Wildtrack

by Bernard Cornwell

  Mulder had given up. He lay exhausted and hopeless. I struggled upright, still holding the knife, and saw the spray bursting apart from Sycorax's bows. Angela was fighting towards us, still four hundred yards off, and still struggling against wind and sea. The storm jib was now nothing but tattered streamers.

  I put my left foot against Mulder's broken leg. "Now," I said, "you're going to tell me what happened."

  "Piss off." He would be defiant to the end, stubborn as a cornered and wounded boar.

  I felt no remorse for the pain I would give him. He'd tried to kill me, now I would take the truth from him and one day give it back in a court of law. I slammed my heel forward.

  When he stopped screaming I asked him again, and this time, because I still threatened and had proved that I would use pain, he told me of Kassouli's revenge. The story came slowly, and I had to tease it out of him between the slashing assaults of the breaking waves.

  Mulder, obedient to his paymaster, had brought Wildtrack to this waste place in the ocean where, two nights before and under the cover of the night watch, Mulder had sheared a port shroud. He had sabotaged a shroud before, trying to cast suspicion on me, and he had known that as soon as he put weight on the shroud the mast would bend and break. He had gone aft, tacked ship, and let the chaos overtake the long hull. The crew had tumbled up from their bunks to find disaster and salvation.

  The salvation was Kerak, the supertanker. A Kassouli ship that had loomed with blazing lights from the darkness, and I imagined the terror Bannister must have felt when he heard, on the radio, the identity of the ship that had so fortuitously appeared.

  The crew had been taken off, Mulder said, leaving only himself and Bannister on Wildtrack. "Bannister wouldn't leave."

  That was a clever touch, I thought sourly. Bannister would have chosen to stay with the one man he could trust; his own assassin.

  Bannister and Mulder had cleared the mast's wreckage then ran westwards under the engine. That was when the gale had blown up. Mulder steered to the tanker's lights, but sometime in the darkness Wildtrack had broached, or else had been struck by a cross-sea, and an open hatch had swamped the boat. Wildtrack's electrics had died, and the motor had coughed into silence. Mulder had clambered forward to start the engine by hand, but had slipped on the companionway and broken his leg.

  They had drifted in the darkness then, the tanker lost, and some time in that next long day Mulder had ripped his blade across Bannister's throat and thus fulfilled his contract. Then he had waited for Kassouli, but the swamped hull would not have shown on the tanker's radar and Mulder had waited in vain. He had slept for a time, waking to the darkness into which, at long intervals, he had sent his few flares. I had seen the last three fired.

  Now, huddled and cold, battered and shivering, I listened to Mulder's tale. I massaged my leg, feeling the slow return of life to the cold flesh. At times, struggling up in the streaming cockpit, I would see Angela's painfully slow progress towards us. I waved once, and saw her wave back. All I could do now was pray that Wildtrack did not sink before Sycorax reached us. I wondered if I should go into the after cabin and strip the lifejacket from the dead man, but I could not face those empty eyes and flayed throat.

  "What happened," I shouted at Mulder, "to Nadeznha?"

  He had thought my interrogation was over, and I had to raise my left foot to encourage him. "I don't know!" he shouted.

  "You do bloody know!" I put my heel against his broken leg.

  "I wasn't on deck." Mulder seemed hypnotized by my threat. "Bannister relieved me."

  "You didn't say that at the inquest."

  "Bannister didn't want me to! He paid me to say that I was on watch!"

  "Why?" I shouted. The wind was shrieking at us, snatching our voices, and tumbling cold water about our two hunched figures. "Why?" I shouted again.

  "He didn't want anyone to know he wasn't a watch captain. Me and Nadeznha, we sailed the boat, not him! But if anyone had known his wife was skippering and he was just crewing, he'd have lost face."

  I stared at the shivering man. Good God, I thought, but it made such sense. Bannister had not been half the sailor his wife had been, nor that Mulder was, yet his vanity would have insisted that he was seen as the expert.

  Mulder mistook my silence for disbelief. "As God is my witness"—he was shaking with fright and cold—"that's all I lied about. I swear it! I don't know what happened. I wouldn't have killed her, I loved her!" I still said nothing, and Mulder still construed my silence as a threat. "I loved her, man! We were lovers! She and I!"

