Birds of Prey c-1

by Wilbur Smith

  He, also, was sickened by the slaughter, and longed for the setting of the sun, or any other chance to cease the carnage. That opportunity came from an unlooked-for direction.

  Aboli left his station at the starboard battery of cannon and ran back to where Hal paced his quarterdeck. Hal looked up at him sharply, but before he could snap a reprimand, Aboli pointed out over the starboard bow.

  "That ship with the red sail. The man in the stern. Do you see him, Gundwane?"

  Hal felt the prickle of apprehension on his arms and the cold sweat sliding down his back as he recognized the tall figure standing and leaning back against the tiller arm. He was clean-shaven now, the spiked moustaches were gone. He wore a turban of yellow, and the heavily embroidered dolman of an Islamic grandee over baggy white breeches and soft knee-high boots, but his pale face stood out like a mirror among the dark-bearded men around him. There may have been others with the same wide set of shoulders and tall athletic figure, but none with the same sword upon the hip, in its scabbard of embossed gold.

  "Bring the ship about, Mister Tyler. Heave to alongside that dhow with the red sail," Hal ordered.

  Ned looked where he pointed then swore. "Son of a bawd, that's Schreuder! May the devil damn him to hell." The Arab crew ran to the side of the dhow as the tall frigate bore down upon them. They jumped overboard and tried to swim back towards the beach, choosing the sabres of the Ethiopian cavalry rather than the gaping culver ins of the Golden Bough's broadside. Schreuder stood alone in the stern and looked up at the frigate with his cold, unrelenting expression. As they drew closer, Hal saw that his face was streaked with dust and powder soot, and that his clothing was torn and soiled with the muck of the battlefield.

  Hal strode to the rail and returned his stare. They were so close that Hal had hardly to raise his voice to make himself heard. "Colonel Schreuder, sir, you have my sword."

  "Then, sir, would you care to come down and take it from me?" Schreuder asked.

  "Mister Tyler, you have the con in my absence. Take me closer to the dhow so that I may board her.

  "This is madness, Gundwane,"Aboli said softly.

  "Make sure neither you nor any man intervenes, Aboli," Hal said, and went to the entry port As the little dhow bobbed close alongside, he slid down the ladder and jumped across the narrow gap of water, landing lightly on her single deck.

  He drew his sword and looked to the stern. Schreuder stepped away from the tiller bar and shrugged out of the stiff dolman tunic.

  "You are a "romantic fool, Henry Courtney," he murmured, and the blade of the Neptune sword whispered softly from its scabbard.

  "To the death?" Hal asked, as he drew his own blade. "Naturally." Schreuder nodded gravely. "For I am going to kill you."

  They came together with the slow grace of two lovers beginning a minuet. Their blades met and flirted as they circled, tap and brush and slither of steel on steel, their feet never still, points held high and eyes locked.

  Ned Tyler held the frigate fifty yards off, keeping that interval with deft touches of helm and trim of her shortened sails. The men lined the near rail. They were quiet and attentive. Although few understood the finer points of style and technique, they could not but be aware of the grace and beauty of this deadly ritual.

  "An eye for his eyes!" Hal seemed to hear his father's voice in his head. "Read in them his soul!"

  Schreuder's face remained gravel but Hal saw the first shadow in his cold blue eyes. It was not fear, but it was respect. Even with these light touches of their blades, Schreuder had evaluated his man. Remembering their previous encounters, he had not expected to be met with such strength and skill. As for Hal he knew that, if he lived through this, he would never again dance so close to death and smell its breath as he did now.

  Hal saw it in his eyes, the moment before Schreuder opened his attack, stepping in lightly and then driving at him with a rapid series of lunges. He moved back, checking each thrust but feeling the power in it. He hardly heard the excited growl of the watchers on the deck of the frigate above them, but he watched Schreuder's eyes and met him with the high point. The Dutchman drove suddenly for his throat, his first serious stroke, and the moment Hal blocked he disengaged fluidly and dropped on bent right knee and cut for Hal's ankle, the Achilles stroke intended to cripple him.

  Hal vaulted lightly over the flashing golden blade but felt it tug at the heel of his boot. With both feet in the air he was momentarily out of balance and Schreuder straightened and like a striking cobra turned the angle of his blade and went for Hal's belly. Hal sprang back but felt it touch him, no pain from that razor edge but just a tiny snick. He bounced back off his left foot, and aimed for one of Schreuder's blue eyes. He saw the surprise in that eye, but then Schreuder rolled his head and the point slit his cheek.

  They backed and circled, both men bleeding now. Hal felt the warm wetness soaking through the front of his shirt, and a scarlet snake ran slowly down past the corner of Schreuder's thin lips and dripped from his chin.

  "First blood was mine, I think, sir?" Schreuder asked.

