Текст книги "Men of Men"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

Соавторы: Wilbur Smith
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In his memory Zouga heard the words again, spoken by that silken voice, and they seemed to echo against the dome of his skull and fill the drums of his ears.

"What is it, my dear fellow?" Pickering repeated the question and something slithered along Zouga's spine and crawled upon the skin of his forearms so that the hair came erect and he had to shudder to free himself of it.

"Nothing," he answered, huskily. "It's nothing; a grey goose walked over my grave." But he stared still at the statue and Rhodes followed his gaze.

"By Jove. Isn't that the bird you wrote about in the book?"

Rhodes sprang to his feet.

Eagerly he strode to where it stood and paused before it for a long silent moment before he reached out and touched the head.

"What an extraordinary piece of work," he said softly, and went down on one knee to examine the shark-tooth pattern that was carved into the plinth. In that attitude he seemed like a worshipper, a priest conducting some weird rite before the idol.

Again Zouga felt that superstitious flutter of nerves crawl like insects upon his skin, and to break the mood he called loudly for Jan Cheroot to bring a lantern.

In the lantern's beam they scrutinized the polished greenish stone, and as Rhodes ran his big large-knuckled hand over it his expression was rapt, the gaze of those strange pale eyes remote, like a poet hearing words in his head.

Long after Pickering and Zouga had returned to their seats by the log fire, Rhodes stood alone under the camel-thorn tree with the falcon, and when at last he left it to join them once more, his tone was brittle with accusation.

"That thing is a treasure, Ballantyne. It is unforgivable to leave it lying out under a tree."

"It's lain in worse conditions for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years," Zouga replied drily.

"You are right." Rhodes sighed, his attention straying back to the bird. "It's yours to do with as you wish." And then, impulsively, "I wish to purchase it from you. Name a price."

"It's not for sale," Zouga told him".

"Five hundred pounds," said Rhodes.

The sum startled Zouga, but his reply was immediate.

"No., "A thousand., "I say," Pickering intervened. "You can pick up ten claims in number 6 Section for that."

Rhodes did not glance at him, but he nodded. "Yes, you could, or Major Ballantyne could pay for his share of the new stagings with a thousand pounds."

A thousand pounds. Zouga felt himself tempted. A thousand pounds would see him clear.

"No." He shook his head. "I'm sorry." He felt he had to explain. "It has become the household god, my personal good-luck symbol."

"Good luck!" snorted Jan Cheroot from across the fire, and all three of them turned their heads in his direction.

None of them noticed him sitting on the edge of the shadows like a wizened little yellow gnome.

"Good luck!"the Hottentot repeated scornfully. "Since we picked up that verdamned bird we haven't seen a day's good luck." He spat into the fire, and his phlegm sizzled and exploded in a little puff of steam. "That bird has put blisters on our feet and rubbed the skin from our backs, it has broken the axles of our wagons and lamed our horses. It has brought us fever, and sickness and death. Miss Aletta died looking at that bird, and Jordie would have followed her if I hadn't thrown the verdamned thing out."

"That's nonsense," Zouga snapped sharply. "That's an old Hottentot maid's superstition."

"Ja," Jan Cheroot challenged him hotly. "Is it an old Hottentot superstition that we are sitting in the dust of this hell-hole, swatting flies and rubbing empty bellies?

Is it superstition that all around us they are pulling fat diamonds and we find only the droppings and manure?

Is it superstition that the earth has fallen on our claims and that it nearly swallowed Ralph? Is that your good luck that you boast the bird brings you, Master Zouga?

If it is, then hear the words of old Jan Cheroot and take the thousand pounds that mister Rhodes offers you; take it with both hands, and thank him for getting rid of that that -" Jan Cheroot ran out of words and glared across the fire at the birdshape under the thorn tree.

"Damn me," Pickering smiled. "But you nag like a wife."

None of them were surprised at the familiar address between servant and master. In Africa relationships like this were common; the servant considering himself to be part of the family with a voice in the affairs of the family, and his claim was accepted by all.

"Jan Cheroot has hated the idol since the day we discovered it."

"Tell me about that day, Jan Cheroot," ordered Rhodes brusquely; and Jan Cheroot puffed up visibly with selfimportance. There were few things he enjoyed more than an important and attentive audience and a good story to tell them. While he made a show of packing his clay pipe with black Magaliesberg shag tobacco and lighting it with an ember from the fire, the two boys crept out of the tent drawn by the prospect of a story. They glanced cautiously at Zouga and, when he made no move to send them back, they were emboldened.

