Leopard Hunts in Darkness b-4

by Wilbur A. Smith

  "My Matabele puppies, we will hear you yap a little before this day is done," he promised softly, and turned at the end of the line. He walked back slowly to where the Russian waited in the shade of one of the huts.

  "You will get nothing qut of the old one." Bukharin took the ebony cigarette-holder from between his teeth and coughed softly, covering his mouth with his hand. "He is dried up, beyond pain, beyond suffering. Look at his eyes.

  Fanatic."

  "I agree, these sangoma are capable of self-hypnosis, he will be impervious to pairWPeter Fungabera shot back the cuff of his battle-sino and glanced impatiently at his watch. "Where is that translator?" It was another hour before the Matabele trusty from the rehabilitation centre was hustled up the path from the valley. He fell on his knees before Peter Fungabera, blubbering and holding up his manacled hands.

  "Get up!" Then, to the sergeant, "Remove his manacles.

  Bring the old man here." Vusamanzi was led into the centre of the village square.

  "Tell him I am his father," Fungabera ordered.

  "Mambo, he replies that his father was a man, not a hyena."

  "Tell him that although I cherish him and all his people, I am displeased with him."

  "Mambo, he replies that if he has made Your Honour unhappy, then he is well content."

  "Tell him he has tied to my men."

  "Mambo, he hopes for the opportunity to do so again."

  "Tell him that I know he is protecting and feeding four enemies of the state."

  "Mambo, he suggests that Your Honour is demented.

  There are no hidden enemies of the state."

  "Very well. Now address all these people. Repeat that I wish to know where the traitors are hidden. Tell them that if they lead me to them, then nobody in the village will come to any harm." The translator stood before the silent rank of women and children, and made a long and passionate plea, but when he ended, they stared back at him stolidly. One of the infants began to scream petulantly, and its mother swung it under her arm and pressed her swollen nipple into its tiny mouth. There was silence again.

  "Sergeant!" Peter Fungabera gave terse orders, and Vusamanzi's hands were snatched behind his back and bound at the wrists. One of the troopers fashioned a hangman's noose in a length of nylon rope and tossed the free end of 0, the rope over one of the main supports of an elevated maize bin at the edge of the square. They stood Vusamanzi under the maize bin and dropped the noose over his head.

  "Now tell his people that when any one of them agrees to lead us to the traitors, this punishment will end immediately." The translator raised his voice, but he had not finished "my before Vusamanzi called over him in a firm voice, UI curse upon any of you who speak to this Shana pig. I command silence upon you, no matter what is done he who breaks it will be visited by me from beyond the grave.

  1, Vusamanzi, master of the waters, command this thing!"

  "Do it!" Peter Fungabera ordered, and the sergeant inched in the slack of the rope. The noose closed around the old man's neck, and gradually he was forced up onto his tiptoes.

  "Enough!" Peter Fungabera ordered and d-icy secured the free end of the rope.

  Now, let them come forward and speak." The translator moved down the rank of women, urging them and finally pleading unashamedly, but Vusamanzi glared at his women fiercely, unable to speak but still commanding them with all his will.

  "Break one of his feet," ordered Peter Fungabera, and the sergeant faced the old man and, with a dozen blows, using the butt of his rifle likea maize stamp, he crushed Vusamanzi's left foot. As the women heard the brittle old bones snap like kindling for the hearth, they began to wail and ululate.

  "Speak!" Peter Fungal5era commanded.

  Vusamanzi stood on one leg, his neck twisted to one side at the pull of the rope. His damaged foot began to swell, likea balloon being inflated, to three times its natural size, the skin stretched black and shiny as an overripe fruit on the point of splitting open.

  "Speak!" Peter Fungabera ordered the second time, and the mournin cries of die women drowned him out.

  "Break his other food" he nodded to the sergeant.

  As the rifle-butt shattered the complex of small bones in Vusamanzi's right foot, he fell sideways against the rope, and the sergeant stepped back, grinning at the contortions of the old man as he tried frantically to relieve the pressure of the rope by taking his weight on his mutilated flet.

  All the women were screaming now, and the children's cries swelled the anguished chorus. One of the old women, the senior wife, broke the line and ran forward with both thin arms outstretched towards her husband of fifty years.

  "Leave her! Peter Fungabera ordered the guards who would have restrained her. They stepped aside.

  The frail old woman reached her husband and tried to lift him, crying out her love and her compassion, but she did not have d -te strength even for Vusamanzi's emaciated body. She succeeded only in relieving the pressure on his L I larynx enough to prolong the agonies of his strangulation.

  The old man's mouth was open, hunting for air, and white froth coated his lips. He was making a harsh, cawing sound, and the old wife's antics were ludicrous.

