Power Of The Sword Part 45

Heed my words, an eye for an eye! Centaine ran across the room and flung herself against the door. Throwing it open, she ran down the pa.s.sage. Blaine was coming up the staircase at a run. He tried to hold her, but she tore herself from his grasp and rushed out through the front doors to where the Daimler was parked.

She had been driving for many hours, driving fast with the accelerator pressed to the floorboards, keeping the great seven-litre engine at a long sustained bellow, sending a tall pale column of dust into the sky behind her, before she consciously realized she was going back into the desert, back to the dreaming mystical hills that the little Bushmen called The Place of all Life'.

it was two months before Centaine came back out of the Kalahari Desert. For all that time she had thwarted Blaine's efforts to contact her, refusing to reply to the letters he wrote or the telephone calls he made to both Abe Abrahams and Dr Twenty-man-jones.

She read the death notices for Isabella Malcomess in the obituary columns of the newspapers which reached the H'ani Mine only weeks after publication, but they served to increase her feeling of isolation and the brooding premonition of disaster and tragedy which Isabella's death curse had left with her.

She returned to Weltevreden in the end only at Shasa's insistence.

When she arrived her hair was floury with dust from the long journey and she was darkly tanned by the Kalahari sun, but tired and dispirited still.

Shasa must have received her telegram and been expecting her. He must have heard the Daimler's motor as she came up the avenue to the chateau, but he was not on the front steps to meet her, and she realized why when she went into her study. He turned from the window from where he had watched her arrival and now he crossed the room to meet her. He was in uniform.

She stopped in the doorway, and an icy stillness froze her.

She watched him come towards her, and in her memory she was carried back down the years and across s.p.a.ce to another meeting with a tall and impossibly handsome young man in the same khaki tunic, with the polished belt and Sam Browne cross-strap, the peaked cap set at a jaunty angle, and the airman's wings on his chest.

Thank G.o.d, you've come, Mater, Shasa greeted her. I had to see you before I left. When? she breathed the question, terrified to hear the answer. When do you go? Tomorrow. Where? Where are they sending you? First we go to Roberts Heights, that was the air-force training base in the Transvaal, for conversion to fighters, and after that wherever they send us. Wish me luck, Mater. She saw that he wore orange flashes on the epaulettes of his tunic, the insignia of those who had volunteered to fight beyond the country's borders.

Yes, my darling, I wish you luck,, she said, and knew that her heart would break to see him go.

The roar of the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine filled his head even through the earphones of the radio telephone that Shasa wore over his leather flying helmet. The c.o.c.kpit canopy of the Hawker Hurricane fighter aircraft was open, so the slipstream buffeted his head, but it gave him an uninterrupted view of the blue African sky around him. The three fighters flew in a loose arrowhead formation. The dun-coloured desert camouflage could not disguise their beautiful deadly lines.

Shasa led the flight. His promotion had been rapid. Command came naturally to him, he had learned that lesson well from Centaine Courtney. It had taken only eighteen months for him to reach the rank of squadron leader.

He flew in a short-sleeved khaki tunic, khaki shorts and with velskoen on his bare feet, for the summer heat of Abyssinia was brutal.

Around his waist was belted a Webley service revolver, an archaic weapon for the pilot of a modern pursuit aircraft, but all of them had taken to wearing sidearms since the intelligence section had circulated those obscene photographs. one of the motorized recce units had overrun a village in the mountains and found the remains of two South African pilots who had been forced down and captured by the Abyssinian irregulars, the shufta, wild hill bandits. The pilots had been given to the women of the village. They had first been emasculated, then flayed with hot irons and disembowelled so skilfully that they were still living as their viscera was drawn from them. Finally, their jaws had been wedged open with Thorn branches and the women had urinated into their open mouths until they drowned. So all the pilots carried sidearms now, to defend themselves first, and then to make certain they were never captured alive.

