Sunset at Sheba (27 page)

For a moment, he waited in the darkness, trying to make up his mind to move. He had no idea whether Sammy was alert or not. He could only hope he was sleeping. He had already fixed in his mind’s eye just where he was hiding and he only needed to get within calling distance. At least, Sammy had known him in the past and had trusted him. He could only hope he would continue to trust him.

He tried to convince himself again he was right in what he was doing. All his life he had suffered from an amiable inability to move forward with certainty in himself, lacking always the sort of blind confidence that had made Offy’s fortune and enabled Kitto to feel that what he was doing was honourable without any qualms of conscience, the same certainty of right that had held Sammy Schuter up on Sheba for two nights and a day now, holding at bay almost half a company of infantry, an armoured car and a field gun.

In a confusion of emotion, he thought of Polly and what she had done, not considering it a sacrifice, and he felt his own share was small.

Certainty swept over him. There was to be no Polly after all, none of the things he had been vaguely forming as hopes in his mind, mere reflections of warmth without the reality of fire, but he knew he was now as sure of what he was proposing to do as he would ever be. Sammy Schuter must have
something
in him to produce such faith as Polly had, whatever he was or had become through the militaristic single-mindedness of Kitto.

Winter thought briefly of the hot-eyed little soldier behind him awaiting the morning with eagerness, certain that he was doing his duty, convinced that all he had done was right. Poor Kitto - the everlasting subaltern! Winter found he could be sorry for him. It was the Kittos of the world who always carried the blame, honest, humourless, rigid in their ideal of duty to the point of being a nuisance. They were the sacrificial goats of the world, who saved their fellow men in times of emergency, the sort of professional soldiers who willingly accepted death or disgrace until the amateurs were ready and the first complicated choreography of opposing armies was over and the battle lines were set up.

Winter stared up the slopes again. From behind him he could hear the sounds of the camp and see the glow of the fires over the rocks of Babylon. Somebody laughed back there, and a horse whinnied, and suddenly, from that bare bleak side of Sheba, it looked incredibly warm and welcoming, with the red glow coming over the top of the stones and the sound of laughter. There, beyond Babylon, were company and shelter. Here was only bareness and emptiness and a big question mark.

Winter buttoned his jacket tightly around him and stood up, a stone chinking softly by his feet. He listened for a second, but there was no movement from Babylon. As he moved again, the pebble rolled down the slope, then he turned his face firmly towards the summit and began to climb.

Sammy Schuter woke abruptly. He was cold and tired and thirsty. Above his head, softening the blackness to a watery mistiness, the distant stars were vivid against the silent sky that backgrounded the summit of Sheba, rising like some fantastic castle behind him.

He turned slowly on his side, the blanket sliding from his shoulders, and listened. Something had disturbed him and with the hunter’s instinct which let him sleep while all his senses were not switched off, he was awake immediately.

For a moment, he lay silently, still listening, catching the thin cheeps of the bats that darkness had brought out of the caves of Sheba into their twisting complex flight, and the breeze moaning shrilly through the clefts and stones lower down. A prickly pear just in front of where he lay clapped its flat leaves together and his nerves tensed as he strained his ears. Then he heard the thin rattle of a pebble rolling, and he sat up abruptly, letting the blanket fall to the ground. Turning over on to his stomach, he peered between the two rocks that had sheltered him from sight all day.

He could see the glow over the rocks of Babylon quite clearly and could hear the faint bark of laughter from the men camping there. He pulled the Mauser forward and worked the breech silently, catching the acridity of cordite that came with the movement. He was not afraid. He was well aware of what the following day would bring for he knew they had captured his horses, and there was no hope of stealing another. He had thrown a shot in the direction of the galloping hooves, but he had realised immediately that he couldn’t see well enough to shoot effectively and he had hung on to the rest of his cartridges, certain he was going to need them the following day. He knew the gun had been recovered now,
and
the armoured car. He had heard the engine start and the dull popple of the exhaust fading as it vanished behind the rocks of Babylon. The engines of war were ranged against him now, inexorable and deadly.

