worried at the edge of the thicket, calling to him with small mewling entreaties. When he did not respond, she followed him into the thicket and lay down beside him. She licked at his wound, and the lion closed his eyes and began to pant softly as the pain began.
It swelled in his body, becoming a vast, suffocating weight that grew and grew within him, seeming to distend his belly until it was at the point of bursting. The lion groaned softly and bit at his flank, trying to kill this thing within him, this living agony that was feeding on his entrails.
The lioness attempted to distract him. She was confused and worried, and she wriggled around and pressed her hindquarters into his face, offering him her swollen, weeping genitalia, but the lion closed his eyes and turned his head away, each breath rasping like a wood saw in his throat.
Then he heard voices again, the whispering voices of men, and he raised his head and his eyes burned yellow and fierce as he found a focus for his suffering. Hatred grew out of the agony of his belly, and his rage was dark and all-engulfing.
Something crashed into the branches of the wild ebony thicket above his head and he growled, a rattling exhalation of air through his tortured throat.
Slowly they went forward into the grass. It reached above their heads, enclosing them so closely they could see no more than two or three paces ahead.
The lion's blood was painted on the grass and the stems were pushed over by the passage of his body, so the trail was easy to follow. The blood on the grass gave Sean and Matatu the exact height of the wound, and the feces mixed with the blood told them the bowels had been penetrated. It was a mortal wound, but death would be slow and agonizing.
Within twenty yards of entering the grass Matatu paused and indicated the puddle of dark, tarry blood. 'He stopped here,' he whispered.
Sean nodded. 'He won't have gone far,' he guessed. He's waiting for us, Matatu, and when he comes, you run back behind me. Do you hear me?'
Matatu grinned at him. They both knew he would not obey.
Matatu had never run; he would stand the charge as he always did.
'All right, you silly little bugger.' Sean was tense. 'Get on with it.'
&
'You Silly little bugger,' Matatu repeated happily. He knew Sean only called him that when particularly proud of him or pleased with him.
They moved along the blood spoor, pausing every three or four paces while Sean lobbed pebbles into the grass ahead of them.
When there was no response, they moved cautiously forward again.
Behind him Sean could hear the click, click of the safety catch on the Rigby. Riccardo was snapping it on and off as they advanced, a nervous gesture that betrayed his agitation. Although the sound irritated him, Sean felt a stir of admiration for the man.
This was probably one of the most dangerous activities in which a man could engage. They don't come much worse than a gutshot lion in close cover. This was Sean's job, but for Riccardo it was a once-in-a-lifetime test, and he had not failed it yet.
Sean tossed another pebble into the grass ahead and listened to it rattle on the branch of a low tree.
As they went on, Sean thought about fear. For some men fear was a crippling and destroying emotion, but for those like Sean it was an addiction. He loved the sensation of fear. It was like a drug flowing through his veins, heightening all his senses, so he could feel the checkering on the polished walnut stock of the rifle under his fingers and the brush of each blade of grass against his bare legs. His vision was so enhanced that he saw it all through a crystal lens that magnified and dramatized each image. He could taste the very air he breathed and smell the crushed grass under his feet and the blood of the lion they were following. He was vividly, vibrantly alive, and he gave himself up to fear, as an addict would to a syringeful of heroin.
He tossed another pebble into the ebony thicket that stood like an island in the sea of grass just ahead of them. It fell through the branches, rattling and crackling, and the lion growled from the depths of the thicket.
The fear of death was so pleasurable as to be almost unbearable, an emotional orgasm, stronger than any woman had ever given him, and he slid the safety catch off the rifle and said, exultation in his voice, 'He's coming, Matatu. Run!' Time slowed down, another phenomenon produced by fear.
From the corner of his eye he saw Riccardo Monterro step up beside him, taking his place in the firing line, and he knew what it was costing him.
'Good man!' he said loudly, and at the sound of his voice, the branches of the ebony thicket shook as a heavy body rushed through them. Suddenly there was a terrifying, growling, grunting uproar coming straight at them.
