Текст книги "A Time to Die"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

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As he drew the trench knife from the sheath on his webbing, two figures appeared in the mouth of the culvert, silhouetted by the moonlight. They were clinging together and laughing softly, the woman half supporting the man as they staggered forward. Sean gripped the knife underhand, the point of the blade belly high, ready to receive them, but they advanced only a few paces into the intimate darkness of the tunnel, then turned to face each other, still giggling and whispering, both of them outlined against the moonlit exterior.

The Freffino sentry pushed the woman against the wall and propped his rifle beside her while he fumbled to open his own clothing. The woman leaned back against the wall and with a Practiced gesture lifted the front of her skirt above her waist.

Laughing and muttering drunkenly, the sentry reeled against her and she used one hand to steady and guide him, the other still holding up her skirt.

If Claudia had reached out a hand, she could have touched the couple, but they were locked together, oblivious of all around them. The man began to push against her, his voice rising as he exhorted himself to greater effort, his movements becoming more frenzied. The woman clucked like a rider urging a mount forward, and the Frelimo went from a canter to a full gallop, pounding away with abandon.

Suddenly the man threw his head back, stiffening into rigidity, and crowed like an asthmatic rooster. Slowly he drooped and the woman laughed and pushed him away briskly. Stiff laughing, she smoothed down her skirt and seized the man's arm. The two of them staggered out into the sandy river-bed and disappeared around the corner of the culvert. The sounds of their scrambled ascent up the embankment dwindled, and Sean slid the knife back into its sheath on his belt and said softly, "That's what we call a tumble in the jungle!"

Claudia giggled with nervous relief. "Two seconds flat. atj t Th us has to be a new world record," she whispered, and Sean hugged her briefly.

"Shall we also be friends?" he whispered. "Sorry I snarled at you "I was being a dismal Jane. I deserved it. You won't have any more moaning and whining from me."

"Stay close." He turned back to grope for Job and found he had slid weakly down the wall and was sitting on the sandy floor of the culvert.

As he stooped to help him to his feet, Sean's fingers touched his shoulder. The bandage Was damp, and his smile faded. "Me bleeding had started again. 4

"Nothing we can do about it now," he thought, and gently eased Job to his feet.

"How are you doing, old son?"

"No worries." Job's whisper was scratchy and faint.

Sean touched Matatu's shoulder, and he obeyed the unspoken command, instantly creeping out the far side of the culvert and disappearing into the scrub on the stream bank

A few minutes later the soft whistle of a night bird carried to them as Matatu gave the all clear. Sean sent Claudia ahead and gave her a full five minutes to get across the open ground of the cut line.

Let's go." Sean looked up from the luminous dial Of his Rolex, d and they lifted Job into the sling seat and started forward into the moonlight. The next hundred paces seemed like the slowest and longest Sean had ever covered, but at last they were into the forest beyond the cut line, and Claudia was waiting for them there.

"We made it!" she whispered joyfully.

three hundred "We sure have. The first mile was a romp, only they kept going more to go," he answered grimly, and Counting their paces against the second hand of his wristwatch, Sean estimated they were averaging two miles an hour. Ahead of tu selected the easiest going. He was always out of sight them, Mota them. At interin the forest ahead; only his soft bird calls guided vals Sean checked their heading against the stars, catching glimpses of the Southern Cross and its brilliant pair of Pointers through the forest canopy ahead of them.

y stopped once again and When the dawn paled the stars, the drink for the first time, two swallows each Sean allowed them to dia carried.

Then he turned from one of the water bottles that Clau his attention to Job's shoulder. The dressing was soaked with fresh blood, and Job's face was as gray as the ashes of a cold camp fire.

His eyes had sunk into dark sockets and his lips were dry and cracked, his breath whistling softly through them– The pain and king a dreadful toll.

loss of blood were to.

nd the bandage. He and Claudia exchanged Gently Sean unwou a quick glance. The destruction of tissue was horrifying, and the field dressing was caked into the wound cavity. Sean realized that would tear the flesh to which it had if he tried to remove it, he adhered and probably restart the bleeding. He leaned forward and grinned at him, a skull-like twitching back sniffed the wound. Job of the lips. "Steak tartare?" he asked weakly.

him, but he 41All it needs is a little garlic." Sean grinned back at had caught the first sickly whiff of corruption. He squeezed another half tube of iodine paste over the original field dressing, then stripped the plastic packaging from a fresh dressing and placed it over the wound.

