Текст книги "The Burning Shore"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

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I am strong enough now, Centaine spoke aloud, and I have learned how to keep alive. I don't have to follow them any more. I could turn back to the south again alone. She stood uncertainly, imagining what it would be like, and it was that single word that decided her.

Alone, she repeated. If only Anna were still alive, if only there was somewhere out there for me to go to, then I might attempt it. And she slumped down on the beach and hugged her knees despondently. There is no way back. I just have to go on. Living each day like an animal, living like a savage, living with savages. And she looked down at the rags which barely covered her body. I just have to go on, and I don't even know where, and her despair threatened to overwhelm her completely. She had to fight it off as though it were a living adversary. I won't give in, she muttered, I just won't give in, and when this is over I will never want again. I'll never thirst and starve nor wear rags and stinking skins again. She looked down at her hands. The nails were ragged and black with dirt and broken off down to the quick. She made a fist to cover them. Never again. My son and I will never want again, I swear it. it was late afternoon when she wandered back into the primitive camp site under the dunes. H'ani looked up at her and grinned like a wizened little ape, and Centaine felt a sudden rush of affection for her.

Dear H'ani, she whispered. You're all I have got left. And the old woman scrambled to her feet and came towards her, carrying the finished necklace of ostrich shell in both hands.

She stood on tiptoe and placed the necklace carefully over Centaine's head and arranged it fussily down her bosom, cooing with self-satisfaction at her handiwork.

It's beautiful, H'ani, Centaine's voice husked. Thank you, thank you so very much, and suddenly she burst into tears. And I called you a savage. Oh, forgive me.

With Anna you are the sweetest, dearest person I've ever known. She knelt so that their faces were level and she hugged the old woman with a desperate strength, pressing her temple against H'ani's withered wrinkled cheek.

Why is she weeping? O'wa demanded from beside the fire.

Because she is happy. That, O'wa opined, is a most stupid reason. I think this female is a little moon-touched. He stood up, and still shaking his head, began the final preparations for the night's journey.

The little old people were unusually solemn, Centaine noticed, as they adjusted their cloaks and carrying satchels, and H'ani came to her and checked the sling of her bag, then knelt to adjust the canvas booties bound around Centaine's feet.

What is it? Their serious mien made Centaine uneasy.

H'ani understood the question, but did not try to explain. Instead she called Centaine and the two of them fell in behind O'wa.

O'wa raised his voice. Spirit of Moon, make a light for us in this night to show us the path. He used the cracked falsetto tone which all the spirits particularly enjoyed, and he performed a few shuffling dance steps in the sand. Spirit of Great Sun, sleep well, and when you rise tomorrow be not angry, that your anger burn us up in the singing sands. Then when we have passed safely through and have reached the sip-wells, we will dance for you and sing our thanks. He finished the short dance with a leap and a stamp of his small childlike feet. That was enough for now, a small down payment, with the balance promised when the spirits had honoured their part of the contract.

Come, old grandmother, he said. Make sure that Nam Child stays close and does not fall behind. You know that we cannot turn back to search for her if she does. And in that quick, swaying jog, he started up the slope of the beach into the mouth of the valley, just as the moon broke clear of the darkening horizon and started its journey across the starry heavens.

It was strange to travel in the night, for the desert seemed to take on new and mysterious dimensions, the dunes seemed taller and closer, decked in silver moonlight and dark purple shadows, and the valleys between them were canyons of silence, while above it all the vast panoply of the stars and the milky way and the moon were closer and brighter than Centaine had ever believed possible. She had the illusion that by simply reaching up she could pluck them down like ripe fruit from the bough.

The memory of the ocean stayed with them long after it was out of sight, the soft hiss of their footsteps in the sand seined to echo its gentle kissing surf on the yellow beaches, and the air was still cooled by its vast green waters.

They had been following the valley for almost a half of the moon's rise to its zenith when suddenly Centaine trotted into an eddy of heat. After the ocean-cooled airs it was like running into a solid barrier. Centaine gasped with surprise and H'ani murmured without breaking the rhythm of her gait, Now it begins."But they passed swiftly through it, and beyond the air was so cold by contrast that Centaine shivered and drew her cloak closer about her shoulders.

The valley twisted and as they came around the corner of a towering dune on which the moon shadows lay like bruises, the desert breathed upon them again.

