The Burning Shore c-8

by Wilbur Smith

  We are discovered, said O'wa, and for a moment H'ani felt drained of even the will to run and hide.

  They are close already. The same resignation was in his eyes, and it spurred the old woman.

  She pulled him to his feet. On the open ground they will run us down with the ease of a cheetah taking a lame gazelle. She turned and looked to the mountain.

  They were at the foot of the scree slope, with scattered brush and loose rock ramping gently up to the mountain's bulk.

  If, H'ani whispered, if we could reach the top, no horse could follow us. It is too high, too steep, O'wa protested.

  There is a way. With a bony finger, H'ani pointed out the faint track that zigzagged up the vast bare rocky flank of the mountain.

  Look, old grandfather, see, the spirits of the mountain are showing us the way. Those are klipSpTinger, O'wa muttered. The two tiny chamois-like antelope, alarmed by the approach of horsemen in the forest below, went prancing lightly up the barely discernible track. They are not mountain spirits, O'wa repeated, watching the nimble brown animals fly almost straight up the tall rock-face.

  I say they are spirits in the guise of antelope. H'ani dragged him towards the scree slope. I say they are showing us the way to escape our enemies. Hurry, you stupid and argumentative old man, there is no other way open to us. She took his hand in hers, and together they hopped and skipped from boulder to boulder, climbing with the awkward agility of a pair of ancient baboons up the tumbled rock of the scree slope.

  However, before they reached the base of the cliff, O'wa was dragging back on her hand, and gasping with pain, reeling weakly as she urged him on.

  My chest, he cried and staggered. In my chest an animal is eating my flesh, I can feel its teeth- and he fell heavily between two boulders.

  We cannot stop, H'ani pleaded as she stood over him. We must go on.

  She tried to drag him up.

  There is such pain, he wheezed. I can feel its teeth ripping out my heart. With all her strength she heaved him into a sitting position, and at that moment there was a faint shout from the foot of the scree slope below them.

  They have seen us, H'ani said, looking down at the two horsemen as they rode out of the forest. They are coming up after us. She watched them jump down from their horses, tether them and then come at the slope. One was a black man and the other had a head that shone like sunlight off a sheet of still water, and as they came on to the slope they shouted again, a fierce and jubilant sound, like the clamour of hunting hounds when they first take the scent.

  That sound roused O'wa and with H'ani's help he came unsteadily to his feet, clutching at his chest. His lips had blanched and his eyes were like those of a mortally wounded gazelle; they terrified her as much as the shouts of the men below.

  We must go on. Half-carrying, half-dragging him, she led him to the base of the cliff.

  I cannot do it. His voice was so faint she had to put her ear to his lips. I cannot go up there. You can, she told him stoutly. I will lead you, place your feet where I place mine. And she went on to the rock, on to the steep pathway that the klipspringer had marked with their sharp pointed hooves, and behind her the old man came on unsteadily.

  one hundred feet up they found a ledge, and it shielded them from the men below. They toiled upwards, clinging to the harsh abrasive surface with their fingertips, and the open drop below them seemed to steady O'wa. He climbed more determinedly. Once when he hesitated and swayed outwards from the wall, she reached back and caught his arm and held him until the fit of vertigo passed.

  Follow me, she told him. Do not look down, old grandfather. Watch my feet and follow me. They went upwards, higher and still higher, and although the plain opened below them, yet the hunters were hidden beneath the sheer of the cliff.

  Only a little further, she told him. See, there is the crest, just a little further and we will be safe. Here, give me your hand. And she reached out to help him over a bad place where the drop opened below them and they had to step across the void.

  H'ani looked down between her feet and she saw them again, dwarfed by distance and foreshortened and misshapened by the overhead perspective. The two hunters were still at the base of the cliff, directly below her, looking up at her. The white man's face shone like a cloud, so strangely pale and yet so malignant, she thought. He lifted his arms and pointed at her with the long staff he carried.

