Lioness

by Nell Brien

  Campbell felt him weakening. He dragged Reitholder to his feet, pulled the broad back against his chest. He slipped his hands under Reitholder’s arms, linked his fingers together behind the bull neck. Slowly, he increased the pressure of the full nelson, felt the bones begin to give. Reitholder sagged to his knees, and Campbell felt his own muscles bunching for the kill. Another inch and it would be over. His breath steadied, he eased the pressure, dragged Reitholder upright.

  “Tell them to throw down their weapons,” he said against Reitholder’s ear.

  “Fuck you, kaffir lover.”

  “Christ, you’re limited,” he grunted.

  Campbell shouted in Swahili. One by one, the surviving men stopped running. They stood still, holding their weapons above their heads. Sambeke and Olentwalla circulated among them, driving them into a small group. Campbell counted heads. Six were still alive. Moses was checking the rest. A shot rang out. There would be no wounded. He shoved the stumbling Reitholder in front of him, back toward the hunting camp.

  Cat heard voices floating in the thin air, the sound of metal hitting rock. Tom and Thomas eased their fingers from the triggers of their Uzis. Standing on the edge of an escarpment above them, Campbell raised the gun in his hand, jerking it up and down in two sharp movements.

  “Stay behind me, Cat,” Tom said. “Thomas, watch the memsahib.”

  They started to climb. Her boots slipped on the rocks. The going was harder than Campbell and the Maasai had made it seem. A bush she grabbed to pull herself upward gave way, a nail broke and she swore. The sun was higher now. She stopped to breathe, remove her sweater. Thomas took it from her, tucked it into the coil of rope over his shoulder. Cat blinked the sweat out of her eyes and fished a tissue from her pocket. She nodded. “Okay.”

  They climbed on. She kept her eyes straight ahead, at the next step, the next boulder over which she had to clamber, fearful of stumbling over bodies. There had to be bodies. The gunfire had been deafening. Then Tom turned and yanked her over a final lip of rock. They were on a plateau, forty feet deep, a lichen-furred cliff striated in broad red and gray bands towering at the rear. Enclosing the plateau were falls of red-pitted boulders, dotted with brush.

  The stink of putrefaction in the air was an almost palpable presence of death.

  Zebra skins were stacked high. Antelope horns tangled in piles, sorted by type. She recognized the tiny horns of the Tommies, the little deer who bounced like rubber balls. Worse were the pathetically small pelts of lion cubs stretched over a drying frame. Below the frame was a pile of tiny bodies not yet skinned—leopard, cheetah, eyes crawling with maggots. Beside them stretched a lion, the black mane stiff with the arterial blood that drenched it. The muzzle had drawn back in his death agony, exposing white teeth. He’d been in his prime.

  And, lashed in twos with gaily colored plastic rope, were the elephant tusks. Tusks too small to rope had been tossed into woven carrying baskets.

  Belly quivering with horror, Cat managed to get to a small tumble of rocks, found a flat surface on which to collapse before her legs gave way.

  What if Joel had seen something like this?

  “Tom,” Campbell called. He walked to the far side of the plateau. “Get the moran down. We’re ready here.”

  Hands on hips, Campbell studied the bound men in front of him. Dressed in the oddments of a variety of military uniforms mixed with T-shirts and jeans, sockless feet thrust into athletic shoes and sneakers, they squatted on their heels, their wrists lashed together. Beside them, a white man was on his knees but upright, and unbound. The three armed Maasai stood over the group, their weapons trained on them.

  Cat looked away without sympathy. Her father had been like them, killing as casually. Sick seals beached in front of the house in Malibu used for target practice. Stray dogs crippled while scavenging for scraps in the sand. Seagulls exploding into clouds of bloody feathers. She could hear his voice taunting their mother. “You’re soft, Karen. And you’ve made your children as weak as you are.”

  She thought of Joel, his eyes filled with murder, mirroring her own.

  On an order from Campbell, Moses dragged the kneeling man to his feet. Twisting one arm behind his back, Moses frog-marched him to the pile of tusks and forced him back down onto his knees.

