Birds of Prey c-1

by Wilbur Smith

  Both Schreuder and Cochran nodded. This was nothing new. "Now, Allah has given me the opportunity to seize both this talisman and the person of the infant Emperor." El Grang sat back and lapsed into silence, watching the faces of the two white men shrewdly.

  "With the Tabernacle and the Emperor in your hands, the armies of Nazet would dissolve like snow in the summer sun," Schreuder said softly.

  El Grang nodded. "A renegade monk has come in to us, and offered to lead a small party commanded by a bold man to the place where both the talisman and the Emperor are hidden. Once the child and the Tabernacle have been captured, I will need a fast, powerful ship to carry them to Muscat before Nazet can make an attempt to rescue them from us." He turned to Schreuder and said, "You, Colonel, are the bold man I need. If you succeed your payment will also be a lakh."

  Then El Grang looked at Cochran. "Yours is the fast ship to carry them to Muscat. When you deliver them there, there will be another lakh for you." He smiled coldly. "This time I will pay you to fly from El Tazar, rather than confront him. Are your balls big and heavy enough for that task, my brave Buzzard?"

  The Golden Bough ran southwards, her sails glowing in the last rays of the sun, like a tower of gold.

  "The Gull of Moray lies at anchor in Adulis Bay," Fasilides" spies had brought the report, "and her captain is ashore. They say he sits in council with El Grang." But that intelligence was two days" stale.

  "Will the Buzzard still be there?" Hal fretted to himself, and studied his sails. The Golden Bough could carry not another stitch of canvas, and every sail was drawing sweetly. The hull sliced through the water, and the deck vibrated beneath his feet like a living creature. If I find her still at anchor, we can board her even in darkness, Hal thought, and strode down the deck, checking the tackle of his guns. The white seamen knuckled their foreheads and grinned at him, while the squatting ranks of Amadoda grinned and crossed their chests with their open right hand in salute. They were like hunting dogs with the scent of the stag in their nostrils. He knew that they would not flinch when he laid the Golden Bough alongside the Gull and led them onto her deck.

  The sun dipped towards the horizon and quenched its flames in the sea. The darkness descended and the outline of the land melted into it.

  Moonrise in two hours, Hal thought, as he stopped by the binnacle to check the ship's heading. We will be into Adulis Bay by then. He looked up at Ned Tyler, whose face was lit by the compass lantern.

  "Hoist our new canvas," he ordered, and Ned repeated the order through the speaking trumpet. The new canvas was laid out on the deck, the sheets already reeved into the clews and earing cringles, but it took an hour Of hard, dangerous work before her white canvas was brought down and stowed away, and the sails that were daubed with pitch were hoist to the yards and unfurled.

  Black was her hull, and black as midnight her canvas. The Golden Bough would show no flash in the moonlight when they sailed into Adulis Bay to take unawares the anchored fleet of Islam.

  Let the Buzzard be there, Hal prayed silently. Please, God, let him not have sailed.

  Slowly the bay opened to them, and they saw the lanterns of the enemy fleet like the lights of a large town. Beyond them the watch fires of El Grang's host reflected off the belly of the low cloud of dust and smoke.

  "Lay the ship on the larboard tack, Mister Tyler. Steer into the bay." The ship came around and bore swiftly towards the anchored fleet.

  "Take a reef in your mains. Furl all your top-hamper, please, Mister Tyler." The ship's rush slowed and the rustle of the bow wave dwindled as they went in under fighting canvas.

  Hal walked towards the bows and Aboli stood up out of the darkness. "Are your archers ready?" Hal asked.

  Aboli's teeth flashed in the gloom. "They are ready, Gundwane."

  Hal made them out now, dark shapes crouched along the ship's rail between the culver ins their bundles of arrows laid out on the deck.

  "Keep them under your eye!" Hal cautioned him. If the Amadoda had one fault in battle it was that they could be carried away by their blood lust.

  As he went on to Big Daniel's station in the waist, he was checking that all the burning slow-match was concealed in the tubs and that the glowing tips would not alert a watchful enemy. "Good evening, Master Daniel. Your men have never been in a night battle. Keep a tight rein. Don't let them start firing wildly."

  He went back to the helm, and the ship crept on into the bay, a dark shadow on the dark waters. The moon rose behind them and lit the scene ahead with a silvery radiance, so that Hal could discern the shapes of the enemy fleet. He knew that his own ship was still invisible.

  On they glided, and they were close enough now to hear the sounds from the moored vessels ahead, voices singing, praying and arguing. Someone was hammering a wooden mallet, and there was the creak of oars and the slotting of rigging as the dhows rolled gently at anchor.

  Hal was straining his eyes to pick out the masts of the Gull of Moray, but he knew that if she were in the bay he would not be able to spot her until the first broadside lit the darkness.

  "A large dhow dead ahead," he said quietly to Ned Tyler. "Steer to pass her close to starboard."

