"Small party of armed men camped up ahead," Sean was explaining. "Not more than twenty of them. We don't know who the hell they are, but we can circle around them and keep going, or we can turn back. It's up to you, Capo."
"I want that elephant!"
"This is probably your last chance to pull out," Sean warned him.
"You're wasting time," Riccardo said. Claudia was torn by her father's decision. It would have been such an anticlimax to turn back now, and yet her first taste of the real flavor of Africa had been disconcerting. She realized as the march resumed and she fell in behind Sean that this was the first time in her life that she had been beyond the trappings and buttresses of civilization, the first time there was no police force to protect her, no recourse to law or justice or mercy. Here she was as vulnerable as an antelope to the leopard, in a forest full of predators.
She quickened her step, closing up behind Sean, and found to her surprise that in some bizarre fashion she was more alive and aware than she had ever been before. For the first time in her life she was on the bottom rung of existence, the level of survival. It was a novel and quite overwhelming sensation. She was glad her father had not decided to turn back. Claudia had long since lost all sense of direction, for Sean led unpredictably. They turned and twisted through the forest, at times moving swiftly and at others creeping forward a stealthy pace at a time and then freezing into absolute stillness at a signal from the flank which she often had not even heard. She noticed that Sean looked up at the night sky every few minutes and guessed he was navigating by the stars, but to her their whorls and blazes and fields were as confused as the lights of a foreign city.
Then, after a while, she realized they had not turned or paused for a long while and were once again heading in a straight line.
Obviously they were clear of danger for the moment. With the excitement over, she soon felt the weight of her legs and the weariness in the small of her back. The pack between her shoulders seemed to have quadrupled in weight, and she glanced at her wristwatch. The luminous dial showed her that they had been going for almost five hours since circling around that hidden camp.
"When will we rest?" she wondered, but made it a point of honor to keep close behind Sean and not to lag by a single pace.
Almost as though a refrigerator door had opened, the temperature plunged, and when they crossed another open glade, the dew on the long grass soaked the legs of her trousers and her boots squelched. She shivered, in real discomfort for the first time.
"When will he rest?" She stared at Sean's back, resenting him, willing him to stop. On he went, ever on, and she had the feeling he was deliberately trying to humiliate her, to break her down, to force her to squeal for mercy.
"I'll show you." She did not slacken her pace as she reached back and unstrapped her Gore-Tex ski jacket from the top of her pack. It was really cold now, the frost crackled underfoot, and her feet were numb, but she kept her station in the line. Quite suddenly she realized that she could see clearly each thick glossy tress of hair down the back of Sean's neck.
"Dawn. I thought it would never come." As she thought it, Sean stopped at last. She pulled up beside him with the nerves in her legs jumping and trembling with fatigue.
"Sorry, Capo," Sean spoke softly past her. "I had to push a little. We had to get well clear of that bunch before light. How are you making out?"
"No problem," Riccardo muttered, but in the gray dawn light, his face looked pale and drawn. He was suffering as much as she was, and she hoped she didn't look as bad. He went to find a place to sit and lowered himself stiffly.
Sean glanced at Claudia, still standing beside him. Neither of them spoke, but he had a faint, enigmatic smile on his lips.
"Don't ask me how I feel," she thought. "I'd rather drink Drana than tell you the truth."
He inclined his head slightly, whether in condescension or respect, she wasn't sure. "First day and the third are always the worst," he said.
"I feel fine," she said. "I can go on quite happily."
"Sure." He grinned openly. "But you'd better go and look after Papa rather."
Sean brought mugs of tea to where she sat beside her father, wrapped in her lightweight down-filled sleeping bag against the dawn chill. Job had brewed it on a tiny smokeless fire that he extinguished immediately once the billy boiled. The tea was strong and sweet and scalding; she had never tasted anything more welcome. With it he handed her a stack of maize cakes and cold cuts of venison. She tried not to wolf them down.
"We'll move on in a few minutes," he warned her. When he saw the dismay in her eyes, he explained.
"We never sleep next to a cooking fire; it can attract the uglies." They went on for five miles. In the middle of the morning, on higher ground in a place secure and easily defended, Sean showed her how to scoop a hollow for her hip and use her pack as a pillow.
She fell asleep as though she had been sandbagged.
She could not believe it when he shook her awake only a minute later. "It's four o'clock." He handed her a mug and another stack of maize cakes. "You've slept six hours straight. We are moving out in five minutes."
Hastily she rolled her sleeping bag, then peered at herself in the metal hand mirror she had surreptitiously retrieved after Sean had thrown it out of her pack.
"Oh God," she whispered. The camouflage cream had caked and striped with her sweat. "I look like Al Jolson in drag." She tidied her hair, dragging her comb through the tangles, and then tied a scarf around it.
With short breaks every two hours, they kept going all that night.
At first Claudia's legs felt as though they were in plaster casts, but soon she walked the stiffness out of them and kept her place in the line without lagging, though the pace Sean set was every bit as hard as the previous night.
In the dawn, they drank tea. Claudia had begun to depend on the brew. She had always been a coffee drinker, but now on the march she found herself fantasizing over her next scalding mug of tea.
"It's the only thing keeping me going," she confided to her father, only half joking.
Riccardo nodded agreement. "They say the Limeys conquered their empire on the stuff."
Sean came across from where he had been in deep discussion with Matatu and Job. "We are only a few hours" march from the reed beds where we saw Tukutela from the air." He looked pointedly at Claudia. "I'd like to try and get there before we sleep, but of course some of us are a little hushed..." He let it hang between them, a dare and an accusation.
"I need a little stroll to settle my breakfast," she said amiably, but she wished her face was not coated with black cream. She hated ceding even the slightest advantage to him.
As Sean walked away, her father swirled the tea leaves in his mug and flicked them out.
"Don't fall for him, tesoro. He'd be too big a handful even for you."
She stared at him, outraged and appalled. "Fall for him? Are you out of your skull, Papa? I can't stand the sight of him."