A Cleft Of Stars

by Geoffrey Jenkins

  The first move in my plan of campaign was to find out whether the area was in the process of being policed by irregular patrols and, if so, how strong they were. I guessed that only one man might be involved. I'd come to this conclusion after questioning Nadine in prison as discreetly as possible after I'd made my decision. Her inquiries to the authorities had run slap up against a security screen but the fact that a light plane was being used to ferry the patrol to the bush airstrip some miles away seemed to point to a single guard, or at the most two. Before starting my search for Rankin I wanted to be sure it did not founder on the patrol. I had allowed for this contingency and had decided that if guards were active I would by-pass The Hill by river and lie low until they had been withdrawn.

  I raised my head again and scanned the terrace. However, I could not spot the patrol hut, which I thought must be situated somewhere close to The Hill's cliffs facing my way among big boulders.

  A shout from the river behind me sent my heart racing. It sounded raucous and inhuman in the oppressive vacuum of silence. I hastily sought somewhere to hide. The kanniedood trunk was inside the fence itself and was too slender for concealment. The nearest real cover-was a tattered clump of chest-high elephant palm about fifty yards back along my route, beyond the rolls of barbed wire. My only path was forward through the cut wire which meant rising into full sight on the terrace.

  The seconds I spent wavering seemed like hours. I glanced anxiously back to the pool where the two great rivers met and then - in spite of again hearing the unnatural shout - my heart changed into lower gear; for on the surface of the water I saw a tell-tale line of froth. The cry wasn't human, but a fisheagle's. The clear harsh call, which precedes its dive-bomber swoop from high cloud, is one of the great sights of river-sea estuaries in Southern Africa. But here on the dried-up river the drought had debased the noble hunter to a carrion scavenger quarrelling with crocodiles for one stinking piece of mudfish or winkling putrid crabs from lairs become their graves as the water receded.

  I wiped my sweating hands on my gritty shirt front. The bird's cry underlined the fact that if I hesitated where I was I could be trapped without the opportunity to escape. My immediate target was plain – the partly ruined defence wall to my left running along the eastern edge of the terrace. Its drop was not so sheer as the one facing the river and therefore I reckoned it would be possible to negotiate it. If I could get behind the wall on a narrow shelf between it and the drop I could approach the guard hut unseen and discover whether it was occupied or not. My further plans depended on that. The alternative route that remained was simply across the broad terrace itself, bare as a billiard table.

  There was about a hundred yards of open ground from my gully to the wall. It was flat like the rest of the terrace but intersected by a number of small runnels – smaller versions of the wire-blocked gullies–which would provide some slight cover.

  I acted on my decision: leading with my left shoulder I rolled on to the cut fence, holding the rifle tucked against my chest. On the naked terrace I lay still while all eternity seemed to hold its breath. Then I jerked to a low crouch and made a shambling sort of crawl to the nearest gully and threw myself in. I hid there until the sun forced me on to the next hollow.

  Again and again I repeated the performance until at length I found myself gasping behind the safety of the eight-foot wall near its extremity where it had collapsed. To work around it was easy enough and, except for the first twenty yards or so where it lipped the drop, the going was easy for (as I had surmised) the terrace flattened out and shelved towards the river bed. This was probably the reason why a protecting wall had been built there in the first place.

  I hung back for a moment, reluctant to leave the river which had served me well so far. I had camouflaged the odd boat I had travelled in up river under a palm clump by the big pool and a double-check now showed me it was completely hidden from view. My shoestring budget had precluded a Land-Rover but in Messina I had seen for sale this curious craft which had been used for catching tiger-fish on the river. Its hull was a cut-out aluminium float from a wartime Catalina flying-boat and it was propelled by an ageing outboard motor. The boat's shallow draught was ideal for my purpose, for the higher I ascended the river the worse it became until finally it was reduced to a series of stagnant hippo pools interconnected by shallow channels twisting through moats of burning sand. At length, at the Limpopo's junction with the Shashi, the water became a soupy devil's brew stinking of dead fish and crocodiles, surrounded by a fringe of unsavoury mud. I shook off my unwillingness to cut my lines of communication and set off along the wall, I edged along cautiously hoping to find a spy hole. The structure was built of unmortared tabular blocks set stringer-wise but there was no coursing or bonding as. in modern building practice. Portions of the upper surface had fallen away here and there. It continued true towards my target, the guard's hut in the northeastern sector of The Hill on the corner opposite the queen's grave. It looked as if eventually the wall ended slap against the cliff face.