Jordie sat next to Jan Cheroot and leaned his curly golden head against the Hottentot's shoulder, while Ralph came diffidently to sit with the men beside the fire.

"We had been one year in the bush," Jan Cheroot began, tone year without seeing a civilized man, one year trekking and hunting-" And the boys settled down with delicious anticipation. They had heard the story a hundred times before and enjoyed each telling more than the last.

"We had killed two hundred great elephant since leaving the Zambezi river, and we had fought bad men and savages. Our porters had mostly deserted or died of disease and wild animals, our provisions were long finished, no salt, no tea, no medicine and little gunpowder. Our clothes were rags, our boots worn through and repaired with the wet hide of buffalo.

"It had been a killing journey, over mountains with no passes and rivers with no names " and ordinary men would long ago have fallen and the birds would have picked their bones white. Even we were tired and sick and we were lost. Around us, as far as our eyes could see, there was nothing but wild hills and bad bush through which only the buffalo could pass."

"And you needed honey for your strength," Jordie burst out, unable to contain himself, and knowing the story word perfect. "Otherwise you would have died in the bush."

"And we needed honey for our strength or we would have died in the bush," Jan Cheroot agreed solemnly.

"Out of the bush came a little brown honey guide, and he sang thus -" Jan Cheroot imitated the high-pitched burring call and fluttered his fingers in an uncanny imitation of the bird."

"Come!" he called to us. "Come, follow me, and I will lead you to the hive."

"But he wasn't a real honey-bird, was he, Jan Cheroot?"

Jordie cried excitedly.

"No, Jordie, he wasn't a real honey-bird."

"And you followed him!"

"And we followed him for many days through bad country. Even when Master Zouga, your father, would have turned back, old Jan Cheroot was firm. We must go on, I told him, for by this time I, who have a deep knowledge and understanding of ghosts and spirits, realized that this was not a real honey-bird but a hobgoblin in the guise of a bird."

Zouga smiled softly. He remembered the incident differently. They had followed the bird for some hours, and it was Jan Cheroot who had lost interest in the hunt and had to be prodded and cajoled to continue.

"Then suddenly -" Jan Cheroot paused and flung out both hands theatrically, "– before our eyes, a wall of grey stone rose out of the bush. A wall so high it was like a mountain. With my axe I chopped away the vines and found a great gateway, guarded by fierce spirits "Spirits?" Zouga smiled.

"They were invisible to ordinary eyes," Jan Cheroot explained loftily. "And I put them to flight with a magical sign."

Zouga winked at Pickering, but Jan Cheroot ignored their smiles.

"Beyond the gateway was a temple yard, in which lay the falcon statues, cast down, some of them shattered, but all of them covered with heaps of gold, mountains of gold."

Zouga sighed. "Fifty pounds weight to be exact. Fragments and tiny pieces which we had to sift from the soil.

How I wish it had been a mountain."

"We gathered the gold from where it lay, and we took up that statue on our shoulders and carried it one thousand miles,"

"Complaining every step of the way," Zouga pointed out.

"until we reached Cape Town again."

It was after midnight when Jan Cheroot brought the saddled horses to the camp fire, and as Rhodes took the reins he paused in the act of mounting.

"Tell me, Major, this land to the north, this Zambezia as you call it in your book, what is it that keeps you from it? What are you doing here?"

"I need money," Zouga told him simply. "And somehow I know that the road to the north begins here. The money to take and hold Zambezia will come from the workings of New Rush."

"I like a man who thinks big, a man who counts not in ones and twos but in tens of thousands," Rhodes nodded approval.

"At this moment I count my fortune in ones and twos."

"We could change that." Rhodes shot a pale piercing glance towards the bird carving, but Zouga chuckled and shook his head.

"I would like first refusal," Rhodes persisted.

"If I sell, it will be to you," Zouga agreed, and Rhodes stepped up in the stirrup, swung a leg over the horse's rump, settled in the saddle and rode out of the camp.

Pickering edged his mount closer to Zouga and leaned down from the saddle to tell him seriously: "He will have it from you, in the end he will have it. "I think not." Zouga shook his head.

But Pickering smiled. "He always gets what he sets his heart on. Always."

He saluted Zouga with the hand that held the reins and then started his horse into a canter and followed Rhodes out onto the dusty starlit track.

