The Leopard Hunts in Darkness (55 page)

‘Time?’ she demanded again.

‘05.27,’ Craig told her.

‘We will be out of sight of the airstrip by now. Out of earshot too.’

‘Fungabera won’t know where we are, where we are heading.’

‘They’ve got a helicopter gunship at Victoria Falls.’ Tungata leaned forward over the seats. ‘If they guess that we are heading for Botswana, they will send it down to
intercept.’

‘We can outrun a helicopter,’ Craig guessed.

‘Not with our undercarriage down,’ Sally-Anne contradicted him, and without another warning, the engine cut out completely.

It was suddenly eerily quiet, just the whistle of the wind through the bullet-holes in the fuselage, the propeller windmilling softly for a few seconds longer, and then with a jerk stopping dead
and pointing skywards like a headsman’s blade.

‘Well,’ Sally-Anne said softly, ‘it’s all immaterial now. Engine out. We are going in.’ And then briskly she began her preparations for a forced landing as the
Cessna started to sink gently away towards the broken hilly and forested land beneath them. She pulled on full flap to slow their airspeed.

‘Seat-belts, everybody,’ she said. ‘Shoulder-straps also.’

She was switching off the fuel-tanks, the master switches, shutting down to prevent fire on impact.

‘Can you see an opening?’ she asked Craig, peering hopelessly through the smeared windscreen.

‘Nothing.’ The forest was a dark green mattress below them.

‘I will try to pick two big trees and knock our wings off between them – that will take the speed off us. But it’s still going to be a daddy of a hit,’ she said, as she
struggled with the panel of her side-window.

‘I can knock it out for you,’ Tungata offered.

‘Good,’ Sally-Anne accepted.

Tungata leaned over and with three blows of his bunched fist smashed the Perspex sheet out of its frame. Sally-Anne thrust her head out, slitting her eyes against the wind.

The earth came up towards them, faster and faster, the hills seemed to grow in size, beginning to tower above them as Sally-Anne made a gentle gliding turn into a narrow valley. She had no
air-speed indicator, so she was flying by the seat of her pants, holding up the nose to bleed off speed. Through the hazy smear of the windshield Craig saw the loom of trees.

‘Doors unlocked and open!’ Sally-Anne ordered. ‘Keep your straps fastened until we stop rolling, then get out as fast as you can, and run like a pack of long thin
dogs!’

She pulled up the nose, the Cessna stalled and the nose dropped again like a stone, but she had judged it to a micro-second, for before it could drop through the horizontal, she hit the trees.
The wings were plucked out of the Cessna, and they were hurled against their shoulder-straps with a force that grazed away the skin and bruised their flesh. But even though the impact took most of
their speed off, the dismembered carcass of the aircraft went slithering and banging into the forest. They were slammed from side to side and shaken in their seats, the fuselage slewing violently
and wrapping sideways around the base of another tree and coming, at last, to rest.

‘Out!’ yelled Sally-Anne. ‘I can smell gas! Get out and run!’

The open doors had been ripped away from their hinges, and they flung off their seat-belts and tumbled out onto the rocky ground, and they ran.

Craig caught up with Sally-Anne. The scarf had come off her head and her long dark tresses streamed behind her. He reached out and put an arm around her shoulders, guided her towards the lip of
a dry ravine and they leaped into it and crouched panting on the sandy bottom, clinging to each other.

‘Is she going to flame out?’ Sally-Anne gasped.

‘Wait for it.’ He held her, and they tensed themselves for the whooshing detonation of leaking gasoline, and the explosion of the main tanks.

Nothing happened, and the silence of the bush settled over them, so they spoke in awed whispers.

‘You fly like an angel,’ he said.

‘An angel with broken wings.’

They waited another minute.

‘By the way,’ he whispered, ‘what the hell is a long thin dog?’

‘A greyhound,’ she giggled with reaction from fear. ‘A dachshund is a long short dog.’ And he found he was giggling with her as they hugged each other.

‘Take a look.’ She was still laughing nervously. They stood up cautiously, and peered over the rim of the ravine. The fuselage was crashed and the metal skin of the Cessna had
crumpled like aluminium foil, but there was no fire. They climbed out of the ravine.

‘Sam!’ Craig called. ‘Sarah!’

The two of them stood up from where they had taken cover at the foot of the rocky side of the valley.