Stay close, Nam Child. But the heat had a viscosity and weight so that Centaine felt that she was wading into a lava flow. At midnight it was hotter than in the boiler room at Mort Homme with the furnace stoked with oak logs, and as she breathed it into her lungs, she felt the heat entering her body like an invader, and with each breath expelled, she could feel it taking her moisture like a thief.

They paused once, only briefly, and drank from an eggbottle. Both H'ani and O'wa watched carefully as Centaine lifted it to her lips, but neither of them had to caution her now.

When the sky began to lighten, O'wa slackened his pace a little, and once or twice paused to survey the valley with a critical eye. It was obvious that he was choosing a place to wait out the day, and when at last they halted, it was close under the lee of a steep dune wall.

There was no material for a fire, and H'ani offered Centaine a piece of sun-dried fish wrapped in seaweed, but she was too tired and hot to eat and afraid also that food would increase her thirst during the day ahead. She drank her ration of water from the egg-bottle, and then wearily stood up and moved a short distance from the others. But as soon as she squatted, H'ani let out a shrill reprimand and hurried to her.

No! she repeated, and Centaine was embarrassed and confused, until the old woman fished in her satchel and brought out the dried wild gourd that she used as a bowl and ladle.

Here, this one – She proffered it to Centaine, who still did not understand. Exasperated, the old woman snatched back the gourd and holding it between her own legs urinated into it. Here, do. She offered the bowl to Centaine again.

I can't, H'ani, not in front of everybody, Centaine protested modestly.

O'wa, come here,H'ani called. Show the child."The old man came across and noisily reinforced H'anils demonstration.

Despite her embarrassment, Centaine could not help feeling a touch of envy. How much more convenient! Now, do! Rani offered her the gourd once again, and Centaine capitulated. She turned away modestly and with both the old people encouraging her loudly, she added her own tinkling stream to the communal gourd. H'ani bore it away triumphantly.

Hurry, Nam Child, she beckoned. The sun will come soon. And she showed Centaine how to scoop a shallow trench in the sand in which to lie.

The sun struck the face of the dune on the opposite side of the valley, and it flung reflected heat at them like a mirror of polished bronze. They lay in the strip of shade and cringed into their trenches.

The sun rose higher and the dune shadow shrank. The heat rose and filled the valley with silvery mirage so that the dunes began to dance, and then the sands began to sing. It was a low but pervading vibration as though the desert was the sounding box of a gigantic string instrument. It rose and fell and died away and then started again.

The sands are singing, H'ani told her quietly, and Centaine understood.

She lay with her ear to the ground and listened to the strange and wonderful music of the desert.

Still the heat increased, and following the example of the San, Centaine covered her head with the canvas shawl and lay quietly. It was too hot to sleep, but she fell into a sort of stupefied coma, and rode the long swelling waves of heat as though they were the sound of the sea.

Still it became hotter, and the shade shrivelled away as the sun nooned, and there was no relief or asylum from its merciless lash, Centaine lay and panted like a maimed animal, and each quick and shallow breath seemed to abrade her throat and burn the strength from her body.

It can't get worse, she told herself. This is the end of it, soon it will begin to cool. She was wrong. The heat grew stronger yet and the desert hissed and vibrated like a tortured beast, and Centaine was almost afraid to open her eyes lest it sear her eyeballs.

Then she heard the old woman moving and she lifted the corner of her head cover and watched her carefully mixing sand into the gourdful of urine. She brought the bowl to where Centaine lay and plastered the wet sand over her baking skin.

Centaine gasped with relief of the cool touch of it, and before it could dry in the fierce beat, H'ani filled in the shallow trench with loose sand, burying Centaine under a thin layer and then arranging the shawl over her head.

Thank you, H'ani, Centaine whispered, and the old woman went to cover her husband.

With the damp sand next to her skin and the protective layer over that, Centaine lasted out those hottest hours of the desert day, and then with that African suddenness she felt the temperature on her cheeks change, and the sunlight was no longer stark dazzling white, but shaded with a mellow, buttery tone.

At nightfall they rose out of their beds and shook themselves, throwing off the sand. They drank in a transport that was almost religious, but again Centaine could not force herself to eat, and then O'wa led them off.

Now there was no novelty or fascination for Centaine in the night's trek, and the heavenly bodies were no longer marvels to gaze upon with awe but merely instruments to mark the long tortuous passage of the hours.

