Wilbur Smith - B4 The Leopard Hunts In Darkness

by B4 The Leopard Hunts In Darkness(Lit)

  He felt his muscles charging, felt the tension build in his sinews and nerves until he was like an arrow, notched -bow against the curve of the long With his eyes he swept the bush directly in the run of the spoor only lightly, and concentrated his main attention on the flanks. This beast that they were hunting was the most cunning of all the dangerous game of Africa, except perhaps the leopard. But it was possessed of the brute strength of a hundred' leopards The lion will growl before he charges, the elephant will turn under the punishment of heavy bullets in the chest, but the Cape buffalo comes and in silence, and only one thing will stop his charge that is death.

  A big, metallic-blue fly settled on Peter Fungabera's lip and crawled into his nostril. So complete was his concentration that he did not feel it, or brush it away. He watched the flanks, he concentrated the very essence of his being on the flanks.

  The Russian checked, examining the change in the spoor, the plant of solid hooves, the puddle of loose bloody dung. This was where the bull had stood, after his first wild run. Peter Fungabera could imagine him, standing massive and black, with his nose held high, looking back towards the hunters with the spreading agony in his guts and liquid faeces from his torn intestines beginning to ooze uncontrollably down his quarters. Here he had stood and listened and heard their voices, and the hatred and anger had begun to seethe in him. Here the killing rage had begun.

  He had dropped his head, and gone on, humping his back against the agony in his bowels, sustained by the rage within him.

  The Russian glanced back at Peter, and they did not have to speak.

  In unison they moved forward.

  The bull was acting on an atavistic memory: everything he did had been done countless times before by his ancestors. From that first wild gallop as he received the bullet, the stop to listen and peer back, the gathering of great muscles, and now the more sedate trot, angling to resent his haunches to the fitful breeze so that the scent of the hunters would be borne down to him, great armoured head swinging from side to side as he began the search for the ambush point, it was all part of a pattern.

  "Me bull crossed a narrow clearing ten paces across, forced his head into the wall of glossy green leaves on the far side, leaving it smeared with fresh bright blood, and went on another fifty yards. Then he turned sharply aside, and started back in a wide circle. Now he moved with deliberate stealth, insinuating his bulk gently through the intertwined creeper and branch a single pace at a time until he came back to the clearing again.

  Here he stopped, hidden on the far edge of the clearing, covering from the side his own bloody tracks across the narrow opening, his body screened entirely by dense growth, and a terrible stillness settled upon him. He let the stinging flies feast on his open wound without shuddering his skin or swinging his tail. He did not twitch either of his large, Cup-shaped ears but strained them forward.

  Not even his eyes blinked as he peered back along the blood spoor and waited for the hunters to come.

  The Russian stepped lightly into the clearing, his gaze darting ahead to where blood painted branches hung on the far side and a huge body had forced its way through into the forest beyond. He started forward quietly. Peter Fungabera followed him, watching the flanks, moving likea dancer, his body glowing with a light sheen of sweat, the flat, hard muscle in his chest and arms changing shape at his slightest movement.

  He saw the bull's eye. It caught the light likea new coin, and Peter froze. He snapped the fingers of his left hand, and the Russian froze with him. Peter Fungabera stared at the bull buffalo's eye, not quite sure what he was seeing, but knowing that it was in the right place thirty yards out on the left. If the bull had doubled, that was where he would be.

  Peter blinked his eyes, and suddenly the image cleared.

  He was no longer focused only on the eye, and so he could see the curve of one horn held so still that it could have been a branch. He saw the crenellations of the boss meeting above the bull's eye, and now he looked into the eye itself and it was likea glimpse into hell.

  The bull charged. The forest burst open before his rush, branches crackled and broke, the leaves shook and fluttered as though struck by a hurricane and the bull came out into the clearing. He came out crabbing sideways, a deceptive but characteristic feint that had lulled many a hunter until the sudden direct I ge at the end.

  He came fast. uhnsetemed impossible that any beast so enormous could move so fast. He was broad and tall as a granite kopje, his back and shoulder crusted with dried mud from the wallow, and there were obscene silvery bald patches on his shoulders and neck, crisscrossed with the long-healed scars of thorn and lions" claws.

  From his open jaws drooled silver ropes of saliva, and tears had tracked wet lines down his hairy cheeks. A man could barely have encompassed that neck with both arms, or matched the spread of those horns with arms extended.

  In the skin folds of his throat hung bunches of blue ticks like ripe grapes, and the rank bovine smell of him was choking in the hothouse of the forest.

  He came on, majestic in his killing rage, and Peter Fungabera went out to meet him. He passed in front of the Russian just as Colonel Bukharin swung up the stubby heavy-calibre rifle, screening the shot, forcing him to throw the barrel up towards the sky. Peter moved likea dark forest wraith, crossing the bull at the opposite angle to his crabbing charge, taking him off balance so that the bull hooked at him likea boxer punching as he moves away, not timing the swing of horns, not sighting true, and Peter swayed away from it with his upper body only, letting the curved point hiss past his ribs by the breadth of a hand and then swaying back as the bull's head was flung high at the finish of the stroke.

