Geoffrey Jenkins: A Cleft Of Stars

It did.

I ducked down from my quick survey of the terrace. My face came close to a tuft of grass and I could see every dead, bleached bristle and the pitiful cluster of rain-starved, torpedo shaped seeds. I tried to clamp my body against the fiery ground, out of The Hill's line of vision, behind a kanniedood ('never-die') tree. Its trunk made a natural post for the fence. My heart was fluttering like a bird's. Somewhere ahead was the guard's hut Nadine had also mentioned and somewhere too might be the guard himself. He would be armed and was not likely to regard as friendly an intruder who had just broken in through his fence, gun in hand.

I lay low, half expecting at any moment a challenge or even a shot.

My pulse pounded and sweat dripped on to the grass patch

— probably the only moisture that had come its way in years. Close-to I saw how the wire had sliced into the trunk and its acid sap had rusted the bright metal. The black-and-grey striped bark curled and peeled off in papery strips. The leafless thing may have been alive, or as dead as thousands of other trees in the drought-devastated countryside.

I lay with my arms forward to present the smallest target.

I eased my grip on the shaft of the diamond pencil, deliberately clenching and unclenching my fingers as if the small movement could also do something for the tension which lay across my stomach like a steel band. I tried taking several long controlled breaths to quiet my nerves; then I watched in astonishment the nails of my thumb and forefinger — made brittle by the heat and moistureless air — split down to the quick. After five minutes I could take the sun's torture on my back no longer. Where my chest and stomach lay against the gritty earth were soaked patches through my khaki shirt. Despite the risk of being spotted, I realized I would have to shift soon. Even the shadow from the kanniedood trunk, like a sundial's black bar against the glowing sand, took on an attraction which was out of all proportion to its slight shade. I squirmed, still not chancing a full bodily movement, which caused the cartridges in my shirt pocket to dig into me. They were overhot but I dismissed a fear that they might explode against my chest. However, they did make me speculate whether the barrel of my old Mannlicher (it had once been my father's) might be so distorted by the heat that I couldn't have hit Rankin at thirty yards had he appeared in front of me like a genie out of the dancing mirage.

I sat up, my mouth dry. I chewed and sucked at an astringent mopani tree leaf I had picked on my way from the river. It is the favourite food of elephants and the butterfly-shaped leaf is a thirst-beater for humans and animals alike. I decided to ease myself under the cut wire and reconnoitre cautiously towards the base of The Hill.

Now that I was confronted by The Hill itself, the plans which I had made round Rankin, both in prison and on my way up-river from Messina, seemed incomplete and somewhat unworkable. Perhaps my keenness to get at him had clouded my recollection of the detailed geography of the place, or even its size. Charlie had said 'Rankin is at The Hill' as if he were to be found simply in occupation of it. When I looked now at the mass rising up before my eyes I realized that I had been over-optimistic about tracking him down quickly. The cliffs of the fortress reared up a couple of hundred feet sheer from the broad terrace. From my low angle the tabletop of the north-western summit where the queen's grave lay was invisible. Compared with this flat section the rest of the surface of the summit was more broken, being pierced here and there with great jags of rock. My view of The Hill was the same as its old enemies had had, and the receiving end wasn't pleasant. There was also a strange air of watchfulness which I could not define.

At the back of The Hill I could see a broad wadi of sand — an ancient watercourse perhaps — about a mile wide. Here our expedition had camped. The wadi separated The Hill from a great circle of hills beyond to the south, a broken complex about five miles in circumference and two across. Intersecting this to the halfway mark, like a sawn-off wagon wheel spoke, was a broad dyke of rock. These hills were generally lower than the fortress itself, although one directly across the wadi had a peak almost as high as the tabletop.

The first move in my plan of campaign was to find out whether the area was in the process of being policed by irregular patrols and, if so, how strong they were. I guessed that only one man might be involved. I'd come to this conclusion after questioning Nadine in prison as discreetly as possible after I'd made my decision. Her inquiries to the authorities had run slap up against a security screen but the fact that a light plane was being used to ferry the patrol to the bush airstrip some miles away seemed to point to a single guard, or at the most two. Before starting my search for Rankin I wanted to be sure it did not founder on the patrol. I had allowed for this contingency and had decided that if guards were active I would by-pass The Hill by river and lie low until they had been withdrawn.

I raised my head again and scanned the terrace. However, I could not spot the patrol hut, which I thought must be situated somewhere close to The Hill's cliffs facing my way among big boulders.

A shout from the river behind me sent my heart racing. It sounded raucous and inhuman in the oppressive vacuum of silence. I hastily sought somewhere to hide. The kanniedood trunk was inside the fence itself and was too slender for concealment. The nearest real cover-was a tattered clump of chest-high elephant palm about fifty yards back along my route, beyond the rolls of barbed wire. My only path was forward through the cut wire which meant rising into full sight on the terrace.

The seconds I spent wavering seemed like hours. I glanced anxiously back to the pool where the two great rivers met and then — in spite of again hearing the unnatural shout — my heart changed into lower gear; for on the surface of the water I saw a tell-tale line of froth. The cry wasn't human, but a fisheagle's. The clear harsh call, which precedes its dive-bomber swoop from high cloud, is one of the great sights of river-sea estuaries in Southern Africa. But here on the dried-up river the drought had debased the noble hunter to a carrion scavenger quarrelling with crocodiles for one stinking piece of mudfish or winkling putrid crabs from lairs become their graves as the water receded.

I wiped my sweating hands on my gritty shirt front. The bird's cry underlined the fact that if I hesitated where I was I could be trapped without the opportunity to escape. My immediate target was plain — the partly ruined defence wall to my left running along the eastern edge of the terrace. Its drop was not so sheer as the one facing the river and therefore I reckoned it would be possible to negotiate it. If I could get behind the wall on a narrow shelf between it and the drop I could approach the guard hut unseen and discover whether it was occupied or not. My further plans depended on that. The alternative route that remained was simply across the broad terrace itself, bare as a billiard table.

There was about a hundred yards of open ground from my gully to the wall. It was flat like the rest of the terrace but intersected by a number of small runnels — smaller versions of the wire-blocked gullies-which would provide some slight cover.

I acted on my decision: leading with my left shoulder I rolled on to the cut fence, holding the rifle tucked against my chest. On the naked terrace I lay still while all eternity seemed to hold its breath. Then I jerked to a low crouch and made a shambling sort of crawl to the nearest gully and threw myself in. I hid there until the sun forced me on to the next hollow.