by Wilbur Smith
The wealthy merchants and Omani aristocrats to whom Grey spoke had little to offer him in his search for Captain Courtney. But when the servants returned to the house, one or two of them had worthwhile information. This led him to some new names and from them to a particular quarter of the city. And then Consul Grey discovered what had happened to Courtney, and what was going to happen to him very shortly. He thought for a moment of intervening himself, but realized that would be a futile and possibly even fatal gesture. In order to achieve the result he required, Grey needed help.
And that being the case, he might as well go to the man who could offer the most help available. And with that thought in mind, Grey set off for Prince Jahan’s palace.
al came to and opened his eyes. He could see nothing. He tried to talk but could not speak. Then he felt the bandana tied tight around his head and tasted the gag in his mouth. He was sitting on a floor with his back against a wall. His hands were tied and his ankles were bound. He was, in short, entirely helpless.
He could hear, though, and he could smell and those two senses were more than enough to tell him that he was in a place that stank of dogs and their filth and that there was a dog, a large one by the sound of it, growling in the very near vicinity.
Hal felt a shot of raw fear grip his body. If the dog attacked him there would be nothing he could do. He heard shouting somewhere close by and then the more distant sound of barking. That set off the dog and the sound of its raucous growls was followed by the shouts of a man trying to keep it quiet, the crack of a whip and a series of resentful canine yelps.
All was quiet for a moment or two and in the relative silence Hal’s thoughts turned from his immediate surroundings to the men who had put him here. Rivers must have betrayed him. What other explanation could there be? And then his final memory before he was knocked out came to him: turning round and finding Tromp had disappeared.
I’ve been such a bloody fool! Why didn’t I see it? Tromp led me to Rivers, of course the two of them were bound to conspire against me!
As the queasy sense of betrayal soured his guts Hal heard the muffled sound of a man’s voice on the far side of a wall, or door, accompanied by a rising crescendo of shouts and cheers. Hal could not make out exactly what the man was saying, except that it was evidently some kind of introductory speech. For a moment he thought he might still be at the slave auction: that he was the next on the block. But the sound had a different character to that of the auction: it came from fewer people in a more confined space. Then the clamour suddenly rose again – Hal realized that a door must have opened – the dog started barking and growling again, its frenzy even greater than before and completely unaffected by the more desperate shouts of its owner, or handler, and the repeated cracks of his whip. There was a sudden slamming of wood and the turning of a key and suddenly the dog was gone from the space where Hal was sitting but he could hear the barking and snarling redoubled on the far side of the wall and door and the cheering becoming even louder.
A dogfight! Hal thought. But what the hell am I doing here?
Before he could work out the answer to that question, Hal felt arms grabbing him and dragging him upright. He made a pointless attempt to shout out in protest, then threw himself backwards and struck the wall but the men holding him maintained their grasp as he bucked and writhed, using all their strength to subdue him.
Hal ceased his struggle. There was nothing he could do now: better by far to save his strength for whenever he could use it better. Once again he felt fear, the kind that comes from not knowing what lies in store and then imagining the worst. But he would not let these men see his weakness and so he fought to quell the panic before it could consume him. He slowed his breathing. He shut out all distractions, letting his mind focus like an eye peering through a telescope. He thought of the ocean and of his ship. And then he thought of his father, who had been subjected to the most vile and inhumane suffering, yet had somehow borne every pain and degradation while retaining his dignity and his honour, right up to the moment of his death. In that appalling memory lay the example that Hal knew he had to follow now. He would never give in, not while his heart still beat in his chest like a ship’s ensign in the wind.
He felt someone grasp his hands and cut his bonds. As his right hand dropped to his side, his left was hauled out to the front, an iron ring was clamped around his wrist, and suddenly his arm was heavy because of the chain to which that ring was attached.
Again the first ripples of fear played against the furthest reaches of Hal’s mind like water lapping a sandy beach. ‘I am a Courtney,’ he said aloud, for himself rather than to the men in that place. There came no reply. The men around him did not understand what he had said, or more likely they did not care.
