The Sound of Thunder (44 page)

Then Michael ran, shouting as he passed the grooms’ quarters.

He threw open the half door of one of the stalls and snatched the bridle from its peg as he ran to his horse. Hands clumsy with haste, he forced the bit between the animal’s teeth and buckled the cheek strap. When he led it out into the yard two of the grooms were standing there, bewildered with sleep.

“Fire!” Michael pointed along the hills. “Call everybody and bring them to help. ” He went up on to the bare back of his horse and looked down at them. “Bring every man from the location, come in the mule, wagon. Come as fast as you can. Then he hit his heels into the mare’s flanks and drove out of the yard, laying forward across her back.

Seventy minutes later Michael checked her on the crest of the escarpment. She was blowing heavily between his knees. Still five miles ahead, bright even in the bright moonlight, a circle of fire lay on the dark plantations of Lion Kop. Above it a black cloud, a cloud that climbed and spread on the wind to hide the stars.

“Oh God, Uncle Sean!” The exclamation wrung from Michael was a cry of physical pain, and he urged the mare forward again. Charging her recklessly through the ford of the Baboo Stroom. so that the water flew like exploding glass, then lunging up the far bank and on along the hills.

The mare was staggering in her gallop as Michael kneed her through the gates into the yard of the Lion Kop homestead.

There were wagons and many blacknen carrying axes. Michael hauled the mare back so violently that she nearly fell.

“Where is the Nkosi?” he shouted at a big Zulu he recognized as Sean’s personal servant.

“He has gone to Pietermaritzburg.

Michael slid down from his horse and turned her loose.

“Send a man to the village to ask for help.

“It is done,” the Zulu replied.

“We must move all the livestock from the top paddocks, get the horses out of the stables, it may come this way,” Michael went on.

“I have sent all the wives to do these things.”

“You have done well, then. Now let us go.”

The Zulus were swarming up on to the wagons, clutching the long, handled axes. Michael and Mbejane ran to the lead wagon Michael took the reins. At that moment two horsemen galloped into the yard.

He could not see their faces in the night.

“Who’s that?” Michael shouted.

ster and Van Wyk! ” The nearest neighbours.

Thank God! Will you take the other wagons?”

They dismounted and ran past Michael.

Michael stood with his legs braced apart, he threw his shoulders open as he wielded the whip and then sent it snaking forward to crack an inch above the ears of the lead mules. They longed forward into the traces and the wagon bounced and clattered out of the yard.

As they galloped in frantic convoy along the main access road towards the plantations they met the Zulu women with their children from the location streaming down towards the homestead, their soft voices calling greeting and speed to their men as they passed.

But Michael hardly heard them, he stood with his eyes fastened on the pillar of red flame and smoke that rose from the heart of Sean’s trees.

“It is in the trees we planted two years ago. ” Mbejane spoke beside him. “But already it will be close upon the next block of older trees. We cannot hope to stop it there.

“Where then?

This side there are more young trees and a wide road. We can try there.

“What is your name? ” Michael asked.

“Mbejane. ” “I am Michael. The Nkosi’s nephew.”

“I know. ” Mbejane nodded, then went on,

“Turn off where next the roads meet.

They came to the cross, roads. In the sector ahead were the young trees, ten feet high, thick as a man’s arm, massed dark leaves and interlacing branches. Far out beyond them in the tall mature wattle was the line of flame. Above it a towering wall of sparks and dark smoke, coming down swiftly on the wind. It would be upon them in less than an hour at its present rate of advance.

A fire like this would jump a thirty, foot road without checking, they must cut back into the young wattle and increase the gap to sixty feet at the least.

Michael swung the wagon off the road and hauled the mules to a halt. He jumped down to meet the other wagons as they Came up.

“Go on for two hundred yards, then start your boys in chop, ping out the wattle towards the fire, we’ve got to widen the road. I’ll start my gang here”, he shouted at Van Wyk.

“Right. ” “Mr. Broster, go on to the end of the block and start working back this way, cut the timber out another thirty feet. ” Without waiting to hear more, Broster drove on. These two men, twice Michael’s age, conceded him the right of command without argument.