  It was slow going at first because of the drop within a foot or two of the outer face but within range of the cliffs this ledge broadened in keeping with the shelving terrain and I picked up speed, moving at a tight crouch, gun in hand. I decided to load only when I could see my objective, for fear that a chance fall might loose off a shot and give me away. Nearer the cliffs and therefore nearer the hut the wall became more solid: it would have taken a modern tank or bulldozer to break through.

  It was imperative I should see what lay on the other side. I went on to where a huge boulder had been used to form part of the wall, in the hope that I might be able to climb it. It was unnecessary, however, for where the blocks joined the boulder there were several rainwater drainage holes at the height of my head.

  I started to get my eye to one of them but it was blocked with rubble and dirt. I reached to clear it with my fingers but drew back in alarm at the feel of something alive. There was a movement and hiss like a tyre deflating and a puff-adder's head emerged. I dodged out of range of its strike with a shudder at the sight of the beautiful mother-of-pearl palate gleaming behind the deadly fangs.

  There were more drainage holes where the wall continued on the other side of the boulder and this time I took the precaution of cleaning one out with my rifle butt before trying to look. I loaded the Mannlicher silently with one round – it had no magazine–and rested it ready to hand against the wall.

  The guard's hut was only a biscuit's toss away on the other side. It was a rough affair built of kanniedood poles with a sloping thatched roof and several windows. A radio aerial was strung from a long pole on the roof to a nearby cliff and a big barrel-shaped water tank stood near by with a ladder against it.

  I watched and waited, but there was no sign of life or movement.

  It seemed significant that a window at the back (presumably the kitchen) was open, which meant that the hut was in current occupation. In the shadow of the wall I was cool and I could afford to let the moves come from the other side. After half an hour I decided that it was safe. Apart from checking the place I was also tempted by thoughts of a long drink from the tank. My mopani leaf had been chewed tasteless. I spat it out and started to climb the wall. It was smooth and difficult and I flinched at the thought of another puff-adder since I had to search blindly for grips in the open stone joints each time I handed myself up a stage farther.

  When I reached the top, still nothing moved at the hut. There was only that open window as a giveaway. Watching it, I dropped down carefully, silently, ducking for a minute behind a fallen rock halfway to the back door. I made a final sprint from its cover and flattened myself against the hut's wall by the open window.

  Then I risked a glance into the room beyond. There were plates and a cup on a crude deal table and a cut loaf of bread, but no human occupant. An inner door was shut; the outside door locked.

  I was overcome by a sense of unease and suspicion. The kitchen set-up looked like a trap.<
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  I disengaged the Mannlicher's safety catch and made my way, inch by inch, towards the front.

  It was the smell which brought me to a halt: not the fishy stench of the river, but a fetid, animal odour which reached into the pit of my stomach and knotted my muscles. I knelt down, scarcely breathing, and by feel alone double checked the rifle's safety catch while I cased every point of the compass. I snicked back the flap of my shirt pocket containing the shells in order to be able to reload quickly. Then something thumped softly on the inside of the wooden wall close to my face.

  I started my spring for the front door as the thought crashed home that the murderer was only an inch or two away through the planks.

  He came out carrying the dead man's head.

  I cannoned headlong into him, tripped and hurtled over his back, firing from the hip as a purely reflex action. The brute lay kicking. It was not on the dying hyena, however, that my sickened gaze fastened. A man's head, the lower jaw missing, with stray pieces of skin and hair adhering to the face and scalp, rolled away from the animal's snapping, frothing jaws.

