Men of Men

"Here they come, my love," Ralph murmured to Scipio, and touched the russet-dappled breast with his lips and felt the beat of the fierce heart against his face.

"God, but they are big," Ralph murmured, and the tiny shapely body on his arm was feather light. He had never flown her against geese before, and he was torn with doubts.

The V-shaped flight of geese went far out across the swamp in a leisurely descending circle and then they were coming back, low, flying into the sun; It was perfect. Scipio would have the sun behind her when she towered, and Ralph thrust his doubts aside.

He slipped the soft leather hood off Scipio's beautiful dove-grey head, and the yellow eyes opened like full moons, focusing swiftly. She shook out her feathers, swelling in size for a moment, puffing out her breast until she saw the thick black skein of geese against the sky, and her plumage flattened, going sleek and polished, steely in the early sunlight, and she crouched forward on Ralph's wrist.

Turning with her to follow the flight of the geese, Ralph could feel the rapier points of her talons through the cuff of his leather gauntlet and sense the tension of the small neat body. She seemed to vibrate like a violin's strings as the bow is drawn lightly across them.

With his free hand he broke the quick-release knot that secured the jesses to Scipio's leg.

"Hunt!" he cried, and launched her, throwing her clear of the reed; and she went on high like a javelin, towering swiftly for the sun on wings shaped like the wicked blades of a pair of fighting knives.

The geese saw her instantly, and stalled back on great wings that were suddenly ungainly with shock. Their tight V-formation broke up as each bird turned away two of them rising, driving hard for height while the third bird swung north again towards the river, dropped height steeply to pick up the speed he had lost in the initial stall of shock, and then levelled out low and winged hard, neck outstretched, webbed feet tucked up under his tail.

Scipio was still towering, going up on wings that blurred with speed and turned to golden discs in the early slanting sunlight.

Her tactics were those of the instinctive killer. She needed every inch of height that she could achieve. She needed it to exchange for speed when she began her stoop, her body weight was many times lighter than the huge birds she was hunting, and she had to kill with shock and speed.

Even as she went up her head was twisted to the side, watching, judging, as the game scattered away below her.

"Don't duck, my sweeting," Ralph called to her.

There was very real danger of it, for though Scipio was hungry to hunt, she had never been flown against birds such as these. Geese were not her natural prey; nature had not equipped her for the shock of binding to something so massive.

As she climbed so the difference in size of hunter and hunted was emphasized; and then abruptly Scipio was at the height she judged sufficient and she hovered, ten beats of Ralph's own heart as he watched her standing in the air.

She was daunted, the game was too big, she was going to duck.

"Hunt, darling, hunt!"he called to her and she seemed to have heard him. She screamed that terrible death cry of the falcon, high and shrill and fierce, and then she folded her wings and dropped into her stoop.

"She's taking the low bird," Ralph shouted his triumph; she was not going to duck, she had selected the goose that had dropped close to earth and was now crossing her front at an acute angle.

"There is the liver of a lion in that small body." Bazo's voice was full of wonder as he stared upwards at the tiny deadly dart that fell against the blue.

They could hear the wind hissing through her halfcocked wings, see the infinitesimal movements of her tip feathers with which she controlled that terrible headlong plunge.

The goose flogged at the air, heavy, massive, black flashed with frosty white, its panic evident in every beat of its frantic wings.

The speed with which Scipio closed was chilling.

Ralph felt the hair on the nape of his neck come erect as though an icy wind had touched him as Scipio reached forward with her steely talons.

This was the moment for which he and the bird had worked and trained so long. The supreme moment of the kill, an involuntary cry burst from his throat, a primeval and animal sound, as Scipio bound to the great goose and the sound of the hit was like a single beat of a bass drum that seemed to shake the very air about Ralph's head.

The goose's spread wings spun like the spokes of a wheel, and a burst of black feathers filled the air as though a shrapnel shell had been fired from a heavy ca

Ralph started to run, whooping with excitement, and Bazo was at his shoulder, laughing, head thrown back, watching the birds fall, leaving a tracery of feathers like the plume of a comet in the sky behind them.

A hawk binds to its prey, from the moment of strike unto the earth. A falcon does not. Scipio should break, and let the goose fall, but she had not; she was still locked in, and Ralph felt the first frost of worry cool his excitement. Had his bird broken bone, or otherwise injured herself in that frightful impact?

"Beauty!" he called to her. "Unbind! Unbind!" She could be caught under the heavy goose and crushed against the earth. It was not her way to hold on all the way in.

"Unbind!" he screamed again, and saw her flutter, stabbing at the air with those sharp-bladed wings. She was stu

Then suddenly she lunged, unbinding, breaking loose from her kill, hovering, letting the goose go on to thud into the rocky earth beyond the swamp, only then sinking, dainty and poised, and settling again upon the humped black carcass. Ralph felt his chest choked with pride and love for her courage and her beauty.

"Kweet," Scipio called, when she saw Ralph. "Kweet," the recognition call, and she left the prize that she had risked her life to take and came readily to Ralph's hand.

He stooped over her, his eyes burning with pride, and kissed her lovely head.

"I won't make you do it again," he whispered. "I just had to see if you could do it, but I won't ever make you do it again."

Ralph fed the goose's head to Scipio, and she tore it to pieces with her curved beak, between each morsel pausing to stare at Ralph.

"The bird loves you," Bazo looked up from the fire over which he was roasting chunks of fat goose, the grease dripping onto the coals and frizzling sharply. Ralph smiled, lifted the bird and kissed its bloody beak.

"And I love her."

"You and the bird have the same spirit. Kamuza and I have spoken of it often."

"Nothing is as brave as my Scipio."

Bazo shook his head. "Do you remember the day that Bakela would have killed me? In the moment that he took the gun to me he was mad, mad to the point of killing."

Ralph's expression changed. It was many months since he had intervened to save the young Matabele from the wrath of his father.

"I have not spoken of it before." Bazo held Ralph's eyes steadily. "It is not the kind of matter about which a man chatters like a woman at the water hole. We will probably never speak of it again, you and I, but know you that it will never be forgotten -" Bazo paused, and then he said it solemnly. "I shall remember, Henshaw."