  "Lovers?" I was incredulous; gaping at him. It made sense, if I had bothered to think about it, yet the conjunction of Nadeznha Bannister's beauty and Mulder's bestiality seemed so very astonishing. "Did Bannister ever find out?"

  "He never found out." There was a curious sort of pride in Mulder's voice; the boast of a man who had made a notable sexual conquest. Poor Bannister, I thought, cuckolded by so many sailors.

  But if Bannister had known about Mulder and Nadeznha, I thought, then his pride might have made him kill both. "Did Bannister kill his wife?" I asked.

  "I don't know." Mulder's voice was a whimper that barely carried over the hiss of sea and air. "In God's name, Mr Sandman, I don't know."

  "But you told Kassouli that he killed her."

  "I told him I'd lied for Bannister at the inquest." Mulder was desperate to be believed. "It was Mr Kassouli's idea that Bannister killed Nadeznha, not mine!"

  "But you encouraged the idea?"

  "I told him the truth. I told him Bannister hated Nadeznha. Behind her back he called her a spoilt wog bitch." Mulder babbled at me. "He was terrified of her!"

  "But you don't know that he murdered her, do you?"

  "Who else?"

  "You bastard," I said. This whole Goddamned, star-crossed, bloody mess was because Kassouli had misinterpreted Mulder's lie at the inquest. And all along the bloody Boer had known nothing, but his venality had led to this killing place. He had taken money for one lie, then seen that he could make more money by betraying Bannister to Kassouli. Now he lay shivering and broken in a sinking boat and, if I could save him, it would only be for a courtroom and a prison.

  That fate suddenly seemed closer as Sycorax thrust her bows through the crest of the neighbouring swell. I hurled the knife overboard and struggled to the lee rail. Sycorax surged down the wave slope, then a rolling crest came between us and all I could see was her topmast above the frantic water. I held on to the guardrail for grim life as another crest slammed over Wildtrack, and when the water seethed away I saw that Sycorax was foully close, too close. She was rearing above us, her chain bobstay dripping weed and water that was whipped horizontally by the wind. Wildtrack 's hulk was falling down the wave, but Sycorax was coming faster and higher on the churning slope. I could see the copper sheathing at her stem. "Sheer off! Sheer off!" I shouted it vainly as I felt Wildtrack rising beneath me, heaving slowly up, then Sycorax seemed to dip towards me as Angela saw the danger. She was too late. I flinched away from Wildtrack's gunwale as Sycorax's bows crashed into the hulk. I seemed to be drowning in the savage churn of water and I heard, rather than saw, the slamming of the two boats. I forced myself upright to see Sycorax's timber scraping and gouging away from me. I'd put the fenders too far aft.

  "Nick!" I heard Angela scream and I knew she would never manage to make the run a second time. I took a breath, willed my legs to push me up, then lunged to seize Sycorax's pulpit rails. My left leg thrust me upwards as the two boats banged and thumped each other. If I fell between the hulls now my legs would be crushed to mincemeat. I hooked an arm over the rail, swung my left leg up to the toerail, and suddenly I was clinging to the outside of Sycorax's bows. I was choking with water, and being deafened by the bellow of wind and the grating of wood and the seething anger of the sea.

  Angela thrust the tiller over to sheer off as I'd told her, and suddenly I knew she would accelerate the boat and she would not know that I was
tied to Mulder. When the braidline jerked taut it would be me who was plucked into the sea, not Mulder. He was a great weight in a waterlogged cockpit, while I was just clinging by weakened arms to Sycorax's gunwales. I screamed for Angela to slow down, but the wind snatched my voice into nothing. I had thrown the knife away, and all I could do was grab the trailing braidline with my right hand and reach under Sycorax's guardrails to loop it round a berthing cleat. I looped it once, twice, then it snatched taut and I heard the shout of pain as Mulder was plucked out of Wildtrack's cockpit. The loops on the cleat had held, but were slipping now and I let them slip so that the rope's tension helped to pull me inboard.

