It sat close by, just out of his reach. He had not realized the size of the creature. It seemed to tower over him as he sat. Close up it was even more hideous. Its naked head and neck were raw scaly red, and it reeked of carrion.
He snatched up a stone from the pile at his side and hurled it with all his strength. It glanced off the vulture's gleaming funereal plumage. The creature spread its huge wings, wider than he was tall, and hopped back a little, then folded them again.
'Leave me, you foul beast!' he sobbed with terror. At the sound of his voice, it raised its feathers, and ducked the monstrous head on its shoulders, but that was its only reaction. The day drew on and the heat of the sun rose until Le Riche felt that he was trapped in a bread oven, barely able to breathe, and his thirst became a terrible torment.
The vulture sat like a carved cathedral gargoyle and watched him. His senses reeled and the darkness drew in on him. The bird must have sensed it also, for suddenly it spread its wings like a black canopy. It uttered a guttural squawk and bounded towards him, hopping on spread talons. Its hooked beak gaped wide open. Le Riche howled with terror, snatched up the stick from his lap and struck out wildly. He fetched the vulture a blow along its naked neck, with just enough force to knock it
off-balance. But it used its wings to recover and hopped back out of his reach again. It folded its wings and resumed its inscrutable vigil.
It was the vulture's indefatigable patience that drove him beyond the bounds of sanity. He raved at it through lips swollen with thirst and cracked by the baking sun until the blood dripped from his chin. The vulture never moved, except to blink its glittering eyes. In his madness he threw his precious stick at its head, his weapon of last resort. The vulture lifted its wings and croaked as the stick glanced off its armoured plumage. Then it settled down again to wait.
The sun reached its zenith, and Le Riche raved and shouted, challenging God and the devil, swearing at the patient bird. He scratched up handfuls of dust and sand to throw at it, until his fingernails were broken off to the quick. He sucked his bleeding fingers to find moisture to slake his thirst, but the dirt clogged his swollen tongue.
He thought about the stream they had crossed on their way here, but it was at least half a mile back down the valley. The picture of the cold tumbling waters excited his dementia. He left the illusionary shelter of the thorn tree, and started crawling slowly back along the rocky pathway towards the river. His feet flopped along behind him, and the crusted sabre cuts burst open and started bleeding again. The vulture smelt the blood, squawked hoarsely and hopped along behind him. Le Riche covered less than a hundred paces, and told himself, 'I will rest for a while.' He lowered his face on to his arm, and lapsed into unconsciousness. The pain woke him. It was as though a dozen spear-heads were being driven into his back.
The vulture was perched between his shoulder-blades, its curved talons locked deeply in his flesh. It was flapping its wings to maintain its balance as it lowered its head and, with a slash of its beak, tore away his shirt. Then it stuck in the hooked, pointed tip and ripped away a long strip of his flesh.
Le Riche screamed hysterically, and rolled over trying to crush the bird under his own body, but with a flap of its wings it rose and settled again close by.
Although his eyesight was blurring and wavering he watched it swallow his flesh, stretching its neck and gulping to force it down. Then it lifted its head and turned its eyes upon him again, holding his gaze unflinchingly.
He knew that it was waiting for him to slip once more into unconsciousness. He sat up and tried to remain alert, singing and shouting at it and clapping his hands, but slowly his voice became an incoherent mumble, his arms fell to his sides and his eyes closed.
This time when he came awake he could not believe the intensity of the pain that overwhelmed him. There was a battering whirlwind of wings around his head and it felt as though a steel hook had been driven through his eye-socket, that his brains were being drawn out of his skull.
He thrashed around weakly on his back, no longer with the strength to cry out, and tried to open his eyes, but he was blind and he could feel sheets of hot blood pouring down his face, filling his good eye, mouth and nostrils so that he was drowning in it.
He reached up with both hands, clutching at the bird's scaly neck, and realized that the bird had driven its beak deep into one of his eye sockets. It was pulling out his eyeball on the long rubbery string that contained the optic nerve.
They always go for the eyes, he thought, with final resignation, past any further resistance. Blinded and now too weak to lift his hands he listened to the bird somewhere close at hand, gulping down his eyeball. He tried to peer at it through his remaining eye, but it was obscured by a streaming river of blood, too copious for him to blink away. Then the buffeting of heavy wing strokes burst around his head again. The last thing he felt was the point of the beak being driven deeply into his other eye.
