by Wilbur Smith
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 all owe3 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."
When at last she had burnt out his emotions with her words, he blew out the lamp and went dazed with emotional exhaustion to her bunk. The rich fragrance of her hair still lingered on her pillow and the sheets were perfumed by her skin. In the night he woke and reached for her, and when he realized that she was not there the agony made him groan, Then he hated his own father for not allowing her to stay with him, and sending her away in the wagons with Sarah, Louisa and little George into the wild hills of the hinterland.
No matter how little he had slept he was always on Arcturws's deck
when eight bells sounded in the middle watch, and before the first blush of dawn he was at the masthead, watching and waiting.
As the most powerful but slowest ship in the squadron, the Arcturus kept the windward station, and Mansur had the sharpest pair of eyes on board. It was he who spotted the tiny fleck of the felucca's sail as she came up over the horizon. The moment that they were certain of her identity Ruby Cornish brought the Arcturus about and they ran down to intercept her. Tasuz answered his hail: "Zayn al-Din is here, with twenty-five great dhows." Then he turned and led the squadron back towards the African mainland, which now lay low on the horizon, dark blue and as menacing as some monster of the deep. Again it was Mansur who first picked out the s
hapes of the enemy flotilla anchored off the mouth of the Umgeni river. Their sails were furled and their dark hulls blended with the background of hills and forest.
"They are lying exactly where your father expected them." Cornish studied them carefully as they raced down upon them. "They are already sending their boats in to the beach. The attack has begun."
Swiftly they closed the gap, and it seemed that the enemy were so intent on their landing that they were neglecting the watch they should have kept on the open sea behind them.
"Those are the five war-dhows of the escort." Mansur pointed them out. "The others are transports."
"We have the weather gauge." Cornish smiled comfortably and his face glowed with satisfaction. "The same wind that blows to our advantage has them pinned against the lee shore. If they hoist their anchors they will go aground almost immediately. We have Kadem ibn Abubaker at our mercy. How should we proceed, Your Highness?" Cornish looked at Mansur. Dorian had given his son the overall command of the squadron: Mansur's royal rank dictated that. The Arab captains would not have understood or accepted any other in place of him.
"My instinct is to go straight at the war-dhows while we have them at our mercy. If we can destroy them, the transports will fall into our laps like overripe fruit. Would you agree, Captain Cornish?"
"With all my heart, Your Highness." Cornish showed his appreciation of Mansur's tact by touching the brim of his hat.
"Then, if you please, let us close with the other ships so that I may pass the order to them. I shall allot an enemy ship to each. We in the Arcturus will engage the largest of them," Mansur pointed to the dhow in the centre of the line of anchored ships, 'for that is almost certainly
commanded by Kadem ibn Abubaker. I shall board immediately and capture it, while you sail on and do the same to the next in line."
The Sprite and the Revenge were sailing a little ahead, backing their sails slightly so as not to head-reach too far on the Arcturus. Mansur hailed them, and pointed out which of the dhows were their separate targets. As soon as they understood what he wanted of them they barged ahead, charging at the line of anchored ships.
At last the enemy saw them coming, and confusion spread swiftly through their fleet. Three of the transports were occupied with landing the horses they were carrying. They were winching them out of the holds with slings passed under their bellies, then lowering them over the side into the water. When they reached it, they turned them loose to swim unaided. The sailors waiting for them in the small boats drove them into the breaking surf to fight their way to the beach as best they were able. Already more than a hundred of the sick, exhausted animals were in the water, struggling to keep afloat.
When they saw the tall ships bearing down on them with all their guns run out, the captains of the horse transports panicked. With a few axe strokes they severed their anchor cables, and tried to bear away. Two collided, and in the confusion they drifted into the line of heaving white surf. Still locked together, the waves broke over their decks. One capsized and took the other with it. The surface of the water was covered with wreckage, struggling men and horses. One or two of the other troop ships managed to cut their cables and hoist their sails. It was close work but they cleared the lee shore and made good their offing.
They are unarmed and no danger to us," Mansur told Cornish. "Let them go. We can run them down later. First we must deal with the war dhows." He left Cornish, and went forward to take command of the boarding party. The five war-dhows had kept their positions at anchor. They were too large and ungainly to risk the dangerous manoeuvre of trying to clear the lee shore in the face of such a powerful enemy. They had no option but to stay and fight.
