pedalled quickly to regain poise, and felt the thatch of the wall touch his back. He ducked to go under Garry's outstretched arm, and Garry let his first punch fly.
All the spectators gasped, and one of the nurses squeaked shrilly. Garry's punch was a thunderbolt, with two hundred pounds of muscle and bone and determination driving it. It hissed through the air and, although Sean caught it on his guard, it drove on through. It crashed against the curved dome of his skull, high above the hairline, with a force that made his long shining hair swirl and flicker as though a gust of wind had caught it.
For an instant Sean's eyes rolled fully backwards in their sockets, giving him a blind white stare. His knees buckled and sagged under him. Then he partially recovered, but his face was frosted with pain and his mouth was twisted with panic, as he tried to avoid the next bear-like rush.
Garry charged in, eagerly seizing the moment for which he had worked so doggedly. His arms were spread as though to welcome an old friend or a lover. Suddenly he kicked and spurted like a long-distance runner hearing the bell for the final lap. He had fooled them all, including Sean. They had thought that those ponderous rushes were all the speed he had, but suddenly there was more, much more.
A buffalo bull charges in for the kill in the same fashion, crabbing across the front of his victim, lulling him, making him doubt that he is really the focus of all that mountainous aggression. Then at the last moment he turns in with bewildering speed to hook and gore and trample.
Half-stunned, Sean could not avoid him. Garry's arms snapped around him in a murderous hug, and the momentum of his charge carried them both onwards into the dining-tent. The bar table went over in a shower of ancient spirits, noble wines and precious crystal. They trampled the glittering splinters underfoot, and a heady cloud of fumes enveloped them for a moment before they barged onwards.
The long dining-table, spread with Madeira lace, crashed over. The Rosenthal dinner service burst into ten thousand expensive splinters. As they went out through the back of the tent, they ripped out the guy ropes and the canvas sagged in weary folds. The servants scattered with cries of alarm and excitement and encouragement.
In a ferocious waltz, they whirled each other in erratic circles. Garry's grip was unshakeable. He had doublelocked his own wrists behind his brother's back. His arms convulsed, rippling with muscle as they tightened like a python crushing its prey.
One of Sean's arms was trapped in that deadly circle. With the free fist, he beat wildly at Garry's head, but he lacked purchase and the blows had no sting. Although one caught Garry in the mouth and split his lip, it left his big white teeth intact. He merely ducked his head and slitted his eyes and squeezed and squeezed.
With an approving roar from the black audience and feminine squeals from Sean's admirers, they lunged into the far side of the thatched boma wall and it burst open.
The two of them, still locked together, came storming back on to the central stage. One of the nurses was not quick enough to avoid them. She was knocked over in a tangle of long tanned legs, flaring skirts and lacy underwear that might have stopped any lesser show. Nobody even glanced at her.
Garry was trying to swing Sean off his feet, lifting him high with each turn. Although Sean's face was swelling and darkening with blood from the constriction of his chest and breathing, he managed like a cat to come down on his feet after each wild swing until Garry steered him into the middle of the camp-fire. Sean's legs were bare, and the flames licked at them, frizzling the hair off his calves, scorching the thin kudu-skin velskoen.
Sean let out a howl of anguish and bounded high in his brother's arms. He managed to jump clear of the fire, but Garry's grip was inexorable.
Grunting with the effort, he forced Sean slowly backwards, bending him like a longbow. Sean's scorched legs buckled, and he sank lower and lower. His knees touched the ground, and Garry bent over him and grunted again as he tightened the circle of his arms another inch.
The air was forced from Sean's lungs in a long hollow groan, and his face suffused with dark blood. Garry grunted again, and his grip tightened another notch, remorseless as a mechanical steel press. Sean's eyes began to bulge from their sockets, and his jaw fell open. His tongue lolled out between his teeth.
'Garry! You are killing him!' Isabella screamed, her concern moving from one brother to the other. Her father held her, and Garry showed no sign of having heard her. He grunted yet again and squeezed.
This time they heard Sean's ribs crack like green twigs. He cried out and went slack as a half-empty bag of wheat in Garry's arms. Garry dropped him and stood back, breathing heavily. His own face was flushed and swollen with the effort.
