The Quest - Smith Wilbur (читать лучшие читаемые книги TXT) 📗

Suddenly, from out of the shadows, another band of prancing and cavorting Luo dragged one of the stolen horses. All of the horsemen recognized her, a bay mare named Starling. The Luo had knotted a bark rope round her neck, and five of them were heaving on it as a dozen

more shoved at her flanks and hindquarters or goaded her cruelly with pointed sticks, blood glistening from the wounds they inflicted. One of the Luo lifted a heavy wooden club in both hands, and rushed at her. He aimed a heavy blow at her head and the club cracked against her skull.

She dropped instantly to kick spasmodically; her bowels voided in a liquid green rush. The painted Luo swarmed over her carcass, brandishing their flint knives. They hacked off lumps of her still twitching flesh and crammed it into their mouths. Blood dribbled down their chins to run across their painted torsos. They were a pack of wild dogs, fighting and howling over a kill. The watching troopers growled with outrage.

Meren glanced sideways at Taita, who nodded. 'Left and right wheel into extended order.' Meren gave the command, low but clear. On each flank the two columns opened like wings into an extended line. As soon as they were in position Meren called again: 'Detachment will charge!

Present arms!' They cleared their swords from the sheaths. 'Forward march! Trot! Gallop! Charge!'

They swept forward in close formation, the horses running shoulder to shoulder. The Luo were in such frenzy that they did not see the troopers coming until they burst into the village. Then they tried to scatter and run, but it was too late. The horses swept over them, crushing them beneath their hoofs. The swords rose and fell, the blades thumping through bone and flesh. The two Shilluk were at the front of the charge, howling, stabbing, leaping and stabbing again.

Taita saw Nakonto send a spear clean through the body of one, so that the point stood out between the Luo's shoulder-blades. When Nakonto cleared it, it seemed to suck out with it every drop of blood from the man's body, a black spray in the firelight.

A painted woman with pendulous dugs that hung to her navel raised both arms to cover her head. Meren stood in his stirrups and hacked off one of her arms at the elbow, then swung the blade again and split her unprotected head like a ripe melon. Her mouth was still crammed with raw meat, which spewed out with her death wail. The troopers kept their tight formation, riding down the Luo, their sword arms rising and falling in a deadly rhythm. The Shilluk caught those who tried to break away.

The drummers, seated before the long, hollowed-out trunks of the Kigelia tree, were in such a transport that they did not even look up. They continued beating out their frenzied rhythm with their wooden clubs until the horsemen rode over to cut them down where they sat. They fell, writhing and bleeding, on to their drums.

At the far side of the village Meren checked the charge. He looked

back and saw no one still standing. The ground around Starling's carcass was covered with the painted naked bodies. A few of the wounded were trying to crawl away. Others were groaning and thrashing in the idust.

The two Shilluk were running among them, stabbing and howling in murderous ecstasy.

'Help the Shilluk finish them!' Meren ordered. His men dismounted and went swiftly over the killing ground, despatching any who showed signs of life.

Taita reined in alongside Meren. He had not been in the first rank of the charge, but had followed close behind. 'I saw a few run into the huts,'

he said. 'Root them out, but don't kill them all. Nakonto might glean good information from them about the country ahead.'

Meren shouted the order to his captains, who went from hut to hut, ransacking them. Two or three Luo women ran out, wailing, with young children. They were hustled into the centre of the village where the Shilluk guides shouted orders to them in their own language. They forced them to squat in rows with their hands clasped on top of their heads.

The children clung to their mothers, tears gleaming on their terrified faces.

'Now we must find the surviving horses,' Meren shouted. 'They cannot have slaughtered and eaten them all. Search there first.' He pointed into the dark forest from which they seen the butchers drag Starling to the slaughter. Hilto took his troop with him and rode into the dark. Suddenly a horse whinnied.

'They are here!' Hilto shouted happily. 'Bring torches!'

The men tore thatch from the roofs of the huts and made crude torches with it, lit them and followed Hilto into the forest. Leaving five men to guard the captured women and children, Meren and Taita followed the torch-bearers. Ahead, Hilto and his men called directions, until in the thickening light they made out the herd of stolen animals.

Taita and Meren dismounted and ran to them. 'How many are left?'

Meren asked urgently.

'Eleven only. We have lost six to the jackals,' Hilto replied. The Luo had tied them all to the same tree on cruelly short ropes. They could not even stretch their necks to the ground.

'They have not been allowed to graze or drink,' Hilto shouted indignantly. 'What kind of beasts are these people?'

'Free them,' Meren ordered. Three troopers dismounted and ran to obey. But the horses were so crowded together that they had to push between them.

Suddenly a man bellowed with outrage and pain. 'Beware! One of the Luo is hiding here. He has a spear and has wounded me.'

Suddenly there were the sounds of a scuffle, followed by a high-pitched childish scream from among the horses' legs.

'Catch him! Don't let him get away.'

'What is happening there?' Meren demanded.

'A little savage is hiding here. He is the one who speared me.'

At that a child darted out from among the horses, carrying a light assegai. A trooper tried to grab him but the child stabbed at him, and vanished into the darkness in the direction of the village. Taita had only a brief glimpse of him before he was gone, but he sensed something different about him. The Luo, even the children, were stocky and bowlegged, but this one was as slender as a papyrus stem, and his legs were elegantly straight. He ran with the grace of a frightened gazelle. Abruptly Taita realized that beneath the white clay and tribal designs, the child was female, and he was struck by an intense sensation of deja vu: 'I swear to all the gods I have seen her before,' he murmured to himself.

'When I catch the little swine, I'll kill him slowly!' the wounded trooper shouted, as he came out from among the horses whence he had flushed the child. There was a spear wound in his forearm, and blood dripped from his fingertips.

'No!' Taita shouted urgently. 'It is a girl. I want her taken alive. She has run back towards the village. Surround the area and search the huts again. She will have gone to ground in one.'

Leaving a few men to deal with the recovered horses, they galloped back to the village. Meren threw a cordon round the huts, and Taita questioned Nakonto and Nontu, who were guarding the women and their children. 'Did you see a child run this way? About this height and covered, like the rest of them, with white clay?'

They shook their heads.

'Apart from these,' Nakonto indicated the wailing captives, 'we have seen no one.'

'She can't have gone far,' Meren assured Taita. 'We have the village surrounded. She cannot escape. We will find her.' He sent Habari's platoon in to carry out a hut-by-hut search. When he came back to Taita he asked, 'Why is the murderous brat important to you, Magus?'

'I am not certain, but I think she is not one of the Luo. She is different. She might even be Egyptian.'

'I doubt that, Magus. She is a savage. Naked and covered with paint.'

'Catch her,' Taita snapped.