The Arcturus ran straight at the largest. Mansur stood in the bows and surveyed the deck of the other ship as the gap between them closed. There he is!" he shouted suddenly, and pointed with his sword. "I knew he must be here!"
The ships were so close that Kadem heard his voice and glared back at him. The shaft of pure hatred that passed between them was almost tangible.
"One broadside, Captain Cornish," Mansur looked back at the quarter579
deck, 'and we will board her over her bows through the smoke." Cornish waved acknowledgement and steered his ship in.
The direction of the wind held Kadem's dhow with her bows pointing out to sea, her stern towards the beach. Although the Omani crew ran out their guns defiantly, they could not bring them to bear. Cornish crossed the bows of Kadem's dhow to rake her at point-blank range. The Arcturus stood higher out of the water than the dhow, and her guns were able to fire down on her. Cornish had loaded with grape-shot, and the broadside crashed out. A thick bank of grey gunsmoke shot through with lumps of burning wadding billowed out and obscured her open deck. The wind blew it aside and revealed a scene of utter devastation. The timbers of the dhow's deck had been ripped as though by the claws of a monstrous cat. The gunners were piled in bloody heaps upon their unfired weapons. The splintered scuppers ran crimson with their blood.
Mansur looked for Kadem in the carnage. With a small jolt of disbelief he saw that he was unharmed and still on his feet, trying to muster the stunned survivors of that terrible blast of iron balls. Skilfully Cornish let the hulls of the two ships kiss, then held them together with a delicate play on the helm. Mansur led his boarders across in a rush, and Cornish toyed with the wheel and disengaged. Leaving Mansur and his men to seize the dhow, he sailed on down the line of anchored ships to attack the next war-dhow before it could escape out to sea. He had a respite of a few minutes to look round and see how the other two ships were faring.
After battering them with unrelenting broadsides at close range, the crews of the Revenge and the Sprite had boarded their chosen adversaries. Three more of the troop transports had drifted into the surf and capsized; some of the others were still at anchor. Cornish counted six more who had avoided the attackers and were clawing desperately out to sea. Then ; he looked back over his stern and saw the bitter fighting that surged over the deck of Kadem's anchored dhow. He thought he saw Mansur in the front of the battle, but it was so fluid and confused that he could ' not be sure. The prince might have done better to let me give them a few more doses of grape, before he boarded, he thought, and then with admiration, but he is a hot blood Kadem ibn Abubaker murdered his mother. Honour allows him no other course than to go after him, man to man.
The Arcturus was coming down fast on the next war-dhow in the line, and Cornish gave her all his attention. "The same medicine, lads, he called to his gunners. "A goodly draught of the grape, and then we will board her."
Ariough the grape-shot had killed or wounded half of the men on the deck of Kadem ibn Abubaker's ship, the moment Mansur's boarding party swung across from the Arcturus, Kadem shouted the order and the rest of his crew came pouring out of the hatchways from the lower decks and launched themselves into the fight.
In numbers boarders and defenders were almost evenly matched. They were so closely packed that there was scarce enough space in which to swing the sword or thrust with the pike. They surged back and forth, slipping on the bloody decks, shouting and hacking at each other.
Mansur looked for Kadem in the ruck, but almost immediately lie was confronted by three men. They came at him in a rush. Mansur hit one low in the chest, driving his point up under the ribs. He heard the air hiss from the man's punctured lungs before he toppled to the deck. Mansur only just had time to recover his blood-smeared blade and come back on guard before the other two were upon him.
One of these was a wiry fellow whose long arms were roped with stringy muscle. His naked chest was tattooed with a sura from the Qur'an. Mansur recognized him: he had fought beside him on the ramparts of Muscat. He feinted, then cut overhand at Mansur's head. Mansur blocked him and locked his blade. He swung him round like a shield to hold off his comrade, who was trying to intervene.
"So, Zaufar! You could not wait for the return of al-Salil, your true caliph," Mansur snarled into his face. "Last tim
e we met I saved your life. This time I shall take it from you."
Zaufar leaped back in consternation. "Prince Mansur, is it you?" In reply Mansur pulled off his turban and shook out his copper golden hair.
"It is the prince," Zaufar screamed. His comrades paused and drew back. They stared at Mansur.