Текст книги "Men of Men"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

Соавторы: Wilbur Smith
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"This way, Major."

Zouga dropped the reins as he reached the low barrier of thorn branches that marked the firing line, and Tom came up short. He swung up the carbine, and fired as the butt slapped into his shoulder. One of the far-off specks of white burst and vanished. He cranked another round into the chamber, and glanced over his shoulder.

The stallion was still half a mile away, but coming on with a war drum of hooves.

Zouga fired again, but Tom was blowing between his knees, heaving with the effort of the wild gallop.

"Damn it to hell."

Haste would be fatal now, but his fingers fumbled the reload and a shiny brass cartridge slipped and struck his boot before it fell into the sand. He thrust another into the breech, took a long slow breath, and judged Tom's movements beneath him.

The rifle jumped against his shoulder, and the acrid plume of gunsmoke blew into his face. The second target exploded.

"Two down, Major," one of the stewards shouted, and then as he fired again, "Three down, one to go!" Then beside Zouga the golden stallion came plunging to a halt, coming back low on glossy bunched quarters.

Louise vaulted from his back in a swirl of beaded buckskin skirts.

There was a flash of the silky skin of her upper calf above the boot, and the back of a dimpled knee. Even in the press of the moment, he found the pale beautiful flesh disturbing enough to spoil his aim and he swore as his next shot flew wide.

Louise was shooting the latest model of the legendary 173 Winchester repeater, the original polished brass frame replaced by blued steel, and Zouga. knew that the modern centre-fire ammunition drove the heavy lead bullet with amazing power and accuracy.

She threw the stallion's rein over her left shoulder, and braced herself to fire from a standing position, leaning forward to absorb the recoil of the Winchester, and let her first shot fly.

She shot in the American style, throwing the rifle to her shoulder and firing in the same movement, not holding her aim nor giving the barrel time to wander. It was fine shooting.

"One hit to missis Sint John," yelled the steward. But the crash of the shot had startled Shooting Star and he reared wildly and backed off on his hind legs, heaving at the reins that were looped over Louise's shoulder, jerking her over backwards so that her second shot flew in a long spurt of powder smoke towards the sky; and then she was down on her back, being dragged away, her skirts tangled about her legs, and the Winchester rifle was flung from her hand.

The stallion came down on his forelegs again. One hoof, sharp as a woodman's axe, grazed the tender spot at the nape of Louise's neck, just below the thick plait of dark hair, leaving an angry pink blaze on the pale skin but not breaking it.

Zouga felt the sweat on his throat turn so cold that he could not swallow. He swung Tom around to head off the stallion.

For unholy seconds Louise's body was hidden by flying dust and trampling hooves; Zouga tried to shout to her ,to let the horse go, but his voice had choked, and then abruptly Louise was on her knees.

She was facing Shooting Star, clinging stubbornly to his reins with both hands, and when he reared again she used his strength to let him boost her to her feet.

"Steady!" she called to him. "Steady, I tell you., She was dusty and a tendril of dark hair had escaped the plait and hung into her eyes, but she was safe and very angry. Her voice crackled like breaking ice. Zouga's relief was immediate, but he mocked her as he swung Tom back to the firing line for his last target.

"I advise you to have that animal properly trained, madam."

"To hell with you, Major Ballantyne!"she told him in the same tone as she had quelled her mount. Somehow the oath on her lips was not shocking at all, but strangely titillating.

Zouga gave Tom a few seconds to settle and regulate his breathing, and then swung up the rifle, held a full bead on the distant white speck and touched off the shot.

"Four hits, you are free to ride on, Major," shouted the steward.

Louise was dragging Shooting Star by the reins to a wild plum tree, a tree with low and sturdy branches.

Swiftly she lashed the stallion's reins to a branch, and now she was running back holding her skirts up to just below the knee, and the stewards gawked at her ankles in the tight-fitting buttoned boots.

She snatched the Winchester from a clump of sansevieria and ran up towards the firing line, reloading as she came. Zouga could see that there were little blisters of perspiration across her forehead, and knew that she was badly shaken, for when she threw up the rifle she held the shot and the heavy weapon wavered unsteadily.

She lowered it, and her shoulders were trembling. She took two long deep breaths and then lifted the Winchester again, firing on the toss up.

"Hit!" yelled the steward.

Louise's lower lip was quivering and she bit down on it fiercely, and shot again.

