Treasure of the Golden Cheetah (42 page)

Jade swore, mentally consigning Bebe’s name amongst every butt-sniffing dog that ever bore a litter. She gasped for air and knew she needed to get Abeba and herself away from the leopard before he decided to attack.
But where?

The terrace spread around to the northeast for nearly a hundred yards. She and Abeba lay in the widest point. Farther on, it shrank to a two-foot shelf. Jade peered over the edge and saw her rifle on the rocks. She could get it if she climbed down for it, but it would take her too long and she didn’t think the leopard would wait. Jade scrambled behind Abeba and gripped her shoulders. So far the leopard was busy with a search for the easiest way down to them. Jade wanted to be hiding somewhere defensible when he found it. Struggling for a purchase with her feet, Jade dragged Abeba backwards with her. She turned her head for a moment, making certain she still had the shelf behind her. That was when she saw the cheetah.

“Biscuit?”

Her eyes seemed to play tricks on her, making her pet larger than his size. His spots made rosette patterns instead of the little spots common to cheetah. For a moment, she thought the leopard had doubled back behind her, but when she looked to the rim, her stalker was still there, although he’d made some headway. Jade wasn’t sure what good Biscuit could do, but somehow his presence gave her a sense of relief, the conviction that she wasn’t entirely abandoned. She called to him, making both the chirping greeting and the churring distress call. He didn’t answer, only turned his head and walked into the wall of snow. As he moved, Jade could have sworn she saw a set of dark, tabbylike stripes running along his spine.

She started to drag Abeba back again and saw her walking stick lying near the woman’s feet.
A weapon!
That and her knife were better than nothing if she could gain a defensible position. Jade reached forward, grabbed the thick staff, and strained to move herself and Abeba to safety. She reached the point where the cheetah had been and laughed.

“Hallelujah!” she said, and angled her way inside. The opening was wide enough for two people side by side but less than four feet high. Jade ducked low and pulled. The hard-packed snow was smoother here, making it easier to drag Abeba. Once inside, she pushed her into a corner crevice and prepared to make a stand.

Where’s Biscuit?
Jade had no doubt that she’d seen her own pet, and her fogged mind had distorted his appearance. As white spots danced in front of her eyes, she was glad to see at all. She turned on her flashlight and quickly scanned the cave. It was more than an ice cavern. The floor farther back turned to rock, and a few loose stones littered the ground. The breaks looked fresh, too, as though the recent tremors, mild though they’d been, had shimmied them loose. Behind them was a lava tube that led into an eroded and long-defunct side, or parasitic, cone that had grown when the main cone was sealed by debris. She could scoot in there if she had to, but it wouldn’t be easy to get Abeba inside.

She pushed the larger stones to the entrance, narrowing the opening to a fourth of its previous size. The smaller ones she kept beside her as potential projectiles. Jade looked at her sorry weapons: one four-foot cedar staff, some rocks, and her knife. The last was good only for close fighting, and she didn’t want to be that close to a leopard’s arsenal. A spear would help.

The voice in her head wasn’t her own this time. It was Jelani’s.
Blast! You are in a bad way.
But the advice was good. First she slashed the hem of her woolen coat into a long, spiral ing strip of cloth. Then she lashed her knife to one end of her staff. A low growl on the other side of the rocks warned her to hurry. Outside, she heard the sound of claws scrabbling on snow and ice.

What the hell is that thing doing up here anyway?
She remembered hearing a leopard’s chuff at Bismark’s hut. Had the leopard from the forest actually followed them all the way up here? The cat growled again, the sound echoing in the narrow tunnel. It pawed at the rocks.

“I need more rocks,” she muttered to herself. “Got to plug up the opening.”

She turned to pull out another of the larger stones from the back hole and noticed for the first time that the rocks appeared to have been purposefully placed there. As she reached for one, her arm muscles twitched with fatigue; she felt the darkness around her swirl as though she were a slowly spinning wheel. Then the bone-chilling cold crept up her body. It began at her feet and ankles, swallowed her legs, and slid up her midsection towards her chest. She heard a woman wail in grief, and, behind that cry, the combined voices of men chanting a dirge. The voices rose and fell with the quavering notes, and a vision of soldiers and splendor passed before her eyes.