  Sjambok in hand, Campbell walked to where she sat at the edge of the plateau, as far away as she could get from the skins, the smell of putrefying flesh.

  He stopped in front of her. “Thomas will take you down to the Land Rovers,” he said.

  Cat felt drained of strength. It was almost too much of an effort to tilt her head up to look at him. “I can’t, I’m sorry. You’ll have to give me a few minutes.”

  “We haven’t got a few minutes. You’ll have to try. This is no place for you.”

  “Who is he, that man? You know him, don’t you?”

  “His name’s Reitholder,” Campbell answered shortly. “Come on.”

  She ignored the hand he held out. “Yes, but who is he? You know him—”

  He cut her off, dropped his hand to his side. “Go down to the Land Rovers, Cat. Thomas will help you.”

  She did not move.

  “Are Olentwalla and the rest okay?” she asked.

  “Yes, they’re all right.”

  “Why did you make me climb up in the first place if now I have to leave?” My God, she thought, panicked. Maybe they don’t want a witness.

  His lips tightened. “I needed Thomas. I didn’t know we’d find all this.” He looked away. “I’m sorry.”

  “How many men are dead?”

  “We’ll count them as we bury them and I’ll let you know. Now go on down the hill, Cat. When we’re finished here we’ll get you a site for your hotel that suits you.”

  She looked at him, aghast. “That’s not what…My God, Campbell, men are dead…” She stopped.

  Campbell’s patience seemed suddenly exhausted. “Just get down off this bloody hill.” He walked away.

  Cat followed his retreating figure with her eyes. Then, on the hillside, a flash of sun on metal caught her attention. She looked up, drew in a sharp breath.

  Tall, long-limbed men, their hair braided into cornrows and plastered with red clay, stood silently on the pitted boulders flanking the plateau. She had heard no sound. They were suddenly just there. Sun polished their skins, deepened the red of the cloth they wore around their waists and shoulders into the color of old blood, touched the points of their spears.

  The poachers stared up at them. Terror creased their faces.

  Alarmed, she called after Campbell. “What are you going to do?”

  Campbell looked up at the hillside. “Whatever they decide,” he said over his shoulder. He walked over to the frightened poachers. Reitholder had scrambled to his feet again and was waiting, erect, chin raised.

  “Come on, Miss Cat.” Thomas was at her shoulder. “Better you do as he say.”

  “Thomas, who are they? What are they going to do?”

  “The young men from the village, Miss Cat. The moran.”

  Before she could press for a reply to the question he had not answered, Campbell’s voice rang out, speaking to the men on the hillside in Maa. Her neck prickled at the full-throated roar that answered him. Cat shook her head. Nothing could drag her away from the wild scene that was unfolding in front of her eyes.

  The coiled sjambok in one hand, Campbell faced the gathered moran, his back to the gray and red rockface. The sun struck the bloody stumps of white elephant tusks, shone on fat iridescent green blowflies massed in the blood-encrusted mane of the lion.

  The sun was high now, the air too hot to breathe, too filled with the reek of death. Cat moved into the shade of a tree that was miraculously clinging to life, its roots climbing over a pile of boulders. The tree gave off a faint, sweet resinous scent that cut the stench of rotting flesh, and she leaned closer to the trunk.

  On the hill, the moran had started to drum their spears against the boulders on wh
ich they stood. The sound of wood smacking rock bounced from the cliff, building in volume until it almost drowned out Campbell’s voice. A turbulent silence fell. Then Tom struck the pile of skins with an AK, shouting to the Maasai as he did so. They murmured angrily, drummed their spears, the sound resonating among the hills. Red dust rose around long thin legs already coated the color of rust.

  Among the bound poachers, only Reitholder was still on his feet. The glare was relentless, heat undulating in ripples. The stench was a noxious blanket, pressing down. Cat opened her mouth to breathe, gasping at the rush of dry air that robbed her lips and mouth of moisture.

  Accompanied by a young Maasai, Tom went to the body of the lion. Tom stood back, and ceremoniously the young man stood astride the dead animal, buried both hands in the black mane, pulled up the heavy head. The tawny bullet-shattered neck was a mass of shredded flesh, coagulated blood, white bone.

