Birds of Prey

by Wilbur Smith

  Swiftly Schreuder stripped off his coat and bundled it over the rock, making a cushion on which to rest the forestock of the musket. He looked down the barrel and picked up the pip of the foresight in the notch of the backsight. He settled it for an instant on Hal’s bobbing head, then lifted it until he had a slice of blue sky showing beneath it, compensating for the drop of the heavy lead ball when it reached the limit of its carry. In the same motion he swept the sight ahead of the grey’s straining head.

  ‘He can never hope for a hit from there!’ Hal breathed, but at that instant he saw the silver smoke bloom like a noxious flower on the stem of the musket barrel. Then he felt a mallet blow as the ball ploughed into the ribs of the grey mare an inch from his knee. Hal heard the air driven from the horse’s punctured lungs. The brave animal reeled backwards and went down on its haunches. It tried to recover its footing by rearing wildly, but instead threw itself off the edge of the narrow path. Just in time, Aboli grabbed Hal’s injured leg and pulled him from its back.

  Hal and Aboli sprawled together on the rocks and looked down. The horse rolled until it struck the bend in the pathway, where it came to rest in a slide of small stones, loose earth and dust. It lay with all four legs kicking weakly in the air. A resounding shout of triumph went up from the pursuing soldiers, whose cries rang along the cliffs and echoed through the gloomy depths of the dark gorge.

  Hal crawled shakily to his feet, and quickly assessed their circumstances. Both he and Aboli still had their muskets slung over their shoulders and their swords in their scabbards. In addition they each had a pair of pistols, a small powder horn and a bag containing musket balls strapped around their waists. But they had lost all else.

  Below them their pursuers had been given new heart by this reverse in their fortunes and were clamouring like a pack of hounds with the smell of the chase hot in their nostrils. They came scrambling upwards.

  ‘Leave your pistols and musket,’ Aboli ordered. ‘Leave the powder horn and sword also, or their weight will wear you down.’

  Hal shook his head. ‘We will need them soon enough. Lead the way on.’ Aboli did not argue and went away at full stride. Hal stayed close behind him, forcing his injured leg to serve his purpose through the pain and the quivering weakness that spread slowly up his thigh.

  Aboli reached back to hand him up over the more formidable steps in the pathway, but the incline became sharper as they laboured upwards and began to work round the sheer buttress of rock that formed one of the portals of the dark gorge. Now, at every pace forward, they were forced to step up onto the next level, as though they were on a staircase, and were skirting the sheer wall that dropped into the valley far below. The pursuers, though still close, were out of sight around the buttress.

  ‘Are we sure this is the right path?’ Hal gasped, as they stopped for a few seconds’ rest on a broader step.

  ‘Althuda is leaving sign for us still,’ Aboli assured him, and kicked over the cairn of three small pebbles balanced upon each other which had been erected prominently in the centre of the path. ‘And so are my grey horses.’ He smiled as he pointed out a pile of shining wet balls of dung a little further ahead. Then he cocked his head. ‘Listen!’

  Now Hal could hear the voices of Schreuder’s men. They were closer than they had been when last they had stopped. They sounded as though they were just round the corner of the buttress behind them. Hal looked at Aboli with dismay, and tried to balance on his good leg to conceal the weakness of the other. They could hear the clink of sword on rock and the clatter of loose stones underfoot. The soldiers’ voices were so clear and loud that Hal could distinguish their words, and Schreuder’s voice relentlessly urging his troops onwards.

  ‘Now you will obey me, Gundwane!’ said Aboli, and he leaned across and snatched Hal’s musket. ‘You will go on at your best speed while I hold them here for a while.’ Hal was about to argue but Aboli looked hard into his eyes. ‘The longer you argue the more danger you place me in,’ he said.

  Hal nodded. ‘See you at the top of the gorge.’ He clasped Aboli’s arm in a firm grip, then hobbled on alone. As the path turned into the main gorge, Hal looked back and saw that Aboli had taken shelter crouching in the bend of the path, and that he had laid the two muskets on the rock in front of him, close to his hand.