  "Ready, Master Daniel!" He raised his voice. "On the vessel to starboard, fire as you bead." They crept up to the anchored dhow and, as she came fully abeam, the Golden Bough's full broadside lit the darkness like sheet lightning and the thunder of the guns stunned their ear-drums and echoed off the desert hills. In that brief eye-searing illumination Hal saw the masts and hulls of the entire enemy fleet brightly lit, and he felt the lead of disappointment heavy in his guts.

  "The Gull has gone," he said aloud. Once again, the Buzzard had eluded him. There will be another time, he consoled himself. Firmly he put the distracting thought from his mind, and turned his full attention back to the battle that was opening like some hellish pageant before him.

  The moment that first broadside tore into the quarry, Aboli did not have to wait for an order. The deck was lit by the flare of many bright flames as the Amadoda lit their fire-arrows. On each cane shaft, tied behind the iron arrowhead, was a tuft of unravelled hemp rope that had been soaked in pitch, which spluttered and then burned fiercely when touched with the slow-match, The archers loosed their arrows, which sailed up in a high, flaming parabola and dropped down to peg into the timbers of an anchored vessel. As the screams of terror and agony rose from the shot-shattered hull, the Golden Bough glided on deeper into the mass of shipping.

  "Two vessels a point on either side of your bows," Hal told the helmsman. "Steer between them."

  As they passed them close on either hand, the ship heeled first to one side and then to the other as her broadsides thundered out in quick succession, and a rain of rite-arrows fell from the sky upon the stricken vessels.

  Behind them the first dhow was ablaze, and her flames lit the bay, brilliantly illuminating the quarry to the Golden Bough's gunners as she ran on amongst them.

  "El Tazar!" As Hal heard the terrified Arab voices screaming his name from ship to ship, he smiled grimly and watched their panic-stricken efforts to cut their anchor cables and escape his terrible approach. Now five dhows were burning, and drifted out of control into the crowded anchorage.

  Some enemy vessels were firing wildly, blazing away without making any attempt to lay their aim on the frigate. Stray cannonballs, aimed too high, howled overhead, while others, aimed too low, skipped across the surface of the water and crashed into the friendly ships anchored alongside them.

  The flames jumped from ship to ship and the whole sweep of the bay was bright as day. Once again Hal looked for the Gull's tall masts. If she were here, by this time the Buzzard would have set sails and his silhouette would be unmistakable. But he was nowhere in sight, and Hal turned back angrily to the task of wreaking as much destruction as he could upon the fleet of Islam.

  Behind them one of the blazing hulls must have been loaded with several hundred tons of black powder for El Grang's artiller
y. It went up in a vast tower of black smoke, shot through with flaring red flames as though the devil had flung open the doors of hell. The rolling column of smoke went on mounting into the night sky until its top was no longer visible and seemed to have reached into the heavens. The blast swept through the fleet striking down those vessels closest to it and shattering their timbers or rolling them over on their backs.

  The wind from the explosion roared over the frigate and, for a moment, her sails were taken aback and she began to lose steerage way. Then the offshore night breeze took over and filled them once more. She bore onwards, deeper into the bay and into the heart of the enemy fleet.

  Hal nodded with grim satisfaction each time one of the Golden Bough's salvoes crashed out. They were one sudden shock of thunder and a single flare of red flame as every gun fired at the same instant. Even Aboli's Arnadoda launched their flights of arrows in a single flaming cloud. In contrast, there was never such a wild discordant banging of uncontrolled shot as stuttered from the enemy ships.

  El Grang's shore batteries began to open up as their sleep-groggy gunners stumbled to their colossal siege guns. Each discharge was like a separate clap of thunder, belittling even the roar of the frigate's massed volleys. Hal smiled each time one of their mighty muzzle flashes tore out from the rock-walled redoubts across the bay. The shore gunners could not possibly pick out the black sails of the Golden Bough in the confusion and smoke. They fired into their own fleet and Hal saw at least one enemy ship smashed to planks by a single ball from the shore.

  "Stand by to go about!" Hal gave the order in one of the fleeting moments of quiet. The shore was coming up fast, and they would soon be landlocked in the depths of the bay. The topmast men handled the sails with perfect timing, and the bows swung through a wide. arc then steadied as they pointed back towards the open sea.

  Hal walked forward in the brilliant light of the burning ships and raised his voice so that the men could hear him. "I doubt not that El Grang will long remember this night." They cheered him even as they heaved on the gun tackles and nocked their arrows. "The Bough and Sir Hal!"

  Then a single voice sang out, "El Tazar!" and they all took up the cry so heartily that El Grang and the Prince must have heard them as they stood before the silken tent on the knoll above the bay and looked down upon their shattered fleet.

  "El Tazar! El Tazar!"