  The drumming ceased, the sudden silence of the Maasai unnerving. The young man lowered the head to the ground.

  “Thomas,” Cat whispered. “Is that lion special in some way?”

  “In old time, Maasai warrior go alone to kill simba with spear. No wives till then. No cattle. No manhood. Now all change. Government law say no one kill simba. If Maasai not kill simba, memsahib, no man kill simba.”

  Campbell walked to the bound men cowering on the ground. He pulled the nearest man to his feet, motioned the rest to get up.

  Raising his voice, Campbell thrust the poacher forward. The moran jerked their spears back and forth as if measuring the distance before throwing.

  Reitholder shouted, trying to drown Campbell’s words. Suddenly everyone was shouting, poachers screaming, the Maasai roaring and stamping, menacing the bound men with their spears. Campbell cracked the sjambok and raised his voice above the hubbub. The turmoil faded. Reitholder’s shouts alone continued.

  “Moses!” Campbell roared.

  Moses leaped forward, the butt of his gun raised to slam into Reitholder’s face. Reitholder jerked his head back, and Moses stopped the butt an inch short of the white man’s teeth. He grinned, then tapped it almost gently at Reitholder’s mouth. Still grinning, Moses stepped back.

  At a gesture from Campbell, Sambeke dragged the poachers into a cowering, ragged line facing the Maasai, then moved away to a safe distance. The tall Maasai who’d displayed the lion’s shattered neck shouted a command. The men on the hill raised their spears.

  Cat started from the shade of the tree toward the bound men, but felt Thomas’s hand dragging her back.

  “Let me go.” She struggled against Thomas’s grasp, her nostrils filled with the smell of sweat from his body and the stink of the plateau. “Campbell!” she shouted. “Stop it. Stop it—”

  Thomas crammed his hand over her mouth, and she sank her teeth into the callused palm. Then she heard the thud of the spears and sagged against him, waiting for the shrieks of pain. What came to her ears was laughter. A storm of high-pitched male laughter. Thomas took his hand from her mouth and she looked up. A forest of spears bristled inches away from the feet of the prostrate poachers. On the hillside, the Maasai roared with laughter.

  Thomas released his hold. Weak with relief, Cat rested her head against his chest.

  A joke. It was all a sick, primitive joke. She looked up to apologize for biting him, but Thomas had his eyes fixed on what was happening behind her.

  Cat turned to see Campbell slashing through the rope binding Reitholder’s ankles. At a nod, Sambeke and Moses dragged the struggling Reitholder to a pile of zebra skins, threw him face downward. Campbell raised the sjambok. The Maasai on the hill were silent.

  The thud of whip on flesh immobilized her with a sick horror. Reitholder flinched as the whip curled around him, but he made no sound. Campbell’s arm rose and fell, the white shirt on Reitholder’s back shredded, reddened. Then his silence broke into a scream.

  Cat crouched against the tree, hands muffling her ears, trying vainly to shut out the terrible sounds of the whip, the screams. But they seemed to go on and on. The muscles in her empty stomach clenched. She took her hands from her ears to press them against her belly and realized that what she was hearing now was the absence of all sound. Then somewhere a lone bird called and gradually others took up song. She lifted her head.

  Reitholder was on all fours, shirt hanging in bloody shreds. Blood coursed through the curled yellow hair on his arms, dripped onto the stony ground. Standing over him, Campbell recoiled the whip.

  The young Maasai who’d given the earlier order shouted. Silently, the men on the hill turned and started to climb. In seconds they were gone.

  “Thomas!” Campbell shouted.

  “Bwana!”

  “Get this man doctored before the blowflies get to him.”

  “You all right, Miss Cat?” Thomas asked anxiously.

  Cat nodded, too numb to speak. She lowered herself to the ground, wrapped her arms around her knees and rested her head, careless of the large insects scurrying around her on the rocky ground. She felt violated, the savagery stamped indelibly into her brain. What she had just witnessed would be there forever, taking its place among the other scenes she tried so hard to blot out. The animals their father mortally wounded, so that he could watch their death agony. Joel’s eyes, his finger tightening on the trigger—strange how that image stayed with her, the small finger curling around the metal. And the blood.