‘Are you all right?’

All four of them were shaken and bruised, Sarah had a bloodied nose and a scratch on her cheek, but none of them had been seriously hurt.

‘What the hell do we do now?’ Craig asked, and they stood in a huddle and looked at each other helplessly.

T
hey ransacked the shattered carcass of the Cessna – the toolbox, the first-aid kit, the survival kit with the flashlight, a five-litre
aluminium water bottle, thermal blankets and malt tablets, the pistol, the AK 47 rifle and ammunition, the map-case, and Craig unscrewed the compass from the roof of the cabin. Then they worked for
an hour trying to hide all traces of the crash from a searching aircraft. Between them Tungata and Craig dragged the severed wing sections into the ravine and covered them with dried brush. They
could not move the fuselage and engine section, but they heaped more branches and brush over it.

Twice while they worked, they heard the sound of an aircraft in the distance. The resonant throb of twin engines was unmistakable.

‘The Dakota,’ Sally-Anne said.

‘They are searching for us.’

‘They can’t know that we are down,’ Sally-Anne protested.

‘No, not for certain, but they must know that we took a real beating,’ Craig pointed out. ‘They must realize that there is a good chance that we are down. They will probably
send in foot patrols to scout the area, and question the villagers.’

‘The sooner we get out of here—’

‘Which way?’

‘May I suggest something?’ Sarah joined the discussion deferentially. ‘We need food and a guide. I think I can lead us from here to my father’s village. He will hide us
until we have decided what we are going to do, until we are ready to go.’

Craig looked at Tungata.

‘Makes sense – any objections, Sam? Okay, let’s do it.’

Before they left the site of the crash, Craig took Sally-Anne aside.

‘Do you feel sad? It was a beautiful aircraft.’

‘I don’t get sentimental over machinery.’ She shook her head. ‘Once it was a great little kite, but it’s buggered and bent now. I save my sentiments for things that
are more cuddly,’ and she squeezed his hand. ‘Time to move on, darling.’

Craig carried the rifle and pointed for them, keeping half a mile ahead and marking the trail. Tungata, lacking stamina, took the drag, with the two girls in the centre.

That evening they dug for water in a dry river-bed and sucked a malt tablet before they rolled into the thermal foil survival blankets. The girls took the first two sentry goes, while Tungata
and Craig spun a coin for the more arduous later watches.

Early the next morning, Craig cut a well-used footpath, and when Sarah came up she recognized it immediately. Two hours later they were in the cultivated valley below Vusamanzi’s hilltop
village and while the rest of the party took cover in the standing maize, Sarah climbed up to find her father. When she returned an hour later the old witchdoctor was with her.

He came directly to Tungata and went down on his arthritically swollen knees before him, and he took one of Tungata’s feet and placed it upon his silver pate. ‘Son of kings, I see
you,’ he greeted him. ‘Sprig of great Mzilikazi, branch of mighty Kumalo, I am your slave.’

‘Stand up, old man,’ Tungata lifted him up, and used the respectful term
kehla
, honoured elder.

‘Forgive me that I do not offer refreshment,’ Vusamanzi apologized, ‘but it is not safe here. The Shona soldiers are everywhere. I must lead you to a safe place, and then you
can rest and refresh yourselves. Follow me.’

He set off at a remarkable pace on his skinny old legs, and they had to lengthen their stride to hold him in view. They walked for two hours by Craig’s wrist-watch, the last hour through
dense thorn thicket and broken rocky ground. There was no defined footpath, and the heated hush of the bush and the claustrophobic crowding in of the hills was enervating and oppressive.

‘I do not like this place,’ Tungata told Craig softly. ‘There are no birds, no animals, there is a feeling here of evil – no, not evil, but of mystery and of
menace.’

Craig looked about him. The rocks had the blasted look of slag from the iron furnace and the trees were deformed and crooked, black as charcoal against the sun and leprous silver when the
sun’s rays struck them full on. Their branches were bearded with trailing lichens, the sickly green of chlorine gas. And Tungata was correct, there were no bird sounds, no rustles of small
animals in the undergrowth. Suddenly Craig felt chilled and he shivered in the sunlight.

‘You feel it also,’ said Tungata, and as he spoke the old man disappeared abruptly, as though he had been swallowed by the black and blasted rock. Craig hurried forward, suppressing
a shudder of superstitious dread. He reached the spot where Vusamanzi had disappeared and looked around, but there was no sign of the old man.