"Give the stone to the yellow man," Karnuza urged quietly. "Five hundred gold queens, and we will return to our own people with treasures. Your father, the induna of Inyati, will be pleased, even the king will call us to the great kraal at Thabas Indunas for audience. We will become important men."

"I do not trust the Bastaard."

"Do not trust him. Trust only the yellow coins he brings."

"I do not like his eyes. They are cold and he hisses like a yellow cobra when he speaks."

They were silent then, a circle of dark figures in the smoky hut, squatting around the diamond as it lay on the clay floor and flickered with weird lights in the reflection of the fire.

They had argued since the sunset had released them from their labours. They had argued over the meal of stringy mutton with its rind of greasy fat and maize porridge baked until it was stiff as cake.

They had argued over the snuff-horn and beer pot, and now it was late. Soon, very soon, there would be a scratching at the door of the hut as the Bastaard came for his answer.

"The stone is not ours to sell. It belongs to Bakela.

Does a son sell the calves from his father's herds?"

Karnuza made a clucking sound of exasperation.

"Surely it is against law and custom to steal from the tribe, from the elders of the tribe, but Bakela is not Matabele. He is buni, white man, it is not wrong doing to take from him any more than it is against law and custom to send the assegai through the heart of a Mashona dog, or to mount his wife in sport, or to take the cattle of a Tswana and put fire into his kraal to hear his children squeal. Those are natural and right things for a man to do."

"Bakela is my father, the stone is his calf, given into my care."

"He will give you a single coin," Karnuza lamented, and Bazo seemed not to hear him.

He picked up the diamond again and turned it in his hand.

"It is a large stone," he mused aloud, "a very large stone." He held it to his eye and looked into the stone as though it were a mountain pool, and he watched with awe the fires and shapes move within it.

Still holding it to his eye, he said, "If I bring my father a newborn calf, he will be happy and give me a reward.

But if I bring him one hundred calves how much greater will be his joy, and one hundred times greater the reward that he will give me."

He lowered the stone and gave a series of orders that sent his men hurrying out into the night, to return immediately with the tools Bazo had sent them to fetch.

Then in silence they watched him make his preparations.

Firstly he spread a kaross of silver jackal pelts on the earth floor and then in the centre of the fur he placed a small steel anvil at which he had watched Zouga shaping horse-shoes and working the iron hoops to repair the wagon wheels.

On the anvil Bazo placed the diamond, and then he threw aside his cloak so that he stood stark naked in the firelight, tall and lean and hard, his belly muscles standing up in concentric ridges under the dark satiny skin and the wide rangy shoulders overdeveloped by practice with shield and spear.

With his legs braced wide, he stood over the anvil, and hefted the sweat-polished handle of the pick, feeling the balance and weight of the steel head that had become so familiar.

Bazo narrowed his eyes, measuring his stroke, and then he reared back with the pick almost touching, the thatched roof. He drove his body weight into the stroke, and the steel pick head came hissing down from on high.

The point caught the diamond exactly on the high centre of its curved upper surface, and the great stone exploded as though a bucketful of mountain water had been dashed to the earth. The sparkling drops, the shattered fragments, the glowing chips of priceless crystal, seemed to fill the whole hut with a burst of sunlight.

They pattered against the thatched walls, stung the naked skins of the watching Matabele, kicked little puffs of grey ash as they fell into the fire, and scattered on the lustrous fur of the silver jackal kaross, shining there like live fish in the net.

"Son of the Great Snake," hooted Kamuza joyously. "We are rich men." And the laughing Matabele flung themselves into the task of gathering up the fragments.

They picked them from the ashes, swept them up from the earthen floor, shook them out of the jackal skin kaross, and piled them into Bazo's cupped hand until it was filled to overflowing. Even then they missed some of the tiny chips that had fallen into the dust or the fire and were lost for ever.

"You are a wise man," Kamuza told Bazo with unaffected admiration.

"Bakela has his stones, a hundred calves , and we will have more coins than the yellow Bastaard would give us."

There was no work in the collapsed number 6 Section, no need to rise before dawn, so the sun was clear of the horizon when Zouga strode out of the tent, clinching his belt as he joined Jan Cheroot and the two boys under the camel-thorn tree.

The table was a packing-case, the lid stained with candle grease and spilled coffee, and breakfast was maize-meal porridge in chipped enamel bowls, unsweetened, for the price of sugar had recently risen to a pound a pound on the diamond fields.

