by Wilbur Smith
Centaine found she was trembling with anger and frustration. ‘He is going to get clean away,’ she told herself. ‘He has won on the first trick.’
The gelding smelled the water and tried to get down the bank. She forced him away with her knees, slapping him across the neck with the loose end of the reins. She tethered him at the end of the horse line and measured a ration of oats and mash into his nose bag.
Blaine came to her. ‘I’m sorry, Centaine,’ he said quietly. ‘We’ll have to turn back. To go on without water is suicide.’
‘I know.’
‘It’s a pretty filthy trick.’ He shook his head. ‘Poisoning a water-hole that supports so much desert life. The destruction will be horrible. I have only seen it done once before. When we were on the march up from Walvis in 1915—’ he broke off as little Kwi came trotting up to them chattering excitedly. ‘What does he say?’ Blaine asked.
‘One of the men we are following is sick,’ Centaine answered quickly. ‘Kwi has found these bandages.’
Kwi had a double handful of stained and soiled cloth which he offered to Centaine.
‘Put them down, Kwi,’ she ordered sharply. She could smell the pus and corruption on the bundle. Obediently Kwi set it down at her feet, and Blaine drew the bayonet from its scabbard on his belt to spread the strips of cloth on the sand.
‘The mask!’ Centaine exclaimed, as she recognized the flour sack that Lothar had worn over his head. It was stiff with dried blood and yellow pus, as were the strips torn from a khaki shirt.
‘The sick man lay down while the other changed the saddles to the new horses, and then they had to lift him to his feet and help him to mount.’ Kwi had read all this from the spoor.
‘I bit him,’ Centaine said softly. ‘While we were struggling I sank my teeth into his wrist. I felt the bone. It was a very deep wound I gave him.’
‘A human bite is almost as dangerous as a snake bite,’ Blaine nodded. ‘Untreated it will nearly always turn to blood-poisoning. De La Rey is a sick man, and his arm must be a mess, judging by these.’ He touched the reeking bandages with the toe of his riding-boot. ‘We would have had him. In his condition, we would almost certainly have caught him before he reached the Okavango river. If only we had enough water to go on.’ He turned away, unwilling to watch her unhappiness, and he spoke sharply to Sergeant Hansmeyer. ‘Half water rations from now on, Sergeant. We will start back to the mission at nightfall. Travel in the cool of the night.’
Centaine could not stand still. She whirled and strode back towards the water-hole, and stood at the top of the bank staring at the notice board with its fatal message.
‘How could you do it, Lothar?’ she whispered. ‘You are a hard and desperate man, but this is a dreadful thing—’
She went slowly down the steep bank and squatted at the edge of the water. She reached out and touched the water with her fingertip. It was cold, cold as death, she thought, and wiped the finger carefully on the leg of her breeches as she stared into the pool.
She thought about Blaine’s remark, ‘I have only seen it done once before. When we were on the march up from Walvis in 1915,’ and suddenly a forgotten conversation sprang up from deep in her mind where it had lain buried all these years. She remembered Lothar De La Rey’s face in the firelight, his eyes haunted as he confessed to her.
‘We had to do it, or at least at the time I thought we did. The Union forces were pressing us so hard. If I had guessed at the consequences—’ He had broken off and stared into the fire. She had loved him so dearly then. She had been his woman. Though she did not yet know it, she already had his child in her womb, and she had reached out and taken his hand to comfort him.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she had whispered, but he had turned a tragic face to her.
‘It does matter, Centaine,’ he had told her. ‘It was the foulest thing I have ever done. I returned to the water-hole a month later like a murderer. I could smell it from a mile or more. The dead were everywhere, zebra and gemsbok, jackals and little desert foxes, birds, even the vultures that had feasted on the rotting carcasses. So much death. It was something that I will remember on the day I die, the one thing in my life of which I am truly ashamed, something I will have to answer for.’
Centaine straightened up slowly. She felt her rage and disappointment slowly snuffed out by a rising tide of excitement. She touched the water again and watched the circle of ripples spread out across the limpid surface.