  Hal turned the corner, looked up and saw the gorge open up above him like a great gloomy funnel. The sides were sheer rock walls and it was roofed over by trees with tall thin stems that reached up for the sunlight. They were draped and festooned with lichens. A small stream came leaping down, in a series of pools and waterfalls, and the path took to this stream bed and climbed up over water-worn boulders. Hal dropped to his knees, plunged his face into the first pool and sucked up water, choking and coughing in his greed. As the water distended his belly he felt strength flow back into his swollen, throbbing leg.

  From the other side of the buttress behind him there came the thud of a musket shot, then the thump of a ball striking flesh, followed immediately by the scream of a man thrown into the abyss, a scream that dwindled and faded as he fell away. It was cut off abruptly as he struck the rocks far below. Aboli had made certain of his first shot, and the pursuers would be thrown back in disarray. It would take them time to regroup and come on more cautiously, so he had won precious minutes for Hal.

  Hal scrambled to his feet, and launched himself up the stream bed. Each of the huge, smooth boulders tested his injured leg to its limit. He grunted, groaned and dragged himself upward, listening at the same time for the sounds of fighting behind him, but he heard nothing more until he reached the next pool where he stopped in surprise.

  Althuda had left the five grey horses tethered to a dead tree at the water’s edge. When he looked beyond them to the next giant step in the stream bed, Hal knew why they had been abandoned here. They could no longer follow this dizzy path. The gorge was constricted into a narrow throat high above his head – and his own courage faltered as he surveyed the perilous route that he had to follow. But there was no other way, for the gorge had turned into a trap from which there was no escape. While he wavered, he heard from far below another musket shot and a clamour of angry shouts.

  ‘Aboli has taken another,’ he said aloud, and his own voice echoed weirdly from the high walls of the gorge. ‘Now both his muskets are empty and he will have to run.’ But Aboli had won this reprieve for him, and he dared not squander it. He drove himself at the steep path, dragging his wounded leg over glassy, water-polished rock, which was slippery and treacherous with slimy green algae.

  His heart pounding with exhaustion, and his fingernails ripped to the quick, he crawled the last few feet upwards and reached the ledge in the throat of the gorge. Here he dropped flat on his belly and looked back over the edge. He saw Aboli coming up, leaping from rock to rock without hesitation, a musket clutched in each hand, not even glancing down to judge his footing on the treacherous boulders.

  Hal looked up at the sky through the narrow opening of the gorge high above his head, and saw that day was fading. It would be dark soon, and the tops of the trees were turning to gold in the last rays of sunlight.

  ‘This way!’ he shouted down to Aboli.

  ‘Go on, Gundwane!’ Aboli shouted back. ‘Do not wait for me. They are close behind!’

  Hal turned and looked up the steep stream bed behind him. For the next two hundred paces it was in full view: if he and Aboli tried to continue the climb, then Schreuder and his men would reach this vantage point while their backs were still exposed. Before they could reach the next shelter they would be shot down by short-range musket fire.

  We will have to make our stand here, he decided. We must hold them until nightfall, then try to slip away in the dark. Quickly he gathered loose rocks from the choked watercourse in which he hid and stacked them along the lip of the ledge. When he looked down he saw that Aboli had reached the foot of the rock wall and was climbing rapidly up towards him.

  When Aboli was half-way
up, and fully exposed, there was a shout from further down the darkening gorge. Through the gloom Hal made out the shape of the first of their pursuers. There came the flash and bang of a musket shot, and Hal peered down anxiously but Aboli was uninjured and still climbing fast.

  Now the bottom of the gorge was swarming with men, and a fusillade of shots set the echoes booming and crashing. Hal picked out Schreuder down there in the gloom: his white face stood out among the darker ones that surrounded him.

  Aboli reached the top of the rock-wall, and Hal gave him a hand on to the ledge. ‘Why have you not gone on, Gundwane?’ he panted.

  ‘No time for talking.’ Hal snatched one of the muskets from him and began to reload it. ‘We have to hold them here until dark. Reload!’

  ‘Powder almost finished,’ Aboli replied. ‘Only enough for a few more shots.’ As he spoke he was plying the ramrod.

  ‘Then we must make every shot tell. After that we will beat them back with rocks.’ Hal primed the pan of his musket. ‘And when we have run out of rocks to throw, we will take the steel to them.’

  Musket balls began to buzz and crack around their heads as the men below opened up a sustained rolling volley. Hal and Aboli were forced to lie below the lip, every few seconds popping up their heads to take a quick glance down the wall.