Indeed, he had spent the day exploring with his eyes the surface of Sheba for another position, where he might be safe, but he had not found a better one where he could command the whole of the plain below, and in the end he had grown tired of looking. It would only serve to stretch out the misery of waiting and, suddenly, he couldn’t be bothered any more. He had now only seven cartridges left for the Mauser and three for the Henry. That wouldn’t stand off a determined assault for long.

For a while, he had hoped they might have been dissuaded by his tenacity and go away, and once when he had heard a horseman ride in and, shortly afterwards, ride away again, he had thought it might be a reprieve of some sort, but nothing had happened and he had settled down again to wait.

All day he had waited in silence, motionless in the broiling heat, listening to the shrill bird-like cries of the dassies. Once a puff adder had passed in front of him, undisturbed by his stillness, golden and shining in the sun, its body flowing in a cold boneless advance. Above him he had seen the kite-hawks and the vultures attracted by the horses he had killed, black and ragged against the sky, floating as though on strings.

He was certain within himself now that the cord of his life was drawing taut, that he had only a few more hours to live, and he was facing calmly the certainty of a lonely trapped death. He had never faced up to artillery fire before but he knew something of its effect on human beings.

He might have made an effort to build up some entrenchment for the morning, but his movements had become lethargic now with hunger and thirst and his mind was numb with too much thinking. He wasn’t afraid. He wasn’t even bitter. He had absorbed in his years of living on the veld too much of the philosophy of the survival of the fittest, and had spent too much of his life as a hunter to be afraid of being the hunted.

He thought bitterly for a moment of Polly, wondering where she was. He would have liked to have seen her again, if only to make her see that what he had done was the only thing he
could
do, but he knew that his sole hope of a few more hours of life was to stay where he was. Even if he reached the bottom alive - and he felt certain he could if he wished - there could be no hope for him without a horse on the empty plain which could give him no more shelter than a billiard table.

Sammy shifted uneasily, conscious of a sense of loss that he was not to enjoy any more the sunny windless evenings and the silent stars of Africa, the soft crackle of frosty grass as he turned out of his blankets in the morning, the high skies, the light dawns and the golden landscapes of dry grass and low distant hills; the titanic laughter of the Kaffir bearers and the sound of a guitar or a concertina dwarfed by the immensity of the veld.

A stone chinking below him jerked his head up, interrupting his musings, and his light eyes narrowed as he stared through the cranny between the stones. Briefly, for an instant, he had seen a shadowy figure move in the darkness. Slowly, he reached out for the water bottle alongside him and, moving slowly, took a sip. Holding it to his ear he shook it and realised it was almost empty.

He stiffened as he saw the figure move in the shadows again, difficult to make out in the uncertain light. At first he thought the men below were trying a night move against him, then he realised there was only one man there, whom he must have seen twice. The figure was moving with the utmost caution, but clumsily nevertheless, with the awkwardness of a city dweller. It was closer now, moving steadily upwards, keeping always to the shadows so that it was difficult at times to see him. It was an easy shot. Too easy for the Mauser.

Sammy watched for a few moments longer, his eyes glittering, a muscle working at the side of his lean unshaven jaw, then he reached backwards and drew the old big-bored Martini-Henry up to his chin, pushing it forward inch by inch through the cranny in the rocks...

The crash of the shot brought them all to their feet. As they leapt for cover, the sock-darner was jostled into the embers of the fire and he scrambled out again, yelling and swearing and kicking sparks of burning wood flying in his haste and anguish.

Sergeant Hadman was out of his blanket in a bound and behind a rock on his hands and knees.

‘Christians, awake,’ he called. ‘We’re off again!’

The sound of the shot had gone rolling round the jagged slopes of Sheba, echoing and clattering among the spires of rock in the silence, so that for a moment it seemed as though there were several guns up there. The horses threw up their heads, their ears pricked, listening, and the dozing Le Roux at the end of the horse lines came to life at once and ran to see what was happening.

Kitto appeared at the entrance of the tent with Romanis and Hoole, and stopped there, staring up at Sheba. Around them were men in various stages of undress, some without boots, others without jackets, holding blankets, all staring with them up at the spires of rock that stood out against the sky.

