Polaroids. What will their reaction be if they know how much progress we
have made in the search?"
"Not -very happy thoughts," he agreed. "But on the other hand there is
not much we can do about any of that until we get back to civilization,
except keep our eyes wide.
open and our wits about us. Hell, I haven't even got the little Rigby
rifle. We are a flock of sitting ducks."
Aly, the muleteers and the monks seemed to be of the same opinion, for
they never slackened the pace. It was midday before they called the
first brief halt to brew coffee and to water the mules. While the men
lit fires, Nicholas took his binoculars from the mule pack and began to
climb the rock slope. He had not covered much ground before he glanced
back and saw Royan climbing after him. He waited for her to catch up.
"You should have taken the chance to rest," he told her severely. "Heat
exhaustion is a real danger."
I don't trust you going off on your own. I want to know what you are up
to."
"Just a little recce. We should have scouts out ahead, not just go
charging blindly along the trail like this. If I remember correctly from
the inward march, some of the ound lies just ahead of us. Lord knows
what we worst gr may run into."
They went on upwards, but it was not possible to reach the crest for a
sheet of unscalable vertical cliff barred their way. Nicholas chose the
best vantage point below this barrier, and glassed both slopes of the
valley ahead of them.
The terrain was as he had remembered it. They were approaching the foot
of the escarpment wall and the ground was becoming more rugged and
severe, like the swell of the open ocean sensing the land and rising up
in alarm before breaking in confusion upon the shore. The trail followed
the river closely. The cliffs hung over the narrow aisle of ound that
made up the bank, sculpted by wind and gr weather into strange, menacing
shapes, like the battlements of a wicked witch's castle in an old Disney
cartoon.
At one point a buttress of red sandstone overhung the trail, forcing the
river to detour around it, and the trail was reduced so much that it
would be difficult for a laden mule to negotiate without being pushed
off the bank into the river.
Nicholas studied the bottom of the valley carefully through the lens. He
could pick out nothing that seemed suspicious or untoward, so he raised
his head and swept the Cliffs and their tops.
At that moment Aly's voice came up from the valley below, echoing along
the slope as he shouted, "Hurry, effendi! The mules are ready to go on!'
Nicholas waved down to him, but then lifted the binoculars for one more
sweep of the ground ahead. A wink of bright light caught his eye - a
brief ephemeral stab of brilliance like the signal of a heliograph. He
switched his whole attention to the spot on the cliff from which it had
emanated.
"What is it? What have you seen?" Royan demanded.
am not sure. Probably nothing," he replied, without lowering the
binoculars. It may have been a reflection from a polished metal surface,
or from the lens of another pair of binoculars, or from the barrel of a
sniper's rifle, he thought. On the other hand, a chip of mica or a
pebble of rock crystal could reflect sunlight the same way, and even
some of the aloes and other succulent plants have shiny leaves. He
watched the spot carefully for a few more minutes, and then Aly's voice
floated up to them again.
"Hurry, effendi. The mule-drivers will not wait!
He stood up. "All right. Nothing. Let's go." He took Royan's arm to help
her over the rough footing, and they started down. At that moment he
heard the rattle of stones from further up the slope, and he stopped her
and held her arm to keep her quiet. They waited, watching the skyline.
Abruptly a pair of long curling horns appeared over the crest, and under
them the head of an old kudu bull, his trumpet-shaped ears pricked
forward and the fringe of his dewlap blowing in the hot, light breeze.
He stopped on the edge of the cliff just above where they crouched, but
he had not seen them. The kudu turned his head and stared back in the
direction from which he had come. The sunlight glinted in his nearest
eye, and the set of his head and the alert, tense stance made it clear
that something had disturbed him.
For a long moment he stood poised like that, and then, still without
being aware of the presence of Nicholas and Royan, he snorted and
abruptly leaped away in full flight.
He vanished from their sight behind the ridge and the sound of his run
dwindled into silence.
"Something scared the living daylights out of him."
"What?" enquired Royan.
"Could have been anything - a leopard, perhaps," he replied, and he
hesitated as he looked down the slope. The caravan of mules and monks
had set off already and was following the trail Up along the river bank.
"What should we do?" Royan asked.
"We should reconnoitre the ground ahead - that is if we had the time,
which we haven't." The caravan was pulling away swiftly. Unless they
went down immediately they would be left behind alone, unarmed. He had
nothing concrete to act upon, and yet he had to make an immediate
decision.
"Come on!" He took her hand again, and they slid and scrambled down the
slope. Once they reached the trail they had to break into a run to catch
up with the tail of the caravan.
Now that they were again part of the column, Nicholas could turn his
attention to searching the skyline above them more thoroughly. The
cliffs loomed over them, blocking out half the sky. The river on their
left hand washed out any other sounds with its noisy, burbling current.
Nicholas was not really alarmed. He prided himself on being able to
sense trouble in advance, a sixth sense that had saved his life more
than once before. He thought of it as his early-warning system, but now
it was sending no messages. There were any number of possible
explanations for the reflection he had picked up from the crest of the
cliff, and for the behaviour of the bull kudu.
However, he was still a little on edge, and he was giving the high
ground above them all his attention. He saw a speck flick over the top
of the cliff, twisting and falling - a dead leaf -on the warm, wayward
breeze. It was too small and insignificant to be of any danger, but
nevertheless he followed the movement with his eye, his interest idle.
The brown leaf spiralled and looped, and finally touched lightly against
his cheek. He lifted his hand as a reflex, and caught it. He rubbed the
brown scrap between his fingers, expecting it to crackle and crumble.
Instead it was soft and supple, with a fine, almost greasy texture.
He opened his hand and studied it more closely. It was no leaf, he saw
at once, but a torn scrap of greased paper, brown and translucent,
Suddenly all his early'warning bells jangled. It was not just the
incongruity of manufactured paper suddenly materializing in this remote
setting. He recognized the quality and texture of that particular type
of paper. He lifted it to his nose and sniffed it. The sharp, nitrous
odour prickled the back of his throat.
"Gelly!" he exclaimed aloud. He knew the smell instantly.
Blasting gelignite was seldom employed for military purposes in this age
of Semtex and plastic explosives, bu was still widely used in the mining
industry and in mineral exploration. Usually the sticks of nitrogelatine
in a wood Pulp and sodium nitrate base was wrapped in that distinct tive
brown greased paper. Before the detonator was placed in the head of the