Wilbur Smith - C09 Birds Of Prey

by C09 Birds Of Prey(Lit)

  His voice was as the thunder of the heavens. He came to me to issue a dire warning." The congregation moaned with superstitious dread.

  "What was this warning?" croaked the Monomatapa staring at his brother with awe.

  "Our father fears for our lives, yours and mine. Great danger threatens us both." Some of the fat wives screamed, and one fell to the ground in a fit, frothing at the mouth.

  "What danger is this, Aboli?" The King glanced around him fearfully, as if seeking an assassin among his courtiers. "Our father warned me that you and I are joined in life as we were in birth. If one of us prospers, then so does the other."

  The Monomatapa nodded. "What else did our father say?"

  "He said that as we are joined in life, so we will be joined in death. He prophesied that we will die upon the very same day, but that that day is of our own choosing."

  The King's face turned a strange greyish tone and glistened with sweat. The elders shrieked and those nearest to where he sat drew small iron knives and slashed their own chests and arms, sprinkling their blood on the earth to protect him from witchcraft.

  "I am deeply troubled by these words that our father uttered," Aboli went on. "I wish that I were able to abide with you here in the Land of Heaven, to protect you from this fate. But, alas, my father's shade warned me further that should I stay here another day then I will die and the Monomatapa with me. I must leave at once and never return.

  That is the only way in which we can both survive the curse."

  "So let it be." The Monomatapa rose to his feet and pointed with a trembling finger. "This very day you must be gone."

  "Alas, my beloved brother, I cannot leave here without that boon I came to seek from you."

  "Speak, Aboli! What is it that you lack?"

  "I must have one hundred and fifty of your finest warriors to protect me, for a dreadful enemy lies in wait for me. Without these soldiers, then I go to certain death, and my death must portend the death of the Monomatapa."

  "Choose!" bellowed the Monomatapa. "Choose of my finest Amadoda, and take them with you. They are your slaves, do with them as you wish. But then get you gone this very day, before the setting of the sun. Leave my land for ever."

  In the leading pinnace Hal shot the bar and rowed out through the Musela mouth of the delta into the open sea. Big Daniel followed closely, and there lay the Golden Bough at her anchor on the ten fathom shoal where they had left her. Ned Tyler stood the ship to quarters and ran out his guns when he saw them approaching. The pinnaces were so packed with men that they had only an inch or two of freeboard. Riding so low in the water, from afar they resembled war canoes. The glinting spears and waving head-dresses of the Amadoda strengthened this impression and Ned gave the order to fire a warning shot across their bows. As the cannon boomed out and a tall plume of spray erupted from the water half a cable's length ahead of the leading boat, Hal stood up in the bows and waved the croix pott6e.

  "Lord love us!" Ned gasped. "Tis the Captain we're shooting at."

  "I'll not be in a hurry to forget that greeting you gave me, Mister Tyler," Hal told him sternly, as he came in through the entry port "I rate a four-gun salute, not a single gun."

  "Bless you, Captain, I had no idea. I thought you was a bunch of heathen savages, begging your pardon, sir."

  "That we are, Mister Tyler. That we are!" And Hal grinned at Ned's confusion as a horde of magnificent warriors swarmed onto the Golden Bough's deck. "Think you'll be able to make seamen of them, Mister Tyler?" soon as he had made his offing, Hal turned the bows into the north once more and sailed up the inland channel between Madagascar and the mainland. He was heading for Zanzibar, the centre of all trade on this coast. There he hoped to have further news of the progress of the Holy War on the Horn and, if he were fortunate, to learn something of the movements of the Gull of Moray.

  This was a settling-in time for the Amadoda. Everything aboard the Golden Bough was strange to them. None had ever seen the sea. They had believed the pinnaces to be the largest canoes ever conceived by man, and were overawed by the size of the ship, the height of her masts and the spread of her sails.