  Schreuder was using most of his men to keep up the fusillade, controlling them so that weapons were always loaded and ready to fire at his command while others reloaded. It seemed that he had chosen a team of his strongest men to scale the wall, while his marksmen tried to keep Hal and Aboli from defending themselves.

  This first wave of a dozen or more climbers carrying only their swords rushed forward and hurled themselves at the rock wall, scrambling upwards. Then, as soon as Hal and Aboli’s heads appeared over the lip, there came a thunderous volley of musket fire and the muzzle flashes lit the gloom.

  Hal ignored the balls that flew around and splashed against the rock below him. He thrust out the barrel of his musket and aimed down at the nearest climber. This was one of the white Dutch corporals, and the range was point-blank. Hal’s ball struck him in the mouth, smashed in his teeth and shattered his jawbone. He lost his grip on the slippery face, and fell backwards. He crashed into the three men below him, knocking them loose, and all four plummeted down to shatter on the rocks below.

  Aboli fired and sent another two green-jackets slithering downwards. Then both he and Hal snatched up their pistols and fired again, then again, clearing the wall of climbers, except for two men who clung helplessly to a crevice half-way up the polished rock face.

  Hal dropped the empty pistols and seized one of the boulders he had placed at hand. It filled his fist, and he hurled it down at the man below him. The green-jacket saw it coming, but could not avoid it. He tried to tuck his head into his shoulders but the rock caught him on the temple, his fingers opened and he fell.

  ‘Good throw, Gundwane!’ Aboli applauded him. ‘Your aim is improving.’ He threw at the last man on the wall and hit him under the chin. He teetered for a moment, then lost his grip and plunged down.

  ‘Reload!’ Hal snapped, and as he poured in powder he glanced at the strip of sky above them. ‘Will the night never come?’ he lamented, and saw Schreuder send the next wave of climbers to rush the wall. Darkness would not save them for, before they had reloaded the muskets, the enemy soldiers were already half-way up.

  They knelt on the lip and fired again, but this time their two shots brought down only one of the attackers and the rest came on steadily. Schreuder sent another wave of climbers to join them and the entire wall seethed with dark figures.

  ‘We cannot beat them all back,’ Hal said, with black despair in his heart. ‘We must retreat back up the gorge.’ But when he looked up at the steep, boulder-strewn climb, his spirits quailed.

  He flung down his musket and, with Aboli at his side, went at the treacherous slope. The first climbers came over the lip of the wall and rushed, shouting, after them.

  In the gathering darkness Hal and Aboli struggled upwards, turning when the pursuers pressed them too closely to take them on with their blades and drive them back just far enough to give them respite to go on upwards. But now more and still more green-jackets had reached the top of the wall, and it was only a matter of minutes before they would be overtaken and overwhelmed.

  Just ahead, Hal noticed a deep crevice in the side wall of the gorge and thought that he and Aboli might take shelter in its darkness. He abandoned the idea, however, as he came level with it and saw how shallow it was. Schreuder would hunt them out of there like a ferret driving out a couple of rabbits from a warren.

  ‘Hal Courtney!’ a voice called from the dark crack in the rock. He peered into it and, in its depths, saw two men. One was Althuda, who had called him, and the other was a stranger, a bearded, older man dressed in animal skins. It was too dark to see his face clearly, but when both he and Althuda beckoned urgently neither Hal nor Aboli hesitated. They threw themselves at the narrow opening and squeezed in, between the two men already there.

  ‘Get down!’ the stranger shouted in Hal’s ear, and stood up with a short-handled axe in his hand. A soldier appeared in the opening of the crevice and raised his sword to thrust at the four men crowded into it, but Althuda threw up the pistol in his hand and shot him at close range in the centre of his chest.

  At the same time the bearded stranger raised the axe high then slashed down with a powerful stroke. Hal did not understand what he was doing, until he saw that the man had severed a rope of plaited bark, thick as a man’s wrist and hairy. The axe bit cleanly through the taut rope, and as it parted the severed tail whipped away, as though impelled by some immense force. The end had been looped and knotted around a sturdy wooden peg, driven into a crack in the stone. The length of the rope ran round the corner of the crevice, then stretched upwards to some point lost in the gathering gloom higher up the steep gorge.

