Blue Horizon

by Wilbur Smith

  Once they had loaded it on to Frost’s back, Bakkat stuffed his food bag with strips of fresh raw meat, and they parted. Armed with Jim’s telescope, he rode back to spy on Keyser and his troopers. Jim wanted him to make certain that they had abandoned the chase, now that they had lost their horses, and that they were starting on the long, bitter march back through the mountains to the distant colony. Jim would not trust Keyser to do what was expected of him: he was learning to respect the colonel’s tenacity, and the strength of his hatred.

  By the time Jim reached the camp where he had left Louisa it was after noon, and she was still sleeping. The aroma of roasting rhebuck steaks roused her. Jim managed to brew one more watery canteen of coffee with the old beans, and Louisa ate with obvious relish.

  In the late afternoon, just as the sun was settling on the peaks, painting them bloody and fiery, Bakkat rode back into camp. “I found them about five miles from where we attacked them last night,” he told Jim. “They have given up the chase. They have abandoned all of the supplies and equipment they could not carry on their backs—they did not even take the time to burn it. I brought back everything I thought we could use.”

  While Zama helped him unload the booty, Jim asked, “Which way are they heading?”

  “As you hoped, Xhia is leading them back west again, straight towards the colony. But they are travelling slowly. Most of the white men are suffering. Their boots are better suited to riding than walking. The fat colonel is already limping, and using a stick. It does not seem as though he will be able to carry on much longer, not for the ten days’ travel it will take them to reach the colony.” Bakkat looked at Jim. “You said that you did not want to kill him. The mountains might kill him for you.”

  Jim shook his head. “Stephanus Keyser is no fool. He will send Xhia ahead to fetch fresh horses from the Cape. He might lose some of his belly, but he won’t die,” he declared, with assurance he did not feel. He added silently, Or, at least, I hope not. He did not want Keyser’s murder laid at the door of his family.

  For the first time in weeks they did not have to run to keep ahead of their pursuers. Bakkat had found a small bag of flour and a bottle of wine in one of the saddlebags Keyser had abandoned. Louisa cooked flat unleavened bread-cakes over the coals, and kebabs of rhebuck meat and liver, and they washed it down with Keyser’s fine old claret. Alcohol is poison to the San, and Bakkat, giggling tipsily, almost fell into the fire when he tried to stand. The fur karosses had dried out after the soaking in the previous day’s thunderstorm, and they collected armfuls of cedarwood to feed a fragrant campfire, so they enjoyed their first unbroken sleep for many a night.

  Early the next morning they rode on, well fed, rested and mounted, towards the meeting place at the Hill of the Baboon’s Head. Only Bakkat was still suffering the ill-effects of the three mouthfuls of wine he had drunk the night before. “I am poisoned,” he muttered. “I am going to die.”

  “No, you won’t,” Jim assured him. “The ancestors will not take a rogue like you.”

  For three days Colonel Stephanus Keyser limped along, leaning heavily on the staff that Captain Koots had cut for him, supported on the other side by Goffel, one of the Hottentot troopers. The trail was endless: steep descents followed by treacherous uphill stretches on which the loose round scree rubble rolled underfoot. An hour before noon on the third day of the march Keyser could go no further. He collapsed with a groan on a small boulder beside the game trail they were following.

  “Goffel, you useless bastard, pull off my boots,” he shouted, and offered one of his feet. Goffel struggled with the large, scuffed, dusty boot, then staggered backwards as it came free in his hands. The others gathered around and stared in awe at the exposed foot. The stocking was in bloody ribbons. The blisters had burst and tatters of skin hung from the open wounds.

  Captain Koots blinked his pale eyes. His eyelashes were colourless which gave him a perpetual bland stare. “Colonel, sir, you cannot go on with your feet in that condition.”

  “That’s what I have been telling you for the last twenty miles, you gibbering idiot,” Keyser roared at him. “Get your men to build me a carrying chair.”

  The men exchanged glances. They were already heavily burdened with the equipment Keyser had insisted they carry back to the colony, including his English hunting saddle, his folding camp chair and bed, his canteen and bedroll. Now they were about to be accorded the honour of carrying the colonel himself.