The earth beneath got its character from loose sand that gave under each step and ragged at her feet, to hard, compacted mica flats where the flowerlike crystals called desert roses had edges to them like knives; they cut through her canvas sandals, and she had to pause to rebind them. Then they left the flats and crossed the low spine of a sub-dune, and from its crest saw another vast valley yawn before them.

O'wa never wavered or showed the least hesitation.

Although Centaine realised that these mountains of sand would walk before the prevailing winds, endlessly changing shape, trackless and unknowable, yet the little man moved through them the way a master mariner rides upon the shifting currents of the ocean.

The silence of the desert seemed to enter Centaine's head like molten wax, deadening her sense of hearing, filling her eardrums with the sussurations of nothingness as though she held a seashell to her ear.

Will the sand never end? she asked herself. Is this a continent of dunes? In the dawn they halted and prepared their defences to resist the siege of the sun, and in the hottest hour of the day as Centaine lay in her shallow grave-like bed, coated with urine-damp sand, she felt her baby move within her more strongly this time, as though he too were fighting the heat and the thirst.

Patience, my darling, she whispered to him. Save your strength. We must learn the lessons and the ways of this land, so that we will never have to suffer like this again, Never again. That evening, when she rose from the sand, she ate a little of the dried fish for the baby's sake, but as she had feared, the food made her thirst almost insupportable.

However, the strength it gave her bore her up through the night's journey.

She did not waste strength by speaking aloud. All three of them were conserving energy and moisture, no unnecessary words or actions, but Centaine looked up at the sky as it made its grand and ponderous revolution, and she could still see Michael's star standing across the black void of the South Pole from her own.

Please let it end, she prayed silently to his star. Let it end soon, for I don't know how much longer I can go on. But it did not end, and it seemed that the nights grew longer, the sand deeper and more cloying around her feet, while each day seemed fiercer than the last and the heat beat down upon them like a blacksmith's hammerstrokes on the iron of the anvil.

Centaine found that she had lost track of the days and nights, they had blended in her mind into a single endless torment of heat and thirst.

Five days, or six or even seven? she wondered vaguely, and then she counted the empty egg-bottles. It must be six, she decided. Only two full bottles left. Centaine and H'ani each placed one of the full bottles in their pack, sharing the load exactly, then they ate the last shreds of dried fish and stood up to face the night's journey, but this time it did not begin immediately.

O'wa stared for a while into the east, turning his head slightly from side to side as though he were listening, and for the first time Centaine detected a fine shade of uncertainty in the way he held his small head with its crownlike nimbus of arrow shafts. Then O'wa began to sing softly in what Centaine had come to recognize as his ghost-voice.

Spirit of great Lion Star, he looked up to Sirius shining in the constellation of Canis Major, you are the only one who can see us here, for all the other spirits avoid the land of singing sand. We are alone, and the journey is harder than I remember it when I passed here as a young man. The path has become obscure, great Lion Star, but you have the bright eye of a vulture and can see it all.

Lead us, I beg of you. Make the path clear for us.

Then he took the egg-bottle from H'ani's satchel and drew the stopper and spilled a little of the water on to the sand. It formed small round balls, and Centaine made a little moaning sound in her throat and sank on to her knees.

See, spirit of great Lion Star, we share water with you, O'wa sang and replugged the bottle, but Centaine stared at the little wet balls of sand and moaned again.

Peace, Nam Child, H'ani whispered to her. To receive a special boon, it is sometimes necessary to give up what is precious. She took Centaine's wrist and pulled her gently to her feet, and then turned to follow O'wa over the endless dunes.

With the silences deafening her, and weariness a crushing burden to carry, and thirst a raging torment, Centaine struggled on, once again losing all sense of time or distance or direction, seeing nothing but the two dancing figures ahead of her, transformed by the rays of the waning moon into tiny hobgoblins.

They stopped so suddenly that Centaine ran into H'ani and would have fallen had not the old woman steadied her, and then quietly drawn her down until they lay side by side.

What, Centaine began, but H'ani placed a hand over her mouth to quieten her.

O'wa lay beside them, and when Centaine was quiet he pointed over the lip of the dune on which they were lying.