  Between the eyes was a bullet-hole and the back had been smashed wide by a soft-nosed bullet.,

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I hauled myself up by the verandah post, winded and sick from the heavy fall. I stared transfixed at the sight of tobaccostained teeth projecting from beneath a fragment of lip on the skull; as I did so terror mounted like a quick-burning fuse from the sphincter muscles of my anus into my stomach. Blind panic exploded like a grenade and I jerked away into a wild career across the open terrace–away, away, anything to be away from the awful silence of that bizarre execution and the thought of the murderer's sights on my own back. I ran zig-zagging from the imaginary gun until I was brought to a halt by the security fence. I clawed my way along it and threw myself more by instinct than reason through the gap I had cut, and hid my head below the level of the terrace, out of sight of the watchful eyes with which my supercharged imagination invested The Hill.

  Gradually my breath returned, and with it my sanity. The sun on my hatless head and the unbroken stillness bore in upon me the futility of my crazy sprint. The wild oscillations of irrational fear steadied round the deadpoint. I got a grip on myself and tried to make some sort, of assessment, and to force myself to go back to the hut.

  It was essential to establish the identity of the dead man: Rankin or a guard. If it was Rankin, my whole plan was shot and then all I could do would be to return, tail between legs, to Nadine – if she would still have me after my walkout. For the first time since leaving I began to have doubts. The hardships of the river had enabled me to push consideration of my shabby trick out of mind but now I had to face it squarely. The end had to justify the means and if Rankin was dead I had lost the end–and possibly Nadine as well.

  If the skull was the guard's, there was only one person likely to have murdered him: Rankin. The thought gave me a measure of grim inverted satisfaction: I had often wondered, during my stay in jail, whether time had passed me by and I would arrive at The Hill to find Rankin gone. But if the murderer was Rankin, I was in deadly danger and I would have to watch every step I made. If he was capable of killing an official guard, he was capable of anything. But why hadn't he disposed of the body? Or – the thought brought a taste of sourness into my gullet – had I interrupted the disposal process: hyenas? What I needed now was a gun and a lot of vigilance. The mere fact that the hyena had been busy inside the hut indicated that the killer could not be around and therefore it would be safe to go back.

  What then had I run away from? I had seen dead men before, in the war. True, the skull was a ghastly sight, but if it was Rankin's, so what? I had little sympathy to spare for him. If it was the guard's; he was a stranger. What then had sparked off my terror?

  I felt the rising surge in my bowels as I forced myself back on to the terrace. The Hill? Whichever way one looked one's eyes always came back to it; sprawled shimmering, ugly, gigantic across the view. The hard sunlight seemed to magnify rather than decrease its mystery. It was inevitable, too, that my concentration should focus on the tabletop with its royal grave. It seemed to echo the accusation: you double-crossed Nadine.

  I started back towards the hut, walking straight and fast. If I went on thinking in this way, in this isolation, I'd be crazy within a few days. The Hill, I told myself, was nothing more than an unusual koppie at a strategic river junction. The mystery of the lost origin of a group of unknown invaders who had fortified it had been blown up to become a riddle into which one could read anything.

  I strode up to the skull and I blenched. I temporized about examining it by first retrieving my hat and rifle. I felt again the tiny ripple of fear-activated muscle in my buttocks and to counteract it I took out a shell for the Mannlicher. The bolt action was looser than it should have been but I put this down to the bang it had had when it fell, and to its age. While I loaded I found myself eyeing every corner of the surroundings but once I had a bullet in the breech I felt better. I then made my way to the verandah. I needed a wall at my back as a precaution against ambush while I took stock of the situation. First, I decided to force myself to examine the skull. However, when I started towards it and had only reached the edge of the verandah, there was such a stench of decaying flesh that suddenly I found myself hanging on to a post, vomiting violently. When the fit had passed I went to the water tank and had a long drink. I came to the conclusion then that it would be better to postpone my examination of the hut and the victim until I could face the ordeal : perhaps in the cool of late afternoon. I still couldn't bring myself to approach the skull so I fetched the ladder and shinned up the roof for the long bamboo pole supporting the radio aerial, which I then used to spear and edge the skull inside the hut. Then I shut the door and window.