Zouga's eyes were red-rimmed, for he had slept little the previous night, but had lain awake worrying and scheming, going over and over in his mind every detail of the plans for the new staging, and coming back each time to the most important detail, the one for which there seemed to be no solution: the cost, the enormous cost of it all.

The two boys saw his face, recognized his mood, and were immediately silent, applying themselves with complete absorption to the unappetizing grey gruel in their bowls.

A shadow fell across the group, and Zouga looked up irritably, squinting into the early sunlight with the spoon half raised to his lips. "What is it, Bazo?"

"Pick-ups, Bakela." The tall young Matabele used the English words. "Pick-ups." Zouga grunted.

"Let me see it." Zouga was immediately uninterested.

Almost certainly it would be a worthless chip of quartz or rock crystal. But Bazo placed a small bundle wrapped in a dirty scrap of cloth beside Zouga's bowl.

"Well, open it," Zouga ordered; and Bazo picked the knot, and spread the cloth.

"Glass!" thought Zouga disgustedly. There was almost a handful of it, chips and pieces, the biggest not much bigger than the head of a wax Vesta.

"Glass!" and he made the gesture of sweeping it away, and then stayed his hand as the sunlight fell on the pile and a shaft of it pricked his eyes in a rainbow burst of colours.

Slowly, disbelievingly, he changed the gesture of dismissal and reached hesitantly, almost reverently for the glittering heap, but Jordan forestalled him.

With a shriek of joy the child's small graceful fingers danced over the pile.

"Diamonds, Papa," he screamed. "They are diamonds, real diamonds."

"Are you sure, Jordie?" Zouga asked the question unnecessarily, his voice hoarse, realizing it was too good to be true. There must be many hundreds of precious stones in the pile, small, very small, but of what superb colour, white, ice-white, seeming to crackle like lightwng they were so bright.

Still hesitantly Zouga took one of the largest stones from Jordan's fingers.

"Are you sure, Jordie?" he repeated.

"They are diamonds, Papa. All of them."

Zouga's last doubts faded, to be replaced immediately by a deeper uncertainty.

"Bazo," he said. "There are so many-" And then something else puzzled him. Quickly he picked out twenty of the largest stones and stood them in a row across the top of the packing case.

"The same colour, they are all the same colour, exactly!"

Zouga shook his head, frowning, confused; and then suddenly the shadows in his eyes cleared.

"Oh my God," he whispered, and slowly all blood drained from his face, leaving the skin dirty yellow like a man ten days gone in malaria fever.

"The same; they are all the same. The breaks are clean and fresh."

Slowly he lifted his eyes to Bazo's face. "Bazo, how big -" his voice roughened and dried, so that he had to clear his throat, "how big was the stone before, before you cracked it?"

"This big." Bazo clenched and showed his fist. "With my pick I made it into many stones, for you, Bakela, knowing how you value many stones."

Zouga's voice was still a husky whisper. "I will kill you," he said in English. "For this, I will kill you."

The scar across his cheek turned slowly into an ugly inflamed weal, the stigmata of his rage, and now he was shaking, his lips trembling as he rose slowly to his feet.

"I will kill you." His voice rose to a bellow, and Jordan shrieked again, this time with terror. He had never seen his father like this before; there was a terrifying maniacal quality about him.

"That was the stone I was waiting for, you bastard, you black bastard, that was it. That was the key to the north."

Zouga snatched the Martini-Henry rifle from where it leaned against the bole of the camel-thorn tree beside the falcon carving. The steel clashed and snickered as he pumped a cartridge into the chamber and in the same moment swung up the barrel.

"I'm going to kill you," he roared, and then checked.

Ralph had jumped to his feet, and now he faced his father, stepping forward until the muzzle of the loaded and fully cocked rifle almost touched the entwined brass snakes of his belt buckle.

"You will have to kill me first, Papa," he said. He was as pale as Zouga, his eyes the same deep haunted green.

"Get out of the way." Zouga's voice sank into that croaking, husky whisper and Ralph could not answer him, but he shook his head, his heavy jaw clenched so determinedly that his teeth grated audibly.

"I warn you, stand aside," Zouga choked, and they stood confronting each other, both trembling with tension and outrage.

Then the muzzle of the heavy rifle wavered in Zouga's hands, lowered slowly until it pointed to the dusty red earth between the toes of Ralph's boots.

