by Wilbur Smith
A dozen times he sighted along the rifle barrel, holding his aim until the sweat ran into his eyes and blurred them and he had to take the butt from his shoulder and turn away.
Out there on the end of the chain, its exposed flesh reddening in the sun a piece of Sean was dying. Some of his youth, some of his laughter, some of his carefree love of life, so he had to creep back to the hole in the canvas and watch.
The sun reached its peak and started down again and the thing on the chain grew weaker. It fell and was a long time crawling on its hands and knees before it regained its feet again.
An hour before sunset Duff had his first convulsion. He was standing facing Sean's wagon, swinging his head from side to side, his mouth working silently. The convulsion took him and he stiffened; his lips pulled up grinning, showing his teeth, his eyes rolled back and disappeared leaving only the whites, and his body started to bend backwards. That beautiful body, still slim as a boy's with the long moulded legs, bending tighter and tighter until with a brittle crack the spine snapped and he fell. He lay wriggling, moaning softly and his trunk was twisted at an impossible angle from the broken spine.
Sean jumped from the wagon and ran to him: standing over him he shot Duff in the head and turned away. He flung his rifle from him and heard it clatter on the hard earth. He walked back to his wagon and took a blanket off Duff's cot. He came back and wrapped Duff in it, averting his eyes from the mutilated head. He carried him to the shelter and laid him on the bed. The blood soaked through the blanket, spreading on the cloth, like ink spilled on blotting-paper. Sean sank down on the chair beside the bed.
Outside the darkness gathered and became complete.
Once in the night a hyena came and snuffled at the blood outside on the earth, then it moved away. There was a pride of lions hunting in the bush beyond the waterhole; they killed two hours before dawn and Sean sat in the darkness and listened to their jubilant roaring.
in the morning, Sean stood up stiffly from his chair and went down to the wagons. Mbejane was waiting beside the fire in the laager.
Where are the others? Sean asked.
Mbejane stood up. They wait where you sent them. I came alone, knowing you would need me. Yes, said Sean. Get two axes from the wagon. They gathered wood, a mountain of dry wood, and packed it around Duff's bed, then Sean put fire to it.
Mbejane saddled a horse for Sean and he mounted up and looked down at the Zulu. Bring the wagons on to the next waterhole. I will meet you there. Sean rode out of the laager. He looked back only once and saw that the breeze had spread the smoke from the pyre in a mile long smudge across the tops of the thorn trees.
Like a bag of pus at the root of an infected tooth the guilt and grief rotted in Sean's mind. His guilt was doubleedged. He had betrayed Duff's trust, and he had lacked the courage to make the betrayal worthwhile. He had waited too long. He should have done it at the beginning, cleanly and quickly, or he should not have done it at all.
He longed with every fibre of his body to be given the chance to do it again, but this time the right way. He would gladly have lived once more through all that horror to clear his conscience and clean the stain from the memory of their friendship.
His grief was a thing of emptiness, an aching void, so that he was lost in it. Where before there had been Duff's laughter, his twisted grin and his infectious zest there was now only a grey nothingness. No glimmer of sun penetrated it and there were no solid shapes in it.
The next waterhole was shallow soup in the centre of a flat expanse of dry mud the size of a polo field. The mud was cracked in an irregular chequered pattern forming small brickettes, each the size of a hand. A man could have jumped across the water without wetting his feet.
Scattered thickly round its circumference were the droppings of the animals that had drunk there. Back and forth across its surface, changing direction as the wind veered, a few loose feathers sailed. The water was brackish and dirty. It was a bad camp. On the third day Mbejane went to Sean's wagon. Sean lay in his cot. He had not changed his clothes since leaving Duff. His beard was beginning, , to mat, sticky with sweat for it was hot as an oven under the wagon canvas.
Nkosi, will you come and look at the water. I do not think we should stay here What is wrong with it? Sean asked without interest. It is dirty, I think we should go on towards the big river. Do whatever you think is right. Sean rolled away from him, his face towards the side of the wagon.
So Mbejane took the wagon-train down towards the Limpopo. It was two days later that they found the ribbon of dark green trees that lined the banks. Sean stayed in his cot throughout the trek, jolting over the rough ground, sweating in the heat but oblivious to all discomfort.
Mbejane put the wagons into laager on the bank above the river-bed, then he and all the other servants waited for Sean to come to life again. Their talk round the fire at nights was baited with worry and they looked often towards Sean's living wagon, where it stood unlit by lantem, dark as the mood of the man that lay within.
Like a bear coming out of its cave at the end of winter, Sean came out of the wagon at last. His clothes were filthy. The dogs hurried to meet him, crowding round his knees, begging for attention and he did not notice them.
