Wilbur Smith - C07 A Time To Die

by C07 A Time To Die(Lit)

  "I didn't think you were capable of gentleness," she went on softly. "I may have misjudged you."

  "Perhaps we misjudged each other," he said.

  She nodded. "Perhaps we did," she said. "But thank you anyway. Thank you for caring about my father."

  She began to turn away to go back to Riccardo, but Sean stopped her. "We still haven't settled anything," he said. "We haven't decided what we are going to do."

  "We go on, of course," she answered. "Right to the bitter end.

  That's what I promised him."

  "You've got guts," he told her softly.

  "If I have, then I got them from him," she replied, and went to her father.

  The mug of tea and a half-dozen aspirin tablets revived Riccardo. He was acting and talking completely rationally again, and none of them made any further reference to his wild behavior, although quite naturally it had thrown a pall over all of them.

  "We must move on, Capo," Sean told him. "Tukutela is walking away from us every minute we sit here."

  They followed the ridge of high ground, and now the odor of the swamps was stronger, brought to them by the fitful, inconstant wind.

  "That's one of the many reasons elephants like the swamps," Sean explained to Riccardo. "The wind is always shifting, turning and switching. It makes it much more difficult to get close to them."

  There was a gap in the trees ahead. Sean stopped and they gazed out through it. "There they are," he said. "The Zambezi swamplands.

  The ridge on which they stood was like the back of a sea serpent, swimming across the open flood plains Now, just ahead of them, it ducked below the surface and disappeared at the point where the open plains gave way to endless expanses of papyrus and reeds.

  Sean raised his binoculars and surveyed the swamps ahead. The reed beds seemed limitless, but he had flown over them and he knew they were interspersed with shallow lagoons of open water and narrow winding channels. Farther out, almost on the horizon, he could see the loom of small islets, dark patches of almost impenetrable bush-crowned islands, and he could just make out the curved palm stems with their high fluffy heads.

  The past season had been particularly dry and the water level would be low, in most places not more than waist deep, but the mud banks would be black and glutinous and the channels much deeper. The going would be arduous, and apart from the mud and water, reeds and water plants would impede each step they took, winding themselves around their legs as they tried to move.

  For them each mile through the swamps would be the equivalent of five on dry land, while the elephant would be in his element. He loved mud and water. It supported his great bulk, and his foot pads were designed by nature to expand as he put his weight upon them, forcing a wide opening, and then to shrink in diameter as he lifted them, freeing themselves readily from the clinging mud.

  Tukutela could gorge on reeds, soft water plants, and swamp grass, and the dense bushy islets would afford variety to his diet.

  The suck of mud and the splash of water would warn him of an approaching enemy and the fitfully turning wind would protect him, bringing the scent of a pursuer down to him from every quarter. In all of Tukutela's wide range, this was the most difficult place to hunt him.

  It's going to be a Sunday school picnic, Capo." Sean lowered the binoculars. "Those tusks are as good as hanging over the fireplace in your den already."

  "the old bull's spoor went out to the very end of the land bridge and then down into the papyrus beds, where the undulating sea of green fronds swallowed the trail and left not a sign.

  "Nobody can follow a trail in there." Riccardo stood at the line where dry friable earth ended and damp swamp mud began. "Nobody can find Tukutela in there," he repeated, staring at the wall of swamp growth higher than his head. "Surely they can't?"

  "You are right, nobody can find him in there," Sean agreed.

  "That is, nobody except Matatu."

  % They were standing in the remains of a village that had been built on the end of the isthmus. Clearly the previous occupants had been fishermen, members of one of the small tribes who live along the banks of the Zambezi and make their livelihood from her abundant green waters. The racks on which they had dried their catches of tilapia bream and barbeled catfish still stood, but their huts had been burned to the ground.

  Job was searching the outskirts of the village, and he whistled for Sean. When Sean went to join him he was standing over an object that lay in the short grass. At first glance Sean thought it was a bundle of rags, and then he saw the bones protruding from it. They were still partially covered by shreds of dried skin and flesh.

  "When?" Sean asked.

  "Six months ago, perhaps."

  "How did he die?"

  Job squatted beside the human skeleton. when he turned the skull, it snapped off the vertebrae of the neck like a ripe fruit. Job cupped it in his hands, and it grinned at him with empty eye sockets.

  "Bullet through the back of the head," Job said. "Exit hole this side." It was like a third eye in the bone of the forehead.

  Job replaced the skull and walked deeper into the grass. "Here's another," he called.

  "Renamo has been through here," Sean gave his opinion. "Either looking for recruits or dried fish or both."

  else it was Frelimo looking for Renamo rebels, and they decided to question them with an AK. "They get it from both sides. There "Poor buggers," Sean said.

  will be plenty more of them lying around. They are the ones who escaped from the huts before they burned." he They started back toward the village and Sean said, ""If they were fishermen-theY would have had their canoes here. They will probably be hidden, but we could certainly use one. Go through the edge of the papyrus beds and then search the bush behind the village."