  “You heard the colonel.” Koots rounded on them. “Richter! You and Le Riche find two cedarwood poles. Use your bayonets to trim them into shape. We will tie the colonel’s saddle over them with strips of bark.” The troopers scattered to their tasks.

  Keyser hobbled on bare, bleeding feet to the stream and sat on the bank. He soaked his feet in the cold clear water and sighed with relief. “Koots!” he shouted, and the captain hurried to join him.

  “Colonel, sir!” He stood to attention on the bank. He was a lean, hard man, with narrow hips and wide bony shoulders under the green baize tunic.

  “How would you like to earn ten thousand guilders?” Keyser dropped his voice to a confidential tone. Koots thought about that sum of money. It represented almost five years’ pay on his present level, and he had no illusions about climbing higher up the military ladder. “It is a large sum of money, sir,” he said cautiously.

  “I want that young bastard Courtney. I want him as much as anything I have ever wanted in my life.”

  “I understand, Colonel.” Koots nodded. “I would like to get my hands on him myself.” He smiled like a cobra at the thought, and clenched his fists instinctively at his sides.

  “He is going to get away, Koots,” Keyser said heavily. “Before we ever reach the castle he will be over the frontier of the colony and we will never see him again. He has made a jackass of me, and of the VOC.”

  Koots showed no sign of distress at these trespasses. He could not prevent a bleak smile reaching his thin lips as he thought, That’s no great feat. It doesn’t take a genius to make a jackass of the colonel.

  Keyser caught a glimmer of the smile. “You, too, Koots. You will be the butt of every joke of every drunkard and whore in every tavern in the colony. You will be buying your own drinks for years to come.” Koots’s face darkened into a murderous scowl. Keyser pressed the advantage. “That is, Koots, unless you and I can see to it that he is captured and brought back to give a public performance of the rope dance on the parade outside the castle.”

  “He is taking the Robbers’ Road to the north,” Koots protested. “The VOC cannot send troops after him. It’s outside their suzerainty. Governor van de Witten would never allow it. He could not flout the orders in council of Het Zeventien.”

  “I could arrange for you, my fine fellow, to take an indefinite leave of absence from the Company service. Paid leave, of course. I would also arrange a travel pass for you to cross the frontier on a hunting expedition. I would give you Xhia and two or three other good men—Richter and Le Riche, perhaps? I would provide all the supplies you needed.”

  “And if I succeed? If I capture Courtney and bring him back to the castle?”

  “I will see to it that Governor van de Witten and the VOC place a bounty on him of ten thousand guilders in gold. I would even settle for his head pickled in a vat of brandewijn.”

  Koots’s eyes widened as he thought about it. With ten thousand guilders he could leave this God-forsaken land for ever. Of course, he could never return to Holland. He was known by a name other than Koots in the old country, and he had unfinished business there that might end on the gallows. However, Batavia was Paradise compared to this backward colony on the tip of a barbaric continent. Koots allowed himself a fleeting erotic fantasy. The Javanese women were famous for their beauty. He had never developed a taste for the simian-featured Hottentots of the Cape. Moreover, there were opportunities in the east for a man who was good with a sword and gun, who did not flinch at the sight of blood, and even more so if
he had a purse of gold guilders on his belt.

  “What do you say to that, Koots?” Keyser interrupted his day-dreams.

  “I say fifteen thousand.”

  “You are a greedy fellow, Koots. Fifteen thousand is a fortune.”

  “You are a wealthy man, Colonel,” Koots pointed out. “I know that you paid two thousand each for Trueheart and Frost. I would bring back your two horses, along with Courtney’s head.”

  At the mention of his stolen horses Keyser’s sense of outrage, which he had managed to hold under tenuous control, returned in full force. They were two of the finest animals outside Europe. He looked down at his ruined feet, the pain in them almost as bitter as the loss of his horses. Yet five thousand guilders out of his own purse was indeed a fortune.

  Koots saw him wavering. He needed only a gentle push. “Then there is the stallion,” he said.

  “What stallion?” Keyser looked up from his feet.

  “The one who beat you at Christmas. Drumfire. Jim Courtney’s stallion. I would throw him into the bargain.”

