Blue Horizon

by Wilbur Smith

  Mansur looked around for him, but his injured eye was blurred and the image of Kadem’s face was faceted, like the multiple reflections in a cracked mirror. Pain filled Mansur’s skull so that it felt as though it was about to burst. With dread of what he might find, he touched his face. His relief was immense when he found that his eye was still in its socket, not hanging out on his cheek.

  Another wave broke over Mansur’s head and when he surfaced again he had lost sight of Kadem. He saw something more horrifying. The mouths of these African rivers that poured effluent and offal into the sea were the natural feeding grounds of the Zambezi shark. Mansur knew them well, and instantly recognized the distinctive blunt dorsal fin that sliced towards him, drawn by the taint of blood and split intestines. The next wave lifted the beast high, and for a moment Mansur saw its shape clearly outlined in the window of green water. It seemed to stare at him with an implacable dark eye. There was a kind of obscene beauty in the hard, sculpted lines of its body, and the sleek coppery hide. Its tail and fins were shaped like giant blades, and its mouth seemed set in a cruel, calculating sneer.

  With a flick of its tail it shot past Mansur, brushing lightly against his legs. Then it was gone. Its disappearance was even more terrifying than its presence. He knew it was circling under him. This was the prelude to an attack. He had spoken to a few survivors of encounters with these ferocious animals, all missing limbs or bearing other hideous mutilations, and they had all told the same tale. “They touch you first, and then they hit you.”

  Mansur rolled on to his belly, ignoring the pain in his eye socket. Fortuitously another wave rolled down upon him and he swam with it until he felt it lift him, carry him in its arms like an infant, and bear him swiftly in towards the beach. He felt the sand under his feet and staggered up the slope with successive waves crashing into him.

  He was cupping one hand over his eye, grunting with the pain, and as soon as he was above the high-water line he dropped to his knees. He ripped a strip from his loincloth and wrapped it round his head, knotting it tightly over the eye to try to ease the agony.

  Then he peered back into the churning surf. Fifty yards out, he saw something pale break through the surface and realized it was an arm. There was a disturbance under it, a ponderous, weighty movement in the discoloured waters. The arm vanished again, seeming to be plucked under.

  Mansur stood up unsteadily and saw that there were now two sharks feeding on Kadem’s corpse. They fought over it like a pair of dogs with a bone. As they worried it, they drove themselves with thrashing tails into the shallow water. At last a larger wave threw the lump of tattered flesh that was all that remained of Kadem ibn Abubaker high up the beach, and left it stranded. The sharks prowled along the edge of the surf for a while then dived and vanished again.

  Mansur went down to gaze upon the remains of his enemy. Great half-moons of flesh had been bitten out of his body. The seawater had washed away the blood, so that his stomach cavity was a clean pink pit, his dangling entrails pale and shining. Even in death his eyes were fixed in a malevolent stare, and his mouth in a snarl of hatred.

  “I have fulfilled my duty,” Mansur whispered. “Perhaps now my mother’s shade can find peace.” He prodded the mutilated corpse with his foot. “As for you, Kadem ibn Abubaker, half your flesh is in the belly of the beast. You can never find peace. May your suffering last through all eternity.”

  He turned away and looked out to sea. The battle was almost over. Three of the war-dhows had been captured, and the blue banners of al-Salil flew at their mastheads. The wreckage of one more was mingled with that of the transports, being battered to kindling in the surf. Arcturus was pursuing the remaining war-dhow out to sea, and her cannons boomed out as she overtook it. The Revenge was following the fleeing transports, but they were already scattered over a wide swathe of ocean.

  Then he saw the Sprite hovering off the mouth of the river, and waved to it. He knew good, faithful Kumrah was searching for him, and that even from this distance he would recognize the colour of his hair. Almost at once he was proved right as he saw the Sprite lower a boat and send it in through the surf to pick him up. His vision was still blurred, but he thought he recognized Kumrah himself in the bows.

