But the current was strong. In the moment that Ralph tensed himself, it pushed Marius back. Now he was out of range again, in the shallows where he could stand easily.

  I am a farmer, Ralph remembered him saying once. Give me solid ground under my feet. He would not enjoy being out of his depth in the water. He would only approach the waterfall if he was certain there was someone there.

  Could Ralph draw him closer? Or would that give too much warning? He would have to wait for Marius to look again. He could see the big Dutchman turning his head, considering his options, puzzling over how Ralph had disappeared.

  Marius looked back down the gorge. Had he heard something? Had one of his men called him? Deafened by the waterfall, Ralph could only guess at what had distracted Marius. He glanced at the falls again, then back down the river. Come on, Ralph urged him. Marius looked again, straight at him. A spark of light flashed from his hand, the sun bowing off a blade. He was also armed.

  The sound Marius had heard came again. He looked back a second time, turned and splashed through the shallows back the way he had come.

  A wave of despair swept over Ralph. Marius had been in front of him, finally vulnerable, and he had not taken his chance. But he could follow Marius, catch him before he descended the rapids. Man to man, knife to knife – he would have an even chance. And whether he killed Marius, or died himself, he would not regret it.

  He gripped his knife and drew a deep breath, ready to plunge under the waterfall. But as he was about to submerge, a hand gripped his shoulder. Ann tugged him back.

  Ralph pulled away. ‘I must stop him.’

  She put her lips against his ear. ‘We have escaped.’

  ‘He will come back.’

  ‘Can you not accept it? Or must you wish your own destruction?’

  It was as if she had snapped him out of a dream, a waking nightmare of vengeance. Ralph’s hand went to the scar on his cheek. As the river poured over his head, he felt not water, but the hot lash of flames. He had pursued revenge before, and what had it achieved?

  She was right. Fate had offered them this one reprieve. For all their sakes, he should take it.

  Their bodies huddled together in the frigid water, waiting for the ominous shadow of movement beyond the waterfall. Time passed agonisingly slowly, but Marius did not return. If his men had found a different trail to follow lower down the valley, or if Dingane had summoned them back, or if he had simply given up and left Ralph to die in the wilderness – Ralph had no way of knowing.

  He could not wait any longer. Without the energy of the chase and motion to warm them, the freezing mountain water had started to bite. Harry had lapsed into a lethargy; Ann was alabaster pale, and Ralph shivered constantly.

  ‘Wait here,’ he shouted in Ann’s ear. ‘I will see if it is safe.’

  He forced his way out through the waterfall and let the current push him across the pool. Where it funnelled out to the rapids he had climbed, a jumble of boulders made a small tongue of dry land. Ralph was so weak the river almost swept him past it, but he managed to grab a rock and haul himself out.

  The stones were warm from the sun. He lay there for a moment, letting the heat sink into his bones. His eyes fluttered closed, and it would have been easy to fall asleep, perhaps accept death there, but he could not abandon Ann and Harry. He forced himself to stand and look down into the ravine, where the river cascaded into the tunnel they had climbed through.

  There was no one there. The Zulus had gone.

  ‘Did you think I would give up so easily, hey?’

  The words echoed off the surrounding cliffs, so it seemed that it was the air itself whispering around him.

  Ralph turned. Marius stood in the shadows on the opposite side of the river, his face in darkness except where a blade of sunlight came through the ravine and cut across his eyes.

  How long had he been waiting there? He has the patience of a hunter, Ralph thought. He cursed himself for forgetting that.

  ‘You have wasted your time,’ he said. ‘By now, Ann and Harry will be far away.’

  Marius grinned. ‘Not so far, I think.’ He jerked his head to the waterfall.

  He had known everything, all along. Instead of taking his chances in the water, he had waited to draw Ralph out onto land. While Ralph had been shivering in the cold water, Marius had regathered his energy.

  Now they confronted each other across the narrow headwaters of the Thukela.

  I was willing to let go of my revenge, Ralph thought bitterly. Why could you not do the same?