  "It was, sir." Hal conceded. "But whose will be the last?" And the words were not past his lips before Schreuder attacked in earnest. While the watchers on the Golden Bough howled and danced with excitement, he drove Hal step by step from the stern to the bows of the dhow and pinned him there, with their blades locked, and forced his back against the gunwale. They stood like that with their blades crossed in front of their faces, and their eyes only a hand's span apart. Their breath mingled and Hal watched the drops of sweat form on Schreuder's upper lip as he strained to hold him like that.

  Deliberately Hal swayed backwards, and saw the gleam of triumph in the blue eyes so close to his own, but his back was loaded like a longbow taking the weight of the archer's draw. He unleashed and, with the strength of his legs, arms and upper body, hurled Schreuder backwards. With the impetus of that movement Hal went on the attack and, their blades rasping and clashing together, he forced Schreuder back down the open deck to the stern.

  With the tiller arm digging into his spine, Schreuder could retreat no further. He caught up Hal's blade and with all the power of his wrist forced him into the prolonged engagement, the ploy with which he had killed Vincent Winterton and a dozen others before him. Their swords swirled and shrilled together, a silver whirlpool of molten sunlight that held them apart yet locked them together.

  On it went, and on. The sweat streamed down both their faces, and their breath came in short, urgent grunts. It was death to the first man to break. Their wrists seemed forged from the same steel as their blades, and then Hal saw something in Schreuder's eyes that he had never dreamed of seeing there. Fear, Schreuder tried to break the circle and lock up the blades as he had with Vincent, but Hal refused and forced him on and on. He felt the first weakness in Schreuder's iron sword arm, and saw the despair in his eyes.

  Then Schreuder broke, and Hal was on him in the same instant that his point dropped and his guard opened. He hit him hard in the centre of his chest and felt the point go home, strike bone, and the hilt thrill in his hand.

  The roar from the men on the deck of the frigate broke over them like a wave of storm-driven surf. In the moment that Hal felt the surge of triumph and the live feeling of his blade buried deep in his opponent's flesh, Schreuder reared back and raised the gold-inlaid blade of the Neptune sword to the level of his eyes in which the sapphire lights were beginning to fade, and lunged.

  The forward movement forced Hal's blade deeper into his body, but as the point of the Neptune sword flashed towards his chest Hal had no defence. He released his grip on the hilt of his own sword, and sprang back, but he could not escape the reach of the golden sword or its gimlet sharp point.

  Hal felt the hit, high in the left side of his chest, and as he reeled back felt the blade slip out of his flesh. With an effort he kept his feet, and the two men confronted each other, both hard hit but Hal disarmed and Schreuder with the Neptune sword still clutched
in his right hand.

  "I think I have killed you, sir,"Schreuder whispered. "Perhaps. But I know I have killed you, sir," Hal answered him.

  "Then I will make certain of my side of it," Schreuder grunted, and took an unsteady pace towards him, but the strength went out of his legs. He sagged forward and fell to the deck.

  Painfully Hal went down on one knee beside his body. With his left hand he clutched his own chest wound, but with his right he prised open Schreuder's dead fingers from the hilt of the Neptune sword and with it in his own hand rose to face the towering deck of the GoLden Bough.

  He held the gleaming sword high, and they cheered him wildly. The sound of it echoed weirdly in Hal's ears and he blinked uncertainly as the brilliant African sunlight faded and his eyes were filled with shadows and darkness.

  His legs gave way under him and he sat down heavily on the deck of the dhow, bowed forward over the sword in his lap.

  He felt but did not see the frigate bump against the dhow as Ned Tyler brought her alongside, and then Aboli's hands were on his shoulders and his voice was deep and close as he lifted Hal in his arms.

  "It is over now, Gundwane. All of it is done."

  Ned Tyler took the ship deeper into the bay and anchored her in the calm waters off the port of Zulla where now the white cross of Ethiopia flew above the shot-battered walls.

  Hal lay for fourteen days on the bunk in the stern cabin, attended only by Aboli. On the fifteenth day Aboli and Big Daniel lifted him into one of the oak chairs and carried him up onto the deck. The men came to him one at a time with a touch of the forehead and a self-consciously muttered greeting.

  Under his eye they made the ship ready for sea. The carpenters replaced the timbers that had been shot away, and the sail makers re sewed the torn sails. Big Daniel plunged over side and swam under the hull to check for damage beneath the waterline. "She's tight and sweet as a virgin's slit," he shouted up to the deck as he surfaced on the other side.

  There were many visitors from the shore. Governors and nobles and soldiers coming with gifts to thank Hal, and to stare at him in awe. As he grew stronger, Hal was able to greet them standing on his quarterdeck. They brought news as well as gifts.

  "General Nazet has borne the Emperor back to Aksum in triumph," they told him.

  Then, many days later, they said, "Praise God, the Emperor has been crowned in Aksum. Forty thousand people came to his coronation." Hal stared longingly at the far blue mountains, and that night slept little.

