Rage by Wilbur Smith Page B

to erode those rights – we look upon all English speakers of good will who consider themselves South Africans first as our brothers. Our destinies are linked with chains of steel—’ Manfred broke off, and lifted his binoculars to his eyes. ‘They are moving in closer now,’ he murmured. ‘We had better get ready.’ He lowered the binoculars and smiled carefully at Shasa. ‘I have heard that you shoot well. I look forward to a demonstration.’
    Shasa was disappointed. He had wanted to know where the carefully rehearsed recital had been heading, but now he hid his impatience behind that easy smile of his and opened the breech of the rifle across his lap.
    â€˜You are right in one thing, Minister,’ he said. ‘We are linked together with chains of steel. Let us hope the weight of them doesn’t draw us all under.’ He saw a strange flash in those topaz yellow eyes, of anger or triumph, he was not certain, and it lasted only an instant.
    â€˜I will fire only on a line from dead ahead towards the right,’ Manfred said. ‘You only in an arc to the left. Agreed?’
    â€˜Agreed,’ Shasa nodded, although he felt a prickle of irritation at being out-manoeuvred so soon and so easily. Manfred had carefully placed himself to cover the right flank, the natural side for a right-handed marksman to swing.

    â€˜You will need the advantage,’ Shasa thought grimly and asked aloud, ‘I hear you also are a fine shot. What about a small wager on the bag?’
    â€˜I do not gamble,’ Manfred replied easily. ‘That is a device of the devil, but I will count the bag with interest,’ and Shasa was reminded of just how puritanical was the extreme Calvinism that Manfred De La Rey practised.
    Carefully Shasa loaded his rifle. He had hand-loaded his own cartridges for he never trusted mass-produced factory ammunition. The shiny brass cases were filled with a charge of Norma powder that would drive the Nosler Partition bullet at well over three thousand feet a second. The special construction of the bullet would ensure that it mushroomed perfectly on impact.
    He worked the bolt and then raised the weapon to his shoulder and used the telescopic sight to scan the plain. The pick-up trucks were less than a mile away, gently weaving back and forth, to prevent the herds breaking back, keeping them moving slowly down towards the line of hills and the hunters hidden below them. Shasa blinked his eye rapidly to clear his vision, and he could make out each individual animal in the herds of antelope trotting ahead of the vehicles.
    They were light as smoke, and they rippled like cloud shadow across the plain. Trotting daintily with heads held high and with their horns shaped like perfect miniature lyres, they were graceful and indescribably lovely.
    Without stereoscopic vision Shasa had difficulty in judging distance, but he had developed the knack of defining relative size and added to this a kind of sixth sense that enabled him to pilot an aircraft, strike a polo ball, or shoot as well as any fully sighted person.
    The nearest of the approaching antelope were almost at extreme range when there was a crackle of rifle fire from further down the line and immediately the herds exploded into silent airy flight. Each tiny creature danced and
bounced on long legs no thicker than a man’s thumb. Seeming no longer bounded by the dictates of gravity, every fluid leap blurring against the matching background of parched earth, they tumbled and shot into the mirage-quivering air in the spectacular display of aerobatics that gave them their name, and down each of their backs a frosty mane came erect and shone with their alarm.
    It was more difficult than trying to bring down a rocketing grouse with a spreading pattern of shot, impossible to hold the darting ethereal shapes in the cross-hairs of the lens, fruitless to aim directly at the swift creatures – necessary rather