  In that instant the bull was open, from his reaching chin to the soft folds of skin between his forelegs, and Peter Fungabera put the fall weight of his body and all the momentum of his run behind the silver blade.

  The bull ran onto the point. It went into him with the sucking sound of a foot in mud, and the blade was swallowed by living flesh. It went in until the fingers of Peter's right hand on the shaft followed the blade into the wound and spurting blood drenched him to the shoulder.

  Peter released his grip on the assegai, and pirouetted away, sptrming clear while the bull bucked stiff4 egged against the long steel in his chest cavity. He tried to follow Peter round, but came up short and stood with his thick stubby forelegs braced, staring at the naked man with a glaze spreading over his eyes.

  Peter Fungabera posed before him, with both arms lifted gracefully. "Ha, earth-shaker! "he called in Shana. "Ha, you sky thunder!" The bull made two Plunging strides forward and some thing burst inside him. Blood erupted in a double gush from his flaring nostrils. He opened his jaws and bellowed, and blood shot up his throat in a frothing bright cascade and drenched his chest. The great bull reeled, fighting to keep his balance.

  "Die, spawn of the black gods!" Peter taunted. "Feel the steel of a future king and die!" The bull went down. The earth jumped beneath their feet as the weight of him struck.

  Peter Fungabera stepped up to the huge bossed head in which the smouldering eyes were fading. He went down on one knee and, with his cupped hands, scooped up the rich hot blood as it streamed from the bull's gaping mouth, and he lifted his hands to his mouth and drank the blood like wine. it streamed down his arms and dribbled from his chin, and Peter laughed, a sound that made even the Russian's vinegary blood chill.

  "I have drunk your living blood, oh great bull. Now your strength is mine! he shouted, as the bull arched his back in the final spasm of death.

  eter Fungabera had showered and changed into mess kit. His trousers were black with a burgundy watered silk side stripe. His short bumfteezer jacket was in the regiment's same distincti e burgundy-red with black silk lapels. His white shirt was starch4 ranted and wing collared with a black1 bow-tie and he wore a double row of miniature decorations.

  The camp servants had set a table under the spread branches of a mhoba-hobo tree, on the edge of an open vlei of short
lush green grass, out of sight and earshot of the main camp. On the table was a bottle of Chivas Regal whisky and another of vodka, a bucket of ice and two crystal glasses.

  Colonel Nikolai Bukharin sat opposite Peter. His long loose cotton shirt hung outside his baggy Cossack pant's and was belted at the waist. His feet were thrust into boots of soft glove-leather. He leaned forward and filled the glasses, and then passed one to Peter.

  This time there was no flamboyant tossing back of liquor. They drank slowly, watching the African sky turn mauve and smouldering gold.

  The silence was the companionable accord of two men who have risked their lives together and have each found the other worthy, a comrade to die with, or an adversary to fight to the death.

  At last Colonel Bukharin placed his glass back on the table with a click.

  "And so, my friend, tell me what you want, "he invited.

  "I want this land," said Peter Fungabera simply.

  "All of it? "the colonel asked.

  "All of it "Not just Zimbabwe?"

  "Not just Zimbabwe."

  "And we are to help you take it?"

  "Yes."

  "In exchange?"

  "My friendship."

  "Your friendship unto death?" the colonel suggested drily. "Or until you have what you want and find a new friend?" Peter smiled. They spoke the same language, they understood each other.

  "What tangible signs of this eternal friendship will you give us?" the Russian insisted.

  "A poor little country like mine," Peter shrugged, "a few strategic minerals nickel, chrome, titanium, beryllium a few ounces of gold." The Russian nodded sagely. "They will be useful to us." "Then, once I am the Monomatapa of Zimbabwe, my eyes will become restless, naturally-, "Naturally." The Russian watched his eyes. He did not like black men, this racist bigotry was a common Russian trait, he did not like their colour nor their smell but this one!

  "My eyes might turn southwards," Peter Fungabera said softly. Ha!

  Colonel Bukharin hid his glee behind a doleful expression. This one is different!

  "The direction in which your own eyes have been focused all along," Peter went on, and the Russian could have chortled.

  "What will you see in the south, Comrade General?"

  "I will see a people enslaved and ripe for emancipation."

  "And what else?" w ill see the gold of the Witwatersrand and the Free State fields, I will see the diamonds of Kimberley, the uranium, the platinum, the silver, the copper in short, I will see one of the great treasure houses of this earth."

  "Yes?" the Russian probed with delight. This one is quick, this one has brains, and this one has the courage that it would take.

  "I will see a base that' divides the western world, a base that controls both the south Atlantic and the Indian oceans, that sits upon the oil lines between the Gulf and Europe, between the Gulf and the Americas." The Russian held up a hand. "Where will these thoughts lead you?"

