Birds of Prey

by Wilbur Smith

  Aboli seemed not to have heard her. The greys trotted straight on towards the castle gates.

  ‘Sukeena, tell the fool to turn round.’

  Sukeena stood up quickly in the swaying carriage then sat down close beside Katinka and slipped her arm through that of her mistress, holding her firmly.

  ‘What on earth are you doing, child? Not here. Have you lost your mind? Not in front of the whole colony.’ She tried to pull away her arm, but Sukeena held it with a strength that shocked her.

  ‘We are going into the castle,’ Sukeena said quietly. ‘And you are to do exactly what I tell you to do.’

  ‘Aboli! Stop the carriage this instant!’ Katinka raised her voice and made to stand up. But Sukeena jerked her down in her seat.

  ‘Don’t struggle,’ Sukeena ordered, ‘or I will cut you. I will cut your face first, so that you are no longer beautiful. Then if you still do not obey I will send this blade through your slimy, evil heart.’

  Katinka looked down and, for the first time, saw the blade that Sukeena held to her side. That dagger had been a gift from one of Katinka’s lovers and she knew just how sharp was its slender blade. Sukeena had stolen it from Katinka’s closet.

  ‘Are you mad?’ Katinka blanched with terror, and tried to squirm away from the needle point.

  ‘Yes. Mad enough to kill you and to enjoy doing it.’ Sukeena pressed the dagger to her side and Katinka screamed. The horses pricked their ears. ‘If you scream again I will draw your blood,’ Sukeena warned. ‘Now hold your tongue and listen while I tell you what you are to do.’

  ‘I will give you to Slow John and laugh as he draws out your entrails,’ Katinka blustered, but her voice shook and terror was in her eyes.

  ‘You will never laugh again, not unless you obey me. This dagger will see to that,’ and she pricked Katinka again, hard enough to pierce cloth and skin, so that a spot of blood the size of a silver guilder appeared on her bodice.

  ‘Please!’ Katinka whimpered. ‘Please, Sukeena, I will do as you say. Please don’t hurt me again. You said you loved me.’

  ‘And I lied,’ Sukeena hissed at her. ‘I lied for my brother’s sake. I hate you. You will never know the strength of my hatred. I loath the touch of your hands. I am revolted by every filthy, evil thing you forced me to do. So do not trade on any love from me. I will crush you with as little pity as I would rid my hair of lice.’ Katinka saw death in her eyes, and she was afraid as she had seldom been in her life before.

  ‘I will do as you tell me,’ she whispered, and Sukeena instructed her in a flat, hard tone that was more threatening than any shouting or raging.

  As Aboli drove the carriage through the castle gates, the usual stir of activity heralded its arrival. The single sentry came to attention and presented his musket. Aboli wheeled the team of greys and brought the carriage to a halt in front of the Company offices. The captain of the guard hurried from the armoury, hastily strapping on his sword-belt. He was a young subaltern, freshly out from Holland, and he had been taken by surprise by the unexpected arrival of the Governor’s wife.

  ‘The devil’s horns!’ he muttered to himself. ‘Why does the bitch pick today to arrive when half my men are sick as dogs?’ He looked anxiously at the single guard at the door to the Company offices, and saw that the man’s face still had a pale greenish tinge. Then he realized that the Governor’s wife was beckoning to him from her seat in the carriage. He broke into a run across the courtyard, straightening his cap and tightening the strap under his chin as he went. He reached the carriage and saluted Katinka. ‘Good morning, Mevrouw. May I assist you to dismount?’

  The Governor’s wife had a strained, nervous look and her voice was high and breathless. The subaltern was instantly alarmed. ‘Is something amiss, Mevrouw?’

  ‘Yes, something is very much amiss. Call my husband!’

  ‘Will you go to his office?’

  ‘No. I will remain here in the carriage. Go to him this instant and tell him that I say he must come immediately. It is a matter of the utmost importance. Life and death! Go! Hurry!’

  The subaltern looked startled and saluted quickly, then bounded up the steps two at a time and shot through the double doors into the offices. While he was gone Aboli dismounted, went to the panniers at the back of the carriage and opened the lid. Then he glanced around the courtyard.

