Wilbur Smith - C11 Blue Horizon

by C11 Blue Horizon(Lit)

  That evening Jim lay awake, until he heard her footsteps coming from the kitchen tent, and saw the glow of her lantern pass along the wall of his tent. Later he heard her changing into her nightdress. The rustle of her clothing conjured up disturbing images of her, and he tried unsuccessfully to banish them. Then he heard her brushing her hair, every stroke of the brush a soft whisper like the wind in a field of ripe wheat. He could imagine the way it rippled and glowed in the lamplight. At last he heard the creak of the car dell bed as it took her weight. Then there was a long silence.

  "Jim." Her voice was low, almost a whisper. It shocked and thrilled him. "Jim, are you awake?"

  "Yes." His voice sounded loud in his own ears.

  Thank you," she said. "I cannot remember when last I enjoyed a day so much."

  "I have enjoyed it also." He almost added, "Except--' but he bit back the word.

  They were silent for so long that he thought she had fallen asleep, but she whispered again: "Thank you also for your gentleness."

  He said nothing, for there was nothing to say. He lay long awake, and his hurt slowly gave way to anger. I do not deserve to be treated

  like this. I have given up everything for her, my home and my family. I have become an outlaw to save her, yet she treats me like some repulsive and poisonous reptile. Then she goes off to sleep as though nothing has happened. I hate her. I wish I had never laid eyes upon her.

  Eiisa lay rigid and wakeful on her bed. She knew he could hear any movement she made and she did not want him to know that she was unable to sleep. She was racked by guilt and remorse. She felt a deep sense of obligation to Jim. She knew only too well what he had sacrificed for her.

  Added to this she liked him. It was impossible not to. He was so outgoing and cheerful, so strong, dependable and resourceful. She felt safe when he was near at hand. She liked the way he looked, big and strong, with an open, honest face. He could make her laugh. She smiled as she thought of the way he had reacted when she shot a hole through his hat. He had a quirky sense of humour that she was at last coming to understand. He could retell the day's events in a way that made her laugh with surprise, even though she had witnessed them. She felt that he was her friend when he called her Hedgehog, and teased her in that rude, almost incomprehensible English way.

  Even now that he was sulking it was good to know that he was within call. Often in the night when she heard strange wild sounds, the gibbering of hyena or the roaring of a pride of lions, she was mortally afraid. Then he would speak to her quietly through the wall of the tent. His voice reassured her, calmed her fears, and she could sleep again.

  Then there were the nightmares. Often she dreamed that she was at Huis Brabant again; she saw the tripod and the silk ropes and, in the candlelight, the dark figure dressed in the costume of the executioner, the black gloves and the leather mask with the eye slits. When the nightmares came upon her she was trapped in those dark fantasies, unable to escape, until his voice woke her, rescued her from the terror.

  "Hedgehog! Wake up! It's all right. It's only a dream. I'm here. I won't let anything happen to you." She always woke to a deep sense of gratitude.

  She liked him a little more each day, and she trusted him. But she could not let him touch her. At even the most casual contact if he adjusted her stirrup leather and touched her ankle, if he handed her some ordinary object like a spoon or a coffee mug and their fingers brushed she felt afraid and repelled.

  Strangely, from a distance she found him attractive. When he rode

  beside her and she smelt his warm man smell and listened to his voice and his laughter, it made her happy.

  Once she had come upon Jim unexpectedly while he was washing in the river. He had still been wearing his breeches, but he had thrown his shirt and leather jacket on the bank; he was scooping handfuls of water and dashing them over his head. His back had been towards her so he had not seen her. For a long moment, before she turned away, she had stared at the smooth, unblemished skin of his bare back. It was in sharp contrast to his sun-browned arms. The muscles were strongly defined below the pale skin and changed shape as he lifted his arms.

  She had felt again that wicked stirring of her senses, that shortness of breath, the melting heaviness of her loins, and the unfocused but lascivious longing that Koen van Ritters had awakened in her, before he plunged her into the horrors of his evil fantasy.

  I don't want that ever again, she thought as she lay in darkness. I cannot let another man touch me. Not even Jim. I want him to be my friend, but I don't want that. I should go into the Church, a nunnery. That is the only escape for me.

  But there was no nunnery in the wilderness, and at last she slept.

  Xhia led Koots and his band of bounty-hunters back to the camp where Jim Courtney had stampeded their horses, the camp from which they had begun the long march back to the colony. Many weeks had passed since that night, and in the meantime there had been high winds and heavy rainfall in the mountains. To any other eye than Xhia's the elements had washed away every last vestige of the sign.

  Xhia worked outwards from the old campsite, following the direction of the stampede, then instinctively divining the direction in which Jim would have driven the stolen herd once he had it under control again. A quarter of a league from the old camp he picked out the faintest trace of the spoor, the scrape of a steel horseshoe on shale that could not have been made by the hoof of an eland bull or any other wild game. He aged the sign, it was not too fresh, nor too old. This was the first peg upon which he began to build the picture of the chase.