  H'ani had never seen a rifle before, and made no effort to hide herself as she stared down at him. She knew she was far out of range of an arrow from even the most powerful bow, and, unafraid, she leaned out from the narrow ledge for a better view of her enemy. She saw the white man's extended arms jerk, and a little feather of white smoke flew from the tip of his staff.

  She never heard the rifle shot, for the bullet arrived before the sound. It was a soft lead-nosed Mauser bullet and it entered low down in the front of her stomach and passed obliquely upwards, traversing her body, tearing through her bowels and her stomach, up through one lung and out through her back a few inches to one side of the spinal column. The force of the impact flung her backwards against the rock wall, and then her lifeless body bounced loosely forward and spun out over the edge.

  Opwa cried out and reached for her as she went over.

  He touched her with his fingertips, before she fell away from him and he teetered on the brink of the precipice.

  My life! he called after her. My little heart! And the pain and the grief were too intense to be borne. He let his body sway outwards, and as it passed its centre of gravity, he cried softly, I am coming with you, old grandmother, to the very end of the journey."And he let himself plunge unresisting into the void, and the wind ripped at him as he fell, but he made not another sound, not ever.

  Lothar De La Rey had to climb twenty feet to where the body of one Bushman had wedged in a crack in the cliff face.

  He saw it was the corpse of an old man, wrinkled and skeletal-thin, crushed by the fall and with the skin and flesh ripped away to expose the bone of his skull. There was very little blood, almost as though the sun and the wind had desiccated the tiny body while it was still alive.

  About the narrow, childlike waist there was a brief loin-cover of tanned rawhide and then, remarkably, a Ianyard from which dangled a clasp knife. It was an Admiralty-type knife with a horn handle such as British sailors carried, and Lothar had not expected to find a tool like this one on a Bushman's corpse in the wastes of the Kalahari. He unlooped the lanyard and dropped the knife into his pocket. There was nothing else of value or interest on the body, and he certainly would not bother to bury it. He left the old man jammed into the rocky crevice and climbed back down to where Swart Hendrick waited for him.

  What did you find? Hendrick demanded.

  Just an old man, but he had this. Lothar showed him the knife and Swart Hendrick nodded without particular interest.

  Ja. They are terrible thieves, like monkeys. That's why they were creeping around our camp. Into the kloof there, amongst that horn bush. It will be dangerous to climb down. I would leave it. Stay here, then, Lothar told him and went to the edge of the deep ravine and looked down. The bottom was choked with dense Thorn growth, and the climb would indeed be dangerous, but Lothar felt a perverse whim to go against Swart Hendrick's advice.

  it took him twenty minutes to reach the bottom of the ravine, and as long again to find the corpse of the Bushman he had shot. It was like trying to find a dead pheasant in thick scrub without a good gundog to sniff it out, and in the end it was only the buzz of big metallic-blue flies that led him to the hand protruding from a clump of scrub, with the pink palm uppermost. He dragged the body out of the thorn scrub by the wrist and realized that it was a female, an ancient hag with impossibly wrinkled skin and dangling breasts like a pair of empty tobacco pouches.

  He grunted with satisfaction when he saw the bullet hole exactly where he had aimed. It had been an extremely difficult shot, at that range and deflected. He transferred his attention immediately fro
m the bullet wound to the extraordinary decoration that the old woman wore around her neck.

  Lothar had never seen anything like it in southern Africa, although in his father's collection there had been a Masai necklace from east Africa, which was vaguely similar. However, the Masai jewellery had been made with trade beads, while for this collar the old woman had collected coloured pebbles and had graded and arranged them with remarkable aesthetic appreciation. Then she had most cunningly fastened them into a breast plate that was at once strong and decorative.

  Lothar realized that it would have considerable value for its rarity, and he rolled the old woman on to her face to unknot the string that held it at the back of her neck.

  Blood from the massive exit wound had soaked the string, run down it and clotted on some of the coloured stones, but he wiped it off carefully.