  Sean crossed to where Riccardo and Claudia were sitting together.

  As he came , he looked at her inquiringly and she nodded and smiled optimistically.

  "Papa's doing fine. What is this place?"

  He explained their reasoning as to the fate of the village.

  "Why would they kill these innocent People?" Claudia was appalled.

  you don't have to have a reason for killing "In Africa these days somebody other than a loaded gun in your hands and a fancy to fire it off."

  "But what harm could they have done?" she insisted.

  Sean shrugged. "Harboring rebels, withholding information,

  hiding food, refusing the services of their women, any one of those crimes or none of them."

  The sun was a red ball through the swamp haze, so low above the tops of the papyrus that Sean could look directly at it without screwing up his eyes.

  "It'll be dark before we can leave," he decided. "We'll have to sleep here tonight and start again at first light tomorrow. One consolation is that now Tukutela has reached the swamps, he will slow down. He's probably not more than a couple of miles ahead of us right now." But as he said it he thought about those shots Riccardo had fired. If the bull had heard them, he would still be running. There was, however, no point in telling that to Riccardo.

  He looked shaken and despondent, and he had been almost silent since the incident.

  "He is just a husk of the Capo I knew, poor old devil. The last thing I can do for him is to get him that elephant." Sean's sympathy was genuine and unaffected and he sat down beside Riccardo and began to draw him out, describing what lay ahead and how they would hunt for the old bull in the papyrus beds.

  The hunt was all that now seemed to interest Riccardo, and for the first time that day he became animated Once he even laughed.

  Claudia flashed a grateful smile at Sean, then stood up and said, "I've got a little private business to attend to."

  "Where are you off to?" Sean demanded immediately"

  "The little girls" room," she told him. "And you are definitely not invited."

  "Don't go wandering off too far, and no swimming this time," he ordered. "You'll get enough of that tomorrow."

  "I hear
and obey, O great white Bwana. " She gave him a sarcastic curtsy and set off out of the perimeter of the burned village.

  Sean watched her go uneasily and was about to call another warning after her when there was a shout from the papyrus bed and his attention was diverted from Claudia.

  He jumped up. "What is it, Job?" he yelled, and went down to the water's edge.

  There were more confused shouts and splashing from the depths of the papyrus. Then Job and Matatu emerged, dragging something long and black and waterlogged between them.

  "Our first bit of luck." Sean grinned at Riccardo and slapped him on the shoulder.

  It was a traditional mokorro dugout canoe, about seventeen feet long, hewn from a single log of the sausage tree, Kigeha africana.

  The body of the dugout was just wide enough for a person to sit ISO in it, but it was usually propelled by a man standing in the stem and wielding a long punt pole.

  Job tipped the water out of the craft and they examined it carefully. The hull had been repaired and caulked in a few places but seemed reasonably sound. Search the village," Sean ordered. "They must have had caulking material here. See if you can find it, then send Dedan and Pumula to cut a couple of punt poles. Claudia screamed, and they all spun to face the sound. she screamed again. The sound was strangely muffled and far off, and Sean began to run, snatching up his rifle from where he had left it beside the nearest burned-out hut.

  "Claudia!" he yelled. "Where are you?" Only his echo mocked him from the forest: "Where are you?... are You?"

  nm 9 When Claudia stood up and rebuckled her belt, she found it came in easily a full two notches shorter around her waist. She smiled down at her belly with approval. Now it was no longer flat but definitely concave. The long march and frugal rations had stripped every last ounce of fat from her frame.

  "Strange how in an age of plenty we set out to starve ourselves."

  She smiled again. "I'm going to enjoy putting on those lost pounds, plenty of pasta and red wine when I get home," She started back toward the village, then realized that in her search for privacy she had gone further than she had intended and that a thicket of wiry thorn brush blocked her way back. She turned aside to circumvent it and came upon a broad pathway running directly down through the bush toward the edge of the swarnd. She followed it thankfully.

  Claudia did not realize that she was following a hippo road, one of the wide thoroughfares the great amphibians followed on their nightly forays into the forest. However, the road had not been used for rnny months. The hippopotamus in the area had been decimated along with the other game. She was in a hurry to get back to her father, and she was feeling slightly uneasy at her isolation from the rest of the party. She strode down the pathway, just short of a run.

  Ahead of her an old mat of dried papyrus stems was spread across the road from side to side. It had obviously been placed there by the previous occupants of the village, and although it served no purpose that Claudia could imagine, it was no obstacle to her progress and she stepped onto it without slackening her pace.

