they could never bring themselves to part.
Go! he ordered, and Manfred sobbed and flung himself at his father.
I want to stay with you, he cried.
Lothar caught his wrist and held him at arm's length.
Do you want me to be ashamed? he snarled. Is that how you want me to remember you, snivelling like a girl? Pa, don't send me away, please. Let me stay. Lothar drew back, released his grip on Manfred's wrist and immediately whipped his open palm across his face and then swung back with his knuckles. The double slap knocked Manfred onto his haunches, leaving livid red blotches on his pale cheeks, and a tiny serpent of bright blood crawled from his nostril down over his upper lip. He stared at Lothar with shocked and incredulous eyes.
Get out of here, Lothar hissed at him, summoning all his courage and resolve to make his voice scornful and his expression savage. I won't have a blubbering little ninny hanging around my neck. Get out of here before I take the strap to you! Manfred scrambled to his feet and backed away, still staring with horrified disbelief at his father.
Go on! Get away! Lothar's expression never wavered, and his voice was angry and disdainful and unrelenting. Get out of here! Manfred turned and stumbled to the edge of the cliff.
There he turned once more and held out his hands. Pa!
Please don't, Go, damn you. Go! The boy scrambled over the edge, and the sounds of his clumsy descent dwindled into silence.
only then Lothar let his shoulders droop, and he sobbed once, then suddenly he was weeping silently, his whole body shaking.
It's the fever, he told himself. The fever has weakened me. But the image of his son's face, golden and beautiful and destroyed with grief, still filled his mind and he felt something tearing in his chest, an unbearable physical pain.
Forgive me, my son, he whispered through his tears. There was no other way to save you. Forgive me, I beg you. Lothar must have relapsed into unconsciousness, for he awoke with a start and could not remember where he was or how he had got there. Then the smell of his arm, sick and disgusting, brought it back to him, and he crawled to the edge of the cliff and looked out towards the south. He saw his pursuers then for the first time, and even at the distance of a mile or more he recognized the two wraith-like little figures that danced ahead of the column of horsemen.
Bushmen, he whispered. Now he understood how they had come so swiftly. She has put her tame Bushmen onto me. He realized then that there had never been any chance of throwing them off the spoor; all that time Lothar had used in covering their sign and in anti-tracking subterfuges had been wasted. The Bushmen had followed them with barely a check over the worst going and most treacherous tracking terrain.
Then he looked beyond the trackers an counted the number of men coming against him. Seven, he whispered, and his eyes narrowed as he tried to pick out a smaller feminine figure amongst them, but they were dismounted leading their horses and the intervening mopani obscured his vision.
He transferred all his attention from the approaching horsemen to his own preparations. His only concern now was to delay the pursuit as long as possible, and to convince the pursuers that all of his band were still together here upon the summit. Every hour he could win for them would give Hendrick and Manie just that much more chance of escape.
It was slow and awkward working with one hand, but he jammed Klein Boy's rifle into a niche of the granite with the muzzle pointing down towards the plain. He looped a strap from one of the water bottles over the trigger and led the other end to his chosen shooting stance in the shadows, protected by a flare of the granite ledge.
He had to pause for a minute to rest, for his vision was starring and breaking up into patches of blackness, and his legs felt too weak to support his weight. He peeped over the edge and the horsemen were much closer, on the point of emerging from the mopani forest into the open ground. Now he recognized Centaine, slim and boyish in her riding-breeches, and he could even make out the bright yellow speck of the scarf around her throat.
Despite the fever heat and the darkness in his head, despite his desperate circumstances, he still found a bitter-sweet admiration for her. By God, she never gives up, he muttered. She'll follow me over the other side to the frontiers of hell. He crawled to the pile of discarded water bottles and dragging them after him, arranged them in three separate piles along the lip of the ledge, and he knotted the leather straps together so that he could agitate all the piles simultaneously with a single twitch of the strap in his hand.
Nothing else I can do, he whispered, except shoot straight. But his head was throbbing and his vision danced with the hot mirage of his fever. Thirst was an agony in his throat and his body was a furnace.
He unscrewed the stopper on the water bottle and drank, carefully controlling himself, sipping and holding it in his mouth before swallowing. Immediately he felt better, and his vision firmed. He closed the water bottle and placed it beside him with the spare ammunition clips. Then he folded his jacket into a cushion on the lip of granite in front of him and laid the Mauser on top of it. The pursuers had reached the foot of the kopje and were clustered about his abandoned horse.
Lothar held up his good hand in front of his eyes with fingers extended. There was no tremor, it was steady as the rock on which he lay and he cuddled the butt of the Mauser in under his chin.
The horses, he reminded himself. They can't follow Manie without horses, and he drew a long breath, held it, and shot Blaine Malcomess chestnut mare in the centre of the white blaze.
As the echoes of the shot still bounced from the cliffs of the surrounding hills, Lothar flicked the bolt of the Mauser and fired again, but this time he jerked the strap attached to the other rifle and the report of the two shots overlapped.
The double report would deceive even an experienced soldier into believing there was more than one man on the summit.
Strangely, in this moment of deadly endeavour, the fever had receded. Lothar's vision was bright and clear, the sights of the Mauser starkly outlined against each target and his gun hand steady and precise as he swung the rifle from one horse to the next and sent each one crashing to earth with a head shot. Now they were all down except one: Centaine's mount.
He picked Centaine up in the field of his gunsight. She was galloping back towards the mopani, lying flat over her horse's neck, her elbows pumping, a man hanging from her stirrup, and Lothar lifted his forefinger from the curve of the trigger. It was an instinctive reaction; he could not bring himself to send a bullet anywhere near
