by Wilbur Smith
Every few minutes Hal looked up at his funereal black sails, then crossed to the binnacle. There was no order he could give the helm, for Ned Tyler was steering her fine as she could sail.
A charged and poignant silence lay heavy on the ship. No man shouted or laughed. The off-duty watch did not doze in the shade of the main sail as was their usual practice but huddled in small silent groups, alert to every move he made and to every word he uttered.
The sun made its majestic circle of the sky and drooped down to touch the far western hills. Night came upon them as stealthily as an assassin, and the horizon blurred and melded with the darkening sky, then was gone.
In the darkness he felt Judith’s hand on his arm. It was smooth and warm, yet strong. ‘We have lost them, but it is not your fault,’ she said softly. ‘No man could have done more.’
‘I have not yet failed,’ he said. ‘Have faith in God and trust in me.’
‘But in darkness? Surely the Buzzard would not show a light, and by dawn tomorrow he will be through the Bab and into the open sea.’
He wanted to tell her that all of this had been ordained long ago, that he was sailing south to meet a special destiny. Even though this might seem fanciful to her, he had to tell her. ‘Judith,’ he said, then paused as he sought the right words.
‘Deck!’ Aboli’s voice boomed out of the darkness high above. It had a timbre and resonance to it that made Hal’s skin prickle and the hairs at the back of his neck stand.
‘Masthead!’ he bellowed back.
‘A light dead ahead!’
He placed one arm around Judith’s shoulders and she made no move to pull away from him. Instead, she leaned closer.
‘There is the answer to your question,’ he whispered.
‘God has provided for us,’ she replied.
‘I must go aloft.’ Hal dropped his arm from around her shoulders. ‘Perhaps we are too hasty, and the devil is playing us tricks.’ He strode across to Ned. ‘Dark ship, Mr Tyler. I’ll keel haul the man who shows a light. Silent ship, no sound or voice.’ He went to the mainmast shrouds.
Hal climbed swiftly until he had joined Aboli. ‘Where is this light?’ He scanned the darkness ahead. ‘I see nothing.’
‘It has gone, but it was almost dead ahead.’
‘A star in your eye, Aboli?’
‘Wait, Gundwane. It was a small light and far away.’
The minutes passed slowly, and then suddenly Hal saw it. Not even a glimmer, but a soft luminescence, so nebulous that he doubted his eyes, especially as Aboli beside him had shown no sign of seeing it. Hal looked away to rest his eyes then turned back and saw in the darkness that it was still there, too low for a star, a weird unnatural glow.
‘Yes, Aboli. I see it now.’ As he spoke it became brighter, and Aboli exclaimed also. Then it died away again.
‘It could be a strange vessel, not the Gull.’
‘Surely the Buzzard would not be so careless as to show a running light.’
‘A lantern in the stern cabin? The reflection from his binnacle?’
‘Or one of his sailors enjoying a quiet pipe?’
‘Let us pray that it is one of those. It is where we could expect the Buzzard to be,’ said Hal. ‘We will keep after it until moonrise.’
They stayed together, peering ahead into the night. Sometimes the strange light showed as a distinct point, at others it was a faint amorphous glow, and often it disappeared. Once it was gone completely for a terrifying half hour, before it shone again perceptibly stronger.
‘We are gaining,’ Hal dared whisper. ‘How far off now, do you reckon?’
‘A league,’ said Aboli, ‘maybe less.’
‘Where is the moon?’ Hal looked into the east, ‘Will it never rise?’
He saw the first iridescence beyond the dark mountains of Arabia and, shyly as a bride, the moon unveiled her face. She laid down a silver path upon the waters, and Hal felt his breath lock in his chest and every sinew of his body drawn tight as a bowstring.
Out of the darkness ahead appeared a lovely apparition, soft as a cloud of opaline mist.
‘There she is!’ he whispered. He had to draw a deep breath to steady his voice. ‘The Gull of Moray dead ahead.’
He grasped Aboli’s arm. ‘Do you go down and warn Ned Tyler and Big Daniel. Stay there until you can see the Gull from the deck, then come back.’