  ‘When we made our partnership on Robben Island, I did not think it would end like this.’ Ralph had no plan, except that the longer he kept Marius talking, the more strength he might recover.

  The words affronted Marius. ‘We could have been kings. I gave you chances, and every time you chose the Kaffirs instead of your own race.’

  ‘Black or white, I would rather live with honest men.’

  Marius sprang at him. The river was only a few feet wide: he cleared it in a single bound, driving the point of his knife towards Ralph’s chest. Ralph brought up his own blade to parry it.

  The weapons clashed. Ralph had expected the attack, but he was not ready for the overwhelming force in Marius’s arm. His knife was dashed from his hand and into the water.

  Ralph was disarmed. Marius bared his teeth and gave a howl of triumph. While he was gloating, Ralph attacked. Marius had not expected an unarmed man to come at him; his reflexes were a fraction too slow. He brought the knife around, but Ralph was already inside his guard. Ralph threw a punch to his ribs, and another to Marius’s jaw that sent him reeling.

  Marius teetered on the edge of the cataract. The knife flailed wildly, but Ralph had to risk it. He flung himself at Marius. On the wet rocks, the Dutchman lost his footing and slipped backwards.

  Locked together, the two men tumbled down the rapids in a welter of water, rocks and limbs. Ralph was battered from so many directions he did not know where the hits came from. He clung to Marius, using his enemy to break the jarring blows.

  It is like wrestling the lion, he thought, a moment before he hit the bottom of the rapids with a shuddering impact. They had landed in the channel where the river flowed away: too shallow to cushion their fall, but deep enough to drown them. Ralph’s head went under; he was pinned down, and whether Marius intended it or not, the Dutchman was on top.

  Marius’s weight crushed Ralph against the smooth stones. Ralph struggled to push himself up, but the effort only provoked Marius. Ralph felt those meaty hands close around his throat, holding him prone, throttling him even as he drowned. Pain exploded in his skull. Shards of white light lanced his eyes. He thrashed and fought, but he was too weak.

  Ralph’s life ebbed out of him. As he stopped struggling, urgent thoughts drifted through his mind.

  What will happen to Ann and Harry?

  There was no way they could escape. When Marius had finished with him, he could do as he liked with them.

  The injustice kindled one last ignition of resolve. Ralph pushed against Marius with all the power he could summon. He bucked his back; he kicked off against the riverbed.

  It was not enough. Marius’s weight was too much. Ralph had failed.

  Ralph stopped struggling and let himself go still. He felt surprisingly peaceful. He no longer felt the chill of the water, only the motion of the current, pushing against his body like a summer breeze against a leaf. Bright light spread in front of his eyes.

  And suddenly the weight lifted off him. Ralph felt himself rising out of the water. For a moment, he thought it was his soul leaving his body, but when he put out his arms, he felt firm rock underneath. He pushed up and met no resistance.

  Water sluiced off him as his head broke the surface. He gulped in a great mouthful of air, with such pain in his chest he thought his lungs would burst.

  He was not dead. Nor was he alone. He could hear Marius thrashing about behind him.

  Why did he let me go?

  Swaying like a drunk, Ralph rose to his feet and turned.

  Marius was standing in the tunnel, bent over, clutching his leg in agony. A red cloud blossomed in the water where he stood, spinning out in thin tendrils as the current washed it away. The bone handle of a knife – Ralph’s knife – stuck out from the back of his thigh.

  Harry stood behind Marius. His mouth was open, his young eyes wide in terror and wonder. His hand was covered in blood.

  Marius roared, the outrage of a wounded alpha animal. He grabbed the knife handle and yanked it out of his flesh. A stream of fresh blood pumped out of the gaping hole, but he did not seem to notice it. Nor did he think of Ralph. His instinct was to destroy the creature who had hurt him.

  He towered over Harry, his head almost touching the rocky ceiling. Harry stood his ground, staring up defiantly.

