by Wilbur Smith
But he was in no doubt what the sound was. He had heard it so often
before. It was the sound of faraway automatic gunfire, almost certainly
an AK-47 assault rifle firing, not long ragged bursts, but short taps of
three rounds, an art that took expertise and practice.
He was sure that the person doing the shooting was a trained
professional.
He tilted his wrist so that the luminescent dial of his watch caught the
starlight, and he saw that it was a few minutes after three 'clock in
the morning.
He stood listening for a long time, but the firing was not repeated. At
last he returned to where Royan lay and settled down beside her again.
However, he slept only shallowly and intermittently, and kept starting
awake listening for more gunfire in the night.
Royan began to stir at the first lemon and orange flush of dawn in the
eastern sky, and while they ate the remains of the survival rations for
their breakfast he told her about the noise that had woken him during
the night.
"Do you think it could have been Boris?" she asked.
"He May have caught up with Mek and Tessay."
"I doubt that very much. Boris has already been gone several days. He
should be well out of earshot by now, even beyond the sound range of the
heaviest weapons."
"Who do you suppose it was, then?"
"I have no idea. But I don't like it. We should start back to camp as
soon as we have had another look around the quarry. After that there is
nothing further that we can do at this stage. We should make tracks for
home and mother."
As soon as the light was strong enough, Nicholas shot a spool of film to
make a record of the quarry. For ison of scale, Royan posed beside
compar the wall in which the embryonic blocks still lay. As she warmed
to her role as a model she started to clown for him. She climbed on to
the biggest of the slabs and hammed it up for the camera, pouting with
one hand behind her head in the style of Marilyn Monroe.
When, finally, they went off down the valley towards the monastery they
were both exultant and garrulous after their success. Their discussion
was animated as they bounced ideas back and forth, and laid their plans
for the further exploitation of these wonderful discoveries.
By the time they reached the pink cliffs at the lower end of the chasm
it was late morning. There they met a small party of monks from the
monastery coming up the trail.
Even from a distance it was obvious that something dreadful had happened
during their absence: the sorrowful ululations of the monks sent chills
down Royan's spine.
It was the universal African sound of mourning, the harbinger of death
and disaster. As they approached they saw that the monks were picking up
handfuls of dust from the track and pouring it over their heads as they
wailed and lamented.
"What is it, Tamre?" Royan asked the boy. "Go and find out for usP Tamre
ran ahead to meet his brother monks.
They stopped in the middle of the path and fell into a high-pitched
discussion, weeping and gesticulating. Then Tamre ran back to them.
"Your people at the camp. Something terrible has happened. Bad men came
in the might. Many of the servants are dead," he screamed.
Nicholas grabbed Royan's hand. "Come on!" he snapped, "let's find out
what is going on here."
They ran the last mile to the camp, and arrived to find another circle
of monks gathered around something in front of the kitchen hut.
Nicholas pushed them aside and elbowed his way to the front. There he
stopped and stared with a sinking feeling in his gut, and the sweat on
his face turned cold with horror. Under a buzzing blue pall of flies lay
the bloodsplattered corpse of the cook and three other camp servants.
Their hands had been bound behind their backs, and then they had been
forced to kneel before being shot in the back of the head at close
range.
"Don't lookV Nicholas warned Royan as she came up.
"It's not very pretty."
But she ignored his advice and came to stand beside him. "Oh, sweet
heavens. They have been slaughtered like cattle in an abattoir," She
gagged.
"This explains the sound of gunfire that I heard last night," he
answered grimly. He went forward to identify the dead men. "Aly and Kif
are not here. Where are they?" He raised his voice and called in Arabic,
turning to face the crowd. "Aly, where are you?"
The tracker pushed his way forward. "I am here, effendi." His voice was
shaky and his face was haggard. "Mere was blood on the front of his
shirt.
"How did this happen?" Nicholas seized his arm and steadied him.
"Men came in the night with the guns. Shufta. They shot into the huts
where we were sleeping. They gave us no warning. They just started
shooting.
"How many of them? Who were they?" Nicholas demanded.
"I do not know how many of them there were. It was dark. I was asleep. I
ran away when the shooting began.
They were shufta, bandits, killers. They were hyenas and jackals - there
was no reason for what they have done.
These men were my brothers, my friends." He began to sob, and the tears
streamed down his face.
Royan turned away, sickened and horrified. She went to her hut and
stopped in the doorway. It had been ransacked. Her bags had been turned
out on to the floor.
Her bedding had been stripped, and the mattress thrown into the corner.
