by Wilbur Smith
Blaine, I have been alone for a long time with a small child to protect and to plan for. When I came to this land as a girl, I served a hard, unrelenting apprenticeship in this desert. I learned that there was nobody I could rely upon but myself, no way to survive but through my own strength and determination. That hasn't altered. I still have nobody but myself on whom I can rely. Isn't that so, Blaine? I wish it were not. He did not attempt to avoid her gaze but looked back at her candidly. I wish,, He broke off and she finished the statement for him. But, you have Isabella and your girls. He nodded. Yes, they cannot fend for themselves. And I can!, isn't that right, Blaine? Don't be bitter with me, please. I did not seek this. I have never made you any promises. I'm sorry. She was immediately contrite. You are right.
You have never promised me anything., She glanced at her watch. 'Our little hour is up, she said, and rose in a single lithe movement to her feet.
I shall just have to go on being strong and hard, she said.
But never tax me with it again, please Blaine. Never again. They had been forced to abandon five of their own horses since leaving the water-hole of the elephant, and Blaine was alternating between walking and riding in an attempt to save the remaining animals. They rode for half an hour and then dismounted and led for the next half hour.
Only the Bushmen were unaffected by the thirst and fatigue and heat, and they chafed at the halting and torturous pace they were forced to adopt.
The only consolation is that De La Rey is doing even worse than we are. From the spoor they could read that the fugitives, reduced to a single horse between them, were making even slower progress. And it's still thirty miles or more to the river. Blaine checked his watch. Time to walk again, I'm afraid. Centaine groaned softly as she swung down from the saddle. She ached in every muscle, and the tendons of her hamstrings and calves felt like twisted wire strands.
They trudged forward and every pace required a conscious effort. Centaine's tongue filled her mouth, thick and leathery, and the mucous membrane of her throat and nostrils was swollen and painful so that it was difficult to breathe. She tried to collect her saliva and hold it in her mouth, but it was gummy and sour, serving only to make her thirst more poignant.
She had forgotten what it was like to be truly thirsty, and the soft sloshing sound of the water bottles on the saddle of the horse she was leading became a torment, She could think of nothing but when they would next be allowed to drink. She kept glancing at her wrist-watch, convincing herself that it had stopped, that she had forgotten to wind it, that at any moment Blaine would lift his arm to halt the column and they could unscrew the stoppers on the water bottles.
Nobody spoke from choice. All orders were terse and monosyllabic, every word an effort.
I won't be the first to give in, Centaine decided grimly, and then she was alarmed that the thought had even occurred to her. 'Nobody will give in. We have to catch them before the river and the river is not far ahead. She found she was focusing only on the earth at her feet, interest in her surroundings, and she knew that was losing a dangerous sign, the first small surrender. She forced herself to look up. Blaine was ahead of her. She had fallen back in those few paces, and she made a huge effort and dragged her horse forward until she was side by side with him again.
Immediately she felt heartened, she had won another victory over her body's frailty.
Blaine smiled at her, but she saw that it had cost him an
effort also. Those kopjes are not marked on the map, he said.
She had not noticed them, but now she looked up and a mile ahead saw their smooth bald granite heads raised above the forest. She had never been this far north; it was new territory for her.
I don't think this country has ever been surveyed, she whispered, and then cleared her throat and spoke more clearly. Only the river itself has been mapped., We will drink when we reach the foot of the nearest hill, he promised her.
A carrot for the donkey, she murmured, and he grinned.
Think about the river. That is a garden full of carrots. And they relapsed into silence; the Bushmen led them directly towards the hills. At the base of the granite cone they found the last of Lothar De La Rey's horses.
It lay on its side, but it lifted its head as they walked up to it. Blaine's mare whickered softly, and the downed animal tried to reply but the effort was too much. It dropped its head flat against the earth and its short hampered breathing raised tiny wisps of dust that swirled around its nostrils.
The Bushmen circled the dying animal and then conferred excitedly.
Kwi ran a short way towards the grey side of the kopje and looked up.
