presence that had frightened them. The baboons crouched, looking up. A shadow drifted across them. Max searched the sky. A martial eagle had stepped off a high peak and glided into a thermal. The warm morning air carried him easily across the gathered baboons, but he was still too high to swoop and make an attack on any vulnerable youngster.!Koga tugged at Max’s arm. This was a good time to make their way through the distracted baboons.
After a few minutes the huge eagle, showing first its dark-brown back feathers, then its speckled white chest, curved lazily in the air and drifted away. Perhaps it had spotted easier prey further down the valley. Max reckoned it was big enough to take a small antelope, so a young baboon would certainly not have posed a problem for the winged predator, which could strike with stunning power. Its talons could pierce a skull, biting deep into the base of the brain, causing instant death. Then it would carry the prey to its nest and dismember the carcass, tearing out the intestines, severing the head and limbs to be eaten. The baboons obviously knew the ominous reality of the raptor’s shadow.
The danger passed, and now Max and!Koga were in the midst of the baboons. One of the males stood on its hind legs, watching them from a distance; the others returned to their nit-picking duties while the youngsters played in a chattering, raucous rough-and-tumble. A huddle of boulders lay in Max and!Koga’s path; baboons scattered as they approached. Some of the rocks were scooped out, worn down by centuries of weather and baboon activity; now they acted like the granite drinking troughs Max knew from Devon. A distant memory, Devon: gentle, forgiving Devon, where the enfolding hills nurtured the traveler into meandering pathways and fields, where the wildest creature likely to be seen might be a barn owl looking for field mice. Max’s mind wrenched back to reality. The baboons had stopped whatever they were doing and were watching them.
!Koga crouched at one of the basins; his hand tickled the water and brought it to his lips. “It is from the storm. It tastes good.”
Carefully they edged closer to the water. Would the baboons fiercely protect their invaluable resource or let them share it? Max pulled off his bush hat and peered down. The reflection that stared back looked nothing like the boy who had started his quest only days earlier. His fair hair was tufted and streaked with dirt. He was leaner, gaunt even, and the caked dirt made him look older. His eyes were red-rimmed from the sun’s glare, and his tears of the previous night had washed a couple of tracks in the grime. Beneath the dirt a tanned, weather-beaten face glared back at him. He looked like a wild man. And maybe now he was.
Without another thought he dipped his cupped hands into the cool water and drank thirstily. Then he pushed his head under, scratched his fingers through his hair, and rubbed his face. As he pulled free of the rock pool a baboon took fright and fled, chattering. Maybe Max was more acceptable as a dirt-clogged creature from the bush. A young baboon sitting in a rock bowl gazed back at him like a boy in a bath, then dragged one hand over its head, spiking its own short hair, punk-like. Max pulled the binoculars from his shirt to stop them banging against the rock and put them down next to him on his bush hat, as he took another luxurious wallow.
Lifting his head clear, he snorted dust and mucus from his nose. He would never take water for granted again. It was sobering to think how much of the precious liquid he wasted at home. He gazed out across the curved hillside. Watching the baboons was a momentary diversion. Max sensed their caution at his presence, but they did not seem to register any threat.
!Koga’s gleaming, dripping face emerged from another pool. “Max,” he said quietly.
Following his gaze, Max saw that the punk baboon had stolen his hat and binoculars. Max tentatively reached out towards it, but it jumped back and scurried into another’s arms, where they hugged and gazed warily at him. Max needed those binoculars. He stepped carefully towards the youngsters. A bark warned Max. He turned. A big, heavily built male was stalking towards him. Its front paws supported muscled shoulders and the mane of long hair around its neck and shoulders made it look even more threatening. It was a meter tall and the doglike muzzle snarled as it barked again. Max stood still, sensing the ripple of tension in the animals around him. The baboon bared its fangs. Max saw!Koga slowly ease an arrow into his bow. “Don’t kill it,!Koga. It’ll be OK.”
“I don’t know,”!Koga replied. “Maybe not. He is the leader. Others will attack if he does.”