  Campbell saw her slumped figure and beckoned Tom. “Get something into her, Tom, coffee or something, before she passes out,” he said. “Did Thomas bring a thermos?”

  Tom nodded. “She shouldn’t have seen this. She should have gone down—”

  “Well, I tried, but she’s as arrogant as her bloody brother. She won’t listen, either.”

  Around them the plateau had erupted into action. Drying racks crashed to the ground. Moses bent over the tusks, sorting them by size. Most were small, taken from adolescents killed before maturity—the last of their line. There would not be another generation.

  “Did you round up the rest of them?” Campbell asked abruptly.

  “Yes. Four were dead, Moses put a couple of them out of their misery. Two are still alive.”

  “How bad are they?”

  Tom shook his head.

  “Any papers?”

  “No.”

  “Well, maybe they know something N’toya can use. See what you can get from them. But get that coffee into her first. She looks as if she’s going to collapse.”

  Cat sensed someone standing in front of her and looked up.

  “I’ve brought you some coffee.” Tom unscrewed the plastic cup from the top of the thermos, filled it and handed it to her.

  “Tom. God, Tom.” She held the cup in both hands to steady it. The coffee was strong and sweet, and she felt better as the caffeine hit her system. Tom towered over her. She felt diminished, crouched at his feet, and she rose on shaky legs. “You knew, didn’t you? You knew what he was going to do?”

  Tom shrugged.

  “What a life you lead,” she said. “Killing. Brutalizing human beings. Did my brother find out what you were up to?”

  “There was nothing to find out.”

  She handed back the empty cup. “You two are going to get a bullet in the back one of these days. You should quit while you’re ahead.”

  He screwed the cup back in place. “I’ll leave this with you. We’ll be going down the hill as soon as we clean up here.”

  When he left, she found a small boulder on which to sit, poured more coffee, drank it slowly. Across the plateau Thomas had moved the group of poachers into the shade. She drained the mug, then walked over to the men, sitting on their heels, puffing on the cigarettes Thomas had handed out. Reitholder was crouched as far from his men as he could manage and still remain in the shade.

  She held the thermos out to the man nearest her. Smiling uncertainly, he took it, then filled the cup with coffee, took a mouthful before handing it to the man next to him. Th
e men passed the mug from hand to hand. When it came to Reitholder, the man next to him hesitated, then leaned over to offer it to him. With an expression of disgust, Reitholder dashed it from the man’s hand. Thomas picked up the cup, refilled it and gave it to the man closest to him.

  “Don’t waste your coffee and sympathy, missy,” Reitholder said to Cat. His English was guttural and ugly. “Kaffirs don’t feel much. They’re not like us, you and me. White people. They’re animals.”

  He stared at her through faded blue eyes, bloodshot eyes rimmed with lashes so pale that, like his eyebrows, they appeared nonexistent. Cat could see scaly reddened patches on his face where the sun had damaged his skin, but except for the sheen of sweat, the pinched lines of pain around his mouth, he looked hard and fit.

  Before she could speak to him, Thomas pushed a tightly woven basket containing a gray paste into her hand. “You doctor him, Miss Cat. He not let me.”

  Cat put the basket on the ground. “Then let the flies get to him.”

  “Bwana Dan say fix him.” Thomas picked up her hand, put the basket firmly into it. “We fix him. Turn, you,” he said to Reitholder. “You let the memsahib help.”

  Reitholder turned so that she could see his back, watching over his shoulder to see her reaction. He managed to bare his teeth in a smile when he saw her face.

  His back was a mass of brutalized flesh. The man needed hospital dressings and antibiotics, Cat thought, not this dubious mixture of native medicine—God only knew what was in it. It smelled vaguely earthy. She scooped the paste from the basket with fingers that were grimy from her climb. She started to feel ill again, sick from balancing the past and the present, unable to speak.

  Reitholder’s broken skin was slick under her fingers. Panic started to rise in her chest. The paste wouldn’t hold. It slipped across the wet flesh like the Vaseline she had used to try to plug the wound in her father’s chest the day Joel shot him, trying to fill a hole that wouldn’t stop bleeding.