  Keyser was weakening, but he set one last condition. “The girl. The convict girl, I want her also.”

  “I will have a little fun with her first.” Although his lean, hard features were impassive, Koots was enjoying the bargaining. “I will bring her to you damaged but alive.”

  “She is probably damaged already.” Keyser laughed. “And will be more so when that young Courtney ram is finished with her. I want her only to make a good show on the gallows. The crowds always love to see a young girl on the rope. I don’t mind what you do to her before that.”

  “We have an agreement, then?” Koots asked.

  “The man, the girl and the three horses.” Keyser nodded. “Three thousand each, or fifteen thousand for all of them.”

  There were ten men to share the labour of carrying the colonel. A team of four was changed every hour, timed with Keyser’s gold watch. The saddle was in the English style, but the work of one of Holland’s finest saddle-makers. They secured it in the centre of the carrying poles. Keyser sat at ease with his feet in the stirrups, while two men at each end lifted the poles on to their shoulders and walked away with them. It took them nine days to reach the colony, the last two without food. The shoulders of the men were sadly galled by the weight of the poles, but Keyser’s feet had almost healed, and the enforced diet had slimmed down his belly and bulk; he looked ten years younger.

  Keyser’s first duty was to report to Governor Paulus Pieterzoon van de Witten. They were old comrades, and shared many secrets. Van de Witten was a tall dyspeptic-looking man of not yet forty. His father and grandfather before him had been members of Het Zeventien in Amsterdam, and his wealth and power were considerable. Very soon he would return to Holland and take his seat on the board of the VOC, as long as there were no blemishes on his career or reputation. The activities of this English bandit might conceivably leave such a stain on his reputation. Colonel Keyser described in detail the crimes against the property and dignity of the VOC perpetrated by the youngest Courtney. Slowly he stoked the flames of the governor’s outrage, repeatedly hinting at van de Witten’s own responsibility in the affair. Their discussion lasted several hours, helped along by the consumption of quantities of Hollands gin and French claret. Finally van de Witten capitulated and agreed that the VOC would offer a reward of fifteen thousand guilders for the capture of Louisa Leuven and James Archibald Courtney, or for positive proof of their execution.

  The placing of rewards on the heads of criminals who had fled the colony was a long-established practice. Many of the hunters and traders who had licences to leave the colony supplemented their profits with bounty money for the VOC.

  Keyser was well pleased with this result. It meant that he was not obliged to risk a single guilder of his own carefully accumulated fortune to contribute to the bounty he had agreed with Captain Koots.

  That same night Koots visited him in the little cottage in the lane behind the Company gardens. Keyser advanced him four hundred guilders to cover the costs of provisioning the expeditionary force that was to pursue Jim Courtney. Five days later a small party of travellers assembled on the banks of the Eerste river, the first river after leaving the colony. They had come separately to the meeting place. There were four white men: Captain Koots, with his pale eyes and colourless hair, his skin reddened by the sun; Sergeant Oudeman, bald, but with heavy drooping moustaches, Koots’s right-hand man and accomplice; Corporals Richter and Le Riche, who hunted together like a pair of wild dogs. Then there were five Hottentot troopers, including the notorious Goffel, who was the interpreter, and Xhia, the Bushman tracker. None of them wore VOC military uniform: they were dressed in the coarse homespun and leather of the Cape burghers. Xhia’s loincloth was made of tanned springbuck skin decorated with beads of ostrich eggshell and Venetian trade beads. Over his shoulders he carried his bow and bark quiver of poisoned arrows, and round his waist a belt hung with an array of charms and buck horns filled with magical and medical potions, powders and unguents.

  Koots swung up into the saddle and looked down at Xhia, the Bushman. “Take the spoor, you little yellow devil, and drink the wind.” They followed Xhia in single file, each trooper leading a spare horse that carried a pack-saddle.

  “Courtney’s spoor will be many weeks old before we cut it again,” Koots watched Xhia’s bare back and pepper-corned head bobbing along ahead of his horse’s nose, “but this hunting dog is a shaitan. He could follow a snowball through the fires of hell.” Then he let himself savour the thought of the warrant in his saddlebag signed by Governor van de Witten, and the prospect of fifteen thousand guilders in gold. He smiled. It was not a pretty smile.

