by Wilbur Smith
“Here is the meat I promised you, mighty black lion,” Jim told Beshwayo.
“Then let us go down to the feast, Somoya, for my belly growls with hunger.”
The impis of young warriors poured down on to the flat lands of the littoral strip. Silently as a pride of panthers they moved into their forward positions. Jim and Beshwayo ran ahead of the leading impi to the lookout position. They climbed high into the branches of the tall wild fig tree they had chosen days before. Its twisted serpentine air-roots and branches formed a natural ladder, and the bunches of yellow fruit and dense foliage sprouted directly from the trunk to screen them effectively. From their perch in one of the main forks they had a view through the foliage along the entire sweep of the beach south of the river mouth.
Jim had his eye to his spyglass. Suddenly he exclaimed in astonishment, “Sweet Mother Mary, if it’s not Koots himself, all dressed up like a Mussulman grandee. No matter what his disguise, I would know that evil jib anywhere.”
He spoke in English, and Beshwayo scowled. “Somoya, I do not understand what you say,” he rebuked Jim. “Now that I have taught you to speak the language of heaven, there is no reason for you still to jabber like a monkey in that strange tongue of yours.”
“Do you see that man on the beach down there in the headdress with the bright and shining band, the one closest to us? He is speaking to the other two. There! He has just struck one in the face.”
“I see him,” Beshwayo said. “Not a good blow, for his victim is standing up again. Who is he, Somoya?”
“His name is Koots,” Jim answered grimly, “my enemy to the death.”
“Then I will leave him for you,” Beshwayo promised.
“Ah, it seems as though at last they have all their troops ashore, and that Koots has made up his mind to move.”
Even above the sound of the surf breaking on the sandbar, they could hear the Arab captains shouting their orders. The squatting ranks rose to their feet, hefting their weapons and packs. Quickly they formed up into columns and began to move into the bush and swamp. Jim tried to count them, but could not do so accurately. “Over two hundred,” he decided.
Beshwayo whistled and two of his indunas climbed up to him swiftly. They wore the head-rings of their rank, their short beards were grizzled and their bare chests and arms carried the scars of many battles. Beshwayo gave them a rapid string of orders. To each they replied in unison, “Yehbo, Nkosi Nkulu! Yes, great king!”
“You have heard me,” Beshwayo told them. “Now obey!”
Beshwayo dismissed them, and they slid down the trunk of the wild fig and disappeared into the undergrowth. Minutes later, Jim saw the surreptitious movements in the bush below as the regiments of Beshwayo warriors began to creep forward. They were well spread out, and even from above there was only the brief flash of oiled dark skin, or the glint of bare steel as they closed in quietly on each flank of the marching Omani columns.
A detachment of Turks in their bronze bowl-shaped helmets passed almost directly under the fig tree in which they sat, but they were so intent on finding their way through the matted bush that none looked up. Suddenly there was a commotion of grunts, breaking branches and splashing mud. A small herd of buffalo, disturbed in their mud wallows, burst out of the swamp and thundered away in a solid mass of black, mud-caked bodies and curved, gleaming horns, smashing a road through the forest. There was a scream and Jim saw the body of one of the Arabs tossed high as he was gored by the old cow buffalo that led the herd. Then they were gone.
A few of his companions gathered about the man’s crushed body, but the captains yelled at them angrily. They left him lying where he had fallen and went on. By this time the leading platoons had disappeared into the jungle, while the rear echelons were only just leaving the open beach and starting into the swamp.
Once they were into the bush, none of them was able to see further ahead than the man in front of him, and they followed each other blindly. Already they were falling into mudholes in the swamp, and losing any but the most general sense of direction as they were forced to skirt the densest patches of thorny scrub. The insects swarmed off the algae-green puddles that steamed in the heat. The Turks sweated under their steel mail. The bronze helmets reflected arrows of light. The officers had to raise their voices to keep contact with their platoons, and any attempt at stealth was abandoned.
On the other hand, this was the kind of terrain in which the Beshwayo hunted and fought best. They were invisible to the columns of Koots’s men. They shadowed them on each flank. The indunas never uttered a word of command. To guide their impis in for the kill, they used only birdcalls or the piping of tree frogs, which sounded so natural that it was difficult to believe they issued from a human throat.