  I dragged myself to safety. I was sobbing with pain and cold, dripping with blood, but there was no time to catch breath. Sycorax dipped in a trough and water smashed me back towards the mainmast where I was stopped short by the braidline's tension. I kept that tension hard as I undid the bowline about my waist, then knelt up to lash the braidline to a belaying pin on the fiferail. Angela was staring at me, her eyes wide in terror, but she had done all I had asked her to do, and done it well. The pain was all over me. Blood was dripping from my left hand from which the crude rope bandage had washed free.

  I crawled down the scuppers. "Hard to starboard! Engine out of gear!"

  Angela had turned to stare at the figure who was being towed in the water behind us. "Is that Tony?"

  "Starboard the tiller now! Out of gear!" The foam was breaking and boiling around Mulder.

  Angela pushed the tiller over, kicked the throttle lever into neutral, and the strain vanished from Mulder's taut rope. I had to go forward again, this time taking a coil of rope from a locker in Sycorax's cockpit. My right leg was shaking, but holding me. I harnessed myself, then leaned over the guardrails and tied my new rope to Mulder's with a rolling hitch. The knot was stained with blood by the time it was fast. I released the braidline from the fiferail and berthing cleat, then went back to the cockpit. The wind was screaming, or perhaps I screamed, for the pain was making me sob. I was moving like a horror-film monster and muttering instructions to myself. Sycorax was broaching, rolling and pitching, snatching like a tethered wild colt.

  I pulled the braidline inboard, undid the rolling hitch, and fed Mulder's line through a block that hung from the boom gallows. Then I began to haul him alongside.

  "Is that Tony?" Angela helped me pull.

  "It's Mulder!"

  "Where's Tony?"

  "He's dead." I could not soften the blow. I spoke too curtly, but I was at the end of my strength and I did not know how, in this welter of sea and wind, to break the news gently.

  Mulder was too heavy for us. We brought him to the gunwale, and there he stuck. I thought at first it was the clumsiness of his inflated lifejacket that was blocking our efforts and I told Angela to fetch a knife and slash the jacket. Mulder, who must have recognized Angela with astonishment, then fear, flinched from the blade, then subsided as he saw that she posed no threat. She stabbed and stabbed through the tough material until the jacket went limp.

  "Pull!" I said to her, and we pulled, but Mulder's weight and the weight of his soaked clothing was too great and we still could not hoist him over the guardrails. Sycorax rolled her gunwale under and Mulder tried to pull himself up, but he was as weak as we were. "Hold on!" I shouted at him. He nodded and gripped a guardrail stanchion. I cleated the braidline, then fetched my bolt-cutters from a locker. If I cut the guardrails away then a surge of sea would probably roll the South African on to our scuppers.

  I cut the wires and was just loosening the braidline from the cleat when Angela screamed.

  I thought it was because Mulder had died, but it was for quite another reason.

  "Nick! Nick!" Her voice held pure terror. I turned and saw, coming out of the grey-white murk, the bows of a giant ship.

  It was a supertanker. A great black, dripping, slab-sided, bulbous-bowed monster of the sea, and I saw she had the yellow kestrel-painted funnel of the Kassouli Line. The tanker slammed through the ocean like a great sea-beast; like a Leviathan come for its revenge. It was the Kerak. She was in ballast, showing her red paint, while the great bulb at her stem seemed like a ramming prow that was heading straight for Sycorax . I remembered Mulder's threat—that Kassouli would sink us—and it seemed only too real as the vast bows splintered the seas aside.

  "Nick!" Angela screamed again.

  "Hold fast!" I shouted at Mulder, then I banged the tiller across and throttled up. It was all a sudden panic in cold horror. The great ship was closing at what seemed her full speed and I could do nothing but shout in impotent rage at her streaked bows.

  Kerak must have seen us as I shouted, for she seemed to turn, or else Sycorax found a twist of speed I'd never known in her. Whatever, we would not be rammed, but we still risked being swamped and I instinctively wrenched my tiller to port so that our bows would meet the great tanker's wash head on.

  I turned and, by doing it, I killed Mulder.

  I had not meant to, I did not know I was doing it, but I killed him. Or perhaps, mercifully, he was already dead before I pulled the tiller across.

