Birds of Prey - Smith Wilbur (версия книг TXT) 📗

"Ah!" she murmured, as she touched it lightly. "It heals marvellously well with a little help from my medicines. You have been fortunate. The bite from the fangs of a hound is always poisonous, and then the abuse to which you put the limb during our flight might have killed you or crippled you for the rest of your life."

Hal smiled at her strictures as he lay back comfortably and surrendered himself to her hands.

"Are you hungry?" she asked, as she retied the dressing over his wound. At that question Hal realized that he was ravenous. She brought him the carcass of a wild partridge, grilled on the coals, and sat opposite him, watching with a proprietary air as he ate and then sucked the bones clean.

"You will soon be strong again." She smiled. "You eat like a lion." She gathered up the scraps of his meal, then stood up. "Aboli and your other seamen have been pleading with me for a chance to come to you. I will call them now."

"Wait!" He stopped her. He wished that this intimate time alone with her would not end so soon. She sank down beside him once more and watched his face expectantly.

"I have not thanked you," he said lamely. "Without your care, I would probably have died of the fever."

She smiled softly and said, "I have not thanked you either. Without you, I would still be a slave." For a time they looked at each other without speaking, openly examining each other's face in detail.

Then Hal asked, "Where are we, Sukeena?" He made a gesture that took in their surroundings. "This hut?"

"It is Sabah's. He has lent it to us. To you and me, and he has gone to live with the others of his band."

"So we are in the mountains at last?"

"Deep in the mountains." She nodded. "At a place that has no name. In a place where the Dutch can never find US."

"I want to see," he said. For a moment she looked dubious, then nodded. She helped him to stand and offered her shoulder to support him as he hopped to the opening in the thatched shelter.

He sank down and leaned against the doorpost of rough cedar wood. Sukeena sat close beside him as he gazed about. For a long time neither spoke. Hal breathed deeply of the crisp, high air that smelled and tasted of the wild flowers that grew in such profusion about them.

"Tis a vision of paradise, he said at last. The peaks that surrounded them were wild and splendid. The cliffs and gorges were painted with lichens that were all the colours of the artist's palette.

The late sunlight fell full upon the mountain tops across the deep valley and crowned them with a golden radiance. The long shadow thrown by the peak behind them was royal purple. The water of the stream below was clear as the air they breathed, and Hal could see the fish lying like long shadows on the yellow sandbanks, fanning their dark tails to keep their heads into the current.

"It is strange, I have never seen this place nor any like it, and yet I feel as though I know it well. I feel a sense of homecoming, as though I was waiting to return here."

"Tis not strange, Henry Courtney. I also was waiting." She turned her head and looked deep into his eyes. "I was waiting for you.

I knew you would come. The stars told me. That day I first saw you on the Parade outside the castle, I recognized you as the one."

There was so much to ponder in that simple declaration that he was silent again for a long while, watching her face. "My father was also an adept. He was able to read the stars, he said.

"Aboli told me."

"So you, too, can divine the future from the stars, Sukeena."

She did not deny it. "My mother taught me many skills. I was able to see you from afar."

He accepted her statement without question. "So you must know what is to become of us, you and me?"

She smiled, and there was a mischievous gleam in her eye. She slipped a slim arm through his. "I would not have to be a great sage to know that, Gundwane. But there is much else that I am able to tell of what lies ahead."

"Tell me, then," he ordered, but she smiled again and shook her head. "There will be time later. We will have much time to talk while your leg heals and you grow strong again." She stood up. "But now I will fetch the others, I cannot deny them any longer."

They came immediately, but Aboli was the first to arrive. He greeted Hal in the language of the forests. "I see you well, Gundwane.

I thought you would sleep for ever."

"Without your help, I might indeed have done so."

Then Big Daniel and Ned and the others came to touch their foreheads and mumble their self-conscious greetings and squat in a semi-circle in front of him. They were not much given to expressing their emotions in words, but what he saw in their eyes when they looked at him warmed and fortified him.

"This is Sabah, whom you already know." Althuda led him forward.

"Well met, Sabah!" Hal seized his hand. "I have never been happier to see another man than I was that night in the Gorge."

"I would have liked to come to your aid much sooner," Sabah replied in Dutch, "but we are few and the enemy were as numerous as ticks on an antelope's belly in spring." Sabah sat down in the ring of men and, with an apologetic air, began to explain. "The fates have not been kind to us here in the mountains. We did not have the services of a physician such as Sukeena We who were once nineteen are now only eight and two of those a woman and an infant. I knew we could not help you fight out in the open, for in hunting for food we have used up all our gunpowder. However, we knew Althuda would bring you up Dark Gorge.