‘He meant it,’ she spoke aloud. ‘He was truly ashamed. He could never have done the same thing again.’ She shivered with dread as she decided what she was going to do, and to bolster her courage she went on in a voice that shook slightly, ‘It’s a bluff. The notice is a bluff. It must be—’ then she broke off as she remembered the three dead horses. ‘He put them down. They were finished, and he used poison on them as part of the bluff. Probably gave it to them in a bucket, but not the water-hole. He wouldn’t have done that twice.’
Slowly she took the hat from her head and used the wide brim to skim the floating layer of dust and rubbish from the surface of the pool. Then she scooped a hatful of the clear cool water, holding it in both hands, steeling herself to do it. She took a deep breath and touched the water with her lips.
‘Centaine!’ Blaine roared in shock and rage as he bounded down the bank and snatched the hat out of her hands. The water splashed over her legs soaking her breeches. He seized her by the arms and jerked her to her feet. His face was swollen and dark, his eyes blazing with anger as he shouted in her face. ‘Have you gone stark staring mad, woman?’
He was shaking her brutally, his fingers digging into the flesh of her upper arms.
‘Blaine, you are hurting me.’
‘Hurting you? I could willingly thrash you, you crazy—’
‘Blaine, it’s a bluff, I’m sure of it.’ She was frightened of him. His rage was a terrible thing to watch. ‘Blaine. Please! Please listen to me.’
She saw the change in his eyes as he regained control. ‘Oh God,’ he said, ‘I thought—’
‘You are hurting me,’ she repeated stupidly, and he released her.
‘I’m sorry.’ He was panting as though he had run a marathon. ‘Don’t do that to me again, woman – next time I don’t know what I will do.’
‘Blaine! Listen to me. It’s a bluff. He didn’t poison the water. I would stake my life on it.’
‘You almost did,’ he growled at her, but he was listening now. ‘How did you reach that conclusion?’ He leaned closer to her, interested and ready to be convinced.
‘I knew him once. Knew him well. I heard him make an oath. It was he who poisoned the water-hole you talked about, back in 1915. He admitted it, but he swore that he would never be able to do it again. He described the carnage at the water-hole, and he swore an oath.’
‘The dead horses lying out there,’ Blaine demanded, ‘how do you explain them?’
‘All right. He poisoned them. He would have to have destroyed them anyway. They were broken; he couldn’t leave them for the lions.’
He strode to the edge of the water and stared down into it.
‘You were going to take that chance—’ he broke off and shuddered, then turned from the water and called sharply.
‘Sergeant Hansmeyer!’
‘Sir.’ The sergeant hurried across from the horse lines.
‘Sergeant, bring the lame mare to me,’ and Hansmeyer went to the lines and led the animal back. She was favouring her right fore and they would have to leave her anyway.
‘Let her drink!’ Blaine ordered.
‘Sir?’ Hansmeyer looked puzzled, and then when he realized Blaine’s intention, he became alarmed. ‘From the spring? It’s poisoned, sir.’
‘That’s what we are going to find out,’ Blaine told him grimly. ‘Let her drink!’
Eagerly the black mare scrambled down the bank and bent her long neck to the pool.
She sucked up the water in great gulps. It sloshed and gurg
led into her belly, and she seemed to swell before their eyes.
‘I didn’t think to use one of the horses,’ Centaine whispered. ‘Oh, it will be terrible if I have guessed wrongly.’
Hansmeyer let the mare drink until she was satiated, and then Blaine ordered, ‘Take her back to the lines.’
He checked his wristwatch. ‘We’ll give her an hour,’ he decided, and took Centaine’s hand. He led her to the shade thrown by the overhang of the bank and they sat together.
‘You say you knew him?’ he asked at last. ‘How well did you know him?’
‘He worked for me – years ago. He did the first development work at the mine. He is an engineer, you know.’
‘Yes. I know he is an engineer. It’s in his file.’ He was silent. ‘You must have got to know him very well for him to admit something like that to you? It’s a very intimate thing, a man’s guilt.’
She did not reply. ‘What can I tell him?’ she thought. ‘That I was Lothar De La Rey’s mistress? That I loved him and bore him a son?’
