The Seventh Scroll - Smith Wilbur - Страница 31

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in the river, it was crisp and fruity. Tessay offered them cold roast

chicken and injera bread, the flat, thin sheets of stone-ground

unleavened bread of the country. The trials and labours of the morning's

travels faded into insignificance as Royan lay beside Nicholas in the

grass and they watched a bearded vulture sailing high against the blue.

It saw them and drifted overhead curiously, twisting its head to look

down at them. Its eyes were masked in black like those of a highwayman,

and the distinctive wedge-shaped tail feathers flirted with the wind the

way the fingers of a concert pianist would stroke the ivories of the

keyboard.

When it was time to go on, Nicholas gave her his hand to lift her to her

feet. It was one of their rare moments of physical contact, and she held

on to his fingers for just a second or two longer than was strictly

necessary.

There was no improvement in the surface of the trac as they drew nearer

to the rim of the gorge, and the hours passed in this bone-jarring,

teeth-rattling progress. The track snaked over a rise and then

dog-legged down the far slope. Halfway down Boris swore in Russian as

they came round the hairpin bend of a high earthen bank to find a huge

diesel truck slewed across the track, almost blocking it.

Even though they had been following the tracks of this convoy of

vehicles since the previous day, this was the first of them that they

had encountered, and it took Boris by surprise. He hit his brakes so

suddenly that his passengers were almost catapulted from their seats,

but on the steep incline in the mud the brakes did not bring them to a

complete halt. Boris was forced to change down into his lowest gear and

steer for the narrow gap between the bank and the truck.

From the back seat Royan looked out of the window I beside her, up the

high side of the diesel truck. There was a company name and logo

emblazoned in scarlet on the green background.

A strong feeling of du vu overcame her as she stared at the image. She

had seen this sign recently, but her memory cheated her: she could not

recall the time or the place. She only knew that it was of vital

importance that she should remember.

The side of the Toyota scraped against the metal of the truck, and then

they were past it. Boris leaned out of his window and shook his fist at

the driver of the larger vehicle.

He was a local man, probably recruited in Addis by the owner of the

truck. Grinning at Boris's antics, he leaned out of his own cab to

return the clenched fist salute, adding a nice little touch by jerking a

raised forefinger upwards.

"Dungeater!" Boris roared with outrage at being bested in the exchange,

but he did not stop. "No use even talking to them. What do they know?

Black chimps!'

For the rest of the wearisome journey Royan remained silent and

withdrawn, shaken and troubled by the conviction that she had seen the

trademark of the winged red horse before, with, set above it in a

pennant, the name of the company: "PEGASUS EXPLORATION'.

As they approached the end of the day's journey at last they passed a

signpost beside the track. The supporting legs of the sign were solidly

set in concrete, and the artwork was of such high quality that it could

only have been that of a professional signwriter.

Across the top of the board an arrow indicated a newly bulldozed road

that headed off to the right, and the directions read:

PEGASUS EXPLORATION

BASE CAMP - ONE KILOMETRE

PRIVATE ROAD

NO ENTRY TO UNAUTHORIZED TRAFFIC

The scarlet horse reared in the centre of the board with its wings

spread wide, on the point of flight.

Now she gasped aloud as the elusive memory came upon her with stunning

clarity. She remembered where she had last seen the flying red horse. In

an instant she was transported back into the icy waters of an English

salmon river, flung from the rolling body of the Land Rover, the huge

MAN truck roaring over the bridge above her, and, for a subliminal pulse

of time, the prancing red horse upon its side.

she almost shouted aloud, but controlled herself. The terror of the

moment returned to her with full force, and she found herself breathing

hard and her heart racing as though she had run a long way.

"It cannot be a coincidence," she assured herself silently, "and I am

not mistaken. It is the same company.

Pegasus Exploration."

She was withdrawn and distracted for the last few miles of the journey,

until the track they were following ended abruptly on the brink of the

sheer cliffs of the escarpment, Here Boris pulled on to the grassy verge

and stopped the engine.

"This is as far as we ride. We camp here tonight. My big truck is not

far behind. They will make camp as so on as they arrive. Tomorrow we

will go down into the gorge on foot."

As they dismounted, Royan tugged at Nicholas's arm, "I must speak to

you," she whispered urgently, and she followed him as he led her along

the bank of the river.

He found a place for them to sit side by side, with their legs dangling

over the drop. Beside them the swollen yellow river seemed to sense what

lay ahead of it. The cold mountain waters speeded up, swirled amongst

the rocks, and gathered themselves for that dizzying leap out into empty

space. The cliff below them was a sheer wall of rock almost a thousand

feet deep. It was so high that in the evening light the abyss far below

was a dark, mysterious place, its bottom hidden from them by shadow and

spray from the falls. As Royan looked down into it her sense of balance

swirled with vertigo. She cringed back from the edge and found herself

instinctively leaning against Nicholas's shoulder to steady herself.

Only when they touched did she realize what she was doing, and she

pulled away from him self-consciously.

The muddied waters of the Dandera. river leaped from the brink, and were

miraculously transformed into curtains of ethereal lacework as they

fell. Like the skirts of waltzing bride they shimmered and swirled, and

rainbows of light played through them as though from an embroidery of

seed pearls. Still falling, the columns of white spray twisted and

changed into lovely but ephemeral shapes, until they struck the lower

ledges of glistening black rock and exploded outwards into fresh clouds

of white that at last screened the dark depths of the abyss with " an

opalescent veil.

It was with a conscious effort that Royan pulled her mind away from the

awe-inspiring scene and back to the troubled present.

"Nicky, do you remember I told you about the truck that forced my mother

and me over the bridge in the Land Rover?"

"Of course." His expression was mystified as he studied her face. "You

are upset. "What is it, Royan?"

"The truck had signwriting down the sides of the trailers that it was

towing."

"You told me, yes. Green and red. You told me that you didn't get a good

enough look to read the sign."

"It was the same as the truck we passed this afternoon.

I saw the sign at the same angle as before and it came back to me. The

red Pegasus, the flying horse."

He studied her face for a while, "Are you absolutely certain?"

"Absolutely!" She nodded vehemently.

Nicholas stared out over the magnificent panorama of the gorge spread

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