Power of the Sword - Smith Wilbur - Страница 106

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However, the overseer would not let him fall, and with his left hand shoved him back against the seat, holding him upright while he worked with the club.

It rang like an axe on wood as it bounced off the bone of Hendrick's skull, and it opened the thin skin of his scalp and the blood sprang up in little ruby-bright fountains. The overseer hit him three times, measured calculated blows, and then he thrust the point of the club into Hendrick's slack gaping mouth, snapping off both his incisor teeth level with the gums.

Always mark them! It was one of his maxims. Mark them so they don't forget. Only then did he release the unconscious man and let him topple, head first, into the centre of the aisle.

Instantly he whipped around and poised on his toes like a puffadder cocking itself into the threatening S of the strike.

With the billy club ready in his right hand he stared down the shocked eyes of the black men around him. Quickly they dropped their gaze from his and the only movement was the jerking of their bodies in time to the swaying clatter of the coach beneath them.

Hendrick's blood was puddling under his head, and then running in little dark red snakes across the floor of the aisle.

The overseer smiled again, looking down with an almost paternal expression at the recumbent figure. it had been a beautiful performance, quick and complete, exactly as he had planned it, and he had enjoyed it. The man at his feet was his own creation and he was proud of it.

He picked up the other millet loaves out of the blood puddle and one at a time tossed them out between the bars of the window. Finally he squatted over the man at his feet and on the back of his shirt carefully wiped the last traces of blood from his billy. Then he stood up, replaced the club in his belt and walked slowly down the aisle.

it was all right now. The mood had changed, the atmosphere was defused. There would be no more trouble. He had done his job, and done it well.

He went out onto the balcony of the coach, and smiling thinly, locked the sliding door behind him again.

The moment the door closed the men in the carriage came back to life. Moses gave his orders crisply and two of them lifted Hendrick back into his seat; another went to the water tank beside the latrine door, while Moses opened his own pack and brought out a stoppered buckhorn.

While they steadied Hendrick's lolling head, Moses poured a brown powder from the buckhorn into the wounds in his scalp. It was a mixture of ash and herbs, powdered finely, and he rubbed it into the open flesh with his finger. The bleeding stopped, and with a wet cloth he cleaned his brother's broken mouth. Then he cradled his unconscious head in his arms, and waited.

Moses had watched the conflict between his brother and the white man with almost clinical interest, deliberately restraining and directing Hendrick's reaction until the drama had reached this explosive climax. His attachment to his brother was still tenuous. Their father had been a prosperous and lusty man and had brought all of his fifteen wives regularly to the child-bed. Moses had over thirty brothers and sisters. Towards very few of them he felt any special affection beyond vague tribal and family duty. Hendrick was many years his senior and had left the kraal when Moses was still a child. Since then the tales of his exploits had filtered back to him, and Hendrick's reputation had grown on these accounts of wild and desperate deeds. But tales are only tales until they are proven and reputations can be built on words and not deeds.

The testing time was at hand. Moses would consider the results of the test and upon them would depend their future relationship. He needed a hard man as his lieutenant, one of the steely men. Lenin had chosen Joseph Stalin. He would choose a man of steel also, a man like an axe, and with him as a weapon he would hack and shape his own plans out of the hard wood of the future. If Hendrick failed the test Moses would toss him aside with as little compassion as he would an axe whose blade had shattered at the first stroke against the trunk of a tree.

Hendrick opened his eyes and looked at his brother with dilated pupils; he moaned and touched the open wounds on his scalp. He winced at the pain and his pupils shrank and focused, and the rage flamed in their depths as he struggled upright.

The diamonds? His voice was low and sibilant as the hiss of one of those deadly little horned adders of the desert.

Gone, Moses told him quietly.

We must go back, find them. But Moses shook his head.

They are scattered like the seeds of the grass; there is no way to mark their fall. No, my brother, we are prisoners in this coach. We cannot go back. The diamonds are lost for ever. Hendrick sat quietly, with his tongue exploring his shattered mouth, running it over the jagged stumps of his front teeth, considering his brother's cold logic. Moses waited quietly. This time he would give no orders, point no direction, no matter how subtle. Hendrick must come to it of his own accord.

You are right, my brother, Hendrick said at last. The diamonds are gone. But I am going to kill the man that did this to us. Moses showed no emotion. He offered no encouragement.

He merely waited.

I will do it with cunning. I will find a way to kill him, and no man will ever know, except him and us. Still Moses waited. So far Hendrick was taking the path that he had laid out for him. However, there was still something else he must do. He waited for it, and it came as he had hoped it would.

Do you agree that I should kill this white dog, my brother? He had asked for sanction from Moses Gama. He had acknowledged his liege lord, placed himself in his brother's hands, and Moses smiled and touched his brother's arm as though he were placing a mark, a brand of approval, upon him.

Do it, my brother, he ordered. If he failed, the white men would hang him on a rope; if he succeeded he would have proved himself an axe, a steely man.

Hendrick brooded darkly in his seat, not speaking for another hour. Occasionally massaging his temples when the throbbing pain of the blows threatened to burst his skull open. Then he rose and moved slowly down the coach examining each of the barred windows, shaking his head and muttering at the pain. He returned to his seat and sat there for a while, and then rose once again and shuffled down the aisle to the latrine cubicle.

He locked himself into the cubicle. There was an open hole in the deck and through it he could see the rushing blur of the stone embankment below the coach. Many of the men using the latrine had missed the hole, and the floor slopped with dark yellow urine and splattered faeces.

Hendrick turned his attention to the single unglazed window. The opening was covered with steel mesh in a wire frame which was screwed into a wooden frame at each corner and at the centre of each side.

He returned to his seat in the carriage and whispered to Moses, 'The white baboon took my knife. I need another. Moses asked no questions. It was part of the test. Hendrick must do it alone and, if he failed, accept the full consequences without expecting Moses to share them or attempt to aid him. He spoke quietly to the men around him, and within a few minutes a clasp knife was passed down the bench and slipped into Hendrick's hand.

He returned to the latrine and worked on the retaining screws of the wire frame, careful not to scratch the paintwork around them or leave any sign that they had been tampered with. He removed all eight screws, eased the frame from its seating and set it aside.

He waited until the tracks made a right hand bend, judging by the centrifugal force against his body as the coach turned under him, and then he glanced out of the open window.

The train was turning away from him, the leading coaches and goods vans out of sight around the bend ahead, and he leaned out of the window and looked up.

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