The Burning Shore

by Wilbur Smith

  Leading the pack horse and carrying the child, Lothar reached his wagons late that same afternoon.

  Swart Hendrick and the camp servants ran out to meet him, agog with curiosity, and Lothar gave his orders.

  ‘I want a separate shelter for the woman, alongside mine. Thatch the roof to keep it cool, and hang canvas sides we can raise to let in the breeze – and I want it ready by nightfall.’

  He carried Centaine to his own cot and bathed her again before dressing her in one of the long nightgowns that Anna Stok had provided.

  She was still not conscious, though once she opened her eyes. They were unfocused and dreamy, and she muttered in French so he could not understand.

  He told her, ‘You are safe. You are with friends.’

  The pupils of her eyes reacted to light, which he knew was an encouraging sign, but the lids fluttered closed and she relapsed into unconsciousness, or sleep from which he was careful not to rouse her.

  With access to his medicine chest again, Lothar was able to redress her wounds, spreading them liberally with an ointment which was his favourite cure-all inherited from his mother. He bound them up in fresh bandages.

  By this time the child was once again hungry and letting it be widely known. Lothar had a milch-goat amongst his stock, and he held Shasa on his lap while he fed him the diluted goat’s milk. Afterwards he tried to make Centaine drink a little warm soup, but she struggled weakly and almost choked. So he carried her to the shelter which his servants had completed, and laid her on a cot of laced rawhide thongs with a sheepskin mattress and fresh blankets. He placed the child beside her and during the night he woke more than once from a light sleep to go to them.

  Just before dawn he at last fell into deep sleep, only to be shaken awake almost immediately.

  ‘What is it?’ He reached instinctively for the rifle at his head.

  ‘Come quickly!’ Swart Hendrick’s hoarse whisper at his ear. ‘The cattle were restless. I thought it might be a lion.’

  ‘What is it, man?’ Lothar demanded irritably. ‘Get on with it, spit it out.’

  ‘It was not a lion – much worse! There are wild San out there. They have been creeping around the camp all night. I think they are after the cattle.’

  Lothar swung his legs over the cot and groped for his boots.

  ‘Have Vark Jan and Klein Boy returned yet?’ It would be easier with a large party.

  ‘Not yet,’ Hendrick shook his head.

  ‘Very well, we’ll hunt alone. Saddle the horses. We must not let the little yellow devils get too much of a start on us.’

  As he stood up, he checked the load of the Mauser, then pulled the sheepskin off his cot and stooped out of the shelter. He hurried to where Swart Hendrick was holding the horses.

  O’wa had not been able to force himself to approach closer than two hundred paces to the camp of the strangers. Even at that distance the strange sounds and odours that carried to him confused him. The ring of axe on wood, the clatter of a bucket, the bleat of a goat made him start; the smell of paraffin and soap, of coffee and woollen clothing troubled him, while the sounds of men speaking in unfamiliar cadence and harsh sibilance were as terrifying to him as the hissing of serpents.

  He lay against the earth, his heart hammering painfully, and whispered to H’ani, ‘Nam Child is with her own kind at last. She is lost to us, old grandmother. This is a sickness of the head, this crazy following after her. We both knew well that the others will murder us if they discover that we are here.’

  ‘Nam Child is hurt. You read the sign beneath the mopani tree where the naked carcass of the lion lay,’ H’ani whispered back. ‘You saw her blood on the earth.’

  ‘She is with her own kind,’ O’wa repeated stubbornly. ‘They will care for her. She does not need us any more. She went in the night and left us without a word of farewell.’

  ‘Old grandfather, I know that what you say is true, but how will I ever smile again if I never know how badly she has been hurt? How will I ever sleep again if I never see little Shasa safe at her breast?’

  ‘You risk both our lives for a glimpse of someone who has departed. They are dead to us now, leave them be.’

  ‘I risk my own life, my husband, for to me it has no further value if I do not know that Nam Child, the daughter of my heart if not of my own womb, is alive and will stay alive. I risk my own life for the touch of Shasa once more. I do not ask you to come with me.’

  H’ani rose, and before he could protest, scuttled away into the shadows, heading towards the faint glow where the watch-fire showed through the trees. O’wa came up on his knees, but his courage failed him again, and he lay and covered his head with an arm.

  ‘Oh, stupid old woman,’ he lamented. ‘Do you not know that without you my heart is a desert? When they kill you, I will die a hundred deaths to your one.’

  H’ani crept towards the camp, circling downwind, watching the drift of smoke from the fire, for she knew that if the cattle or the horses scented her, they would stamp and mill and alert the camp. Every few paces she sank to the ground and listened with all her soul, staring into the shadows around the wagons and the crude huts of the encampment, watching for those tall, very black men, dressed in outlandish apparel and hung with glittering metal weapons.