Vaguely he answered the greetings of his servants. He wandered down the bank into the river bed.
The summer had shrunk the Limpopo into a sparse line of pools strung out down the centre of the watercourse.
The pools were dark olive green. The sand around them was white, glaring snowfield white, and the boulders that choked the barely moving river were black and polished smooth. The banks were steep, half a mile apart and walled in with trees. Sean walked through the sand, sinking to his ankles with each step. He reached the water and sat down at the edge, he dabbled his hand in it and found it warm. as blood. In the sand next to him was the long slither mark of a crocodile, and a troop of monkeys were shaking the branches of a tree on the far bank and chattering at him. A pair of Sean's dogs splashed across the narrow neck between two Pools and went off to chase the monkeys. They went halfheartedly with their tongues flapping at the corners of their mouths for it was very hot in the whiteness of the river-bed. Sean stared into the green water. It was lonely without Duff; he had only his guilt and his sorrow for company. One of the dogs that had stayed with him touched his cheek with its cold nose.
Sean put his arm round its neck and the dog leaned against him. He heard footsteps in the sand behind him, he turned and looked up. It was Mbejane. Nkosi, Hlubi has found elephant not an hour's march up stream. He has counted twenty show good ivory.
Sean looked back at the water. Go away, he said.
Mbejane squatted down beside him with his elbows on his knees. For whom do you mourn? he asked. Go away, Mbejane, leave me alone. Nkosi Duff does not need your sorrow, therefore I think that you mourn for yourself Mhejane picked up a pebble and tossed it into the pool. When a traveller gets a Thorn in his foot, Mbejane went on softly, and he is wise he plucks it out, and he is a fool who leaves it and says "I will keep this thorn to prick me so that I will always remember the road upon which I have travelled. " Nkosi, it is better to remember with pleasure than with pain. Mbejane lobbed another pebble into the pool, then he stood up and walked back to the camp. When Sean followed him ten minutes later he found a saddle on his horse, his rifle in the scabbard and Mbejane and Hlubi waiting with their spears. Kandhla handed him his hat, he held it by the brim, turning it in his hands. Then he clapped it onto his head and swung up onto the horse.
Lead, he ordered.
During the next weeks Sean hunted with a single-mindedness that left no time for brooding. His returns to the wagons were short and intermittent; his only reasons for returning at all were to bring in the ivory and change his horse. At the end of one of these brief visits to camp and as Sean was about to mount up for another hunt, even Mbejane complained. Nkosi, there are better ways to die than working too hard. You look well enough, Sean assured him, although Mbejane was no
w as lean as a greyhound and his skin shone like washed anthracite. Perhaps all men look healthy to a man on horseback, Mbejane suggested Sean stoppe with one foot in the stirrup. He looked at Mbejane thoughtfully, then he lowered his leg again. We hunt on foot now, Mbejane, and the first to ask for mercy earns the right to be called woman" by the other. Mbejane grinned; the challenge was to his liking. They crossed the river and found spoor before midday, a small herd of young bulls. They followed it until nightfall and slept huddled together under one blanket, then they went on again next morning. on the third day they lost the spoor in rocky ground and they cast back towards the river. They picked up another herd within ten miles of the wagons, went after them and killed that evening three fine bulls, not a tusk between them under fifty pounds weight. A night march back to the wagons, four hours sleep and they were away again. Sean was limping a little now and on the second day out, during one of their infrequent halts, he pulled off his boot. The blister on his heel had burst and his sock was stiff with dried blood.
Mbejane looked at him expressionlessly. How far are we from the wagons? asked Sean. We can be back before dark, Nkosi. Mbenjane carried Sean's rifle for him on the return. Not once did his mask of solemnity slip. Back in camp Kandhla brought a basin of hot water and set it in front of Sean's chair. While Sean soaked his feet in it his entire following squatted in a circle about him. Every face wore an expression of studied concern and the silence was broken only by the clucking sounds of Bantu sympathy. They were loving every minute of it and Mbejane with the timing of a natural act or was building up the effect, playing to his audience.
Sean puffed at a cheroot, scowling to stop himself laughing. Mbejane cleared his throat and spat into the fire.
Every eye was on him; they waited breathlessly. Nkosi, said Mbejane, I would set fifty head of oxen as your marriage price, if you were my daughter.
One instant more of silence, then a shout of laughter.
Sean laughed with them at first, but after a while when Hlubi had nearly staggered into the fire and Nonga was sobbing loudly on Mbejaae's shoulder with tears of mirth streaming down his cheeks, Sean's own laughter stopped.
It wasn't that funny.
