Wilbur Smith - Assegai

‘Hurry, woman. Don’t just stand there. Take the end of the line,’ he shouted impatiently.

For the first time in their long relationship he was totally in her power. This was the man who had murdered her father, the one who had humiliated and tortured her mentally and physically. This was the moment for retribution. If she killed him now she could expunge all those memories. She would be clean and whole. Moving as slowly as a sleep-walker, she came towards him, at the same time reaching into Bueler’s pack.

‘Yes, Eva, that’s good. I know I can always depend on you. Take the rope.’ There was a wheedling tone in his voice that she had never heard before. She felt strength and resolution flowing through her body. The hilt of the Mauser fitted perfectly into her hand.

‘I am the dark angel,’ she whispered, as she stared up at the man hanging helplessly above her. ‘I am the revenger.’ She drew the pistol, and pulled back the slide. There was a sharp metallic click as she let it fly forward again, feeding a round into the chamber.

‘What are you doing?’ Graf Otto shouted in consternation. ‘Put that gun down. Somebody will get hurt!’ Slowly she lifted it and aimed up at him.

‘Stop, Eva! In the name of God, what are you doing?’ Now she heard fear in his voice.

‘I am going to kill you,’ she said softly.

‘Are you mad? Have you lost your mind?’

‘I have lost more than my mind. You have taken everything from me. Now I am taking it back.’

She fired.

She had not expected the report to be so loud and the recoil to be so vicious. She had aimed at his black heart, but the bullet had nicked his left arm above the elbow. Blood trickled down his forearm and dripped from his fingertips.

‘Don’t do this, Eva. Please! I will do anything you say.’ She fired again and this shot flew wider than the first. It did not touch him. She had not known how difficult it was to shoot a pistol accurately at that range. Graf Otto was wriggling in the harness, swinging and jerking from side to side. She fired again and again. He was screaming with terror. ‘Stop! Stop my darling! I will make it up to you, I promise. You will have anything in the world you want from me.’ She drew a deep breath and tried to still the pounding of her heart as she levelled the pistol for the last time – but before she could squeeze off the shot a strong arm whipped around her from behind and a hand fastened on her wrist, pushing the gun down. The shot ploughed into the ground between the toecaps of her boots.

‘Good man, Ritter!’ Graf Otto bellowed. ‘Hold her fast! Wait until I can get my hands on the treacherous bitch.’

Ritter twisted the pistol out of Eva’s hands, then bore her to the ground with a knee between her shoulder-blades. He held her hands behind her back while one of his crew secured them with half a dozen workmanlike knots. Ritter handed him the Mauser. ‘Shoot her if she gives you an excuse to do so,’ he ordered, then ran to bring Graf Otto down from the tree. He grabbed the end of the dangling line and pulled it across. Graf Otto took a firm hold on a branch, then swung himself up until he was lying across it. There, he unbuckled his harness and let it fall. As agile as a huge ginger ape, he swarmed down the main trunk to the ground. He paused for only a minute to catch his breath, then walked slowly to where Eva lay. ‘Pick her up,’ he ordered the crewman, ‘and hold her firm.’ He smiled at her and showed her the metal fist. ‘This is for you, my darling!’ He hit her. He had judged the strength of his blow carefully: he did not want her to die too quickly.

‘Bitch!’ he said, then took a handful of her hair and twisted it until she fell on to her knees. ‘Treacherous bitch. Now I understand that it was you all along, not that pathetic Boer creature.’ He pushed her face into the rain-soaked earth and put his boot on the back of her head. ‘I don’t know what is the best way for you to die. Should I drown you in mud? Should I strangle you slowly? Or should I pound your beautiful head to jelly? It is a difficult decision.’ He lifted her face and stared into her eyes. The blood oozing from her nose mingled with the mud, streamed down her face and dripped off her chin. ‘Not so beautiful any more. More like the dirty little whore you truly are.’

Eva threw back her head and spat at him.

He wiped his face on his sleeve and laughed at her. ‘This will be great sport. I shall enjoy every moment.’

Ritter stepped forward and tried to intervene. ‘No, sir. You cannot do this to her. She is a woman.’

‘I will prove to you that I can, Commodore. Watch this.’ He lifted the armoured hand again, but as he leaned towards Eva, a deafening thunderbolt numbed their eardrums. It was the distinctive report of a .470 Nitro Express rifle. Graf Otto was hurled backwards, arms flailing, as the heavy bullet tore into the centre of his chest and erupted from between his shoulder-blades in a bright fountain of blood and pulped tissue.

‘There is another bullet for anyone who wishes to dispute the issue further. Hands high, please, gentlemen!’ Leon said in German, as he stepped from the bushes with Manyoro, Loikot and twenty Masai morani armed with stabbing assegais at his back.

‘Manyoro, tie these people like chickens going to market. Have the morani take them to the army fort at Lake Magadi and hand them over to the soldiers,’ he said, then ran to where Eva knelt in the mud. He jerked his hunting knife from its sheath and cut the rope. Then he cupped her face in his hands and lifted it to his.

‘My nose,’ she whispered. He brushed a kiss across her muddied and bloody lips.

‘It’s broken, and you will have a lovely pair of black eyes, but it’s nothing that Doc Thompson can’t deal with as soon as I can get you back to Nairobi.’ He lifted her and held her tightly to his chest as he started back up the mountainside to where the Butterfly waited on the landing strip. There, he laid her tenderly on the deck and covered her with a sheet of tarpaulin, for she was shivering with shock.

When he stood up he saw that Lusima was standing by the fuselage. ‘I’m taking her to Nairobi,’ he told Lusima, ‘but there’s a great service you can do for us.’

‘I will do it, my son,’ she said.

‘The silver monster lies broken upon the mountainside. Manyoro will take you and your morani to it. This is what I want you to do for me.’

‘I am listening to you, M’bogo.’ He spoke urgently. When he had finished she nodded. ‘All these things I will do. Now take your lovely broken flower to safety and cherish her until she is healed.’

It was four years almost to the day before they returned to Sheba’s Pool. They left Lusima, Manyoro, Ishmael and Loikot at the old campsite and rode up alone to the pool. Leon came to lift her down from the saddle and kissed her before he set her on her feet. ‘Passing strange,’ he said, ‘but how is it that you grow younger and more beautiful every day?’

She laughed and touched the side of her nose. ‘Except for a little kink and a bump here and there.’ Even the medical magic of Dr Thompson had not been up to the challenge of straightening her nose completely.

‘You call that a little bump?’ he asked, as he laid his hand on her belly. ‘What about this one?’

She looked down at it proudly. ‘Just watch it grow.’

‘I’m agog with anticipation, Mrs Courtney.’ He took her hand and led her to her usual seat on the rocky ledge. They sat side by side and gazed down into the dark waters.

‘I bet you’ve never heard the tale of the missing Meerbach millions,’ Eva said.

‘Of course I have.’ His face was straight and serious. ‘It’s one of the great mysteries of Africa. On a par with the lost mines of King Solomon and the Kruger millions that the old Boer president spirited away ahead of Kitchener’s army when he marched into Pretoria.’