Wilbur Smith - B4 The Leopard Hunts In Darkness

by B4 The Leopard Hunts In Darkness(Lit)

  "Both the apprentices and Taka-Taka overlooked one of the diamonds," Tungata said softly. "We found the clay shards and a single diamond where they had left it."

  "Now you may go to sleep if you are still weary, Nkosi." Vusamanzi gave his permission with a gleam in his rheumy old eyes. "What? You want to hear more? There is nothing else to tell. The tale is finished."

  "Where did they take the king's body?" Tungata asked.

  "Do you know the place, my wise and revered old father?" Vusamanzi grinned. "It is indeed an unexpected pleasure to find respect and honour for age in the young people of this new age, but to answer your question, son of Kumalo: I do know where the king's body is. The secret was passed to me by my father!

  "Can you lead me to the place?"

  "Di I not te you that mis place in which we now sit "14 is sacred? It is sacred for good reason!

  "My God I"

  "Herel both Craig and Tungata exclaimed together I and Vusamanzi cackled happily and hugged his bony old knees, well pleased with their reaction.

  "In the morning I will take you to view the site of the king's grave," he promised, "but now my throat is dry with too much talking. Pass the beer-pot to an old man." hen Craig woke, the first morning light was diffusing through the hole in the roof of the I! Tcavern, milky and blued by the smoke from the cooking-fire where the girls were busy preparing the morning meal.

  While they breakfasted, and with Vusamanzi's reluctant permission, Craig related in English the outlines of the tale of Loberigula's reburial to Sarah and Sally-Anne. They were both enthralled, and immediately on fire to join the expedition.

  "It is a difficult place to reach," the old man buffed, "and it is not for the eyes of mere womenfolk." But Sarah smiled "s head and whispered in her sweetest, stroked the old man his ear, and finally, after a further show of gruff severity, he relented.

  Under Vusamanzi's direction, the men made a few simple preparations for the expedition. In one of the ancillary branches of the cavern beneath a flat stone was a hidey, hole containing another kerosene lantern, two native axes and three large coils of good-quality nylon rope which the old man clearly prized highly.

  "We liberated this fine rope from the army of Smithy during the bush war," he boasted.

  "One great blow for freedom," Craig murmured, and Sally-Anne frowned him to silence.

  They set off down one of the branches of the cavern, Vusamanzi leading and carrying one of the lanterns followed by Tungata with one of the rope coils, the girls in the centre, and Craig with a second coil of rope and the orb r lantern in the rear.

  Vusamanzi strode along the passage as it narrowed and twisted. When the passage forked, he did not hesitate.

  Craig opened his clasp-knife and marked the wall of the right, hand fork, and then hurried to catch up with the rest of the party.

  The system of tunnels and caves was a three-dimensional maze. Water and seepage had mined the limestone of the hills until it was as perforated as Gruy&e cheese. In some places they scrambled down rock scree, and at one point they climbed a rough, natural staircase of limestone. Craig blazed every twist and turn of the way. The air was cold and dank and musky with the smell of guano. Occasionally there was a flurry of shadowy wings around their heads, and the shrill squeal of disturbed bats echoed down the passageways.

  After twenty minutes they came to an almost vertical drop of glossy smooth limestone, so deep that the lantern glow did not reach the depths. Under Vusamanzi's direction, they secured the end of one coil of nylon rope to a pillar of limestone, and one at a time slid down fifty feet to the next stage. This was a vertical fault in the rock formation, where two geological bodies had shifted slightly and formed an open crack in the depths of the earth. It was so narrow that he could touch either wall, and in the lantern light Craig could just make out the bright eyes of the bats hanging inverted from the rocky roof above them.

  Uncoiling the second rope Vusamanzi cautiously climbed down the treacherous floor of the crack. The crack widened as it descended, and the roof receded into the gloom above their heads. It reminded Craig of the great gallery in the heart of Claeops" pyramid, a fearsome cleft through living rock, daAgerously steep, so they had to steady themselves with the rope at every pace. They had almost reached the limit of the rope, when Vusamanzi halted and stood tall on a tilted slab, lit by his own lantern, looking likea black Moses descended from the mountain.

  "What is it?" Craig called.

  "Come on down!" Tungata ordered, and Craig scrambled down the last slope and found Vusamanzi and the others perched on the rock slab peering over the ledge into the still surface of a subterranean lake.

  "Now what?" Sally-Anne asked, her voice muted with awe of this deep and secret place.

  The lake had filled the limestone shaft. Across the surface, a hundred and fifty feet away, the roof of the shaft dipped into it at the same angle as the floor on which they stood.

  Craig used the flashlight that they had salvaged from the wrecked Cessna for the first time. He shone it into the water that had stood undisturbed through the ages so that all sediment had settled out of it, leaving it clear as a trout stream. They could see the inclined floor of the gallery sinking away at the same angle into the depths. Craig F ill switched off the flashlight, conserving the batteries.

