by Wilbur Smith
‘Blaine!’ she exclaimed. ‘The diamonds! It’s the diamond case! They have dropped the diamonds.’
Her fatigue fell away from her like a discarded cape and before he could stop her she put her heels into her gelding’s flanks and urged him into a gallop, overtaking the Bushmen. The two spare horses were forced to follow her, straining on their lead reins, the water bottles bouncing wildly on their backs.
‘Centaine!’ Blaine shouted, and spurred his mount after her, trying to catch her.
Sergeant Hansmeyer had been drooping in the saddle, but he roused himself instantly as the two leaders galloped away.
‘Troop, forward!’ he shouted, and the whole party was tearing ahead.
Suddenly Centaine’s gelding screamed with agony and reared under her. She was almost thrown from the saddle, but recovered her balance with a fine feat of horsemanship, and then the spare horses were whinnying and kicking and lashing out in agony. Blaine tried to turn out, but he was too late and his mount broke down under him, his spare horses shrieking and bucking on their leads.
‘Halt!’ he screamed, turning desperately to try and stop Sergeant Hansmeyer’s charge, signalling him with both arms. ‘Halt! Troop, halt!’ The Sergeant reacted swiftly, swinging his mount to block the troopers who followed him, and they came up short in a tangle of milling, tramping horses, the dust swirling over them in a fine mist.
Centaine sprang down from the saddle and checked her gelding’s front legs, they were both sound and she lifted a rear hoof and stared in disbelief. A burr of rusted iron was stuck to the frog of the gelding’s hoof and dark blood was already pouring from the wound it had inflicted, mingling into a muddy paste with the fine desert dust.
Gingerly Centaine took hold of the metal rose and tried to pull it away, but it was buried deeply and the gelding trembled with the pain. She tugged and twisted, carefully avoiding the protruding spikes, and at last the horrible thing came free in her hand, wet with the gelding’s blood. She straightened and looked across at Blaine. He also had been busy with his own mount’s feet and held two of the bloody irons in his hands.
‘Horse irons,’ Blaine told her. ‘I haven’t seen the cruel damned things since the war.’ They were crudely forged, shaped like the ubiquitous devil thorns of the African veld, four pointed stars aligned so that one point was always standing upright. Three inches of sharp iron that would cripple man or beast, or would slash the tyres of a following vehicle.
Centaine looked around and saw that the earth all around where she stood was strewn with the wicked spikes. Dust had been lightly brushed over them to conceal them from casual observation but had in no way reduced their effectiveness.
Quickly she stooped again to the task of ridding all three of her horses of the spikes. The gelding had picked them up in both rear hooves and the spare horses had three and two hooves damaged. She plucked the iron spikes from their flesh and hurled them away angrily.
Sergeant Hansmeyer had dismounted his troopers and they came up to assist her and Blaine, stepping cautiously for the spikes would readily penetrate the soles of their boots. They cleared a narrow corridor through which the horses could be led back to safe ground, but all six of them had been brutally maimed. They hobbled slowly and painfully, reluctant to touch the earth with their damaged hooves.
‘Six of them,’ Blaine whispered bitterly. ‘Wait until I get my hands on that bastard.’ He drew the .303 rifle from the scabbard on his saddle and ordered Hansmeyer, ‘Put our saddles onto two of your spare horses. Top up all the water bottles from those on the crippled horses. Have two of your troopers mark a path around the area of the horse irons. Move it quickly! We can’t waste a minute.’
Centaine left them and went forward, cautiously circling around the booby-trapped patch of earth. She reached the black japanned despatch case which had deceived her and picked it up. The lid flapped open, the lock smashed by Lothar’s bullet, and she turned the case upside down. It was empty. She let it drop and looked back.
Blaine’s men had worked swiftly. Their saddles had been transferred to undamaged horses. They had chosen a black gelding for her and Sergeant Hansmeyer was leading it. The whole troop was circling out in single file, leaning out of the saddle to check for any more horse irons in their path. She knew that from now on they would not be able to relax for a moment, for she knew that Lothar would not have laid all his spikes. They would find more along the spoor.
