Birds of Prey - Smith Wilbur (версия книг TXT) 📗
"That is the one. Like your brother, he deserves to be free."
Again Sukeena's feet checked, but then she glided onwards. "What are you saying, Aboli, my friend?"
"You and I together. We can work to set them free." "Is it possible?" she whispered.
"Althuda was free once. He broke his jesses and soared away like a falcon." Aboli looked up at the aching blue African sky. "With our help he could be free again, and Gundwane with him."
They had come to the stableyard and Fredricus roused himself on the seat of the carriage. He looked down at Aboli and his lips curled back to show teeth discoloured brown by chewing tobacco. "How can a black ape learn to drive my coach and my six darlings?" he asked the empty air.
"Fredricus is an enemy. Trust him not." Sukeena's lips barely moved as she gave Aboli the warning. "Trust nobody in this household until we can speak again." the house slaves, as well as most of the furniture in the residence, Katinka had purchased from Kleinhans all the horses in his string and the contents of the tack room. She had written him an order on her bankers in Amsterdam. It was for a large sum, but she knew that her father would make good any shortfall.
The most beautiful of all the horses was a bay mare, a superb animal with strong graceful legs and a beautifully shaped head. Katinka was an expert horsewoman, but she had no feeling or love for the creature beneath her and her slim, pale hands were strong and cruel. She rode with a Spanish curb that bruised the mare's mouth savagely, and her use of the whip was wanton. When she had ruined a mount she could always sell it and buy another.
Despite these faults, she was fearless and had a dashing seat. When the mare danced under her and threw her head against the agony of the whip and the curb, Katinka sat easily and looked marvellously elegant. Now she was pushing the mare to the full extent of her pace and endurance, flying at the steep path, using the whip when she faltered or when it seemed as though she would refuse to jump a fallen tree that blocked the pathway.
The horse was lathered, soaked with sweat as though she had plunged through a river. The froth that streamed from her gaping mouth was tinged pink with blood from the edged steel of the curb. It splattered back onto Katinka's boots and skirt, and she laughed wildly with excitement as they galloped out onto the saddle of the mountain. She looked- back over her shoulder. Schreuder was fifty lengths or more behind her. he had come by another route to meet her in secret. His black gelding was labouring heavily under his weight, and though Schreuder used the whip freely his mount could not hold the mare.
Katinka did not stop at the saddle but, with the whip and -the tiny needle-sharp spur under her riding habit, goaded the mare onward and sent her plunging straight down the far slope. Here a fall would be disastrous, for the footing was treacherous and the mare was blown. The danger excited Katinka. She revelled in the feel of the powerful body beneath her, and of the saddle leather pounding against her sweating thighs and buttocks.
They came slithering off the scree slope and burst out into the open meadow beside the stream. She raced parallel with the stream for half a league, but when she reached a hidden grove of silver leaf trees she reined in the mare in a dozen lunges from full gallop to a wrenching halt.
She unhooked her leg from over the horn of the sidesaddle and in a swirl of skirts and laced under linen dropped lightly to earth. She landed like a cat, and while the mare blew like the bellows of a smithy and reeled on her feet with exhaustion, Katinka. stood, both fists clenched on her hips, and watched Schreuder come down the slope after her.
He reached the meadow and galloped to where she stood. There, he jumped from the gelding's back. His face was dark with rage. "That was madness, Mevrouw," he shouted. "If you had fallen!"
"But I never fall, Colonel." She laughed in his face. "Not unless you can make me." She reached up suddenly and threw both arms around his neck. Like a lamprey she fastened on his lips, sucking so powerfully that she drew his tongue into her own mouth. As his arms tightened around her she bit his lower lip hard enough to start his blood, and tasted the metallic salt on her own tongue. When he roared with pain, she broke from his embrace and, lifting the skirts of her habit, ran lightly along the bank of the stream.
"Sweet Mary, you'll pay dearly for that, you little devil!" He wiped his mouth, and when he saw the smear of blood on his palm, he raced after her.
These last days, Katinka had toyed with him, driving him to the frontiers of sanity, promising and then revoking, teasing and then dismissing, cold as the north wind one moment then hot as the tropical sun at noonday. He was dizzy and confused with lust and longing, but his desire had infected her. Tormenting him, she had driven herself as far and as hard. She wanted him now almost as much as he wanted her. She wanted to feel him deep inside her body, she had to have him quench the fires she had ignited in her womb. The time had come when she could delay no longer.
He caught up with her and she turned at bay. With her back against one of the silver leaf trees, she faced him like a hind cornered by the hounds. She saw the blind rage turn his eyes opaque as marble. His face was swollen and encarnadined, his lips drawn back to expose his clenched teeth.
With a thrill of real terror she realized that this rage into which she had driven him was a kind of madness over which he had no control. She knew that she was in danger of her life and, knowing that, her own lust broke its banks like a mighty river in full spate.
She threw herself at him and with both hands ripped at the fastenings of his breeches. "You want to kill me, don't you?"
"You bitch," he choked, and reached for her throat. "You slut. I can stand no more. I will make you-" She pulled him out through the opening in his clothes, hard and thick, swollen furious red and so hot he seemed to sear her fingers. "Kill- me with this, then. Thrust it into me so deeply that you pierce my heart." She leaned back against the rough bark of the silver leaf and planted her feet wide apart. He swept her skirts up high, and with both hands she guided him into herself. As he lunged and bucked furiously against her, the tree against which she leaned shook as though a gale of wind had struck it. The silver leaves rained down over them glinting like newly minted coins as they spun and swirled in the sunlight. As she reached her climax Katinka screamed so that the echoes rang along the yellow cliffs high above them. atinka came down from the mountain like a fury, riding on the wings of the north-west gale that had sprung so suddenly out of the sunny winter sky. Her hair had broken free of her bonnet and streamed out like a brilliant banner, snapping and tangling in the wind. The mare ran as though pursued by lions. When she reached the upper vineyards, Katinka put her to the high stone wall, over which she soared like a falcon.