Claudia held it in place as he rewrapped it with a new bandage from the medical pack. He rolled the blood-soaked bandage and stuffed it into a side pocket. He would wash it out at the first water they came to.

"We must keep going," he told Job. "We've got to get well clear of the railway line. Are you up to it?"

Job nodded, but Sean could see the dread in his eyes. Every step they moved him was an agony.

I'm going to give you another shot of antibiotic-I can give you a jolt of morphine at the same time?"

Job shook his head. "Keep it for when it gets really bad." He grinned again, a grimace that tugged at Sean's heart. He could not meet Job's eyes. "Show us your best side," he said, and made a performance of pulling down the trousers of Job's battle dress and darting the hypodermic needle into one of his glossy black buttocks. Claudia averted her gaze modestly and Job whispered, "It's okay, Claudia, you are allowed to look. Just don't touch, that's am."

"You're as bad as Sean," she said primly. "Downright vulgar, both of you."

They lifted Job back into the nylon sling seat and went on. By midmorning mirages shimmered and rose in glassy whirlpools from the rocky kopjes over which they were trekking, and tiny mo pane flies hovered in a fine mist around their heads, crawling into their nostrils and ears and eyes with infuriating persistence.

With heat came thirst and their sweat dried on their shirts and left irregular outlines in white salt on the cloth.

When they stopped at noon in the sparse dappled shade of an African teak, Sean knew they had all had enough and the worst heat of the day was still to come. They laid Job on a hastily cut mattress of dried grass, and he lapsed almost immediately into a state that was more coma than sleep, snoring softly through his dry, swollen lips.

IMe carrying sling had rubbed the skin from both Sean's shoulders, for he and Alphdnso had changed sides at each of the hourly stops. The harsh nylon straps had galled Alphonso as badly, and he muttered sullenly as he examined his injuries, "Before this I hated the Matabele simply because they are a flea-infested, thieving bunch of venereal apes. Now I have another reason to hate them."

Sean tossed him the tube of iodine paste. "Smear the muti on your grievous injuries, en stuff the empty tube in your garrulous mouth," he advise&Alphonso went off, still muttering, to find a place to lie downs.

Sean and Claudia found a hollow screened by a low hook-thorn bush a short distance from where Job lay. Sean spread their blankets to make a nest for them and settled into it thankfully. "I'm hushed."

"How hushed?" Claudia asked, and knelt over him to nibble his ear.

"Not that hushed," he qualified, and pulled her down beside him.

At sunset Sean cooked a pot of maize-meal porridge on a tiny smoker ess fire while Alphonso rigged the aerial and tuned the radio to the Renamo command frequency. There was a clutter of garbled, broken-up traffic on their wavelength, probably Frehmo transmissions, but at last they heard their call sign through the jumble. -Ngulube! Warthog! Come in, Ngulube! This is Banana Tree."

Alphonso acknowledged and made a fictitious position report that placed them still far north of the railway line, on a march back to the river area. Banana Tree acknowledged and signed off.

"They fell for it," Sean gave his opinion. "UDoks like the Shangane deserters haven't reached base and blown the whistle on us, not yet anyway."

In the last of the daylight, they ate the meal of maize porridge and Sean studied his field map and marked in his dead-reckoning position. According to the map, the hilly ground seemed to extend for another thirty miles or so, then descended gently to a more level plain on which a number of small villages and cultivated lands were marked; beyond that was the first natural barrier, an s their route.

other wide river that ran west to east directly acros He called Alphonso across and asked him, "The southern division of Renamo under General Tippoo Tip-do you know where his area begins, where his main forces are deployed?"

"Like us, they move all the time to confuse Frelinio. Sometimes they are here, other times down here near the Rio Save." He shrugged. "Renanio is wherever the fighting is."

"And Frelimo? Where are they?"

"They chase after Renamo and then run like frightened rabbits when they catch them," he guffawed. "To us now, it doesn't matter who is who and where they are. Everybody we meet down here is going to try and kill us."

"Great intelligence report," Sean thanked him, and folded the map into its plastic wallet.

Quickly they finished the frugal meal, and Sean stood up. "All right, Alphonso. Let's get Job up and moving."