  Then in the morning Ned Tyler came to him. "The ship is ready for sea, Captain."

  "Thank you, Mister Tyler." Hal turned from him and left him standing without orders.

  Before he reached the companionway to the stern cabin, there came a hail from the masthead. "There is a boat putting out from the pard." Eagerly Hal strode back to the rail. He scanned the passengers, searching for a slim figure in armour with a dark halo of curls around a beloved amber face. He felt the lead of disappointment weight his limbs when he recognized only Bishop Fasilides" lanky frame and his white beard blowing over his shoulder.

  Fasilides came in through the entry port and made the sign of the Cross. "Bless this fine ship, and all the brave men who sail in her." The rough seamen bared their heads and went down on their knees. When he had blessed each, Fasilides came to Hal. "I come as a messenger from the Emperor."

  "God bless him!" Hal answered.

  "I bring his greetings and his thanks to you and your men."

  He turned to one of the priests who followed him and took from him the heavy gold chain he carried. "On the Emperor's behalf I bestow upon you the order of the Golden Lion of Ethiopia." He placed the chain with its jeivelled medallion around Hal's neck. "I bring with me the prize monies that you have earned from your gallant war upon the pagan, together with the reward that the Emperor personally sends you."

  From the dhow they brought up a single small wooden chest. It was too heavy to be carried up the side, and it took four strong seamen on the block and tackle to lift it to the Golden Bough's deck.

  Fasilides lifted the lid of the chest and the sparkle of gold within was dazzling in the sunlight.

  "Well, my lads!" Hal called to his men. "You will have the price of a flagon of beer in your purse when next we dock in Plymouth harbour."

  "When will you sail?" Fasilides wanted to know.

  "All is in readiness," Hal replied. "But tell me, what news of General Nazet?"

  Fasilides looked at him shrewdly. "No news. After the coronation she disappeared, and the Tabernacle of Mary with her. Some say she has gone back into the mountains, whence she came."

  Hal's face darkened. "I will sail on tomorrow morning's tide, Father. And I thank you and the Emperor for your charity and your blessings."

  The following morning Hal was on deck two hours before sunrise, and all the ship was awake. The excitement that always attonded departure gripped the Golden Bough. Only Hal was unaffected by it. The sense of loss and betrayal was heavy upon him. Though she had made no promise, he had hoped with all his heart that Judith Nazet might come. Now, as he made his final tour of inspection of the ship, he steadfastly refrained from looking back towards the shore.

  Ned came to him. "The tide has turned, Captain! And the wind stands fair to weather Dahlak Island on a single tack."

  Hal could delay no longer. "Up anchor, Mister Tyler. Set all plain sail. Take us south to Elephant Lagoon. We have some unfinished business thereabouts."

  Ned Tyler and Big Daniel grinned at the prospect of reclaiming their share of the treasure that they knew was hidden there.

  The canvas billowed out from her yards and the Golden Bough shook herself and came awake. Her bows swung round and steadied as they pointed at the entrance to the open sea.

  Hal stood, his hands clasped behind his back, and stared straight ahead. Aboli came to him then with a cloak over his arm, and when Hal turned to him he shook it out and lifted it high for his appraisal. "The croix pattge, the same as your father wore at the beginning of every voyage."

  "Where did you get that, Aboli?"

  "I had it made for you in Zulla while you lay wounded. You have earned the right to wear it." He spread it over Hal's shoulders, and stood back to appraise him. "You look like your father did on the first day I saw him." Those words gave Hal such pleasure as to lighten his sombre mood.

  "Deck!" The hail from the lookout rang out of the lightening sky.

  "Masthead?" Hal threw his head back and looked up. "Signal from the shore!"

  Hal turned quickly with the cloak swirling about him.

  Above the walls of Zulla three bright red lights hung in the dawn sky, and as he watched they floated gracefully back to earth.

  "Three Chinese rockets!" Aboli said. "The recall signal." "Put the ship about, please, Mister Tyler," said Hal, and went to the rail as the ship swung round.

  "Boat putting out from the pard" came Aboli's hail.

  Hal peered ahead and, out of the gloom, saw the shape of a small dhow coming to meet them. As the range closed and the light strengthened, he felt his heart leap and his breath come shorter.

  In the bows stood a figure in unfamiliar garb, a woman who wore a blue caftan and a head cloth of the same colour. As the boat drew alongside she lifted the cloth from her head and Hal saw the glorious dark crown of her hair.

  He was waiting for her at the entry port When Judith Nazet stepped onto the deck, he greeted her awkwardly. "Good morrow, General Nazet."

  "I am a general no longer. Now I am only a common maid named Judith.".

  "You are welcome, Judith."

  "I came as soon as I was able." Her voice was husky and uncertain. "Now at last Iyasu is crowned, and the Tabernacle has gone back to its resting place in the mountains."