The Tiger's Prey

by Wilbur Smith

  With a howl of pure fury, Legrange grabbed the dangling end of a rope that had come loose in the broadside. Wrapping it around his wrist, pistol in his free hand, he clambered back onto the rail.

  ‘No quarter,’ he roared. He swung across the open water, through the smoke that still hung in the air, and landed on the Dowager’s deck. One of the sailors, seeing him coming, dropped his spent musket and reached for a sword. Legrange shot him point-blank in the face, discarded the pistol and drew another from his belt. Another sailor stumbled towards him. Legrange shot him too, then drew his sword.

  All along the Dowager’s side, grappling irons and bare feet thudded onto the deck as Legrange’s men followed him aboard. Splashed with the blood and guts of their shipmates, they swung out of the smoke that choked the air. The Dowager’s crew was almost immediately overwhelmed. Even after the broadside, the pirates still heavily outnumbered them – and they were in a savage mood for what had just overtaken the rest of their crew. One by one, the Dowager’s crew were cut down, until only a small knot remained herded below on the poop deck.

  Some of the pirates, seeing the battle won, ran below to begin the looting. The rest surrounded the Dowager’s men at the stern, prodding them with their cutlasses but making no effort to kill them. They knew their captain would want to take his time, to exact slow revenge for the defiance they had showed in resisting.

  Legrange strode across the bloody deck, stepping over the corpses of the fallen. ‘Which of you is the captain?’ he demanded.

  Inchbird shuffled forward. Blood soaked his shirt from a cut on his arm. ‘Josiah Inchbird. I am the master.’

  Grabbing his shoulder, Legrange pulled him forward and threw him to the deck. ‘You should have surrendered,’ he hissed. ‘You made us work for it. You should not have done that.’

  He pulled the knife from his belt and pressed the blade against Inchbird’s cheek. ‘I’m going to skin you alive, and then I’ll feed your guts to the sharks while you watch them eat.’

  The men around him laughed. Inchbird squirmed and pleaded.

  ‘We’ve spices and calicos from Madras in the hold, and pepper in the ballast. Take it all.’

  Legrange leaned closer. ‘Oh, I will, you can be sure of that. I’ll pull your ship apart, every plank and bulkhead, and find every last dollar you’ve hidden. But I’m not going to punish you for that, but for your defiance and for what you did to my men.’

  A commotion from the companionway distracted him. He turned around, as two of his men emerged from below decks dragging a prisoner between them. The men at the stern hooted and whistled as they saw it was a woman, clutching the neck of her dress where it had been torn open. They dropped her on her knees in front of Legrange.

  ‘We found her in the captain’s cabin, trying to hide these.’ One of the pirates opened his palm and let a handful of gold coins spill over the deck. The others whistled and cheered.

  Legrange cupped her chin in his hands and lifted her face to force her to look at him. Dark eyes stared back at him, brimming with hatred and defiance. He’d soon change that, and he grinned happily at the thought.

  ‘Fetch me the brazier,’ he ordered. He pulled her up by her hair so she was forced to stand, then gave her a hefty shove. She stumbled backwards, tripped on a rope and sprawled on her back. Before she could move, four of the pirates pounced, spread-eagling her arms and legs and holding them down.

  Legrange stepped over her. He slit open her skirts with the blade of his sword and his men spread them apart. The woman twisted and writhed, but the men had her pinned tight. Legrange pulled the skirts further apart, exposing her creamy thighs, and the dark tuft of hair where they met. The men whooped and cheered.

  He glanced at Inchbird. ‘Is she your wife? Your doxy?’

  ‘A passenger,’ grunted Inchbird. ‘Let her go, please sir.’

  ‘That will depend on the ride she gives me.’

  Two men came with a brazier on an iron tripod. The coals glowed dully. He stirred them with the point of his sword until the steel glowed red. He lifted out the smoking blade and held it over her. He looked into her deep brown eyes. Now there was no defiance – only terror.

  A thin smile curled his lips. He lowered the blade towards the junction of thighs, letting it hover inches from her womanhood. She’d gone very still, not daring to struggle for fear of touching the sword. Smoke rose from the glowing steel.