Zouga slid the carbine back into its leather scabbard, touched the brim of his helmet to Louise in a cavalier salute. "Good shooting, ma'am."

He turned Tom's head away from the firing line.

As they reached the wild plum, Zouga leaned out from the saddle. Louise had tied Shooting Star's reins to the branch with a slippery fisherman, it was a sailor's knot, a quick-release knot for a fast getaway.

Zouga twitched the loose end and the knot fell apart, then he slapped Shooting Star across the cheek with his open hand. "Go on," he said. "Get out of it!" The stallion jerked his head, found that he was free and kicked his heels high.

Zouga looked back as he reached the next low fold in the plain.

The stallion was grazing head down, but even at that distance it was apparent that he was keeping a wary eye on the lonely figure that ran after him in hampering skirts. As soon as Louise came within arm's length of his bridle, he tossed up his head and trotted away to the next clump of grass, leaving her blundering behind.

"Come, Tom." He turned away, trying not to let his conscience trouble him. There were no rules, any rules was acceptable, but it still felt bad, until he reminded himself of the stakes. A shilling against all he owned and he set Tom to run in earnest.

Another mile and he glanced back, just in time to see Shooting Star and his rider come over the rise. They seemed to fly clear of the earth, borne along by the floating carpet of their own dust.

"Run! Tom! Run!" Zouga swept the hat off his head and slapped it against Tom's neck, goading him to his best speed.

Within another half mile Tom's shoulders were hot and slick with salt sweat. Ropes of saliva spilled from the corners of his lips and splattered onto Zouga's boots , but the yellow flag was in sight.

"Not far," Zouga called to him anxiously. "We must beat them to the flag."

He looked back. He could not believe they were so close.

The stallion's head was driving like a hammer to each stride, and his neck and shoulders were black with sweat. She had pushed him fearfully. Louise was driving him with her arms and the rhythmic force of her body.

Her hair was a wild tangle about her face, and her eyes were a blaze of blue.

Yet as she came up to them she straightened in the saddle, her chin lifted high, and she looked at Zouga coldly, expressionlessly, the way a queen might glance at an urchin running at the wheel of her coach.

Zouga lifted his right hand to salute her achievement.

it had been a tremendous run, to make up so much ground. He was turned slightly towards her, and her expression of cold disinterest lulled him for the vital instant that it took her to bring Shooting Star level with Tom's shoulder.

Zouga never saw the command, probably the toe of her boot on the far side of Shooting Star's heaving chest; he had certainly not expected a show horse to have learned the low tricks of a polo pony. Shooting Star's huge sweat-streaked shoulder crashed into Tom, taking him in the short ribs with a force that drove the air out of him in a belching grunt, and as he was spun aside Tom chopped desperately to keep from falling, twisting and dropping to his knees, his nose on the ground, too tired and taken too unawares to meet the power of that ferocious barge.

Zouga lost a stirrup and was thrown onto Tom's neck.

He clung desperately, feeling the saddle shift under the unequal transfer of weight; then Tom heaved again and Zouga went over, landing on his shoulders and the back of his neck.

He seemed to strike solid rock and blackness crushed down from the dome of his skull. When it cleared, he was standing again, swaying like a drunk, blinking uncertainly after the pounding stallion as he pulled away towards the last flag.

Zouga pulled Tom to his feet, and checked swiftly for strained sinew or broken bone, then threw himself back into the saddle.

"We're not beat yet," he told Tom "There are still the thorns."

Far ahead Shooting Star was making the turn around the last flag. From there Louise was free to make her way back to the finish line any way she wanted, but there were still the thorns.

Tom was winded, his chest shuddering with the effort of each laboured breath, and they reached the flag in an awkward jarring trot and made the turn. Ahead of them the thorns stretched in a solid green barrier. This was the last obstacle, and beyond it was a clear run to the finish.

A rider had a choice: go through the thorn, or ride wide.

"Which way did she go?" Zouga shouted at the stewards below the flag as he went past.

"She's gone for the gap," one of them yelled back, and then Zouga saw the little feather of dust a mile or more out on the right subsiding only slowly as the stallion sped away.

The thorn barrier petered out on the rocky slopes of the Magersfontein hills, and there was an open gap below the steep ironstone cliffs, that was where the stallion was aimed.

