The Sound of Thunder(5)

Slowly one of them stood and gathered the bundle of his possessions, a kaross (or skin blanket), two spears, a cast-off shirt that Sean had given him. He balanced the bundle on his head and looked at Sean.

‘Nkosi!’ he said and lifted a clenched fist in salute.

‘Nonga,’ Sean replied. The man turned away and trudged out of the laager.

‘Nkosi!’

‘Hlubi.’

‘Nkosil’

‘Zama.’

A roll call of loyalty – Sean spoke their names for the last time, and singly they left the laager. Sean stood and watched them walk away in the dusk. Not one of them looked back and no two men walked together. It was finished.

Wearily Sean turned back to the laager. The horses were ready. Three with saddles, two carrying packs.

‘We will eat first, Mbejane.’

‘It is ready, Nkosi. Hlubi cooked before he went.’

‘Come on, Dirk. Dinner.’

Dirk was the only one who spoke during the meal. He chattered gaily, wrought up with excitement by this new adventure, while Sean and Mbejane shovelled fat Hlubi’s stew and hardly tasted it.

Out in the gathering darkness a jackal yelped, a lonely sound on the evening wind, fitting the mood of a man who had lost friends and fortune.

‘It is time.’ Sean shrugged into his sheepskin jacket and buttoned it as he stood to kick out the fire, but suddenly he froze and stood with his head cocked as he listened. There was a new sound on the wind.

‘Horses!’ Mbejane confirmed it.

‘Quickly, Mbejane, my rifle.’ The Zulu leapt up, ran to the horses and slipped Sean’s rifle from its scabbard.

‘Get out of the light and keep your mouth shut,’ Sean ordered as he hustled Dirk into the shadows between the wagons. He grabbed the rifle from Mbejane and levered a cartridge into the breech and the three of them crouched and waited.

The click and roll of pebbles under hooves, the soft sound of a branch brushed aside.

‘One only,’ whispered Mbejane. A pack-horse whickered softly and was answered immediately from the darkness. Then silence, a long silence broken at last by the jingle of a bridle as the rider dismounted.

Sean saw him then, a slim figure emerging slowly out of the night and he swung the rifle to cover his approach. There was something unusual in the way the stranger moved, gracefully but with a sway from the hips, long-legged like a colt and Sean knew that he was young, very young to judge by his height.

With relief Sean straightened up from his crouch and examined him as he stopped uncertainly beside the fire and peered into the shadows. The lad wore a peaked cloth cap pulled down over his ears and his jacket was an expensive, honey-coloured chamois. His riding breeches were beautifully tailored and hugged his buttocks snugly. Sean decided that his backside was too big and out of proportion to the small feet clad in polished English hunting boots. A regular dandy, and the scorn was in Sean’s tone as he called out.

‘Stay where you are, friend, and state your business!’ The effect of Sean’s challenge was unexpected. The lad jumped, the soles of his glossy boots cleared the ground by at least six inches, and when he landed again he was facing Sean.

‘Talk up. I haven’t got all night.’

The lad opened his mouth, closed it again, licked his lips and spoke.

‘I was told you were going to Natal.’ The voice was low and husky.

‘Who told you that?’ demanded Sean.

‘My uncle.’

‘Who is your uncle?’

‘Isaac Goldberg.’

Sean digested this intelligence and while he did so he examined the face before him. Cleanshaven, pale, big dark eyes and a laughing kind of mouth that was now pursed with fright.

‘And if I am?’ Sean demanded.

‘I want to go with you.’

‘Forget it. Get back on your horse and go home.’

‘I’ll pay you – I’ll pay you well.’

Was it the voice or the posture of the lad, Sean pondered, there was something very odd about him. He stood with a flat leather pouch held in both hands across the front of his hips – in an attitude of defence, as though he were protecting – protecting what? And suddenly Sean knew what it was.

‘Take off your cap,’ he ordered.

‘No.’

‘Take it off.’

A second longer the lad hesitated, then in a gesture that was almost defiance he jerked off the cap and two thick black braids of hair, shiny in the firelight, dropped and hung down almost to his waist and transformed him instantly from gawky masculinity into stunning womanhood.

Although he had guessed it, Sean was unprepared for the shock of this revelation. It was not so much her beauty, but her attire that caused the shock. Never in his life had Sean seen a woman in breeches, and now he gasped. Breeches, by God, she might as well be naked from the waist down – even that would be less indecent.