Alphonso belched softly, then grinned wickedly. "He's your Matabele dog. If you want him, you carry him, I've had enough."

Sean hid his dismay behind a neutral expression. "You are wasting time," he said softly. "Get on your feet!" Alphonso only belched again and held his eyes, still grinning.

Slowly Sean reached down to the trench knife in its sheath. Just as deliberately Alphonso reached and touched the Tokarev pistol tucked into his belt. They stared at each other.

"Sean, what is it?" Claudia asked anxiously. "What is going on?"

She had not understood the exchange in Shangane, but the tension was palpable.

"He's refusing to help me carry Job," he replied.

"You can't carry him alone, can you?" Claudia said anxiously.

"Alphonso will help-" ,–or I'll kill him!" Sean replied in Shangane.

Alphonso laughed out loud. He stood up and shook himself like a dog, turned his back on Sean, and picked up his radio pack, Sean's AKM rifle, and most of the water bottles. "I'll carry these," he chuckled, shaking his head at the joke. "You can carry your Matabele." He ambled away southward along the fine of march.

Sean dropped his hand from the hilt of the knife and looked across at Job. He was watching quietly from his mattress of grass, and Sean snarled at him, "If you say it, I'll kick your black arse for your "I didn't say nothing." Job tried to smile, but it was a weak, transient grimace.

"Good," said Sean grimly, and picked up the nylon sling seat and straps. "Claudia, give us a hand here."

Between them they got Job on his feet. Sean rigged the nylon slings around his waist and under his crotch like a parachute harness and looped them over his shoulders. Then he supported Job with an arm around his waist.

"One more river, there's one more river to cross," he sang hoarsely and un tunefully and grinned at Job. They moved forward. Although Job's feet touched the ground and he tried to take as much of his own weight as possible, he was mainly supported by the straps that crossed over Sean's shoulders and they were locked together like a pair in a harness.

Within the first hundred paces they had established some sort of rhythm, but still their progress was unsteady and painfully slow, set by Job's uncertain footsteps. There could be no attempt at stealth or anti tracking fair Sean had to pick the easiest and most obvious route.

Theystuck to the open game trails, that complex network that like th4Tveins in a dried leaf meshes the African veld.

Behind them Claudia followed laden with the medical pack and the rest of the water bottles, but even so she carried a leafy branch with which she tried to sweep away their tracks. Her efforts might conceal their passing from a casual observer, but a Frelimo tracker would follow them as though he were on the MI motorway. It was hardly worth the effort, but Sean did not discourage her, for he knew how important it was to her to feel she was pulling her weight and making a useful contribution to their escape.

Sean counted their paces against the second hand of his wristwatch and estimated that they were down to less than a mile an hour. Eight miles a day was all the progress they could hope for.

He started to divide that into three hundred but gave up before he reached the depressing answer.

Both Matatu and Alphonso had disappeared into the cornbreturn forest ahead of them, and Sean glanced at his watch again.

They had been going only a little over thirty minutes, but already their momentum was winding down. Job's weight was heavier, the straps cutting painfully into the flesh of Sean's shoulders, and Job's footsteps were dragging and catching on every irregularity of the game path.

I, I'm cutting down to thirty-minute stages," Sean told Job.

"We'll take five minutes now."

When Sean lowered him to a sitting position against the hole of a tree, Job leaned his head back against the rough bark and closed his eyes. His breathing sobbed in his chest, and droplets of sweat made slow runners down his cheeks. Like tiny black pearls, the drops reflected the color of his skin.

Sean let the five minutes run over to ten, then told Job cheerfully, "On your feet, soldier, let's eat some ground."

Getting Job up on his feet again was torture for both of them, and Sean realized that in trying to be gentle on him, he had allowed Job to rest too long. The wound had begun to stiffen.

The next thirty-minute stage endured so long that Sean was convinced his watch had stopped. He had to check the sweep of the second hand to reassure himself.

When at last he lowered him to a sitting position, Job grimaced.

"Sorry, Sean, cramps. Left calf."

Sean squatted in front of him and felt the knots of tortured muscle in Job's leg. While he massaged it, he spoke quietly to Claudia. "There are salt tablets in the medic pack, front pocket."

Job swallowed them, and Claudia held the water bottle to his lips.

After two swallows he pushed it away.

More," Claudia urged him, but he shook his head.