Beshwayo listened to these sounds intently. Cocking his huge shaven head first on one side then the other, he understood what they were telling him as if they spoke in plain language. “It is time, Somoya,” he said at last. He threw back his head and filled his lungs; his barrel chest swelled, then contracted at the force with which he uttered the high, chanting cry of a fish-eagle. Almost immediately, from far out and much closer at hand, his cry was repeated from a dozen places in the thick jungle below where they sat. His indunas were acknowledging the king’s order to attack.
“Come, Somoya!” said Beshwayo softly. “Unless we are quick we will miss the sport.” When Jim reached the ground he found Bakkat squatting beside the trunk of the fig tree.
He greeted Jim with a sparkling grin. “I heard the fish eagle cry. So, now there is work to do, Somoya.” He handed Jim his sword belt. Jim buckled it about his waist, then thrust the pair of double-barrelled pistols through the leather loops. Like a dark shadow Beshwayo had already disappeared into a dense stand of reeds. Jim turned back to Bakkat. “Koots is here. He leads the enemy brigade,” he told him. “Find him for me, Bakkat.”
“He will be at the head of his troops,” Bakkat said. “We must circle out around the main fighting so that we are not trapped in it, like a bull elephant in quicksand.”
Suddenly the jungle around them echoed and resonated with the clamour of fighting men: the thudding reports of musket and pistol, the thunder of assegai and kerrie drumming on rawhide shield, wild splashing in the swamps, and the crackle of breaking brush as men charged through it. Then the war chant of Beshwayo’s men was answered by shouted challenges in Arabic and Turkish.
Bakkat darted away, avoiding the sounds of battle, circling out towards the river to get ahead of the Omani brigades. Jim ran hard to keep up with him. Once or twice he lost sight of him in the denser patches of jungle, but Bakkat whistled softly to lead him on.
They reached the spur of dry ground at the far side of the swamp. Bakkat found a narrow game path and ran back along it. After a few hundred paces he stopped again, and they both stood listening. Jim was panting like a dog, and his shirt was dark with sweat, plastered to his body like a second skin. The battle was so close that, underlying the uproar, they could clearly make out the more intimate sounds of death, the crunch of a skull splitting at the blow from a kerrie, the grunt as a spearman thrust home, the hiss of a scimitar blade through the air, the gush of blood spilling upon the earth, the thud of a falling body, the groans and laboured breath of the maimed and dying.
Bakkat looked at Jim, and made a gesture of closing in upon the battle, but Jim raised a hand to restrain him and cocked his head. His breath was returning swiftly. He loosed his pistols in their loops, and drew his sword.
Suddenly there was a bull-like bellow from the thickets close at hand. “Come, my sons! Come, the children of heaven! Let us devour them!”
Jim grinned, it could be none other than Beshwayo. He was answered by another voice, crying out in heavily accented Arabic: “Steady! Steady! Hold your fire! Let them come in close!”
“That’s him!” Jim nodded at Bakkat. “Koots!”
They left the game path and plunged into the undergrowth. Jim forced his way through a wall of
thorns, and before him stretched an opening of bright green swamp grass. In its centre there was a tiny island not more than twenty paces across. On this last refuge Koots was making his stand with a dozen of his men, Arabs in mud-soaked robes and Turks in splattered half-armour. They had formed a ragged line, some kneeling, others standing with their muskets at high port. Koots was striding up and down behind the second rank, carrying his musket at the trail. A bloody cloth was wrapped round his forehead, but he was grinning like a skull, a fearsome rictus that exposed his clenched teeth.
Across the narrow neck of swamp they were confronted by a mass of Beshwayo’s warriors, with the Great Bull at their head. Beshwayo threw back his head and gave one last bellow: “Come, my children. This way lies the road to glory!” He bounded forward into the pools, scummed with thick clumps of stinking green algae. His warriors raced after him and the swamp exploded into spray under their charge.
“Steady!” Koots shouted. “One shot and they will be on us.”
Beshwayo never faltered: he galloped forward, straight into the levelled muskets like a charging buffalo.