As though she were a sleepwalker in a nightmare, she crossed the floor
and picked up the canvas folder in which she kept her papers. She turned
it upside down and shook it. It was empty. The satellite photo graphs
and the maps, all her rubbings of the stele, the Polaroids that Nicholas
had taken in Tanus's tomb - everything was gone.
Royan picked up the bed and set it the right way up.
She sat down on it, and tried to gather her thoughts. She felt confused
and shaken. The image of those bloody, bullet-ripped corpses laid out in
front of the kitchen haunted her, and she found it difficult to
concentrate and to think clearly.
Nicholas burst into her hut and looked around quickly.
"They did the same thing to me. Ransacked the place. My rifle has gone,
and all my papers. But at least I had the passports and travellers'
cheques in my day-pack-' He broke off as he saw the empty canvas folder
lying at her feet. "Have they taken the-'
"Yes!" she forestalled his question. "They have cleaned out all our
research material, even the Polaroids. Thank God you had the undeveloped
rolls of film with you. It's the same as happened to Duraid and me all
over again. We aren't safe from them, even here,'even out in the
remotest part of the bush." There was the edge of hysteria in her voice.
She jumped up from the bed and ran to him.
"Oh, Nicky, what would have happened if we had been in camp last night?"
She threw her arms around him, and clung to him. "We would be lying out
there in the sun now, all bloody and covered with flies."
"Steady on, my de
ar. Let's not jump to any conclusions.
This could just be a chance raid by bandits."
"Then why did they steal our papers? What value would ordinary shtifta
place on rubbings and Polaroids?
Where was the Pegasus helicopter heading just before the raid? They were
after us, Nicky. I feel it so strongly. They wanted to kill us just as
they did Duraid. They could return at any time, and now we are unarmed
and helpless."
"All right, I agree with you that we are pretty vulnerable here. It
would be wise to get out as soon as possible.
There isn't any point in staying on here anyway. There's nothing more we
can do at this stage." He hugged her and shook her gently. "Brace up! We
will salvage what we can from this mess, and then get moving back to the
vehicles right away."
"What about the dead men?" She stood back, and with an effort forced
back her, tears and brought herself under control. "How many of our
people survived?"
"Aly, Salin and Kif escaped. They dived out of their huts and ran off
into the darkness as soon as the shooting started. I have told them to
get ready to leave right away. I have spoken to one of the senior
priests. They will take care of the burial of the dead, and will report
to the authorities as soon as they are able. But they agree that the
attack was aimed at us, and that we are still in danger, and that we
should get away as soon as possible."
Within the hour they were ready to start. Nicholas had decided to leave
all the camping equipment and Boris's personal gear in the charge of
Jali Hora. The mules were lightly loaded, and he planned to make a
forced march out of the gorge.
The abbot had given them an escort of monks to accompany them to the top
of the escarpment. "Only a truly Godless man would attack you while you
are under the protection of the crosss' he explained.
Nicholas found the dried hide and head of the striped dik-dik still in
the skinning shed. He rolled it into a bundle and strapped it on to the
load atop one of the mules, and then gave the order for the attenuated
caravan to move out.
Tamre had insinuated himself into the group of monks who were escorting
the party. He kept close behind Royan as they set off up the trail, with
the lamentations and farewells of the monastic community following them
for the first mile.
It was hot in this brutal midday. There was no movement of air to bring
relief, and the stone walls of the valley sucked up the heat of that
awful sun and spewed it back over them as they toiled up the steep
gradients. It dried their sweat even as it oozed through their pores,
leaving patterns of white salt crystals on their skins and clothing. The
muleteers, spurred on by fear, set a killing pace, trotting behind their
beasts and prodding their testicles with a sharpened stick to keep them
moving at their best pace.
By midafternoon they had retraced the morning's travel and once more
reached the putative site of Taita's dam wall. Nicholas and Royan took a
few.minutes'breather to dip their heads in the river and sluice the salt
and sweat from their faces and necks. Then they stood together above the
falls and took a brief farewell of the chasm in which lay all their
hopes and dreams.
"How long until we return?"she asked.
"We cannot afford to leave it too long," he told her.
"Big rains are due soon, and the hyenas have got the scent and are
crowding in. From now on every day will be precious, and every hour we
lose may be crucial."
She stared down into the chasm and said softly, "You haven't won yet,
Taita. The game is still afoot."
They turned away together and followed the mules up the trail towards
the escarpment wall. That evening they did not stop at the traditional
campsite beside the river, but pressed on several miles further until
darkness forced a halt. There was no attempt to build a comfortable
camp.
They dined on cakes of injera bread dipped in the wat pot that the monks
had carried with them. Then Nicholas and Royan spread their bedrolls
side by side on the stony earth and, using the mule packs as pillows,
fell into exhausted, dreamless sleep.
