by Wilbur Smith
Their features seemed distorted as though seen through a poorly glazed window, thickened and smeared with lust.
He thought that after the Bushman had been mounted by each of them in turn, ravished as though he were a woman, he would probably welcome what awaited him at the very end.
So. Lothar tried to keep his expression neutral, but his voice was hoarse with disgust. I am returning to the wagons now. The San is yours, but I must know if he has seen or has heard of the white girl. He must answer that one question. That is all. Lothar went to his horse and mounted. He rode away towards the wagons without looking back. just once, far behind, he heard a cry of such outrage and agony that it made his skin prickle, but then it was muted and lost on the moan of the desert wind.
Much later when his men rode up to the wagons, Lothar was lying under the side awning of his living wagon, reading his faithful old copy of Goethe by the light of a hurricane lantern, stained and battered, it had sustained him a hundred times before when the substance of his being had been drawn thin.
The laughter of his men as they dismounted and unsaddled had a fat, satisfied sound, like that of men who had well feasted and drunk, and were replete. Swart Hendrick came to where he lay, swaggering as though he had taken wine, and the front of his breeches was speckled with black drops of dried blood.
The San had not seen a white woman, but there was something strange and unexplained that he had heard whispered at the fire when they met other San in the desert; a tale of a woman and a child from a strange land
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where the sun never shines, who lived with two old people of the San. Lothar came up on his elbow. He remembered the two little Bushmen he had seen with the girl. Where? Did he say where? he demanded eagerly. There is a place, deep in the Kalahari, that is sacred to all the San. He gave us the direction-'Where, Hendrick, damn you.
Where? A long journey, fifteen days of their travel."What is this place? How will we know it?
That, Hendrick admitted sadly, he did not say. His will to stay alive was not as great as we thought it might be. He died before he could tell us. Tomorrow we will turn in that direction, Lothar ordered.
There are the other San that we lost today. With fresh horses we might catch them before sundown tomorrow.
They have women with them- No! Lothar snarled at him. We go on towards this sacred place in the wilderness.
When the great bald mountain rose abruptly out of the plain, Lothar believed at first that it must be some trick of the desert light.
He knew of no description in the folklore or verbal history of the desert tribes to warn that the existence of such a place was possible. The only white men who had travelled this country, Livingstone and Oswell on their route to the discovery of Lake Ngarni, and Anderson and Galton on their hunting forays, had made no mention of such a mountain in their writing.
Thus Lothar doubted what he was seeing in the uncertain evening light, and the sunset was so laden with dust, so garish and theatrical as to heighten the effect of a stage illusion.
However, in the first light of the next day when he looked for it eagerly, the silhouette was still there, dark and clearly incised against a sky that was turned to mother-of-pearl by the coming of the dawn. As he rode towards it, so it rose higher and still higher from the plain, and finally detached itself from the earth and floated in the sky on its own shimmering mirage.
When at last Lothar stood beneath the tall cliffs, he did not doubt that this was the sacred place of which the San had spoken as he died, and his conviction was made complete when he scrambled up the scree slopes and discovered the wondrous paintings upon the sheltered cliff face.
This is the place, but it's so extensive, Lothar realized. If the girl is here, we might never find her. So many caves and valleys and hidden places, we could search for ever. He divided his men again and sent them on foot to explore and search the nearest slopes of the mountain.
Then he left the wagons in a shaded grove in the charge of Swart Hendrick, whom he mistrusted least, and taking only a spare horse set out to circumnavigate the mountain's bulk.
After two days of travel, during which he kept notes and sketched a rough map with the aid of his pocket compass, he could estimate with some certainty that the mountain was probably about thirty miles long and four or five miles wide, a long extended ridge of gneiss and intruding sandstone strata.
He rounded the eastern extremity of the mountain and deduced from his compass headings that he was heading back along the opposite side from where he had left the wagons. Whenever some feature of the cliffs caught his attention, a fissure or a complex of caves, for instance, he hobbled the horses and climbed up to explore.