  Hal nodded at the helm. "Take us out, please, Mister Tyler." As they wove their way through the burning hulks and floating wreckage, and drew slowly out towards the entrance a single shot fired from one of the drifting dhows smashed in through the gunwale, and tore across the open deck. Miraculously it passed between one of the gun crews and a group of the half-naked archers without touching them. But Stan Sparrow was standing at the far rail, commanding a gun battery, and the hot iron ball took off both his legs neatly, just above the knees.

  Instinctively Hal started forward to succour him, but then he checked himself. As captain, the dead and wounded were not his concern, but he felt the agony of loss. Stan Sparrow had been with him from the beginning. He was a good man and a shipmate.

  When they carried Stan away, they passed close by where Hal stood.

  He saw that Stan's face was ivory pale, and that he was drained of blood. He was sinking fast but he saw Hal and, with a great effort, lifted his hand to touch his forehead. "They was good times, Captain," he said, and his hand dropped.

  "God speed, Master Stan," Hal said, and while they carried him below, he turned to look back into the bay, so that in the light of the burning ships no man might see his distress.

  Long after they had run out of the bay and turned away northwards towards Mitsiwa, the night skies behind them glowed with the inferno they had created. The captains of divisions came one at a time to make their battle reports. Though Stan Sparrow was the only man killed, three others had been wounded by musket fire from the dhows as they sailed past, and another man's leg had been crushed in the recoil of an overshot ted culverin. It was a small price to pay, Hal supposed, and yet, though he knew it to be weakness, he mourned Stan Sparrow.

  Although he was exhausted and his head ached from the din of battle and the powder smoke, Hal was too wrought-up for sleep and his mind was in a turmoil of emotion and racing thoughts. He left the helm to Ned Tyler and went to stand alone in the bows to let the cool night air soothe him.

  He was still alone there as the dawn began to break and the GoLden Bough headed in towards Mitsiwa roads, and the first to see the three red Chinese rockets soar up into the sky from the heights of the cliffs above the bay.

  It was a signal from Judith Nazet, an urgent recall. He felt his pulse quicken with dread as he turned and bellowed to Aboli, who had the watch, "Hoist three red lanterns to the masthead!"

  Three red lights was an acknowledgement of her signal. She has heard the guns and seen the flames, he thought. She wishes to have my report of the battle. Somehow he knew that it was not so but he hoped to quieten the sudden sense of dread that assailed him.

  It was fully light as they nosed in towards the shore. Hal was still in the bows and the first to spot the boat that darted out from the beach to meet them. From two cables' length away he recognized the slim figure standing beside the single mast. He felt his heart leap and his sadness fall away, replaced by a sense of eager anticipation.

  Judith Nazet's head was bare and the dark halo of her hair framed her face. She wore armour and a sword was buckled at her side, a steel helmet under her arm.

  Hal strode back to the quarterdeck and gave his order to the helm. "Round her up and heave to! Let the boat come alongside."

  Judith Nazet came through the entry port with a lithe and graceful urgency, and Hal saw that her marvelous features were stricken. "I give thanks to God for bringing you back so swiftly," she said, in a voice that trembled with some strong emotion. "A terrible catastrophe has overtaken us. I can hardly find words to describe it to you."

  They had muffled the horses" hoofs with leather boots so they made little sound on the rocky earth. The priest rode close beside him, but Cornelius Schreuder had taken the precaution of securing a light steel chain around the man's waist and the other end around his own wrist. The priest had a shifty eye and a ferrety face that Schreuder trusted not at all.

  They rode in double file along the narrow valley, and although the moon had risen an hour before the rocky sides still threw the sun's heat into their faces. Schreuder had selected the fifteen most trustworthy men from his regiment, and all were mounted on fast horses.

  The tack had been carefully muffled and their weapons wrapped in cloth so they made no sound in the night.

  The priest held up his hand suddenly. "Stop here!" Schreuder repeated the order in a whisper.

  "I must go forward to see if the way is clear," said the priest.

  "I will go with you." Schreuder dismounted and shortened his grip on the chain. They left the rest of the band in the bottom of the wadi and crawled up the steep side.

  "There is the monastery." The priest pointed at the massive square bulk that squatted on the hills above them, blotting out half the stars from the night sky. "Flash twice and then twice again, "he said.

  Schreuder aimed the small lantern towards the walls of the monastery and flipped open the shutter that screened the flame. Twice, and then again, he flashed the signal, and they waited. Nothing happened.

  "If you are playing with me, I will hack off your head with the back of my sword," Schreuder growled, and felt the little priest shiver beside him.

  "Flash again!" he pleaded, and Schreuder repeated the signal. Suddenly a weak speck of light glimmered briefly on the top of the wall. Twice it showed, and then was extinguished.

  "We can go on," whispered the priest excitedly, but Schreuder restrained him.

  "What have you told those within the monastery who will help us to enter?"

  "They have been told that we are spiriting away the Emperor and the Tabernacle to a safe place to save him from
an assassination plot by a great noble of the Galla faction who seeks to take the crown of Prester John from him."