They all followed his example, staring up the steep rounded expanse of granite. It was two or three hundred feet high. The surface was not as smooth as it had appeared at a distance. There were deep cracks, some lateral, others running vertically from the foot to the summit, and the granite was flaking away in the onion peel effect caused by heat expansion and contraction. This left small sharp-edged steps which would give footholds and make it possible for a man to reach the top, though it would be an exposed and potentially dangerous climb.
On the summit a cluster of perfectly round boulders, each the size of a large dwelling house, formed a symmetrical crown. The whole was one of those natural compositions so artful and contrived that it seemed to have been conceived and executed by human engineers. Centaine was strongly reminded of the dolmens which she had visited as a child in France, or of one of those ancient Mayan temples in the South American jungles which she had seen illustrated.
Blaine had left her side and led his mount towards the foot of the granite cliff, and something on the crest of the kopje caught Centaine's eye. It was a flicker of movement in the shadow beneath one of the crowning boulders on the summit, and she shouted a warning.
Blaine, be careful! On the top, He was standing at his horse's head with the reins over his shoulder, staring upwards. But before he could respond to her warning there was a thud as though a sack of wheat had been dropped on a stone floor. Centaine did not recognize the sound as a high-velocity bullet striking living flesh until Blaine's horse staggered, its front legs collapsed and it dropped heavily, dragging Blaine with it.
Centaine was stunned until she heard the whiplash crack of the Mauser from the summit of the kopje and she realized that the bullet had reached them before the sound.
All around her the troopers were shouting and wrestling with their panicking horses, and Centaine spun and vaulted for the saddle of her own mount. With one hand on the pommel and without touching the stirrup irons she was up, dragging the horse's head around.
Blaine, I'm coming, she screamed. He had scrambled to his feet beside the carcass of his horse, and she rode for him.
Grab my stirrup, she called, and the Mausers up on the hill were cracking bullets amongst them. She saw Sergeant Hansmeyer's horse shot dead beneath him and he was pitched headlong from the saddle.
Blaine ran to meet her and seized her dangling stirrup. She turned the horse and heeled him into a full gallop, pumping the reins, heading back for the sparse cover of the mopani two hundred yards behind them.
Blaine was swinging on the stirrup leather, his feet skimming the ground, making giant strides as he kept level with her.
Are you all right? she yelled.
Keep going! His voice strained at the effort and she looked back under her arm. The gunfire still crackled and snapped around them. One of the troopers turned back to help Sergeant Hansmeyer, but as he reached him a bullet hit his horse in the head and it crashed over and flung the trooper sprawling to earth.
They are picking off the horses! Centaine cried, as she realized that hers was the only animal still unscathed. All the others were down, killed with a single shot in the head for each of them. It was superb marksmanship, for the men on the summit were firing downhill at a range of one hundred and fifty paces or more.
Ahead of her Centaine saw a shallow ravine that she had not noticed be
fore. There was a tangle of fallen dead mopani branches upon the nearest bank, a natural palisade, and she rode for it, forcing her winded horse down the bank in a scrambling leap and then immediately springing down and seizing his head to control him.
Blaine had been dragged off his feet and had rolled down the bank, but he pulled himself up. I walked into that ambush like a greenhorn, he snarled, angry at himself. Too bloody tired to think straight. He jerked the rifle out of the scabbard on Centaine's saddle and climbed quickly to the lip of the bank.
Ahead of him the dead horses lay below the steep smooth slope of the kopje, and Sergeant Hansmeyer and his troopers were dodging and jinking as they sprinted back for the cover of the ravine. Mauser-fire crackled, kicking up spouts of yellow dust about their feet, and they winced and ducked at the implosion of air in their eardrums as passing shot whipped about their heads.
Magically the Bushmen had disappeared, like little brown leprechauns, at the first shot. Centaine knew they would not see them again. Already they were on their way back to join their clan at O'chee Pan.