When Aboli was gone he watched the shape of the Gull’s sails firm and harden in the moonlight, and he felt fear as he had seldom known it in his life, fear not only for himself but for the men who trusted him and the woman on the deck below and the child aboard the other ship. How could he hope to lay the Golden Bough alongside the Gull while she fired her broadsides into them, and they could make no reply? How many must die in the next hour and who would be among them? He though of Judith Nazet’s proud slim body torn by flying grape. ‘Do not let it happen, Lord God. You have taken from me already more than I can bear. How much more? How much more will you ask of me?’
He saw the light again on board the other ship. It glowed from the tall windows in her stern. Were there candles burning in there? He stared until his eyes ached, but there was no single source to the emanation of light.
There was a light touch on his arm. He had not heard Aboli climb back to him. ‘The Gull is in sight from the deck,’ he told Hal softly.
Hal could not leave the masthead yet, for he felt a sense of religious dread as he stared at the strange light in the Gull’s stern.
‘’Tis no lamp or lantern or candle, Aboli,’ he said. ‘’Tis the Tabernacle of Mary that glows in the darkness. A beacon to guide me to my destiny.’
Aboli shivered beside him. ‘’Tis true that it is a light not of this world, a fairy light, such as I have never seen before.’ His voice shook. ‘But how do you know, Gundwane? How can you be so sure that it is the talisman that burns so?’
‘Because I know,’ said Hal simply, and as he said it the light died away before their eyes, and the Gull was dark. Only her moonlit sails towered before them.
‘It was a sign,’ Aboli murmured.
‘Yes, it was a sign,’ said Hal, and his voice was strong and serene once again. ‘God has given me a sign.’
They climbed down to the deck, and Hal went directly to the helm. ‘There she is, Mr Tyler.’ They both looked ahead to where the Gull’s canvas shone in the moonlight.
‘Aye, there she is, Captain.’
‘Douse the light in the binnacle. Lay me alongside the Gull, if you please. Have four spare helmsmen standing by to take the whipstaff when the others are killed.’
‘Aye, Sir Hal.’
Hal went forward. Big Daniel’s figure emerged out of the darkness. ‘Grappling irons, Master Daniel?’
‘All ready, Captain. Me and ten of my strongest men will heave them.’
‘Nay, Daniel, leave that to John Lovell. I have better work for you and Aboli. Come with me.’
He led Daniel and Aboli back to where Judith Nazet stood at the foot of the mainmast.
‘The two of you will go with General Nazet. Take ten of your best seamen. Do not get caught up in the fighting on deck. Swift as you can, get down to the Gull’s stern cabin. There you will find the Tabernacle and the child. Bring them out. Nothing must turn you aside from that purpose. Do you understand?’
‘How do you know where they are holding the Emperor and the Tabernacle?’ Judith Nazet asked quietly.
‘I know,’ Hal said, with such finality that she was silent. He wanted to order her to stay in a safe place until the fight was over, but he knew she would refuse – and besides which there was no safe place when two ships of such force were locked in mortal combat.
‘Where will you be, Gundwane?’ Aboli asked softly.
‘I shall be with the Buzzard,’ Hal said, and left them without another word.
He went towards the bows, pausing as he reached each of the divisions who crouched below the gunwale, and speaking softly to their boatswains. ‘G
od love you, Samuel Moone. We might have to take a shot or two before we board her, but think of the pleasure that waits you on the Gull’s deck.’
To Jiri he said, ‘This will be such a fight as you will boast of to your grandchildren.’
He had a word for each, then stood once more in the bows and looked across at the Gull. She was a cable’s length ahead now, sailing on serenely under her moon-radiant canvas.
‘Lord, keep us hidden from them,’ he whispered, and looked up at his own black sails, a tall dark pyramid against the stars.
Slowly, achingly slowly they closed the gap. She cannot elude us now, Hal thought, with grim satisfaction. We are too close.
Suddenly there came a wild scream of terror from the Gull’s masthead. ‘Sail ho! Dead astern! The Golden Bough!’
Then all was shouting and confusion on the other ship’s deck. There was the savage beat of a drum calling the Buzzard’s crew to battle quarters, and the rush of many feet on her planking. A loud series of crashes as her gunports were flung open, and then the squeal and rumble as the guns were run out. From twenty points along her dark rail came the glow of slow-match burning, and the glint of their reflection from steel.