Grimly Zouga swung Tom around the flag and pointed him directly at the thorns. This route was almost two miles shorter, but he would need every inch of it. Yet he stopped Tom when they reached the edge of the thorns and let him breathe as he untied the heavy greatcoat from the pommel of his saddle and shrugged into it. He buttoned it high at the throat and felt the sweat burst out on his forehead as he pulled on the leather gauntlets to protect his hands.

"Let's go," he whispered, and lay flat on Tom's neck, as they crashed into the thorn.

The red-tipped hooked points of the thorns skidded over Zouga's thick felt hat with a rasping tearing sound, and tugged at the shoulders and skirts of the greatcoat.

The brush grew as high as a mounted man's head, the sturdy trunks just far enough apart to let a horse pass, but the barbed branches intertwined and exacted a cruel toll. However, Tom kept going, swinging and chopping from side to side; he dodged between the white barked trunks, ducking his head under the branches, his ears flat against his skull and his eyes closed to slits, maintaining just the right amount of momentum to snap the thorns off their triangular bases and showering both himself and Zouga with a confetti of feathery green leaves.

Every few seconds he snorted at the sting of thorn that had penetrated his tough shaggy hide.

Shooting Star's burnished skin was so thin and finely bred that the network of veins and arteries showed through it. The thorns would have ripped it to bloody tatters.

Zouga felt blood trickling down his own neck from where a thorn had nicked his ear, but he crouched lower and let Tom pick his own way through. "Poor Tom," he encouraged him. "Poor brave Tom." The horse whickered with the pain of the stinging red needles, but did not check his stride. Yet his breathing was easier now, the slower gait had helped him; and the sweat was drying in salty white crystals on his shoulders.

Then abruptly they burst out of the thorn onto the open plain. Zouga tore off the leather gauntlets and threw them away. He ripped at the buttons of the greatcoat and let it fly away, flapping like a great black crow in the wind of Tom's gallop, and then he stood high in the stirrups and shaded his eyes with the brim of his hat.

Swiftly he searched the open ground, but it was empty as far as he could see. the tiny specks of colour in the distance: women's dresses and the gay bunting that marked the finish. His heart bounded with relief, and under him Tom lunged into a clumsy gallop.

Still standing in the stirrups, Zouga looked towards the line of hills out on his right hand, and he saw them.

The stallion had turned the far end of the thorn barrier where it ran into the hills and was coming down the rocky slope towards the level ground in a dangerous scramble.

The tiny figure on his back was being thrown about brutally. One instant she seemed to be on his neck, the next she was flung back onto his haunches, as Shooting Star plunged and heaved to keep his balance.

"We have them now, Tom. There it is. There is the line, right under your nose." Zouga pointed his head.

"They cannot catch us now. Go, old man, go!" Tom's hooves cracked on the hard earth like the beat of a joyous drummer. The crossing of the thorns had been cruel work, but it had rested him and he was pushing hard now.

"Waie hole!" Zouga called to him, and Tom flicked his ears reproachfully. He had seen it before Zouga had, and he jinked around the burrow neatly, while the heads of the curious little ground squirrels bobbed out of the earth as they passed.

The ground was rotten with their warrens, but Tom barely checked his gallop, swinging to avoid the mounds of freshly-turned earth, or occasionally stretching out to step over an entrance hole.

The ground squirrels were almost indistinguishable from their northern cousins, except for the stripe down their furry backs and their terrestrial habit. They stood on their hind legs, like small groups of spectators at the entrance of each warren, their expressions comically astonished and their long bushy tails curled over their backs as Tom pounded past them.

Zouga looked over his shoulder. Shooting Star was off the steep slope of the hills, down onto the open plain, and it was apparent that he was burning the last reserves of his great strength, coming on in a blazing run, driving with his forelegs, and then bunching up his sweat drenched hindquarters to hurl himself into the next stride. Louise was pushing him with her arms, like a washerwoman working over the scrubbing board, but she was too far behind for Zouga to see the expression on her face.

Much too far behind, half a mile behind, and there was less than a mile to run to the line of gaily coloured bunting that marked the finish.

Zouga could clearly see the crowds on each side of the posts, thick as bees at the entrance to the hive, and others were running for the wagons to join them.

He could hear the faint pop of gunfire, see the little spurts of gunsmoke jumping up above the heads of the crowd as his supporters fired into the air in jubilation.

Soon he would hear their voices, catch the sound of their cheers, even above the beat of Tom's hooves.