Matatu stood perfectly still, like a guardsman on parade.
Matatu had never run. Sean stepped up on one side of him and Riccardo on the other, and they lifted their rifles and aimed into the wall of grass as that thing rushed in on them, flattening the tall stems with its charge, roaring now, blasts of sound that were like a physical assault on their senses.
The grass opened in their faces and a huge, tawny body hurled itself on them.
They fired together, and the crash of gunfire drowned the enraged roaring. Sean fired the second barrel, the two shots sounding as one, and the huge 750-grain bullet tore into the charging animal, stopping it as though it had run into a cliff. Riccardo was working the bolt of the Rigby, and a rolling echo of gunfire filled the air around them.
The dead animal fell at their feet, and they stood with rifles raised, staring down at the bleeding carcass, dazed by the swiftness and the savagery and the beat of gunfire in their heads.
In the silence Shadrach stepped forward. Like Matatu, he had stood his ground. Now he stooped to the carcass, then jerked back and shouted aloud what they had not yet fully realized.
'It's not the lion!'
As he said it, the lion charged. He came straight at them out of the thicket as his mate had done but even more swiftly, driven by the agony in his belly and the black rage that filled him. He came grunting like a locomotive at full throttle, and they were unprepared, their rifles unloaded, bunched up too closely around the carcass of the lioness, and Shadrach was between them and the lion.
The lion came bursting out of the tall grass in full charge and seized Shadrach in his jaws, biting into his hip. The momentum of its charge carried it into the knot of men standing close behind Shadrach.
It knocked them all off their feet. Sean went over backward, crashing into the earth on his shoulder blades and the back of his neck with stunning force. He was holding the rifle in front of his chest, instinctively trying to protect it from damage as he went down, and the engraved barrels slammed into his sternum as he hit the earth. Pain shot through his chest, but he held on to the weapon and rolled onto his side.
Ten feet away the lion was savaging Shadrach. It had him pinned under its massive paws as it mauled his hip and upper leg.
'Thank God it's not a leopard,' Sean thought as he broke open the rifle to reload. A leopard will not fix on one man if it attacks a group of hunters. It will bound from one to the other in rapid succession, maiming and killing all of them with dazzling speed.
Furthermore, a leopard's main prey is the baboon, so it knows precisely how to dispatch a primate. It goes instinctively for the head, taking off the scalp and top of the skull, while its back legs kick down the belly, stripping out the intestines with hooked yellow claws very quickly, very efficiently.
'Thank God it's not a leopard.' The great beast was fixed on Shadrach, pinning him with its claws, worrying the leg, and with each growl a scarlet spray of blood puffed out of its jaws. The Matabele gun bearer was screaming and beating ineffectually at the huge maned head with both clenched fists.
Sean saw Riccardo in the grass beyond them, scrambling to his knees and crawling toward where the Rigby rifle had been thrown.
'Don't shoot, Capo!' Sean yelled at him. In a melee like this one, an inexperienced man with a loaded rifle was many times more dangerous than the attacking animal. The bullets of the Rigby would crack through the lion's body and smash into anybody beyond.
Sean had two spare cartridges held between the fingers of his left hand. It was the old hunter's trick for the fast reload, and he slid the two cartridges into the empty breeches and snapped the action shut.
The lion was chewing on Shadrach's lower body. Sean could hear the bone crunch and crackle like dry toast under those dreadful fangs. His nostrils were full of the fetid, gamy smell of the lion, of dust and the reek of blood of man and beast.
Beyond them he saw that Riccardo had the rifle. He was on his knees, his face ashen with shock, cramming cartridges into the breech of the Rigby.
'Don't shoot!' Sean yelled again. The lion was directly between them.
A bullet that hit the animal would come straight on to him.
It takes a special technique to shoot an attacking animal off a prostrate man without killing them both. It was deadly dangerous to run up to them and shoot down into the animal's body with the man lying under it.