  There was one guard at the gates and another at the head of the stairs but, as usual, the slow-match in their muskets was unlit. There was no sentry posted at the doors to the armoury, but from where he stood he could see through the window that three men were in the guard room. Each of the five overseers in the courtyard carried swords as well as their whips and canes. Hugo Barnard was at the far end of the yard and had both his hounds on the leash. He was haranguing the gang of common convicts laying the paving stones along the foot of the east wall. These other convicts, not part of the crew of the Resolution, might be a hazard when they made their attempt to escape. Nearly two hundred were working on the walls, the multihued dregs of humanity. They could easily hamper the rescue attempt by blocking the escape route or even by trying to join in with the Resolution’s crew and mobbing the carriage when they realized what was happening.

  We will deal with that when it happens, he thought grimly, and turned his full attention to the armed guards and overseers who were the primary threat. With Barnard and his gang, there were ten armed men in sight but any outcry could bring another twenty or thirty soldiers hurrying out of the barracks and across the yard. The whole business could get out of hand quickly.

  He looked up to find Hal and Big Daniel watching him from the scaffold. Hal already had the rope of the gantry in his hand, the tail looped around his wrist. Ned Tyler and Billy Rogers were on the lower tier, and the two birds, Finch and Sparrow, were working near Althuda in the courtyard. They were all pretending to carry on with their tasks, but were eyeing Aboli surreptitiously.

  Aboli reached into the pannier and loosened the twine that secured the rolled silk carpet. He opened a flap of it and, without lifting them clear, revealed the three Mogul scimitars and the single kukri knife that he had chosen for himself. He knew that, from their vantage point, Hal and Big Daniel could see into the pannier. Then he stood immobile and expressionless at the back wheel of the carriage.

  Suddenly the Governor burst hatless and in his shirt sleeves through the double doors at the head of the staircase and came down at an ungainly lurching run.

  ‘What is it, Mevrouw?’ he called urgently to his wife, when he was half-way down. ‘They say you sent for me, and it’s a matter of life and death.’

  ‘Hurry!’ Katinka cried plaintively. ‘I am in the most terrible predicament.’

  He arrived at the door of the carriage, panting wildly. ‘Tell me what ails you, Mevrouw!’ he gasped.

  Aboli stepped up behind him and hooked one great arm around his neck, pinning him helplessly. Van de Velde began to struggle. For all his obesity he was a powerful man and even Aboli had difficulty in holding him.

  ‘What in the devil’s name are you doing?’ he roared in outrage. Aboli placed the blade of the kukri at his throat. When van de Velde felt the cold touch of steel and the sting of the razor edge, his struggles ceased.

  ‘I will slit your throat like the great hog you are,’ Aboli whispered in his ear, ‘and Sukeena has a dagger at your wife’s heart. Tell your soldiers to stay where they are and throw down their arms.’

  The subaltern had started forward at van de Velde’s cry, and his sword was half-way out of its scabbard as he rushed down the stairs.

  ‘Stop!’ van de Velde shouted at him in terror. ‘Don’t move, you fool. You will have me killed.’ The subaltern halted and dithered uncertainly.

  Aboli tightened his lock around the Governor’s throat. ‘Tell him to throw down his sword.’

  ‘Throw down your sword!’ van de Velde whinnied. ‘Do as he says. Can’t you see he has a knife at my throat?’ The subaltern dropped his sword, which clatte
red down the steps.

  Fifty feet above the courtyard, Hal sprang out from the scaffold, hanging on the rope from the gantry, and Big Daniel belayed the other end, braking the speed of his fall. The sheave squealed as he plummeted down and landed in balance on the cobbles. He leaped to the rear of the carriage and seized one of the jewelled scimitars. With the next leap he was half-way up the steps where he stooped and swept up the subaltern’s sword in his left hand. He placed the point under the officer’s chin and said, ‘Order your men to throw down their weapons!’

  ‘Lay down your arms, all of you!’ the subaltern yelled. ‘If any man among you brings harm to the Governor or his lady, he will pay for it with his own life.’ The sentries obeyed with alacrity, dropping their muskets and sidearms to the paving stones.

  ‘You too!’ van de Velde howled at the overseers, and with reluctance they obeyed. However, at that moment Hugo Barnard was screened by a pile of masonry blocks. He stepped quietly into the doorway to the kitchens, dragging his two hounds with him, and crouched there, waiting his opportunity.

