and flat scaly heads, which blew so loudly that they were called puff-adders.
She began moving backwards carefully staring into the clump of first growth wit-els from which the sound had come. She saw small movement, but it was some seconds before she realized what she was seeing.
The lion cub was flat on its belly in the dappled shadow of the thicket, and its own dappled baby spots blended beautifully against the bed of dried leaves and leaf mould on which it lay.
The cub had learned already the first lesson of concealment, absolute stillness; except for his two round fluffy ears. The ears flicked back and forth, signalling clearly every emotion and intention. He stared at Marion with wide round eyes that had not yet turned the ferocious yellow of full growth, but were still hazed with the bluish glaze of kittenhood. His whiskers bristled stiffly, and his ears signalled wildly conflicting messages.
Flattening against the skull: One step nearer and I'll tear you to pieces. Shooting out sideways: One step nearer and I'll die of fright. Coming up and cupping forward: What the hell are you anyway? Oh, exclaimed Marion. You darling little thing. She set down the basket, and squatted. She extended one hand and made soft cooing noises. There's a darling. Are you all alone then, poor baby?
She moved forward slowly, still talking and cooing. Nobody's going to hurt you, baby. The cub was uncertain, its ears rising into an attitude of curiosity and indecision as it stared at her. Are you all alone then? You'll make a lovely pet for my own baby, won't you? Closer and closer she edged, and the cub warned her with a half-hearted apologetic hiss.
What a cheeky darling we are, Marion smiled and squatted three feet from the cub.
How are we going to take you home? Marion asked. Will you fit in the basket? In the river bed, the lioness carried the second cub through the shallows, and was followed by one of the heroes of the litter, struggling along gamely through the thick white sand. However, when he reached the edge of the shallow stream and tested it with one paw, his newfound courage deserted him at the cold wet touch, and he sat down and wept bitterly.
The lioness, by this time almost wild with distraction and frustration, turned back, and dropped her burden which immediately set off in clumsy gallop for the jessie thicket again, then she seized the weeping hero instead and trotted back through the stream and set off determinedly for the far bank.
Her huge round pads made no sound in the soft earth as she came up the bank, carrying the cub.
Marion heard the crackling spluttering explosion of sound behind her, and she whirled to her feet in one movement.
The lioness crouched on the lip of the bank fifty yards away. It warned her again with that terrible sound.
All that Marion saw were the eyes. They were a blazing yellow, a ferocious terrifying yellow, and she screamed, a wild high ringing, rising sound.
The sound launched the lioness into her charge, and it came with an unbelievably fluid flowing speed that turned into a yellow rushing blur. She snaked in low, and the sand spurted beneath her paws, all claws fully extended, the lips drawn back in a fixed silent snarl, the teeth exposed, long and white and pointed.
Marion turned to run, and had gone five paces when the lioness took her. She pulled her down with a swipe of a forepaw across the small of her back and five curved yellow claws cut deeply, four inches through skin and muscle, opening the abdominal cavity like a sabre cut, crushing the vertebrae and bursting both kidneys instantaneously.
It was a blow that would have killed even a full-grown ox, and it hurled Marion twenty feet forward, but as she fell on her back, the lioness was on her again.
The jaws were wide open, the long white fangs framed the deep wet pink cavern of tongue and throat. In an instant of incredibly heightened perception, Marion saw the smooth ridges of firm pink flesh that covered the arched roof of the lioness mouth in regular patterns, and she smelt the meaty stink of her breath.
Marian lay twisted under the great yellow cat, she was still screaming and her lower body lay at an odd angle from the shattered spine, but she lifted both arms to protect her face.
The lioness bit into the forearms, just below the elbows and the bone crunched sharply, shattering into slivers and splinters in the mangled flesh, both arms were severed almost through.
Then the lioness seized Marion's shoulder, and worried it until the long eye teeth meshed through broken bone and fat and tissue, and Marion kept screaming, twisting and writhing under the cat.
The lioness took a long time to kill her, confused by her own anger and the unfamiliar taste and shape of the victim.
She tore and bit and ripped for almost a minute before she found the throat.
When the lioness stood up at last, her head and neck were a gory mask, her fur sticky and sodden with blood.
Her tail still lashed from side to side in residual anger, but she licked her face with a long dextrous tongue and her lip curled at the sweet unfamiliar flavour. She wiped her face carefully with her paws before trotting back to her cub, and licking him also with long pink protective strokes.
Marion's broken torn body lay where she left it, until Pungushe's wives came, a little before sundown.
Mark and Pungushe crossed the river in darkness with the moonlight turning the sand-banks to ghostly grey, and the round white moon itself reflected perfectly in the still mirror-surface of the pool below the main camp. The turbulence of their fording shattered the image into a thousand points of light, like a crystal glass flung on to a stone floor.
As they rode up the bank, they heard the death wall in the night, that terrible keening, the mourning of Zulu women. The men halted involuntarily, the sound striking dread into both of them. Come! shouted Mark and kicked one foot from the stirrup. Pungushe grabbed the leather and swung off his feet as Mark lashed Trojan into a gallop and they tore up the hill.
The fire that the women had lit threw a grotesque yellow wavering glow, and weird dancing shadows.
The four women sat in a group around the long, karosswrapped bundle.
None of them looked up as the men ran forward into the firelight. Who is it? Mark demanded. What has happened? Pungushe seized his eldest wife by the shoulders, and shook her, trying to interrupt the hysteria of