  Mansur looked from the approaching boat back along the beach. Thrown upon the sands, scattered over a mile at the water’s edge, were the carcasses of drowned men and horses from the destroyed dhows. Some of the enemy had survived. Men squatted singly or stood in small disconsolate groups along the shore, but it was clear that there was no fight left in them. Stray horses wandered about at the edge of the jungle.

  He had lost his dagger in the surf. He felt utterly vulnerable, half blind, naked and unarmed. Trying to ignore the pain in his eye, Mansur ran to one of the nearest corpses. It still wore a short robe and a weapon was strapped around its waist. Mansur stripped off these pathetic relics and pulled the robe over his head. Then he drew the scimitar from its sheath and tested the blade. It was of fine Damascus steel. To test the edge he shaved a few hairs from his wrist before he ran the blade back into its scabbard. For the first time he became aware of a distant hubbub of voices. These came from the depths of the vegetation above the beach.

  It’s not over yet! he realized. Just then a rabble of running men burst out of the jungle. They were almost a furlong further up the beach, between him and the river mouth, but he saw that they were a mixed bunch of Arabs and Turks. They were being driven down towards the water’s edge by a pack of Beshwayo’s warriors. The stabbing spears flashed, then were buried in living flesh, and the triumphant shouts of the warriors mingled with the screams and desperate cries of the enemy.

  “Ngi dhla! I have eaten!”

  Mansur realized the fresh danger he was in. Beshwayo’s forces were in a killing frenzy. None would recognize him as friendly: he was just another pale, bearded face and they would stab him with as much glee as they would any one of the Omani.

  The wet sand along the edge of the water was hard and compacted. He ran along it towards the river mouth. The Arab survivors of the battle realized they were being driven into the sea and they turned at bay. In a last bitter stand they faced Beshwayo’s men. There was only a narrow gap behind them but Mansur raced through it, although the pain in his eye made him grunt at each pace. He was almost clear, and the boat from the Sprite was through the surf and into the calm water. It would be on the beach before he reached it.

  Then there was a shout behind him and he glanced back. Three of the black warriors had spotted him. They had left the surrounded Arabs to their comrades, and they were racing after him, yelping with excitement, hounds on the scent of the hare.

  From ahead there were shouts of encouragement: “We are here, Highness. Run, in the Name of God!” He recognized the voice and saw Kumrah in the bows of the boat.

  Mansur ran, but his ordeal in the surf and the agony in his eye weakened him, and he could hear bare feet slapping on the wet sand close behind him. He could almost feel the glide of the steel through his flesh as an assegai stabbed between his shoulder-blades. Kumrah, in the boat, was thirty paces ahead, but that might just as well have been thirty leagues. He could hear the hoarse breathing of one man close behind his shoulder. He had to turn to face them and defend himself. He drew the scimitar from its scabbard and spun round.

  The leading warrior was so close that he had already drawn back his assegai, low underhand, for the killing stroke. But with Mansur at bay he checked his rush, and called softly to his two companions, “The horns of the bull!” This was their favourite tactic. They fanned out on each side of him, and in that instant Mansur was surrounded. Whichever way he turned his back would be exposed to a long blade. He knew he was a dead man, but he rushed at the man before him. Before he could cross blades with him he heard Kumrah shout behind him: “Down, Highness!” Mansur did not hesitate but threw himself flat on the sand.

  His adversary stood over him and lifted the assegai high. “Ngi dhla!” he screamed.

>   Beshwayo’s men had not yet realized the effects of close-range musketry. Before the warrior could make the stroke, a volley of musket fire swept over where Mansur lay. A ball hit the warrior in his elbow and his arm broke like a green twig. The assegai flew from his grip and he reeled back as another ball slapped into his chest. Mansur rolled over swiftly to face the other two warriors but one was on his knees clutching his belly and the other was on his back, kicking convulsively, half his head shot away.

  “Come, Prince Mansur!” Kumrah called, through the veil of gunsmoke that had enveloped the boat. It blew aside, and Mansur saw that every man of the crew had fired the volley that had saved him. He dragged himself to his feet and staggered to the boat. Now that mortal danger was past he lacked the strength to pull himself over the gunwale, but many strong hands reached out for him.