Today the air was clear and bright under a cloudless azure sky, and visibility was unlimited. Below and ahead stretched the rugged Abyssinian highlands, precipitous Ambas, the huge table-topped mountains, the dark deep gorges between, desert and rock, dry and sun-bleached to the dun colour of an old lion's scarred hide.

The three fighters bored upwards, striving for height. They had scrambled from the dusty forward airstrip at Yirga Alem only minutes before, in response to a faint but desperate appeal over the field radio from the advancing infantry, and Shasa wheeled the flight onto the northern heading and picked out the thin pate thread of the road winding through the mountains far below them.

immediately he resumed the fighter pilot's scan, his head pivoting and turning, eyes darting and flicking, never allowed to fix and focus short, up and around and down in a regular never ceasing motion and he saw them first.

They were tiny specks, a cloud of black midges against the aching blue.

Popeye flight, this is leader. Tally ho! he said into the microphone of his radio telephone. Eleven o'clock high! Ten plus, and they look like Cap.r.o.nis. Buster! Buster! Buster was the order to go to full throttle.

I have them! Dave Abrahams answered immediately. It was extraordinary that they had been able to keep together, from the training days at Roberts Heights through all the vagaries of the East African campaign, until now they were fighting with Dan Pienaar's South African Corps, driving the Duke of Aosta's Italians back through the mountains towards Addis Adaba.

Shasa glanced across at him. David had brought his Hurricane up on Shasa's starboard wingtip. He also had his canopy open, and they flashed a grin across at each other. David's large beaky nose had been burned raw and pink by the sun, and the straps of his helmet hung unbuckled under his chin.

It was a good feeling to have him on his wing. Then both of them closed their canopies in preparation for the attack and looked ahead. Shasa brought the flight around into a gentle turn, climbing up into the sun, the cla.s.sic fighter tactics.

The distant midges resolved swiftly into the familiar silhouettes of three-engined Cap.r.o.ni bombers. Shasa counted twelve, four sticks of three. They were going for the crossroads at Kerene again, where the South African advance was bottled into the pa.s.s between the soaring walls of the high Ambas, and at that moment Shasa saw the bombs drop away from below the leading bombers.

Still under full throttle, the Rolls-Royce engines screamed in protest as they climbed out, turning into the sun that blinded the Italian gunners. Shasa winged over and went down into the attack.

He could see the bomb-bursts now, tiny fountains of pale dust, spurting up around the crossroads, falling amongst the antlike column of vehicles in the gut of the hills. Those poor b.a.s.t.a.r.ds down there were taking a pounding, and as they tore down the sky the second flight of Cap.r.o.nis released their bombloads. The fat grey eggs, finned at one end, went down with a deceptively slow wobbling motion, and Shasa twisted his head around in one last sweep of the heavens, squinting into the sun, checking that the Italian fighters were not waiting up there, lying in ambush; but the sky was unsullied blue, and he switched his full attention back to his gunsight.

He picked out the leading Cap.r.o.ni in the third flight, hoping his attack would spoil the bomb-layer's aim, and he touched left rudder and rotated the Hurricane's nose downwards a hair's breadth until the silver and blue Cap.r.o.ni swam gently in the rose of his gunsight.

Six hundred yards and he held his fire. He could see the insignia of the fasces on the fuselage, the bundled rods and axe of imperial Rome. The heads of the two pilots in the c.o.c.kpit were inclined earthwards, watching for the fall of the bombs. The twin machine-guns in the revolving power turret were trained aft.

Five hundred yards. He could see the head and shoulders of the turret gunner. The back of his helmet was towards Shasa. He had not yet spotted the three deadly machines screaming down onto his starboard quarter.

Four hundred yards, so close that Shasa could see the scorching of fumes around the exhaust ports of the Cap.r.o.ni's engines, and the gunner still was unaware.

Three hundred yards. The bomb bay of the Cap.r.o.ni began to open under her swollen belly, pregnant with death. Now Shasa could make out the rows of rivet heads along the silver fuselage and on the wide blue wings. He settled his grip on the joystick between his knees and slipped the saf etylock on the firing b.u.t.ton, readying the eight Browning machine-guns in his wings.