Snatching an axe from the nearest Zulu, Michael issued his orders as he ran to the young wattle. The men crowded after him and Michael selected a tree, took his stance and swung the axe in a low arc from the side. The tree quivered and rained loose leaves upon him at the blow. Smoothly he reversed his grip on the shaft of the axe and swung again from the opposite side. The blade sliced through the soft wood, the tree sagged wearily away from him and groaned as it subsided. He stepped past it to the next. Around him the Zulus spread out along the road and the night rang with the beat of their axes.

Four times during the next half, hour fresh wagons galloped in, wagons loaded with men and driven by Sean’s neighbours, until almost three hundred men were using the axe on Sean’s lovingly planted and tenderly nursed wattle.

Shoulder to shoulder, chopping in wordless frenzy, trampling the fallen saplings as they moved forward.

Once a man yelled in pain and Michael looked up to see two Zulus dragging another back to the road with his leg half severed by the slip of a careless axe. Dark blood in the moonlight.

One of the neighbours hurried to tend the injured man and Michael turned back to the destruction of the wattle.

Swing, change hands and swing again, the solid thunk! and the tree swaying. Shove it over and struggle through the fallci@ tangle of branches to the next. Swing again, and smell the sweet bleeding sap, feel the ache in the shoulders and the sting of sweat in the burst blisters of the palms.

Then suddenly the other smell, acrid on the wind. Smoke.

Michael paused and looked up. The men on each side of him stopped work also and the firelight danced on their naked, sweat greased bodies as they leaned on their axes and watched it come On a front four hundred yards wide, ponderously it rolle down towards them. Not with the explosive white heat of a burning pine forest, but in the awful grandeur of orange and dar’ red, billowing smoke and torrential sparks.

Gradually the sound of axes died along the line as men stopped and watched this appalling thing come down towards them. it lit their faces clearly, revealing the awe that was on all of them.

They could feel the heat now, great gusts of it that shrivelled the tender growth ahead of the flames, and suddenly a freak of the wind sent a bank of black smoke billowing down over the motionless line of men and blotted them out from each other. It cleared as swiftly as it came. and left them coughing and gasping.

“Back! Get back to the road!” yelled Michael and the cry was taken up and thrown along the line. They waded back through the morass of waist, high vegetation and assembled in small subdued groups along the road, standing together helplessly with the axes idle in their hands, fearful in the face of that line of flame and smoke.

“Cut branches to beat with! ” Michael whipped their apathy.

“String out along the edge. ” He hurried along the road, pushing them back into line, bullying them, cursing in his own fear.

“Come on, the flames will drop when they reach the fallen trees.

Cover your faces, use your shirts. Hey, you, don’t just stand there.

With renewed determination each man armed himself with a green branch, and they re, formed along the road.

Quietly they stood in the daylight glare of the flames, black faces impassive, white ones flushed with heat and working anxiously.

“Do you think we’ll be able to . Michael started as he reached Ken Broster, and then he stopped. The question he had been about to ask had no answer. Instead he said,

“We’ve lost three thousand acres already, but if it gets away from us here! ” Involuntarily both of them glanced back at the tall mature wattle behind them.

“We’ll hold it here,” Broster stated with a certainly he did not feel.

“I hope you’re right,” whispered Michael, then suddenly Broster shouted: “Oh Christ, look!

For a moment Michael was blinded by the red glare and unsighted by the smoke. The tire burned unevenly. In places it had driven forward in great wedge, shaped salients of Ilaine and left behind bays of standing wattle that were withering and browning in the heat.

From out of one of these bays, into the springy matt of fallen and trampled branches staggered a man.

“Who the hell started Michael. The man was unrecognizable. His shirt ripped to shreds by branches that had also scourged his face into a bloody mask. He floundered forward towards the road, two slack exhausted paces before he fell and disappeared under the leaves.

“The Nkosikana. ” Mbejane’s voice boomed above the thunder of the flames. “Dirk! It’s Dirk Courtney!” Michael started forward.