‘Light the battle lamps!’ Hal heard the Buzzard’s bellows of rage as he drove his panicky crew to their stations, then clearly his order to the helm. ‘Hard to larboard! Lay the bastards under our broadside! We’ll give them such a good sniff of gunsmoke that they’ll fart it in the devil’s face when we send them down to hell.’
The Gull’s battle lanterns flared, as she lit up to give her gunners light to work. In their yellow glow Hal glimpsed the Buzzard’s bush of red hair.
Then the silhouette of the Gull altered rapidly as she came around. Hal nodded, the Buzzard had acted instinctively but unwisely. In his position Hal would have stood off and shot the Golden Bough to a wreck while she was unable to reply. Now he would have to be fortunate and quick to get off one steady broadside before the Golden Bough was upon him.
Hal grinned. The Buzzard was the victim of his own iniquity. Probably it had not even entered his calculations that Hal would hold his fire on account of a child and an ancient relic. If he were in the same position as Hal, the Buzzard would have blazed away with all his cannon.
As the Gull came slowly around, the Golden Bough flew at her and, for a moment, Hal thought they might be alongside her before her guns could bear.
They closed the last hundred yards and Ned had already given the order to shorten to fighting sail, when the Gull turned through the last few degrees of arc and all her guns were aimed straight at where Hal stood.
Looking directly into the Gull’s battery, Hal’s eyeballs were seared by the brilliant crimson glow as she fired her broadside into the Golden Bough at point-blank range.
A tempest of disrupted air struck them so viciously that Hal was hurled backwards and thought that he had been hit by a ball. The deck around him dissolved into a buzzing storm of splinters and the knot of Amadoda nearest him were struck squarely and blown into nothingness. The Golden Bough heeled over sharply to the weight of shot that tore through her, and the choking fog of gunsmoke drifted over her shattered hull.
The terrible silence that followed the thunder of the broadside was marred only by the screams and groans of the wounded and the dying. Then the wall of gunsmoke was blown aside, and from across the narrow gap of water came the cheering of the other crew. ‘The Gull and Cumbrae!’ and Hal heard the rumble of the gun trains as they were run in-board to be reloaded.
How many of my lads are dead? he wondered. A quarter? Half? He looked back at his own decks, but the darkness hid from his eyes the torn timbers and the heaps of dead and dying.
From across the water he heard the thudding of ramrods forcing powder and shot down the barrels of the guns. ‘Faster!’ he whispered. ‘Faster, my darling. Close the gap and do not make us face another such blast.’
He heard the squeal of the tackle and the rumble as one of the swiftest guncrews completed loading before the others and ran out its culverin. The two ships were now so close together that Hal saw the monstrous gaping barrel come poking out through its gunport. With the muzzle almost touching the Golden Bough’s side it roared again, and timbers shattered and men screamed as the heavy ball tore through them.
Then before any more of the Gull’s guns could be run out, the two ships came together with a rending, grinding crash. In the light of the Gull’s battle lanterns Hal saw the grappling hooks hurled over her side and heard them clatter on her deck. He did not hesitate but sprang to the gunwale and leaped across the narrow strip of water as the two hulls surged alongside each other. He landed lightly as a cat among the nearest of the Buzzard’s guncrews and killed two men before they could draw their cutlasses.
Then a wave of his boarders followed him over her side, led by the Amadoda armed with pike and axe. Within seconds the Gull’s upper deck was transformed into a battlefield. Men fought chest to chest and hand to hand, shouting and yelling with rage and terror.
‘El Tazar!’ roared the men of the Golden Bough, to be answered by, ‘The Gull and Cumbrae!’ as they came together.
Hal found himself confronted by four men simultaneously and was driven back to the rail before John Lovell tore into them from behind and killed one with a thrust between the shoulder-blades. Hal killed another as he hesitated and the other two broke and ran. Hal had a moment to look about him. He saw the Buzzard on the far side of the deck, roaring with rage, the great claymore swinging high above his head as he hacked down the men in front of him.