Jade released the rock and the vision vanished. She fell back, panting. “Biscuit!” she called weakly into the black gloom. Her voice echoed back at her. Clattering rocks and a rumbling growl came from the front. She turned her head and again faced a pair of glowing yellow eyes.

He’s through.
But this time, she saw hunger more than hatred. For the first time, she realized that this creature was also weakened. Small consolation. A weak, hungry leopard meant a desperate one, and it would take only one good charge to kill her.

You must attack, just as you charged the lion on the plains.
Jade heard the order as clearly as if Jelani stood beside her. Suddenly, her arms and legs felt suffused with warmth and strength. It might be only a strength born of fear, but it would serve.

She grabbed a stone and hurled it at the cat, hitting it on the nose. The leopard snapped its head back, snarling and spitting. When it dove back towards the opening, pain fueled its attack. She hurled a second, smaller but sharper rock. It struck near the cat’s eye.

Jade didn’t wait for the cat to regain its balance. She gathered herself together into a crouching stance, her makeshift spear gripped in two hands.

“Hyaaahhh!” she shouted, and lunged for the opening. Her knife point contacted hard muscle and rib, fur and fury. The leopard screamed but the cry died in a gurgle. Jade had missed the heart, but she’d nicked an artery and punctured a lung.

“Go!” she shouted as she wrenched her spear free. She aimed another rock at the cat’s head. The cat turned in time and the rock struck it in the ribs instead. The wounded animal skittered off.

Jade pushed her way outside and found sight of her Winchester. She’d have to track the cat and put it down.
Pay the insurance.
Otherwise, it would lie in wait and catch her off guard as she helped Abeba to the rim. She used the staff to brace herself and slipped off the terrace. Jade half crawled, half slid down the four feet to the rifle. The return climb was harder, as fatigue threatened to overwhelm her, but she finally hauled herself back onto the ice terrace.

The cat’s blood trail was easy to spot, red rosettes on the snow. Jade followed it to the rim and counterclockwise towards the north. Her efforts weren’t needed. The great cat lay dead in the snow, its golden eyes dimmed as by a fog. Its death caused a pang in Jade’s heart. She had no idea why this cat had tracked her, but she felt the animal was just a pawn in some larger game, and she felt more like a murderer than a victor in a life-or-death battle. The least she could do for the leopard was give it a decent burial against scavengers. She shouldered her rifle and set to work covering the cat’s body with snow.

“Rest in peace,
chui.
Forgive me.” When she stood, she saw the golden-hued cheetah in the distance by the cleft in the glacier. She blinked and it was gone.

 

 

JELANI INHALED DEEPLY. Keeping watch had exhausted him. He’d heard Bwana Nyati return with Bwana Julian and known that his friend had faced her greatest danger without the big man’s aid. The woman called Bebe caught up to them and said that Jade and Abeba were dead, that Jade had killed Abeba, then was attacked by a leopard. Bwana Nyati cried out and would have gone back up, but the woman said she could not take Julian down the mountain without Bwana Nyati’s help. The director could barely walk and his mind was cloudy. And so Bwana Nyati led them down, pain riddling his face. Jelani knew the woman Bebe was lying. He also knew Bwana Nyati wouldn’t believe him. The proof was for Simba Jike to give.

Beside Jelani, Biscuit stirred, sensing the young
mondo-mogo
’s movement. Jelani laid a hand on the cat’s head and stroked him, grateful for the warmth the cheetah had brought when he’d found Jelani alone. Doubly grateful that Biscuit had stayed beside him even when his former master had passed through the abandoned campsite.

“It was
your
ancestral spirit that helped show Simba Jike the cave and saved her,” Jelani said. Biscuit responded to his soothing voice with a deep, rasping purr. Jelani shifted and reached for the caches of jerked meat that he’d hidden away, wrapped in a cloth. He offered a large piece to Biscuit, who took it daintily between his teeth.

“Protecting Simba Jike is hungry work. Eat. We need our strength for when she returns.”