“The mad fool,” Jim lamented. “He knows the power of the gun.”
“Wait!” Koots called, quite softly. “Wait for it!” Jim saw that he had chosen the king, and was aiming at his chest. He snatched one of his pistols from the loop on his belt and fired instinctively, without seeing the iron sights. It was a forlorn effort. Koots did not even flinch as the ball flew past his head. Instead, his voice rang out harshly, “Fire!” The volley crashed out, and in the smoke Jim saw at least four of the charging warriors go down, two killed outright, the others thrashing around in the mud. Their companions ran over the top of them. Jim searched desperately for a glimpse of Beshwayo. Then as the smoke cleared he saw him untouched and undaunted still in the front of the charge, bawling lustily as he came: “I am the Black Death. Look upon me, and know fear!” He hurled himself into the front rank of Arabs, and knocked two flat on to the earth with a sweep of his shield. He stood over them and stabbed down so swiftly that his blade blurred. Each time he drew it out again a bright crimson tide followed the steel.
Koots threw aside his empty musket, and whirled round. He crossed the island with long, loping strides and plunged into the swamp, heading straight back towards where Jim stood. Jim stepped out from the thicket of thorns. He drew his sword, and waited for him at the edge of marshy ground. Koots recognized him and stopped ankle deep in the mud.
“The Courtney puppy!” He was still smiling. “I have waited long for this moment. Keyser will still pay good gold guilders for your head.”
“You’ll have to reap it first.”
“Where is your blonde whore? I have something for her also.” Koots took a handful of his crotch and shook it lewdly.
“I will hack it off and take it to her,” Jim promised him grimly.
Koots glanced over his shoulder. His men were all dead. With slashes of the assegai, the Beshwayo were disembowelling their corpses, allowing their spirits to escape: a last tribute to men who had fought well. But some had already started in pursuit of Koots, splashing towards him through the swamp.
Koots hesitated no longer. He came straight at Jim, stepping high through the mud, still smiling, those pale eyes staring into Jim’s face to read his intentions. His first thrust came with no warning, straight at Jim’s throat. Jim touched his blade, just enough to turn it off line so that the point flew over his shoulder. In the moment that Koots was at full extension, he shot his own blade forward, steel rasped on steel, and guided Jim’s point home. He felt the hit, cloth and flesh splitting, then the shock of bone. Koots leaped back.
“Liefde tot God!” His smile had given way to a startled expression. Fresh blood spread on his muddy shirt-front. “The puppy has become a dog.”
Surprise gave way to anger and he rushed at Jim again. Their blades clashed and scraped as he tried to drive Jim back, so that he could find firm footing. But Jim stood solid, and kept him pinned in the soft mud. It clung to Koots’s boots and hampered each step he took.
“I am coming, Somoya,” shouted Beshwayo, as he bounded across the narrow neck of swamp.
“I do not take the food from your mouth,” Jim shouted back. “Leave me this morsel.”
Beshwayo stopped and held up his hand, to restrain his men who swarmed eagerly after him.
“Somoya is hungry,” he said. “Let him eat in peace.” And he laughed.
Koots dropped back a pace, trying to draw Jim forward into the mud. Jim smiled into his pale eyes and, with a scornful flick of his head, declined the invitation. Koots circled left and as soon as Jim turned to meet him he broke the other way, but he was slow in the mud. Jim hit him again, raking his flank. Beshwayo’s men roared approval.
“You bleed as freely as the great pig you are,” Jim taunted him. The blood was sliding down Koots’s leg and dripping into the mud. He glanced down at it and his expression was grim. Both wounds were shallow and light, but together they would drain him swiftly. Jim lunged at him.
When Koots jumped back he felt the weakness in his legs. He knew he must try for a quick decision. He looked at the man who confronted him, and for one of the few times in his life he felt a twinge of fear. This was no longer the stripling he had chased across half of Africa. This was a man, tall and broad-shouldered, forged like steel in the furnace of life.