He looked at them sourly, at their wide open pink mouths and their white teeth, at their shaking shoulders and heaving chests and suddenly it came to him very clearly that they were no longer laughing at him. They were laughing for the joy of it. They were laughing because they were alive. A chuckle rattled up Sean's throat and escaped before he could stop it, another one bounced around inside his chest and he lay back in his chair, opened his mouth and let it come. The hell with it, he was alive, too.
In the morning when he climbed out of his wagon and limped across to see what Kandhla was cooking for breakfast, there was a faint excitement in him again, the excitement of a new day. He felt good. Duff's memory was still with him, it always would be, but now it was not a sickening ache. He had plucked out the thorn.
They moved camp three times in November, keeping to the south bank of the river, following it back towards the west. Slowly the wagons which they had emptied of ivory beside the waterhole began to fill again, for the game was concentrated along the river. The rest of the land was dry but now each day there was promise of relief.
The clouds that had been scattered across the sky began to crowd together, gathering into rounded dark-edged masses or rearing proudly into thunderheads. All of nature seemed impressed by their growing importance. In the evening the sun dressed them in royal purple and during the day the whirlwinds did dervish dances for their entertainment. The rains were coming. Sean had to make a decision, cross the Limpopo and cut himself off from the south when the river flooded, or stay where he was and leave the land beyond undisturbed. It wasn't a difficult decision.
They found a place where the banks flattened out a little on both sides of the river. They unloaded the first wagon and double-teamed it; then with everybody shouting encouragement the oxen galloped down the steep slope into the river-bed. The wagon bounced behind them until it hit the sand where it came to a halt, tilted at an abandoned angle, with its wheels sunk axledeep into the sand.
onto the spokes, shouted Sean. They flung themselves on the wheels and strained to keep them turning, but half the oxen were down on their knees, powerless in the loose footing.
Damn it to hell. Sean glared at the wagon. Outspan the oxen and take them back. Get out the axes. It took them three days to lay a bridge of corduroyed branches across the river and another two to get all the wagons and ivory to the far bank. Sean declared a holiday when the last wagon was manhandled into the laager and the whole camp slept late the next morning. The sun was high by the time Sean descended from his wagon. He was still muzzy and a little liverish from lying abed. He yawned wide and stretched like a crucifix. He ran his tongue round his mouth and gtimaced at the taste, then he scratched his chest and the hair rasped under his fingers. Kandhla, where's the coffee? Don't you care that I am near dead from thirst? Nkosi, the water will boil very soon. Sean grunted and walked across to where Mbejane squatted with the other servants by the fire watching Kandhla. This is a good camp, Mbejane. Sean looked up at the roof of leaves above them. It was a place of green shade, cool in the late morning heat. Christmas beetles were squealing in the wide stretched branches. There is good grazing for the cattle, Mbejane agreed;
he stretched out his hand towards Sean. I found this in the grass, someone else has camped here. Sean took it from him and examined it, a piece of broken china with a blue fig-leaf pattern. It was a shock to Sean, that little fragment of civilization in the wilderness; he turned it in his fingers and Mbejane went on. There are the ashes of an old fire there against the shurna tree and I found the ruts where wagons climbed the bank at the same place as ours. How long ago? Mbejane shrugged. A year perhaps. Grass has grown in the wagon tracks. Sean sat down in his chair, he felt disturbed. He thought about it and grinned as he realized he was jealous; there were strangers here in the land he was coming to regard as his own, those year-old tracks gave him a feeling of being in a crowd. Also there was the opposite feeling, that of longing for the company of his own kind. The sneaking desire to see a white face again. It was strange that he could resent something and yet wish for it simultaneously. Kandhla, am I to have coffee now or at supper tonight? Nkosi, it is done. Kandhla poured a little brown sugar into the mug stirred it with a stick and handed it to him.
Sean held the mug in both hands, blowing to cool it, then sipping and sighing with each mouthful. The talk of his Zulus passed back and forth about the circle and the snuff -boxes followed it, each remark of worth greeted with a solemn chorus of It is true, it is true, and the taking of snuff. Small arguments jumped up and fell back again into the leisurely stream of conversation. Sean listened to them, occasionally joining in or contributing a story until his stomach told him it was time to eat. Kandhla started to cook, under the critical supervision and with the helpful suggestions of those whom idleness had made garrulous. He had almost succeeded in grilling the carcass of a guinea-fowl to the satisfaction of the entire company, although Mbejane felt that he should have added a pinch more salt, when Nonga sitting across the fire from him jumped to his feet and pointed out towards the north. Sean shaded his eyes and looked.
For Chrissake, said Sean.
Ah! ah! ah! said his servants.
A white man rode towards them through the trees; he cantered with long stirrups, slouched comfortably, close enough already for Sean to make out the great ginger beard that masked the bottom half of his face. He was a big man; the sleeves of his shirt rolled high around thick arms.