  He darted it at her and she screamed, but it was a feint. He’d stopped the blade a hair’s breadth from her parted genital lips. He laughed. He hadn’t had this much fun since the last of the slave girls had died from his attentions.

  ‘Take it,’ she pleaded. ‘Take the cargo, the gold, anything you want.’

  ‘I will,’ Legrange promised her. ‘But first, I’ll take my pleasure.’ The tip of his sword had cooled. He plunged it back into the brazier until it glowed hotter than ever, then held it in front of her eyes. Sweat beaded on her forehead. ‘You see this? It won’t kill you, but it’ll make you hurt more than you ever thought was possible.’

  ‘Go to hell where you belong,’ she hissed at him.

  Her defiance only whetted Legrange’s appetite. He liked a woman with spirit – so much more satisfying when she finally broke down. He licked his lips and tasted blood. From below decks, he heard shouts and the clash of arms, but he was too caught up in his sport to pay it any heed. Probably his men quarrelling over the loot. He would deal with them later.

  He wiped his mouth with the back of his free hand and said softly, ‘I’m going to burn you, woman. I’m going to burn you, and then I’ll have you, and then I’ll give you to my men to finish any way they like.’

  ‘Ship your oars,’ Tom ordered quietly. All eight dripping oars slithered inboard, as the Centaurus’ jolly boat came under the pirate ship’s black hull. Tom eased off the tiller. He didn’t look up: all his concentration was fixed on bringing the boat alongside as silently as possible. In the bows, Aboli and Dorian trained their muskets up at the Fighting Cock’s deck, where a swivel cannon was clamped ominously on the gunwale. If any of the pirates had stayed aboard the pirate ship and had not crossed over to the prize, he could churn them to mincemeat with that weapon.

  Tom looked back at the Centaurus, standing off about half a mile away. The pirates hadn’t noticed her – or were too busy with their pillage to bother with her yet. He’d left only two men aboard with Sarah and Yasmini. If they failed here then the women were doomed. He put the thought out of his mind.

  The bows of the jolly boat touched the pirate ship with barely a whisper. Aboli grabbed on to her steps and gestured upwards. Tom shook his head. Near the waterline, a row of hatches studded the pirate’s hull: too low to be gun ports. He realized that they were probably ventilation hatches, a remnant from her days as a slaver.

  Tom took the knife from his belt and worked it into the seam of the nearest hatch. When the slaves were aboard, it would have been padlocked from the inside, but the pirates would not bother with niceties such as that. His blade touched the latch inside. He jimmied upwards.

  The latch gave. He swung the hatch open and peered in at the gloom of the lower deck. No one challenged him. With Aboli holding the boat steady, he wriggled through. The others followed him, passing their weapons ahead of them. Aboli, with his broad shoulders and powerful body, struggled to squeeze through.

  The lower deck was cramped and close. Tom crouched, and still nearly hit his head on a beam. He moved among the piles of stores and plunder the pirates had stored here, working his way towards the light coming in through the gratings from the main deck. Dorian and Aboli followed close behind with the rest of the crew men from the Centaurus. Among them was Alf Wilson, who had sailed with Tom’s father; and Aboli’s two sons, Zama and Tula. Their eyes shone white in the darkness, hardened to fury by the evidence they saw of the ship’s slaving past. All of them knew too well that in other circumstances they might have found themselves chained to the iron rings that still protruded f
rom the wooden walls, carried across the ocean to be sold like animals to the colonists in the Caribbean and America; always supposing that they survived the voyage. They fancied they could still smell the residue of suffering and human misery leaching from the planks.

  Tom shinned up the aft ladder and cautiously put his head through the hatch. He’d come up under the quarterdeck, near the mizzen mast. Out in the burning sun, only dead men lay sprawled across the main deck. All the living had gone across to Dowager to plunder her.

  Tom beckoned for his men to follow him up onto gun deck. He pointed to one of the long guns, its muzzle protruding out through the open port and pressing right up against the other ship’s hull.

  He snapped an order. ‘Run that in.’

  Zama and Tula leaped to the tackles that held the gun to the ship’s frame. Alf Wilson and the other men joined them, and together they hauled it back. It rumbled in on its trucks, leaving the gun port an open square of light. Tom stuck his head through. The two ships moved together, their hulls knocking when they touched. A thin strip of clear water sparkled between them.