  Many of the stones were in their original crystalline form, and others were water-worn and polished. The old woman had probably picked them out of the gravel banks in the dry river beds. He turned them to catch the light and smiled with pleasure at the lovely sparkle of reflected sunlight. He wrapped the necklace in his bandanna and placed it carefully in his breast pocket.

  One last glance at the dead Bushwoman convinced him that there was nothing else of interest about her, and Lothar left her lying on her face and turned to the difficult climb up the ravine wall to where Swart Hendrick waited above him.

  Centaine became aware of the feeling of woven cloth upon her body, and it was so unfamiliar that it brought her to the very threshold of consciousness. She thought that she lay upon something soft, but she knew that was impossible, as was the filtered light through green canvas.

  She was too tired to ponder these things, and when she tried to keep her eyelids open, they drooped against her best efforts and she became aware of her weakness. Her insides had been scooped out of her as though she were a soft-boiled egg, and only her brittle outer shell remained. The thought made her want to smile, but even that effort was too great and she drifted away into that lulling darkness again.

  When next she became aware, it was to the sound of someone singing softly. She lay with her eyes closed and realized that she could understand the words. It was a love song, a lament for a girl that the singer had known before the war began.

  It was a man's voice, and she thought it was one of the most thrilling voices she had ever heard. She did not want the song to end, but suddenly it broke off, and the man laughed.

  So, you like that do you? he said in Afrikaans, and a child said, Da! Da! so loudly and so clearly that Centaine's eyelids flew open. It was Shasa's voice and every memory of that night with the lion in the mopani came rushing back at her, and she wanted to scream again.

  My baby, save my baby! and she rolled her head from side to side, and found she was alone in a hut with thatched roof and canvas sides. She lay on a camp cot, and she was dressed in a long cool cotton nightgown.

  Shasa! she called out, and tried to sit up. She managed only a spasmodic jerk, and her voice was a dull, hoarse whisper.

  Shasa! This time she summoned all her strength. Shasa! and it came out as a croak.

  There was a startled exclamation, and she heard a stoat clatter as it was overturned. The hut darkened as someone stepped into the doorway, and she rolled her head towards the opening, A man stood there. He was holding Shasa on his hip.

  He was tall, with wide shoulders, but the light was behind him so she could not see his face.

  So, the sleeping princess awakes- that deep, thrilling voice -at last, at long last. Still carrying her son, he stepped to the side of her cot and bent over her.

  We have been worried, he said gently, and she looked up into the face of the most beautiful man she had ever seen, a golden man, with golden hair and yellow leopard's eyes in his tanned golden face.

  On his hip Shasa bounced up and down and reached towards her.

  Mama! My baby! She lifted one hand, and the stranger swung Shasa off his hip and placed him beside her on the cot.

  Then he lifted Centaine's shoulders and propped her into a sitting position with a bolster behind her. His hands were brown and strong, yet the fingers were as elegant as those of a pianist.

  Who are you? Her voice was a husky whisper, and there were dark smears below her eyes, the colour of fresh bruises.

  My name is Lothar De La Rey, he answered, and Shasa clenched his fists and pounded his mother's shoulder in a gesture of overwhelming affection.

  Gently! Lothar caught his wrist to restrain him. Your mama is not up to so much love, not yet. She saw how Lothar's expression softened as he looked at the child.

  What happened to me? Centaine asked. Where am YOU were attacked and mauled by a lion. When I shot the beast, you fell out of the tree. She nodded. Yes, I remember that, but afterwards You suffered concussion and then the wounds from the lion claws mortified. How long? she breathed.

  Six days, but the worst is past. Your leg is still very swollen and inflamed, Mevrou Courtney. She started. You use that name.

  Where did you learn that name? i know that your name is Mevrou Centaine Courtney and that you were a survivor from the hospital ship Protea Castle. How? How do you know these things? I was sent by your father-in-law to search for you. My father-in-law? Colonel Courtney, and that woman, Anna Stok. Anna? Anna is alive? Centaine reached out and seized his wrist. is no doubt about that at all! Lothar laughed. ThereShe is very much alive. That is the most wonderful news! I thought she was drowned -Centaine broke off as she realized that she was still holding his wrist. She let her hand fall to her side and sank back against the bolster.