  Most were immediately smitten by seasickness, and it took many days for them to find their sea-legs. Their bowels were in a turmoil induced by the diet of biscuit and pickled meat. They hungered for their pots of millet porridge and their gourds of blood and milk. They had never been confined in such a small space and they pined for the wide savannah.

  They suffered from the cold, for even in this tropical sea the trade winds were cool and the warm Mozambique current many degrees below the temperature of the sun-scorched plains of the savannah. Hal ordered Althuda, who was in charge of the ship's stores, to issue bolts of sail canvas to them and Aboli showed them how to stitch petticoats and tarpaulin jackets for themselves.

  They soon forgot these tribulations when Aboli ordered a platoon of men to follow Jiri and Matesi and Kimatti aloft to set and reef sail. A hundred dizzy feet above the deck and the rushing sea, swinging on the great pendulum of the mainmast, for the first time in their lives these warriors who had each killed their lion were overcome by terror.

  Aboli climbed up to where they clung helplessly to the shrouds and mocked them. "Look at these pretty virgins. I thought at first there might be a man among them, but I see they should all squat when they piss." Then he stood upright on the swaying yard and laughed at them. He ran out to the end of it and there performed a stamping, leaping war dance. One of the Amadoda could abide his mockery no longer. he loosed his death grip on the rigging and shuffled out along the yard to where Aboli stood with hands on hips.

  "One man among them!" Aboli laughed and embraced him. During the next week three of the Amadoda fell from the rigging while trying to emulate this feat. Two dropped into the sea but before Hal could wear the ship around and go back to pick them up the sharks had taken them. The third man struck the deck and his was the most merciful end. After that there were no more casualties, and the Amadoda, each one accustomed since boyhood to climbing the highest trees for honey and birds" eggs, swiftly became adept top-mast men

  When Hal ordered bundles of pikes to be brought up from the hold and issued to the Amadoda they howled and danced with delight, for they were spearmen born. They delighted in the heavy-shafted pikes with their deadly iron heads. Aboli adapted their tactics and fighting formation to the Golden Bough's cramped deck spaces. He showed them how to form the classical Roman Testudo, their shields overlapping and locked like the scales of an armadillo. With this formation they could sweep the deck of an enemy ship irresistibly.

  Hal ordered them to set up a heavy mat of oakum under the forecastle break to act as a butt. Once the Amadoda had learned the weight and balance of the heavy pikes they could hurl them the length of the ship to bury the iron heads full length in the mat of coarse fibres. They plunged into these exercises with such gusto that two of their number were speared to death before Aboli could impress upon them that these were mock battles and should not be fought to the death.

  Then it was time to introduce them to the English longbow. Their own bows were short and puny in comparison and they looked askance at this six-foot weapon, dubiously tried the massive draw weight and shook their heads. Hal took the bow out of their hands and nocked an arrow. He looked up at the single black and white gull that floated high above the mainmast. "If I bring down one of those birds will you eat it raw?" he asked, and they roared with laughter at the joke.

  "I will eat the feathers as wellP shouted a big cocky one named Ingwe, the Leopard. In a fluid motion Hal drew and loosed. The arrow arced up, its flight curving across the wind, and they shouted with amazement as it pierced the gull's snowy bosom and the wide pinions folded. The bird tumbled down in a tangle of wings and webbed feet, and struck the deck at Hal's feet. An Amadoda snatched it up, and the transfixed carcass was passed from hand to hand amid astonished jabbering.

  "Do not ruffle the feathers," Hal cautioned them. "You will spoil Ingw
e's dinner for him."

  From that moment their love of the longbow was passionate and within days they had developed into archers of the first water. When Hal towed an empty water keg at a full cable's length behind the ship, the Amadoda. shot at it, first individually then in massed divisions like English archers. When the keg was heaved back on deck it was bristling like a porcupine's back, and they retrieved seven out of every ten arrows that had been shot.