Suddenly Blaine chuckled. ‘Jealousy is really one of the most unlovely emotions, isn’t it? I withdraw the question. It was impertinent. Forgive me.’
She laid her hand on his arm and smiled at him gratefully.
‘That doesn’t mean I have forgiven you for the fright you gave me,’ he told her with mock severity. ‘I could still quite happily turn you over my knee.’
The thought of it gave her a funny little perverse twinge of excitement. His rage had frightened her and that excited her also. He had not shaved since they had left the mission. His new beard was thick and dark as the pelt of an otter, except there was a single silver hair in it. It grew at the corner of his mouth, shining like a star in the night.
‘What are you staring at?’ he asked.
‘I was wondering if your beard would scratch – if you decided to kiss me instead of spanking me.’
She saw him struggling like a drowning man in a rip tide of temptation. She imagined the fears and the doubts and the anguish of wanting that boiled behind those green eyes, and she waited, her face turned up to him, neither pulling back nor thrusting forward, waiting for him to accept the inevitability of it.
When he took her mouth it was fiercely, almost roughly, as though he was angry with his own inability to resist, and angry with her for leading him into this dangerous wilderness of infidelity. He sucked all the strength out of her body so that she went limp in his arms, only the grip of her own arms around his neck matched his and her mouth was deep and wet and soft and open for him to probe.
He broke away from her at last and sprang to his feet. He stood over her, looking down at her. ‘May God have pity on us,’ he whispered, and strode away up the bank, leaving her alone with her joy and disquiet and guilt and with the raging flame he had kindled in her belly.
Sergeant Hansmeyer summoned her at last. He came to the pool and stood at the top of the bank.
‘Colonel Malcomess is asking for you, Missus.’
She followed him back to the horse lines, and she felt strangely detached from reality. Her feet seemed not to touch the earth and everything was dreamlike and far away.
Blaine stood with the lame mare, holding her head and stroking her neck. She made little fluttering sounds in her nostrils and nibbled at the front of his tunic. Blaine looked over her head as Centaine came up on the mare’s other side. They stared at each other.
‘No turning back,’ he said softly, and she accepted the ambiguity of his words. ‘We go forward – together.’
‘Yes, Blaine,’ she agreed meekly.
‘And to hell with the consequences,’ he said harshly.
A second longer they held each other’s eyes, and then Blaine lifted his voice. ‘Sergeant, water all the horses and fill the bottles. We have nine hours to make up on the chase.’
They kept going through the night. The little Bushmen stayed on the spoor with only the stars and a sliver of moon to light it for them, and when the sun rose the tracks were still strung out ahead of them, each filled with purple shadow by the acutely slanted rays.
Now there were four riders in the fleeing band, for the horse herder from the fountain had joined them and they were leading a spare horse each.
An hour after dawn, they found where the fugitives had camped the previous night. Lothar had abandoned two of his horses here; they had broken down from the brutal treatment, hard riding in these severe conditions. They stood beside the remains of the camp fire which Lothar had smothered with sand. Kwi brushed away the sand and knelt to blow on the ashes, a tiny flame sprang up under his breath and he grinned like a pixie.
‘We have made up five or six hours on them while they slept,’ Blaine murmured, and looked at Centaine. She straightened up immediately from her weary slump but she was pale and light-headed with fatigue.
‘He’s using up his horses like a prodigal,’ she said, and they both looked at the two animals that Lothar had abandoned. They stood with heads hanging, muzzles almost touching the ground, a pair of chestnut mares, one with a white blazed forehead and the other with white socks. Both of them moved only with pain and difficulty, and their tongues were black and swollen, protruding from the sides of their mouths.
‘He did not waste water on them,’ Blaine agreed. ‘Poor devils.’
‘You will have to put them down,’ Centaine said.
‘That’s why he left them, Centaine,’ he said gently.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘The shots,’ he explained. ‘He’ll be listening for gunfire—’
‘Oh Blaine! What are we going to do? We can’t leave them.’