  For a long minute nothing else happened, and Hal and Aboli stared at the other two in bewilderment. Then there was a creaking and a rustling from higher up the funnel of the gorge, a rumbling and a crackling as though a sleeping giant had stirred.

  ‘Sabah has triggered the rockfall!’ Althuda explained, and instantly Hal understood. He stared out into the gorge through the narrow entrance to the crevice. The rumbling became a gathering roar, and above it he could hear the wild, terrified screams of green-jackets caught full in the path of this avalanche. For them there was neither shelter nor escape. The gorge was a death trap into which Althuda and Sabah had lured them.

  The roaring and grinding of rock rose in a deafening crescendo. The mountain seemed to tremble beneath them. The screams of the soldiers in its path were drowned, and suddenly a mighty river of racing boulders came sweeping past the entrance to the crevice. The light was blotted out, and the air was filled with dust and powdered rock so that the four men choked and gasped for breath. Blinded and suffocating, Hal lifted the tail of his ragged shirt and held it over his nose and mouth, trying to filter the air so that he could breathe in the tumultuous choking dust-storm thrown out by the tidal wave of rock and flying stone that poured past.

  The avalanche went on for a long time but gradually the stream of moving rock dwindled to become a slow, intermittent slither and tumble of the last few fragments. At last silence, complete and oppressive, weighed down upon them, and the dust settled to reveal the outline of the opening to their shelter.

  Aboli crawled out and balanced gingerly on the loose, unstable footing. Hal crept out beside him and both peered down the gloomy gorge. From wall to wall, it had been scoured clean by the avalanche. There was no sound or trace of their pursuers, not a last despairing cry or dying moan, not a shred of cloth or discarded weapon. It was as though they had never been.

  Hal’s injured leg could no longer bear his weight. He staggered and collapsed in the opening of the crevice. The fever in his blood from the festering wounds boiled up and filled his head with darkness and
heat. He was aware of strong hands supporting him and then he lapsed into unconsciousness.

  Colonel Cornelius Schreuder waited for an hour in the antechamber of the castle before Governor van de Velde condescended to see him. When, eventually, he was summoned by an aide-decamp, he strode into the Governor’s audience chamber, but still van de Velde declined to acknowledge his presence. He went on signing the documents and proclamations that Jacobus Hop laid before him, one at a time.

  Schreuder was in full uniform, wearing all his decorations and stars. His wig was freshly curled and powdered, and his moustaches were dressed with beeswax into sharp spikes. Down one side of his face there were pink raw scars and scabs.

  Van de Velde signed the last document and dismissed Hop with a wave of his hand. When the clerk had left and closed the doors behind him, van de Velde picked up Schreuder’s written report from the desk in front of him as though it was a particularly revolting piece of excrement.

  ‘So you lost almost forty men, Schreuder?’ he asked heavily. ‘Not to mention eight of the Company’s finest horses.’

  ‘Thirty-four men,’ Schreuder corrected him, still standing stiffly to attention.

  ‘Almost forty!’ van de Velde repeated, with an expression of repugnance. ‘And eight horses. The convicts and slaves you were pursuing got clean away from you. Hardly a famous victory, do you agree, Colonel?’ Schreuder scowled furiously at the sculpted cornices on the ceiling above the Governor’s head. ‘The security of the castle is your responsibility, Schreuder. The minding of the prisoners is your responsibility. The safety of my person and that of my wife is also your responsibility. Do you agree, Schreuder?’

  ‘Yes, your excellency.’ A nerve beneath Schreuder’s eye began to twitch.

  ‘You allowed the prisoners to escape. You allowed them to plunder the Company’s property. You allowed them to do grievous damage to this building with explosives. Look at my windows!’ Van de Velde pointed at the empty casements from which the stained-glass panels had been blown. ‘I have estimates from the Company surveyor that place the damage at over one hundred thousand guilders!’ He was working himself steadily into a rage. ‘A hundred thousand guilders! Then, on top of that, you allowed the prisoners to abduct my wife and myself and to place us in mortal danger—’ He had to break off to get his temper under control. ‘Then you allowed almost forty of the Company’s servants to be murdered, including five white men! What do you imagine will be the reaction of the Council of Seventeen in Amsterdam when they receive my full report detailing the depths of the dereliction of your duties, hey? What do you think they will say? Answer me, you jumped-up popinjay! What do you think they will say?’