  In one area alone the Amadoda. showed no aptitude. at serving the great bronze culver ins Despite all the threats and mockery that Aboli heaped upon them, he could not get them to approach one with anything less than superstitious awe. Each time a broadside boomed they howled, "It is witchcraft. It is the thunder of the heavens."

  Hal drew up a new watch-bill, in which the battle stations of the crew were rearranged to have the white seamen serving the batteries and the Amadoda handling the sails and making up the boarding-party.

  A standing bank of high clouds twenty leagues ahead of their bows marked the island of Zanzibar. A fringe of coconut palms ringed the white beach of the bay, but the massive walls of the fortress were even whiter, dazzling as the ice slopes of a glacier in the sunlight. The citadel had been built a century before by the Portuguese and until only a decade previously it had assured that nation's domination of the trade routes of the entire eastern shores of the African continent.

  Later the Omani Arabs, under their warrior king Ahmed El Grang the Left-handed, had sailed in with their war dhows, attacked the Portuguese and had driven out their garrison with great slaughter. This loss had signalled the beginning of the decline of Portuguese influence on the coast, and the Omanis had usurped their place as the foremost trading nation.

  Hal examined the fort through the lens of his telescope and noted the banner of Islam flying above the tower, and the serried ranks of cannon along the tops of the walls. Those weapons could hurl heated shot onto any hostile vessel that attempted to enter the bay.

  He felt a thrill of foreboding along his spine as he contemplated the fact that if he enlisted with the forces of the Prester, he would become the enemy of Ahmed El Grang. One day those huge cannon might be firing upon the Golden Bough. In the meantime he must make the most of this last opportunity to enter the Omani camp as a neutral and to gather all the intelligence that came his way.

  The harbour was crowded with small craft, mostly the dhows of the Mussulmen from India, Arabia and Muscat. There were two tall ships among this multitude. one flew a Spanish flag and the other was French, but Hal recognized neither.

  All these traders were drawn to Zanzibar by the riches of Africa, the gold of Sofala, the gum arabic, ivory, and the endless flood of humanity into its slave market. This was where seven thousand men, women and children were offered for sale each season when the trade winds brought the barques in from around the Cape of Good Hope and from all the vast basin of the Indian Ocean.

  Hal dipped his ensign in courtesy to the fortress, then conned the Golden Bough towards the anchorage under top sails. At his order the anchor splashed into the clear water and the tiny sliver of canvas was whipped off her and furled by Aboli's exuberant Amadoda. Almost immediately the ship was besieged by a fleet of little boats, selling every conceivable commodity from fresh fruit and water to small boys. These last were ordered by their masters to bend over the thwarts, lift their robes and display their small brown buttocks for the delectation of the seamen at the Golden Bough's rail.

  "Pretty jig-jig boys," the whore masters crooned in pidgin English.

  "Sweet bums like ripe mangoes."

  "Mister Tyler, have a boat lowered," Hal ordered. "I'm going ashore. I will take Althuda and Master Daniel with me and ten of your best men."

  They rowed across to the stone landing steps below the fortress walls, and Big Daniel went ashore first to plough open a passage through the throng of merchants, who swarmed down to the water's edge to offer their wares. On their last visit he had escorted Sir Francis ashore so he led the way. His seamen formed in a phalanx around Hal and they marched through the narrow streets.

  They passed through bazaars and crowded souks where the merchants displayed their stocks. Traders and seamen from the other vessels in the harbour picked over the piles of elephant tusks, and cakes of fragrant golden gum arabic, bunches of ostrich feathers and rhinoceros horns. They haggled over the price of the carpets from Muscat and the stoppered porcupine quills filled with grains of alluvial gold from Sofala and the rivers of the African interior. The slavemasters paraded files of human beings for potential buyers to examine their teeth, and palpate the muscles of the males or lift the aprons of the young females to consider their sweets.

  From this area of commerce, Big Daniel led them into a sector of the town where the buildings on each side of the lanes almost touched each other overhead and blocked out the light of day, The stench of human faeces from the open sewers, which ran down to the harbour, almost suffocated them.