Once he discovered a small spring of clear sweet water welling up from the base of the cliff and trickling into a natura I rock basin. He filled his water canteens, then he stripped and washed his clothes. At last he bathed, gasping with delight at the cold, and went on refreshed.
At other places he found more of the San paintings covering the rock face, and he marvelled at the accuracy of the artist's eye and hand that depicted the shape of eland and buffalo so that even his hunter's eye could find no fault. However, these were all ancient signs and he found nothing of recent human presence.
The forest and plain below the cliffs teemed with game, and he had no difficulty in shooting a plump young gazelle or antelope each day and keeping himself in fresh meat. On the third evening, he killed an impala ewe and made a kebab of the tripes and kidneys and liver, impaling them on a green twig and grilling them over the coals.
However, the scent of fresh meat attracted unwelcome attention to his camp, and he had to spend the rest of the night standing by the horses with his rifle in his hand while a hungry lion grunted and moaned in the darkness just outside the circle of firelight. He examined the beast's tracks in the morning and found that it was an adult male, past its prime and with a damaged limb that forced it to limp heavily.
A dangerous brute, he muttered, and hoped that it had moved away. But this was a vain hope, he discovered that evening when the horses began to fidget and whicker as the sun set. The lion must have followed him at a distance during the day, and emboldened by the gathering dusk, it again closed in and began to prowl around his camp fire. Another sleepless night. He resigned himself and heaped wood on the fire. Preparing to stand guard, he pulled on his overcoat, and suffered another minor irritation. One of the brass buttons was missing, which would let in the cold of the desert night.
it was a long, unpleasant night, but a little after midnight the lion seemed at last to tire of its fruitless vigil and it moved away. He heard it utter one last string of moaning grunts at the head of the grassy vlei half a mile away, then there was silence.
Wearily Lothar checked the head halters on the horses and then went to the fire and rolled himself in his blankets, still fully dressed, and keeping his boots on. Within minutes he had fallen into a deep dreamless sleep.
He came awake with bewildering suddenness and found himself sitting up with the rifle in his hands, and the din of an angry lion's thunderous roars echoing in his ears.
The fire had died down to white ash but the tree-tops were black against the paling morning sky. Lothar threw off his blankets and scrambled to his feet. The horses were stiff with alarm, their ears pricked forward, staring towards the open glade whose silver grasses just showed through the screen of mopani forest.
The lion roared again, and he judged it as a half-mile distant, in the direction in which the horses were staring.
So clearly does the roar of a lion carry in the night, that an inexperienced ear would have reckoned it much closer and been unable to pinpoint the direction, for it played ventriloquist tricks upon the ear.
Once more the awful cacophony filled the forest. Lothar had never heard one of these beasts behaving like this, such sustained anger and frustration in those great blasts of sound, and then his head jerked with shock. In the lull between this roar and the next
, he heard another unmistakable sound, a human scream of utmost terror.
Lothar reacted without thought. He seized the head halter of his favOUTite hunting horse and leaped to its bare back. He socked his heels into its ribs, urging it into a gallop, and guided it with his knees, turning it towards the head of the glade. He lay forward on the horse's neck as the low branches lashed past his head, but as he broke into the open glade, he straightened and looked about him frantically.
In the few minutes since he had woken, the light had strengthened, and the eastern sky was a throbbing orange glow. There was a single tall mopani tree standing detached from the rest of the forest, surrounded by the low dry grass of the glade. High in its branches was a huge dark mass, and indistinct but violent movement made the branches of the mopani wave and thrash against the sky.
Lothar turned his horse towards it, and the thunderous growls of a lion were punctuated by yet another highpitched shriek.
Only then could Lothar distinguish what was happening in the top of the mopani, and he found it hard to believe.
Great God! he swore with surprise, for he had never heard of a lion climbing a tree. There was the great tawny cat high in the waving branches, clinging with its hindlegs to the trunk and reaching up with vicious swipes of its forepaws towards the human shape just beyond its reach.
