‘Friend!’ I called again. ‘I am of your people. I am of your clan.’
I went slowly down into the silent hostile grove. There was no response to my words, no sound nor movement. Ahead of me lay a fallen tree. I began sliding towards it, my guts a hard ball of tension and fear.
‘I carry no weapon,’ I called, and the grove was quiet and sinister in the hush of the afternoon.
I had almost reached the fallen tree, when I heard the twang of the bow and I dived for the shelter of the dead trunk. Close beside my head the arrow fluted, humming in the silence, and I went down. My face was pressed into the dry earth, my heart frozen with fear at the close passage of such hideous death.
I heard footsteps, running, from behind me and I rolled over on my side to defend myself.
Sally was running down the wild fig roots towards me, ignoring my instructions, her face a pale mask of deathly terror, her mouth open in a silent scream. She had seen me fall and lie still, and the thought of me dead had triggered her panic. Now as I moved she realized her mistake, and she faltered in her run, suddenly aware of her own vulnerability.
‘Get back, Sal,’ I yelled. ‘Get back!’ Her uncertainty turned to dismay and she stopped, stranded halfway between the cavern entrance and my dead tree-trunk, undecided on which way to move.
In the edge of my vision I saw the little yellow bushman rise from a patch of pale grass. There was an arrow notched to his bow and the feathered flights were drawn back to his cheek as he aimed. He was fifty paces from where Sally hovered, and he held his aim for a second.
I dived across the space that separated Sally from me at the instant the bushman released the arrow. The arrow and I flew on an interception course, two sides of a triangle with Sally at the apex.
I saw the humming blur of the arrow flash in belly-high at Sally and I knew I could not reach her before it struck. I threw the flattened leather case with a despairing underhand flick of my wrist as I dived towards her. It cart-wheeled lazily, spinning in the air - and the arrow slapped into it. The deadly iron tip, with the poison-smeared barbs, bit into the tough leather of the case. Arrow and case fell harmlessly at Sally’s feet, and I picked her up in my arms and spinning on my heels, doubled up under her weight. I raced back towards the cover of the dead tree- trunk.
The bushman was still on his knees in the grass ahead of me He reached over his shoulder and pulled another arrow from his quiver, in one smoothly practised movement he had notched and drawn.
This time there was no hope of dodging, and I ran on grimly. The bow-string sang, the arrow flew, and instantly I felt a violent jerk at my neck. I knew I was hit, and with Sally still in my arms we fell behind the dead tree- trunk.
‘I think I’m hit, Sal.’ I could feel the arrow dangling against my chest as I rolled away from her. ‘Break off the shaft - don’t try and pull it out against the barbs.’
We lay facing each other, our eyes only a few inches apart Strangely, now that I was a dead man I felt no fear,,The thing was done, even if I was hit a dozen more times, my fate would be unaltered. It remained only to get Sally safely away before the poison did its work.
She reached out with shaking hands and took the frail reed arrow, lifting it gingerly - and then her face cleared.
‘Your collar, Ben, it’s lodged in the collar of your jacket. It hasn’t touched you.’
Relief washed through me as I ran my hands up the shaft of the arrow, and found that I was not dead. Carefully lying on my side while Sally held the tip of the arrow away from my flesh, I shrugged off my light khaki jacket. For a moment I stared in revulsion at the hand-forged iron arrow-head with the sticky toffee-coloured material clogging the wicked barbs, then I threw jacket and arrow aside.
‘God, that was close,’ I whispered. ‘Listen, Sal, I think there is only one of them here. He’s a young man, panicky, probably as afraid as we are. I will try to talk to him again.’
I wriggled forward against the reassuring solidity of the dead tree, and raised my voice in the most persuasive tones that would pass my parched throat.
‘I am your friend. Though you fly your arrows at me, I will not war with you. I have lived with your people, I am one with you. How else do I speak your language?’
A deathly, impenetrable silence.
‘How else do I speak the tongue of the people?’ I asked again, and strained my ears for a sound.
Then the bushman spoke, his voice a high-pitched fluting, broken up with soft ducking and clicking sounds.
‘The devils of the forest speak in many tongues. I close my ears to your deceits.’
‘I am no devil. I have lived as one of yours. Did you never hear of the one named the Sunbird,’ I used my bushman name, ‘who stayed with the people of Xhai and became their brother?’
Another long silence followed, but now I sensed that the little bushman was undecided, puzzled, no longer afraid and deadly.
‘Do you know of the old man named Xhai?’
‘I know of him,’ admitted the bushman, and I breathed a little easier.
‘Did you hear of the one they called the Sunbird?’
Another long pause, then reluctantly, ‘I have heard men speak of it.’
‘I am that one.’
Now the silence went on for ten minutes or more. I knew the bushman was considering my claim from every possible angle. At last he spoke again.
‘Xhai and I hunt together this season. Even now he comes, before darkness he will be here. We will wait for him.’
‘We will wait for him,’ I agreed.