Then from the corner of his eye Hal caught the glint of Judith Nazet’s steel helmet and, towering on each side of her, the forms of Aboli and Big Daniel. They drove across the deck and disappeared down the companionway to the stern cabin. That moment of distraction might have cost Hal his life for a man stabbed at him with a pike, and he turned only just in time to avoid the thrust. Then he was in the midst of the fight again as it swayed back and forth across the deck.
He put down another man with a thrust in the belly, then looked about for the Buzzard. He saw him in the waist, and shouted at him, ‘Cumbrae, I am coming for you!’ But in the uproar the Buzzard did not look round at him, and Hal started towards him cutting a path for himself through the mob of fighting men.
At that moment one of the main shrouds was cut loose by a swinging axe that missed the head at which it was aimed, and the battle lantern that was suspended from it came crashing to the deck at Hal’s feet. He sprang back from the blaze of burning oil that roared up into his face then gathered himself and leapt through the flames to reach the Buzzard.
He landed on the far side and looked about him swiftly, but the Buzzard had disappeared and instead two of his sailors charged at Hal. He took them on and slashed through the sinews of an extended sword arm as one lunged at him. Then, in the same movement, he changed cut to thrust and drove his point deeply into the second man’s throat.
He recovered and glanced back over his shoulder. The flames from the shattered lantern had taken hold and were lighting the deck brightly. Streamers of fire were running up the dangling shroud towards the rigging. Through the dancing flames he saw Judith Nazet leap out of the entrance to the stern companionway. She was followed closely by Big Daniel carrying the Tabernacle of Mary, balanced easily on his shoulder as though it were light as a down-filled bolster. The golden angels on its lid sparkled in the light of the flames.
A sailor rushed at Judith with his pike, and Hal shouted with horror as the gleaming spearhead struck her full in the side under her raised arm. It tore through the thin cotton of her tunic, but glanced harmlessly off the shirt of steel chain-mail beneath the cloth. Judith whirled like an angry panther, and her blade flashed as she aimed at his face. Such was the fury of her blow that the point came out of the back of the pirate’s skull, and the man dropped at her feet.
Judith’s fierce dark eyes met Hal’s across the teeming deck.
‘Iyasu!’ she shoute
d. ‘He is gone!’
The flames were leaping up between them, and Hal yelled through them, ‘Go with Daniel! Get off this ship! Take the Tabernacle to safety on the Golden Bough. I will find Iyasu.’
She neither argued nor hesitated but ran, with Daniel beside her, to the rail and leaped across onto the Golden Bough’s deck. Hal started to fight his way towards the companionway to reach the lower decks where the child must be hidden, but a phalanx of Amadoda led by Jiri swept across the deck and cut him off. The black warriors had locked their shields together into the solid carapace of the testudo and, with their pikes thrust through the gaps, the pirates could not stand before their charge.
In every battle there comes a moment when its outcome is decided and as the Gull’s sailors scattered before that rush of howling, prancing warriors it had come. The Buzzard’s men were beaten.
‘I must find Iyasu and get him off the Gull before the flames reach the powder magazine,’ Hal told himself, and turned towards the break in the forecastle as his easiest access to the lower decks. At that moment a bellow stopped him dead.
The Buzzard stood on high, lit by the dancing yellow light of the flames. ‘Courtney!’ he roared. ‘Is this what you are searching for?’
His head was bared and his tangled red locks tumbled about his face. In his right hand he held his claymore, and in his left he carried Iyasu. The child was screaming with terror as the Buzzard lifted him high. He wore only a thin nightshirt, which had rucked up above his waist, and his slender brown legs kicked frantically in the air.
‘Is this what you are looking for?’ the Buzzard bellowed again, and lifted the child high above his head. ‘Then come and fetch the brat.’
Hal bounded forward, cutting two men out of his way, before he reached the foot of the forecastle ladder. The Buzzard watched him come. He must have known that he was beaten, with his ship in flames and his crew being cut down and hurled overboard by the rush of the pikemen, but he grinned like a gargoyle. ‘Let me show you a fine little trick, Sir Henry. It’s called catch the bairn on the steel.’