  They were all asleep, she could make out the shapes around the fire and the stink of their bodies in her nostrils made her shake with fear. She forced herself to rise and go forward, keeping one of the wagons between her and the sleeping men, until she could crouch beside the tall rear wheel of the wagon.

  She was certain that Nam Child was in one of the thatched shelters, but to choose the wrong one would bring disaster upon her. She decided on the nearest of the shelters and crawled on her hands and knees to the entrance. Her eyes were good in the gloom, almost like those of a cat, but all she could see was a dark indefinite bundle on a raised structure at the far end of the shelter, a human shape, perhaps, but there was no way of being certain.

  The shape stirred, and then coughed and grunted.

  ‘A man!’ Her heart thudded so loudly, she was certain it would wake him. She drew back, and crawled to the second shelter.

  Here there was another sleeping form. H’ani crept towards it timidly, and when she was within arm’s length, her nostrils flared. She recognized the milky smell of Shasa, and the odour of Nam Child’s skin which to the old woman was as sweet as the wild melon.

  She knelt beside the cot, and Shasa sensed her presence and whimpered. H’ani touched his forehead, and then slipped the tip of her little finger into his mouth. She had taught him well; all Bushmen children learned to be still under this special restraint, for the safety of the clan could depend on their silence. Sasha relaxed under the familiar touch and smell of the old woman.

  H’ani felt for Nam Child’s face. The heat of her cheeks told her that Nam Child was in light fever, and she leaned forward and smelled her breath. It was soured with pain and sickness, but lacked the rank feral stench of virulent infection. H’ani longed for the opportunity to examine and dress her wounds, but knew it was vain.

  Instead she placed her lips against the girl’s ear and whispered, ‘My heart, my little bird, I call all the spirits of the clan to protect you. Your old grandfather and I will dance for you, to strengthen and cure you.’

  The old woman’s voice reached something deep in the unconscious girl’s being. Images formed in her mind.

  ‘Old grandmother,’ she muttered, and smiled at the dream images. ‘Old grandmother—’

  ‘I am with you,’ H’ani replied. ‘I will be with you always and always—’ That was all she could say, for she could not risk the sob that crouched in her throat ready to burst through her lips. She touched them each once more, the child and the mother, on their lips and their closed eyes, then she rose and scuttled from the shelter. Her tears blinded her, her grief swamped her senses, she passed close to the thorn laager where the horses stood.

  One of the horses snorted
and stamped and tossed its head at the sharp unfamiliar scent. As H’ani disappeared into the night, one of the men lying beside the fire sat up and threw aside his blanket to go to the restless horses. Halfway there, he paused and then stooped over the tiny footprint in the dust.

  It was strange how weary H’ani felt now, as she and O’wa made their way back around the base of the mountain towards the secret valley.

  While they had followed the trail of Nam Child and Shasa, she had felt as though she could run for ever, as though she were a young woman again, imbued with boundless energy and strength in her concern for the safety of the two she loved as dearly as she loved her ancient husband. Now, however, when she had turned her back upon them for ever, she felt the full weight of her age, and it pressed her down so that her usual alert swinging trot was reduced to a heavy plod, and the weariness ached in her legs and up her spine.

  In front of her O’wa moved as slowly, and she sensed the effort that each pace cost him. In the time that it had taken the sun to rise a handspan above the horizon, both of them had been deprived of the force and purpose that made survival in their harsh world possible. Once more they had suffered terrible bereavement, but this time they did not have the will to rise above it.

  Ahead of her O’wa halted and sank down on his haunches. She had never in all the long years seen him so beaten, and when she squatted beside him, he turned his head slowly to her. ‘Old grandmother, I am tired,’ he whispered. ‘I would like to sleep for a long time. The sun hurts my eyes.’ He held up his hand to shield them.

  ‘It has been a long hard road, old grandfather, but we are at peace with the spirits of our clan, and Nam Child is safe with her own kind. We can rest a while now.’ Suddenly she felt the grief come up her throat and she choked upon it, but there were no tears. It seemed that all the moisture had dried from her wizened old frame. There were no tears, but the need to weep was like an arrow in her chest, and she rocked on her heels and made a little humming sound in her throat to try to alleviate the pain, so she did not hear the horses coming.

  It was O’wa who dropped his hand from his eyes and cocked his head to the tremor on the still morning air, and when H’ani saw the fright in his eyes, she listened and heard it also.

  ‘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 klipspringer,’ 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 misshap-ened 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.

  O’wa 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 lanyard 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 look 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.