  "Listen to the Matabele rooster crow, and his ancient hen cackle! Peter Fungabera smiled, and his troopers guffawed delightedly.

  It took a long time, but when at last Vusamanzi hung still and silent with his face twisted up to the sky, his wife sank to the earth at his feet and rocked her body rhythmically as she began the keen of mourning.

  Peter Fungabera. walked back to the Russian, and Bukharin lit another cigarette and murmured, "Crude and ineffective."

  "There was never any chance with the old fool. We had to get him out of the way, and set the mood." Peter dabbed at his chin and forehead with the tail of his scarf. "It was effective, Colonel, just look at the faces of the women He tucked the scarf back into the neck of his smock and strolled back to the women.

  "Ask them where the enemies of the state are hidden." But as the translator began to speak, the old woman sprang to her feet and rushed back to face them.

  "You saw your lord die without speaking," she screeched.

  "You heard his command. You know that he will return!" Peter Fungabera. altered the grip on his swagger, stick and with little apparent effort drove the point of it up under the old woman's ribs. She screamed and collapsed.

  Her spleen, enlarged by endemic malarial infection, had ruptured at the blow.

  "Get rid of her," Peter ordered, and one of the troopers seized her ankles and dragged her away behind the huts.

  "Ask them where the enemies of the state are hidden." Peter walked slowly along the rank, looking into their faces, evaluating the degree of terror that he saw in each pair of black Matabele eyes. He took his time over the selection, coming back at last to the youngest mother, barely more than a child herself, her infant strapped upon her back with a strip of patterned blue cloth.

  He stood in front of her and stared her down, then, when he judged the moment, he reached out and took her wrist. He led her gently to the centre of the open square, where the remains of the watch-fire still burned.

  He kicked the smouldering ends of the logs together, and, still holding the girl, waited until they burst into flames again. Then he twisted the girl's arm, forcing her to her knees. Slowly silence fell over the other women, and they watched with deadly fascination.

  Peter Fungabera loosened the blue cloth and lifted the infant off the girl's back. It was a boy. A chubby infant, with skin the colour of wild honey, his little pot-belly was gorged with his mother's milk, and there were creases of fat like bracelets, at his wrists and ankles.

  Peter tossed him up lightly and as he fn seized one ankle. The child shrieked with shocked oAt rage dangling upside down from Peter's fist.

  "Where are the enemies of the state hidden?" The child's face was swelling and darkening with blood.

  "She says she does not know." Peter Fungabera lifted the child high above the
flames.

  "Where are the enemies of the state?" Each time he repeated the question he lowered the infant a few inches.

  "She says she does not know." Suddenly Peter lowered the little wriggling body into the very heart of the flames, and the child squealed with a totally new sound. Peter lifted it clear of the flames after a second and dangled it in front of its mother's face. The flames had frizzled away the child's eyelashes and the tight little criss,curls from its scalp.

  "Tell her that I will roast this little piglet slowly and then I will force her to eat it." The girl tried to snatch her child back, but he kept it just beyond her reach. The girl started screaming a single phrase, repeating it over and over again, and the other women sighed and covered their faces.

  "She says she will lead you to them." Peter Fungabera. dropped the infant into her arms and strolled back to the Russian. Colonel Bukharin inclined his head slightly in grudging admiration.

  arty feet down Craig hung suspended before the wall4 of the tomb. He had anchored his waist strap to a lump of limestone, and by the feeble yellow light of the lamp from one of the life-jackets was carefully exam OF

  ming the masonry for a weak point of entry. Using his hands to supplement his water-distorted vision, he found that there was no break or aperture, but that the foot of the wall was composed of much larger lumps of limestone than the top. Probably the availability of large rocks within easy portability of the tomb had been exhausted as the work progressed and the old witch-doctor and his apprentices had fallen back on smaller material, and yet the smallest was larger than a man's head.

  Craig seized one of these and struggled to dislodge it.

  His hands had been softened by the water, and a tiny puff of blood clouded the water as his skin split on the sharp file edge of the stone, but there was no pain for the cold had numbed him.

  Almost immediately the bloodstain in the water was obscured by a darker shadow as the dirt and debris that had lain so long undisturbed swirled into suspension at his efforts. Within seconds he was totally blinded as the water was filthied, and he switched off the lamp to conserve the battery. Small particles of dirt irritated his eyes, and he closed them tightly, working only by sense of touch.

  There are degrees Of darkness, but this was total. It was a darkness that seemed to have physical weight and it crushed down upon him, emphasizing the hundreds of feet of solid rock and water above him. The oxygen he drew into his mouth had a flat chemical taste, and every few breaths a spurt of water would find its way around the ill fitting seal of his mask and he choked upon it, forcing himself not to cough, for a coughing fit might dislodge the mask entirely.