Hansmeyer came up beside her. ‘We are ready to go, ma’am.’ He handed her the reins to the fresh horse and she mounted, then they all looked back.
Blaine stood with the Lee Enfield rifle on his hip, and with his back turned to them faced the line of six crippled horses. He seemed to be praying, or perhaps he was merely steeling himself, but his head was bowed.
He lifted it slowly and threw the butt of the rifle to his shoulder. He fired without lowering the rifle, his right hand flicking the bolt back and forth, and the shots crashing out in rapid succession, blending into a long-drawn-out drum-roll of sound. The horses fell on top of one another, in a twitching, jerking pile. He turned away then, and even at that distance Centaine glimpsed his expression.
She found she was weeping. The tears poured down her face, and she could not stop them. Blaine rode up beside her. He glanced at her, and when he saw her tears, he stared straight ahead, letting her get over it.
‘We have lost nearly an hour,’ he said. ‘Troop forward!’
Twice more before nightfall the Bushman stopped the column and they had to pick their way cautiously around a scattering of the wicked spikes. Each time it cost them precious minutes.
‘We are losing ground,’ Blaine estimated. ‘They heard the rifle shots and they are alerted. They know they have got fresh horses waiting somewhere ahead. They are pushing harder – much harder than we dare.’
The country changed with dramatic suddenness as they emerged from the wastes of Bushmanland into the gently wooded more benevolent Kavango area.
Along the undulating ridges of the ancient compacted dunes grew tall trees, combretum the lovely bush willow, and albizia with its fine feathery foliage, and stands of young mopani between them. The shallow valleys were covered with fine desert grasses whose silver and pink seed heads brushed their stirrup irons as they rode through.
The water was not far below the surface here and all Nature seemed to respond to its presence. For the first time since leaving the mission at Kalkrand, they saw large game, zebra and redgolden impala, and they knew that the waterhole for which they were riding could be only a few miles ahead for these animals would drink daily.
It was not too soon for all the horses were used up and weak, struggling onwards beneath the weight of their riders. A few inches remained in the water bottles, seeming to mock their thirst with hollow gurgles at each pace.
Lothar De La Rey could not remain in the saddle unaided. Swart Hendrick rode on one side of him and his bastard son Klein Boy on the other. They supported him when sudden bouts of delirium overcame him and he laughed and ranted and would have slipped from the saddle and tumbled to earth. Manfred trailed behind them, watching his father anxiously, but too exhausted and thirsty to assist him.
They struggled up another rise in the endless succession of consolidated dunes, and Swart Hendrick stood in the stirrups and peered down into the gentle basin ahead of them, barely daring to hope that they had been able to ride directly to their destination through the trackless land where every vista mirrored the previous one and the one that followed. All they had to steer by was the sun and the instinct of the desert creature.
Then his spirits soared, for ahead of them there were the tall grey mopani trunks nurtured into giants by the water over which they stood and the four great umbrella acacia exactly as they had been imprinted in his memory. Between their trunks Hendrick caught the soft sheen of standing water.
The horses managed a last jolting trot down the slope and through the trees, and then out over the bare clay that surrounded th
e shrunken puddle of water in the centre.
The water was the colour of café au lait, not ten paces across at the widest point nor deeper than a man’s knee. Around it the hoofprints and pad marks of dozens of various types of wild animals – from the tiny multiple V scratches of quail and francolin to the huge round prints of a bull elephant the size of dustbin lids – had been sculpted into the black clay and then baked by the sun as hard as concrete.
Hendrick and Klein Boy drove their mounts into the centre of the pool and then flung themselves face down into the lukewarm muddy water, snorting and gasping and laughing wildly as they scooped it into their mouths.
Manfred helped his father to dismount at the edge, and then ran to scoop a hatful and bring it to Lothar where he had collapsed into a sitting position, supporting himself on his own knees.
Lothar drank greedily, choking and coughing as the water went down the wrong way. His face was flushed and swollen, his eyes fever-bright and the poison in his blood burning him up.