  "Well, Sam." Craig put one hand on his shoulder. "Here's sh." Tungata's chuckle was your big chance to swim likea ri brief and insincere, and they both looked at Vusamanzi.

  "Where now, revered father?"

  "When Taka-Taka came to these hills and my grander saved the king's body from defilement, father and my lath J there had been seven long terrible years of drought scorching the land. The level of the water in this shaft was much lower than it is now. Down there," Vusamanzi pointed into the limpid depths, "there is another branch in the rock. In that place they laid Lobengula s body. In the many years since then, good and plentiful rains have blessed the land, and each year the level of these waters has risen. The first time I visited this place, brought here by my father, the waters were below that pointed rock-" Briefly Craig switched on the flashlight and in its beam the splintered limestone lay thirty feet or more below the surface.

  "But even then the king's grave was far below the surface."

  "So you have never seen the grave with your own eyes?" Craig demanded.

  "Never," Vusamanzi agreed. "But my father described it to met Craig knelt at the edge of the lake and put his hand into the water. It was so cold that he shivered and jerked his hand out. He dried it on his shirt, and when he looked up, Tungata was watching him with a quizzical expression.

  "Now you just hold on there, my beloved Matabele brother," Craig said vehemently. "I know exactly what that look means and you can forget all about it."

  "I cannot swim, Pupho my friend."

  "Forget it," Craig advised him.

  "We will tie one of the ropes around you. You can come to no harm."

  "You know where you can put your ropes."

  "The torch is waterproof, it will shine underwater," Tungata went on with equanimity.

  "Christ! Craig said bitterly. "African rule number one: when all else fails, look around for the nearest white face."

  "Do you remember how you swam across the Limpopo river for a ridiculous wager, a case of beer?" Tungata asked sweetly.

  "That day I was drunk, now I'm sober." Craig looked at Sally-Anne for support and was disappointed.

  "Not you al soP "There are crocs in the Limpopo, no crocs here she pointed out.

  Slowly Craig beg4 nato unbutton his shirt, and Tungata smiled and began readying the rope. They all watched with interest while Craig unstrapped his leg and laid it carefully aside. He stood one-legged in his underpants at the edge of the pool while Tungata fastened the end of the rope around his waist.

  "Pupho," Tungata said quietly, "you will need dry clothes afterwards. Why do you wish to wet these?"

  "Sarah," Craig explained and glanced at her.

  "She
is Matabele. Nudity does not offend us."

  "Leave him his secrets," Sarah smiled, "though I have none from him." And Craig remembered her nakedness in the water below the bridge. He sat on the edge of the rock slab and pulled off his underpants, tossing them on top of the heap of his clothing. Neither of the girls averted their eyes, and he slid into the water, gasping at the cold. He paddled out gently into the centre of the pool and trod water.

  "Time me," he called back to them. "Give me a double tug on the rope every sixty seconds. At three minutes, pull me up regardless, okay?"

  "Okay." Tungata had the coils of rope between his feet, ready to feed out.

  Craig hung in the water and began to hyperventilate, pumping his lungs likea bellows, purging them of carbon dioxide. It was a dangerous trick, an inexperienced diver could black out from oxygen starvation before the build-up of CO, triggered the urge to breathe again. He grabbed a full lung and flipped his leg and lower body above the surface in a duck dive, and went down cleanly into the cold clear water.

  Without a glass face-plate, his vision was grossly distorted, but he held the flashlight beam on the sharp pinnacle of limestone thirty feet below and went down swiftly, the pressure popping and squeaking in his ears.

  He reached it and gave himself a push off from the rock.

  He was going down more readily now as the water pressure compressed the air in his lungs and reduced his buoyancy.

  The steep rocky floor of the pool flew in a myopic blur past his face, and he rolled on his side and scanned the walls of gleaming limestone on each side for an opening.

  There was a double tug on the rope around his waist: one minute gone, and he saw the entrance to the tomb below him. It was an almost circular opening in the left-hand wall of the main gallery, and it reminded Craig of the empty eye-socket in a human skull.

  He sank down towards it and put out a hand to brace himself on the limestone sill above the opening. The mouth of the tomb was wide enough for a man to stoop through. He ran his hand over the walls and they were polished by running water and silky with a coating of slime. Craig guessed that this was a drain-hole from the earth's surface carved out of the limestone by the filtering of rain waters over the millennia.

  He was suddenly afraid. There was something forbidding and threatening about this dark entrance. He glanced back towards the surface. He could see the faint reflected glow of old Vusamanzi's lantern forty feet above him, and the icy water sapped his vitality and courage. He wanted to thrash wildly back towards the surface, and he felt the first involuntary pumping of his lungs.

  Something tugged at his waist, and for an instant he teetered on the edge of wild Panic before he realized it was the signal. Two minutes almost his limit.

  He forced himself forward into the entrance of the tomb. It angled gently upwards again, round as a sewer pipe. Craig swam for twenty feet flashing the torch beam ahead of him, but the water was turning murky and dark as he stirred up the sediment from the floor.

