the slide. He knew that it was damaged beyond repair.
“Think I’ll have me a little target practice, shouted Hendry from above, and again there was a burst of automatic fire. Bruce’s rifle disappeared in a cloud of dust and flying rock fragments and when it cleared the woodwork of the rifle was splintered and torn and there was further damage to the action.
Well, that’s that, thought Bruce, the rifle is wrecked, Shermaine has the pistol, and I have only one good hand. This is going to be
interesting.
He unbuttoned the front of his jacket and examined the welt that the bullet had raised across his chest. It looked like a rope burn, painful and red, but not serious. He rebuttoned his jacket.
“Okay, Bruce Baby, the time for games is over. I’m coming down to get you.” Hendry’s voice was harsh and loud, filled with confidence.
Bruce rallied under the goading of it. He looked round quickly which way to go? Climb high so he must come up to get at you. Take the right-hand turret, work round the side of it and wait for him on the top.
In haste now, spurred by the dread of being the hunted, he
scrambled to his feet and dodged away up the slope, keeping his head down using the thick screen of rock and vegetation.
He reached the wall of the right-hand turret and followed it round, found the spiral ledge that he had seen from below and went on to it, up along it like a fly on a wall, completely exposed, keeping his back to the cliff of granite, shuffling sideways up the eighteen-inch ledge with the drop below him growing deeper with each step.
Now he was three hundred feet above the forest and could look out across the dark green land to another row of kopjes on the horizon.
The rain had ceased but the cloud was unbroken, covering the sky.
The ledge widened, became a platform and Bruce hurried across it round the far shoulder and came to a dead end.
The ledge had petered out and there was only the drop below. He had trapped himself on the side of the turret the summit was unattainable. If Hendry descended to the forest floor and circled the kopje he would find Bruce completely at his mercy, for there was no cover on the narrow ledge. Hendry could have a little more target practice.
Bruce leaned against the rock and struggled to control his breathing. His throat was clogged with the thick saliva of exhaustion and fear. He felt tired and helpless, his thumb throbbed painfully and he lifted it to examine it once more.
Despite the tourniquet it was bleeding slowly, a wine-red drop at a time.
Bleeding! Bruce swallowed the thick gluey stuff in his throat and looked back along the way he had come. On the grey rock the bright red splashes stood out clearly. He had laid a blood spoor for Hendry to follow.
All -right then, perhaps it is best this way. At least I’ll be able to come to grips with him. If I wait behind this shoulder until
he starts to cross the platform, there’s a three hundred foot drop on one side, I may be able to rush him and throw him off.
Bruce leaned against the shoulder of granite, hidden from the platform, and tuned his ears to catch the first sound of Hendry’s approach.
The clouds parted in the eastern sector of the sky and the sun shone through, slanting across the side of the kopje.
It will be better to die in the sun, thought Bruce, a sacrifice to the Sun god thrown from the roof of the temple, and he grinned without mirth, waiting with patience and with pain.
The minutes fell like drops into the pool of time, slowly measuring out the edition of life that had been allotted to him. The pulse in his ears counted also, in-id his breath that he drew and held and gently exhaled — how many more would there be?
I should pray, he thought, but after this morning when I prayed that it shouldnot rain, and the rains came and saved me, i will not presume again to tell the Old Man how to run things.
Perhaps he knows best after all.
Thy will be done, he thought instead, and. suddenly his nerves
jerked tight as a line hit by a marlin. The sound he had heard was that of cloth brushing against rough rock.
He held his breath and listened, but all he could discern was the pulse in his ears and the wind in the trees of the forest below. The
wind was a lonely sound.
Thy will be done, he repeated without breathing, and heard Hendry breathe close behind the shoulder of rock.
He stood away from the wall and waited. Then he saw Hendry’s shadow thrown by the early morning sun along the ledge. A great distorted shadow on the grey rock.
Thy will be done. And he went round the shoulder fast, his good hand held like a blade and the weight of his body behind it.
Hendry was three feet away, the rifle at high port across his chest, standing close in against the cliff, the cup-shaped steel helmet pulled low over the slitty eyes and little beads of sweat clinging in the red-gold stubble of his beard. He tried to drop the muzzle of the rifle but Bruce was too close.
Bruce lunged with stiff fingers at his throat and he felt the crackle and give of cartilage. Then his weight carried him on and
Hendry sprawled backwards on to the stone platform with Bruce on top of him.
The rifle slithered across the rock and dropped over the edge, and they lay chest to chest with legs locked together in a horrible parody of the love act. But in this act we do not procreate, we destroy!
Hendry’s face was purple and swollen above his damaged throat, his
Mouth open as he struggled for air, and his breath smelt old and sour in Bruce’s face.
With a twist towards the thumb Bruce freed his right wrist from
Hendry’s grip and, lifting it like an axe, brought it down across the bridge of Hendry’s nose. Twin jets of blood spouted from the nostrils and gushed into his open mouth.
With a wet strangling sound in his throat Hendry’s body arched violently upwards and Bruce was thrown back against the side of the cliff with such force that for a second he lay there.
Wally was on his knees, facing Bruce, his eyes glazed and
sightless, and the strangling rattling sound spraying from his throat in a pink cloud of blood. With both hands he was fumbling his pistol out of its canvas holster.
Bruce drew his knees up on to his chest, then straightened his legs in a mule kick. His feet landed together in the centre of
Hendry’s stomach, throwing him backwards off the platform. Hendry made
that strangled bellow all the way to the bottom, but at the end it was cut off abruptly, and afterwards there was only the sound of the wind in the forest below.
For a long time, drained of strength and the power to think, Bruce sat on the ledge with his back against the rock.
Above him the clouds had rolled aside and half the sky was blue.
He looked out across the land and the forest was lush and clean from the rain. And I am still alive. The realization warmed Bruce’s mind as comfortably as the early sun was warming his body. He wanted to shout it out across the forest. I am still alive!
At last he stood up, crossed to the edge of the cliff and looked down at the tiny crumpled figure on the rocks below.
Then he turned away and dragged his beaten body down the side of the turret.
It took him twenty minutes to find Wally Hendry in the chaos of broken rock and scrub below the turret. He lay on his side with his legs drawn up as though he slept. Bruce knelt beside him and drew his pistol from the olive-green canvas holster; then he unbuttoned the flap of Hendry’s bulging breast pocket and took out the white canvas bag.
He stood up, opened the mouth of the bag and stirred the diamonds with his forefinger. Satisfied, he jerked the drawstring closed and dropped them into his own pocket.
In death he is even more repulsive than he was alive, thought
Bruce without regret as he looked down at the corpse.