A Feast Unknown

“I have paid,” I said. “That kick was for the beating. But I still owe you for much more. And I am one who pays his debts.”

“Is the gold really down there?” he said.

“They will find none,” I said. “Not unless they dig much deeper than I did. The only way you, or they, can get my gold is to demand a ransom. My fortune is secure in fifty banks throughout the world.”

He grimaced. He could walk only by limping. I had kicked him harder than I had intended.

“Caliban is down there,” I said, “and he is showing himself so that the soldiers will chase him. But they won’t catch him. They will catch us instead, unless we travel far and fast, because he will lead them to us.”

He looked at the northern end of the valley, where we had crossed. The tiny figure should have been unidentifiable to the naked eye. He had, however, shed all his clothes. The sun gleamed on that metal-caplike hair and the bronze skin. He moved as if he were a cloud driven by the wind.

A number of Kenyans were ru

He came up the mountainside like a great bronze-colored rock baboon. I have never seen a man run up such a steepness and rockiness so swiftly or bound so from projection to projection.

“He is leading them up to us,” I said.

Noli had been watching him through the binoculars. He said, “Why is he doing that?”

He did not comment on Caliban’s prodigious climbing. His expression was strange, however.

I saw no reason to tell Noli that Caliban was putting me to the test again.

“Unlock the handcuffs,” I said. “I can’t get away from you as long as I’m within range of your gun.”

He smiled briefly and said, “You know I won’t shoot unless I have to. No. You stay cuffed.”

“At least let my hands be in front of me.”

“No.”

“You can’t run very fast,” I said. “The only way to stop them will be to roll rocks down and hope to start an avalanche. The slope here is a steep and loose talus. You’ll need help. I can’t help with my hands behind me.”

He waved his rifle. “Let’s go. We can still outrun them.”

I saw no reason to go along with Noli an inch more. We had come to the parting of the ways.

I strained against the handcuffs. I thought I would rip out the muscles of my arms and the veins of my temples with my effort. There was a snap, and my hands came free. He backed away, his skin white and his eyes wide. He swore in Albanian.

I turned away from him and looked over the edge of the rock. Caliban was slowed down. The

Kenyans had quit firing at him. About fifty were strung out in a rough line about three hundred yards long.

The rest were still on the valley floor. They had stopped firing because they realized they could precipitate an avalanche.

I picked up a boulder which must have weighed three hundred pounds and lifted it above my head. I shouted at Caliban. He had stopped now. He was about forty feet below me. His feet were on a ledge so narrow that I could almost not see it, and his hands were gripping some projections invisible to me. His head was thrown back, and he stared straight up at me. He looked like a statue carved out of the mountain itself.

I shouted, “Catch, Caliban!” and heaved the boulder outwards.

I don’t think he expected us to be so close. He must have thought we would be at least a half-mile on and desperately striving to increase the distance.

The boulder fell for twenty feet, hit an out-cropping, bounded out, struck ten feet above Caliban, broke off rock and dust and bumped past him. I could see him dimly through the cloud.

I picked up a smaller boulder and tossed it after the first. It missed all the outcrops the first had struck and, as nearly as I could determine through the dust, should have hit Caliban. Or the place where he had been. Still was, I hoped. Or did I? I felt some sense of disappointment that the relationship was so soon over and that he had been so easily disposed of.

That is, if he had been. I would not have stayed a second in the same spot, and I doubted that he would.

The first boulder had leaped on down like a great legless kangaroo. It had hit something, a loose pile, an unstable boulder or cluster of boulders. The avalanche started. The dust rose so thickly that I could not see what was happening. A noise as of two clashing thunderstorms arose, and soon the flat rock on which I stood began to tremble. We retreated. The edge of the mountain did not, however, fall off. It remained firm, although it, too, became hidden in dust.

When the rumbling had ceased and the cloud had thi

Nor was anything to be seen of Caliban.

Noli was still pale, but he managed a smile and said, “We certainly wiped them out, heh, Lord

Grandrith?”

He was holding the rifle with both hands, and he was watching my hands. I said, “I know you have another pair of handcuffs in the pocket of your jacket. I will allow you to put them on me only if my hands are in front of me. There will be some very difficult climbing ahead, and it will be impossible for me to climb with my hands behind me. In fact, it may be impossible with handcuffs.”

I held out my arms. He took the key out of his pocket and threw it to me. “Unlock those cuffs.”

While I was doing so, he took out the other pair of cuffs.

“You will put them on yourself,” he said. “You didn’t really think I would get close enough to you for you to grab me, did you?”

“I thought I would try,” I said.

He threw the cuffs at me and I caught them with one hand, spun, and released them as I completed the circle. The cuffs flew at him; he jerked the rifle up to ward them off; I was in at him, throwing myself like an American football blocker. The rifle blast seared my back; I hit him in the hips; he went down and over.

By the time he had gotten to his feet, I had the rifle.

At my order, he presented his back to me. I knocked him out with the rifle butt and chained his hands behind him. I put the key in his jacket pocket and sat down. When he regained consciousness, he groaned and fluttered his eyelids. I slapped his face to bring him to more quickly.

I lifted him up and passed a noose from his rope around his arms and body a few inches below his shoulders. I shoved him ahead. He balked but nevertheless went screaming over the edge. I pulled up on the rope so that it tightened before he had gone more than a body’s length down. He dangled, his back scraping the perpendicular face of the cliff. He tried to look up at me, but the weight of his body and the pressure of the rock behind his head prevented him.

I lowered him slowly and gently. I did not want the rope to loosen and so drop him down the cliff.

Then I jerked the rope and managed to turn him so he faced the cliff. He saw the tiny ledge below his feet. After some effort, he got his feet firmly placed on the narrow cropping. The heels of his boots hung over the air.

I let more slack into the rope and succeeded in working it loose from his body and pulling it back up.

He must have wanted greatly to look upward, but he did not dare. He could maintain his position on the ledge only by pressing face and body in against the rock.

I called, “Noli! You can’t go more than a few inches to the right or left! Yet, if you can get your hands in front of you, and somehow get the key out of your front pocket, and then unlock the cuffs, you can climb back up here!”