The next morning, while the mules were being loaded in the pre-dawn
darkness, they drank a bowl of strong bitter black Ethiopian coffee.
Then they started out along the trail again.
As the rising sun lit the sheer walls of the escarpment ahead of them
they seemed close enough to touch, and Nicholas remarked to Royan, as
she swung along longlegged beside him, "At this pace we should reach the
foot of the escarpment this afternoon, and there is a good chance that
we might sleep tonight in the cavern behind the waterfall."
"That means we could cut a couple of days off the journey and reach the
trucks some time tomorrow."
"Possibly," he said. "I'll be glad to get out of here."
"It feels like a trap," Royan agreed, looking at the rocky, broken
ground that rose on either hand, hemming them into the narrow bottom of
the Dandera river. "I have been doing a bit of thinking, Nicky."
"Let's hear your conclusions."
"No conclusions, only some disturbing thoughts. Suppose somebody at
Pegasus who can understand them is now in possession of our rubbings and
Polaroids. What will their reaction be if they know how much progress we
have made in the search?"
"Not -very happy thoughts," he agreed. "But on the other hand there is
not much we can do about any of that until we get back to civilization,
except keep our eyes wide.
open and our wits about us. Hell, I haven't even got the little Rigby
rifle. We are a flock of sitting ducks."
Aly, the muleteers and the monks seemed to be of the same opinion, for
they never slackened the pace. It was midday before they called the
first brief halt to brew coffee and to water the mules. While the men
lit fires, Nicholas took his binoculars from the mule pack and began to
climb the rock slope. He had not covered much ground before he glanced
back and saw Royan climbing after him. He waited for her to catch up.
"You should have taken the chance to rest," he told her severely. "Heat
exhaustion is a real danger."
I don't trust you going off on your own. I want to know what you are up
to."
"Just a little recce. We should have scouts out ahead, not just go
charging blindly along the trail like this. If I remember correctly from
the inward march, some of the ound lies just ahead of us. Lord knows
what we worst gr may run into."
They went on upwards, but it was not possible to reach the crest for a
sheet of unscalable vertical cliff barred their way. Nicholas chose the
best vantage point below this barrier, and glassed both slopes of the
valley ahead of them.
The terrain was as he had remembered it. They were approaching the foot
of the escarpment wall and the ground was becoming more rugged and
severe, like the swell of the open ocean sensing the land and rising up
in alarm before breaking in
confusion upon the shore. The trail followed
the river closely. The cliffs hung over the narrow aisle of ound that
made up the bank, sculpted by wind and gr weather into strange, menacing
shapes, like the battlements of a wicked witch's castle in an old Disney
cartoon.
At one point a buttress of red sandstone overhung the trail, forcing the
river to detour around it, and the trail was reduced so much that it
would be difficult for a laden mule to negotiate without being pushed
off the bank into the river.
Nicholas studied the bottom of the valley carefully through the lens. He
could pick out nothing that seemed suspicious or untoward, so he raised
his head and swept the Cliffs and their tops.
At that moment Aly's voice came up from the valley below, echoing along
the slope as he shouted, "Hurry, effendi! The mules are ready to go on!'
Nicholas waved down to him, but then lifted the binoculars for one more
sweep of the ground ahead. A wink of bright light caught his eye - a
brief ephemeral stab of brilliance like the signal of a heliograph. He
switched his whole attention to the spot on the cliff from which it had
emanated.
"What is it? What have you seen?" Royan demanded.
am not sure. Probably nothing," he replied, without lowering the
binoculars. It may have been a reflection from a polished metal surface,
or from the lens of another pair of binoculars, or from the barrel of a
sniper's rifle, he thought. On the other hand, a chip of mica or a
pebble of rock crystal could reflect sunlight the same way, and even
some of the aloes and other succulent plants have shiny leaves. He
watched the spot carefully for a few more minutes, and then Aly's voice
floated up to them again.
"Hurry, effendi. The mule-drivers will not wait!
He stood up. "All right. Nothing. Let's go." He took Royan's arm to help
her over the rough footing, and they started down. At that moment he
heard the rattle of stones from further up the slope, and he stopped her
and held her arm to keep her quiet. They waited, watching the skyline.
Abruptly a pair of long curling horns appeared over the crest, and under
them the head of an old kudu bull, his trumpet-shaped ears pricked
forward and the fringe of his dewlap blowing in the hot, light breeze.
He stopped on the edge of the cliff just above where they crouched, but
he had not seen them. The kudu turned his head and stared back in the