Birds of Prey - Smith Wilbur (версия книг TXT) 📗
Two women followed them. Both were stark naked, the first a mature female with full and bountiful breast, her belly marked with the stria of childbearing. The other was a girl, slim and graceful with a sweet moon face and startlingly white teeth behind full lips. She was the loveliest of any that Hal had laid eyes upon since they had entered the land of the Monomatapa. Her waist was narrow and her hips full and her skin was like black satin. She knelt on hands and knees with her buttocks turned towards them. Hal shifted uneasily as the deepest folds of her privy parts were exposed to his gaze. Even in these circumstances of danger and uncertainty he found himself aroused by her nubility.
"Show no emotion," Aboli warned him softly, without moving his lips. "As you love life, remain unmoved."
The wizards fell silent and for a space everyone was still. Then, out of the hut stooped a massively corpulent figure clad in a leopards king cloak. Upon his head was a tall Hat of the same dappled fur, which exaggerated his already magisterial height.
He paused in the doorway and glared at them. All the company of wizards and witches crouching at his feet moaned with amazement and covered their eyes, as if his beauty and majesty had blinded them.
Hal stared back at him. It was difficult to follow Aboli's advice to remain expressionless, for the features of the Monomatapa were tattooed in exactly the same pattern and style as the face he had known from childhood, the great round face of Aboli.
Aboli broke the silence. "I see you, great Mambo. I see you, my brother. I see you, N'Poffio, son of my father."
The Monomatapa's eyes narrowed slightly, but his patterned features remained as if carved in ebony. With slow and stately stride he crossed to where the naked girl knelt and seated himself upon her arched back as though she were a stool. He continued to glare at Aboli and Hal, and the silence drew out.
Suddenly he made an impatient gesture to the woman who stood beside him. She took one of her own breasts in her hand and, placing the engorged nipple between his thick lips, gave him suck. He drank from her, his throat bobbing, then pushed her away and wiped his mouth with the palm of his hand. Refreshed by this warm draught, he looked to his principal soothsayer. "Speak to me of these strangers, Sweswe!" he commanded. "Make me a prophecy, O beloved of the dark spirits!"
The oldest and ugliest of the wizards sprang to his feet and began a wild gyrating, whirling dance. He shrieked and leaped high in the air, shaking the rattle in his hand. "Treason!" he screamed, and frothy spittle splattered from his lips. "Sacrilege! Who dares claim blood ties with the Son of the Heavens?" He pranced in front of Aboli like a wizened ape on skinny shanks. "I smell the stink of treachery!"
He hurled his rattle at Aboli's feet and snatched a cows-tail whisk from his belt. "I smell sedition!" He brandished the whisk, and began to tremble in every muscle. "What devil is this who dares to imitate the sacred Tattoo?" His eyes rolled back in his skull until only the whites showed. "Beware! For the ghost of your father, the great Holomima, demands the blood sacrifice!" he shrieked, and gathered himself to spring full at Aboli's face to strike him with the magician's whisk.
Aboli was faster. The cutlass sprang from the scabbard on his belt as though it were a living thing. It flashed in the sunlight as he cut back-handed. The wizard's head was severed cleanly from his trunk and rolled down his back. It lay on the polished clay gazing with wide astonished eyes at the sky, and the lips writhing and twitching as they tried to utter the next wild denunciation.
The headless body stood, for a moment, on trembling legs. A fountain of blood from the severed neck spouted high in the air, the whisk fell from the hand and the body collapsed slowly on top of its own head.
"The ghost of our father Holomima demands the blood sacrifice," said Aboli softly. "And lo! Aboli his son, have given it to him."
No person in the royal enclosure spoke or moved for what seemed half a lifetime to Hal. Then the Monomatapa began to shake all over. His belly began to wobble and his tattooed jowls danced and shook. His face contorted in what seemed a berserker's fury.
Hal placed his hand on the hilt of his cutlass. "If he is truly your brother, then I will kill him for you," he whispered to Aboli. "You cover my back and we will fight our way out of here."
But the Monomatapa opened his mouth wide and let fly a huge shout of laughter. "The tattooed one has made the blood sacrifice that Sweswe demanded! "he bellowed. Then mirth overcame him and for a long while he could not speak again. He shook with laughter, gasped for breath, hugged himself then hooted again.
"Did you see him stand there with no head while his mouth tried still to speak?" he roared, and tears of laughter rolled down his cheeks.
The grovelling band of magicians burst out in squeaks and shrieks of sympathetic glee. "The heavens laugh!" they whined. "And all men are happy."
Suddenly the Monomatapa stopped laughing. "Bring me Sweswe's stupid head!" he commanded, and the councillor who had led them here bounded forward to obey. He retrieved it and knelt before the king to hand it to him.
The Monomatapa held the head by its matted plaits of kinky hair and stared into the wide blank eyes. He began to laugh again. "What stupidity not to recognize the blood of kings. How could you not know my brother Aboli by his majestic bearing and the fury of his temper?"
He flung the dripping head at the other magicians, who scattered. "Learn from the stupidity of Sweswel" he admonished them. "Make no more false prophecy! Tell me no more falsehoods! Begone, all of you! Or I will ask my brother to make another blood sacrifice."
They fled in pandemonium, and the Monomatapa rose from his live throne and advanced upon Aboli, a huge and happy grin splitting his fat, tattooed face. "Aboli," he said, "my brother who was long dead and who now lives!" and he embraced him.
One of the elaborately thatched huts on the perimeter of the courtyard was placed at their disposal, and a procession of maidens was sent to them, bearing clay pots of hot water balanced upon their heads for the two men to bathe. Still other girls carried trays on which was piled fine raiment to replace their travel-stained clothing, beaded loincloths of tanned leather and cloaks of fur and feathers.