  Tom and Dorian had knelt side by side in the gun emplacement and rested their telescopes on the parapet. They studied Zayn’s squadron of ships, which were anchored in a group below the walls of the fort on the far side of the bay and bombarding the walls.

  Dorian had sited the long nine-pounder cannons with great care. From this height they could bring every part of the bay under fire. Once it came through the entrance no ship was safe from them. It had been a Herculean task to get the guns up to this eyrie. The sides of the bluff were too high and steep, and the guns too heavy, to lift them straight up from the shore.

  Tom had cut a track through the thick forest along the rising spine of the ridge and, using this as a ramp, he had dragged the guns up with teams of oxen until they were directly above the chosen site. Then, on heavy anchor cable, he lowered them down into the concealed emplacements. Once the guns were sited they ranged them on targets set up around the shore of the bay. Their first shots had flown far over and crashed into the forest beyond.

  Once they were satisfied with the position of the guns, they built the charcoal furnace fifty paces from the powder magazine to reduce the danger of sparks flying from one to the other. They plastered the furnace with river clay. They made the bellows with fifty tanned ox hides, sealing the seams with tar. A gang of cooks, labourers and riff-raff worked the handles to force air into the furnace. Once it reached full blast, it was not possible to look with the naked eye into the white-hot glare of the interior so Dorian had smoked a sheet of glass with the flame of an oil lamp: peering through this, they could judge when the shot was hot enough. Then they manhandled each cannon ball out of the furnace with long-handled tongs. The men doing the job wore thick leather mittens and aprons to protect them from the heat. They dropped each glowing ball into a specially prepared cradle, with long handles. These were carried by two men across to the gun, which was waiting with its barrel raised to the maximum possible elevation.

  Once the ball was dropped down the muzzle, it was not long before it burned away the wet wads and spontaneously ignited the powder charge behind them. A premature discharge while the barrel was pointed skywards would tear it off its carriage, wreck the gun emplacement and kill or maim the gun-crews. This allowed only the briefest respite to lay the gun on its target and fire it. Then the whole dangerous, lengthy process had to be repeated. After a few shots the barrel overheated until it was on the point of bursting and the recoil was monstrous; it had to be sponged out and buckets of seawater poured down the sizzling muzzle before they dared ram a fresh charge of powder into it.

  Over the previous weeks, while they awaited the arrival of Zayn al-Din’s fleet, Dorian had instructed and exercised the gunners in handling hot shot. They had encountered all these complications for themselves and learned by hard experience, which culminated with the explosion of one of the guns. Two men had been killed by flying fragments of the bronze barrel. All of the crews now had a deep respect for the glowing cannon-balls, and none was looking forward to firing the remaining three weapons in earnest.

  The foreman had come from the furnace to report to Dorian with an expression of awe and dread: “We have twelve balls ready, mighty Caliph.”

  “You have done well, Farmat, but I am not yet ready to open fire. Keep the furnaces hot.” He and Tom turned back to continue their surveillance of the action taking place below them. The bombardment from Zayn’s ships covered the whole bay and the edges of the forest with smoke, but through it they saw the defenders abandon the fort and run out through the gates.

  “Good!” said Dorian, with satisfaction. “They have remembered their orders.” He had ordered a token defence of the fort merely to lure Zayn’s fleet deep into the bay.

  “I hope they remembered to spike the guns on the parapets before they left,” Tom growled. “I do not fancy them being turned on us.”

  The bombardment died away, and they watched the boats filled with the assault party leave the war-dhows and head in for the beach, to occupy the deserted fort. Both Tom and Dorian recognized Guy Courtney in the bows of the leading boat.

  “His Britannic Majesty’s honourable consul general in the flesh!” Dorian exclaimed. “The scent of the gold was too strong for him to ignore. He has come in person to retrieve it.”