Blaine pushed up the rear sight of the Lee Enfield to four hundred yards and aimed for the crest of the kopje, where a feather of drifting blue gun-smoke betrayed the hi gunmen. He fired as fast as he could work the bolt, spraying bullets to cover the fleeing troopers, watching white chips of granite burst from the skyline of the kopje as the raking fire withered away. He snatched a clip of ammunition from his bandolier and pressed the brass cartridges into the open breech of the hot rifle, slammed the bolt shut and flung the weapon to his shoulder, and poured fire up at the marksmen on the crest of the kopje.
one by one Hansmeyer and his troopers reached the ravine and tumbled into it, sweating and panting wildly. With grim satisfaction Blaine noticed that each of them had carried his rifle with him, and they wore their bandoliers strapped across their chests, seventy-five rounds a man.
They shot the horses in the head but never touched a man. Hansmeyer's breathing whistled in his throat as he struggled with the words.
They never fired a shot near me, Centaine blurted. Lothar must have taken great care not to endanger her. She realized with a tremor just how easily he could have put a bullet into the back of her skull as she fled.
Blaine was reloading the Lee Enfield, but he looked up and smiled bumourlessly. The fellow is no idiot. He knows that he has shot his bolt, and he is not looking to add murder to the long list of the charges against him. He looked at Hansmeyer. How many men on the kopje? he demanded.
I don't know, Hansmeyer answered. But there is more than one. The rate of fire was too much for one man, and I heard shots overlapping. All right, let's find out how many there are. Blaine beckoned Centaine and Hansmeyer up beside him and explained.
Centaine took his binoculars and moved down the ravine until she was well out on the flank and below a dense tuft of grass which grew on the lip of the ravine. She used the tuft as a screen and raised her head until she could make out the summit of the kopje. She cused the binoculars and called Ready! Blaine had his helmet on the ramrod of his rifle, and he lifted it and Hansmeyer fired two shots into the air to draw the attention of the marksmen on the kopje.
Almost immediately the answering fusillade crackled from the hilltop. More than one shot fired simultaneously, and dust kicked off the lip of the ravine inches from the khaki helmet while ricochet howled away over the mopani trees.
Two or three, Hansmeyer called.
Three, Centaine confirmed, lowering the binoculars as she ducked down. I saw three heads., Good. Blaine nodded. We've got them then, just a matter of time. Blaine. Centaine loosened the strap of her water bottle from the saddle. That's all we have got., She shook the bottle, and it was less than a quarter full. They all stared at it, and involuntarily Blaine licked his lips.
We will be able to recover the other bottles, just as soon as it's dark, he assured them, and then briskly, Sergeant, take two troopers with you, try and work your way around the other side of the kopje. Make sure nobody leaves by the back door. Lothar De La Rey sat propped against one of the huge round granite boulders at the top of the kopje. He sat in the shade, with the Mauser across his lap. He was bare-headed and his long golden hair blew softly across his forehead.
He stared out towards the south, across the plain and the scattered mopani forest, in the direction from which the relentless pursuit would come. The climb up the sheer granite wall had taxed him severely and he was not yet recovered from it.
Leave me one water bottle, he ordered and Hendrick placed it beside him.
I have filled it from those, Hendrick indicated the pile of discarded, empty water bottles. And we have a full bottle to see us as far as the river. Good. Lothar nodded and checked the other equipment laid out beside him on the granite slab.
that was There were four hand grenades, the old potato masher type with a wooden handle. They had lain in the cache with the horse irons and other equipment for almost twenty years and he could not rely upon them.
Klein Boy had left his rifle and his bandolier of Mauser ammunition with the grenades. So Lothar had two rifles and 150 rounds - more than enough, if the grenades worked. If they didn't it wouldn't matter anyway.
All right, Lothar said quietly. I have everything I need.
You can go. Hendrick turned his cannonball of a head to peer into the south. They were on a grandstand, high above the world, and the sweep of their horizon was twenty miles or more, but there was as yet no sign of the pursuit.
Hendrick started to rise to his feet, and then paused. He squinted into the heat haze and the glare. Dust! he said. It was still five miles away, a pale haze above the trees.
