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

"You cannot stay here." Hal sprang to his feet. "You must go away at once."

The girl stared up at him in dismay, and tears filled her dark eyes. "Do I not please you, Great One?" she murmured. "You are very pretty," Hal blurted, "but-" How could he tell her that he was married to a golden memory?

"Let me stay with you, lord," the girl pleaded pathetically. "If you reject me, I will be sent to the executioner. I will die with the sharp stake thrust up through the secret opening of my body to pierce my bowels. Please let me live, O Great One. Have mercy on this unworthy female, O Glorious White Face."

Hal turned to Aboli. "What can I do?"

"Send her away." Aboli shrugged. "As she says, she is worthless.

You can stop up your ears so that you do not have to listen to her screaming on the stake."

"Do not mock me, Aboli. You know I cannot betray the memory of the woman I love."

"Sukeena is dead, Gundwane. I also loved her, as a brother, but she is dead. This child is alive, but she will not be so by sunset tomorrow unless you take pity upon her. Your voW was not anything that Sukeena demanded of you."

Aboli stooped over the other girl, took her hand and lifted her to her feet.

"I cannot give you any further help, Gundwane. You are a man and Sukeena knew that. Now that she has gone, she might deem it fitting that you live the rest of your life like one."

He led his own girl to the rear of the hut, where a pile of soft karosses was laid and a pair of carved wooden head rests stood side by side. He laid her down and dropped the leather curtain that screened them.

"What is your name?" Hal asked the girl who crouched at his feet.

"My name is Inyosi, Honey-bee," she answered. "Please do not send me to die." She crawled to him, clasped his legs and pressed her face to his lower body.

"I cannot," he mumbled. "I belong to another." But he wore only the beaded loincloth and her breath was warm and soft on his belly and her hands stroked the backs of his legs.

"I cannot," he repeated desperately, but one of Inyosi's little hands crept up under his loincloth.

"Your mouth tells me one thing, Mighty Lord," she puffed, "but the great spear of your manhood tells me another."

Hal let out a smothered groan, picked her up in his arms and ran with her across the floor to where his own pallet of furs had been laid out.

At first Inyosi was startled by the fury of his passion, but then she let out a joyous cry and matched him kiss for kiss and thrust for thrust.

In the dawn, as she prepared to leave him, she whispered, "You have saved my worthless life. In return I must attempt to save your illustrious one." She kissed him one last time, then murmured with her lips against his, "I heard the Monomatapa speak to Zama while he bestrode my back. He believes that Aboli has returned to claim the Seat of Heaven from him. Tomorrow, during the audience to which he has commanded you and Aboli, he will give the order for his bodyguard to seize you and hurl you from the cliff top onto the rocks below, where the hyenas and the vultures wait to devour your corpses." Inyosi snuggled against his chest. "I do not want you to die, my lord. You are too beautiful."

Then she rose from the pallet and slipped away silently into the darkness. Hal crossed to the hearth and threw a faggot of firewood upon it. The smoke rose up through the hole in the centre of the domed roof and the flames lit the interior with flickering yellow light.

"Aboli? Are you alone? We must talk at once," he called! and Aboli came out from behind the curtain.

"The girl is asleep, but speak in English."

"Your brother intends to have both of us killed during the audience."

"The girl told you this?" Aboli asked, and Hal nodded guiltily at the mention of his infidelity.

Aboli smiled in sympathy. "So the little Honey-bee saves your life. Sukeena would rejoice for that. You need feel no guilt."

"If we attempt to escape, your brother would send an army to pursue us. We would never reach the river again." "So do you have a plan, Gundwane?"

Zama came to lead them to the royal audience. They stepped out of the gloom of the great &Zhut into the brilliant African sunlight, and Hal paused to gaze around the concourse of the Monomatapa.

He could only estimate their numbers, but a full regiment of the royal bodyguard ringed the open space, perhaps a thousand tall warriors with the high head-dresses of cranes" feathers turning each into a giant. The light morning breeze tossed and tumbled the feathers, and the sunlight glinted on their broad-bladed spears.

Beyond them the nobles of the tribe filled every space and lined the top of the wall of granite blocks that surrounded the citadel. A hundred royal wives clustered about the door to the King's hut. Some were so fat and loaded with bangles and ornaments that they could not walk unaided and leant heavily on their handmaidens. When they waddled along their buttocks rolled and undulated like soft bladders filled with lard.

Zama led Hal and Aboli to the centre of the courtyard and left them there. A heavy silence fell on the throng and no one moved, until suddenly the captain of the bodyguard blew a blast on a spiral kudu horn and the Monomatapa loomed in the doorway of his hut.

A moaning sigh swept through the gathering and, as one, they threw themselves full length to the earth and covered their faces. Only Hal and Aboli remained standing upright.