon.

  Even in her agitation, Claudia noticed the trust with which they looked at Sean Courtney. She sensed that they had shared mortal danger so many times before that a peculiar bond united their small, exclusive group. The four of them were closer than brothers, She had never been that close or lovers, and she felt a sting of envy.

  to another human being in her life.

  In turn Sean touched each of them on the shoulder, a light, unsentimental gesture of affirmation. Then he spoke softly to Job.

  A shadow passed over the Matabele's handsome features, and for a moment it seemed he might protest. But then he nodded acceptance and crossed to the Toyota, standing guard with the shotgun beside Claudia.

  Sean held the double-barreled rifle across the crook of his arm as he combed his thick glossy hair back from his forehead with his fingers and bound it up out of his eyes with a strip of plaited leather around his forehead.

  Even though she loathed him, she found herself admiring the heroic figure he cut as he prepared to face the terrible danger and gruesome death she had, in a large measure, prepared for him. The sleeves had been cut out of his bush jacket and he wore short khaki pants, so that his limbs were bare and tanned. He was even taller than her father, but his waist was slimmer and his shoulders wider, and he carried the squat, heavy rifle easily in one hand.

  He glanced across at her, and his gaze was level, green, and contemptuous. She was suddenly possessed by a premonition of impending disaster, and she wanted to plead with him not to cross the river. But before she could speak, he had turned away.

  "Ready, Capo?" he asked. Riccardo nodded, holding the Rigby at high port across his chest. His expression was solemn. "All right, let's move out." Sean nodded at Matatu and the little man led them down the bank.

  In the river-bed, they fell into hunting formation with the tracker leading. Sean followed close behind him, watching the reed bed ahead. Riccardo came next, leaving a gap of ten paces between them to reduce the confusion in a close-quarters melee, and Shadrach followed at the end.

  As they crossed, they filled their pockets with smooth water worn pebbles from the river-bed. Below the far bank they paused to listen. Then Sean passed Matatu and went ahead. He stood alone in the trampled clearing below the bait tree for almost five minutes, listening, staring intently into the tall grass beyond.

  and Then he begin to lob pebbles into the grass, systematically working the area where the lion had disappeared. The pebbles clattered against other stones or bounced off the stems of shrubs, but there was no challenging growl. He whistled softly. The others scrambled up the bank and fell into their positions, and he nodded at Matatu.

  They went forward slowly. There are many gravestones in Africa marking the resting places of men who hurried after a Wounded lion. Matatu concentrated all his attention on the ground at his feet. Placing his trust in Sean, he never looked up at the wall of grass ahead. At the edge of the grass he hissed softly and with his hand behind his back made a secretive gesture.

  "Blood," Sean told Riccardo softly without looking back at him. "And belly hair. You were right, Capo. It's a gutshot."

  He could see the wet gleam of blood on the stems of the grass.

  "Akwendi!" he told Matatu. He drew a breath like a diver poised on a cliff above a deep and icy pool. He held that breath as he stepped forward and the tall grass closed around him, limiting his vision like the sinister and murky waters of the pool.

  The impact of the bullet had been a mighty blow to the lion's flank that slewed him round and numbed his entire body behind his rib cage. But the grass closed about him as he raced forward, and immediately he felt secure and confident. Within twenty strides he stopped and stood looking back over his shoulder, listening and drawing the scent into his flared nostrils, lashing his tail from side to side, There was no sensation of pain, just a numbness and weight in his entrails as though he had swallowed an ironstone boulder. He smelled his own blood and turned to sniff at his side. The exit wound the bullet had left was the size of an egg cup, and from it oozed blood that was almost tarry black. Mingled with the blood were the liquid contents of his bowels. They made a tiny pattering sound as they dribbled onto the dry earth beneath him. He licked at the wound, and blood glutted his jaws.

  Then he lifted his head and listened again. He heard human voices in the distance, beyond the river, and he growled softly, feeling his anger begin to, mount, associating the blood and heaviness in his belly with the presence of man.

  Then the lioness called him, a low gasping moan, and he turned and followed her. He did not run now, for the weight in his belly hampered him and his back legs felt numb and heavy. The lioness was waiting for him a little farther on. Eagerly she rubbed herself against him and then tried to lead him away, trotting off ahead of him. He moved heavily after her, stopping to listen and lick the running wound, and she turned back impatiently and moaned at him and nuzzled his face, sniffing and licking at his wound, puzzled and distressed by his behavior.

  His legs were heavy as tree trunks now. Ahead of him was a thicket of wild ebony. He turned and pushed his way into the dense, tangled undergrowth. He sighed as he lowered his body, curling the black tuft of his tail under him as he lay down.

  The lioness fretted and worried at the edge of the thicket, calling to him with small mewling entreaties. When he did not respond, she followed him into the thicket and lay down beside him. She licked at his wound, and the lion closed his eyes and began to pant softly as the pain began.

  It swelled in his body, becoming a vast, suffocating weight that grew and grew within him, seeming to distend his belly until it was at the point of bursting. The lion groaned softly and bit at his flank, trying to kill this thing within him, this living agony that was feeding on his entrails.

  The lioness attempted to distract him. She was confused and worried, and she wriggled around and pressed her hindquarters into his face, offering him her swollen, weeping genitalia, but the lion closed his eyes and turned his head away, each breath rasping like a wood saw in his throat.

  Then he heard voices again, the whispering voices of men, and he raised his head and his eyes burned yellow and fierce as he found a focus for his suffering. Hatred grew out of the agony of his belly, and his rage was dark and all-engulfing.

  Something crashed into the branches of the wild ebony thicket above his head and he growled, a rattling exhalation of air through his tortured throat.