"Don't waste it," he murmured.

"How's that feel?" Sean gave his calf a couple of hard slaps.

"Good for another few miles."

"Let's go," Sean said. "Before it seizes up again."

It amazed Claudia how the two of them kept going through the night with only those five-minute breaks and the frugal drafts from the water bottles.

"Three hundred miles of this," she thought. "It simply is not possible. Flesh and blood can't take it. It will kill both of them."

A little before dawn, Matatu popped up like a small black shadow out of the forest and whispered to Sean.

"He has found a water hole about two or three miles ahead," Sean told them. "Can you make it, Job?"

The sun had risen and cleared the tops of the trees, and the day's heat was building up like a stoked furnace. When Job collapsed and hung suspended at Sean's side, dangling with his full weight on the cross straps, they were still half a mile from the water hole.

Sean lowered him to the ground and sat beside him. He was so exhausted himself that for a few minutes he could not find the energy to talk or move.

"Well, at least you picked a good place to pass out," he congratulated Job a in hoarse whisper. They were in a patch of thick thorn bush that would give them shade and cover for the rest of the day.

The made a bed of cut grass for Job in the shade and settled him on it. He was only half conscious, his speech slurred and andering and his eyes continually slipping out of focus. Claudia tried to feed him, but he turned his face away. However, he drank thirstily when at last Matatu and Alphonso returned from the water hole with all the water bottles refilled. After he had drunk he lapsed back into coma, and they waited out the heat of the day in the thorn patch.

Sean and Claudia lay in each other's arms, for she had become so accustomed to falling asleep in his embrace. She realized that Sean was near the end of his tether. She had never imagined he could be so finely stretched, that even his strength, which she had come to believe was inexhaustible, had a limit upon it.

When she woke a little after noon, he lay like a dead man beside her and she studied his face lovingly, almost greedily. His beard was full and beginning to curl, and she picked out two curly silver hairs in the dense bush. His features were punt, all trace of fat and superfluous flesh burnedlaway, and there were lines and weathered creases in his skin that she had never noticed before. She studied them as though 6 LIFE history were chiseled into them like cuneiform writing on a tablet she could read. "God, but I love him," she thought, amazed at the depth of her own feelings. His skin was burned to the color of dark mahogany by the sun, yet it retained a luster like that of fine leather, well used but polished with care over the years, "like Papa's polo boots." She smiled at the simile, but it was somehow apt. She had watched her father in his dressing room lovingly applying dubbin to the leather with his fingers and polishing it to a dull glow with his own bare palm.

"Boots!" she whispered. "That's a good name for you," she told Sean as he slept, and she remembered how her father's boots had flexed and wrinkled at the ankle, almost as supple as silk as he stepped up into the stirrup. "Wrinkled just like you, my old boot."

She smiled and kissed the lines in his forehead softly so as not to wake him.

She realized then to just what an extent the memory of her father had been absorbed in this man who lay for once like a child in her arms. The two men seemed to have merged in one body, and she could concentrate all her love in a single place. Gently she moved Sean's sleeping head until it nestled against her shoulder, and she burrowed her fingers into the dense springing curls at the back of his head and rocked him gently.

Up to this moment, he had succeeded in evoking the full spectrum of her emotions, from anger to sensual passion–everything except tenderness. Now, however, it was complete. "My baby," she whispered as tenderly as a mother. For once she truly felt he belonged to her completely.

A soft groan shattered her fragile mood. She raised her head and glanced across at where Job lay beneath the thorn bush nearby, but he relapsed into silence once again.

She thought about the two of them, Job and Sean and their special masculine relationship in which she knew she could never share. She should have been jealous, but instead in some strange way it made her feel more secure. If Sean could be so constant and self-sacrificing in his love for another man, she hoped that she could expect the same constancy from him in their own different but even more intense relationship.

Job groaned again and began to thrash about restlessly. She sighed and then gently disentangled herself from Sean's sleeping form, stood up, and crossed to where Job lay.

A cloud of metallic green flies buzzed around the blood-soaked bandage that covered his shoulder. They settled on the soiled dressing and tasted it with their long proboscises, then rubbed their front legs together with delight. Claudia saw that they had laid their rice-grain eggs in thick rafts on the bloody cloth, and with an exclamation of disgust she fanned them away and scraped the loathsome white eggs from the folds of the bandage.