Ya! Ya! Lothar worked his horse with elbows and heels, urging it to its top speed, and as he reached the mopani he flung himself from its back, and rode the shock of landing with his legs and back. Then he danced out to one side, head thrown back, rifle at high port across his chest, trying for a clear shot at the animal high above him.
The lion and its victim made an indistinguishably confused silhouette against the sky, a shot from below could hit one as easily as the other, and there were thick intervening branches of the mopani to deflect his bullet.
Lothar dodged sideways until he found a hole in the branches, and he flung the rifle up to his shoulder, braced himself over backwards, aiming straight up, but still reluctant to chance the shot. Then the lion snatched the human shape half off its precarious perch, dragging it down, and the screams were so piteous, so agonized, that Lothar could not wait longer.
He aimed for the lion's spine, at the root of the tail, a point as far as possible from the twisting body of its victim who was still clinging with desperate strength to one of the mopani branches. He fired and the heavy Mauser bullet smashed into the base of the lion's spine, between its bunched and straining haunches, and tore upwards, following the line of the vertebrae for the span of a hand, shattering and crushing the bony knuckles, destroying the great nerves of the legs at their roots, before ripping out again from the centre of the lion's back.
The lion's hindlegs spasmed, the long yellow claws retracted involuntarily into their sheaths in the leathery pads, loosening their grip on the mopani bark, and the paralysed legs could hold no longer. The great tawny cat came sliding and twisting and roaring down out of the tree, crashing against the lower branches as it fell, arching back on itself, snapping at the pain in its shattered spine with gaping pink jaws.
It brought its human victim down with it, its foreclaws still hooked deeply into tender flesh, shaking and throwing the frail body about with its convulsions. They hit the earth in a tangle, with an impact that jarred up through the soles of Lothar's boots. He had jumped clear as they came down through the branches, but now he ran forward.
The lion's back legs were splayed behind it like those of a toad, and it lay half over the human body. Now it reared up on its forelegs, pinned by its paralysed hindquai ters, and as it dragged itself towards Lothar, it opened its jaws and bellowed. The stench of its breath was carrion and corruption, and hot stinking froth splattered his face and bare arms.
Lothar thrust the muzzle of the Mauser almost into that dreadful mouth and without aiming, he fired. The bullet entered the soft palate at the back of the lion's throat, tore through the back of its skull, and erupted in a fountain of pink blood and brains. For a second longer, it stood braced on its stiff forelegs, then with a gusty sigh its lungs emptied and it rolled slowly over on to its side.
Lothar dropped the Mauser and fell on his knees beside the huge twitching yellow carcass, and tried to reach the body beneath it, but only the bottom half protruded, a pair of slim brown naked legs, the narrow, boyish loins bound up in a tattered canvas kilt.
Lothar sprang up and seized the lion's tail; he flung all his weight upon it, and sluggishly the furry carcass rolled over on to its back, freeing the body beneath it. A woman, he saw at once, and he stooped and lifted her. Her head with its thick mop of dark curling hair flopped lifelessly, and he cupped his hand at the back of her neck, as though he were holding a newborn infant, and he looked into her f ace.
It was the face of the photograph, the face he had glimpsed so long ago in the field of his telescope, the face that had haunted and driven him, but there was no life in it.
The long dark eyelashes were closed and meshed together, the smooth, darkly tanned features were without expression, and the strong wide mouth was slack; the soft lips drooped open to reveal the small white even teeth and a little string of saliva dribbled from one corner of her mouth.
No! Lothar shook his head vehemently. You can't be dead, no, it's not possible, after all this. I won't- He broke off. Out of the thick dark mane of her hair a serpent crawled down across the broad forehead towards her eye, a slow dark red serpent of new blood.