Two hundred yards. He played the rudder bars with his toes and the gunsight drifted over the Cap.r.o.ni's fuselage. He stared through it, frowning slightly with concentration, his lower lip caught between his front teeth. Suddenly a line of bright fiery phosph.o.r.escent beads strung across the nose of his Hurricane. The gunner of the second Cap.r.o.ni had spotted him at last, and fired a warning burst across his nose.

One hundred yards. The gunner and both pilots in the leading Cap.r.o.ni, alerted by the burst of fire, had looked round and seen him. The turret gunner was traversing frantically trying to bring his guns to bear. Through the gunsight Shasa could see his white face, contorted with terror.

Eighty yards. Still frowning, Shasa pressed down with his thumb on the firing-b.u.t.ton. The Hurricane shuddered and slowed to the recoil of eight Brownings, and Shasa was thrown gently forward against his shoulder-straps by the deceleration. Bright streams of tracer, sparkling like electricity, hosed into the Cap.r.o.ni, and Shasa watched the strike of shot, directing it with quick subtle touches of his controls.

The Italian gunner never fired his turret guns. The Perspex canopy disintegrated around him and concentrated fire tore him to shreds. Half his head and one of his arms were pulled off like those of a careless child's rag doll, and went spinning and bouncing away in the propeller wash. Instantly Shasa switched his aim, picking up the silver coin of the spinning propeller and the vulnerable wing root of the Cap.r.o.ni in his sights. The crisp silhouette of the wing dissolved like wax in a candle-flame. Glycerine and fuel vapour poured from the motor in liquid sheets, and the whole wing pivoted slowly backwards on its root, and then tore away and spun off, a dead leaf in the slipstream. The bomber flipped over on its back and went down in a flat inverted spiral, unbalanced by the missing wing, weaving irregular zigzag patterns of smoke and vapour and flame down the sky, and Shasa turned all his attention to the next formation of bombers.

He brought the Hurricane round still under full throttle, and he pulled his turn so tightly that the blood drained away from his brain and his vision turned grey and shadowy. He tensed his belly muscles and clenched his jaw to resist the drainage of blood, and levelled out on a head-on course with the next Cap.r.o.ni in line.

The two aircraft raced together with terrifying speed. The nose of the Cap.r.o.ni swelled miraculously to fill all Shasas vision, and he fired into it at pointblank range and then pulled up his nose and they flashed past each other so close that he felt the b.u.mp and jar of the bomber's slipstream. He came round again, hard and furiously, breaking up the Italian formations, scattering them across the sky, turning and diving and firing until with that abruptness that is so much part of aerial combat, they were all gone.

He was alone in an enormously blue and empty sky and he was sweating with adrenalin reaction. His grip on the control column was so tight that it hurt his knuckles. He throttled back and checked his fuel gauge. Those desperate minutes at full throttle had burned over half a tankful.

Popeye flight, this is leader. Come in all units. He spoke into his microphone and the response was immediate.

Leader, this is three! That was the third Hurricane, with young Le Roux at the controls. I'm down to quarter of a tank. All right, three, return independently to base, Shasa ordered. And then he called again. Popeye two, this is leader.

Do you read me? Shasa was searching the sky around him, trying to pick up David's aircraft, feeling the first p.r.i.c.kle of anxiety.

Come in, Popeye two, he repeated, and looked down, searching for smoke rising from a wrecked aircraft in the broken brown land below. Then his pulse jumped as David's voice came in clearly through his headphones.

Leader, this is two, I have damage. David, where the h.e.l.l are you? Approximately ten miles east of Kerene crossroads, at eight thousand feet. Shasa glanced into the easterly quarter and almost instantly picked out a thin grey line being swiftly drawn above the blue horizon towards the south. it looked like a feather.

David, I see smoke in your area. Are you on fire? Affirmative.

I have an engine fire. I'm coming, David, hold on! Shasa flung the Hurricane's wing up in a steep turn and rammed the throttle open to its stop.