The heat was painful in Michael’s face. How much more intense must it be out there where Dirk was lying. As if they knew their prey was helpless the flames raced forward eagerly, triumphantly, to consume him. Whoever went in to rob them would meet the full fury of their advance.

Michael plunged into the brush and ploughed his way towards where Dirk thrashed feebly, almost encircled by the deadly embrace of the flames, and the heat reached out ahead of the flames to welcome him.

Mbejane ran beside him.

“Go back,” shouted Mbejane. “It needs only one of us.”

But Michael did not answer him and they crashed side by side through the brush, racing the fire with Dirk as the prize.

Mbejane reached him first and lifting him, turned back for the road. He took one step before he fell and rose again unsteadily from the mass of branches. Even his vast strength was insufficient in this vacuum of heat. His mouth was open, a pink cave in the glistening black oval of his face, wide open and his chest heaved strenuously as he hunted air, but instead sucked the scalding heat into his throat.

Michael threw himself forward against the heat to reach him It was almost a solid thing, a barrier of red shimmering glare Michael could feel it swelling and tightening the skin of his face, and drying the moisture from his eyeballs.

“I’ll take his legs,” he grunted and reached for Dirk. A patch of brown appeared miraculously on the sleeve of his shirt singed by the flames as though it had been carelessly ironed Beneath it the heat sunk a barb of agony into his flesh.

Half a dozen paces together with Dirk between them before Michael tripped and fell, dragging Mbenjane down with him, They were a long time rising, all movement slowing down_, when they did they were surrounded.

long prongs of flame had reached the area of fallen sapling on either side of them. This had slowed them and diminished their fury. But a chance gust of wind and fuel had forced them to curl inwards on each other, spreading horns of fire ahead of Michael and Mbejane and leaving them enclosed by a dancing, leaping palisade of flame.

“Go through! ” croaked Michael, his throat scalded and swolen.

“We must break through. ” And they churned their way towards the encircling wall.

Through it, vague and unreal, he could see men beating at the flames, distorted phantoms trying desperately to open a path for them.

Mbejane wore only a loin cloth, no breeches, coat nor boots to protect him, as Michael had. He was very near the limit of his strength.

Now looking at Michael across the body of the boy they carried, Mbejane saw a curious thing. Michael’s hair crinkled slowly and then began to smoke, smouldering like an old sack.

Michael screamed at the agony of it, a hideous sound that shrilled above the roar and crackle of the flames. But agony was the key that unlocked the last storehouse of his strength. As though it were a rag doll he snatched Dirk’s body from Mbejane’s grasp and lifting it with both hands on to his shoulders he charged into the fire.

The flames reached to his waist, clawing greedily at him as he ran and the smoke eddied and swirled about him, but he was through.

“Help Mbejane! ” he shouted at the Zulu beaters and then he was out on to the road. He dropped Dirk and beat at his clothing with his bare hands. His boots were charred and his clothing was alight in a dozen places. He fell and rolled wildly in the dusty road to smother it.

Two Zulus went in to help Mbejane. Two nameless blacknien, two labourers, men of no distinction. Neither of them wore boots. Both of them reached Mbejane as he tottered weakly towards them. One on each side they urged him back towards the road.

At this moment Michael rolled to his knees in the road and despite his own agony watched them with a sickened fascination.

Leading Mbejane between them as though he were a blind man, they stumbled barefooted into the flames and stirred up a great cloud of sparks around them. Then the smoke, rolled dOWT@ over them and they were gone.

, Mbejane! ” croaked Michael, and pushed himself to his feet to go to him, then: “Oh God, Oh, thank God.” Mbejane and one of the Zulus stumbled out of the smoke into the arms of the men who waited for them.

back for the other Zulu. No one went back for No one went him until two hours later when the dawn had broken and the fire had been stopped at the road and the mature wattle had been saved. Then Ken Broster led a small party gingerly into the wilderness of still smouldering ash, into the black desert. They found him on his face Those parts of him that had lain against the earth were still recognizable as belonging to a human being.

“Ladyburg in twenty minutes, Mr. Courtney. The conductor put his head round the door of the compartment.

“Thanks, Jack.” Sean looked up from his book.