  He worked away from it searching in the sheltered places, between two rocks, in the lee of fallen trees, in the malleable clay of a don ga bottom, in the str atas of shale soft enough to bear an imprint and hard enough to retain it.

  Koots and his men followed at a distance, careful not to over-tread and spoil the ancient sign. Often when the spoor was so ethereal as to

  be obscured from even Xhia's sorcery, they unsaddled their horses and waited, smoking and bickering, playing dice, gambling for the reward money they would win with the capture of the fugitives. At last Xhia, with infinite patience, would unravel that part of the puzzle. He would call them, and they would mount up and follow him on through the mountains.

  Gradually the sign became fresher as he narrowed the gap between them and their quarry, and Xhia moved along it with more confidence. None the less, it was three weeks after picking up that first faint hoof print that Xhia caught up with the wandering herd of mules and horses that Jim and Bakkat had used to lure them on, then abandoned.

  At first Koots could not understand how they had been gulled. Here were their horses but no human beings with them. Since the first day he had encountered great difficulty communicating with Xhia, for the Bushman's Dutch was rudimentary and hand signs were not adequate for explaining the complicated nature of the deceit that Bakkat had played upon them. Then it dawned upon Koots that the best horses were missing from this herd of strays: Frost, Crow, Lemon, Stag and, of course, Drumfire and Trueheart.

  "They split off, and left this bunch of animals to lead us away." Koots had understood at last and he blanched with fury. "For all this time we have been wandering in circles, while those criminals got clear away in another direction."

  His anger needed a focus, and that was Xhia. "Catch that yellow rat!" he shouted at Richter and Le Riche. "I want some skin from this stinking little swartze." They grabbed the Bushman before he realized their intention.

  Tie him to that tree." Koots pointed out a large cripple wood They were enjoying this. Their anger with the Bushman was every bit as intense as Koots's: he was directly responsible for their hardship and discomfort over the past months, and retribution would be sweet. They bound him with leather thongs at ankles and wrists. Koots tore off Xhia's leather breech cloth and left him naked.

  "Goffel!" Koots shouted at the Hottentot trooper. "Cut me a bundle of thorn branches this thick." He made a circle of thumb and forefinger. "Leave
the thorns on them."

  Koots shrugged off his leather coat, and windmilled his right arm, loosening the muscles. Goffel came up from the bank of the stream with an armful of thorn branches, and Koots took his time selecting one that had a pleasing whip and rigidity. Xhia watched him with huge eyes as he strained at his bonds. Koots chopped the thorns off the butt end of the stick of his choice so they would not prick his own fingers, but the

  rest of the limber wand bristled with the red-tipped spikes. He flourished the scourge as he advanced on Xhia. "Now, you little reptile, you have led me a fine fandango, but it's your turn to dance now."

  He swung the first cut across Xhia's shoulder-blades. The cane raised a welt upon it, studded with an irregular rash of thorn punctures, from each of which oozed a drop of blood. Xhia howled with pain and outrage.

  "Sing, you bastard mating of baboons," Koots told him, with grim satisfaction. "You must learn that you cannot take Herminius Koots for a fool." He swung again. The green branch began to disintegrate with the force of the blows, and the thorns broke off and embedded themselves in Xhia's flesh.

  Xhia twisted and fought against his bonds until his wrists were rubbed bloody and raw by the leather loops. In a voice too loud for his little frame he screamed his fury and his vows of revenge in a language that the white man could not understand.

  "You will die for this, you white hyena! You eater of dung! You copulater with corpses! I shall kill you with the slowest of my poisons, you drinker of snake's piss and monkey sperm."

  Koots discarded the broken branch and selected another. He wiped the sweat off his face with the sleeve of his shirt and began again. He kept it up until both he and Xhia were exhausted. His shirt was sodden and his breathing hoarse. Xhia hung silently on the leather thongs and the blood ran in dark snakes down his back and buttocks to drip into the dust between his feet. Only then did Koots step back. "Leave him hanging there tonight," he ordered. "He should be in a more willing mood by the morning. Nothing like a good thrashing to get these zwartes working properly."

  Slowly Xhia turned his head and looked into Koots's face. He spoke softly. "I will give you the death of twenty days. You will plead with me to kill you at the end."

  Koots did not understand the words but when he saw the hatred in Xhia's beady black eyes he understood the sense, and stepped back involuntarily. "Corporal Richter," he said, 'we will have to keep him tied up until he gets over his sore back and his murderous temper." He picked up Xhia's quiver of poisoned arrows and tossed it on to the fire. "Don't let him have any weapon until he's learned his lesson. I don't want it between my shoulder-blades. They are treacherous bastards, these little apes."

  In the morning Goffel used the point of his bayonet to dig the thorns ut of the punctures that covered Xhia's back, but some had been driven in too deeply. Over the following days they festered and suppurated,

  before they sloughed to the surface. With the fortitude of a wild thing Xhia recovered his strength and agility swiftly. His expression was inscrutable, and only when he looked at Koots did the hatred gleam out of those anthracite dark eyes.

