it out on my family. My father--' Jim broke off. The consequences were too terrible to think about.
'Keyser is no dumbhead,' Bakkat went on. 'He knows by now that we are going to a meeting with your father. If he does not know where, all he has to do is follow us. If you are not going to kill him, you will need
help from the Kulu Kulu himself to throw Xhia off our spoor. I could not be certain of doing it even if I were travelling alone. But now we are three men, a girl who has never been in the wilderness before, two horses and six loaded mules. What hope do we have against the eyes, nose and magic of Xhia?'
They reached another ridgeline where they stopped to rest Drumfire and let the pursuit come in sight once again.
'Where are we, Bakkat?' Jim rose in the stirrups and gazed around at the awe-inspiring chaos of mountain and valley that surrounded them.
This place has no name for ordinary men do not come here, unless they are lost or mad.'
Then which way are the sea and the colony?' He found it difficult to keep a sense of direction in the maze of the mountains.
Bakkat pointed without hesitation, and Jim squinted at the sun to check his bearings, but he did not question Bakkat's infallibility. 'How far?'
'Not far if you ride on an eagle's back.' Bakkat shrugged. 'Perhaps eight days if you know the road, and travel fast.'
'Keyset must be running out of supplies by now. Even we are down to the last bag of chagga, and twenty pounds of maize meal.'
'He will eat his spare horses before he gives up and lets you go to the meeting with your father,' Bakkat predicted.
Late that afternoon they watched, from a safe distance, as Sergeant Oudeman selected one of the horses from the remount herd and led it into a ravine near where Keyser's troop were camped. While Oudeman held its head, and Richter and Le Riche stropped their knives on a rock, Koots checked the flint and priming in his pistol. Then he walked up to the animal and placed the muzzle against the white blaze on its forehead. The shot was muted but the horse dropped instantly and kicked convulsively.
'Horse steaks for dinner,' Jim murmured, 'and Keyser has food for another week at the least.' He lowered his telescope. 'Bakkat, we cannot go on like this much longer. My father will not wait for ever at the Gariep.'
'How many horses do they have left?' Bakkat asked as he picked his nose thoughtfully, and examined what he had excavated.
Jim lifted the glass again and ran it over the distant herd. '... sixteen, seventeen, eighteen,' he counted. 'Eighteen, including Keyser's grey.' He studied Bakkat's face, but it was innocent. The horses? Yes, of course!' he exclaimed. Bakkat's studied expression broke and his face creased into an impish grin. 'Yes. Their horses are the only way for us to attack them.'
The pursuit drove them on relentlessly into wild country where not even Bakkat had ventured before. Twice they saw game once a herd of four eland crossing the skyline, then fifty beautiful blue buck in a single herd together. But if they had turned aside to pursue the animals they would have lost ground and the gunfire would have brought Keyser and his troopers on at full tilt he would be with them before they could butcher their kill. If they shot one of the mules, the same thing would happen. They rode on with the last of their provisions almost gone. Jim hoarded the last handful of coffee beans.
Gradually the pace Zama could maintain with Louisa and the mules fell off. The gap between the two parties dwindled until Jim and Bakkat caught up with them. Still Keyset's troopers came on apace, so that Jim's little band had more and more difficulty holding them off. Fresh horse steaks grilled over the fire seemed to have restored the strength and determination of Keyser's troopers. Louisa was flagging. She had been emaciated before the chase began, and now, with little food and rest, she was nearing the limit of her endurance.
To add to Jim's worries other hunters had joined the chase. Sleeping fitfully in the darkness, cold and hungry, unable to afford time during daylight even to collect firewood, expecting at any moment that Keyser's men might creep up on them, they were startled awake by a terrible sound. Louisa screamed before she could stop herself.
'What is that?'
Jim leaped out of his fur kaross and went to her. He put an arm round her shoulders. She was so terrified that she did not pull away. The sound came again: a series of deep grunts, each louder than the last, crescendoing into a thunder that echoed and rolled off the dark mountains.
'What is it?' Louisa's voice shook.
'Lions,' Jim told her. There was no point in trying to deceive her so, instead, he tried to distract her. 'Even the bravest of men is frightened by a lion three times- when first he sees its spoor, when first he hears its roar, when first he meets it face to face.'