  I had released the two locking turns on the cleated braidline after I'd cut the guardrails away. I'd done it so I could pull Mulder inboard, but my alarm at the Kerak's threat had made me abandon the cleat. It still had three turns on it, but the braidline was made of a slick synthetic fibre that, without the locking turns, slipped on the cleat's horns. The surge of our acceleration must have loosened Mulder's grip on the stanchion, he had let go, and his weight had dragged the braidline's loops inch by deadly inch, and with each lurch he had fallen further from safety. As I turned to port a wave had lifted our stern and he must have been thrust under the boat.

  The first I knew of it was a chopping judder in Sycorax's timbers, a quivering in the hull, and then I snatched the engine out of gear, but the blood was already spreading in our wake. Blood and horror surfaced, churned up by the spinning blades, and then Mulder's tethered body bobbed up on the surface, a mess of red, and I jerked the rest of the braidline loose and throttled hard forward so we would leave him astern and Angela would not see the butcher's mess on the sea behind. Mulder's skull had taken the propellor's blows. He was dead.

  Then the Kerak's streaked and cliff-like hull smashed past to block out the eastern sky. Faces, made tiny by height and distance, stared from behind the bridge windows. A single figure, standing on the jutting wing of the bridge, hurled what I thought was a lifebuoy towards Sycorax. The thing twisted in the air, was snatched by the wind, and red flowers shredded from the wreath as it dropped to the sea. Flowers for a dead girl.

  The wake of the tanker was like a storm wave, breaking and running white. I pushed Sycorax hard round, under full throttle again, then snatched the lever back to slow as we met the first wave head on. We pounded into the sea, rearing and plunging, and water exploded from our hull as we crashed down from its peak. The second wave tossed us up again and the boom shook and I thought the topping lift would snap. I hurled useless curses at the receding tanker.

  "What happened?" Angela was staring at the cut guardrails where Mulder had been.

  "He died," I said. "My fault." Our bows pitched into what seemed like a black hole in the sea. We crashed into the next wave, Angela staggered, then Sycorax clawed her way back up.

  "Who died?" Angela asked, and I realized that she was in shock.

  "Mulder died!"

  Her eyes were vacant. "And Tony?"

  "I'm sorry," I said. I didn't know what else to say, except that I was sorry. I was sorry for her, for her husband, even for the man who had died because I had undone the locking turns of his safety line. I would dream about those turns. A life had gone because I'd pulled a rope free. It was a foul dream to add to the one about the man who'd cried "Mama!" as my bayonet twisted in his gut.

  Kerak had disappeared in the spume, leaving Sycorax in lesser waves. I turned her to face the swells when the squawk of the radio startled me. I fo
rced Angela to take the tiller, then pushed open the cabin hatch and leaned down to the set. Vicky mewed at me from the chart table and I muttered something soothing as I pulled the microphone towards me. The call sounded again from the speaker. "This is merchant vessel Kerak to yacht Sycorax, over."

  "Sycorax," I responded. A sea shattered on our bows and slashed down to sting my face.

  "Is that Captain Sandman? Over." It was Yassir Kassouli's voice.

  "Who else?" I snapped back.

  There was a pause. "I could not see anyone on board Wildtrack. Did you get close enough to see anyone aboard? Over."

  "I got on board Wildtrack," I said. I was too tired, too hurt, and too cold to be bothered with radio courtesies.

  The radio hissed. Angela was watching me, but so dully that I did not think she could hear what I was saying. "You were on board? Over," Kassouli asked, and I could hear the incredulity in his voice.

  "Why don't you just piss off?" Except I hadn't pressed the microphone button so he did not hear me. Now I did press it. "I was on board," I confirmed, "and there was no one there alive. No one. Bannister's dead. So is Mulder."

  Kassouli's metallic voice sounded after another pause. "Who was the body being towed behind your yacht, Captain? Over."

  "That was Mulder. I tried to save him. I couldn't."

  "What happened? Over," Kassouli persisted.

  "Mulder died," I said. "He just died." I raised my head to look for Kerak, but the tanker was still lost in the whirl of windborne spray. She'd be watching me on her radar, though, and I feared that she would turn and come back. "It was an accident," I said into the microphone.

  "And Bannister's death? Over."