The silence went on for many seconds; then Zouga took a full breath and the barrel of his chest swelled under the faded blue flannel shirt.

With a gesture of utter frustration he hurled the rifle against the treetrunk and the butt snapped through.

Then he sank back into his seat at the packing-case table and his golden head sank slowly into his hands.

"Get out." All the fire and fury had gone from his voice; it was quiet and hopeless. "Get out, all of you."

Zouga sat on alone under the thorn tree. He felt burned out with emotion and anger, empty and blackened and devastated within, like the veld after fire has swept through it.

When at last he lifted his head the first thing he saw was the falcon squatting opposite him on its greenstone plinth. It seemed to be smiling, a cruel and sardonic twist to the predator's beak, but when he stared at it Zouga saw that it was merely a trick of shadow and sunlight through the thorn branches.

The kopje-walloper was a small man, with legs so short that his polished high-heeled boots did not touch the floor when he sat on the swivel piano stool behind his desk.

The desk filled most of the tiny galvanized-iron hut, and it was furnace-hot in the room; the heat quivered and danced down from the roof. On the raw deal planks of the desk stood the accoutrements of the kopie-walloperys trade. The whisky bottle and shot-glasses to mellow the man with stones to sell; the sheet of white paper on which to examine the goods for colour; the wooden tweezers, the jeweller's eye-glass, the balance and scales, and the cheque book.

The cheque book was the size of a family Bible, each cheque form embossed in gold leaf and printed in multicolours, the border depicting choirs of heavenly angels, sea nymphs riding in half clam shells drawn by teams of leaping dolphins, the Queen as Britannia with helmet, shield and trident, twisting cornucopia from which poured the treasures of Empire and a dozen other patriotic symbols of Victorian might.

The cheque book was by far the most impressive item in the hut, not excepting the buyer's flowing silk Ascot tie and the yellow spats that covered his boots. It was unlikely that a digger would be able to refuse payment offered in such flamboyant style.

"How much, mister Werner?" Zouga asked.

Werner had swiftly sorted the glittering heap of diamond chips into separate piles, grading them by size alone for each stone was of the same fine white colour.

The smallest stones were three points, three hundredth parts of a carat, barely bigger than a grain of beach sand, the largest was almost a carat.

Now Werner laid aside his tweezers. and ran his hand through his dark locks.

"Have another whisky," he murmured, and when Zouga refused, "Well, me, I'm having one now."

He poured both glasses full to the brim, and despite Zouga's frown pushed one across to him.

"How much?" Zouga persisted.

"The weight?"Werner sipped the whisky and smacked his thick liver-coloured lips. "Ninety-six carats, all told.

What a diamond it must have been. We will never see the likes again-' "How much in cash?"

"Major, I would have offered you fifty thousand pounds, if that had been a single stone."

Zouga winced and blinked his eyes closed for an instant, as though he had been slapped across the face with an open hand.

With fifty thousand pounds he could have taken Zambezia, money for men, horses and guns, money for wagons and bullock teams, machinery to mine the reef and mill the gold, money for the farms, the seed and implements. He opened his eyes again.

"Damn you, I'm not interested in what might have been," he whispered. "Just tell me how much you will pay for that."

"Two thousand pounds; that's my top price, and it's not an "open" offer."

The stone had splintered into almost two hundred chips. That meant a "pick-up" payment to Bazo of that many sovereigns. Zouga would intensely resent having to make that payment, but he owed it and he would make it. Of what remained after paying Bazo, at least a thousand would go for his share of the new stagings on the number 6 Section.

Eight hundred left, and it cost him a hundred a week to work his claims, so he had won himself two months.

Sixty days, instead of a land. Sixty days instead of a hundred thousand square miles of rich land.

"I'll take it," he said quietly, picked up the whisky glass and drained it. It burned away the bitter taste at the back of his throat.

Ralph's bird was a lanner, one of the true members of the family Falco, long-winged and perfect for hunting the open plains of Griqualand. At last, after many attempts, he had found her and taken her for his own, a falcon and therefore bigger than the male bird, which was not a falcon but a tercel or, in the case of a lanner, a "lanneret".

She was "eyas", the falconers" term for a wild bird taken at the nest when almost full-fledged. Ralph had climbed to the nest high on the top branches of a giant acacia and brought the bird down in his shirt, bleeding where she had raked him with her talons across his belly.

