Mek Nimmur was on his way back to his own stronghold.
Boris estimated that he had between fifteen and twenty men with him. It
was difficult to be certain, for the tracks on the pathway overlapped
each other, and of course he would have scouts on the'point ahead of him
and sweeping his flanks. There would also be a rear guard dragging the
trail behind him.
They were making good time, but such a large party would not be able to
outpace a single pursuer. He was sure he was gaining on them. He
reckoned that he had started four hours behind them, but judging by
recent signs he was now less than two hours adrift.
Without breaking his trot, he stooped to pick thing up from the path. As
he ran on he examined it. It was a twig, the soft tip shoot of a
kusagga-sagga plant that grew beside the track. One of the men ahead of
him had brushed against it as he passed, and snapped it off the main
branch. It gave Boris a fairly accurate gauge of how far he was behind.
Even in the heat of the gorge, the tender shoot had barely begun to
wilt. He was even closer than he had estimated.
He slowed down., a little as he considered his next move. He knew this
part of the valley fairly well. The previous year he had hunted over
much of this terrain with an American client, who had been looking for a
trophy Walia ibex. They had spent almost a month combing these same
gullies and wooded ravines before they had brought down a huge old ram,
black with age and carrying a pair of curled, back-sweeping horns that
ranked as the tenth largest ever in the Rowland Ward record book.
He knew that two or three miles ahead the Nile began another oxbow loop
out to the south, and that it then doubled back upon itself. The main
trail followed the river, because a series of sheer and formidable
cliffs guarded the high groupd in the centre of the loop of the river.
It was, however, possible to cut the corner. Boris had'done it before,
while following the wounded ibex.
The American hunter had not killed cleanly his bullet had struck the ram
too far back, missing the heartlung cavity and piercing the gut. The
stricken wild goat had taken to the high ground, following one of its
secret paths up amongst the crags. Boris and the American had followed
it up and over the mountain. Boris remembered how dangerous and
treacherous the path had been, but when it descended the far side of the
mountain it had cut off nearly ten miles.
If he could find the beginning of the goat path again, there was every
chance that he would be able to get ahead of Mek Nimmur and be lying in
wait for him on the far side. That would give him an enormous advantage.
The guerrilla leader would be expecting pursuit, not ambush.
He would be covering his back trail, and it was highly unlikely that
Boris would be able to slip past the rear guard without alerting his
intended victims. On the other hand, once he was ahead of them he would
be in control. Then he could choose his own killing ground.
As the trail and the main flow of the Nile started to turn away towards
the south, he kept watching the high ground above it, seeking a familiar
landmark. He had not gone another half-mile before he found it. Here
there was a break in the line of dark cliffs, a heavily forested
reentrant, that cut into the wall of basalt.