The noise outside reached a climactic cacophony of human and animal noise and then was released and, after a last round of applause and whistles, settled down to a low hum of masculine conversation. The dogfight was over.
Hal felt a jerk on his chain and he was led forward a few paces, then his head was pushed down, hard, so that he almost bent double – that must be the door the dog went through – and suddenly his sightless world flooded with the roar of the crowd. He caught the scent of fresh blood in the air and gave an involuntary shiver, trying not to imagine the slaughter that had just been played out for the people’s amusement. Then he heard something else much closer to him. There was a man struggling nearby, and his muffled roars of protest mingled with the curses of the guards attempting to overpower him.
‘Your excellencies, gentlemen!’ The thin, high voice of a master of ceremonies speaking in Arabic cut through the low roar of the crowd like the cry from a muezzin over a crowded marketplace. ‘Prepare to be amazed! Glut your eyes on a contest such as we have never brought you before. There can be no running. There can be no hiding. There can be only blood!’
Hal heard a voice saying, ‘Here, take this,’ and a sword’s hilt was pressed into the palm of his right hand. He took it and held it, hearing Aboli’s voice in his head, talking as he had done when Hal had been his student.
Do not wrap your hand tight around the hilt like a club, Gundwane, for that makes the sword a heavy, dead weapon. Your grip must be easy so that the control comes from your fingers. That way the sword can become a fluid extension of your hand.
He lifted the sword now, pivoting it in his hand, releasing and squeezing the grip into his palm so that the blade lifted and fell as he tested its weight. It was a cutlass; simple, crude and brutal. It was quite heavy too, and so he decided on a three-quarter grip, his thumb cradling the ridged handle rather than lining along the back edge as it would were he holding a lighter blade.
Good, Gundwane, he heard Aboli say. Now you can easily change the direction of your attack. With such a grip the sword is alive.
He brought the cutlass up to his face, putting the cool brass hilt against his cheek so that he got a feel for the large, fluted shell hand guard. At the end of the pommel he felt the peen block which secured it to the tang, noting that it was a pyramid shape and sharp. Then he made some practice cuts through the air, half comforted to at least have a good blade in his hand, though half terrified too, to think that the man on the other end of that chain, who he could not even see, was likely doing the very same thing.
‘Today, many of you may have seen the infidel slut Nazet put up for sale in the market.’ That got a cheer. ‘Sadly, a fire, doubtless started by the enemies of Zanzibar, prevented that sale from being completed. Now Nazet has disappeared, vanished into thin air.’
No! Hal screamed into his gag. She can’t have disappeared. They can’t have taken her from me again, when we’d been so close, gazing into one another’s eyes. I can’t lose her again!
‘But we will provide you with something even better than the selling of Nazet. Behold, the killing of El Tazar! For it is he that you see before you, he who is fighting for his life … and who will keep fighting, against first one man and then another until
at last he is dead!’
The announcer waited for more cheers to subside, then he resumed his speech. ‘If either of you attempts to remove your blindfold or gag, you will be shot where you stand and fed to the beasts.’ The master of ceremonies’ voice was warning them. ‘Prepare!’
Hal took up his fighting stance, feet shoulder-width apart with the leading foot forward and the trailing foot at right angles to it. His knees were bent so that the centre of gravity was kept midway between his heels.
The spectators had fallen silent. With his left hand Hal grabbed a fistful of the chain then took up the strain, the links chinking as the encumbrance pulled taut again.
He heard the shout of, ‘Fight!’ and the crowd bellowed with bestial excitation.
Suddenly the chain went slack. Hal knew his opponent was coming for him, so he moved to his right, raising the cutlass to protect his face, as the other man’s blade struck it, ringing out the first chime of the contest. Then the man was gone again and the chain drew tight.