Oudeman rode close behind Xhia, holding him on a long rope like a hunting dog on a leash. They all knew that if Xhia left them, perhaps slipping away into the night, none of them was likely to find his way out of this wilderness and back to the distant colony. After the treatment he had received from Koots, this eventuality was more than just a possibility, so they took turns to guard Xhia, keeping him on the rope night and day.
They crossed another small clear stream and turned a corner in the valley between two tall pinnacles of stone. An extraordinary vista opened before them. Their senses had become dulled by the wild grandeur of these mountains, but now they reined in their horses and stared in astonishment.
Xhia began to sing, a plaintive, repetitive chant, shuffling and dancing, as he looked up at the sacred cliffs that rose in front of them. Even Koots was awed. The riven walls of rock seemed to reach to the very sky, and the clouds rolled over the summit, like spilled milk.
Suddenly Xhia leaped high in the air and uttered a dreadful shriek, which startled Koots and raised the fine hair on his forearms. Xhia's cry
was picked up in the great basin of stone, and flung back in a glissando of descending echoes.
'Hear the voices of my ancestors answer me!' Xhia cried, and jumped again. 'O holy ones, O wise ones, give me leave to enter.'
'Enter! Enter!' the echoes answered him and, still dancing and singing, Xhia led them up the scree to the foot of the cliffs. The walls of lichen covered stone seemed to hang over them, and the clouds flying over the tops gave the illusion that the cliff was toppling down on them. The wind thrummed through the turrets and towers of stone like the voices of the long- dead, and the troopers were silent, their horses fidgeting nervously.
Half- way up the scree a massive boulder blocked their way. In ancient time it had fallen out of the cliff face and tumbled down to this resting place. It was the size of a cottage and so almost perfectly rectangular that it might have been shaped by human hand. Koots saw that in the near side of the block there was a small natural shrine. A strange collection of objects was laid in the niche: horns of blue buck and rhebuck so old they were encrusted with the cocoons of the bacon beetle, the skull of a baboon and the wings of a heron, dry and brittle with age, a calabash half filled with pretty agate and quartz pebbles, water-worn and polished, a necklace of beads chipped from ostrich egg, flint arrow-heads and a quiver that was rotted and cracked.
'We must leave gifts here for the Old People,' Xhia said, and Goffel translated.
Koots looked uncomfortable. 'What gifts?' he asked.
'Something to eat or drink, and something pretty,' Xhia told him. 'Your little shiny bottle.'
'No!' Koots said, but without conviction. He had been saving the last few inches of Hollands gm in his silver flask, rationing himself to an occasional sip.
The Old People will be angry,' Xhia warned. 'They will conceal the sign from us.'
Koots wavered, then reluctantly unfastened the flap of his saddlebag and brought out the silver flask. Xhia reached up for it, but Koots kept his grip. 'If you fail me again, I will have no further use for you, except to fatten the jackals.' He gave up the flask.
Chanting softly Xhia approached the shrine and poured a few drops of the gin down the face of the rock. Then he picked up a fist-sized stone and battered the metal flask. Koots winced, but kept silent. Xhia placed the flask with the other offerings in the niche, then backed away, still singing softly.
'Now what do we do?' Koots demanded. This place made him nervous. He wanted to be gone. 'What about the spoor?'
'If the Old People are pleased with your gift they will reveal it to us. We must go on into the sacred places,' Xhia told him. 'First you must take this rope from my neck, or the Old People will be angered that you treat one of their own tribe in this manner.'
Koots looked doubtful, but Xhia's plea made good sense. He reached a decision. He drew his musket from its sheath and cocked the hammer. Tell him that he must stay close. If he tries to run, I will ride him down and shoot him like a rabid dog. This gun is loaded with goose-shot and he has seen me shoot. He knows I don't miss,' he ordered Goffel, and waited while he translated for the little Bushman.
'Turn him loose.' He nodded to Oudeman. Xhia made no attempt to escape, and they followed him up to the base of the cliff. Abruptly Xhia vanished, as though by the magic of his forefathers.
With a shout of anger, Koots spurred his horse forward, his
