top of Rowland Ward.' He was referring to the register of big game which
was the Bible of the trophy hunter. 'Don't you want to take him,
English?' He ran to the nearest mule and pulled the Rigby rifle from its
slip case, then ran back and offered it to Nicholas.
'Let him go.' Nicholas shook his head. 'Only dik-dik for me.'
With a flirt of his white powder-puff tail, the bull was gone over the
ridge. Boris shook his head disgustedly and spat into the river.
'Why did he try to insist that you kill it?' Royan demanded as they went
on.
'A photograph of a record pair of horns like that would look good on his
advertising brochure. Suck in them clients.'
All day they followed the winding trail, and in the late afternoon they
camped in a clearing above the river where it was evident that other
caravans had camped many times before them. It seemed obvious that this
road was divided into time-honoured stages: every traveller took three
full days from the top of the falls to reach the monastery, and they all
camped at the same sites.
'Sorry. No shower here,' Boris told his clients. 'If you want to wash,
there is a safe pool around the first bend upstream.'
Royan looked appealingly at Nicholas, 'I am so tired and sweaty. Please
won't you stand guard for me, where you can hear me call if I need you?'
So he lay on the mossy bank just below the bend, out of sight but close
enough to hear her splash and squeal at the cold embrace of the water.
Once when he turned his head he realized that the current must have
drifted her downstream, for through the trees he caught a flash of a
naked back, and the curve of a buttock, creamy and glistening wet with
water. He looked away again guiltily, but he was startled by the
intensity of his physical arousal brought on by that brief glimpse of
lambent skin dappled with the late sunlight through the trees.
When she came downstream along the bank, singing softly, towelling her
wet hair, she called to him, 'Your turn.
Do you want me to stand guard for you?'
'I am a big boy now.' He shook his head, but as she passed him he
noticed the saucy glint in her eye, and he ly if she had been fully
aware of just how wondered sudden far downstream she had swum, and how
much he had seen.
He was titillated by the thought.
He went upstream to the pool alone, and as he stripped he looked down at
himself and felt guilty when he saw how she had moved him- Since
Rosalind, no other woman had had this effect on him.
'A nice cold plunge won't do you any harm, my lad.' He threw his jeans
over a bush, and dived into the pool.
sat at the campfire after the evening meal, olas looked up suddenly and
cocked his
'Am I hearing things?' he wondered.
'No,' Tessay laughed. 'That is singing you hear. The priests from the
monastery are coming to welcome us.'
They saw the torches then, winding up the hillside in procession,
flickering through the trees as they approached the camp. The muleteers
