Then one morning she sat up in the rumpled bed, over which John was rampaging unchecked and sowing crumbles of lightly chewed biscuit, and she looked at Mark seriously.
‘You once asked me to marry you,’ she said. ‘Would you like to repeat that question, sir?’
And it was later that same day they heard the axeman at work up the valley.
The blade of a two-handed axe, swung against the bole of a standing hardwood tree, rings like a gunshot, and the sound of it bounced against the cliffs of Chaka’s Gate and was flung back to break in dying echoes down the valley, each stroke still lingering on the air while the next cracked off the grey cliffs. There was more than one axeman at work, so that the din was continuous, like the sounds of battle.
Storm had never before seen such a passion of anger on Mark’s face. His skin was drained of blood so that the tan of the sun was fever-yellow and his lips seemed frost-bitten and pinched by the force of it. Yet his eyes blazed, and she had to run to match his angry stride as they went up the scree slope from the river beneath the cliffs, and the sound of the axes broke over them, each separate stroke as brutal and shocking as the ones that preceded it.
Ahead of them, one of the lofty leadwoods quivered as though in agony and moved against the sky. Mark stopped in mid-stride to watch it, with his head thrown back and the same agony twisting his own lips. It was a tree of extraordinary symmetry, the silvery trunk rising with such grace as to seem as slim as a young girl’s waist. It had taken two hundred years to reach its towering height. Seventy feet above the ground, it spread into a dark green dome of foliage.
As they watched, the tree shuddered again and the axes fell silent. Slowly, majestically, the leadwood swung into a downward arc, gathering ponderous momentum, and the partially severed trunk groaned and popped as the fibres tore; faster and faster still she fell, crashing through the tops of the lesser vegetation below her, the twisting tearing wood shrieking like a living thing until she struck solid earth with a jarring impact they could feel in their guts.
The silence lasted many seconds, and then there was the sound of men’s voices, awed voices, as though intimidated by the magnitude of the destruction they had wrought. Then almost immediately after that, the axes started again, fragmenting the great silences of the valley – and Mark began to run. Storm could not keep pace with him.
He came out in an area of devastation, a growing swathe of fallen trees where fifty black men worked like ants, half-naked and burnished with their own sweat, as they stripped the branches and piled them in windrows for burning. The wood chips shone white as bone in the sunlight and the sap that oozed from the axe cuts had the sweetish smell of newly spilled blood.
At the head of the long narrow clearing, a single white man crouched to the eyepiece of a theodolite set on its squat tripod. He was aiming the instrument down the clearing and directing with hand signals the setting of brightly painted markers.
He straightened from the instrument to face Mark – a young man with a mild friendly face, thick spectacles in silver wire frames, lank sandy hair flopping on to his forehead.
‘Oh, hello there,’ he smiled, and then the smile froze as Mark hissed at him.
‘Are you in charge here?’
‘Well, yes, I suppose I am,’ the young surveyor stuttered.
‘You are under arrest.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘It’s quite simple,’ Mark blazed at him. ‘You are cutting standing timber in a proclaimed area. I am the Government Ranger, and I am placing you under arrest.’
‘Now look here,’ the surveyor began placatingly, spreading his open hands in a demonstration of his friendly intentions. ‘I’m just doing my job.’
In his blind wholesale rage, Mark had not noticed the approach of another man, a heavy broad-shouldered man who moved silently out of the uncut brush along the edge of the clearing. However, the thick north-country accent was instantly familiar, and struck sparks along the surface of Mark’s skin. He remembered Hobday from that day when first he had returned to Andersland to find his world turned upside down.
‘That’s all right, chummy. I’ll talk to Mister Anders.’ Hobday touched the young surveyor’s shoulder placatingly and smiled at Mark, a smile that exposed the short evenly ground teeth, but was completely lacking in any warmth or humour.
‘There is nothing you can tell me,’ Mark started, and Hobday lifted one hand to stop him.