Yes. Lothar had seen it minutes before. It could be a herd of zebra, or a willy willy, but I wouldn't bet my share of the loot on it.
Move out now. Hendrick did not obey immediately. He stared into the white man's sapphire-yellow eyes.
Hendrick had not argued nor protested when Lothar had explained what they must do. It was right, it was logical.
They had always left their wounded, often with just a pistol at hand, for when the pain or the hyenas closed in. And yet, this time Hendrick felt the need to say something, but there were no words that could match the enormity of the moment. He knew he was leaving a part of his own LIFE upon this sun-blasted rock.
I will look after the boy, he said simply, and Lothar nodded.
I want to talk to Manie. He licked his dry, cracked lips and shivered briefly with the heat of the poison in his blood.
Wait for him at the bottom. It will take only a minute. Come. Hendrick jerked his head, and Klein Boy stood up beside him. Together they moved with the swiftness of hunting panthers to the cliff, and Klein Boy slipped over the edge. Hendrick paused and looked back. He raised his right hand.
Stay in peace, he said simply.
Go in peace, old friend, Lothar murmured. He had never called him friend before and Hendrick flinched at the word.
Then he turned his head so Lothar could not see his eyes, and a moment later he was gone.
Lothar stared after him for long seconds, then shook himself lightly, driving back the self-pity and the sickly sentiment and the fever mists which threatened to close in and unman him completely.
Manfred, he said, and the boy started. He had been sitting as close as he dared to his father, watching his face, hanging on every word, every gesture he made.
Pa, he whispered. I don't want to go. I don't want to leave you. I don't want to be without you., Lothar made an impatient gesture, hardening his features to hide this softness in him. You will do as I tell you. Pa, I You have never let me down before, Manie. I have been proud of you. Don't spoil it for me now. Don't let me find out that my son is a coward I'm not a coward! Then you will do what you have to do, he said harshly, and before Manfred could protest again he ordered, Bring me the haversack. Lothar placed the bag between his feet and with his good hand unbuckled the flap. He took one of the packages from it and tore open the h
eavy brown paper with his teeth. He spilled the stones into a small pile on the granite beside him and then spread them. He picked out ten of the biggest and whitest gems.
Take off your jacket, he ordered, and when Manfred handed the garment to him Lothar pierced a tiny hole in the lining with his clasp knife.
These stones will be worth thousands of pounds. Enough to see you full grown and educated, he said, as he stuffed them one at a time into the lining of the jacket with his forefinger.
But these others, there are too many, too heavy, too bulky to hide. Dangerous for you to carry them with you, a death warrant. He pushed himself to his feet with an effort.
Come! He led Manfred amongst the cluster of huge boulders, bracing himself against the rock to keep himself from falling while Manfred supported him from the other side.
Here! He grunted and lowered himself to his knees, Manfred squatting down beside him. At their feet the granite cap was cracked through as though split with a chisel. At the top the crack was only as wide as two hand-spans, but it was deep, they could not see the bottom of it though they peered down thirty feet or more. The crack narrowed gradually as it descended and the depths of it were lost in shadow.
Lothar dangled the haversack of diamonds over the aperture. Mark this place well, he whispered. Look back often when you go northwards so that you will remember this hill. The stones will be waiting for you when you need them. Lothar opened his fingers and the haversack dropped into the crack. They heard the canvas scraping against the sides of the granite cleft as it fell, and then silence as it jammed deep down in the narrow throat of the crack.
Side by side they peered down, and they could just make out the lighter colour and the contrasting texture of the canvas thirty feet down, but it would escape even the concentrated scrutiny of anyone who did not know exactly where to look for it.
That is my legacy to you, Manie, Lothar whispered, and crawled back from the aperture. All right, Hendrick is waiting for you. It is time for you to go. Go quickly now. He wanted to embrace his son for the last time, to kiss his eyes and his lips and press him to his heart, but he knew it would undo them both. If they clung to each other now, they could never bring themselves to part.