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

Silhouetted against it was the outline of a sitting man, wrapped in a kaross.

They lay and waited for the dawn. However, long before first light the camp began to stir. The watchman stood up, stretched, coughed and spat in the dead coals. Then he threw fresh wood upon the fire, and knelt to blow it. The flames flared and, by their light, Hal saw that he was but a boy. Naked except for a loincloth, the lad left the fire and came close to where they were hidden. He lifted his loincloth and peed into the grass, playing games with his urine stream, aiming at fallen leaves and twigs and chuckling as he tried to drown a scurrying scarab beetle.

Then he went back to the fire and called out towards the lean-to of branches and thatch, "The dawn comes. It is time to let out the herd."

His voice was high and unbroken, but Hal was delighted to find that he understood every word the boy had said. It was the language of the forests that Aboli had taught him.

Two other lads of the same age crawled out of the hut, shivering, muttering and scratching, and all three went to the cattle pen. They spoke to the beasts as though they, too, were children, rubbed their heads and patted their flanks.

As the light strengthened Hal saw that these cattle were far different from those he had known on High Weald. They were taller and rangier, with huge humps over their shoulders, and the span of their horns was so wide as to appear grotesque, the weight almost too much for even their heavy frames to support.

The boys picked out a cow and pushed her calf away from the udder.

Then one knelt under her belly and milked her, sending purring jets into a calabash gourd. Meanwhile, the other two seized a young bullock and passed a leather thong around its neck. They drew this tight and when the restricted blood vessels stood proud beneath the black skin, one pricked a vein with the sharp point of an arrow head.

The first child came running with the gourd half-filled with milk and held the mouth of it under the stream of bright red blood that spurted from the punctured vein.

When the gourd was full, one staunched the small wound in the bullock's neck with a handful of dust, and turned it loose. The beast wandered away, none the worse for the bleeding. The boys shook the gourd vigorously, then passed it from one to the other, each drinking deeply from the mixture of milk and blood as his turn came, smacking his lips and sighing with pleasure.

So engrossed were they with their breakfast that none noticed Aboli or Hal until they were grabbed from behind and hoisted kicking and shrieking in the air.

"Be quiet, you little baboon, Aboli ordered.

"Slavers!" wailed the eldest child, as he saw Hal's white face. "We are taken by slavers!"

"They will eat us," squeaked the youngest.

"We are not slavers!" Hal told them. "And we will not harm you."

This assurance merely sent' the the trio into fresh paroxysms of terror. "He is a devil who can speak the language of heaven."

"He understands all we say. He is an albino devil." "He will surely eat us as my mother warned me."

Aboli held the eldest at arm's length and glared at him. "What is your name, little monkey?"

"See his tattoos." The boy howled in dread and confusion. "He is tattooed like the Monomatapa, the chosen of heaven."

"He is a great Mambo!"

"Or the ghost of the Monomatapa who died long ago."

"I am indeed a great chief," Aboli agreed. "And you will tell me your name."

"My name is Tweti oh, Monomatapa, spare me for I am but little. I will be only a single mouthful for your mighty jaws."

"Take me to your village, Tweti, and I will spare you and your brothers."

After a while the children began to believe that they would neither be eaten nor turned into slaves, and they started to smile shyly at Hal's overtures. From there it was not long before they were giggling delightedly to have been chosen by the great tattooed chief and the strange albino to lead them to the village.

Driving the cattle herd before them, they took a track through the hills and came out suddenly in a small village surrounded by rudimentary fields of cultivation, in which a few straggling millet plants grew. The huts were shaped like bee-hives and beautifully thatched, but they were deserted. Clay pots stood on the cooking fires before each hut and there were calves in the pens and woven baskets, weapons and accoutrements scattered where they had been dropped when the villagers fled.

The three boys squeaked reassurances into the surrounding bush. "Come out! Come. and see! It is a great Mambo of our tribe come back from death to visit us!"

An old crone was the first to emerge timidly from a thicket of elephant grass. She wore only a greasy leather skirt, and her one eye socket was empty. She had but a single yellow tooth in the front of her mouth. Her dangling dugs flapped against her wrinkled belly, which was scarified with ritual tattoos.

She took one look at Aboli's face, then ran to prostrate herself before him. She lifted one of his feet and placed it on her head. "Mighty Monomatapa," she keened, "you are the chosen of heaven. I am a useless insect, a dung beetle, before your glory."

In singles and pairs, and then in greater numbers, the other villagers emerged from their hiding places and gathered before Aboli to kneel in obeisance and pour dust and ashes on their heads in reverence.

"Do not let this adulation turn your head, oh Chosen One," Hal told him sourly in English.