base of a morula tree, with the naked corpse of the snake-bite victim beside him for company, and they marched away along the line of the escarpment.
They had gone a hundred yards when Camacho was overcome by a rush of compassion. He and the dying man had fought and marched and whored together for many years. He turned back.
The man gave him a haggard grin, his dry crusted lips cracking with the effort. Camacho answered him with that marvelous flashing smile as he dropped the man's loaded pistol in his lap. It would be better to use it before the hyena find you tonight, he told him. The thirst is terrible, the man croaked, a tiny bead of blood appeared on his deeply cracked lower lip, bright as an emperor's ruby in -the sunlight. He eyed the twogallon water bottle on Carnacho's hip.
Carnacho resettled the water bottle on its strap so it was out of sight behind his back. The contents sloshed seductively.
Try not to think about it, he counselled.
There was a point where compassion ended and stupidity began. Who knew where and when they would find the next water? In this God-blasted desolation, water was an item not to be wasted on a man who was 'already as good as dead.
He patted the man's shoulder comfortingly, gave him a last lovely smile and then swaggered away amongst the grey ironthorn scrub, whistling softly under his breath with the plumed beaver cocked over one eye. Camachito went back to make sure we had forgotten nothing. ' The one-eyed Abyssinian greeted him as he caught up with the column, and they shouted with laughter. Their spirits were still high, the water-bottles more than half filled and the prospects of immense loot danced like a will-o-the-wisp down the valley ahead of them.
That had been ten days ago, the last three of which without water, for you could not count the cupful of mud and elephant piss they had from the last puddled water-hole. Apart from the lack of water, the going had become appalling. Camacho had never marched through such broken and harsh terrain, toiling up one rocky slope and then battling down through tearing Thorn to the next dry river course, and then up again.
Also, it now seemed highly probable that either the Englishman had changed his mind and gone north of the Zambezi river after all, in which case they had lost him, or else, and Camacho's skin crawled at the thought, or else they had crossed the spoor of the caravan in the early dawn or late evening when the light was too bad to make it out clearly. It was an easy mistake to make, they had crossed hundreds of game tracks each day, and the spoor could have been wiped by a herd of game, or one of the fierce short-lived little whirlwinds, the dust devils which ravaged the valley at this season of the year.
To cap all Camacho's tribulations, his band of noble warriors was on the point of mutiny. They were talking quite openly about turning back. There never had been an Englishman and a caravan of riches, even if there had, he was now far from here and getting further every day.
They were exhausted by these switchback ridges and valleys and the water bottles were nearly all of them dry, which made it hard to maintain enthusiasm for the venture. The ringleaders were reminding the others that in their absence, their share of the profits of the slave caravan were blowing in the wind. Fifty slaves, for certain, were worth a hundred mythical Englishmen. They had many excellent reasons for turning back.
Carnacho, on the other hand, had nothing to return for, apart from his half-brother's ire. He also had a score to settle, two scores. He still hoped that they might manage to take the Englishman and his sister alive, especially the woman. Even in the thirst and the heat, his groin swelled at the memory of her in men's breeches. He jerked himself back to reality, and he glanced over his shoulder at the straggling line of ruffians who followed him.
Soon it would be necessary to kill one of his men, he had decided hours ago. Dung-eaters all of them, it was the only language they truly understood. He must make an example to stiffen their backbones, and keep them slogging onwards.
He had already decided which one it would be. The one-eyed Abyssinian was the biggest talker, the most eloquent apostle of the return to the coast, and what made his choice even more attractive was that his left side was blind. The problem was that the job must be done properly. The others would be impressed by the knife but not the gun. However, the Abyssinian allowed no man into that blind spot. Without making it too obvious, Camacho had twice sidled up on his left, but each time the Abyssinian had swung his head with its frizzed-up halo of dense curly hair towards him, and given him a grin with a slow trickle of a tear running down his cheek from that obscenely empty eye-socket.
However, Camacho was a persistent man, and an inventive one, for he noticed that whenever he moved out of the Abyssinian's blind spot, the man relaxed, and immediately became more verbose and arrogant. Twice more Camacho tried an approach from the left, and twice more was met with a single cold beady stare. He was establishing a pattern, teaching the victim that threat came only from the left, and when they halted in the middle of the morning, he ostentatiously squatted on the right. The Abyssinian grinned at him as he wiped the spout of his almost empty water bottle on his sleeve. This is the place. I go no further. ' The one-eyed man announced in fluent Portuguese. 'I make the oath on Christ's sacred wounds. ' And he touched the Coptic gold cross that hung around his neck. 'Not another step forward. I am going back.'
Fanning himself with the beaver hat, Camacho shrugged, and answered the cold grin with his own sunny smile. 'Let's drink to your going then With his free hand, he lifted his own water bottle, and shook it slightly. There was a cupful, no more. All their eyes went instinctively to the bottle. Here water was life, even the Abyssinian's single eye fastened on it.
Then Camacho, let it slip from his fingers. It looked like an accident, the bottle rolled to the Abyssinian's feet with clear water glugging out on to the baked earth, and, with an exclamation, the man stooped for it with his right hand, his knife hand.
Nobody really saw Camacho move. He had been holding the knife in the lining of the beaver hat. Suddenly it seemed to reappear behind the Abyssinian's right ear, just the carved bone handle protruding the blade completely buried.
The Abyssinian lifted his hand with a mystified expression and touched the hilt of the knife, blinked his single eye rapidly, opened his mouth and then closed it firmly and fell forward on top of the water bottle.
Camacho was standing over them, a cocked pistol in each hand. Who else wishes to make an oath on Christ's sacred wounds? ' he smiled at them, his teeth very big and white and square. 'Nobody? Very well then, I will make an oath. I make it on the long-lost maidenheads of your sisters which they sold a hundred times for an escudo the bunch Even they were shocked by such blasphemy, I make it on your flaccid and puny manhoods which it will be my great pleasure to shoot off, he was interrupted, and broke off in mid-sentence.
There was a faint popping sound on the hushed heated morning, so distant, so indistinct, that for a moment none of them recognized it as the sound of gunfire. Camacho recovered first, he thrust the pistols into his waistband. They were no longer needed, and he ran to the crest of the rocky kopie on which they sat.