‘Wind up,’ someone commented in a hoarse voice.

O’Hare’s sergeant shook his head. ‘That’s something
be
ain’t got, brother,’ he said dryly. ‘Something moved. Mebbe a rock rabbit. Thank your lucky stars it was that what he was shooting at and not you. There’ll be one rock rabbit less’n there was. That’s for sure.’

‘It was like this in the last war,’ somebody muttered. ‘Stuck out on the veld, listening, hearing rifles. You remember Ladysmith, Sarge?’

‘Sure.’ The sergeant nodded, staring upwards. ‘It was me what took her dancing...’

Waiting out among the group of mimosa trees, Polly jumped to her feet as she heard the rifle bark. The horses which she had tethered nearby edged away, their ears back, settling down again as the silence flooded round them once more. She could hear frogs not far away in the low-lying ground near the stream, croaking hoarsely, and the high thin irritating cheep of crickets.

For a while, she stared nervously around her, wondering what to do. Judging by the time that had elapsed, she guessed that Winter must have reached the little krantz where Sammy was hiding out beyond that she knew nothing, and she was desperately tempted to leave the mimosa thorn and head back to camp.

The thought of the crowded circles of men round the fires and the big knotty body of Le Roux held her as she moved towards the horses, then the need to be with Sammy again and some loyalty to Winter drew her down again to the rock where she had been sitting.

With her nerves prickling, she heard someone in the camp call out, then a rifle fired, and there was silence again...

Kitto was still standing by the tent door, staring up at Sheba, his eyes narrowed.

‘Tell that damn’ fool over there to put up his rifle,’ he snapped.

‘Accident, sir!’ Sergeant Hadman appeared alongside him, the sharp planes of his features glowing in the light of the fire. ‘It won’t happen again. It nearly took his ‘ead off and he’ll be more careful in future, I think.’

‘See anything, Sergeant?’

‘No, sir. Nothing. I been forward a bit but there’s nothing moving. I think he musta seen a rock rabbit or a snake or something and mistook it for one of us.’    .

‘Perhaps you’re right.’ Kitto glanced again up at Sheba, then turned into the tent, followed by Romanis and Hoole. ‘Whatever it was,’ he said, ‘it’s one bullet less to face tomorrow.’

Winter lay back in a crevasse between two rocks where he had been flung by the shock of the heavy, soft-nosed bullet which had hit him high up on the right side of the chest and smashed his shoulder blade on its way out.

He put his left hand to his shoulder and was surprised to find that the blood on his fingers was black in the light of the stars. Then the pain began to come to the torn hole in his back where the flattened bullet had made its exit, growing steadily stronger as the numbness of the initial shock wore away. He struggled to sit up and was startled to discover he couldn’t do so, and it dawned on him quite clearly and without fear that he was probably going to die.

He struggled back through the mists to complete consciousness and called out softly.

‘Sammy! Sammy! Can you hear me?’

He moved his left hand about, trying to push himself upright, and found that his fingers only weakly scrabbled over the uneven stony surface. Feebly he began to pat his pockets and realised they were still jammed with food and Mauser cartridges, then as a wave of pain swept over him he tried to hold his shattered shoulder together again, clutching at the splintered bone as though with his own desperate anguished strength he might stop the bleeding and take the pain away.

He remembered the look of amazement he had seen on the face of the dead Offy Plummer, and he wondered if the same look of shock had been on his own face as the bullet had flung him back among the rocks.

Once again, he struggled to rise, but his fall had jammed him somehow in the crevasse with his useless arm beneath him, and he was unable to shove himself upright.

‘Sammy!’ he called again. ‘This is Winter! Come here, quickly!’

Again he struggled to sit up, wishing he had something at his back against which he could use his legs as a lever to force himself upright. Then, his mind swinging dangerously, erratically, he found himself wishing he had a drink and tried to remember if he’d brought a brandy flask with him. After a struggle to find it, he realised he couldn’t get at it even if he had, and he began to wonder instead if Sammy Schuter had saved a few drops of water up there in his rocky eyrie.