‘This way.’ Vusamanzi’s voice was a sepulchral echo. ‘Beyond the turn of the rock.’

The cliff was folded back upon itself, a narrow concealed cleft, just wide enough for a man to squeeze through. Craig stepped round the corner and paused to let his eyes adjust to the poor
light.

Vusamanzi had taken a cheap storm lantern from a shelf in the rock above his head and was filling the base with paraffin from the bottle he had carried in his pouch. He struck a match and held
it to the wick.

‘Come,’ he invited, and led them into the passageway.

‘These hills are riddled with caves and secret passages,’ Sarah explained. ‘They are all dolomite formations.’

A hundred and fifty yards further on, the passage opened into a large chamber. Soft natural light filtered in through an opening in the domed roof high above their heads. Vusamanzi extinguished
the lantern and set it down on a ledge to one side of a hearth, man-made from blocks of limestone. The rock above the hearth was blackened with soot, and there was a pile of old ash upon the floor.
Beside it was a neat stack of firewood.

‘This is a sacred place,’ Vusamanzi told them. ‘It is here that the apprentice magicians live during the training period. It was here, as a young man, that I served under my
own father, and learned the ancient prophecies and the magical arts.’ He gestured to them to sit down, and all of them slumped thankfully to the rocky floor. ‘You will be safe here. The
soldiers will not find you. In a week or a month, when they grow weary of searching for you, it will be safe for you to leave. Then we will find a man to guide you.’

‘It’s spooky,’ Sally-Anne whispered, when Craig translated this for her.

‘Some of my women are following us with food. They will come every second day while you are here, with food and news.’

Two of Sarah’s half-sisters arrived at the cavern before darkness fell. They carried heavy bundles balanced upon their heads, and they set about preparing a meal immediately. Their
laughter and merry chatter, the flicker of the flames on the hearth, the smell of woodsmoke and food cooking, partially dispelled the oppressive atmosphere of the cavern.

‘You must eat with the women,’ Craig explained to Sally-Anne. ‘It’s the custom. The old man will be very unhappy—’

‘He looks such an old dear, but underneath he turns out to be just another male chauvinist pig,’ she protested.

The three men passed the beer-pot around their circle, and ate from the communal bowl in the centre and the old man spoke to Tungata between mouthfuls.

‘The spirits prevented our first meeting, Nkosi. We waited for you to come that night, but the Shona had taken you. It was a time of sorrow for all of us, but now the spirits have
relented, they have delivered you from the Shona and brought us together at last.’ Vusamanzi looked at Craig. ‘There are things of great portent that you and I must discuss –
tribal matters.’

‘You say that the spirits have arranged my escape from the Shona,’ Tungata replied. ‘It may be so – but if it is, then this white man is their agent. He and his woman
have risked their very lives to free me.’

‘Still, he is a white man,’ said the old man delicately.

‘His family has lived in this land for a hundred years – and he is my brother,’ said Tungata simply.

‘You vouch for him, Nkosi?’ the old man persisted.

‘Speak, old man,’ Tungata assured him. ‘We are all friends, here.’

The magician sighed and shuffled and took another handful of food. ‘As my lord wishes,’ he agreed at last, and then abruptly, ‘You are the guardian of the old king’s
tomb, are you not?’

Tungata’s dark eyes hooded in the firelight.

‘What do you know of these things, old man?’ he countered.

‘I know that the sons of the house of Kumalo, when they reach manhood, are taken to the tomb of the king and made to swear the oath of guardianship.’

Tungata nodded reluctantly. ‘This may be so.’

‘Do you know the prophecy?’ the old man demanded.

And Tungata nodded and said, ‘That when the tribe is sorely in need, the spirit of the old king will come forth to give them succour.’

‘The spirit of Lobengula will come forth as a fire,’ the old man corrected him.

‘Yes,’ Tungata agreed. ‘Lobengula’s fire.’

‘And there is more, much more – do you know the rest of it, son of Kumalo?’

‘Tell it to me, old father.’

‘The prophecy goes on thus:
The leopard cub will first break an oath, then break his chains. The leopard cub will first fly like an eagle, then swim like a fish. When these things have
come to pass, the fire of Lobengula will be freed from the dark places and come forth to succour and save his people.
’