The Quest - Smith Wilbur (читаем книги онлайн бесплатно TXT) 📗

'It is not to their natural taste, I grant, but if you mix the berries into dhurra meal and bake it into cakes they will eat them readily enough,'

Tolas said. He lit a fire and placed flat river stones in the flames. While they heated he demonstrated how to pound the fruit into a paste and mix it with the dhurra meal. 'The proportions are important. One of fruit to five of the meal. Any larger amount of the berries and the horse will refuse it, or if they eat it they will purge excessively,' he explained. When the stones were crackling hot he put handfuls of the mixture on to them and let it bake into hard cakes. He laid them aside to cool and began another batch. 'The cakes will keep without spoiling for many months, even in the worst conditions. The horses will eat them even when they are covered with green mould.'

Fenn picked one up and burnt her fingers. She passed it from hand to hand and blew on it until it cooled, then took it to Windsmoke. The mare sniffed it, fluttering her nostrils. Then she took it between her lips and rolled her eyes at Taita.

'Go on, you silly thing,' he told her sternly. 'Eat. It is good for you.'

Windsmoke crunched the cake. A few scraps fell out of her mouth,

but she swallowed the rest. Then she lowered her head to pick up the pieces from the grass. Whirlwind was watching her with interest. When Fenn brought him a cake he followed her example and ate it with gusto.

Then he pushed Fenn with his muzzle, demanding more.

'What dose do you give them?' Taita asked Tolas.

'It was a matter of experiment,' Tolas replied. 'As soon as they show any symptoms of being fly-struck I give them four or five cakes each day until the symptoms disappear, then continue the dose until long after they seem fully recovered.'

'What do you call the fruit?' Fenn demanded.

Tolas shrugged. 'The Ootasa have some outlandish name for it, but I have never thought to give it an Egyptian one.'

“Then I shall name it the Tolas fruit,' Fenn announced, and Tolas smiled, gratified.

The following day Taita and Fenn returned to the grove with Shofar, four troopers and the equipment they needed to bake a large quantity of Tolas cakes. They set up camp in the midst of the grove, in a clearing that overlooked the dry bed of the Nile. They stayed there for ten days, and filled twenty large leather sacks with the cakes. When they returned with purple-stained hands and ten baggage-loaded mules, they found Meren and his men eager to leave.

When they bade Rabat farewell, he told Taita dolefully, 'We shall probably never meet again in this life, Magus, but it has been a great honour for me to be allowed to render you some small service.'

'I am grateful for your willing assistance and cheerful company.

Pharaoh himself will hear of it,' Taita assured him.

They struck out again southwards, with Tolas as their guide, towards the hills shaped like a virgin's breasts, and the fly country. Their time at Fort Adari had refreshed men and animals and they made good progress.

Taita ordered that the hunters should keep the tails of the animal game they caught. He showed the men how to skin them, scrape flesh, salt them, then leave them to dry in the air. Meanwhile they carved wood into handles and inserted them into the tubes of dried skin in place of the bone they had removed. Finally Taita brandished one of the fly switches and told them, 'Soon you will be grateful for these. It is probably the only weapon that will discourage the fly.'

On the twentieth morning after they had left Fort Adari they made the customary early start on the day's trek. Then at a little past noon, as Tolas had predicted, the twin nipples of the hills, like the breasts of a virgin, thrust above the horizon.

'No further. Order the halt,' Taita called to Meren. He had decided before they left Fort Adari that he would not follow Tolas's advice slavishly. He had already been dosing Windsmoke and Whirlwind with the cakes and hoped that the medicine would concentrate in their blood long before they suffered the first sting. On that last evening before they entered the fly territory he took Fenn with him to the horse lines. When she saw them coming Windsmoke whickered. Taita rubbed her forehead and scratched behind her ears, then fed her a Tolas cake. Fenn did the same for Whirlwind. By now both had developed a taste for the cakes and swallowed them with appetite. Tolas had been watching from the shadows. Now he approached Taita and greeted him diffidently. 'So you are taking the grey mare and her foal with you?' he asked.

'I could not bear to leave them behind,' Taita replied.

Tolas sighed. 'I understand, Magus. Perhaps I would have done the same, for already I love them. I pray to Horus and Isis that they will survive.'

'Thank you, Tolas. We will all come together again, of that I am certain.'

Next morning they parted company. Tolas could guide them no further and turned back for Fort Adari. Nakonto was out on the point, breaking the trail, Meren and three squads marching behind him. Taita and Fenn came next, on Windsmoke and Whirlwind. The eighteen salted horses followed in a loose herd. Shabako, with the fourth squad, brought up the rear.

They camped that evening under the hills. While they ate their dinner by the fires a pride of hunting lions began to roar on the dark plain beyond the hills, a menacing sound. Taita and Meren went to check the head ropes of the tethered horses, but the lions did not come closer and gradually their roars receded and the silence of the night settled over them.

The next morning, while the column mustered, Taita and Fenn fed the horses their Tolas cakes. Then they mounted and rode on between the twin hills. Taita had just relaxed into the rhythm of the march when suddenly he straightened and stared at Windsmoke's neck. A large dark insect had appeared on her creamy hide, close to her mane. He cupped his right hand and waited for the insect to settle, extend its sharp black

proboscis and probe for the blood vessels beneath the mare's skin. The buried sting anchored it, so he was able to snatch it up in his cupped hands. It buzzed shrilly as it tried to escape but he tightened his; grip and crushed its head and body. Then he held it between two fingers and showed it to Fenn. 'This is a fly that the tribes call the tsetse. It is the first of many to come,' he predicted. At the words, another fly settled on his neck and plunged its sting into the soft skin behind his ear.

He winced and slapped at it. Although he caught it a hard blow, it shot away seemingly unharmed.

'Get out your fly switches,' Meren ordered, and soon they were all lashing at themselves and their mounts, like religious flagellants, trying to drive off the stinging swarms. The following days were a torment as the flies plagued them ceaselessly. They were at their worst during the heat of the day, but kept up the attack by the light of the moon and the stars, maddening men and horses alike.

The tails of the horses lashed continuously against their flanks and hindquarters. They tossed their heads and twitched their skins as they rtried to shake off the flies that crawled into their ears and eyes.

The faces of the men swelled like some grotesque crimson fruit and their eyes became slits in the puffy flesh. The backs of their necks were lumpy and the itching was intolerable. With their fingernails they scratched raw the skin behind their ears. At night they built smudge fires ,of dried elephant dung and crouched, coughing and gasping, in the acrid Ismoke to seek respite. But as soon as they moved away for a breath of Ifresh air the flies arrowed in on them, driving their stings deep at the instant they landed. Their bodies were so tough that a hard blow with the palm of a hand hardly disturbed them. Even when they were knocked from their perch, they rebounded in the same movement, stinging again ion some other exposed body part. The fly switches were the only effective weapon. They did not kill them, but the long tail hairs tangled legs and wings and held them so that they could be crushed between the fingers.