  He unbuckled his sword belt. ‘Anchor me, Aboli.’

  With Aboli grasping his legs, he wriggled out through the gun port until he could touch the other ship’s side. This far back, she had no gun ports: he found himself opposite her stern windows, looking into the captain’s cabin. He could see figures moving around inside behind the glass, ransacking the interior to carry off anything valuable. He froze, but they were too intent on their work to notice him in the deep shadow between the vessels.

  ‘Give me a hand with this,’ one of them called. ‘It’s bloody heavy.’

  His voice came clear through a broken window. As Tom watched, another man joined him. Together, they lifted a strong box and carried it out the door.

  The cabin was empty. Tom stretched as far as he could, glad of Aboli’s powerful arms belaying him. He reached through the jagged hole in the glass, careful not to cut his wrist, and undid the latch. He pushed the window open.

  ‘Let go,’ he whispered to Aboli. He grasped the window sill and hauled himself through. A pile of cushions broke his fall, their covers slit open and their stuffing ripped out in the pirates’ search for valuables.

  Aboli passed Tom’s blue sword through the window. Tom buckled it on and checked the priming of his pistols as the others crawled through one by one. By the time they were all in, the cabin was so crowded they could barely move.

  A roar of laughter sounded from the quarterdeck above. Tom wondered what was happening.

  The door swung open. A pirate stood there. He must have been looting the wardroom, for he carried a fistful of silver spoons in one hand, and a candlestick in the other.

  ‘What are you doing? This is mine.’ And then, as he took in the strange group assembled there, ‘Who the bloody hell are you?’

  There was no room to swing a sword in the cabin. Aboli extended his arm, blade in hand, and ran the pirate through the neck. He dropped to the floor clutching his throat. Blood gurgled through the wound. The spoons and candlestick clattered to the deck.

  ‘On me, Centaurus!’ Tom ducked through the door out onto the lower deck. It was a scene of utter carnage: men hauling bales of cloth from the hold, tipping out seamen’s chests, spilling precious spices across the planking. Further forward, some had broken open a cask of rum and they were drinking from the bunghole.

  None had their weapons in hand. Most didn’t see the men emerging from the cabin, or didn’t realize who they were.

  The Centaurus’ boarding party rushed at them. Dorian and Aboli were experienced warriors, veterans of countless fights. Zama and Tula, who had grown up with tales of their father’s wars, fought with the ferocity of young men given their first taste of battle. Alf Wilson and the rest of the crew had followed the Courtneys into more contests than they cared to remember. They knew precisely what they had to do.

  The pirates barely realized what was happening to them, before most were felled without a fight. A few tried to protect themselves with whatever came to hand – navigation books, tankards or bales of cloth – but they were cut down swiftly. From the corner of his eye, Tom saw Dorian pressing forward with sharp, precise movements. One of the pirates had a knife in his hand. Dorian disarmed him with a flick of his sword, turned the blade and slid it between his ribs and through the pirate’s heart. With a twist of his wrist, the sword came out cleanly, in time to punch the steel guard into the next man’s face. The man reeled back, and Dorian stepped forward and ran him through.

  But a few of the pirates had managed to escape up the forward ladder. ‘Up on deck,’ shouted Tom. Some of the pirates above must have worked out what was happening. If the pirates battened down the hatches, Tom and all his men would be trapped between decks.

  Tom shot up the companionway, taking the blood-slicked steps three at a time. A man appeared at the top; Tom drew one of his pistols and shot him left-handed. At that range, he couldn’t miss. The man toppled towards him. Tom sidestepped him, took the last steps in a single bound and landed on the main deck.

  With his senses heightened by the rush of battle, he took in the scene at once: the knot of prisoners corralled at the back, surrounded by armed pirates; the captain on his knees, bleeding from his face and arms; and the woman pinned down on her back, skirts spread, with a bearded pirate holding his sword between her thighs.

  Tom raised his second pistol and fired. Too quick: the ball went wide of the mark and hit one of the men behind. The pirate captain jerked up. With a snarl of rage, he raised his sword to stab it through the woman beneath him.