Koots gathered his courage and the last of his strength and rushed at Jim, trying by sheer weight and strength to drive him back. Jim stood to meet him. It seemed that only an evanescent barrier of darting metal separated them. The clash and scrape of the blades rose to a dreadful crescendo. Beshwayo’s warriors were enthralled by this novel form of combat. They recognized the skill and strength it demanded, and they chanted encouragement, drumming their assegais upon their shields, dancing and swaying with excitement.
It could not last much longer. Koots’s pale eyes were covered by the sheen of despair. Sweat diluted the blood that streamed down his side. He felt the slackness in his wrist, and the give of his muscles when he tried to press Jim harder. Jim blocked his next desperate thrust high in the natural line of attack, and locked their blades in front of their eyes. They stared at each other through the cross of silver formed by the quivering steel. They formed a statue group that seemed carved from marble. The Beshwayo sensed the high drama of the moment and fell silent.
Koots and Jim both knew that whichever one tried to break away would expose himself to the killing stroke. Then Jim felt Koots break. Koots shifted his feet and, with a heave of both shoulders, tried to throw Jim back and disengage. Jim was ready for it, and as Koots released, Jim shot forward like the strike of an adder. Koots’s eyes flew wide, but they were colourless and blind. His fingers opened, and he let his sword drop into the mud.
Jim stood with his wrist locked and the point of his own steel buried deep in Koots’s chest. He felt the hilt thump softly in his hand, and thought for an instant that it was his own pulse. Then he realized that his blade had transfixed Koots’s heart, and it was the pumping of his opponent’s lifeblood that he could feel transmitted up the blade.
Koots’s expression was puzzled. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. Slowly his knees buckled and, as he sagged, Jim allowed him to slip off the blade. He fell face down in the mud, and Beshwayo’s men roared like a pride of lions at the kill.
Weeks before, the three ships, Revenge, Sprite and Arcturus, had sailed out of Nativity Bay on the dawn tide. They left Tasuz in his little felucca within sight of the bluff to watch for the arrival of Zayn’s fleet while they went on to lie in ambush out of sight of land below the eastern horizon. The endless days that followed were of unrelieved monotony and uncertainty, patrolling back and forth along the edge of the oceanic shelf, watching for Tasuz to summon them to battle.
Ruby Cornish in the Arcturus made his sun shot at noon each day, but the instincts of Kumrah in the Sprite and Batula in the Revenge were almost as accurate as his navigational
instruments at keeping them on their station.
Mansur spent almost all the hours of daylight high in Arcturus’s main top, watching the horizon through the lens of his telescope until his right eye was bloodshot with the strain and the glare of the sun off the water. Each evening, after an early dinner with Cornish, he went to Verity’s cabin. He sat late at her writing bureau. She had given him the key to the drawers when they parted on the beach of Nativity Bay. “No one else has ever read my journals. I wrote them in Arabic, so that neither my father nor my mother could decipher them. You see, my darling, I never trusted either of them very far.” She laughed as she said it. “I want you to be the first to read them. Through them you will be able to share my life and my innermost thoughts and secrets.”
“I feel humble that you should do me such great honour.” His voice choked as he said it.
“It is not about honour, it is about love,” she replied. “From now onwards, I shall never keep a secret from you.”
Mansur found that the journals spanned the last ten years of her life, since she had turned nine. They were a monumental record of a young girl’s emotions as she groped her way towards womanhood. He sat late each night, and by the light of the oil lamp he shared her yearnings and her bewilderment at life, her girlish disasters and petty triumphs. There were outpourings of joy, and others of such poignancy that his heart ached for her. There were dark, enigmatic passages when she pondered her relationship with her parents. He felt his flesh creep when she hinted fearfully at the unspeakable as she wrote of her father. She spared no detail when she described the punishments he had inflicted on her, and his hands shook with anger as he turned the perfumed pages. There were other passages that brought him up short with their brilliant revelations. Always her fresh, inspired use of words amazed him. At times she made him laugh aloud, and at others his vision blurred with tears.
The last pages of the penultimate volume covered the period from their first meeting on the deck of the Arcturus in Muscat harbour until their parting on the road back from Isakanderbad. At one point she had written of him, “Though he does not yet know it, already he owns a part of me. From this time onwards our footsteps will be printed side by side in the sands of time.”