  The cold was likea terminal disease, sapping and destroying him, affecting his judgement and reactions, making it more and more difficult to guard against the onset of oxygen poisoning, and each signal on the rope from the surface seemed to be an eternity after the last.

  But he worked at the wall with a grim determination, beginning to hate the long, dead ancestors of Vusamanzi for their thoroughness in inlding it.

  By the time his half-hour shift finally ended, he had pulled down a pile of rock from the head of the wall and had tunnelled a hole three or four feet mito the masonry just wide enough to accommodate his upper body with its bulky oxygen equipment strapped to it, but there was still no indication as to just how much thicker the wall was.

  He cleared the rock he had dislodged, kicking it down the incline of the chute and letting it fall away into the depths of the grand gallery. Then, with soaring relief, he untied the anchor rope and slid down after it and began the long ascent to the surface of the pool.

  Tungata helped him clamber out of the water onto the slab, for he was weak as a child and the equipment on his back weighed him down. Tungata pulled the set off over his head, while Sarah poured a mug of black tea and ladled sticky brown sugar into it.

  "Sally-Anne?"he asked.

  Tendula is standing guard in the upper cavern,"Tungata answered.

  Craig cupped his hands around the mug, and edged closer to the smoky little fire, shaking with the cold.

  "I have started a small hole in the top of the wall and gone into it about three feet, but there is no way of guessing how thick it is or how many more dives it will need to get through it." He sipped the tea.

  "One thing we have overlooked: I will need something to carry the goodies, if we find them." Craig crossed his fingers and Sarah made her own sign to ward off misfortune. "The beer-pots are obviously brittle old Insutsha broke one and they will be awkward to carry. We will have to use the bags I made from the canvas seat covers. When Sarah goes up to relieve Pendula, she must send them down." As the numbness of cold was dispelled by the fire and hot tea, so the pain in his head began. Craig knew that it was the effect of breathing high-pressure oxygen, the first symptom of poisoning. It was likea high-grade migraine, crushing in on his brain so that he wanted to moan aloud.

  He fumbled three painkillers from the first-aid kit and washed them down with hot tea.

  Then he sat in a dejected huddle and waited for them to take effect. He was dreading his return to the wall so strongly that it sickened his stomach and corroded his will.

  He found that he was looking for an excuse to postpone the next dive, anything to avoid that terrible cold and die suffocating press of dark waters upon him.

  Tungata was watching him silently across the fire, and Craig slipped the frir cape off his shoulders and handed the empty mug back to Sarah. He stood up. The headache had degraded to a dull throb behind his eyes.

  "Let's go," he said, and Tungata laid a hand on his upper arm and squeezed it before he stooped to lift the oxygen set over Craig's head.

  Craig quailed at this new contact with the icy water, but he forced himself into it, and the stone he held weighted him swiftly into the depths. In his imagination the entrance to the tomb no longer resembled an eyeless socket, but rather the toothless maw of some horrible creature from African mythology, gaping open to ingest him.

  He entered it and swam up the inclined shaft, and anchored himself before the untidy hole he had burrowed into the wall. The sediment had settled, and in the glow of his lamp the shadows and shapes of rock crowded in upon him, and he wrestled with another attack of claustrophobia, anticipating the clouds of filth which would soon render him blind. He reached out and the rock was brutally rough on his torn hands. He prised a lump of limestone free, and a small slide of the surrounding stones sent sediment billowing around his head. He switched off his lamp and began the cold blind work again.

  The rope signals at his waist were his only contact with reality and finite time A somehow they helped him to control his mount in terror of the cold and darkness.

  Twenty minutes, and his headache was breaking through the drugs with which he had subdued it. It felt as though a blunt nail was being driven with hammer blows into his temple, and as though the iron point was cutting in behind his eyes.

  "I can't last another ten minutes," he thought. "I'm going up now." He began to turn away from the wall and then just managed to prevent himself.

  "Five minutes," he promised himself "Just five minutes more." He forced his upper body into the opening, and the steel oxygen cylinder struck a rock and rang likea bell. He groped around the edges of a triangular-shaped rock that had been frustrating his efforts for the past few minutes.

  Once again he wished for a short jeremy bar to -get into that crack and break it open. His fingers ached as he used them instead, getting them in under the rock, and then he wedged himself against the sides of the hole and began to jerk at it, slowly exerting more strength with each heave, until his back was bunched with muscle and his belly ached with the effort.

  Something moved and he heard rock grate on rock. He heaved again and the crack closed on his fingers and he screamed with pain into his mask. But the pain of his crushed fingertips unlocked reserves of strength he had not yet tapped. He flung all of this against the rock and it rolled, his fingers came free a
nd there was a rumbling, clanking roar of falling sliding stone blocks.