The Burning Shore - Smith Wilbur - Страница 112

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All right, you sons of the great hyena, listen to me. We are looking for San, the little yellow killers. Their eyes sparkled. We are looking for the white girl they had as their captive, and there are a hundred gold sovereigns for the man who cuts her spoor. This is how we will conduct the hunt, Lothar smoothed the sand between his feet and then traced out the plan for them with a twig.

The wagons will follow the line of the water-holes, here and here, and we will fan out, like this and like this.

Between us we can sweep fifty miles of country. So they rode into the east, as he had planned it, and within the first ten days they cut the spoor of a small party of wild San. Lothar called in his outriders and they followed up the trail of tiny childlike footprints.

They moved with extreme caution, carefully spying out the terrain ahead through Lothar's telescope, and skirting each stand where an ambush could be laid. The idea of a poisoned bone arrowhead burying itself in his flesh made Lothar shudder every time he let himself think about it.

Bullets and bayonets were the tools of his trade, but the filthy poisons that these little pygmies brewed unmanned him, and he hated them more each hot tortuous nervewracking mile that they followed the spoor.

Reading the sign, Lothar learned that there were eight San in the party they were following: two adult males and two women, probably their wives. There were also four small children, two still at the breast and two just old enough to walk on their own.

The children will slow them down, Vark Jan gloated, they will not be able to stand the pace. I want one of them alive, Lothar warned them.

I want to know about the girl. Vark Jan's slave grandmother had taught him enough of the San language to interrogate a captive and he grinned. Catch one of them and I will make him talk, be sure of that. The San were hunting and foraging and Lothar's band gained on them rapidly. They were only an hour behind when the San, with their animal perceptions, sensed their presence.

Lothar found the spot where they had become aware, the spot where the trail seemed to vanish.

They are anti-tracking, he growled. Get down and search, he ordered.

They are carrying the children, Vark Jan squatted to examine the earth, the babies are too young to cover their own spoor. The women are carrying them, but they will tire quickly under the load. Though the trail seemed to end and the ground beyond seemed unmarked even to Lothar's experienced eye, yet even the San had left sign that Vark Jan and Swart Hendrick could follow. The pace was slower, for they had to dismount to be closer to the earth, but still they followed, and within four hours Swart Hendrick nodded and grinned.

The women are tiring quickly. They are leaving better sign and moving slower. We are gaining on them now. Far ahead the San women, toiling under the weight of the children, looked back and wailed softly. The following horses showed across the plain, magnified by the mirage until they loomed like monsters, but even the sight of their pursuers could not drive the women on at a better speed.

So I must play the plover, said the oldest of the San hunters. He was re erring to t e way the plover feigns injury to lead a predator away from its nest. If I can make them follow me, I may be able to burn up their horses with thirst, he told his clan. Then when you reach the next water-hole and after you have drunk and filled the water-eggs- He proffered a sealed buckhom container to his wife and he did not have to say the fateful words.

Poisoning a water-hole was such a desperate deed that none of them wanted to talk of it. If you can kill the horses, you will be safe, the hunter told them. I will try to give you time to do it.

The old San hunter went quickly to each of the children and touched their eyelids and lips in blessing and farewell, and they stared at him solemnly. When he went to his woman who had borne him two sons, she gave a short keening wall. He admonished her with a glance which told her clearly, Show no fear in front of the little ones. Then as he shed his clothing and his leather satchel, the old San whispered to the younger man, his companion in a thousand hunts, Be a father to my sons. He handed his satchel to him, and stepped back. Now, go!

While he watched his clan trot away, the old man restrung his little bow and then carefully unwound the strips of leather that protected the heads of his arrows.

His family disappeared across the plain, and he turned his back upon them and went to meet his pursuers.

Lothar was fretting at the pace. Though he knew that the quarry was only an hour ahead, they had lost the spoor again and were held up while his flanks cast forward to pick it up. They were in open country, a flat plain that stretched away to an indeterminate meeting with the sky.

The plain was dotted with dark clumps of low scrub, and the mirage made them dance and squirm in the field of the telescope. It would be impossible to pick out a human figure amongst them at more than a mile distance.

The horses were almost knocked up, they had to have water soon. Within the next hour he would have to call off the pursuit and turn back to the water wagon. He lifted the telescope again, but a wild shout made him start and glance around. Swart Hendrick was pointing out to the left. The man on the extreme left flank, Vuil Lippe, the Bondelswart, was trying to control his mount.

It was rearing and walking on its hindlegs, dragging him with it in a sheet of flying dust.

Lothar had heard that a horse would react to the hot scent of a wild Bushman as though to that of a lion, but he had doubted it. Vuil Lippe was helpless, both hands on the reins, his rifle in the boot on the saddle, and as Lothar watched he was dragged over one of the salt bushes and sprawled in the dirt.

Then quite miraculously another human shape seemed to appear out of the very earth. The tiny naked pixie-like shape stood up only twenty paces beyond the dragging rider. Unlikely as it seemed, he must have been completely concealed behind a clump of scrub that should not have hidden a hare.

As Lothar watched with helpless horror, the little mannikin drew his bow and let fly. Lothar saw the flight of the arrow, like a dust mote in the sunlight, and then the naked Bushman whirled and trotted directly away from the line of horsemen.

Lothar's men were all shouting and struggling to remount, but terror seemed to have infected the horses, and they pranced and circled. Lothar was the first up. He did not touch the stirrups, but with a hand on his horse's withers, sprang into the saddle, turned its head and galloped down the line.

Already the running Bushman was disappearing amongst the low mirage-shrouded scrub, in a swinging trot that carried him away at an incredible rate. The man he had fired at had let his horse run free and had pulled himself to his feet. He stood with his legs braced apart, swaying slightly from side to side.

Are you all right? Lothar shouted as he rode up, and then he saw the arrow.

It dangled down Vuil Lippe's chest, but the arrow-head was buried in his cheek, and he stared up at Lothar with a bewildered expression. Lothar jumped down and caught him by the shoulders.

I'm a dead man, Lippe said softly, his hands hanging by his sides, and Lothar seized the dangling arrow and tried to pull it free. The flesh of Lippe's cheek was drawn out in a peak and he screamed and staggered. Gritting his teeth, Lothar heaved again, but this time the frail reed shaft snapped, leaving the bone arrowhead embedded in the man's flesh, and he began to struggle.

Lothar seized a handful of his greasy black hair and twisted his head over to examine the wound. Keep still, damn you. A short length of bone protruded from the wound. It was caked with a black rubbery coating.

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