Max glanced around.!Koga was right. The warning bark had alerted other males. The strict hierarchy of the baboon troop meant that the older juveniles, often acting as scouts for the troop, rallied when the danger call came from the leader. Other males stayed with their families but were nevertheless alerted.
Max reassured!Koga. “We’ll walk away … slowly.”
Once in a while Max had come across kids at school who were stronger than he, and there was always the odd bully to contend with. Despite best intentions, some kids just had to exert their dominance, and Max had had a couple of scraps at school. There were Baskins and Hoggart, two of the older boys. They got out of hand at times. If they weren’t looking for a scrap with someone else, they would rough and tumble each other. Whatever the outcome, it meant a few bruises, but this baboon with its razor-sharp teeth was way above the Baskins and Hoggart league-this was the equivalent of a knife-wielding, streetwise kid with a very bad attitude. If there wasn’t something to hand for self-defense, then a fast sprint for self-preservation brought no shame. Only Max would never outrun this bruiser. He flinched as the baboon coughed another bark and with a snarl charged to within four meters of where Max now stood with his back to the rocks. The other baboons began to join in, their screeches and threats sounding like a badly out-of-control football crowd.
“Next time he will really attack,”!Koga shouted, bringing attention to himself from the other young males. The height of the boulders offered some immediate sanctuary, but that would be short-lived once the frenzy spread. It was not much of a choice: an attack would come sooner or later.
“I want a chance to get out of this,!Koga. We walk slowly, and then we run. All right?”
!Koga gazed at the confident boy who stood unflinching before the baboon’s agitated aggression.
“We’ll run like hell,!Koga, once we reach those rocks over there. You ready?”
!Koga nodded and eased his back along the boulders, watching the gathering juveniles, who were eager for combat, once their leader attacked. Almost shoulder to shoulder, the boys edged away. Within moments, one of the juvenile males broke ranks and charged. The screaming, indignant bark of the leader barely stopped the young baboon before it reached Max-who smelled its fetid breath and saw the ragged spittle hanging from its lips.
Together, the boys eased away from the advancing baboons-it seemed like a small army was gathering around them. It was a hundred or more meters before they could reach the rocks, allowing them to put on a turn of speed. The rocks would divide the advancing baboons and give the boys a chance of reaching the flatter, wider plain beyond the fringe of the mountains.
“Get ready,!Koga, we have to go for it now!”
Max sensed the quivering anticipation in the startled looks of the baboons and felt his own energy gathering to explode. Then suddenly a shadow swept across them all.
The shrieking peaked. The commanding voice of the leader barked above them all and the baboons were unleashed. They surged towards Max and!Koga, who were helpless. Blurred images-fragments of his mother and father-slammed through Max’s mind. He saw!Koga level his spear in readiness. This was it! A fight to the death. He sucked in air to scream his defiance.
But the horde swept past them, jostling them, the juveniles now taking the lead, scouting ahead, leading the troop to safety beyond the place of exposed danger.
A reprieve!
Max and!Koga reacted instinctively and ran with them, pounding across the ground, immersed in the baboons’ hysteria. They were safe amidst the panic. The blackness fell across them again, but it was not the shadow of the hunting eagle. The darkness belonged to a far more dangerous creature.
Five hundred meters above, the silent predator rose higher on a thermal spiral. On huge, featherless wings stretched across a skeletal frame, it whispered through the sky. The glider’s Perspex cockpit, an all-seeing eye, held Shaka Chang.
Slye had tried to contact the men sent to kill the boys, but their radio transceiver responded with a lion’s rumbling growl and the sound of it being scraped across the ground. Chang was indifferent to the men’s fate and this morning’s flight served only to acquaint him with the terrain from where the boy might emerge-or where he had perished. Chang liked to know everything about those who were trying to interfere with his plans, and ultimately he trusted only his own eyes.
Chang gazed down at the fleeing baboons. He thought he saw a shape, different from the others, but the warm air scooped him upwards and obscured his vision. He heeled the glider around again and swept low across