‘I am here in my official capacity as a Provincial Inspector for the Ministry of Lands, Anders. You’d better listen.’
The angry words died and Mark stared at him, while Hobday calmly unfolded a letter from his wallet and proffered it to Mark. It was typewritten on Government paper and signed by the Deputy Minister of Lands. The signature was bold and black – Dirk Courtney. Mark read through the letter slowly, with a plunging sense of despair, and when he finished, he handed it back to Hobday. It gave him unlimited powers in the valley, powers backed by all the authority and weight of Government.
‘You are going up in the world,’ he said, ‘but still working for the same master.’ And the man nodded complacently, and then his eyes switched away from Mark’s face as Storm came up. The expression on his face changed, as he looked at her.
Storm had her hair in thick twin braids, dangling forward on to each breast. The sun had turned her skin to a rich reddish brown, against which her eyes were startlingly blue and clear. Except for the eyes, she looked like a Sioux princess from some romantic novel.
Hobday dropped his eyes slowly over her body, with such intimate lingering insolence that she reached instinctively for Mark’s arm and drew closer to him, as though to bring herself under his direct protection.
‘What is it, Mark?’ She was still breathless from her climb up the slope, and high colour lit her cheeks. ‘What are they doing here?’
‘They’re Government men,’ said Mark heavily. ‘From the Ministry of Lands.’
‘But they can’t cut our trees,’ she protested, her voice rising. ‘You’ve got to stop them, Mark.’
‘They’re cutting survey lines,’ Mark explained. ‘They are surveying the valley.’
‘But those trees—’
‘It don’t really matter, ma’am,’ Hobday told her. His voice was lower now with a thick gloating tone, and his eyes were still busy on her body, like insects crawling greedily to the scent of honey, moving over the thin sun-bleached cotton that covered her breasts. ‘It don’t matter a damn,’ he repeated. ‘They are all going to be under water anyway, cut or standing – it’s all going under.’ He turned away from her at last, and swept one hand down the rude clearing. ‘From that side to this,’ he said, indicating the gap between the towering grey cliffs of Chaka’s Gate, ‘right across it, we’re going to build the biggest bloody dam in the whole world.’
They sat together in darkness, close together as though for comfort, and Mark had not lit the lantern. The reflected glow of stars was thrown in under the thatched veranda of the cottage, giving them just enough light to make out each other’s faces.
‘We knew it was coming,’ whispered Storm. ‘And yet somehow I did not believe it. just as though wishing could make it stop.’
‘I’m going through early tomorrow to see your father,’ Mark told her. ‘He has to know.’
She nodded. ‘Yes, we must be ready to confront them.’
‘What will you do? I can’t leave you here with John.’
‘And you can’t take me with you. Not to my father,’ she agreed. ‘It’s all right, Mark, I’ll take John back to the cottage. We’ll wait for you.’
‘I’ll come for you there, and next time we return here, you’ll be my wife.’
She leaned against him. ‘If there is anything to return to,’ she whispered. ‘Oh Mark, Mark – they can’t do it! They can’t drown all this – this—’ The words eluded her and she fell silent, clinging to him.
They did not speak again, until minutes later a low polite cough roused them, a
nd Mark straightened to see the dark familiar bulk of Pungushe standing below the veranda in the starlight.
‘Pungushe,’ he said. ‘I see you.’
‘Jamela,’ the Zulu replied, and there was a tone and tightness in his voice that Mark had never heard before. ‘I have been to the camp of the strangers. The cutters of wood, the men with painted poles, and bright axes.’
He turned his head to look down the valley, and they followed his gaze. The ruddy glow of many camp fires flickered against the lower slopes of the cliffs and on the still night air, the sounds of laughter and men’s voices carried faintly.
‘Yes?’ Mark asked.
‘There are two white men there. One of them is young and blind and of no importance – while the other is a square thick man, who stands solid on his feet like a bull buffalo, and yet moves silently, and speaks little and quietly.’
‘Yes?’ Mark asked again.