It was all over. He had won. He had won back his claims, the cherished image of the falcon god, and the five thousand pounds with which he could take his family away to a new life. He had taken on the gods of chance and won.

He had only one regret, that the courage of the horse and rider behind him had been in vain. Careful not to unbalance Tom's heavy unlovely gallop, he looked back under his own arm.

By God, she had not yet accepted defeat. She was driving with all her strength and all her heart, pushing the horse as hard as she pushed herself, coming on so swiftly that Zouga glanced uneasily over Tom's pricked ears to reassure himself as to the proximity of the finish line. No, there was no chance, even at that tremendous speed, Shooting Star could never catch them.

Already he could hear the voices of the crowd, make out their individual faces, even recognize Pickering, the chief steward, on his seat on the wagon, and beside him Rhodes" unmistakable bulk and the mop of unruly hair.

With him to witness it, Zouga's triumph was complete.

He turned for the last time to look back at Shooting Star, just in time to see him fall. It had been much too fast, too uncontrolled, that wild gallop across ground rotten with squirrel warrens. Shooting Star's front legs went from under him. Zouga imagined he could hear the bone break, like the crack of a pistol shot, and the huge horse went down from full gallop, shoulder first, neck twisted around in an agonized contortion'like that of a dying flamingo; dust flew up in a cloud, blanketing them, and above it the stallion's hooves kicked spasmodically, convulsively, and then sagged.

The pale beige dust cloud drifted aside, revealing the tragic tangle of horse and rider. Shooting Star lay on his side and, as Zouga reined in and swung Tom's nose back the way he had come, the great stallion made a feeble effort to lift his head off the ground and then let it fall back weakly.

Louise's body had been flung clear. She lay curled like a sleeping child on the bare earth, very still, very small.

"Ha, Tom, ha!"Zouga urged him to greater speed. He was shocked at the sense of utter desolation that assailed him as he galloped back to where she lay. There was something so final, so terribly chilling in her stillness, in the complete relaxation, the lifelessness of that tiny crumpled body.

"Please God," Zouga spoke aloud, his throat seared by dust and thirst and dread. "Please don't let it be."

He imagined the lovely delicate neck twisted at an impossible angle against the shattered vertebrae. He imagined the awful bloodless depression in the delicate dome of her skull; he imagined those huge dark eyes, open and staring, the inner glow fading, he imagined, oh God, he imagined, Then he was kicking his feet clear of the stirrups and jumping down even while Tom was at full gallop, stumbling to keep his balance and then running to where she lay.

Louise uncurled her body and rolled lightly to her feet.

"Come, darling, up darling," she called to Shooting Star, as she ran to him. The stallion lunged once, twice and then he was standing, head up.

"What a clever darling," Louise laughed, but with the huskiness of excitement and the tremor of heart-breaking exertion in the sound of it.

She did not have the strength left to vault for the saddle, and for a moment she hopped with one foot in the stirrup before she could find the energy to swing her other leg up over Shooting Star's back, while Zouga stood and gaped at her.

From the saddle she looked down at Zouga. "Playing dead is an old Blackfoot Indian's trick, Major."

Louise swung the stallion's head towards the finish line.

"Let's see you run the last lap on equal terms," she challenged, and Shooting Star jumped away at full gallop.

For a moment Zouga could not bring himself to believe that she had taught the stallion to fall so convincingly, and to lie so still. Then suddenly his concern for her safety, the desolate feeling of believing her dead or maimed turned to fury and outrage.

As he ran back to where Tom stood, he yelled after her.

"Madam, you are a cheat, may God forgive you for that."

She turned in the saddle and waved gaily. "Sir, you are gullible, but I will forgive you for that."

And Shooting Star bore her away towards the finish at a pace that poor Tom could never match.

Zouga Ballantyne was drunk. It was the first time in the twenty-two years they had been together that Jan Cheroot had seen him so.

He sat very erect on the high-backed deal chair, and his face above the beard had a strange waxen look to it.

His eyes were glazed over with the same soapy sheen of uncut diamonds, The third bottle of Cape Brandy stood on the green baize of the table between them, and as Zouga fumbled for it, he knocked it over. The spirit glugged loudly from the mouth, and soaked into the cloth.

Jan Cheroot snatched it upright, with a shocked oath.

"Man, if you want to lose the Devil's Own, I don't mind, but, when you spill the brandy, that's another thing."