David was a little below him, and he went screaming down the sky.

David, how bad is it! Roast turkey, David said laconically, and ahead of him Shasa made out the burning Hurricane.

David had his stricken machine in a steep side slip, so that the flames were not streaming back over the c.o.c.kpit canopy but were being blown out to one side. He was going down fast, trying to build up speed to the critical point when the fire would be starved of oxygen and would extinguish itself spontaneously.

Shasa bore down on him and then eased back his own speed and kept slightly above and two hundred yards off. He could see the bullet holes in the other machine's engine cowling and wing. One of the Italian gunners had got in a good burst at David. The paintwork was blackening and blistering back down the Hurricane's fuselage, almost as far as the c.o.c.kpit, and David was struggling with the Perspex canopy, trying to open it.

,A jammed canopy and David will cook, Shasa thought, but at that moment the canopy came free and slid back easily and David looked across at him. The air around his head was distorted by the s.h.i.+mmering heat of invisible flames and a brown patch appeared on the sleeve of David's tunic as the khaki cotton scorched.

No good! I'm hitting the silk, Shasa. He saw David's lips move and his voice echoed in Shasa's earphones, but before he could reply, David pulled the helmet from his head and released his shoulder-straps.

He lifted one hand in a farewell salute, and then turned the burning Hurricane onto its back and fell out of the open c.o.c.kpit.

He went down with arms and legs spread in an untidy sprawling starfish, beginning to turn like a cartwheel until suddenly a cascade of silk burst from his parachute pack, bloomed into a glistening snowy flower over him and he was jerked backwards, his fall broken, and he drifted away towards the parched, dung-coloured earth five thousand feet below, the light breeze carrying his parachute away towards the south.

Shasa throttled his Hurricane back until he was losing height at the same rate as the descending parachute, and he circled David slowly, keeping two or three hundred yards separation from his dangling body, craning his head over the side of his open c.o.c.kpit, trying to estimate where David would land, and then glancing anxiously at the fuel gauge on his instrument panel. The needle hovered just above the red line.

David's burning Hurricane smashed into the dusty plain below the soaring Ambas and exploded in a quick dragon's breath of smoke, and Shasa surveyed the ground.

Directly below were ridges of iron grey Which peaked into cones of darker rock. Between the ridges were stony hollows, rough as a crocodile's skin, and then, just beyond the last ridge, a softer smoother valley; as they descended he made out the regular furrows of primitive cultivation on the gentle slopes of the valley. David would come down on or very close to the final ridge. Shasa's eyes narrowed. Human habitation! There was a tiny group of thatched huts at the end of the valley, and for a moment his spirits rose. Then he remembered the photographs, those mutilated and desecrated lumps of human flesh, and his jaw clenched as he looked across at David, swaying and swinging on the parachute shrouds.

He banked the Hurricane away, turning and dropping down towards the valley, and he levelled out at fifty feet above the ground, and flew back between the rock ridges up the shallow valley. He roared over the rude fields of cultivation, scraggly stalks of sorghum standing in ragged lines, stunted and browned by drought, and then ahead of him he saw human figures.

A group of men were running down the valley from the village, twenty or more figures in long dirty grey robes that flapped around their bare black legs as they ran. Their hair was teased up into fuzzy dark bushes, and all of them were armed, some with modern carbines probably looted from the battlefield, others with the long muzzle-loading jezails.

As the Hurricane roared low over their heads, three or four of them stopped running and threw their rifles to their shoulders, pointing them up at Shasa. He saw the flash of black powder smoke as they fired, but he did not feel the bullets. .h.i.t his aircraft.

Shasa needed no further evidence of their hostile intentions. The armed men were streaming along the bottom of the ridge, waving their rifles, racing to intercept the tiny figure on the floating parachute.

Shasa dropped down again, lined up the running group and at five hundred yards, opened up with the eight Brownings.