  The ladder gave me another idea: laid over the rolls of barbed wire below the security fence it would give easy access to the river from the terrace and back again. Acting on this, I carried it on my shoulder across the bare stretch of terrace with a feeling of trailing my coat to unseen enemies; as if to tempt them further, I rested at intervals with my back deliberately turned to The Hill. I took my time, too, at the gate and painstakingly sawed with the diamond pencil through several more strands of wire, to make a sizeable gap. In the end I had a quick, safe route open.

  It was my need for a rational approach which also crystallized my decision to make camp at The Hill itself. I made my choice of site as much with my heart as with my head. I plumped for a circle of big rocks near the foot of the secret stairway, not far from the trench where our love had taken fire. This site, I reasoned, commanded the fortress's most vital strategic point and if Rankin were holed up on the summit he could not by-pass it. Footpaths dating from the time of the expedition all converged there. Also, being on the side of The Hill away from the river, I could hide myself and avoid discovery from that quarter. And the soaring cliffs gave welcome shade. The actual entrance to the secret stairway was about twenty-five feet above the ground and concealed by the big old fig tree whose roots, hanging down from the cliffside, formed a grassy cage. It could be a useful hide-out if the need arose.

  I unloaded the boat and started on the first of two journeys to hump my few possessions to the place. The exposed solitary walk across the terrace in the hard light, with nerves strung high and rifle at the ready, reminded me of the classic confrontation in a Western where the good guy and the bad guy shoot it out in the empty street. The more the range closed towards The Hill the tenser I became. But there was no shot, no sound even, except that of my heels on the rock. I skirted the cliffs under the tabletop (I was now at the opposite extremity of the fortress from the hut) and made full use of the cover afforded by the scatter of great boulders which had fallen from the cliffs. Once I had rounded the point there were more sheltering boulders on the wadi side. I picked my way cautiously through these and it was with a sense of anticlimax that I reached the foot of the stairway. There was not a sign of human o
ccupation and the sandy tracks were devoid of any but animal spoor. I dumped the gunny-sack containing my things and made my second journey to the boat via the hut and filled a jerrican with water from the tank. To get there I walked clean across the broad front of The Hill facing the river. Afterwards I relaxed, for if I was to be shot at, that would have been the time. The return to my campingplace was without incident. It took most of the afternoon to make the trips. Perhaps their uneventfulness lulled me into putting off the issue of examining the skull and mortuary-like interior of the hut - until the next day. They certainly convinced me it would be quite safe to light a small fire that night (behind the protecting screen of rocks where it wouldn't be seen) as a precaution against wild animals, and I spent until dusk gathering wood. I found a dead leadwood tree whose long-burning timber known to veldmen as 'hard-coal' - would last for hours without attention and keep prowling hyenas at bay while I slept. It also has the useful characteristic of burning with sudden sparks and flares, probably from old insect nests deep in the heartwood.

  Night fell.

  I hung about until it was completely dark but I didn't feel safe to settle down until I had carried out a test to see if my fire could be spotted - just in case. The night was hot but it would be cheerless sitting alone in the blackness; nevertheless, I determined to do so if necessary. I took the rifle and went to the outer limit of The Hill's fortifications facing the wadi -

  in other words, the sector between the fortress itself and the adjoining ring of hills to the south. The drop from the terrace into the wadi's sandy bed was less than that on the river front: some twenty feet, I guessed. Also, the fortified wall was in a worse state of repair and there seemed to be more rolls of barbed wire here.

  I found that the ring of boulders round my fire hid it com- pletely from that particular angle. Satisfied, I then worked round in a semi-circle towards Nadine's trench, checking further. Suddenly there was a movement on the ground ahead. For a moment my eyes conjured up a man crawling towards me, head up. I swung my sights on to the object; when I made out what it was I grinned with relief. A starving armadillo scuffed at the iron-hard ground and what I had taken for a head was no more threatening than a baby riding on its mother's back, tail entwined with hers. Somehow the touching sight evoked a surge of deep longing for Nadine.