The Burning Shore - Smith Wilbur - Страница 105
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Centaine looked for the zebra herd again as they meandered amongst the mopani trees, but this time the forests seemed strangely deserted and what wild game they did see was mistrusting and skittish, taking instant alarm at the first distant sign of the upright human figures.
There is something, H'ani muttered as they rested in the noon heat, I do not know what it is, but the wild things sense it also. It makes me uneasy, we should return to the valley that I might talk with O'wa. He understands these things better than I do. Oh Rani, not yet, Centaine pleaded.
Let us stay here a little longer. I feel so free. I do not like whatever is happening here, H'ani insisted.
The bees- Centaine found inspiration, we cannot pass through the tunnel until nightfall, and though H'ani grumped and frowned, she at last agreed.
But listen to this old woman, there is something unusual, something bad- and she sniffed at the air and neither of them could sleep when they rested at noon.
H'ani took Shasa from her as soon as he had fed.
He grows so, she whispered, and there was a shadow of regret in her bright black eyes. I wish I could see him in his full growth, straight and tall as the mopani tree."You will, old grandmother, Centaine smiled, you will live to see him as a man. H'ani did not look up at her. You will go, both of you, one day soon. I sense it, you will go back to your own people. Her voice was hoarse with regret. You will go, and when you do there will be nothing left in life for this old woman. No, old grandmother, Centaine reached out and took her hand. Perhaps we will have to go one day. But we will come back to you. I give you my word on that. Gently H'ani disentangled her grip, and still without looking at Centaine, stood up. The heat is past. They worked back towards the mountain, moving widely separated through the forest, keeping each other just in sight, except when denser bush intervened. As was her habit, Centaine chatted to the sleeping infant on her hip, speaking French to train his ear to the sound of the language, and to keep her own tongue exercised.
They had almost reached the scree slope below the cliffs when Centaine saw the fresh tracks of a pair of zebra stallions imprinted deeply in the soft earth ahead of her. Under H'ani's instruction, she had developed acute powers of observation, and O'wa had taught her to read the signs of the wild with fluent ease. There was something about these tracks that puzzled her. They ran side by side, as though the animals that made them had been harnessed to each other. She hefted Shasa on to her other hip and turned aside to examine them more closely.
She stopped with a jerk that alarmed the child, and he squawked in protest. Centaine stood paralysed with shock, staring at the hoof prints, not yet able to comprehend what she was seeing. Then suddenly a rush of emotions and understanding made her reel back. She understood the agitated behaviour of the wild creatures, and H'ani's undirected premonition of evil. She began to tremble, at the same moment filled with fear and joy, with confusion and shaking excitement.
Shasa, she whispered, they are not zebra prints. The hooves that had made these chains of tracks were shod with crescents of steel. Horsemen, Shasa, civilized men riding horses shod with steel! It seemed impossible. Not
here, not in this desert fastness.
Instinctively her hands flew to the opening of the canvas shawl she wore about her shoulders, and from which her breasts thrust out unashamedly. She covered them and glanced around her fearfully. With the San she had come to accept nudity as completely natural. Now she was aware that her skirts rode high on her long slim thighs, and she was ashamed.
She backed away from the prints as though from an accuser s finger.
Man, a civilized man, she repeated, and immediately the image of Michael formed in her mind, and her longing overcame her shame. She crept forward again and knelt beside the spoor, staring at it avidly, not able to bring herself to touch it in case it proved to be hallucination.
It was fresh, so very fresh that even as she watched the crisply outlined edge of one hoofprint, it collapsed and slid in upon itself in a trickle of loose sand.
An hour ago, Shasa, they passed only an hour ago, not longer. The riders had been walking their horses, moving at less than five miles an hour, There is a civilized man within five miles of us at this very moment, Shasa. She jumped up and ran along the line, fifty paces, before she stopped again and dropped to her knees. She would not have seen it before, without O'wa's instruction she had been blind, but now she picked out the alien texture of metal, even though it was only the size of a thumbnail and had fallen into a clump of dry grass.
She picked it out and laid it in her palm. It was a tarnished brass button, a military button with an embossed crest, and the broken thread still knotted in the tang.
She stared at it as though it were a priceless jewel.
The design upon it depicted a unicorn and an antelope guarding a shield and below there was a motto in a ribbon.
Ex Unitate Vires, she read aloud. She had seen the same buttons on General Sean Courtney's tunic, but his were brightly polished. From Unity Strength. The coat of arms of the Union of South Africa. A soldier, Shasa! One of General Courtney's men! At that moment there was a distant whistle, H'ani's summons, and Centaine sprang to her feet and hovered undecidedly. All her instinct was to race desperately after the horsemen, and to plead to be allowed to travel with them back to civilization, but then H'ani whistled again and she turned to look back.
She knew how terrified the San were of all foreigners, for the old people had told her all the stories of brutal persecution. H'ani must not see these tracks. She shaded her eyes and stared longingly in the direction in which the spoor pointed, but nothing moved amongst the mopani trees. She will try to stop us following them, Shasa, she and O'wa will do anything to stop us. How can we leave the old people, and yet they can't come with us, they will be in great danger- she was torn. and undecided -but we can't let this chance go. It might be our only- H'ani whistled again, this time much closer, and Centaine saw her small figure amongst the trees coming towards her. Centaine's hand closed guiltily on the brass button and she thrust it into the bottom of her satchel.
H'ani mustn't see the tracks, she repeated, and glanced quickly up at the cliffs, orientating herself so that she could return and find them herself, and then whirled and ran to meet the old woman and led her away, back towards the hidden valley.
That evening, as they performed the routine camp chores, Centaine had difficulty disguising the nervous excitement that gripped her, and she replied distractedly to H'ani's questions. As soon as they had eaten and the short African dusk ended, she went to her shelter and settled down as though to sleep, pulling the gemsbok skin over both the infant and herself. Although she lay quietly, and regulated her breathing, she was fretting and worrying, as she tried to reach her decision.
She had no means of guessing who the horsemen were, and she was determined not to lead the San into mortal danger, yet she was equally determined to take her own chances and to follow up those tantalizing tracks for the promise they held of salvation and return to her own world, of escape from this harsh existence which would at last turn her and her infant into savages.
We must give ourselves a start, so that we can catch up with the horsemen before H'ani and O'wa even realize we have gone. That way they will not follow us, will not be exposed to danger. We will go as soon as the moon rises, my baby. She lay tense and still, feigning sleep, until the gibbous moon showed over the rim of the valley. Then she rose quietly and Shasa murmured and grunted sleepily as she gathered up her satchel and stave and crept quietly out on to the path.
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