Jan Cheroot stumbled a little over the words; they had been drinking since an hour before sundown.

"What am I going to tell the boys?" mumbled Zouga.

"Tell them that they are on holiday, for the first time in ten years. We are all on holiday."

Jan Cheroot poured brandy into Zouga's mug, and pushed it closer to his hand. Then he poured a good dram into his own, thought about it for a moment, and added as much again.

"I have lost everything Old Jan."

"Ja," Jan Cheroot said cheerfully. "And that was not very much, was it."

"I have lost the claims."

"Good." jan Cheroot nodded. "For ten years those double-damned squares of dirt ate our souls away, and starved us while they were doing it."

"I have lost the bird."

"Good again!" Jan Cheroot swigged his brandy, and smacked his lips with appreciation. "Let mister Rhodes have his share of bad luck now.

That bird will finish him, as it nearly finished us. Send it to him as soon as you can, and thank God to be rid of it."

Slowly Zouga lowered his face into his hands, covering his eyes and his mouth, so that his voice was muffled.

"Jan Cheroot. It's all over. For me the road to the north is closed. My dream is finished. It's all been for nothing."

The bibulous grin faded slowly and Jan Cheroot's yellow face puckered with deep compassion.

"it is not finished, you are still young and strong with two strong sons."

"We shall lose them too, soon, very soon."

"Then you will have me, old friend, like it has always been."

Zouga lifted his head out of his hands and stared at the little Hottentot.

"What are we going to do, Jan Cheroot?"

"We are going to finish this bottle and then open another," Jan Cheroot told him firmly.

In the morning they loaded the soapstone idol into the gravel cart, and laid it on a bed of straw; then Zouga spread a stained and tattered tarpaulin over it and Jordan helped him rope it down.

Neither of them spoke, until they were finished, and then Jordan whispered so softly that Zouga barely caught the words.

"You can't let it go, Papa." And Zouga turned to look at his younger son, truly seeing him for the first time in many years.

With a small shock he realized that Jordan was a man.

In imitation of Ralph perhaps, he also had grown a moustache. It was a dense coppery gold, and accentuated the gentle line of his mouth, yet, if anything, the man was more beautiful than the child had been.

"Is there no way we can keep it?" Jordan persisted, with a thin edge of desperation in his voice, and Zouga went on staring at him. How old was he now? Over nineteen years, and yesterday he had been a baby, little Jordie.

Everything was changed.

Zouga turned away from him, and placed his hand on the tarpaulin-wrapped burden in the bottom of the cart.

"No, Jordan. It was a wager, a matter of honour."

"But, Mama -" Jordan started and then broke off abruptly as Zouga looked back at him sharply.

"What about Mama?" he demanded, and Jordan looked away and flushed, bringing up the colour under the velvety skin of his cheeks.

"Nothing," he said quickly, and went to the head of the lead mule.

"I will take the bird to mister Rhodes," he volunteered, and Zouga nodded immediately, relieved that he would be spared this painful duty.

"Ask him when he will be free to sign the transfer of the claims."

Zouga touched the wrapped statue again as though in farewell and then he pulled his hand away, went up the steps onto the verandah and into the bungalow without looking back.

Jordan led the mules out into the rutted road and swung them towards the settlement. He walked bareheaded in the sunlight. He was tall and slim and he moved with a peculiar grace, stepping lightly and lithely in the soft red dust. His chin was up, his eyes focused far ahead, with the dreaming, yet all-seeing, gaze of a poet.

Men and women, especially women, looked after him as he passed and their expressions softened, but Jordan walked on as though he were alone on a deserted street.

Though his lips never moved, the words of the invocation to the goddess Panes kept running through his mind.

"– Why did you run away? You would have been better with us -" So many times he had called to the goddess, the words were part of his very existence. "Will you not come back to us, great Panes?"

The goddess was going, and Jordan did not believe he could support the agony of it. Statue, goddess and mother were all one in his mind, his last link with Aletta. Aletta who had become Panes.

He felt desolate, bereaved as though of his dearest love, and when he reached the milkwood fence of Rhodes' camp, he stopped and wild fancies seized him. He would take the goddess, run with her into the wilderness, hide her in some distant cave. His heart bounded. No, he would take her back to the ancient ruined city from which she had come, that far place in the north from which his father had stolen her, where she would be safe.

Then with a plunge of his spirits and a slide of despair in his guts he knew that these were childish dreamings and that he was no longer a child.