Job opened his eyes and looked up at her. She realized he was fully conscious once again, and she smiled encouragingly at him.

"Would you like another drink?"

"No." His voice was so low she had to lean closer to him. "You have to make him do it," he said.

"Who? Sean?" she asked.

Job nodded. "He can't go on like this. He's killing himself.

Without him none of you will survive. You must make him leave me here." She had begun to shake her head before he stopped speaking' No she said firmly. "He would never do it, and I wouldn't let him, even if he wanted to. We're in this together, pardner." She touched his arm. "Now, how about that drink?" He subsided, too weak to argue further. Like Sean, Job seemed to have deteriorated alarmingly in the last few hours. She sat beside him, fanning the flies away with an i1ala palm frond while the sun slid slowly down the western sky.

In the cool of the afternoon Sean stiffed and sat up, instantly wide awake, taking in his surroundings with a quick glance. The sleep had revived and fortified him.

"How is be?" he asked.

When she shook her head, he came to squat beside her. "We'll have to get him up again pretty soon."

"Give him a few more minutes," she pleaded. Then she went on, "Do you know what I've been thinking about while I've been sitting here?"

"Tell me," he invited, and put his arm around her shoulders.

"I've been thinking about that water hole out there. I've been fantasizing about pouring water over myself, washing my clothes, getting rid of this stink."

"Have you heard about NapoleonT" he asked.

"Napoleon?" She looked puzzled. "What does he have to do with bathing?"

"Whenever he returned from a campaign, he would send a galloper ahead of him to Josephine with the message "Je rent re the te have pas. "I'm coming home, don't bathe." You see, he liked his ladies the way he liked his cheese, full bodied. He would have loved you the way you are now!"

"You're disgusting.". She punched his shoulder, and Job groaned.

"Hey, there." Sea; turned his attention to him. "What's going down, monT"

"I'll take you up on your offer now,". Job whispered.

"Morphine?" Sean asked.

Job nodded. "Just a little shot, okay?"

"You've got it," Sean agreed, and reached for the medical pack.

After the injection Job lay with his eyes closed, and they watched the taut fines of pain around his mouth slowly relax.

"]setter?" Sean asked. Job smiled softly without opening his eyes. "We'll give you a few minutes more," Sean told him, "while we make the radio sched. with Banana Tree."

Sean stood up and went across to where Alphonso was already rigging the radio aerial.

this is Banana Tree." The response to Alphonso's first call was so strong and clear that Sean started.

Alphonso adjusted the gain and then thumbed the microphone and gave another fictitious position report, as though he were still on the return march to the river area.

There was a pause, filled only by the drone and crackle of static.

Then another voice came equally clear and loud. "Let me speak to Colonel Courtney!" The intonation was unmistakable, and Alphonso looked up at Sean.

"General China," he whispered. He offered Sean the microphone but Sean pushed it aside and frowned with concentration as he waited for the next transmission.

In the silence that followed, Claudia left Job's side and crossed quickly to Sean. She squatted beside him and he placed his arm around her protectively; both of them stared at the radio.

"The deserters," she said softly. "China knows."

"Listen!" Sean cautioned. They waited.

Very well. " China's voice again. "I can understand that you do not wish to reply. However, I will presume that you are listening, Colonel."

All their attention was on the radio, and Job opened his eyes. He had heard every word China spoke quite clearly, and he rolled his head.

Alphonso had left his pack and webbing piled on his blanket not ten paces from where Job lay. The butt of the Tokarev pistol protruded from the side pocket of the pack.

"You have yet to disappoint me, Colonel." China's voice was mellow and affable. "It would have been too simple and totally unsatisfying if you had merely blundered into the arms of the reception committee I had arranged for you at the Zimbabwean border."

Job eased himself up on his good elbow. There was no pain, merely a sensation of weakness and drowsiness. The morphine was working. It was difficult to think clearly. He focused all his attention on the pistol, and he wondered if Alphonso had chambered a round. He began to move toward it, extending his legs, digging in his heels, then lifting his buttocks clear, and jackknifing his legs.

He made no sound, and all the others were concentrating on the voice from the radio.

"So the game is still on, Colonel-or should we rather call it the hunt? You are a great hunter, a great white hunter. You glory in the pursuit of wild animals. You call it sport, and you pride yourself on what you term "fair chase." Job was halfway across the clearing. There was still no Pam, and he moved a little quicker. At any moment one of them might turn Ins way and see him.