Hal’s ears sifted through the noise which seemed to swirl all around him, but he could hear nothing to help him, neither footfalls nor his opponent’s breathing, so that he could only guess where the other man was. He stepped forward so that the chain slackened, then without warning he stepped back and hauled the chain back, twisting his body to put his weight into it, and he felt the stubborn weight of the other man resisting. Then he strode forward slashing his sword left and right, high and low, as the crowd cheered and laughed and hooted.
But he hit nothing, could never know if he had even come close, or if the other man’s blade had narrowly missed him, and he let the chain play out again, breathing hard through his nose because of the gag crammed in his mouth.
Where are you? Come, friend, let us end this.
He sensed a movement on his right and swept the cutlass up to block a cut that would have taken off his head, then having found each other, their swords sang, blade against blade, both men striking and parrying as instinct and hard-won experience took over.
The steel kissed and Hal rolled his blade over his opponent’s, passing forward to thrust the cutlass’s guard into his enemy’s face. The blow threw the man’s head back and Hal felt a savage joy. The blades rang again and he heard a muffled grunt so he extended and lunged at the sound, driving his attack forward, and this time he felt the blade slice into flesh before his opponent beat his sword away.
His opponent was hurt now, he had to be, and Hal knew he must press the advantage. He had to strike again before the man could recover and so he followed the line of the chain, scything his blade left and right. Now, as the exertion caused his heart to pound and his muscles to feel the strain of combat, Hal discovered a new handicap to add to all the others. The gag made it all but impossible to breathe through his mouth and his burning lungs could not drag in enough precious air through his nostrils alone. As his body struggled for air, Hal’s mind was flooded with the horror of his blindness. It screamed at him to retreat from the sharp steel that sought his own flesh, to make himself small, to hide. But there was nowhere to hide and so he attacked, the cutlass an extension of his hand, as Aboli had taught him years ago, so that the blade became a living creature thirsting for blood.
But it found steel this time, not flesh, the jarring impact sending hot pain through the marrow of his arm, then the other man heaved on the chain and Hal staggered forward, unbalanced. The man brushed past his right shoulder and was suddenly behind him and the chain was wrapped round Hal’s neck, strangling him.
Then he was falling. He hit the ground writhing like a caught eel but could not break free. He could not breathe. He felt the man’s face close. Too close. An elbow in his back. The man’s legs trying to wrap around his own, trying to bind him as he hauled back on the chain. The man was too strong. Hal bucked and kicked, his heels hammering the ground. An immense pressure swelled in his face. His skull was going to explode. His eyes were going to burst.
There was no arena now. No baying crowd. There was just silence but for the pounding of his heart in his ears. A beat that was slowing.
I am dying.
No, Henry. You will not die here. I forbid it.
Father?
Get up, Henry. Kill this man and get to your feet. Do it now. My son.
Did he still hold the sword? Yes. But his strength was ebbing. He must strike now. And hard. He released his grip and reversed it, bringing his hand over the hilt and taking hold again with his finger knuckles on top the way he would grip a hammer. Screaming into the gag he brought the sword up hard and fast, hilt first over his head, and the pommel cracked into the man’s skull.
Somehow the man held on still, pulling the chain into Hal’s neck, but now his strength was failing and Hal managed to get two fingers, then three, between the iron links and his own skin. Enough to draw a breath, and with that breath, new life flooded his veins. He brought the cutlass up again, and again he struck his enemy’s skull with its iron hilt and now his whole left hand was between the chain and his neck. He threw it off and scrambled away from the man’s flailing limbs, rising to his feet, stumbling, still dizzy from lack of breath.
Knowing he must finish it he followed the chain back, hacking at the ground like a demented butcher, the crowd cheering wildly, louder with each successive strike as he closed in on the other man. Then he heard a rattle of chain and knew it meant that the man had somehow got to his own feet, so Hal swept his sword high and it rang against his enemy’s blade. He struck again. And again, beating the weapon down, filled with bloodlust and joy as he felt the other man’s strength flooding away.