Sheets of tracer and dust flew up around the group of robed figures in a raging storm, an saw four or five of them picked up and flung down again by the hail of machine-gun fire.

Then he was forced to climb out to miss the hills at the head of the valley, and as he came around once more he saw that the shufta had regrouped and were once again running to intercept David who was at less than a thousand feet now. It was clear that he would fall on the slope of the ridge.

Shasa dropped in for a second attack, but this time the shufta scattered before the approaching Hurricane and from the cover of the rocks they turned a furious fusillade on Shasa as he roared over their heads. His own machine-gun fire threw up clouds of dust and rock fragments, but did little execution.

He climbed up and levelled out, swivelling his head to watch David land. The parachute drifted over the ridge, missing it by only a few feet, then it hit the down-draught of the back slope and dropped sharply.

He saw David land heavily and tumble head over heels, b.u.mping across the rocky slope until the parachute jerked him to his feet again. He struggled with the tangled shrouds and the billowing folds of silk, sawing and tipping it, spilling air from it until the parachute collapsed in a silvery heap and David threw off the harness.

He stood and stared down the slope towards the band of running howling shufta and Shasa saw him unbuckle the flap of his holster and draw his service pistol, then shade his eyes and look up at the circling Hurricane.

Shasa dropped down almost to his level, and as he pa.s.sed he pointed urgently down the slope. David stared up at him without comprehension. He looked very small and abandoned on the desert hillside, and Shasa was close enough to see the resignation on his face as he waved farewell to Shasa and turned to face the savage band coming up to take him.

Shasa fired another burst at the shufta as he roared towards them, and again they scattered for cover. They were still half a mile from David; he had delayed them for precious seconds. He put the Hurricane into a maximum-rate turn, his wingtip brus.h.i.+ng the thorn scrub of the ridge as he came around, and the instant he levelled out he let down his undercarriage. With landing-wheels hanging he roared back over the spot where David stood and repeated his urgent signal, pointing down into the valley.

He saw understanding lighten David's face. He turned and ran down the slope with long bounding strides, so that he seemed to float above the dark rocks, skimming them lightly.

Shasa turned at the bottom end of the valley and lined up on the roughly ploughed strip of land at the foot of the slope.

He saw that David was already halfway down and that the shufta were trying to head him off, but then he needed all his wits for the touch down.

At the last moment he pulled on full flap and held the Hurricane off, letting her float in, bleeding off speed, back, back, back with the stick. Two feet off the ploughed earth she stalled and dropped in with a crash, bounced and hit again, and bounced, caught a wheel in the rough and her tail went up. She almost nosed in, then checked and ran out, kicking and jolting, throwing Shasa cruelly against his shoulder-straps.

He was down. He had given himself even odds on getting her down without breaking her, but here he was down and David had almost reached the bottom of the ridge.

David wasn't going to make it, he realized almost immediately. Four of the strongest runners amongst the shufta had pulled ahead, and they were going to cut David off before he reached the ploughed land. The other shufta had stopped and were shooting at long range. Shasa saw bullets kick up little dust feathers along the slope, some of them fell frighteningly close to David's racing form.

Shasa turned the Hurricane, standing on one rudder to force her wheels over the rough furrows. When her nose was pointed directly at the four leading shufta, he gave the Hurricane a burst of full throttle and her tail lifted. For a moment she was level and her Brownings could bear. He fired a full burst, and a tornado of shot swept across the field, scything down the dry sorghum stalks and catching the group of running men, blowing two of them into sodden bundles of red rags, spinning a third in a giddy little danse macabre veiled by a curtain of flying dust. The remaining bandit threw himself flat to the earth, and the Hurricane's tail dropped back onto the tail wheel. The machine-guns could no longer bear.

David was only a few hundred yards away now, coming on fast, his long legs flying and Shasa swung the Hurricane to point back down the valley. The down slope would add speed to their take-off run.

Shasa leaned out of the c.o.c.kpit.

Come on, Davie, he yelled. Gold medal this time, boyo!

