Power of the Sword - Smith Wilbur (электронная книга TXT) 📗
He saw understanding lighten David's face. He turned and ran down the slope with long bounding strides, so that he seemed to float above the dark rocks, skimming them lightly.
Shasa turned at the bottom end of the valley and lined up on the roughly ploughed strip of land at the foot of the slope.
He saw that David was already halfway down and that the shufta were trying to head him off, but then he needed all his wits for the touch down.
At the last moment he pulled on full flap and held the Hurricane off, letting her float in, bleeding off speed, back, back, back with the stick. Two feet off the ploughed earth she stalled and dropped in with a crash, bounced and hit again, and bounced, caught a wheel in the rough and her tail went up. She almost nosed in, then checked and ran out, kicking and jolting, throwing Shasa cruelly against his shoulder-straps.
He was down. He had given himself even odds on getting her down without breaking her, but here he was down and David had almost reached the bottom of the ridge.
David wasn't going to make it, he realized almost immediately. Four of the strongest runners amongst the shufta had pulled ahead, and they were going to cut David off before he reached the ploughed land. The other shufta had stopped and were shooting at long range. Shasa saw bullets kick up little dust feathers along the slope, some of them fell frighteningly close to David's racing form.
Shasa turned the Hurricane, standing on one rudder to force her wheels over the rough furrows. When her nose was pointed directly at the four leading shufta, he gave the Hurricane a burst of full throttle and her tail lifted. For a moment she was level and her Brownings could bear. He fired a full burst, and a tornado of shot swept across the field, scything down the dry sorghum stalks and catching the group of running men, blowing two of them into sodden bundles of red rags, spinning a third in a giddy little danse macabre veiled by a curtain of flying dust. The remaining bandit threw himself flat to the earth, and the Hurricane's tail dropped back onto the tail wheel. The machine-guns could no longer bear.
David was only a few hundred yards away now, coming on fast, his long legs flying and Shasa swung the Hurricane to point back down the valley. The down slope would add speed to their take-off run.
Shasa leaned out of the cockpit.
Come on, Davie, he yelled. Gold medal this time, boyo!
Something hit the cowling just in front of the canopy with a metallic twang and then went screaming off in ricochet, leaving a silver smear through the paintwork. Shasa looked back. The shufta were into the edge of the field, running forward, then stopping to kneel and fire. Another bullet cracked past his head, forcing him to flinch and duck.
Come on, Davie! He could hear David's panting breath above the idling beat of the Rolls-Royce engine, and a bullet slapped into the wing, punching a neat round hole through the fabric.
Come on, Davie. Sweat had stained David's tunic and greased his flushed face. He reached the Hurricane and jumped up onto the wing. The aircraft dipped under his weight.
On my lap, Shasa yelled. Get in! David scrambled in on top of him, grunting for breath.
I can't see ahead, Shasa shouted. You take the stick and the throttle, I'll work the rudders. He felt David's hands on the joystick and the throttle lever, and relinquished both of them. The engine beat quickened and the Hurricane began to roll forward.
A touch of left rudder, David called, his voice broken and rough with fatigue, and Shasa pushed on an inch of left rudder.
In a gale of sound and dust the Rolls-Royce engine built up to full power, and they were bumping and bouncing over the field, steering an erratic course as Shasa worked the
rudders blindly, over-correcting to David's instructions.
Shasa could not see ahead. David was crushing him down in the seat and totally obscuring his forward vision. He twisted his head and looked over the edge of the cockpit, watching the ground begin to blur past him as their speed built up, responding quickly to David's calls for left or right rudder. The dry sorghum stalks whipped against the leading edges of the wings; the sound they made was almost as ugly as the snap and flute of bullets passing close. All the remaining shufta were still firing at them, but the range was opening rapidly.
The Hurricane hit a hump in the field and it kicked them into the air. The jolting and thudding ceased abruptly and they were airborne, climbing away.
We made it! Shasa shouted, amazed at their achievement, and as the words left his lips something hit him in the face.
The bullet was a piece of hammered-iron pot-leg, as long and thick as a man's thumb. It had been fired from a 1779
Tower musket by a handful of black powder. It struck the metal frame of the canopy beside Shasa's head, and the pot leg mushroomed and tumbled as it ricocheted. Spinning, it smashed into the side of Shasa's face, its velocity sharply reduced by the impact on the frame. Striking side-on, it did not penetrate to the brain.
Shasa did not even lose consciousness. It felt as though he had been hit in the outer corner of his left eye with a full swing of a hammer. His head was knocked across so that it struck the opposite side of the canopy.
He felt the supra-orbital margin of the frontal bone of his skull shatter, and hot blood drenched his eye and tatters of his own skin and flesh hung down over his face like a curtain.
David! he screamed. I'm hit! I can't see! David twisted around and looked back at Shasa's face and he cried out in horror. Blood was spurting and dribbling and splashing, blown by the slipstream into pink veils that spattered into David's face.
I can't see, Shasa kept repeating. His face was raw meat running red. I can't see, oh God Davie, I can't see. David pulled the silk scarf from around his own neck and pushed it into one of Shasa's groping hands.
Try and stop the bleeding, he shouted above the roar of the engine, and Shasa bundled the scarf and pressed it into the hideously ragged wound, while David gave all his attention to getting them home, keeping low, skimming the wild brown hills.
It took them fifteen minutes back to the airstrip at Yirga Alem and they came in at treetop level. David slammed the Hurricane onto the dusty strip and taxied tail up to the waiting field ambulance that he had called for from the air.
They lifted Shasa out of the blood-spattered cockpit. Then David and a medical orderly half-carried, half-led him, stumbling like a blind man to the ambulance. Within fifteen minutes Shasa was anaesthetized and laid out on the operating table in the hospital tent and an air-force doctor was working over him.
When he came round from the anaesthetic, all was dark.
He lifted his hand and touched his face. it was swathed in bandages, and panic rose in him.
David" he tried to scream, but it came out in a drunken slur from the chloroform.
All right, Shasa, I'm here. The voice was close by and he groped for him.
Davie! Davie! It's all right, Shasa, it's all going to be just fine. Shasa found his hand and clung to it. I can't see. I'm blind., The bandages, that's all, David assured him. The doctor is delighted with you. You're not lying to me, David? Shasa pleaded. 'Tell me I'm not blind. You are not blind, David whispered, but mercifully Shasa could not see his face as he said it. Shasa's desperate grip relaxed slowly, and after a minute the pain-killers took effect and he drifted back into unconsciousness.
David sat beside his cot all that night; even in darkness the tent was hot as an oven. He wiped the glistening sweat from Shasas neck and chest, and held his hand when he whimpered in his sleep and muttered, Mater? Are you there, Mater? After midnight the doctor ordered David to leave him and get some rest, but David refused.