  Tell me, she whispered, tell me everything. How is she? How did you know where to find me? Where is Anna now? When will I see her? Lothar laughed again. His teeth were very white. So many questions! He drew the stool to her cot. Where shall I begin? Begin with Anna, tell me all about her. He talked and she listened avidly, watching his face, asking another question as soon as one was answered, fighting off the weakness of her body to revel in the sound of his voice, in the intense pleasure of hearing glad tidings of the real world from which she had been so long excluded, of communicating with one of her own kind and looking on a white and civilized face again.

  The day was almost gone, the evening gloom filling her little shelter when Shasa let out a demanding shout and Lothar broke off.

  He is hungry."I will feed him if you will leave us a while, Mijnheer."No, Lothar shook his head. You have lost your milk.

  Centaine's head jerked as though the words were a blow in her face, and she stared at him while thoughts tumbled and crowded in her mind. Up to that moment she had been so wrapped up in listening and questioning that she had not considered that there was no other woman in the camp, that for six days she had been entirely helpless, and that somebody had tended her, washed her and changed her, fed her and dressed her wounds. But his words, such an intimate subject spoken of in direct fashion, brought all this home to her, and as she stared at him, she felt herself begin to blush with shame. Her cheeks flamed, those long brown fingers of his must have touched her where only one other man had touched before. She felt her eyes smart, as she realized what those yellow eyes of his must have looked upon.

  She felt herself burning up with embarrassment, and then incredibly with a hot and shameful excitement, so that she had difficulty breathing, and she lowered her eyes and turned her head away so that he could not see her scarlet cheeks.

  Lothar seemed to be entirely unaware of her predicament. Come on, soldier, let's show mama our new trick. He lifted SHasa and fed him with a spoon, and Shasa bounced on his lip and said, Hum! Hum! as he saw each spoonful coming, and then launched himself at it with mouth wide open. He likes you, Centaine said.

  We are friends, Lothar admitted, as he removed the heavy coating of gruel from Shasa's forehead and chin and ears with a damp cloth.

  You are good with children, Centaine whispered and saw the sudden biting pain reflected in the darkening gold of
his eyes.

  Once I had a son, he said, and placed Shasa at her side, then picked up the spoon and empty bowl and went to the doorway.

  Where is your son? she called softly after him, and he paused in the opening, then turned slowly back to her. My son is dead, he said softly.

  She was ripe and over-ripe for love. Her loneliness was a hunger so intense that it seemed it could not be assuaged, not even by those long languid conversations under the awning of the wagon tent when, with Shasa between them, they talked away the hottest hours of those lazy African days.

  Mostly they discussed the things she held dearest, music and books. Although he preferred Goethe to Victor Hugo and Wagner to Verdi, these differences gave them grounds for amusing and satisfying dispute. in those arguments she discovered that his learning and scholarship far exceeded her own, but she strangely did not resent it.

  it merely made her more attentive to his voice. It was a marvelous voice; after the clicking and grunting of the San language, she could listen to it for the lilt and cadence as though it were music in itself.

  Sing for me! she ordered, when they had for the moment exhausted a particular topic. Both Shasa and I command it.

  Your servant, of course! he smiled, and gave them a mocking little bow, then he sang without any selfconsciousness.

  Take the chick and the hen will follow you Centaine had often heard Anna repeat the old proverb, and when she watched Shasa riding around the camp on Lothar's shoulder, she realized the wisdom behind it, for her eyes and her heart followed both of them.

  At first she felt quick resentment whenever Shasa greeted Lothar with cries of Da! Da! That name should have been reserved for Michael alone. Then with a painful stab she remembered that Michael was lying in the cemetery at Mort Homme.

  After that it was easy to smile when Shasals first attempts at walking unaided on his own two legs ended with a precipitous and headlong return to earth and he bawled for Lothar and crawled to him, seeking comfort.