Two hundred feet below at the dune's foot began a level plain, awash with soft silver moonlight. It reached to the very limit of Centaine's night vision, flat, without end, and it gave her hope that at last the dunes were behind them. Upon this plain stood a scattered forest of longdead trees.

Leprous-grey in the moonlight, they lifted the blighted and twisted limbs of arthritic beggars of an uncaring sky.

The weird scene invoked in Centaine a superstitious chill, and when something large but shapeless moved amongst the ancient trees like a monster from mythology, she shivered and wriggled closer to H'ani.

Both the San were trembling with eagerness like hunting dogs on the leash, and H'ani shook Centaine's hand and pointed silently. As Centaine's eyes adjusted, she saw that there were more living shapes than the one she had first spotted, but they were as still as great grey boulders.

She counted five of them altogether.

Lying on his side, O'wa was restringing his little hunting bow, and when he had tested the tension of its string, he selected a pair of arrows from the leather band around his forehead, made a sign to H'ani and then slithered back from the crest of the dune. Once he was off the skyline, he leaped to his feet and slipped away into the shadows and folds of windblown sands.

The two women lay behind the ridge, still and silent as the shadows. Centaine was learning the animal patience that this ancient wilderness demanded of all its creatures. The sky began to bloom with the first promise of day, and now she could see more clearly the creatures on the plain below them.

They were huge antelopes. Four of them lying quietly, while one of them, larger and more thickset in shoulders and neck, stood a little apart. Centaine judged that he was the herd bull, for at his shoulder he stood as tall as Nuage, her beloved stallion, but he carried a magnificent pair of horns, long and straight and vicious, and Centaine was reminded vividly of the tapestry La Dame d la Licorne at the Muse de Cluny, which her father had taken her to see on her twelfth birthday.

The light strengthened and the bull gleamed a lovely soft mulberry-fawn colour. His face was marked with F darker lines in a diamond pattern, that looked as though he were wearing a head halter, but there was that wild dignity about him that immediately dispelled any suggestion of captivity.

He swung his noble head towards where Centaine lay, extended his trumpet-like ears and swished his dark bushy horse-like tail uneasily. H'ani laid her hand on Centaine's arm and they shrank down. The bull stared in their direction for many minutes, rigid and still as a marble carving, but neither of the women moved, and at last the bull lowered his head and began to dig in the loose earth of the plain with his sharp black forehooves.

All, yes! Dig for the sweet root of the hi plant, great and splendid bull, O'wa exhorted him silently. Do not lift your head, you marvelous chieftain of all gemsbok, feed well, and I will dance you such a dance that all the spirits of the gemsbok will envy you for ever! O'wa lay one hundred and fifty feet from where the gemsbok bull was standing, still far beyond the range of his puny bow. He had left the shadow of the dune valley almost an hour before, and in that time had covered less than five hundred paces.

There was a slight depression in the surface of the plain, a mere indentation less than a hand's span deep, but even in the vague light of the moon O'wa had picked it out unerringly with his hunter's eye and he had slid into it like a small amber-coloured serpent, and like a serpent moved on his belly with slow, sinuous undulations and silent prayers to the spirits of Lion Star who had guided him to this quarry.

Suddenly the gemsbok flung up his head and stared about him suspiciously, ears flared wide.

Don't be alarmed, sweet bull, O'wa urged him. Smell the hi tuber and let peace enter your heart again. The minutes stretched out, and then the bull blew a small fluttery sound through his nostrils, and lowered his head. His harem of fawn-coloured cows who had been watching him warily relaxed, and their jaws began working again as they chewed on the cud.

o'wa slithered forward, moving under the flattened lip of the depression, his cheek touching the earth so as not to show a head silhouette, pushing himself over the soft earth with his hips and his knees and his toes.

The gemsbok had rooted out the tuber and was chewing on it with noisy gusto, holding it down with a forehoof to break off a mouthful, and O'wa closed the gap between them with elaborate, patient stealth.

Feast well, sweet bull, without you three persons and an unborn child will be dead by tomorrow's sun. Do not , great gemsbok, stay a while, just a little while longer. He was as close as he dared approach now, but it was still too far. The gemsbok's hide was tough and his fur thick. The arrow was a light reed, and the point was bone that could not take the same keen edge as iron.

Spirit of Lion Star, do not turn your face away now, O'wa beseeched, and raised his left hand so that the tiny pale-coloured palm was turned towards the bull.

