Power of the Sword - Smith Wilbur (читать книги онлайн регистрации .TXT) 📗
Kwi ran a short way towards the grey side of the kopje and looked up.
They all followed his example, staring up the steep rounded expanse of granite. It was two or three hundred feet high. The surface was not as smooth as it had appeared at a distance. There were deep cracks, some lateral, others running vertically from the foot to the summit, and the granite was flaking away in the onion peel effect caused by heat expansion and contraction. This left small sharp-edged steps which would give footholds and make it possible for a man to reach the top, though it would be an exposed and potentially dangerous climb.
On the summit a cluster of perfectly round boulders, each the size of a large dwelling house, formed a symmetrical crown. The whole was one of those natural compositions so artful and contrived that it seemed to have been conceived and executed by human engineers. Centaine was strongly reminded of the dolmens which she had visited as a child in France, or of one of those ancient Mayan temples in the South American jungles which she had seen illustrated.
Blaine had left her side and led his mount towards the foot of the granite cliff, and something on the crest of the kopje caught Centaine's eye. It was a flicker of movement in the shadow beneath one of the crowning boulders on the summit, and she shouted a warning.
Blaine, be careful! On the top, He was standing at his horse's head with the reins over his shoulder, staring upwards. But before he could respond to her warning there was a thud as though a sack of wheat had been dropped on a stone floor. Centaine did not recognize the sound as a high-velocity bullet striking living flesh until Blaine's horse staggered, its front legs collapsed and it dropped heavily, dragging Blaine with it.
Centaine was stunned until she heard the whiplash crack of the Mauser from the summit of the kopje and she realized that the bullet had reached them before the sound.
All around her the troopers were shouting and wrestling with their panicking horses, and Centaine spun and vaulted for the saddle of her own mount. With one hand on the pommel and without touching the stirrup irons she was up, dragging the horse's head around.
Blaine, I'm coming, she screamed. He had scrambled to his feet beside the carcass of his horse, and she rode for him.
Grab my stirrup, she called, and the Mausers up on the hill were cracking bullets amongst them. She saw Sergeant Hansmeyer's horse shot dead beneath him and he was pitched headlong from the saddle.
Blaine ran to meet her and seized her dangling stirrup. She turned the horse and heeled him into a full gallop, pumping the reins, heading back for the sparse cover of the mopani two hundred yards behind them.
Blaine was swinging on the stirrup leather, his feet skimming the ground, making giant strides as he kept level with her.
Are you all right? she yelled.
Keep going! His voice strained at the effort and she looked back under her arm. The gunfire still crackled and snapped around them. One of the troopers turned back to help Sergeant Hansmeyer, but as he reached him a bullet hit his horse in the head and it crashed over and flung the trooper sprawling to earth.
They are picking off the horses! Centaine cried, as she realized that hers was the only animal still unscathed. All the others were down, killed with a single shot in the head for each of them. It was superb marksmanship, for the men on the summit were firing downhill at a range of one hundred and fifty paces or more.
Ahead of her Centaine saw a shallow ravine that she had not noticed before. There was a tangle of fallen dead mopani branches upon the nearest bank, a natural palisade, and she rode for it, forcing her winded horse down the bank in a scrambling leap and then immediately springing down and seizing his head to control him.
Blaine had been dragged off his feet and had rolled down the bank, but he pulled himself up. I walked into that ambush like a greenhorn, he snarled, angry at himself. Too bloody tired to think straight. He jerked the rifle out of the scabbard on Centaine's saddle and climbed quickly to the lip of the bank.
Ahead of him the dead horses lay below the steep smooth slope of the kopje, and Sergeant Hansmeyer and his troopers were dodging and jinking as they sprinted back for the cover of the ravine. Mauser-fire crackled, kicking up spouts of yellow dust about their feet, and they winced and ducked at the implosion of air in their eardrums as passing shot whipped about their heads.
Magically the Bushmen had disappeared, like little brown leprechauns, at the first shot. Centaine knew they would not see them again. Already they were on their way back to join their clan at O'chee Pan.
Blaine pushed up the rear sight of the Lee Enfield to four hundred yards and aimed for the crest of the kopje, where a feather of drifting blue gun-smoke betrayed the hi gunmen. He fired as fast as he could work the bolt, spraying bullets to cover the fleeing troopers, watching white chips of granite burst from the skyline of the kopje as the raking fire withered away. He snatched a clip of ammunition from his bandolier and pressed the brass cartridges into the open breech of the hot rifle, slammed the bolt shut and flung the weapon to his shoulder, and poured fire up at the marksmen on the crest of the kopje.
one by one Hansmeyer and his troopers reached the ravine and tumbled into it, sweating and panting wildly. With grim satisfaction Blaine noticed that each of them had carried his rifle with him, and they wore their bandoliers strapped across their chests, seventy-five rounds a man.
They shot the horses in the head but never touched a man. Hansmeyer's breathing whistled in his throat as he struggled with the words.
They never fired a shot near me, Centaine blurted. Lothar must have taken great care not to endanger her. She realized with a tremor just how easily he could have put a bullet into the back of her skull as she fled.
Blaine was reloading the Lee Enfield, but he looked up and smiled bumourlessly. The fellow is no idiot. He knows that he has shot his bolt, and he is not looking to add murder to the long list of the charges against him. He looked at Hansmeyer. How many men on the kopje? he demanded.
I don't know, Hansmeyer answered. But there is more than one. The rate of fire was too much for one man, and I heard shots overlapping. All right, let's find out how many there are. Blaine beckoned Centaine and Hansmeyer up beside him and explained.
Centaine took his binoculars and moved down the ravine until she was well out on the flank and below a dense tuft of grass which grew on the lip of the ravine. She used the tuft as a screen and raised her head until she could make out the summit of the kopje. She cused the binoculars and called Ready! Blaine had his helmet on the ramrod of his rifle, and he lifted it and Hansmeyer fired two shots into the air to draw the attention of the marksmen on the kopje.
Almost immediately the answering fusillade crackled from the hilltop. More than one shot fired simultaneously, and dust kicked off the lip of the ravine inches from the khaki helmet while ricochet howled away over the mopani trees.
Two or three, Hansmeyer called.
Three, Centaine confirmed, lowering the binoculars as she ducked down. I saw three heads., Good. Blaine nodded. We've got them then, just a matter of time. Blaine. Centaine loosened the strap of her water bottle from the saddle. That's all we have got., She shook the bottle, and it was less than a quarter full. They all stared at it, and involuntarily Blaine licked his lips.
We will be able to recover the other bottles, just as soon as it's dark, he assured them, and then briskly, Sergeant, take two troopers with you, try and work your way around the other side of the kopje. Make sure nobody leaves by the back door. Lothar De La Rey sat propped against one of the huge round granite boulders at the top of the kopje. He sat in the shade, with the Mauser across his lap. He was bare-headed and his long golden hair blew softly across his forehead.