  Ralph flung himself at Marius. He crooked one arm around the Dutchman’s neck to pull him back, while with his other hand he tried to wrestle away the knife. Marius jerked backwards, struggling to keep his balance with Ralph on his back. He staggered three steps down the tunnel.

  Ralph kicked his heel against the bleeding wound in Marius’s leg, making him howl in agony, but the Dutchman’s grip on the knife stayed tight. Ralph could not pry it out of his monstrous hand.

  Ralph was still desperately weak from his ordeal in the water. With a shrug of his mighty shoulders, Marius dislodged him. Ralph had to spring away, or he would have been dumped in the river again.

  The two men faced each other down the tunnel. Marius lunged with the knife, and in the tight confines there was no space for Ralph to dodge it.

  But halfway through his stride, Marius suddenly stopped as if he had hit an invisible wall. Harry had dived forward and wrapped his arms around the Dutchman’s leg. Marius toppled forward like an oak tree. Ralph stepped aside, and as Marius crashed past him, he grabbed the Boer’s arm and bent it backwards over his knee. The arm snapped; the knife dropped from Marius’s grasp.

  It never touched the water. Ralph caught it left-handed, transferred it to his right, and stabbed it into Marius’s back. He felt it slide past the vertebrae, between the ribs and deep into the cavity of Marius’s heart.

  Marius’s body jerked, then went limp. He floated face down in the water; air bubbled up around him. Ralph wondered why the river did not carry the corpse away, until he realised he was still clinging to the dead man’s shirt, holding him in place.

  He rolled Marius over. He had driven the knife in so far, the point had come out through his chest. Blood seeped from the wound and washed away in the current. Marius’s dead eyes stared up, wide open: the eyes of a man who had seen what he most craved – and had lost it all.

  You wanted this land for yourself, Ralph thought, but it is not yours to own. It never was.

  He released his grip. The body drifted away, gathering pace, until it vanished into the sunlight.

  In Ralph’s mind, he saw the body making its last journey along the Thukela. Down the valley, across the plains and hills they had struggled over. He saw it spinning in the lazy current where the river broadened by KwaDukuza, past basking hippos and crocodiles sunning themselves on the banks, until at last it reached the ocean. The same ocean from which, eight years earlier, a man had staggered out of the fog while a boy slept in his new mother’s arms.

  Harry picked himself out of the water and stood beside Ralph. Together, they stared down the tunnel. The sun filled the space with a golden light that shone off the surface of the water and rippled across the stone ceiling.

  ‘Is he dead?’ Harry asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  Harry nodded. ‘Did I kill him?’

  ‘No.’

  A shudder went through Ralph that had nothing to do with the freezing water. In that moment, he understood with the clear force of an epiphany that he must keep Harry from that path. The boy must grow up innocent, free from the stain that Ralph carried.

  ‘I killed him. You saved my life.’

  Harry grabbed Ralph’s hand and Ralph held him tight, feeling the strength in that small body.

  ‘What will we do now?’ Harry asked.

  ‘We had best find your mother.’

  They met Ann trying to scramble down the rapids using the rope that still hung where Ralph had tied it. Ralph wondered that she had been so slow to come after Harry, until he realised how quickly the fight had unfolded. It had been a matter of moments that Harry had been there, though it felt like a lifetime. Ann hugged Harry close. The water had already washed the blood off his hands.

  They followed the river back through the tunnel and the gorge, sliding down the rapids on their backsides, until they reached the stony shingle where the river met the forest path. At every turn, Ralph tensed himself for an ambush – but there was no one waiting. Without Marius, the rest of the Zulu company had retreated.

  They laid themselves out on a dry stone where the sun still lingered, drawing heat into their chilled bodies until Harry’s teeth had stopped chattering. Ralph gathered branches and ferns to make a rough shelter.

  ‘We will be quite intimate in there,’ Ann observed.

  ‘I can sleep outside.’

  She laughed – the prettiest sound Ralph had heard in weeks. She and Harry were naked; Ralph still wore the remnants of his kilt, but it was torn to shreds and hid nothing.