Lothar snatched the cotton bandanna from around his neck and wiped away the blood, but it flooded down her face as fast as he could clear it. He parted her crown of curls and found the wound in her shiny white scalp, a short but deep cut where she had hit one of the mopani branches. He could see the gleam of bone in the bottom of the wound. He pressed the lips of the cut together and wadded his kerchief over it, then bound it in place with the bandanna.
He cradled the injured head against his shoulder and lifted the limp body into a sitting position. One of her breasts flopped out of her skimpy fur cloak, and he felt an almost blasphemous shock, it was so pale and tender and vulnerable. He covered it swiftly and guiltily, then turned his attention to her injured leg.
The wounds were frightening; parallel slashes that had ripped deep into the flesh of her calf, cutting down to the heel of her left foot. He laid her back gently and knelt at her feet, lifting the leg and dreading the sudden spurting rush of arterial blood. It did not come, there was only the dark seepage of venous blood, and he sighed.
Thank you, God. He dragged off his heavy military greatcoat, and placed the wounded leg upon it to keep it out of the dirt, then he pulled his shirt over his head. It had not been washed since the rock spring two days before and it stank of his stale sweat.
Nothing else for it. He ripped the shirt into strips and bound up the leg.
He knew that this was the real danger, the infections that a carrion eater, such as a lion, carried on its fangs and its claws were almost as deadly as the poisons of a Bushman's arrowhead. The claws of a lion particularly were sheathed in deep scabbards in the pads. Old blood and putrefied meat lodged in the cavities, an almost certain source of virulent mortification and gas-gangrene.
We have to get you to the camp, Centaine. He used her name for the first time, and it gave him a tiny flicker of pleasure, quickly smothered by fear as he touched her skin again and felt the cold, the mortuary chill upon it.
Quickly he checked her pulse and was shocked at its weak, irregular flutter. He lifted her shoulders and wrapped her in the thick greatcoat, then looked about him for his horse. It was down at the far end of the glade, grazing head down. Bare to the waist and shivering in the cold, he ran after it and led it back to the mopani.
As he stooped to lift the girl's unconscious body, he froze with shock.
From above his head came a sound that ripped along his nerves and triggered his deepest instincts. It was the loud cry of an infant in distress, and he straightened swiftly and stared up the tall tr
unk. There was a bundle hanging in the top branches, and it twitched and swung agitatedly from side to side.
A woman and a child. The words of the dying Bushman came back to Lothar.
He pillowed the unconscious girl's head against the warm carcass of the lion, then jumped to catch the lowest mopani branch. He drew himself bodily upwards and swung one leg over the branch. He climbed swiftly up to the suspended bundle, and found it was a rawhide satchel.
He unhooked the straps and lowered it until he could peer into the opening.
A small, indignant face scowled up at him, and as it saw him it flushed and yelled with fright.
The memory of Lothar's own son assailed him so suddenly and bitterly that he winced and swayed on the high branch, and then drew the kicking, yelling child more securely against his own body and smiled, a painful, lopsided smile.
That is a big voice for a small man, he whispered huskily. it never occurred to him that it might be a girl that arrogant anger could only be male.
It was easier to shift his camp to the mopani tree under which Centaine lay, than move her to the camp. He had to carry the child with him, but he managed it in less than twenty minutes. He was fearful every minute that he left the helpless mother alone, and vastly relieved when he led the pack horse back to where she lay. Centaine was still unconscious, and the child he carried had soiled itself and was ravenous with hunger.
He wiped off the boy's small pink bottom with a handful of dry grass, remembering how he had performed the same service for his own son, and then placed him under the greatcoat where he could reach his unconscious mother's breast.
Then he set a canteen of water on a small fire and dropped the curved sacking needle and a Thank of white cotton thread from his canvas housewife into the boiling water to sterilize. He washed his own hands in a mug of hot water and carbolic soap, emptied the mug, refilled it and began to scrub out the deep tears in the girl's calf.
The water was painfully hot, and he lathered carbolic soap and forced his finger to the bottom of each wound, poured hot water into it, and then washed it out again and again.