‘Make coffee and breakfast. We are all played out – horses and men. We must rest for a few hours before we go on.’ He swung down from the saddle and untied his blanket roll. ‘In the meantime I will take care of the cripples.’
He shook out his sheepskin underblanket as he walked across to the first mare. He stopped in front of her and unbuckled the flap of his holster. He drew his service pistol and wrapped the sheepskin over his right hand that held the pistol.
The mare dropped instantly to the muted thud of the pistol, and kicked spasmodically before relaxing into stillness. Centaine looked away, busying herself with measuring coffee into the billy as Blaine walked heavily across to the blazed chestnut mare.
There was a tiny movement of air, not truly a sound, light as the flirt of a sunbird’s wing, but both Swart Hendrick and Lothar De La Rey lifted their heads and pulled up their mounts. Lothar raised his hand for silence and they waited, holding their breath.
It came again, another spit of distant muted gunfire, and Lothar and Hendrick glanced at each other.
‘The arsenic trick did not work,’ grunted the big black Ovambo. ‘You should have really poisoned the water, not pretended,’ and Lothar shook his head wearily.
‘She must be riding like a she-devil. They are only four hours behind us, less if they push their horses. I never believed she could come on so quickly.’
‘You cannot be sure that it is her,’ Hendrick told him.
‘It’s her.’ Lothar showed no trace of doubt. ‘She promised me she would come.’ His voice was hoarse, his lips cracked and flaky with dry skin. His eyes were bloodshot, gummed with yellow mucus thick as clotted cream and deeply underscored with bruised purple smudges. His beard was parti-coloured, gold and ginger and white.
His arm was wrapped in bandage to the elbow, the yellow discharge had seeped through the cloth. He had looped a cartridge belt around his neck as a sling, and the arm was supported partly by the belt and partly by the black japanned despatch case strapped to the pommel of his saddle.
He turned to look back across the plain with its sparse covering of scrub and camel-thorn, but the movement brought on another wave of giddiness and he swayed and snatched at the despatch case to prevent himself falling.
‘Pa!’ Manfred grabbed his good arm, his face contorted with concern. ‘Pa! Are you all right?’
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Lothar closed his eyes before he could answer. ‘All right,’ he croaked. He could feel the infection swelling and distorting the flesh of his hand and forearm. The skin felt thin and stretched to the point of bursting like an overripe plum, and the heat of the poison flowed with his blood. He could feel it throbbing painfully in the glands below his armpit and from there spreading out through his whole body, squeezing the sweat out through his skin, burning his eyes and pounding in his temples, shimmering a desert mirage in his brain.
‘Go on,’ he whispered. ‘Got to go on,’ and Hendrick picked up the lead rein with which he was guiding Lothar’s horse.
‘Wait!’ blurted Lothar, rocking in the saddle. ‘How far to the next water?’
‘We’ll be there before noon tomorrow.’
Lothar was trying to concentrate but the fever filled his head with steam and heat.
‘The horse irons. It’s time for the horse irons.’
Hendrick nodded. They had carried the horse irons from the cache in the hills. They weighed seventy pounds, a heavy burden for one of the lead horses. It was time to be rid of some of that weight now.
‘We’ll give her a bait to lead her onto them,’ Lothar croaked.
The short rest, the hasty meal and even the strong, hot, oversweetened coffee seemed only to have increased Centaine’s fatigue.
‘I will not let him see it,’ she told herself firmly. ‘I’ll not give in until they do.’ But her skin felt so dry that it might tear like paper and the glare ached in her eyes, filling her skull with pain.
She glanced sideways at Blaine. He sat straight and tall in the saddle, invincible and indefatigable, but he turned his head and his eyes softened as he looked at her.
‘We’ll break for a drink in ten minutes,’ he told her softly.
‘I’m all right,’ she protested.
‘We are all tired,’ he said. ‘There is no shame in admitting it.’ He broke off and shaded his eyes, peering ahead.
‘What is it?’ she demanded.
‘I’m not sure.’ He lifted the binoculars that hung on his chest and focused them on the dark blob far ahead that had caught his attention. ‘I still can’t recognize what it is.’ He passed the glasses to her and Centaine stared through them.