'Once is enough for me,' she said, and although her voice quavered, she gave a small, uncertain laugh. Jim felt a lift of pride at her courage. Then he dropped his arm from her shoulders as he felt her shift uncomfortably in his embrace. She still could not bear a masculine touch. They are after the horses,' he told her. 'If fortune favours us, they might go after Keyser's animals instead of ours.' As if in answer to
his wish, a few minutes later they heard a fusillade of musket fire further back down the valley where they had seen the enemy set up camp at nightfall.
'The lions must be on our side.' Louisa laughed again, a little more convincingly- At intervals during the rest of the night there came the clap of a distant musket shot.
'The lions are still harassing Keyser's camp,' Jim said. 'With luck they will lose some horses.'
At dawn as they began their flight again, Jim looked back through the telescope and saw that Keyser had lost none of his horses. 'They were able to drive off the lions, more's the pity,' he told Louisa.
'Let's hope they try again tonight,' she said.
It was the hardest day they had so far been forced to endure. During the afternoon a thunderstorm swept down from the north-west and drenched them with cold, driving rain. It blew over just as the sun was setting, and in the last light of the day they saw the enemy less than a league behind them, coming on steadily. Jim continued the retreat long after dark. It was a nightmare march over wet and treacherous ground, through rills that had swollen dangerously with rain. Jim knew in his heart that they could not carry on like this much longer.
When at last they halted Louisa almost fell from Trueheart's back. Jim wrapped her in a sodden fur kaross and gave her a small stick of chagga, almost the last of their food.
'You have it. I am not hungry,' she protested.
'Eat it,' he commanded. 'No time for heroics now.'
She slumped and fell asleep before she had taken more than a few mouthfuls. Jim went to where Zama and Bakkat were sitting together. 'This is just about the end,' he said grimly. 'We have to do it tonight, or not at all. We have to get at their horses.' They had been planning all that day, but it would be a forlorn attempt. Although he kept a bold face, Jim knew it was almost certainly doomed.
Bakkat was the only one of them who had any chance at all of thwarting Xhia's vigilance and getting into the enemy camp undiscovered, and he could not un tether all eighteen horses and bring them out on his own.
'One or two, yes,' he told Jim, 'but not eighteen.'
'We must take all of them.' He looked up at the sky. A sickle moon sailed through the streaming remnants of the rain clouds 'Just enough light to do the job.'
'Bakkat could get into the horse lines and cripple them, hamstring them,' Zama suggested.
Jim shifted uneasily: the idea of mutilating a horse was distasteful.
'The first animal would scream so loudly Bakkat would have the whole camp down on him. No, that won't work.'
At that moment Bakkat sprang to his feet and sniffed loudly. 'Hold the horses!' he cried. 'Quickly! The lions are here.'
Zama ran to Trueheart and seized her halter rope. Bakkat darted to the mules to control them. They would be more docile than the two thoroughbreds. Jim was only just in time. He grabbed Drumfire's head as the stallion reared on his hind legs and whinnied shrilly with terror. Jim was lifted off his feet but he managed to throw an arm around Drumfire's neck, and hold him down. 'Steady, my darling. Whoa now! Easy! Easy!' he soothed him. But still the horse stamped and reared and tried to break away. Jim shouted across at Bakkat, 'What is it? What's happening?'
'It's the lion,' Bakkat panted. 'Foul demon! He has circled upwind, and squirted his stinking piss for the horses to smell. The lioness will be waiting down wind to catch any that break away.'
'Sweet Christ!' Jim exclaimed. 'Even I can smell it!' It was a rank feline stench in the back of his throat, more repulsive than the spray of a tomcat. Drumfire reared again. The odour was driving him crazy. He was beyond control. This time Jim knew he could not hold him. He still had both arms around the stallion's neck but his feet barely touched die ground. Drumfire broke into a gallop dragging Jim along with him.
'The lioness!' Bakkat yelled. 'Beware! The lioness is waiting for you.'
Drumfire's hoofs thundered over the rocky ground, and Jim felt as though his arms were being wrenched out of their sockets.
'Let him go, Somoya. You cannot stop him!' Bakkat screamed after