Bazo had helped him fashion the hood and jesses of soft glove leather for the proud head, but it was Ralph who walked her on his hand, hour after hour, day after day, stroking and gentling her, calling her "darling" and "beauty" and "lovely" until she would eat from his fist and greet him with a soft "Kweet! Kweet!" of recognition when she saw him. Then he introduced her to the lure of stuffed pigeon feathers, teaching her to hit it as he swung it on its long cord.

Finally, in the traditional ritual of the falconer, he sat up all night with the bird on his fist and a candle burning beside him. He sat with her in the trial of wills which would prove his domination over her, staring into her fierce yellow eyes, in the candlelight, hour after hour, outlasting her until the lids closed over her eyes and she slept perched upon his fist and Ralph had won. Then at last he could hunt her.

Jordan loved the bird for her beauty, and once she was trained Ralph occasionally let him carry her and stroke the hot sleek plumage under his gentle fingers. It was Jordan who found her name. He took it from Plutarch's Lives, which he was re-reading, and so the falcon was named Scipio, but Jordan accompanied the hunt only once, disgracing himself irretrievably by bursting into tears at the moment of the kill.

Ralph never invited him again.

The same rains that had undermined the number 6 causeway had flooded every depression and vlei for a hundred miles around the New Rush diggings. Slowly, in the hot dry months since that deluge, the shallower pools and swamps had dried out; but five miles south on the Cape Road, halfway to the low line of blue Magersfontein hills, there was still a wide body of open water, and already reed-beds had grown up around its perimeter and colonies of scarlet and ebony bishop birds had woven their hanging basket nests on the nodding reed staffs.

Amongst the reeds Ralph and Bazo built their blind.

They drew the long, leafy fronds down over their own heads, careful not to slice their hands on the razor-edged leaves; the fluffy white silks snowed down on them from the laden seed heads of the reeds, and they plaited the roof of stems in place, concealing themselves from the open sky.

Ralph scooped a handful of black mud and smeared it over his face.

He knew that his white face turned upwards would shine like a mirror, catching the eye of even a high-flighted bird.

"You should have been born Matabele, then you would not need mud."

Bazo chuckled as he watched him, and Ralph made an obscene sign at him with his fingers before they settled down to wait.

It was fascinating to see how Scipio, blind under the leather hood, could still pick up the beat of approaching wings long before the men could see or hear them, and they were alerted by the set of her head and the anticipatory stretch of her talons.

"Not yet, darling," Ralph whispered. "Soon now, darling."

Then Bazo whistled sharply and pointed with his chin.

Across the swamp, still two miles out, very high against the empty sky, Ralph saw them. There were three of them, big black wings curving on the downbeat in that characteristic unhurried, weighty action.

"Here they come, my love," Ralph murmured to Scipio, and touched the russet-dappled breast with his lips and felt the beat of the fierce heart against his face.

"God, but they are big," Ralph murmured, and the tiny shapely body on his arm was feather light. He had never flown her against geese before, and he was torn with doubts.

The V-shaped flight of geese went far out across the swamp in a leisurely descending circle and then they were coming back, low, flying into the sun; It was perfect. Scipio would have the sun behind her when she towered, and Ralph thrust his doubts aside.

He slipped the soft leather hood off Scipio's beautiful dove-grey head, and the yellow eyes opened like full moons, focusing swiftly. She shook out her feathers, swelling in size for a moment, puffing out her breast until she saw the thick black skein of geese against the sky, and her plumage flattened, going sleek and polished, steely in the early sunlight, and she crouched forward on Ralph's wrist.

Turning with her to follow the flight of the geese, Ralph could feel the rapier points of her talons through the cuff of his leather gauntlet and sense the tension of the small neat body. She seemed to vibrate like a violin's strings as the bow is drawn lightly across them.

With his free hand he broke the quick-release knot that secured the jesses to Scipio's leg.

"Hunt!" he cried, and launched her, throwing her clear of the reed; and she went on high like a javelin, towering swiftly for the sun on wings shaped like the wicked blades of a pair of fighting knives.

The geese saw her instantly, and stalled back on great wings that were suddenly ungainly with shock. Their tight V-formation broke up as each bird turned away two of them rising, driving hard for height while the third bird swung north again towards the river, dropped height steeply to pick up the speed he had lost in the initial stall of shock, and then levelled out low and winged hard, neck outstretched, webbed feet tucked up under his tail.

Scipio was still towering, going up on wings that blurred with speed and turned to golden discs in the early slanting sunlight.