  Abruptly the passagended and he ran his hand over rough rock. His lungm were beginning to pump in earnest and there was a singing in his ears, his vision was clouded with swirling sediment and the beginnings of dizzy vertigo, but he forced himself to stay on and examine the end of the tunnel from side to side and top to bottom, running his free hand over it.

  Quickly he realized that he was feeling a wall of limestone masonry, packed carefully into place to block off the tunnel, and his spirits plunged. The old witch-doctors had once again sealed Lobengula's tomb, and in the brief seconds he had left, he realized that they had made a thorough job of it.

  His searching fingers touched something with a smooth metallic feel lying at the foot of the wall. He took it up and turned away from the wall, shoving himself down the passage, with panic and the need for air rising in him. He reached the main gallery again, still carrying the metallic object in one hand.

  High above him, the lantern glowed and he swam upwards, with his senses beginning to flutter likea candle flame in the wind; darkness and stars of light played before his eyes as his brain starved and he felt the first deadly lethargy turning his hands and his foot to lead.

  With a jerk, the rope around his waist came tight, and he felt himself being drawn swiftly upwards. Three minutes, and Tungata was pulling him out. The lantern light spun dizzily overhead as he windmilled on the end of the rope, and he could not pre vent himself, he tried to breathe and freezing water shot down his throat and went into his lungs, stinging like the cut of a razor.

  He exploded out through the surface, and Tungata was waist-deep, hauling double-handed on the life-line. The instant he broke through, Tungata seized him, a thick muscled arm around his chest, and he dragged Craig to the edge.

  The two girls were ready to grab his wrists and help him up onto the slab. Craig collapsed on his side, doubled up likea foetus, coughing and heaving the water from his lungs and shaking violently with cold.

  Sally-Anne rolled him onto his stomach and bore down on his back with both hands. Water and vomit shot up his throat, but his breathing gradually eased and at last he sat up wiping his mouth. Sally-Anne had stripped off her own shirt and was chafing him vigorously with it. In the lantern light his body was dappled blue with cold and he was still shivering uncontrollably.

  "How do you feel?" Sarah asked.

  "Bloody marvelous," he gasped. "Nothing likea bracing dip "He's all right," Tungata assured them, "as soon as he St. arts snarling, he's all right." Craig cupped his hands over the chimney of the lantern for warmth and gradually his shivering eased. Sarah leaned across to Tungata, and with a wicked smile directed at Craig's naked lower body, whispered something.

  "Right on! Tungata chuckled, imitating a black Amen, can accent. "And what's more, these honkys ain't got no rhythm neither." Craig quickly reached for his underpants, and Sally, Anne rushed loyally to his defence. "You're not seeing him at his best, that water is freezing." Craig's hands were stained red, brown with rust, they marked his underpants and he remembered the metal object he had found at the wall of the tomb. It lay where he had dropped it at the" edge of the slab.

  "Part of a trek chain," he said, as he picked it up. "From an ox wagon." Vusamanzi had been squatting silently on one side, at the edge of the lantern light. Now he spoke. "That chain was from the king's wag4. My grandfather used it to lower the king's body down the shaft." "So you have found the king's grave?" Tungata asked.

  This mundane little scrap of metal was for all of them the proof that changed fantasy to factual reality.

  "I think so," Craig began strapping on his leg, "but we will never know for certain." They all watched his face and waited. Craig suffered another paroxysm of coughing, then his breathing settled and he went on, "There is a passage, just as Vusamanzi described. It is about another fifteen feet below that pinnacle and it goes off to die left, a round opening with a shaft that rises sharply. About twenty feet from the entrance, the shaft has been blocked with masonry, big blocks and lumps of limestone, packed closely together. There is no way of telling how thick the wall is, but one thing is certain, it is going to take a lot of work to get through it I had about twenty seconds" endurance at the face, not long enough to prise out even a single block.

  Without diving apparatus, nobody is going to get past that seal." Sally-Anne was shrugging on her damp shirt over her white bra, but she stopped and stared at him challengingly.

  "We can't just give up, Craig darling, we can't just walk away and never know. It would eat me up not knowing a mystery like that! I'd never be happy, never again as long as I lived."

  "I'm open to suggestions," Craig agreed sarcastically.

  "Anybody got a scuba tucked in their back pocket? How about paying Vusamanzi a goat and he can make the water jump aside, shades of Moses and the Red Sea."

  "Don't be flippant, "said Sally-Anne.

  "Come on somebody, be intelligent and inventive what? No takers?

  Okay, then let's get back to where there ri is a re and a
little sun light." Craig dropped the rusted piece of chain back into the pool.

  "Sleep well, Lobengula, "the one who drives like the wind", keep your fire-stones beside you, and shala ease, stay in peace!" he climb back up through the maze of passages and inter leading caverns was a dismal and silent procession, although Craig checked and remarked each turn and juncture as he passed it.

  When they reached the main cavern again, it took only a few minutes to blow the embers on the hearth to flames and boil a canteen of water.