  Another shot rang out. Dorian had come up beside Tom. Smoke blew from the pistol in his hands; the pirate captain dropped his sword and stumbled back, bleeding from his wrist.

  Tom grinned at his brother. ‘Good shot, Dorry.’

  ‘I was aiming for his heart.’ Dorian jammed the spent pistol in his belt, and swapped his sword back to his right hand. A pirate lunged at him with a pike. Dorian sidestepped the blow, caught the man off balance and lunged with his sword. It took him in the centre of his chest and the blood-smeared point appeared a hand’s length from between his shoulder blades.

  Aboli had already cut his way back onto the quarterdeck. Tom followed him up the ladder. Another fierce melee boiled across the ship’s stern. With cries of ‘huzzah’ and ‘Dowager’, the merchant’s crew had turned on their captors. They were unarmed, but the pirates were off-guard. Some had gone to join the looting; others had been too busy watching Legrange toying with the woman. Some of them had put down their weapons, and now they were caught from both sides. Sailors wrestled swords from the pirates, or grappled them so closely they couldn’t bring their weapons into play. Tom moved through the melee, searching eagerly for the pirate captain.

  His foot caught on something. His eyes flicked down. It was the woman he’d seen earlier, curled into a ball, holding her torn skirts around her. Nearby, he saw a smouldering brazier sitting on the deck, utterly forgotten as the fighting raged around it.

  Even in the heat of battle, Tom felt a spike of alarm. Fire was every sailor’s worst fear – the one thing that could reduce a ship to black ash in minutes.

  Aboli had seen it too. He picked up the brazier by one leg and hurled it over the side, onto the pirate ship. Hot coals skittered across her deck. One came to rest against a pile of rope, but with all the uproar aboard the Dowager, no one noticed it.

  Tom stood over the woman, threatening off anyone who came near, still scanning the throng for the enemy captain. The men from Centaurus, the crew from the Dowager and the remaining pirates were all locked in mortal combat. More pirates emerged from below deck like rats: they kept coming, fighting with a ferocity he’d rarely seen equalled. Men who had everything to lose.

  And then, like a shift in the wind, the pirates started to give way. Space opened in front of Tom, space to lunge and strike. He advanced, cutting down men as they ran from him. For a moment, he didn’t re
alize why they were running. Then he smelled it. It was not the acrid tang of gunpowder that had stampeded them, but the powerful choking scent of burning wood and tar.

  Caught between determined foes and a burning ship, the pirates raced to get back to put out the fire that was sweeping through their own ship. Tom skewered one just as he made to leap from the Dowager’s side. He toppled into the gap between the ships and was crushed between their hulls. Tom looked across. Black smoke billowed out of the Fighting Cock; flames licked over her gunwale and started running up her stays.

  ‘Cut her loose!’ Tom yelled. If the fire jumped across to the Dowager, they’d all burn and drown. Zama started cutting away the grappling ropes with his boarding axe. Two of the Dowager’s men grabbed cutlasses that had fallen on the deck and joined him.

  The flames ran higher. Still the ships remained locked together. Looking up, Tom saw the Dowager’s yardarms caught in the pirate’s rigging, forming a high bridge between the two ships.

  ‘Give me that axe.’ He grabbed it from Zama and ran up the ratlines. Dorian followed him.

  He swung himself around the futtock shrouds and out onto the yard. As master of his own ship, he rarely went aloft any longer, but he had not lost the knack. He ran to the end of the yard and started hacking away at the tangle of lines and shrouds that had snagged it. The fire burned beneath him, jumping so high it looked as if the flames were licking the soles of his boots. Smoke made his eyes water. Dorian joined him, kneeling on the yard to cut away a block that had jammed on the clewlines.

  Still the ships stayed fast in their mutual embrace.

  ‘Why won’t she go?’

  Dorian pointed to a piece of tackle that had wrapped itself in the braces. He took the boarding axe from Tom and moved towards it.

  Something struck the yard. Tom felt the vibration even before he saw the hole gouged in the side of the spar, just by Dorian’s foot. Down through the smoke, Tom saw the pirate captain lowering the musket he had just fired.