‘I have seen this man before in the valley,’ Pungushe paused. ‘He is the silent one of whom we have spoken. He is the one who shot ixhegu, your grandfather – and smoked as he watched him die.’
Hobday moved quietly, solidly, along the edge of the slash line of the trees. The axes were silent, now, but the end of the noon break would be enforced to the minute. At the stroke of the hour they would be back at work. He was driving them hard, he always worked his gangs hard, took a pride in his ability to extract from each man effort beyond his wage. It was one of the qualities that Dirk Courtney valued in him—that and his loyalty, a fierce unswerving loyalty that baulked at no demand upon it. There was no squeamishness, no hesitating. When Dirk Courtney ordered it, there was no question asked. Hobday’s reward was every day more apparent, already he was a man of substance, and when the new land was apportioned, that red sweet well-watered soil, rich as newly butchered beef, then his reward would be complete.
He paused at the spot where the slope increased sharply, angling into its plunge to the river bed below, and he looked out across the land. Involuntarily he licked his lips, like a glutton smelling rich food.
They had worked so long for this, each of them in his own way, led and inspired by Dirk Courtney, and although Hobday’s personal share of the spoil would be a minute fraction of a single per cent, yet it was riches such as most other men only dream of.
He licked his lips again, standing very still and silent in the shadows and he looked to the sky. The clouds were piled to the very heavens, mountains of silver, blinding in the sunlight, and as he watched they moved ponderously down on the light wind. He could feel the closeness, and he stirred impatiently. Rain would delay them seriously, and rain was coming, the big torrential summer rains.
Then he was distracted again. Something moved on the far side of the slash line, and his eye darted to the movement. It was a flash of bright colour like the flick of sunbird’s wing, and his veiled eyes jumped to it instantly, his body without moving became charged with tension.
The girl came out of the brush line, and paused thirty paces away. She had not seen him, and she stood poised, listening, head cocked like a forest animal.
She stood lightly, gracefully, and her limbs were slim and brown, the flesh so firm and young and sweet that he felt the quick bright rush of lust again as he had when, the previous day, he had seen her for the first time.
She wore a loose, wide peasant skirt of gay colour, and a thin cotton bodice pulled low at the front and drawn loosely with a string that left the bulge of bosom pushing free, the fine skin shading from dark ruddy brown to pale cream. She was dressed like a girl going to meet a lover, and there was a deliciously fearful tenseness in the way she took a step forward and stopped again uncertainly. He felt the lust fuelled in his groin, and he was suddenly aware of his own hoarse breathing.
The girl turned her head and looked directly at him, and as she saw him, she started visibly, dropping back a pace with one hand flying to her mouth. She stared at him for fully five seconds, and then slowly a transformation came over her.
The fingers dropped away from her face and she put both hands behind her back, a movement that thrust the pert breasts against the cotton of her bodice so he could see the rosy dark buttons of her nipples through the material. She thrust out one hip at a saucy angle, and lifted her chin boldly. Deliberately she let her eyes slide down his body, let them linger on his groin, and then rise again to his face. It was an invitation as clear as the spoken word, and Hobday heard the blood roaring in his ears.
She tossed her head, flicking the thick braid of hair over her shoulder, and she turned away, walking deliberately back to the tree-line, exaggerating the roll of tight round buttocks under the skirt.
She looked back over her shoulder, and as he started forward to follow, she let out a tingling flirt of laughter and ran lightly on sandalled feet, turning at an angle down the slope and Hobday began to run.
Within fifty yards Storm had lost sight of him in the heavy underbrush, and she stopped to listen, fearful that he might have given up the pursuit. Then there was movement above her, at the crest of the slope, and she realized with the first pang of real alarm that he had moved more swiftly than she had anticipated, and he had not followed her down, but had stayed above her in a position of command.
She went off again, running, and almost immediately she realized that he was ahead of her, moving fast along the crest. From up there, he could trap her by a swift turn directly down the slope.