Sean tried to sit up, but the pain of the cracked ribs lanced him and he moaned again and clutched his chest. Garry smoothed back his hair with both hands, but the unruly crest at the crown of his scalp sprang up again immediately.
'Right,'said Garry calmly. 'From now on you will behave yourself. Do you hear me?' Sean managed to push himself up on to his knees with one hand, clutching his chest with the other.
'Do you hear me?'Garry asked again, standing over him.
'Screw you,' Sean whispered, and the effort hurt his chest.
Garry leant over and prodded his injured chest with a thick hard thumb.
'Do you hear me?' 'OK, OK,' Sean yelped. 'I hear you.' 'Good,' Garry nodded, and turned to the hovering nurses. 'Frdulein,' he said in passable German, 'I think we have need of your professional services.' They rushed forward clucking. One on each side of him, they raised Sean to his feet and led him away to his tent.
Shasa released Isabella's arm.
'Well,' he murmured. 'That seems to have sorted that out at last.' And then he glanced at the shambles of the dining-tent.
'I do hope that wasn't the last bottle of Chivas.'
Garry sat on the camp-bed, stripped to the waist while Isabella anointed his bruises with arnica salve from the first-aid box. The hectic blotches left by Sean's fists covered his arms and upper body like the dappling of a giraffe's hide. His nose was swollen, and his lip was lumped and crusted with fresh scab.
'I think it's an improvement,' Isabella told him. 'Before your face was only half-nose, now it is all nose.' Garry chuckled and pinched the end of it gingerly. 'We have taken care of Master Sean. Now it seems as though you are next on the list to be taught a little respect.' She kissed the top of his head where the tuft stood up from his crown.
'Teddy Bear,' she said. 'You know, Garry, Holly is a lucky girl; you are one hell of a man.'He blushed, he actually blushed, and her love for him was confirmed and strengthened. He was no longer comical, even with the bloated nose and thick upper lip.
Sean groaned again theatrically, and Otto Heider threw back his head and laughed.
'Herep He poured another three fingers of whisky into the tumbler that stood on the bedside table. 'This is for the pain, like chloroform.' Sean leant across to take the glass and tossed back the whisky. 'I've been jumped on by buffalo and kicked by jumbo, but this one! Hey, Trudi, take it easy.' Trudi paused with the surgical tape in her hand, and kissed him full on the lips.
'Be quiet,' she said. 'I am fixing you.' She had a sexy German lisp and soft red lips.
'You are a great little fixer,' he admitted. She tinkled with laughter and resumed work on his injured chest, passing the tape under his armpit to Erica who sat behind Sean on his king-size bed.
'No more bumsen for you.' Erica smiled severely. 'Not for many long times.' And passed the tape under his other armpit, back to Trudi.
Otto Heider laughed again. 'Are you going to retire injured and leave me to take care of these two little vixen all on my own?'Otto was amazingly generous to his friends, and Sean was an old friend. Otto shared with his friends. The four of them - Otto, Trudi, Erica and Sean - had 37e done more than merely hunt together. It had been a fun safari. Except for the elephant that Garry had messed up, they had all enjoyed themselves immensely.
'You no good any more. But your brother - he strong like a bull.' Trudi slanted her eyes wickedly. 'He fight good. You think he bumsen good?' Sean stared at her thoughtfully for a moment, and then he began to grin.
'My brother is a prude, a prig. He was almost certainly a virgin when he married that po-faced wench of his. I doubt he would know what to do with a good piece of bumsen if you waved it under his nose.' 'We show him what to do with it,' Trudi promised. 'Me and Erica, we show him good.' 'What do you think, Otto?' Sean looked across at his client. 'Can I borrow the ladies tonight? It shouldn't take long? I'll have them back at your tent by midnight.' Otto shook his head with admiration. 'My friend, you are one funny man. You always make such good jokes. Hey, girls, you like it? What you think? It's a funny joke, hey?' Sean was laughing with them, holding his injured ribs to cushion them.
However, there was a vindictive gleam in his eyes.
Sean understood better than any of them what had happened that day. It had been much more than another brotherly brawl that he had provoked. It had been the ultimate territorial contest of two young bulls in the final battle for dominance and rank. He had lost, and the defeat rankled deeply.
He knew that he could never seriously challenge again. Garry had beaten him in every sphere, from the boardroom to the physical arena. Garry was at last