  Down from the scaffold scrambled the other seamen. Sparrow and Finch from the lower tier were first to reach the courtyard but Ned, Big Daniel and Billy Rogers were seconds behind them.

  ‘Come on, Althuda!’ Hal called, and Althuda dropped his mallet and chisel and ran to join him. ‘Catch!’ Hal lobbed the jewelled scimitar in a high, glinting parabola, and Althuda reached up and caught it by the hilt, plucking it neatly out of the air. Hal wondered what class of swordsman he was. As a fisherman it was unlikely that he would have had much practice.

  I shall have to shield him if it comes to a fight, he thought, and looked around quickly. He saw Daniel pulling the other weapons out of the pannier at the back of the carriage. The twin scimitars looked like toys in his huge fist. He tossed one to Ned Tyler and kept the other for himself as he ran to join Hal.

  Hal picked up a sword that a sentry had dropped and threw it to Big Daniel. ‘This one is more your style, Master Danny,’ he yelled, and Daniel grinned, showing his broken black teeth, as he caught the heavy infantry weapon and made it hiss in the air as he cut left and right.

  ‘Sweet Jesus, it’s good to have a real blade in my hand again!’ he exulted, and tossed the light scimitar to Wally Finch. ‘A tool for a man, but a toy for a boy.’

  ‘Aboli, keep a firm hold on that great hog. Cut his ears off if he tries to be crafty,’ Hal shouted. ‘The rest of you follow me!’ He dropped down the staircase and raced towards the doors of the armoury with Big Daniel and the others on his heels. Althuda began to follow him also, but Hal stopped him. ‘Not you. You look after Sukeena!’

  As Althuda turned back and they ran on across the courtyard, Hal snapped at Daniel, ‘Where’s Barnard?’

  ‘The murdering bastard was here not a moment past, but I don’t see him now.’

  ‘Keep a good lookout for his top sails. We’ll have trouble with that swine yet.’

  Hal burst into the armoury. The three men in the guard room were slumped on the bench: two were asleep and the third scrambled to his feet in bewilderment. Before he could recover his wits, Hal’s point was pressed to his chest. ‘Stay where you are, or I’ll look at the colour of your liver.’ The man dropped back into his seat. ‘Here, Ned!’ Hal called to him as Ned rushed in. ‘Play wet-nurse to these infants,’ and left them in his charge as he ran after Daniel and the other seamen.

  Daniel charged the heavy teak door at the end of the passage and it burst open before his rush. They had never before had a chance to look into the armoury, but now at a glance Hal saw that it was all laid out in a neat and orderly fashion. The weapons were in racks along the walls, and the powder kegs stacked to the ceiling at the far end.

  ‘Pick your weapons and bring a keg of powder each,’ he ordered, and they ran to the long racks of infantry swords, polished, gleaming and sharpened to a bright edge. Further back were the racks of muskets and pistols. Hal thrust a pair of pistols into the rope that served him as a belt. ‘Remember, you’ll have to carry everything you take with you up the mountains, so don’t be greedy,’ he warned them, and picked up a fifty-pound keg of gunpowder from the pyramid at the far end of the armoury, which he hoisted to his shoulder. Then he turned for the door. ‘That’s enough, lads. Get out! Daniel, lay a powder trail as you go!’

  Daniel used the butt of a musket to stove in the bungs of two of the powder kegs. At the foot of the pyramid of barrels he poured a mound of black gunpowder. ‘That lot will go off with an almighty bang!’ He grinned, as he backed towards the door, the other keg under his arm spilling a long dark trail behind him.

  Under their burdens they staggered out into the sunlight. Hal was the last to leave. ‘Get out of here, Ned!’ he ordered, and handed him the weapons he carried as Ned ran for the door. Then Hal turned on the three Dutch soldiers, who were cowering on the bench. Ned had disarmed them – their weapons were thrown in the corner of the guard room.

  ‘I’m going to blow this place to hell,’ he told them in Dutch. ‘Run for the gates, and if you’re wise you’ll keep running without looking back. Go!’ They sprang up and, in their haste to get clear, jammed in the doorway. They struggled and fought each other until they burst out into the courtyard and raced across it.

  ‘Look out!’ they yelled, as they sprinted for the gates. ‘They’re going to blow up the powder store!’ The gaolers and the other common convicts who, until this point, had stood gaping at the carriage and the hostage Governor in Aboli’s grip, now turned their heads towards the armoury and stared at it in stupid surprise.