  "It will be my duty4 to see this land to the south elevated to its true place i the community of nations, in the in tutelage of and under the protection of that greatest of all lovers of freedom, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics." ed, still watching his eyes. Yes, this The Russian nodd black man had seen the design behind it all. The south was the grand prize, but to win it they needed to take it in the strangler's grasp. To the east they already had Mozambique, to the west Angola was theirs and Namibia would soon be also. They needed only the north to isolate the prize. The north was Zimbabwe, like the strangler's thumb on the windpipe, and this man could deliver it to them.

  Colonel Bukharin sat forward in his canvas camp-chair and became businesslike and brisk.

  "OpportunityP "Economic chaos, and intertribal warfare, the breakdown of central government." Peter Fungabera counted them off on his fingers.

  "The present government is meeting you more than halfway in creating its own economic breakdown," the Russian observed, "and you are already doing fine work in fanning tribal hatreds."

  "Thank you, comrade."

  "However, the peasants must begin to starve a little before they become manageable-"

  "I am pushing in the Cabinet for the nationalization of the white-owned farms and ranches. Without the white farmers I can produce you a goodly measure of starvation," Peter Fungabera smiled.

  "I hear you have already made a start. I congratulate you on the recent acquisition of your own estate, King's Lynn?

  That is the name is it not?"

  "You are well informed, Colonel."

  "I

  take pains to ensure that I am. But when the moment comes to seize the reins of state, what kind of man will the people look to?"

  "A strong man," Peter answered without hesitation. "One whose ruthlessness has been demonstrated."

  "As yours was during the chimurenga, and more recently in Matabeleland." A man of charisma and presence, a man well known to the:4 people."

  "The women sing your praises in the streets of Harare, not a single day passes without your image on the television screens or your name on the front page of the newspapers."

  "A man with force behind him."

  "The Third Brigade," the Russian nodded, "and the blessing of the people of the USSR. However," he paused significantly, 'two questions need answers, Comrade General."

  "Yes?"

  "The first is a mundane and distasteful question to raise between men such as you and I money. My paymasters become restless. Our expenses have begun to exceed by a considerable amount the shipments of ivory and animal products that you have sent us-" He held up his hand again to forestall argument. It was an old man's hand, dappled with withered dark spots and crisscrossed with prominent blue veins. "I know that we should do these things merely for the love of freedom, that money is a capitalist obscenity, but nothing is perfect in this world. In short, Comrade General, you are reaching the limits that Moscow has set on your credit."

  "I understand," Peter Fungabera nodded. "What is your second question?"

  "The Matabele tribe. They are a warlike and difficult people. I know that you have been forced to stir up enmity, to cause dissension and strife and to bring upon the present government the disapproval of the Western powers by your campaign in Matabeleland. But what happens afterwards?

  How do you control them once you yourself have seized power?

  (I " est ions with a single name, Peter answer both qu Fungabera. replied.

  "Me name?"

  "Tungata Zebiwe."

  "Ha! Yes! Tungata Zebiwe. The Matabele leader. You had him put away. I presumed that by now he had been liquidated."

  "I am holding him in great secrecy and safety at one of my rehabilitation centres near here."

  "Explain."

  "Firstly, the money."

  "From what we know, Tungata Zebiwe is not a rich man," the Russian demurred.

  "He has the key to a fortune which might easily exceed two hundred million US dollars." The Russian raised a silver eyebrow in the gesture of disbelief that Peter was coming to know well, and which was beginning to irritate him.

  "Diamonds," he said.

  "The mother country is one of the world's largest Producers. "The Russian spread his hands disparagingly.

  "Not industrial rubbish, not black boart, but gem stones of the first water, large stones, huge stones, some of the finest ever mined anywhere." The Russian looked thoughtful. "if it is true-"

  "It is true! But I will not explain further. Not yet."

  "Very well. At least I can hold out some sort of promise to the money-sucking leeches in our treasury department?

  And the second question. The Matabele? You cannot plan to 0 blite rate them, man, woman and child?" Peter Fungabera shook his head regretfully. "No. Though it would be the better way, America and Britain would not allow it. No, my answer is Tungata Zebiwe again. When I take over the country, he will reappear it will be almost miraculous. He will come back from the dead. The Mota

  ,

  bele trib
e will go wild with joy and relief They will follow him, they will dote upon him, and I will make him my vice-president."

  "He hates you. You destroyed him. If you ever free him, he will seek to revenge that."

  "No," Peter shook his head. "I will send him to you. You have special clinics for difficult cases, do you not? Institutes where a mentally sick man can be treated with drugs and other techniques to make him rational and reasonable once more?" This time the Russian actually began to chortle, and he poured himself another vodka, shaking with silent laughter. When he looked up at Peter, there was respect in those pale eyes for the first time.