  ‘I think we are past caring about modesty.’

  Ralph untied his kilt and tossed it to her. ‘This will cover you.’

  Ann gave him a surprisingly frank look that lingered between his legs. ‘That may preserve my shame. But it hardly protects my sensibilities.’

  It was such a prim sentiment, delivered with such a wicked grin, that Ralph could not help smiling back.

  ‘We are like Adam and Eve.’

  Ann had thought herself in Eden once before, in Paradise Valley. It reminded her of Frank, and everything she had lost since then.

  Ralph saw her face cloud over. ‘Do you regret this?’

  ‘Regret?’ She shook her head.

  Ralph moved to pull away, but Ann grabbed his wrist and pulled him close, so his face was only a few inches from hers.

  ‘Every step that brought us here has been attended by tragedy and death,’ she reminded him. ‘It is not the path I would have chosen.’ She saw the hurt in his eyes, felt him tugging away from her again. She would not let him go. ‘But now that I am here with you, there is not one single thing I regret.’

  She leaned forward and kissed him. Her cheek still carried the chill from the river, but her lips were warm and soft. The moment Ralph touched her, he had a flash of the feeling he’d had in the river: a blissful release, the burden of life lifting from his soul. Except then, he had thought he was dying; now he felt he was waking up to a new life.

  ‘Harry is watching,’ she murmured in his ear. ‘We will have to continue this later.’

  They separated – but even apart, Ralph felt her warmth living on in him. Ann picked up Ralph’s kilt and tied it around her waist.

  ‘We will have to find some more clothes,’ she said.

  ‘And food.’

  This was not Eden; the trees would not give up their fruits so easily. Even if the Zulus did not come back, Ralph, Ann and Harry would be lucky to survive.

  ‘What will we do?’ Harry asked. In the hush of evening, his words sounded very small, lost in the landscape around them.

  Ralph pointed over his head, to the great mountain cliffs that towered over them. The rock face was in shadow, but a thousand feet up, a few last rays of sunlight still touched the summit and turned it golden.

  ‘We will have to find a way to get over that.’

  Harry craned his head to look up at it, so far he almost fell over. ‘It is a long way.’

  ‘It is,’ Ralph agreed. ‘But we will go there together.’

  ‘And what is on the other side?’

  Ralph put one arm around Harry, the other around Ann, and squeezed them close to him.

  ‘Adventure.’

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  Wilbur Smith was born in Central Africa in 1933. He became a full-time writer in 1964 following the success of When the Lion Feeds and has since published over fifty global bestsellers, including the Courtney Series, the Ballantyne Series, the Egyptian Series, the Hector Cross Series and many successful standalone novels, all meticulously researched on his numerous expeditions worldwide. An international phenomenon, his readership built up over fifty-five years of writing, establishing him as one of the most successful and impressive brand authors in the world.

  The establishment of the Wilbur & Niso Smith Foundation in 2015 cemented Wilbur’s passion for empowering writers, promoting literacy and advancing adventure writing as a genre. The foundation’s flagship programme is the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize.

  Wilbur Smith died peacefully at home in 2021 with his wife, Niso, by his side, leaving behind him a rich treasure-trove of novels and stories that will delight readers for years to come.

  For all the latest information on Wilbur Smith’s writing visit www.wilbursmithbooks.com or facebook.com/WilburSmith.

  Tom Harper is the author of thirteen thrillers and historical adventures including The Orpheus Descent, Black River and Lost Temple. Research for his novels has taken him all over the world, from the high Arctic to the heart of the Amazon jungle. He lives with his family in York. For more information about Tom’s books, visit www.tom-harper.co.uk.

  Also by Wilbur Smith

  Non-Fiction

  On Leopard Rock: A Life of Adventures

  The Courtney Series

  When the Lion Feeds

  The Sound of Thunder

  A Sparrow Falls

  The Burning Shore

  Power of the Sword

  Rage

  A Time to Die

  Golden Fox

  Birds of Prey