01 A Falcon Flies (aka Flight of the Falcons) by Wilbur Smith

Author:Wilbur Smith [Smith, Wilbur]
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Jan Cheroot squatted beside the spoor and grinned like a gnome in a successful piece of sorcery, his slant eyes almost disappearing in the web of wrinkles and folds of yellow skin.

‘Our luck has come at last,’ he exulted. ‘This is indeed an elephant to sing about.’

He took a roll of twine out of the bulging pocket of his tunic and used it to measure the circumference of one of the huge pad marks. It was well over five feet, close to six feet around.

‘Double that is how high he stands at the shoulder,’ Jan Cheroot explained. ‘What an elephant!’

Matthew had at last controlled his excitement enough to explain how he had awoken that dawn, when the light was grey and uncertain, and seen the herd passing close to the camp in deathly silence, three great grey ghostly shapes, moving out of the forest and entering the blackened and barren valley through which the fire had swept. They were gone so swiftly, that it had seemed that they had never existed, but their spoor was impressed so clearly into the soft layer of fire ash that every irregularity in the immense footprints, the whorls and wavy creases of the horny pads, were clearly visible.

‘There was one of them, bigger and taller than the others, his teeth were long as a throwing spear and so heavy that he held his head low and moved like an old man, a very old man.’

Now Zouga also shivered with excitement, even in the stultifying heat of the bumed-out valley, where it seemed the blackened earth had retained the heat of the flames. Jan Cheroot, mistaking the small movement, grinned wickedly around the stem of his clay pipe.

‘My old father used to say that even a brave man is frightened three times when he hunts the elephant, once when he sees its spoor, twice when he hears its voice and the third time when he see the beast — big and black as an ironstone kopje.’

Zouga did not trouble to deny the accusation, he was following the run of the spoor with his eyes. The three huge animals had moved up the centre of the valley, heading directly into the bad ground of the escarpment rim.

‘We will follow them,’ he said quietly.

‘Of course,’ Jan Cheroot nodded, ‘that is what we came for.’

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