"I have never understood your white man's passion for this pursuit. To me it always seemed so pointless. My people have always believed that if you want meat, you should kill it as efficiently and with as little effort as possible."

Job reached the pile of equipment on Alphonso's blanket and stretched out to touch the hilt of the pistol. When he tried to withdraw it from the pocket, his fingertips were numb and it slipped from his hand, but instead of clattering on the hard earth, the pistol dropped soundlessly onto a fold of the blanket and he saw with a rush of relief that the action was cocked and the safety catch engaged. Alphonso had loaded it, ready for instant use.

Behind him China's voice still echoed from the radio set: "Perhaps you have corrupted me, Colonel. Perhaps I am acqumng your decadent European ways, but for the first time I understand your passion. Perhaps it is simply that at last the game is big enough to excite me. I wonder how you must feel at this change of role, Colonel. You are the game and I am the hunter. I know where you are, but you don't know where I am. Perhaps I am closer than you believe possible. Where am 1, Colonel? You must guess. You must run and hide. When will we meet, and how?"

oh settled his fingers carefully around the butt of the Tokarev.

He lifted it and was surprised by the effort it required. He placed his thumb upon the slide of the safety catch, but it would not budge. He felt panic rising in him. His hand was too weak and numb to move the slide forward into the firing position.

"I do not prorruse you "fair chase," Colonel. I will hunt you in my own African way, but it will be good sport. I promise you that at least."

Job exerted all his strength and felt the slide of the safety catch begin to move under hiNhumb.

"The time is nowtighteen hundred hours Zulu. I will call you on this frequencya't the same time tomorrow, Colonel-that is, if we have not already met. Until then watch the sky, Colonel Courtlook behind you. You do not know from which direction I they, will come. But be sure I will come!"

There was a faint click as China unkeyed his microphone. Sean reached over and switched off the radio set to conserve the battery.

None of them spoke or moved, until another, sharper metallic click broke the silence. To Sean the sound was unmistakable, the sound of a safety catch being disengaged, and he reacted instinctively, pushing Claudia flat and whirling round to face it.

For a moment he was paralyzed. Then he screamed, "No! Job, for Christ's sake! NO!" and hurled himself forward like a sprinter from the blocks.

Job was lying on his side facing Sean, but well beyond his reach.

Sean drove himself across the space that separated them, but he seemed to be wading through honey, sticky and slow, it impeded his movements. He watched Job raise the pistol, and he tried to prevent him by the force of his gaze. They were looking into each other's eyes, Sean trying to dominate and command her, but Job's eyes were sad, filled with a deep regret and yet unwavering.

Sean saw him open his lips and heard the muzzle of the pistol click against his teeth as Job thrust it deeply into his mouth and closed his lips around the muzzle, like a child sucking a Popsicle.

Sean reached out desperately, straining with all his strength to reach Job's pistol hand and rip the stubby black barrel out of his mouth. His fingertips had just touched Job's wrist when the pistol fired. The sound was muffled, damped down by the flesh and bone of Job's skull.

In his extremity of effort, Sean's vision was enhanced to unnatural clarity, and it seemed that time had been suspended so that everything happened very slowly, like a movie reel run at half speed.

Job's head altered shape. It swelled before Sean's eyes like a rubber Halloween mask filled with high-pressure gas. His eyelids flew wide open, and for an instant his eyeballs bulged from their sockets, exposing a wide rim of white around their dark irises, then rolling upward into his skull.

His shattered head changed shape again, elongating backward, stretching his skin tightly over his cheekbones and flattening his nostrils as the bullet drew the contents of his skull out through the back of his head, whiplashing his neck to its full stretch so that even in the aftermath of the shot, Sean heard the vertebrae creak and click.

Job was jerked backward, his arm flung away from his head in a debonair salute, the Tokarev pistol still gripped in his clenched fist, but Sean was quick enough to catch him before his mutilated head hit the hard earth.

He caught Job in his arms and held him to his chest with all his strength. His body was heavy and hot with fever, but slack and plastic as though it contained no bone. It seemed to overflow Sean's enfolding arms, and he held him hard. Job's muscles shivered and shuddered, and his legs kicked in a macabre little jigging movement. Sean tried to hold him still.