 

 

BY THE TIME Jade got back down to the cave in the crater, Abeba had opened her eyes and Jade reassured her that she was safe. The initial fear in the woman’s eyes turned to awe, but Jade didn’t believe she’d inspired it. The fact that Abeba studiously avoided looking to the cave’s rear told Jade all she needed to know. Her mind still searched for a rational explanation of the visions: altitude, shock, hunger. But her heart, her soul admitted the truth. They were next to the burial cave.
It really exists!
kept playing in her head. Part of her longed to rush into the tomb to see it. Another part was terrified of the vision’s power. She forced herself to think about Abeba.

“Can you walk? Are you injured?” Jade asked.

“My leg, above the foot. It hurts.”

“Let me look.” Jade unlaced Abeba’s boot and gently probed the ankle and shin, all the while pondering the wonders hidden beyond the rocks. Only once did Abeba wince, when Jade touched the bony rounded protrusion of the lower fibula. “Can you move your foot?”

Abeba gingerly flexed it. Jade decided from the growing bruise that she’d been kicked or had struck a stone when she fell. There was little swelling. Jade gathered some of the available ice, which she wrapped in her handkerchief and placed on Abeba’s foot. “Hold that.”

“I can walk,” Abeba said. “You won’t leave me, will you?”

“I won’t leave you,” said Jade. She took the remains of the chocolate bar from her pocket and handed it to Abeba. “Eat this.” Jade took a long look at the rear of the cave. When Jade had dropped the rock, the dirge and wailing had ceased along with the horrid death pall, but she didn’t want to experience them again. She had felt power here, a power she didn’t want to confront directly. “Do you want to look or shall I replace the stones?”

“You would respect the grave and keep it secret?” asked Abeba. Now, perhaps, some of that awe was meant for Jade.

“Yes.”

Abeba closed her eyes, as though meditating. After a moment she said, “We are safe. You may go in and look. It is well that you do, that someone else carry the secret. Bring to me the first two burial items that you see, but
only
two. Disturb no more.”

“The first two,” Jade repeated. “One of them had better not be a body,” she muttered. She pulled out her flashlight and tentatively touched a stone. This time, the sensation of cold and death did not enter her. She heard no voices, saw no warriors. She carefully removed three more stones. When the opening was wide enough to admit her safely, she scuttled over the lower barrier and into the inner chamber. As her dimming light swept the chamber, she saw destruction. Volcanic stone, broken from the ceiling, had rained down on the burial. But glimpses of glory still existed, and she felt overwhelmed by a sense of antiquity and majesty so long forgotten.

A tangle of rusting blades stuck out at odd angles from under the debris. Jade counted seventeen. While far fewer than the hundreds of slain servants in Sina’s tale, they did indicate the importance of this burial site. Jade tried to pull out one blade, but it wouldn’t budge, not without dislodging more stones. A possible sword hilt turned out to be an arm bone. She shuddered when it crumbled at her touch.

She stepped over the remains of an offering table and spied a small golden object shaped like a cheetah. It was no bigger than a hen’s egg, but the detail was exquisite. Jade picked it up and was surprised by how light it was. Then she saw from a worn spot that it was carved of ivory with an overlay of gold leaf.

That’s one.
She pocketed it and took another step towards the rear. Stones stacked as though into an altar or bier protruded from under a wall of rock that had fallen when part of this extinct side vent had collapsed in ages past. The exposed bier was covered by swaths of glittering purple cloth. It crumbled at Jade’s touch, revealing a skeletal hand protruding from under the debris, rings on each bony finger. The hand clutched the end of a golden scepter, and one large ruby at its base winked at her. “Menelik!” she whispered, and felt her knees buckle at the sight.

She could no more retrieve the scepter than she could one of the swords, but as she reverently pondered the ancient hand, its little finger shifted and dangled from the rest of the hand. The ring it wore slipped off and fell to the floor, as though the king had given it to her. Jade picked it up with trembling fingers. It bore a lapis lazuli Star of David inlaid into the golden bezel.
That’s two.
Jade crossed herself again, then slipped back outside. As she did, the ceiling rock shifted with a groan and hid the body from view. Jade handed the two items to Abeba and told her what she’d seen.