  Hal appeared in the armoury doorway with a sword in one hand and a burning torch that he had seized from its bracket in the other.

  ‘I am counting to ten,’ Hal shouted, ‘and then I am lighting the powder train!’ In his rags, and with his great bushy black beard and wild eyes, he looked like a maniac. A moan of horror and fear went up from every man in the yard. One of the convicts threw down his spade and followed the fleeing soldiers in a rush for the gate. Immediately pandemonium overwhelmed them all. Two hundred convicts and soldiers stormed the gates in a rush for safety.

  Van de Velde struggled in Aboli’s grip and screamed, ‘Let me go! The idiot is going to blow us all to perdition. Let me go! Run! Run!’ His shrieks added to the panic, and within the time it takes to draw and hold a long breath the courtyard was deserted except for the group of seamen around the carriage and Hal. Katinka was screaming and sobbing hysterically, but Sukeena slapped her hard across the face. ‘Keep quiet, you simpering ninny, or I’ll give you good reason to blubber,’ and Katinka gulped back her distress.

  ‘Aboli, get van de Velde into the carriage! He and his wife are coming with us,’ Hal called, and Aboli lifted the Governor bodily and hurled him over the top of the door. He landed in an ungainly heap on the floorboards and struggled there, like an insect on a pin. ‘Althuda, put your sword point to his heart and be ready to kill him when I give the word.’

  ‘I look forward to it!’ Althuda shouted, dragged van de Velde upright and thrust him into the seat facing his wife. ‘Where should I give it to you?’ he asked him. ‘In your fat gut, perhaps?’

  Van de Velde had lost his wig in the scuffle and his expression was abject, every inch of his huge frame seeming to quiver with despair. ‘Don’t kill me. I can protect you,’ he pleaded, and Katinka started weeping and keening again. This time, Sukeena merely held her a little tighter, lifted the point of the dagger to her throat and whispered, ‘We don’t need you now we have the Governor. It won’t matter at all if I kill you.’ Katinka choked back the next sob.

  ‘Daniel, load the powder and the spare weapons,’ Hal ordered, and they piled them into the carriage. The elegant vehicle was no wagon, and the coachwork sagged under the load on its delicately sprung suspension.

  ‘That’s enough! It will take no more.’ Aboli stopped them throwing the last few powder kegs on board.

  ‘One man to each horse!’ Hal commanded. ‘Don’t tr
y to board them, lads. You’re none of you riders. You’ll fall off and break your necks, which won’t matter much, but your weight will kill the poor beasts before we have gone a mile, and that will matter. Lay hold of their rigging and let them tow you along.’ They ran to their places around the team of horses, and latched onto their harness. ‘Leave space for me on the larboard bow, lads,’ he called, and even in her excitement and agitation Sukeena laughed aloud at his use of the nautical terms. His men understood, though, and left the offside lead horse for him.

  Aboli leaped to his place on the coachman’s seat, while in the body of the carriage Althuda menaced van de Velde and Sukeena held her dagger to Katinka’s white throat.

  Aboli wheeled the team and shouted, ‘Come on, Gundwane. It’s time to go. The garrison will wake up at any moment now.’ As he said it they heard the flat report of a pistol shot, and a garrison officer ran from the doorway of the barracks across the square waving his smoking pistol, shouting to his men to form up on him. ‘Stand to arms! On me the First Company!’

  Hal paused only a moment to light the slow-match of one of his pistols from the burning torch, then tossed the torch onto the powder train and waited to see it flare and catch. The smoking flame started snaking back through the doors of the armoury into the passageway that led to the main powder magazine. Then he sprang down the steps into the courtyard and raced to meet the overloaded carriage as Aboli drove the horses in a circle and lined up for the gates.

  He was almost there, raising his hand to seize the bridle of the leading grey gelding, when suddenly Aboli shouted in agitation, ‘Gundwane, behind you! Have a care!’

  Hugo Barnard had appeared in the doorway where he and his hounds had taken shelter at the first sign of trouble. Now he slipped both dogs from the leash and with wild yells of encouragement sent them in pursuit of Hal. ‘Vat hom! Catch him!’ he yelled and the animals raced towards him in a silent rush, running side by side, striding out and covering the length of the courtyard like a pair of whippets coursing a hare.