The Burning Shore - Smith Wilbur - Страница 87

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The light improved swiftly, and H'ani, trotting ahead of Centaine, pointed with her digging stick. At first Centaine could not see what she was indicating, then she noticed a small dried vine with a few parched brown leaves lying close to the earth, and the first sign of living plant life since they had left the coast.

Because she now knew where and how to look, Centaine noticed other plants, brown and blasted and insignificant, but she had learned enough of this desert to guess what lay beneath the surface. It gave her spirits a small lift when she noticed the first scattered clumps of fine silver dry desert grass. The dunes were behind them, and the land about them was coming alive again.

The morning breeze that had aided O'wa in his stalk persisted after the sun had cleared the horizon, so the heat was not as oppressive as it had been in the dune country. The whole temper of the San was lighter and more carefree, and even without H'ani's assurances 'Good now, eat, drink soon', Centaine was sure that they had passed through the worst stage of the journey.

She had to screw up her eyes and shade them, for already the low sun sparkled in dazzling points of white light from the mica chips and bright pebbles and the sky was aglow with a hot soapy radiance that dissolved the horizon and washed out all colour and altered shape and substance.

Far ahead of them Centaine saw the humped shape lying, and beyond it the four gemsbok cows lingering loyalty but fearfully by their fallen liege bull. They abandoned him at last only when the little file of human shapes was within a mile, and they galloped away into the shimmering heat haze.

The bull lay as O'wa had mimed him, panting and so weakened by the poison of the arrowhead that his head rolled and his long straight annulated horns waggled from side to side. His eyes glistened with tears and his eyelashes were as long and curved as those of a beautiful woman, yet he tried to rise to defend himself as O'wa faced him, and hooked with those rapier horns that could impale a full-grown lion, swinging them in a vicious flashing arc, before sagging back.

O'wa circled him cautiously, seeming so frail against the animal's bulk, waiting for his opening, the clumsy spear poised, but the bull dragged its semi-paralysed body around to face him. The arrowhead still dangled from the wound beneath his ear, and the lovely black and white pattern of his face mask was smeared with dark coagulated blood from the poisoned wound.

Centaine thought of Nuage again, and she wanted the suffering to end quickly. She laid down her satchel, loosened her skirt and held it like a matador's cape and sidled up to the stricken bull on the far side from O'wa.

Be ready, O'wa, be ready! The bull turned to her voice.

She caped the bull and he lunged at her, his horns hissed in the air like a swinging cutlas, and he dragged himself towards her, kicking up dust with his giant hooves, and Centaine leaped nimbly aside.

As he was distracted, O'wa rushed forward and lanced the bull in the throat, driving the bone spearhead deep, twisting and worrying it, seeking the cartoid artery. Bright arterial blood sprayed like a flamingo feather in the sunlight, and O'wa leapt back and watched him die.

Thank you, great bull. Thank you for letting us live.

Between them they rolled the carcass on to its back, but when O'wa prepared to make the first cut with his flint knife, Centaine opened the blade of her clasp knife and handed it to him.

O'wa hesitated. He had never touched that beautiful weapon. He believed that if he did it might cleave to his fingers and he would never be able to give it up again.

Take, O'wa, Centaine urged him, and when he still hesitated, staring at the knife with a timid reverence, Centaine with a sudden intuitive flash realized the true reason for O'wa's antagonism towards her.

He wants the knife, he is lusting after it. She almost laughed but controlled it. Take, O'wa, and the little man reached out slowly and took it from her hand.

He turned it lovingly between his fingers. He stroked the steel, caressing the blade, and then tested the edge with his thumb.

Ai! All be exclaimed as the steel sliced through his skin and raised a beaded chain of blood drops across the ball of his thumb. What a weapon. Look, H'ani! He displayed his injured thumb proudly. See how sharp it is! My stupid husband, it is usual to cut the game and not the hunter! O`wa cackled happily at the joke, and bent to the task.

He took the bull's scrotum in his left hand and drew it out, then with a single stroke lopped it free.

Ai! How sharp! He laid the scrotum aside, the testicles grilled on the coals were a delicacy and the sac of soft skin would make a fine pouch for arrowheads and other small valuables.

Starting from the wound between the bull's hindlegs, he made a shallow cut through the skin, angling the blade forward so as not to pierce the belly cavity. He led the cut with his forefinger hooked under the skin, up between the bull's forelegs under its throat to the point of the chin.

He made ring cuts around the bull's neck, and around the hocks of all four limbs, then sliced down the inside of the legs until he intercepted the first long lateral incision.

With the women pulling on the white underside of the skin and the blue marbled muscles sheathed in their transparent capsules, they flayed the hide off the carcass in a single sheet. It made a soft, tearing crackling sound as it came away; they spread it out, fur-side down on the ground.

Then O'wa opened the stomach cavity with the precision of a surgeon, lifted out the heavy wet viscera and laid them on the sheet of skin.

H'ani scurried away and collected a bunch of the fine pale desert grass. She had to range widely, for the clumps of grass were scattered and sparse. She hurried back and arranged the grass over the gourd bowl, while O'wa slit open the slippery white bag of the bull's rumen and lifted out a double handful of the contents. Water dribbled from the undigested vegetation even before O'wa began to squeeze it out.

Using the bunch of grass as a sieve, O'wa filled the gourd with fluid and then lifted it with both hands to his lips. He drank deeply, closing his eyes with ecstasy, and when he lowered the bowl, he belched thunderously and grinned hugely as he passed the gourd to H'ani. She drank noisily and finished with a belch and a hoot of appreciation, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand as she passed the gourd to Centaine.

Centaine examined the pale greenish-brown liquid. It's only vegetable juice, she consoled herself. It hasn't even been chewed or mixed with gastric juices yet- and she lifted the gourd.

it was much easier than she had anticipated, and it tasted like a broth of herbs and grass, with the bitter aftertaste of the hi tuber. She handed the empty gourd back to O'wa, and while he squeezed and strained the rest of the contents of the rumen, she imagined the long table at Mort Homme set with silver and crystal and SEvres porcelain, and the way Anna fussed over the flowers, the freshness of the turbot, the temperature of the wine and the exact shade of pink of the slices of freshly carved filet, and she laughed aloud. She had come a long, long way from Mort Homme.

The two little San laughed with her in complete misunderstanding, and they all drank again and then again.

Look at the child, H'ani invited her husband. In this land of the singing sand I feared for her, but already she blooms like the desert flowers after the rain. She is a strong one, with the liver of a lion, did you see how she helped at the moment of the kill, by drawing the eye of the bull to herself? H'ani nodded and cackled and belched. She will breed a fine son, you hear the word of old H'ani, a fine son indeed. O'wa, his belly ballooning with good water, grinned and was about to concede, when his eye dropped to the knife that lay between his feet, and the grin faded.

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