Swart Hendrick waded to the side, his boots squelching and water pouring from his sodden clothing, still grinning – until a thought struck him and he stopped. The grin was gone from his thick black lips and he glared about him.
‘Nobody here,’ he grunted. ‘Buffalo and Legs – where are they?’ He broke into a run, spraying water at each pace as he headed for the primitive hut that stood in the shade of the nearest umbrella acacia.
It was empty and derelict. The charcoal of the camp-fire was scattered widely; the freshest signs were days – no, weeks old. He raged through the forest, and at last came back to Lothar. Between them Klein Boy and Manfred had helped Lothar into the shade and he lay back against the trunk of the acacia.
‘They’ve deserted.’ Lothar anticipated Hendrick’s report. ‘I should have known. Ten horses, worth fifty pounds each. It was too much temptation.’ The rest and the water seemed to have strengthened him; he was lucid again.
‘They must have run away within days of us leaving them.’ Hendrick sank down beside him. ‘Surely they have taken the horses and sold them to the Portuguese, then gone home to their wives.’
‘Promise me that when you see them again you will kill them slowly, Hendrick, very slowly.’
‘I dream of how I will do it,’ Hendrick whispered. ‘First I will make them eat their own manhoods, I will cut them off with a blunt knife and I will feed them to them in small pieces.’
They were both silent, staring at the small group of their four horses which stood at the pool’s edge. Their bellies were distended with water but their heads were hanging pathetically, noses almost touching the baked clay.
‘Seventy miles to the river, seventy miles at least.’ Lothar broke the silence, and he began to unwrap the filthy rags that covered his arm.
The swelling was grotesque. His hand was the size and shape of a ripe melon. The fingers stuck stiffly out of the blue ball of flesh. The swelling carried up the forearm to the elbow, trebling the girth of his lower limb, and the skin had burst open and clear lymph leaked out of the tears. The bite wounds were deep, slimy, yellow pits, the edges flared open like the petals of a flower, and the smell of infection was sweet and thick as oil in Lothar’s own nostrils and throat, disgusting him.
Above the elbow the swelling was not so intense, but there were livid scarlet lines beneath the skin running right up to Lothar’s shoulder. He reached up and gently explored the swollen glands in his armpit. They were hard as musket balls buried in his flesh.
‘Gangrene,’ he told himself, and he realized now that the carbolic acid solution with which he had originally cleansed the bite wounds had aggravated the condition. ‘Too strong,’ he muttered. ‘Too strong solution.’ It had destroyed the capillary vessels around the wound, preparing the way for the gangrene that had followed. ‘The hand should come off.’ He faced the fact at last, and for a moment he even considered attempting the operation himself. He imagined starting at the elbow joint and cutting –
‘I can’t do it,’ he decided. ‘I can’t even think of it. I have to go on as far as the gangrene will let me, for Manie’s sake.’ He looked up at the boy.
‘I need bandages.’ He tried to make his voice firm and reassuring, but it came out as a raven’s croak, and the boy started and tore his eyes from the ravaged limb.
Lothar dusted the suppurating wounds with carbolic crystals – all that he had – and bound them up with strips of blanket. They had used up all their extra clothing for bandages.
‘How far is she behind us, Henny?’ he asked, as he knotted the bandage.
‘We have won time,’ Hendrick guessed. ‘They must be saving their horses. But look at ours.’
One of the animals had lain down at the edge of the water, the sign of capitulation.
‘Five or six hours behind us.’ And it was seventy miles to the river, with no guarantee that the pursuers would honour the border and not pursue them across. Lothar did not have to voice those doubts; they were all too aware of them.
‘Manfred,’ he whispered. ‘Bring the diamonds.’ The boy placed the canvas haversack beside Lothar and he unpacked it carefully.
There were twenty-eight of the small brown cartridge paper packages with their red wax seals. Lothar separated them into four piles, seven packages in each.
‘Equal shares,’ he said. ‘We cannot value each package, so we will cut them four ways and give the youngest first pick.’ He looked across at Hendrick. ‘Agreed?’