  Bakkat knew that this was only a respite, and that Keyser would not allow them to escape so easily: sooner rather than later Xhia would be following their spoor again. He scouted well ahead and on the sixth day after the capture of Keyser’s horses he found the place ideally suited to his purpose. Here, a stratum of black igneous rock cut diagonally across the floor of a wide valley, through the bed of a fast-flowing river, then climbed the steep far side of the valley. The stratum ran straight and stood out as clearly as a paved Roman road, for no grass or other vegetation grew upon it. Where it crossed the river it was so resistant to the erosion of the waters that it formed a natural weir. The river dropped over the far side, a thundering waterfall, into a whirlpool twenty feet below. The black rock was so hard that not even the steel-shod hoofs of the horses left a scratch upon the surface.

  “Keyser will come back,” Bakkat told Jim, as they squatted on the shiny black floor. “He is a stubborn man, and you have made it a matter of his pride and honour. He will not give up. Even if he does not come himself he will send others to follow you, and Xhia will guide them.”

  “It will take even Xhia many days and weeks to reach the Cape and then return,” Jim demurred. “By then we will be hundreds of leagues away.”

  “Xhia can follow a spoor that is a year old, unless it has been carefully wiped clean.”

  “How will you wipe our spoor, Bakkat?” Jim asked.

  “We have many horses,” Bakkat pointed out, and Jim nodded. “Perhaps too many,” Bakkat persisted.

  Jim looked over the herd of mules and captured horses. There were over thirty. “We do not need so many,” he agreed.

  “How many do you need?” Bakkat asked.

  Jim considered. “Drumfire and Trueheart, Frost and Crow to ride, Stag and Lemon as spares and to carry the packs.”

  “I will use the rest, horses and mules, to wipe our spoor and act as a decoy to lead Xhia away,” Bakkat declared.

  “Show me!” Jim ordered, and Bakkat set about the preparations. While Zama watered the herd above the black rock weir, Louisa and Jim fashioned leather booties from the captured saddlebags and the skins of the eland and rhebuck. These would muffle the hoofs of the six horses they were taking with them. While they were busy with this task, Bakkat scouted downstream. He kept well u
p on the slope of the valley and never approached the river bank. When he returned they cut out the six chosen horses and strapped the booties over their hoofs. It would not take long for the steel shoes to bite through the leather, but it was only a few hundred yards to the river bank.

  They secured the equipment to the backs of the six horses. Then, when all was in readiness, they assembled the entire herd of horses and mules into a tight bunch and walked them easily across the black rock. Half-way across they held the six loaded horses, and let the rest go on and start grazing on the far slope of the valley.

  Jim, Louisa and Zama removed their own boots, strapped them on to the backs of their mounts, then led them barefoot along the black stone pathway. Bakkat came behind them, examining each inch of the ground they had covered. Even to his eye they left no sign. The leather booties had padded the hoofs, the bare human feet were soft and pliant, and they had walked slowly, not adding their weight to that of the horses. The hoofs had neither scored nor scratched the rock.

  When they reached the river bank Jim told Zama, “You go first. Once they hit the water the horses will want to swim straight to the bank. Your job will be to prevent them doing that.”

  They watched anxiously as Zama waded out along the natural causeway, with the water reaching first to his knees, then to his waist. In the end he did not have to dive over the edge, the racing waters simply carried him away. He struck the surface of the pool twenty feet below and disappeared for what seemed to the watchers an age. Then his head broke out and he lifted one arm and waved up at them. Jim turned to Louisa.

  “Are you ready?” he asked. She lifted her chin and nodded. She did not speak, but he saw the fear in her eyes. She walked firmly to the river’s edge, but he could not let her go alone. He took her arm, and for once she made no move to pull away from him. They waded out side by side until the water reached over their knees. Then they stopped and teetered slightly, Jim bracing himself to hold her. “I know you swim like a fish. I have seen you,” he said. She looked up and smiled at him, but her eyes were huge and dark blue with terror. He released his grip on her arm, and she did not hesitate but dived forward and instantly disappeared in the spray and thunder. Jim felt his heart go with her, and was frozen with dread as he peered down.