The next swing hit nothing but the one after that struck flesh and bone, and Hal hauled the sword back from the falling weight, sensing that he had struck a mortal blow.
The noise around him subsided, confirming that the fight was over and that he had won, and so tucking the blood-smeared cutlass beneath his left arm he tore at the blindfold, pulling it back over his head.
And then he had dropped the sword and was clawing at the gag in his mouth because his stomach threatened to purge itself as his eyes took in the scene before him.
It was Tromp.
The Dutchman was on his knees, his face sheeted in blood from the two terrible puncture wounds in his forehead made by the little peen block on the pommel of Hal’s cutlass. He was cut in the shoulder too, and his nose was broken, smashed across his face. But the worst of his wounds was the fleshy gash in his chest through which Hal could see the white gleam of his ribs. This foot-long cut was not yet full of blood. It would be soon enough.
Hal felt overwhelmed by a tidal wave of mixed emotions: horror and guilt at the harm he had done to a man who had become his friend mixed with terrible shame at the suspicions he had so unfairly harboured against a man who had not betrayed him, but had remained loyal. And this was how that loyalty had been rewarded. Hal staggered over and fell to his knees in front of Tromp, who was feebly tugging at his own blindfold. He did not have the strength or dexterity to remove it and Hal was torn as to what do. He was so ashamed of what he had done that he thought he must let Tromp die with the blindfold on, never knowing who it was that had killed him. For he was a dead man. The Dutchman’s remaining heartbeats could be counted on two hands. Surely.
Let him die now, Hal pleaded silently, looking up at the sky which was filling with cloud.
His eyes scanned the arena as if they might find an answer there, but they met nothing but a sea of hostile, unfamiliar faces. There were four other men in the ring with him: all armed and all looking directly at him, as if daring him to take them on. And then Hal saw the eyes of a child, filled with tears. They seemed familiar but his mind was so overwhelmed by all that had happened that he could not place them and besides, what could a child be doing in a place like this? Hal tried to concentrate on what he knew to be true, and real, and what he had to do. And so, his hands shaking, he reached out and took hold of the blood-soaked silk over Tromp’s eyes and lifted it from h
is eyes.
‘I’m sorry,’ Hal murmured. ‘Christ, I’m so sorry … my friend.’
Tromp’s eyes seemed to sharpen a touch, seemed to focus on Hal. Then they dulled as though a skein of ice had formed over them. He pitched forward and Hal caught him. He untied the knot behind the Dutchman’s head and removed the gag. It did not seem right to let him die unable to speak, unable to damn Hal for killing him.
But there were no words. Hal lowered his friend to the ground and looked up through his own tears to see the four armed men standing around him.
‘Take him back to the kennel,’ the master of ceremonies spoke. Two men pulled Hal to his feet and as he stood at his full height once again he looked into the crowd and shouted out in desperate defiance: ‘Here I am! I’m still alive! What now, damn you? What now, you mad bastards?!’
The crowd responded with catcalls, obscene gestures and threw half-chewed meat bones and stale bread rolls in his direction. But then their shouts of contempt gave way to alarm. People were running for the exits. Even the men guarding Hal were looking around in panic. And then he saw the reason why as a company of armed soldiers, at least thirty-strong, entered the yard where the fighting ring stood and forced their way through the crowd, clubbing and even stabbing anyone who got in their way. Hal’s guards turned tail and fled and he was about to follow them, but as he looked around for a way out he saw that it was too late. He was entirely surrounded by troops. Then a man whose plumed helmet and resplendent uniform marked him out as their commander stepped into the filthy, blood- and excrement-stained ring and said, ‘Captain Courtney, please come with me. His Highness the Maharajah Sadiq Khan Jahan wishes to make your acquaintance.’
al had only been in his cell for a few hours when he received a visit from Prince Jahan. Hal had been steeling himself for brutal interrogation, but Jahan’s opening question took him completely by surprise.