  “My beloved twin brother!” Tom agreed. “It does my heart good to see him again after all these years. When we last parted he was trying to kill me. It seems that things have changed not at all since then.”

  “It will not take him long to find that the cupboard is bare,” Dorian said, “so now it is time to slam the door shut behind them.” He called to the runner who waited eagerly at the back of the redoubt for just this summons. He was one of Sarah’s orphans, and he rushed forward grinning widely and trembling with eagerness to please. “Go down to Smallboy, and tell him it is time to close the gate.” Dorian had barely finished speaking before the boy had jumped over the wall and was racing down the steep pathway. Dorian had to shout after him, “Don’t let them see you!”

  Smallboy and Muntu waited with the teams of oxen already hitched to the heavy anchor cable. This was strung out across the entrance of the bay to the heavy piles of logs on the far bank. The slack cable was weighted to lie on the bottom of the channel until pulled taut. The war-dhows had sailed in over it without being aware of its presence under their keels.

  The boom was made up off seventy huge logs. Many had been felled the previous year and stacked in the sawmill yard at the back of the fort, ready to be sawn into planks. Even with this stockpile, they were still short of twenty logs to span the channel.

  Jim and Mansur had taken every available man into the forest to cut down more of the giant trees, and Smallboy’s ox teams had dragged them to the beach. There, they had bolted them lengthwise to the spare anchor cable that they had lifted out of Arcturus’s orlop. The cable was almost twenty inches in diameter and had a test strain of over thirty tons. The logs, some of them three feet in diameter and forty feet in length, were strung along this massive hemp rope like pearls on a necklace. They would form a barricade that Tom and Dorian calculated would resist the onslaught of even the largest of Zayn’s dhows. The heavy line of logs would tear out a ship’s bottom before it could break through.

  As soon as Zayn’s fleet was sighted from the top of the bluff Smallboy and Muntu inspanned the ox teams and led them round to the south bank of the entrance channel. They kept the teams hidden in the dense bush, and watched the five big dhows sail past within easy pistol shot of where they lay. When the messenger lad had come racing down from the gun emplacements with the order from Dorian, he was so out of breath and wild with excitement that he was incoherent. Smallboy had to grab him by the shoulders and shake him. “Master Klebe says to close the gate!” the child had squeaked.

  Smallboy fired his long whiplash and the ox teams took the strain, then plodded away with the end of the boom cable. As it came up taut, the cable rose to the surface of the channel and the oxen had to lean into the traces. The line of logs answered the pull. They slithered down the far bank from where they had been stacked, and snaked across the channel. The head of the boom reached the north side of the cha
nnel, and Smallboy chained it fast to the trunk of a huge tambootie hardwood. The mouth of the bay was corked up tightly.

  Tom and Dorian had watched as Guy led his shore party at a rush through the gates of the captured fort and disappeared from their view. Then they turned their telescopes on the entrance to the bay and saw the massive cable rise to the surface of the channel as the oxen drew it tight.

  “We can load the first gun,” Dorian told his gunners, who responded without marked enthusiasm. The gun captain relayed the order to the foreman in charge of the furnace. It was a lengthy business to fish the first shot from the furnace, and while they waited Tom kept a watch on the enemy.

  Suddenly he called to Dorian. “Guy is back on the parapet of the fort. He must have discovered the epistle I left for him in the treasury.” He chuckled aloud. “Even from this distance I can see he’s fit to burst with rage.” Then his expression changed. “Now what’s the crafty swine up to? He is heading back to the beach. He is saddling up the horses that have come ashore. There is some kind of fracas. By God! You will not believe this, Dorry. Guy has shot one of his own men.” The distant pop of the pistol shot carried to them on the heights, and Dorian left the cannon to join Tom.

  “He has mounted.”

  “He is taking at least twenty men with him.”

  “Where in the name of the devil is he going?”

  They watched the troop of horsemen, with Guy at the head, set out along the wagon road. It dawned on both Tom and Dorian at the same moment.

  “He has seen the wagon tracks.”