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Tungata swerved a second time, ru
it was a strangle-hold and as he threw all his strength into it, he felt the give of Tungata's larynx in the crook of his elbow, and the loaded feel of the vertebrae, like the tension of a dry twig on the point of snapping. He wanted to kill him, he wanted to tear his head off his body, but he could not anchor himself to apply those last few ounces of pressure.
Tungata lifted both hands off the wheel, tearing at Craig's wrist and elbow, making a glottal, cawing sound, and the untended steering-wheel spun wildly. The Land, Rover charged off the road, plunged over the unprotected verge onto the steep rocky slope, and with a rending screech of metal crashed end over end.
Craig's grip was torn open and he was flung clear. He hit hard earth, cartwheeled, and lay for a second, his ears humming and his body crushed and helpless until he rallied and pulled himself to his knees.
The Land' Rover lay on its back. The headlights still blazed, and thirty paces down the slope, full in their beam, lay Sally-A
He started to crawl towards her, when another figure rose out of the intervening darkness, a great, dark, wideshouldered figure. Tungata was clearly stu
He hurled himself at Tungata and they came together, chest to chest. Long ago, as friends, they had often wrestled, but Craig had forgotten the sheer bull strength of the man. His muscles were hard and resilient and black as the cured rubber of a transcontinental truck tyre, and, one legged Craig was unbalanced. Dazed as he was, Tungata heaved him off his foot.
As he went down, Craig kept his grip and despite his own strength, Tungata could not break it. They went down together, and Craig used his stump, driving up with the hard rubbery pad at the end of it, using the swing of it and Tungata's own falling weight to slog into Tungata's lower body.
Tungata grunted and the strength went out of him.
Craig rolled out from under him, reared back onto his shoulders, and used all his body to launch himself forward again to hit with the stump. It sounded like an axe swung double-handed against a tree trunk, and it caught Tungata.
in the middle of his chest, right over the heart.
Tungata dropped over backwards and lay still- Crai crawled to him and reached for his unprotected throat with both hands. He felt the ropes of muscle framing the sharp hard Jump of the thyroid cartilage and he drove his thumbs deeply into it, and, at the feet of ebbing life under his hands, his rage fell away he found he could not kill him.
He opened his hands and drew away, shaking and gasping.
He left Tungata lying crumpled on the rocky earth and crawled to where Sally-A
Above them on the road the following truck pulled up with a metallic squeal of brakes and armed men came swarming down the slope, baying likea pack of hounds at the kill. In his arms I ikea child waking from sleep, Sally A
She was alive, still alive and he whispered to her, "My darling, oh my darling, I love you so!" our of Sally-A
It was here that Abel Khori, the public prosecutor assigned to the Tungata Zebiwe case, visited her. Mr. Khori was a distinguished-looking Shana who had been called to the London bar and still affected the dress of Lincoln's I
"I am visiting you to clarify in my own mind certain points in the statement that you have already made to the police. For it would be highly improper of me to influence in any way the evidence that you will give," Khori explained.
He showed Craig and Sally-Arme the reports of spontaneous Matabele demonstrations for Tungata's release, which had been swiftly broken up by the police and units of the Third Brigade, and which the Shana editor of the Herald had relegated to the middle pages.
"We must always bear in mind that this man is ipso jure accused of a criminal act,. and he should not be allowed to become a tribal martyr. -You see the dangers. The sooner we can have the er*ire business settled mutatis mutandis, the better for everybody." Craig and Sally-A
"We ca