Power of the Sword - Smith Wilbur (читать книги онлайн регистрации .TXT) 📗
Centaine looked around and saw that the earth all around where she stood was strewn with the wicked spikes. Dust had been lightly brushed over them to conceal them from casual observation but had in no way reduced their effectiveness.
Quickly she stooped again to the task of ridding all three of her horses of the spikes. The gelding had picked them up in both rear hooves and the spare horses had three and two hooves damaged. She plucked the iron spikes from their flesh and hurled them away angrily.
Sergeant Hansmeyer had dismounted his troopers and they came up to assist her and Blaine, stepping cautiously for the spikes would readily penetrate the soles of their boots. They cleared a narrow corridor through which the horses could be led back to safe ground, but all six of them had been brutally maimed. They hobbled slowly and painfully, reluctant to touch the earth with their damaged hooves.
Six of them, Blaine whispered bitterly. Wait until I get my hands on that bastard. He drew the .303 rifle from the scabbard on his saddle and ordered Hansmeyer, Put our saddles onto two of your spare horses. Top up all the water bottles from those on the crippled horses. Have two of your troopers mark a path around the area of the horse irons.
Move it quickly! We can't waste a minute. Centaine left them and went forward, cautiously circling around the booby-trapped patch of earth. She reached the black japanned despatch case which had deceived her and picked it up. The lid flapped open, the lock smashed by Lothar's bullet, and she turned the case upside down. it was empty. She let it drop and looked back.
Blaine's men had worked swiftly. Their saddles had been transferred to undamaged horses. They had chosen a black gelding for her and Sergeant Hansmeyer was leading it. The whole troop was circling out in single file, leaning out of the saddle to check for any more horse irons in their path.
She knew that from now on they would not be able to relax for a moment, for she knew that Lothar would not have laid all his spikes. They would find more along the spoor.
Hansmeyer came up beside her. We are ready to go, ma'am. He handed her the reins to the fresh horse and she mounted, then they all looked back.
Blaine stood with the Lee Enfield rifle on his hip, and with his back turned to them faced the line of six crippled horses.
He seemed to be praying, or perhaps he was merely steeling himself, but his head was bowed.
He lifted it slowly and threw the butt of the rifle to his shoulder. He fired without lowering the rifle, his right hand flicking the bolt back and forth, and the shots crashing out in rapid succession, blending into a long-drawn-out drumroll of sound. The horses fell on top of one another, in a twitching, jerking pile. He turned away then, and even at that distance Centaine glimpsed his expression.
She found she was weeping. The tears poured down her face, and she could not stop them. Blaine rode up beside her. He glanced at her, and when he saw her tears, he stared straight ahead, letting her get over it.
We have lost nearly an hour, he said. Troop forward! Twice more before nightfall the Bushman stopped the column and they had to pick their way cautiously around a scattering of the wicked spikes. Each time it cost them precious minutes.
We are losing ground, Blaine estimated. They heard the rifle shots and they are alerted. They know they have got fresh horses waiting somewhere ahead. They are pushing harder, much harder than we dare. The country changed with dramatic suddenness as they emerged from the wastes of Bushmanland into the gently wooded more benevolent Kavango area.
Along the undulating ridges of the ancient compacted dunes grew tall trees, combreturn the lovely bush willow, and albizia with its fine feathery foliage, and stands of young mopani between them. The shallow valleys were covered with fine desert grasses whose silver and pink seed heads brushed their stirrups irons as they rode through.
The water was not far below the surface here and all Nature seemed to respond to its presence. For the first time since leaving the mission at Kalkland, they saw large game, zebra and red-golden impala, and they knew that the waterhole for which they were riding could be only a few miles ahead for these animals would drink daily.
It was not too soon for all the horses were used up and weak, struggling onwards beneath the weight of their riders.
A few inches remained in the water bottles, seeming to mock their thirst with hollow gurgles at each pace.
Lothar De La Rey could not remain in the saddle unaided.
Swart Hendrick rode on one side of him and his bastard son Klein Boy on the other. They supported him when sudden bouts of delirium overcame him and he laughed and ranted and would have slipped from the saddle and tumbled to earth. Manfred trailed behind them, watching his father anxiously, but too exhausted and thirsty to assist him.
They struggled up another rise in the endless succession of consolidated dunes, and Swart Hendrick stood in the stirrups and peered down into the gentle basin ahead of them, barely daring to hope that they had been able to ride directly to their destination through the trackless land where every vista mirrored the previous one and the one that followed.
All they had to steer by was the sun and the instinct of the desert creature.
Then his spirits soared, for ahead of them there were the tall grey mopani trunks nurtured into giants by the water over which they stood and the four great umbrella acacia exactly as they had been imprinted in his memory. Between their trunks Hendrick caught the soft sheen of standing water.
The horses managed a last jolting trot down the slope and through the trees, and then out over the bare clay that surrounded the shrunken puddle of water in the centre.
The water was the colour of cafg all lait, not ten paces across at the widest point nor deeper than a man's knee.
Around it the hoof-prints and pad marks of dozens of various types of wild animals, from the tiny multiple V scratches of quail and francolin to the huge round prints of a bull elephant the size of dustbin lids, had been sculpted into the black clay and then baked by the sun as hard as concrete.
Hendrick and Klein Boy drove their mounts into the centre of the pool and then flung themselves face down into the lukewarm muddy water, snorting and gasping and laughing wildly as they scooped it into their mouths.
Manfred helped his father to dismount at the edge, and then ran to scoop a hatful and bring it to Lothar where he had collapsed into a sitting position, supporting himself on his own knees.
Lothar drank greedily, choking and coughing as the water went down the wrong way. His face was flushed and swollen, his eyes fever-bright and the poison in his blood burning him up.
Swart Hendrick waded to the side, his boots squelching and water pouring from his sodden clothing, still grinning until a thought struck him and he stopped. The grin was gone from his thick black lips and he glared about him.
Nobody here, he grunted. Buffalo and Legs, where are they? He broke into a run, spraying water at each pace as he headed for the primitive hut that stood in the shade of the nearest umbrella acacia.
It was empty and derelict. The charcoal of the camp-fire was scattered widely; the freshest signs were days, no, weeks old. He raged through the forest, and at last came back to Lothar. Between them Klein Boy and Manfred had helped Lothar into the shade and he lay back against the trunk of the acacia.
They've deserted. Lothar anticipated Hendrick's report.
I should have known. Ten horses, worth fifty pounds each.
It was too much temptation. The rest and the water seemed to have strengthened him; he was lucid again.
They must have run away within days of us leaving them. Hendrick sank down beside him. Surely they have taken the horses and sold them to the Portuguese, then gone home to their wives! Promise me that when you see them again you will kill them slowly, Hendrick, very slowly. I dream of how I will do it, Hendrick whispered. First I will make them eat their own manhoods, I will cut them off with a blunt knife and will feed them to them in small pieces. They were both silent, staring at the small group of their four horses which stood at the pool's edge. Their bellies were distended with water but their heads were hanging pathetically, noses almost touching the baked clay.