  The Pitfall had been dug for the purpose of trapping a hippopotamus. It was ten feet deep with fannelshoped sides that would tumble one of the huge beasts down into its depth and wedge it securely between the earthen walls. The opening was covered by branches strong enough to carry the weight of a man or a lesser animal, but not that of a hippo. Over these branches the builders had spread the papyrus stems.

  However, the pitfall had been built a long time previously and both branches and mat had rotted and weakened. They collapsed under Claudia's weight, and she screamed as she dropped through into the pit beneath, screamed again as she hit the sloping side and bounced off it. The bottom of the pit was covered with a few inches of stagnant water that had seeped into it. Claudia landed awkwardly with one leg twisted up under her and then rolled onto her back in the mud.

  The breath had been driven from her lungs and there was a fierce pain in her left knee. For a few minutes she could not respond to the faint shouts she heard from above. She sat up, clutching her injured knee to her chest and gasping wildly to fill her agonized lungs. At last she managed a strangled shout.

  "Here! I'm here!"

  "Are you all right?" Sean's head appeared above her, peering down anxiously.

  "I think so!" she gasped, and tried to stand up, but the pain shot through her knee and she fell back. "My knee," she said.

  "Hold on. I'm coming down." Sean's head withdrew. She heard voices, Job and Matatu and her father. Then a coil of nylon rope dropped down toward her, unfurling as it fell. Sean lowered himself swiftly down the rope and dropped the last few feet to land with a splash in the mud beside her.

  "I'm sorry," she said contritely. "I guess I've done it again."

  "Don't apologize." He grinned. "I'm not conditioned to it. For once it's not your fault. Let's take a look at your leg."

  He squatted beside her. "Move your foot. Capital! Can you bend your knee? Splendid! At least no bones broken. That's a relief. Let's get you out of this hole." He tied a loop in the end of the rope, slipped it over her head and shoulders, and settled it under her armpits.

  "Okay, Job," he called up. "Take her up. Gently, man, gently."

  As soon as they reached ground level, Sean made a more thorough examination of her knee.

  He rolled up the leg of her jeans and said, "Shit!"

  As a Scout commander he had extensive experience of the type of injury a paratrooper is prone to-broken bones, torn cartilage, sprained ligaments in ankle and knee. Already Claudia's knee was ballooning and the first tinge of bruising colored the smooth tanned skin.

  "This might hurt a little," he warned, and manipulated her leg gently.

  "Ouch!" she said. "That's damned sore."

  "Okay." He nodded. "It's the medial ligament. I don't think you've torn it, it would be more painful if you had. Probably just sprained it."

  "What does that mean?" she asked.

  "Three days," he replied. "You won't be walking on it for at least three days."

  He put his arm around her shoulders. "Can you stand up?" he asked. When she nodded, he helped her to her feet. She leaned against him, standing on her good leg.

  "Try putting a little weight on it," he said.

  immediately she exclaimed with pain. "No, I can't use it."

  He stopped, picked her up in his arms as though she were a child, and carried her back to the village. She was surprised by his strength, and although her knee was beginning to throb, she relaxed in his arms. It was a good feeling. Papa had carried her like this when she was a little girl, and she had to resist the urge to lay her head against Sean's shoulder.

  When they reached the village, he set her down in the clearing, and Matatu ran to fetch his pack. Her injury had diverted Riccardo's attention from his own troubles, and he came to fuss over his little girl in a way which ordinarily would have annoyed her.

  Now she submitted to it, thankful for his revived animation and attention.

  Sean strapped the knee with an elastic bandage from his first aid kit and gave her an anti inflammatory tablet to swallow with hot tea.

  "That's about all we can do for it," he told her, and sat back.

  "Only thing that will fix it is time.

  "Why did you say three days?"

  "It takes that long. I've seen a hundred knees just like yours, except that they were usually a lot more hairy and not nearly as pretty. "That's a compliment." She raised an eyebrow. "You're getting soft, Colonel."

  "Part of the treatment, and of course totally insincere," he assured her with a grin. "The only question now, ducky, is what on earth are we going to do with you?"

  "Leave me here," she said promptly.

  "Are you out of your mind?" he asked. Riccardo backed him up immediately.

  "That's out of the question."

  "Look at it this way," she reasoned calmly. "I can't move for three days, by which time your elephant will be long gone, Papa."

  She held u
p her hand to forestall his argument. "We can't go back.

  You can't carry me. I can't walk. We would have to sit here anyway."

  "We can't leave you alone. Don't be ridiculous."

  "No," she agreed. "But you can leave someone to look after me while you go on after Tukutela."

  "No." Riccardo shook his head.

  "Sean," she appealed to him. "Make him see that it's the sensible thing to do."

  He stared at her, and the admiration she saw in his gaze gave her a full warm feeling in her chest.

  "Damn it" he said softly. "You're all right."