She felt panic spur her, and started to run in earnest. • Immediately the loose scree betrayed her and slipped away under her feet. She fell and rolled, flailing her arms for support and coming up on to her knees the moment her fall was broken.
She let out a little sob of fear. The man had seen her fall and had come down the slope. He was so close that she could see the square white teeth in the brown smooth face. He was grinning, a keen excited grimace, and he was steady and quick, moving down directly into the path along which she must run to safety, cutting her off squarely from where Mark waited.
She jumped to her feet and swirled away, doubling the slope, instinctively turning directly away from her pursuer - and from all help. Suddenly, she was completely alone, fleeing on frantic feet into the lonely spaces of the bush, beyond earshot of succour. Mark had been right, she realized, he had not wanted her to act as the bait. He had known just how dangerous a game she had set out to play, but in her stubborn arrogant way she had insisted, laughing at his protests, belittling his fears, until he had reluctantly agreed. Now she was running, terrified, the terror making her heart pound and squeezing her lungs so that her legs felt weak and rubbery under her.
Once she tried to turn back, but like an old and wily hound coursing a hare, he had anticipated and was there to block her, again she ran and suddenly the river was in front of her. The up-country rains had spated the course of the Bubezi and it rolled past in wide green majesty. She had to turn again along the bank, and was immediately into the area of thick jessie bush. The heavy thorn crowded her closely, leaving only narrow passages, a labyrinth of dark and secret twists and turns in which almost immediately she lost direction. She stopped and stood, trying to listen over the rush of her own breathing, trying to see through the wavering mist of her tears, tears of fear and of helplessness.
Her hair had come down in little wisps over her forehead, her cheeks blazed with high colour, and the tears made her eyes glitter with a feverish sheen.
She heard nothing, and the brown thorn encircled her. She turned slowly, almost like a blind woman, and now she was sobbing softly in her terror; she chose one of the narrow passages for escape and dived into it.
He was waiting for her. She came round the first twist of the pathway and ran almost directly into his chest.
Only at the very last instant she saw the outstretched arms, thick and brown and smooth, with the fingers of both hands hooked to seize her.
She screamed, high and shrill, and spun away, back along the path she had come, but his fingers caught in the thin cotto
n of her blouse. It tore like paper, and as she ran, the smooth creamy flesh of her back shone through the rent, flashing with a pearly promise that spurred his lust even higher, and when he laughed, it was a hoarse breathless blurt of sound that launched Storm into a fresh paroxysm of terror.
He hunted her through the jessie, and twice when he could have taken her, he deliberately let her slip through his fingers, drawing out the excruciating pleasure of it, cat with mouse, delighting at the way she shrieked at his touch, and at the fresh outburst of frantic terror with which she tried to escape him.
But at last she was finished, and she backed up into a corner of solid impenetrable thorn wall, and crouched there, clutching the shreds of her torn blouse about her, trembling with the wild uncontrollable shudders of a patient in high fever, her face smeared with tears and her sweat, staring at him with huge dark blue eyes.
He came slowly to her. He stooped and she was unresisting as he placed his big square brown hands on her shoulders.
He was still chuckling, but his own breath was unsteady, and his lips were drawn back from the square white teeth in a grimace of lust and excitement.
He pressed his mouth down over hers, and it was like one of those nightmares in which she could not move nor scream. His teeth crushed painfully against her lips, and she tasted her own blood, a slick metallic salt on her tongue and she felt herself suffocating, his hands were hard and rough as granite on the soft silk of her breasts and she came to life again, tugging unavailingly at his wrists, trying to drag them away.
‘Yes,’ he grunted, in the soft thick choked voice. ‘Fight. Keep fighting me. Yes. Yes. That’s right – struggle – don’t stop.’
His voice roused her from the hypnotic spell of terror, and she screamed again.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Do that. Scream again.’ And he turned her across his body, forcing her down until his knee caught her in the small of the back, and her body bent backwards like a drawn bow, her hair sweeping the ground and the curve of her throat was soft and white and vulnerable; he placed his open mouth on her throat.