Something hit the cowling just in front of the canopy with a metallic tw.a.n.g and then went screaming off in ricochet, leaving a silver smear through the paintwork. Shasa looked back. The shufta were into the edge of the field, running forward, then stopping to kneel and fire. Another bullet cracked past his head, forcing him to flinch and duck.

Come on, Davie! He could hear David's panting breath above the idling beat of the Rolls-Royce engine, and a bullet slapped into the wing, punching a neat round hole through the fabric.

Come on, Davie. Sweat had stained David's tunic and greased his flushed face. He reached the Hurricane and jumped up onto the wing. The aircraft dipped under his weight.

On my lap, Shasa yelled. Get in! David scrambled in on top of him, grunting for breath.

I can't see ahead, Shasa shouted. You take the stick and the throttle, I'll work the rudders. He felt David's hands on the joystick and the throttle lever, and relinquished both of them. The engine beat quickened and the Hurricane began to roll forward.

A touch of left rudder, David called, his voice broken and rough with fatigue, and Shasa pushed on an inch of left rudder.

In a gale of sound and dust the Rolls-Royce engine built up to full power, and they were b.u.mping and bouncing over the field, steering an erratic course as Shasa worked the rudders blindly, over-correcting to David's instructions.

Shasa could not see ahead. David was crus.h.i.+ng him down in the seat and totally obscuring his forward vision. He twisted his head and looked over the edge of the c.o.c.kpit, watching the ground begin to blur past him as their speed built up, responding quickly to David's calls for left or right rudder. The dry sorghum stalks whipped against the leading edges of the wings; the sound they made was almost as ugly as the snap and flute of bullets pa.s.sing close. All the remaining shufta were still firing at them, but the range was opening rapidly.

The Hurricane hit a hump in the field and it kicked them into the air. The jolting and thudding ceased abruptly and they were airborne, climbing away.

We made it! Shasa shouted, amazed at their achievement, and as the words left his lips something hit him in the face.

The bullet was a piece of hammered-iron pot-leg, as long and thick as a man's thumb. It had been fired from a 1779 Tower musket by a handful of black powder. It struck the metal frame of the canopy beside Shasa's head, and the pot leg mushroomed and tumbled as it ricocheted. Spinning, it smashed into the side of Shasa's face, its velocity sharply reduced by the impact on the frame. Striking side-on, it did not penetrate to the brain.

Shasa did not even lose consciousness. It felt as though he had been hit in the outer corner of his left eye with a full swing of a hammer. His head was knocked across so that it struck the opposite side of the canopy.

He felt the supra-orbital margin of the frontal bone of his skull shatter, and hot blood drenched his eye and tatters of his own skin and flesh hung down over his face like a curtain.

David! he screamed. I'm hit! I can't see! David twisted around and looked back at Shasa's face and he cried out in horror. Blood was spurting and dribbling and splas.h.i.+ng, blown by the slipstream into pink veils that spattered into David's face.

I can't see, Shasa kept repeating. His face was raw meat running red. I can't see, oh G.o.d Davie, I can't see. David pulled the silk scarf from around his own neck and pushed it into one of Shasa's groping hands.

Try and stop the bleeding, he shouted above the roar of the engine, and Shasa bundled the scarf and pressed it into the hideously ragged wound, while David gave all his attention to getting them home, keeping low, skimming the wild brown hills.

It took them fifteen minutes back to the airstrip at Yirga Alem and they came in at treetop level. David slammed the Hurricane onto the dusty strip and taxied tail up to the waiting field ambulance that he had called for from the air.

They lifted Shasa out of the blood-spattered c.o.c.kpit. Then David and a medical orderly half-carried, half-led him, stumbling like a blind man to the ambulance. Within fifteen minutes Shasa was anaesthetized and laid out on the operating table in the hospital tent and an air-force doctor was working over him.

When he came round from the anaesthetic, all was dark.

He lifted his hand and touched his face. it was swathed in bandages, and panic rose in him.

David" he tried to scream, but it came out in a drunken slur from the chloroform.