Night Of Knives

Chapter 4

"No!" Derek shouts, leaping to his feet. "No! Leave her alone!"

The one-eyed man stops, a little surprised.

"Come on, we have to stand together," Derek says urgently to Veronica.

She hesitates a moment; then she too stands and starts to shout, "Let her go! No! You let her go now!"

Tom and Judy join in, bellowing and screaming, their voices surprisingly strong. Veronica grabs Jacob's shoulder and tries to pull him to his feet. His eyes open and stare blearily at her.

"He's taking Susan away, we have to stop him," she hisses.

The message gets through, and Jacob lumbers to his feet. The one-eyed man begins to walk away, pulling Susan with him, but Derek leads Veronica and Jacob in pursuit, gets in front of him and blocks his path, and starts to shout again: "No! Let her go! You let her go, you can't have her!"

"Laisse-moi," Susan hisses to the one-eyed man, and Derek switches to French too: "Laissez-lui, maintenant! Maintenant!" Then Veronica joins in the shouting, and so does Jacob, also in French. Tom and Judy add their voices, and look like they would like to come join them, but Michael and Diane refuse to get up.

The one-eyed man looks annoyed and perplexed by this cacophony of protest, as if confronted by buzzing mosquitoes. He looks over to the other Africans. They seem bemused, but also amused, and they do not seem eager to put down their beers and back him. He frowns for a moment. Then he releases Susan, grabs Derek by the throat and pushes him up against the wall of the cave, pulling Veronica along partway. He is amazingly strong.

Derek chokes for air, tries to kick and writhe out of the hold, but to no avail. The one-eyed man closes his other hand into a fist and slams it three times into Derek's midsection, and once into his face. Blood begins to seep from Derek's nose. Honour satisfied, the one-eyed man lets his victim drop to the rocky ground, and turns to Veronica. She quails - but all he does is shove her away, back towards the inner wall of the cave.

She and Jacob manage to half-carry a stunned Derek back to the others. The one-eyed man retakes his position with his men, grabs a bottle of beer, and drinks deeply. Derek drops heavily onto a rock, stunned, barely able to sit without falling. Veronica leans towards him and looks carefully into his eyes. To her relief his pupils seem undilated; he has not been concussed.

Susan sits beside them, keeping Derek between her and the Africans, looking as if she might shatter at any moment. She asks, hesitantly, "Are you all right?"

Derek manages a smile that's mostly wince. "I'll live. I think. We have to stick together. We can't let them divide us."

"They're not going to kill us," Veronica says, reassuring herself as much as anyone else. "We're worth too much. They'll ransom us."

"Not necessarily," Jacob says quietly.

Everyone looks at him. Veronica is surprised he is making any contribution to the conversation at all. Jacob's face is still pale with exhaustion, both his voice and his whole skinny body are trembling, the back of his T-shirt is dark with blood that has leaked from his whip wounds - but his eyes are steady, and he no longer looks faint. He looks angry.

He says, in his faintly nasal voice, "The reason we had guards today was six years ago a bunch of interahamwe came into the park and captured fourteen tourists. They eventually murdered eight. The English speakers. They let the French go."

Susan's grip on Derek tightens. Veronica swallows. Everyone here is a native English speaker, although it seems Derek, Jacob and Susan can also get by in French.