  "Drink the wind, Xhia," Koots cuffed him casually as he would a recalcitrant dog, 'and don't look at me like that, or I'll waste another thorn tree on your stinking hide." He pointed back along the trail that had led them to this place. "Now go back and find where Jim Courtney split his spoor."

  They retraced their footsteps over the ground they had covered during the last ten days. They followed Xhia. Gradually his torn back clotted with festering scabs as his injuries started to heal. However, it seemed that the beating had indeed been beneficial for he worked hard. He seldom lifted his eyes from the ground, except to study the lie of the terrain ahead. They went swiftly for he had their own tracks to use as a marker. Sometimes he followed a spur for a short way until it proved false or illusory, then returned to the main trail.

  At last they reached the stratum of black igneous rock beside the waterfall. On the way out they had passed this spot with only a brief pause. Even though this seemed an ideal location for Bakkat to stage a deception, Xhia's suspicions had been only mildly excited. Almost immediately he had picked up the strong clear spoor on the further side of the stratum, and followed it away.

  Now he shook his head as he returned to the spot. "I was a fool. Now I can smell Bakkat's treachery in the air." He sniffed like a dog getting a whiff of the chase. He reached the place where Bakkat had cast the masking spell, and he picked up a fragment of black ash. He examined it carefully and saw it was the ash of the long tree, the wizard's tree.

  "Here he burned the long and cast his spell to cheat me. I walked past this place with my eyes blinded." He was angry at having been so easily deluded by a man he considered his inferior in cunning and wizard-craft. He went down on his hands and knees and snuffled the earth. "This is where he would have pissed to cover his scent." But the traces were months old and even his nose could distinguish no residual ammoniac odour of Bakkat's urine.

  He stood up again and made a sign of separation to Koots, laying the palms of his hands together, then parting them with a swimming motion. This is the place," he said in execrable Dutch, pointing left and right. "Horses go that way. Man go that way."

  "By the blood of the crucifixion, this time you had better be right or I will have your balls. Do you understand?"

  "No understand." Xhia shook his head.

  Koots reached down and seized a handful of Xhia's genitalia, and with his other hand drew his dagger. He lifted Xhia on tiptoe by his scrotum, then made the gesture of drawing the blade across the stretched sac, almost touching the skin, but shaving past it by a hair's breadth.

  "Cut your balls," he repeated. "VerstaanT

  Xhia nodded soundlessly and Koots pushed him away. "Get on with it, then."

  They camped on the bank above the waterfall, and Xhia worked both banks of the river for three miles upstream and down. First he covered the water's edge, but in the last ten days or so the river had come down in spate, then subsided again. At the high-water mark dry grass and debris were stranded in the branches of the trees that grew along the banks. Not even the heaviest trodden spoor could have survived the inundation.

  Next Xhia moved out from the river bank, climbing up the slopes to the highest point that the flood waters had reached. He worked the ground painstakingly, scrutinizing every inch. All his experience and magic yielded nothing. The trail was gone, washed away. He had no way of knowing whether Bakkat had gone upstream or down. He had come up against an impenetrable wall.

  Koots's nerves were already raw, and when he realized that Xhia had failed again he flew into a fit of fury more vicious than the last. He had Xhia bound again, but this time they hung him by his heels over a smouldering fire which Koots stoked carefully with green leaves. Xhia's peppercorn hair frizzled in the heat and he coughed, choked and retched in the smoke as he writhed and swung on the rope's end.

  The rest of the band broke off their dice game to watch. They were all thoroughly bored and dispirited by this time, and the lure of the reward was waning as the trail grew colder each day. Richter and Le Riche had already started muttering threats of mutiny, of abandoning the pursuit, escaping from these harsh and merciless mountains and heading back to the colony.

  "Kill the little monkey," said Le Riche in a tone of disinterest. "Have done with him, and let's go home."

  Instead Koots stood up and drew his knife, slashed the rope that held Xhia suspended, and the little man dropped headlong into the coals. He let out another shriek and rolled out of the fire, only slightly more singed than he had been already. Koots grabbed the end of the rope that was still round his ankles and dragged Xhia to the nearest tree. He tied him there, and left him while he went back to eat the midday meal.

  Xhia crouched against the trunk of the tree, muttering to himself and

  examining his injuries. When Koots had finished eating he flicked the coffee grounds out of his mug, and shouted for Goffel. The Hottentot we
nt with him to the tree and they both looked down at Xhia. "I want you to tell this little bastard in his own language, that I am going to keep him tied up. He will receive no water or food and I will beat him every day until he does his job and finds the spoor again."

  Goffel translated this threat. Xhia hissed angrily and covered his face, to show how the sight of Koots offended him.

  "Tell him I am in no hurry," Koots instructed. Tell him I can wait until he shrivels up and dries in the sun like the baboon turd that he is."

  In the morning Xhia was still tied to the tree, but while Koots and his troopers were eating a breakfast of grilled corn cakes and smoked Dutch sausage Xhia called out to Goffel in the language of the San. The Hottentot went to squat in front of him and they spoke together quietly for a long time. Then Goffel came back to Koots. "Xhia says that he can find Somoya for you."