  Big Daniel stopped abruptly in front of an arched mahogany door, carved with intricate Islamic motifs and studded with iron spikes, and heaved on the dangling bell rope Within minutes they heard the bolts on the far side being pulled back and the huge door creaked open. Half a dozen small brown faces peered out at them, boys and girls of mixed blood and of all ages between five and ten years.

  "Welcome! Welcome!" they chirruped in quaintly accented English.

  "The blessing of Allah the All Merciful be upon you, English milord. May all your days be golden and scented with wild jasmine."

  A little girl seized Hal by the hand and led him through into the interior courtyard. A fountain tinkled in the centre and the air was filled with the scent of frangipani and yellow tamarind flowers. A tall figure, clad in flowing white robes and gold-corded Arabian head-dress, rose from the pile of silk carpets where he had been reclining.

  "Indeed, I add a thousand welcomes to those of my children, my good Captain, and may Allah shower you with riches and blessing," he said, in a familiar and comforting Yorkshire accent. "I watched your fine ship anchor in the bay, and I knew you would soon call upon me." He clapped his hands, and from the back of the house emerged a line of slaves each bearing trays that contained coloured glasses of sherbet and coconut milk and little bowls of sweetmeats and roasted nuts.

  The consul sent Big Daniel and his seamen through to the servants" quarters at the rear of the house. "They will be given refreshment," he said.

  Hal cast Big Daniel a significant look, which the boatswain interpreted accurately. There would be no liquor in this Islamic household, but there would be women and the seamen had to be protected from themselves. Hal kept Althuda beside him. There might be call for him to draw up documents or to take down notes.

  The consul led them to a secluded corner of the courtyard. "Now, let me introduce myself, I am William Grey, His Majesty's consul to the Sultanate of Zanzibar."

  "Henry Courtney, at your service, sir."

  "I knew a Sir Francis Courtney. Are you by chance related?"

  "My father, sir."

  "Ah! An honourable man. Please give him my respects when next you meet."

  "Tragically he was killed in the Dutch war."

  "My condolences, Sir Henry. Please be seated." A pile of beautifully patterned silk carpets had been set close at hand for Hal. The consul sat opposite him. Once he was comfortable, a slave brought Grey a water-pipe. "A pipeful of Mang is a sovereign remedy for distempers of the liver and for the malaria which is a plague in these climes. Will you join me, sir?" Hal refused this offer, for he knew of the tricks the Indian hemp flowers played upon the mind, and the dreams and trances with which it could ensnare the smoker.

  While he puffed at his pipe, Grey questioned him cunningly as to his recent movements and his future plans, and Hal was polite but evasive. Like a pair of duel lists they sparred and waited for an opening. As the water bubbled in the tall glass bowl of the pipe and the fragrant smoke drifted across the courtyard Grey became more affable and e
xpansive.

  "You live in the style of a great sheikh." Hal tried a little flattery and Grey responded with gratification.

  "Would you find it difficult to believe that fifteen years ago I was merely a lowly clerk in the employment of the English East India Company? When my ship was wrecked on the corals of Sofala, I came ashore here as a castaway." He shrugged and made a gesture that was more Oriental than English. "As you say, Allah has smiled on me."

  "You have embraced Islam?" Hal did not allow his expression to show the repugnance he felt for the apostate. "I am a true believer in the one God, and in Muhammad his Prophet." Grey nodded. Hal wondered how much his decision to convert had rested on political and practical considerations. Grey, the Christian, would not have prospered in Zanzibar as Grey, the Mussulman, so obviously had.

  "Most Englishmen who call at Zanzibar have one thing in mind," Grey went on. "They have come here for trade, and usually to acquire a cargo of slaves. I regret that this is not the best season for slaving. The trade winds have brought in the dhows from Further India and beyond. They have already carried away the best specimens, and what is now left in the market is the dregs. However, in my own barracoon I have two hundred prime creatures, the best you will find in a thousand miles of sailing."