With a light touch on the lead mule's bridle, he guided her into the camp, and Rhodes was standing at the front door of his bungalow, bareheaded and in shirtsleeves. He was talking quietly, urgently to a man below the stoep.

Jordan recognized him as one of the Central Diamond Company overseers.

When Rhodes looked up and saw Jordan, he dismissed the overseer with a curt word and a nod.

jordan," Rhodes" greeting was grave, perhaps he sensed the mood of the young man before him, "you have brought it?"

When Jordan nodded, he turned back to the waiting overseer.

"Bring four of your best men," he ordered. "I want this cart unloaded, and carefully. It's a valuable work of art."

He watched keenly as they untied the ropes that held the tarpaulin in place, but cocked the large curly head when Jordan spoke.

"If we have to lose it, then I'm glad it's you that it goes to, mister Rhodes."

"The bird means something to you also, Jordan?"

"Everything," Jordan said simply, and then caught himself; that sounded ridiculous. mister Rhodes would think him strange. "I mean, it has been in my family since before I was born. I don't really know what it will be like without that goddess. I don't really want to think about losing it."

"You don't have to lose it, Jordan."

Jordan looked at him, unable to bring himself to ask the meaning.

"You can follow the goddess, Jordan."

"Please don't tease me, mister Rhodes."

1you are bright and willing, you have studied Pitman's shorthand, and you have an excellent pen," Rhodes said.

"I need a secretary, somebody who knows and loves diamonds as I do. Somebody whom I feel easy with.

Somebody I know and whom I like. Somebody I can trust. Jordan felt a vast soaring rush of joy, something sharper, brighter and more poignant than he had ever known before. He could not speak; he stood rooted and stared into the pale blue and beautiful eyes of the man whom he had worshipped for so many years.

"Well, Jordan, I am offering you the position. Do you want it?"

"Yes," Jordan said softly. "More than anything on earth, mister Rhodes."

"Good, then your first task is to find a place to set up the bird."

The white overseer had pulled the tarpaulin aside to expose the statue, and the sheet hung down over the side of the cart.

"Easy now," he shouted at the gang of black labourers.

"Get a rope on it. Don't drop it. Watch that end, damn YOU.

They swarmed over the statue, too many of them for the job, getting in one another's way, and Jordan's heady joy at Rhodes" offer was submerged in a quick stab of concern for the safety of the bird.

He started forward to set the ropes himself, but at that moment there was the clatter of hooves and Neville Pickering rode into the yard. He was astride his mare, a highly bred and finely mettled bay, and he reined her down to a walk.

He shot a glance at Jordan, and his face clouded for an instant, a quick show of irritation, or of something else.

With a sudden intuitive flash Jordan realized that Pickering resented his presence here.

Then as quickly as it had come the shadow passed from Pickering's handsome features and he smiled that sunny charming smile of his and looked down at the statue in the cart.

"What have we here?" His tone was gay, his manner carefree and relaxed. As always he was elegantly dressed, the drape of broadcloth showing off his broad shoulders, the tooled leather belt emphasizing his narrow waist, as the polished half boots did the length and shape of his legs. The low-crowned, broad-brimmed hat was cocked forward over one eye, and he was smiling.

"Oh, the bird." He looked up at Rhodes on the stoep of the bungalow. "So you have it at last, as you said you would. I should congratulate you."

The day had been still and too hot, it would change soon. The wind would-come out of the south and the temperature would plunge, but until then the only movements of air were the sudden little dust devils that sprang out of nowhere, small but violent whirlwinds that lifted a high churning vortex of dust and dry grass and dead leaves a hundred or more feet into the still sky as they sped in a wildly erratic course across the plain, and then just as suddenly collapsed and disintegrated into nothingness again.

One of these dust devils rose now, on the open ground beyond the milkwood hedge. It tore a dense red cloud of spinning dust off the surface of the road, then swerved abruptly and raced into the yard of Rhodes" camp. Jordan felt his heart gripped in a cold vice of superstitious dread.

"Panes!" The cry was silent in his head. "Great Panes!"

He knew what that wind was " he knew the presence of the goddess, for how many times had she come to his invocation? Suddenly the whole yard was filled with the swirling torrents of dust, and the wind battered them. It flew into Jordan's face, so that he must slit his eyes against it. It flung his soft shiny curls into his face, and it flattened his shirt against his chest and his lean flat belly.