Swart Hendrick understood that the sharing of the booty was at last an admission that not all of them were going to reach the river. Hendrick lowered his eyes from Lothar’s face. He and this golden-haired, white-skinned devil had been together since the far-off time of their youth. He had never considered what held them together. He felt a deep, unwavering antagonism and distrust towards all white men except this one. They had dared so much, seen so much, shared so much. He did not think of it as love or as friendship. Yet the thought of the parting which lay just ahead filled him with a devastating despair, as though a little death awaited him.
‘Agreed,’ he said, in that deep resonant tone, like the chime of a bass bell, and he looked up at the white boy. The man and the boy were one unit in Hendrick’s mind. What he felt for the father was also for the son.
‘Choose, Manie,’ he ordered.
‘I don’t know.’ Manfred put both hands behind his back, reluctant to touch one of the piles.
‘Do it,’ snapped his father, and obediently he reached out and touched the nearest pile.
‘Pick them up,’ Lothar ordered, and then looked at the black youth. ‘Choose, Klein Boy.’
There were two piles left, and Lothar grinned through cracked lips. ‘How old are you, Henny?’
‘As old as the burned mountain, as young as the first flower of spring,’ the Ovambo said, and they both laughed.
‘If I had a diamond for every time we have laughed together,’ Hendrick thought, ‘I would be the richest man in the world.’ And it required an effort to keep the smile on his face. ‘You must be younger than I am,’ he spoke aloud. ‘For I have always had to care for you like a nursemaid. Choose!’
Lothar shoved his chosen pile across to Manfred. ‘Put it in the haversack,’ he told him, and Manfred packed their share of the booty into the canvas bag and strapped it closed while the two black men filled the pockets of their tunics with their packages.
‘Now fill the water bottles. It’s only seventy miles to the river,’ Lothar said.
When they were ready to leave Hendrick stooped to help Lothar to his feet, but he struck Hendrick’s hands away irritably and used the trunk of the acacia to push himself upright.
One of the horses could not rise and they left it lying at the water’s edge. Another broke down within the first mile, but the other two limped on gamely. Neither of them could any longer support the full weight of a man, but one carried the water bottles and Lothar used the other as a crutch. He staggered along beside it with his good arm draped
over its neck.
The other three men took it in turns to lead the horses, and they trudged on determinedly northwards. Sometimes Lothar laughed without reason and sang in a strong, clear voice, carrying the tune so beautifully that Manfred felt a buoyant rush of relief. But then the singing quavered and his voice broke and cracked. He shouted and raved and pleaded with the fever phantoms that crowded about him, and Manfred ran back to him and circled his waist with a helping arm and Lothar quieted down.
‘You are a good boy, Manie,’ he whispered. ‘You’ve always been a good boy. We are going to have a wonderful life from now on. A fine school for you, you will become a young gentleman – we’ll go to Berlin together, the opera—’
‘Oh, Papa, don’t talk. Save your strength, Papa.’ And Lothar subsided once more into an oppressive silence, toiling on mechanically with his boots dragging and scuffing, and only the labouring horse and his son’s strong young arm preventing him from crashing face forward onto the hot Kalahari sands.
Far ahead of them the first of the granite kopjes showed above the sparse heat-blighted forest. It was round as a pearl and the smooth rock glowed silver grey in the sunlight.
Centaine stopped her horse on the crest of the rise and looked down into the basin of land beyond. She recognized the tall trees from the top branches of which, many years before, she had glimpsed her first wild African elephant, and a little of the childlike wonder of that moment had remained with her over all that time.
Then she saw the water, and all else was forgotten. It was not easy to control the horses once they had smelled it. She had heard of desert travellers dying of thirst at the water-hole when they allowed their cattle and horses to rush ahead and trample the water into thick mud. But Blaine and his sergeant were experienced men and controlled them firmly.
As soon as the horses had been watered and picketed, Centaine pulled off her boots and waded fully dressed into the pool, ducking under the surface to soak her clothing and her hair and revelling at the chill of the muddy water.