As she watched, one of the stallions, a magnificent animal standing twelve hands and with a bushy tail sweeping below his hocks, cut a young mare out of the main pack of the herd, nipping at her flanks and her neck with square yellow teeth, heading her off when she tried to circle back, pushing her well away from the other mares, but closer to the acacia tree, before he started to gentle her by nuzzling her neck.
The mare bridled flirtatiously well aware of her highly desirable condition, and she rolled her eyes and bit him viciously on his muscled glossy shoulder so that he snorted and reared away, but then circled back and tried to push his nose up under her tail where she was swollen tensely with her season. She squealed with a modest outrage and lashed out with both back legs, her shiny black hooves flying high past his head, and she spun around to face him, baring her teeth.
Centaine found herself unaccountably moved. She shared the mare's mounting excitation, empathized with her charade of reluctance that was spurring the circling stallion to greater ardour. At last the mare submitted and stood stock-still, her tail lifted as the stallion nosed her gently. Centaine felt her own body stiffen in anticipation - then when the stallion reared over her and buried his long pulsing black root deeply in her, Centaine gasped and pressed her own knees together sharply.
That night in her rude thatched shelter beside the steaming thermal pool, she dreamed of Michael and the old barn near North Field, and woke to a deep corroding loneliness and an undirected discontent that did not subside even when she held Shasa to her breast and felt him tugging demandingly at her.
Her dark mood persisted, and the high rocky walls of the valley closed in around her so she felt she could not breathe. However, four more days passed before she could wheedle H'ani into another expedition out into the open forests.
Centaine looked for the zebra herd again as they meandered amongst the mopani trees, but this time the forests seemed strangely deserted and what wild game they did see was mistrusting and skittish, taking instant alarm at the first distant sign of the upright human figures.
There is something, H'ani muttered as they rested in the noon heat, I do not know what it is, but the wild things sense it also. It makes me uneasy, we should return to the valley that I might talk with O'wa. He understands these things better than I do. Oh Rani, not yet, Centaine pleaded.
Let us stay here a little longer. I feel so free. I do not like whatever is happening here, H'ani insisted.
The bees- Centaine found inspiration, we cannot pass through the tunnel until nightfall, and though H'ani grumped and frowned, she at last agreed.
But listen to this old woman, there is something unusual, something bad- and she sniffed at the air and neither of them could sleep when they rested at noon.
H'ani took Shasa from her as soon as he had fed.
He grows so, she whispered, and there was a shadow of regret in her bright black eyes. I wish I could see him in his full growth, straight and tall as the mopani tree."You will, old grandmother, Centaine smiled, you will live to see him as a man. H'ani did not look up at her. You will go, both of you, one day soon. I sense it, you will go back to your own people. Her voice was hoarse with regret. You will go, and when you do there will be nothing left in life for this old woman. No, old grandmother, Centaine reached out and took her hand. Perhaps we will have to go one day. But we will come back to you. I give you my word on that. Gently H'ani disentangled her grip, and still without looking at Centaine, stood up. The heat is past. They worked back towards the mountain, moving widely separated through the forest, keeping each other just in sight, except when denser bush intervened. As was her habit, Centaine chatted to the sleeping infant on her hip, speaking French to train his ear to the sound of the language, and to keep her own tongue exercised.
They had almost reached the scree slope below the cliffs when Centaine saw the fresh tracks of a pair of zebra stallions imprinted deeply in the soft earth ahead of her. Under H'ani's instruction, she had developed acute powers of observation, and O'wa had taught her to read the signs of the wild with fluent ease. There was something about these tracks that puzzled her. They ran side by side, as though the animals that made them had been harnessed to each other. She hefted Shasa on to her other hip and turned aside to examine them more closely.
She stopped with a jerk that alarmed the child, and he squawked in protest. Centaine stood paralysed with shock, staring at the hoof prints, not yet able to comprehend what she was seeing. Then suddenly a rush of emotions and understanding made her reel back. She understood the agitated behaviour of the wild creatures, and H'ani's undirected premonition of evil. She began to tremble, at the same moment filled with fear and joy, with confusion and shaking excitement.
Shasa, she whispered, they are not zebra prints. The hooves that had made these chains of tracks were shod with crescents of steel. Horsemen, Shasa, civilized men riding horses shod with steel! It seemed impossible. Not
here, not in this desert fastness.
Instinctively her hands flew to the opening of the canvas shawl she wore about her shoulders, and from which her breasts thrust out unashamedly. She covered them and glanced around her fearfully. With the San she had come to accept nudity as completely natural. Now she was aware that her skirts rode high on her long slim thighs, and she was ashamed.
She backed away from the prints as though from an accuser s finger.
Man, a civilized man, she repeated, and immediately the image of Michael formed in her mind, and her longing overcame her shame. She crept forward again and knelt beside the spoor, staring at it avidly, not able to bring herself to touch it in case it proved to be hallucination.
It was fresh, so very fresh that even as she watched the crisply outlined edge of one hoofprint, it collapsed and slid in upon itself in a trickle of loose sand.
An hour ago, Shasa, they passed only an hour ago, not longer. The riders had been walking their horses, moving at less than five miles an hour, There is a civilized man within five miles of us at this very moment, Shasa. She jumped up and ran along the line, fifty paces, before she stopped again and dropped to her knees. She would not have seen it before, without O'wa's instruction she had been blind, but now she picked out the alien texture of metal, even though it was only the size of a thumbnail and had fallen into a clump of dry grass.
She picked it out and laid it in her palm. It was a tarnished brass button, a military button with an embossed crest, and the broken thread still knotted in the tang.
She stared at it as though it were a priceless jewel.
The design upon it depicted a unicorn and an antelope guarding a shield and below there was a motto in a ribbon.
Ex Unitate Vires, she read aloud. She had seen the same buttons on General Sean Courtney's tunic, but his were brightly polished. From Unity Strength. The coat of arms of the Union of South Africa. A soldier, Shasa! One of General Courtney's men! At that moment there was a distant whistle, H'ani's summons, and Centaine sprang to her feet and hovered undecidedly. All her instinct was to race desperately after the horsemen, and to plead to be allowed to travel with them back to civilization, but then H'ani whistled again and she turned to look back.
She knew how terrified the San were of all foreigners, for the old people had told her all the stories of brutal persecution. H'ani must not see these tracks. She shaded her eyes and stared longingly in the direction in which the spoor pointed, but nothing moved amongst the mopani trees. She will try to stop us following them, Shasa, she and O'wa will do anything to stop us. How can we leave the old people, and yet they can't come with us, they will be in great danger- she was torn. and undecided -but we can't let this chance go. It might be our only- H'ani whistled again, this time much closer, and Centaine saw her small figure amongst the trees coming towards her. Centaine's hand closed guiltily on the brass button and she thrust it into the bottom of her satchel.