fado as he flogged a man to death, accompanying the traditional love song with the flute and percussion of the lash.
He did not go north, Camacho agreed uneasily. You were told to see that he didI could not stop him. He is English, ' Camacho's voice croaked a little, 'he is stubborn. 'We will speak again of that, ' Alphonse promised coldly. 'Now, swiftly tell me where he is and what he plans to do.'
Camacho recited the explanation he had prepared, skirting delicately around the most offensive parts of the story, and dwelling on. subjects such as the wealth that the Ballantyne expedition carried with it rather than his own brutal beating at the Englishman's hands.
Alphonse had thrown himself down in the shade of a tree beside the track and listened broodingly, chewing at the straggling ends of his mustache, filling in for himself the conspicuous gaps in his half-brother's recital, and speaking again only at the end. When will he leave the valley of the Zambezi? ' Soon, Camacho, hedged, for the unpredictable Englishman might already be half-way to the escarpment. Although I cut him deeply, it may be he has had himself carried in a mushila (litter). 'He must not be allowed to enter the Monomatapa, Alphonse said flatly, and came to his feet with a single lithe movement. 'The best place to do the business would be in the bad ground below the rim of the valley.'
He glanced back along the winding road. The head of the column was a mile away still, across a glade of open golden grass. The shuffling double rank of bowed creatures, yoked at the neck, did not seem human, though the singing was sad and beautiful. I can spare fifteen men.'
It will not be enough, ' Carnacho cut in swiftly. It will be, said his brother coldly, 'if you do the business in the night. 'Twenty men, Camacho pleaded. 'He has soldiers with him, trained soldiers and he is a soldier himself.'
Alphonse was silent, weighing risk and advantage but the worst part of the Hyena Road already lay behind the column, and each mile nearer the coast, the land was tamer, the risk diminished and the need for guards less pressing.
Twenty! 'he agreed abruptly, and turned to Carnacho. But not one of the foreigners must escape. ' Looking into his brother's cold black eyes, Camacho felt his skin crawl. 'Leave no sign, bury them deep, so the jackal and hyena do not dig them out. Use the porters to carry the expedition's equipment to the place in the hills, and when they have done so, kill them also. We will bring it down with the next caravan to the coast. 'Si. Si. I understand.
'Do not fail us again, my beloved cousin-brother.'
Alphonse made the endearment a threat, and Camacho swallowed with a nervous little gulp. I will leave as soon as I have rested. 'No, Alphonse shook his head. 'You will leave immediately.
Once that Englishman enters the land beyond the mountains, there will soon be no more slaves. It is bad enough that there has been no gold for twenty years and more, but if the river of slaves were to dry up, both my father and I would be displeased, very displeased.'
At Zouga's order the long mournful blast of the kuduhom trumpet shattered the silence of the utterly dark hour before the dawn.
The Indunas took up the cry 'Safari! We march! ' and they prodded the sleeping porters off their reed sleepingmats. The camp fires had burned down to dim red mounds of coals smothered in the soft grey powder of their own ash. As fresh logs were thrown upon them they flared up in a false dawn that lit the underside of the umbrella-shaped acacia trees with wavering yellow light.
The smell of roasting ropoko cakes rose on tendrils of pale smoke straight into the windless dark sky. The muted voices became louder, more cheerful as the flames drove away the chills and the nightmares. Safari! The cry was taken up, and the divisions assembled, ghostly figures in the gloom, emerging more clearly as the growing dawn light paled the sky and snuffed out the stars. Safari! And the mass of men and equipment resolved itself and order grew out of chaos.
Like those long columns of big shiny black serowe ants that endlessly cross and re-cross the African earth, the stream of porters moved steadily away into the still gloomy forest.
As each of them passed Zouga and Robyn standing together at the gate of the thorn scherm, they shouted a greeting and executed a few prancing steps to demonstrate their loyalty and enthusiasm, while Robyn laughed with them and Zouga called encouragement. We no longer have a guide, and we don't know where we are going. ' She took Zougals arm. 'What is to become of us? 'If we knew, it would take all the fun out of it. 'At least a guide. 'While you thought I was hunting I went out as far as the escarpment which is further than that swaggering Portuguese ever went, further than any white man, except of course Pater, has ever been. Follow me, Sissy, I am your guide.'
She looked up at him now in the strengthening light of coming dawn.
I knew you were not hunting, she told him. The escarpment is rugged and very broken, but I have examined two passes through the telescope that I think will go-'And beyond that? ' He laughed, 'We will find out. ' Then he squeezed her around the waist. 'That is the whole fun of the thing.'
She studied his face with full attention for a few moments. The new full beard emphasized the strong, almost stubborn, lines of his jaw. There was a piratical devil-may-care lift to the corner of his lips, and Robyn realized that no man of conventional mind would have proposed and engineered this expedition. She knew he possessed courage, his exploits in India had proved that beyond doubt, and yet when she looked at his sketches and water colours and read the rough notes he was making for the book, she discovered a sensitivity and an imagination she had never before suspected. He was a difficult person to know and understand.
Perhaps she could have told him about Sarah and the child or even about Mungo St. John, and that night in the main cabin of Huron, for when he laughed like this, the stern features softened with humour and humanity, . and green lights sparkled in his eyes. That's what we are here for, Sissy, the fun of it all. 'And the gold, she teased, 'and the ivoryYes, by God, the gold and ivory as well. Come on, Sissy, this is where it truly begins, and he limped after the column as its tail disappeared into the acacia forest, favouring his injured leg and using a freshly cut staff to move across the sandy earth. For a moment Robyn hesitated and then she shrugged aside her doubts and ran to catch up with her brother.
That first day the porters were rested and eager, the valley floor flat and the going easy, so Zouga ordered tirikeza, the double march, so that even at their slow pace the column left many miles of dusty grey earth behind them that day.
They marched until the heat came up in the middle of the morning and the merciless sun dried the sweat the moment it burst through their pores and left tiny salt crystals on the skin, that sparkled like diamond chips. Then they found shade and lay like dead men through the heat of noon, stirring again only when the lowering sun gave the illusion of cooling the air and the blast of the kudii-horn trumpet forced them to their feet again.