For almost a minute nothing happened, and then the bull noticed the disembodied hand that seemed to rise out of the earth, and he lifted his head and stared at it. It seemed too small to be dangerous.

After a minute of utter stillness, O'wa wriggled his fingers seductively and the bull blew through his nostrils and stretched out his muzzle, sucking in air, trying to get the scent, but O'wa was working into the small, fitful morning breeze, with the deceptive dawn light behind him.

He held his hand still again and then slowly lowered it to his side. The bull took a few paces towards him and then froze, another few paces, craning inquisitively, ears pricked forward, he peered at the shallow indentation where O'wa lay pressed to the earth without breathing.

Then the bull's curiosity took him forward again into range of O'wa's bow.

In a flash of movement, like the strike of the adder, O'wa rolled on to his side, drew the eagle feather flights to his cheek and let the arrow fly. It darted like a bee across the space between them and alighted with a slapping sound on the patterned cheek of the bull, fixing its barbs in the soft skin below his trumpet-like ear.

The bull reared back at the sting of it, and whirled away. Instantly his harem cows sprang from their sandy couches into full gallop and the whole herd went away after the running bull, switching their long dark tails and dragging a pale train of dust behind them.

The bull was shaking his head, trying to rid himself of the the arrow that dangled from his cheek, and he swerved in his run and deliberately brushed his head against the trunk of one of the ancient dead trees.

Stick deep! O'wa was on his feet, capering and yelling. Hold fast, arrow, carry the poison of O'wa to his heart.

Carry it swiftly, little arrow. The women came running down from the dune to join him.

Oh, what a cunning hunter, H'ani lauded her husband, and Centaine was breathless but disappointed for the herd was already out of sight across the dark plain, lost in the grey of predawn. Gone? she asked H'ani.

Wait, the old woman answered. Follow soon. Watch now. O'wa make magic. The old man had laid aside his weapons, except for two arrows which he arranged in his headband to prick up at the same angle as the horns of a gemsbok. Then he cupped his hands on each side of his head into trumpet-shaped ears, and subtly altered his entire stance and the way he carried his head. He snorted through his nostrils and pawed at the ground, and before Centaine's eyes was transformed into a gemsbok. The mimicry was so faithful that Centaine clapped her hands delightedly.

o'wa went through the panotominie of seeing the beckoning hand, approaching it warily, and then being struck by the arrow. Centaine had a sense of due,! vu, so accurately was the incident portrayed.

O'wa galloped away with the same stride and carriage as the gemsbok, but then he began to weaken and stagger.

He was panting, his head drooping, and Centaine felt a pang of sympathy for the stricken beast. She thought of Nuage and tears sprang into her eyes, but H'ani was clapping and uttering little shrieks of encouragement.

Die, oh bull that we revere, die that we may live! O'wa blundered in a wide circle, his horned head too heavy to carry, an he sagged to the earth and went into the final convulsions as the poison coursed through his blood.

It was all so convincing that Centaine was no longer seeing the little San, but rather the bull that he was portraying. She did not for a moment doubt the efficacy for the sympathetic spell that O'wa was weaving over his quarry.

Ah! H'ani cried. He is down. The great bull is finished, and Centaine believed without question.

They drank from the egg-bottles, and then O'wa broke a straight branch from one of the dead trees and shaped one end to fit the spearhead made from the thighbone of a buffalo which he carried in his pouch. He bound the spearhead in place and weighed the heavy weapon in his hand.

It is time to go after the bull, he announced, and led off across the plain.

Centaine's first impression was correct. They had passed beyond the dune country, but the plain that lay ahead of them was every bit as forbidding, and the strange shapes of the dead forest gave it a surreal and otherworldly feeling.

Centaine wondered how long ago the forest had died, and shivered as she realized that these trees might have stood like this for a thousand years, preserved by the desiccated air as the mummies of the pharaohs had been.

O'Wa was following the tracks of the gemsbok herd, and even over the hard pebbled expanses of the plain where Centaine could see no sign of their passing, the little San led them at a confident unwavering trot. He paused only once to pick up the shaft of his arrow, lying at the base of the dead tree upon which the bull had brushed itself. He held it up and showed it to the women. See. The barb has struck. The head of the arrow was missing. O'wa had deliberately designed it in two pieces with a weak section just at the back of the poisoned barb so that it would break away.

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.