Released from restraint the Golden Bough spread her canvas and wheeled away. The waters rustling under her bows and her wake creaming behind her, she sped out from her ambush behind Dahlak Island.
The light was bright enough by now for Hal to make out clearly his quarry scattered across the wind-flecked waters ahead. He looked eagerly for the piled canvas of a tall ship among them, but saw only the single lateen sails of the Arabian dhows.
The closest of these vessels seemed unalarmed by the Golden Bough's appearance, her high pyramid of sails standing right across the entrance to Adulis Bay. They held their course and, as the frigate bore down upon the nearest of them, Hal saw the crew and passengers lining the dhow's side and peering across at them. Some had scampered up the stubby mast and were waving a greeting.
Hal stopped beside the helm and said to Ned Tyler, "Tis likely that they have seen only one other ship like ours in these waters and that's the Gull. They take us for an ally." He looked up to where his topmast men hung in the rigging, ready to handle the great mass of canvas. Then he looked back along the deck, where the gunners were fussing over the culver ins and the powder boys were scurrying up from below decks with their deadly burdens.
"Mister Fisher!" he called. "Load one battery on each side with ball, all the others with chain and grape, if you please." Big Daniel grinned, with black and rotten teeth, and knuckled his brow. Hal wanted simply to disable the enemy vessels, not sink or burn them. Even the smallest and poorest of those craft must be worth a great deal to the exchequer of His Most Christian Majesty, if he could capture them and deliver them to Admiral Senec at Mitsiwa. The battery on each side loaded with ball would be held in reserve.
The first dhow was so close ahead that Hal could see the expressions on the faces of her crew. They were a dozen or so sailors, dressed in ragged and faded robes and haik turbans. Most were still smiling and waving but the old man at the tiller in the stern was looking about wildly, as if to seek some providential escape from the tall hull that was racing down upon his little vessel.
"Break out our colours, if you please, Mister Tyler," Hal ordered, and watched the croix pott6e unfurl alongside the white Coptic cross of the Empire on its royal blue ground. The dismay on the faces of the dhow's crew as they saw the cross of their doom spread before their eyes was pathetic to behold and Hal gave his next order. "Run out your guns, Master Daniel!" The Golden Bough's gun ports crashed back and the hull reverberated to the rumble of the guns as the culver ins poked out their bronze muzzles.
"I'll pass the chase close to starboard. Fire as you bear, Master DanielP Big Daniel raced to the bows and took command of the number-one starboard battery. Hal saw him move swiftly from gun to gun to check their laying, inserting the wedges to lower the aim. They would be firing almost directly down into the dhow as they swept past her.
The Golden Bough rushed down silently upon the little craft, and Hal said quietly to the helm, "Slowly bring her up a point to larboard."
As they realized the menace of the gaping guns, the crew of the dhow fled from the rail and flung themselves down behind the stubby little mast or crouched behind the bales and casks that cluttered her deck.
The first battery fired together in one smoking, thunderous discharge and every shot struck home. The base of the mast was blown away in a storm of white wood splinters and her riggings crashed down to hang over side in an untidy tangle of rope and canvas. The old man at the tiller disappeared, as though turned to air by a wizard's spell. He left only a red smear on the torn planking.
"Avast firing!" Hal bellowed, to make himself heard in the ear-numbing aftermath of the gunfire. The dhow was crippled. her bows were already swinging away before the wind, the tiller shot away and her mast gone overboard. The Golden Bough left her rolling in her wake.
"Hold your course, Mister Tyler." The Golden Bough tore straight at the flotilla of small craft strewn across the blue waters ahead. These had seen the merciless treatment of the first dhow and the Imperial colours flying at the frigate's masthead, and now every one put his helm hard up and came around before the wind. Goose-winged, they fled before the Golden Bough's charge.
"Steer for the vessel dead ahead!" said Hal quietly, and Ned Tyler brought the frigate around a point. The dhow Hal had chosen was one of the largest in sight, and its open deck was crowded with men. There must be at least three hundred packed into her, Hal estimated. It was a short voyage across the narrow sea, and her captain had taken a risk. she was carrying far more troops than was prudent.
A thin shout of defiance reached Hal's ears as they closed the range. "Allah Akbar! God is great!" Steel war helmets glinted on the heads of the Omani troops, and they brandished their long, curved scimitars. There came an untidy volley of musket fire, aimed at the frigate, the popping of the jezails and puffs of gunsmoke along the dhow's side. A lead ball thudded into the mast above Hal's head.
"Every man aboard her is a soldier," Hal said aloud. He did not have to add that if they were allowed to reach the western shore of the sea they would march against Judith Nazet. "Give her a volley of ball.
Sink her, Master Daniel!"
The heavy iron cannonballs raked the troopship from deck to keel and split her like kindling under the axe. The sea rushed in through her torn belly. She capsized and the water was suddenly filled with the bobbing heads of struggling, drowning men.
"Steer for that vessel with the silver pennant." Hal did not look back but tore through the fleet like a barracuda into a shoal of flying fish. Not one could outrun him. With her mountain of white sails driving her, the Golden Bough flew upon them as if they were at anchor, and her guns crashed out in flame and smoke. Some of the little ships burst open and sank, others were left in the frigate's wake with mast snapped away and sails dragging alongside. Some of the sailors threw themselves overboard at the moment that the culver ins came to beat upon them. They preferred the sharks to the blast of guns.
Several ran for the nearest island and tried to anchor in the shoal waters where the Golden Bough could not follow. Others deliberately ran aground, and their crews dived overboard to swim and wade to the beach.
Only those ships furthest to the east and closest to the Arabian coast had the head start to run from the frigate's charge. Hal looked asterric and saw the water behind him dotted with the floundering hulls of those he had overtaken. Every mile he chased the survivors eastwards was a mile further from Mitsiwa.
"None of those will come back in a hurry!" he said grimly, as he watched them fly in confusion. "Mister Tyler, please be good enough to wear the ship around and lay her close hauled on the starboard tack."
This was the Golden Bough's best point of sailing. "There is no dhow built in all Arabia that can point higher into the wind than my darling can," Hal said aloud, as he saw twenty sail to windward trying to escape by beating up into the west. The Golden Bough tore back into the scattered fleet, and now some of the dhows dropped their wide triangular main sail as they saw him coming and screamed to Allah for mercy.
Hal checked the frigate as he came alongside each of these, bringing her head to the wind as he launched a boat and sent a prize crew, comprising one white seaman and six of his Amadoda, to board the surrendered ship. "If there is nothing of value in her cargo, take off her crew and put a torch to her."
By late that afternoon, Hal had five large dhows on tow behind the Golden Bough, and another seven sailing in company with him, under jury-rigging and with his prize crews aboard, as they headed back towards Mitsiwa. Every one of the captured vessels was heavily laden with vital provisions of war. Behind him, the sky was dulled with the smoke of the burning hulls and the sea was littered with the wreckage.
General Nazet sat on her black Arabian stallion and watched from the cliff tops as this untidy flotilla straggled into Mitsiwa Roads. At last she closed her telescope and remarked to Admiral Senec beside her, "I see why you call him El Tazar! This Englishman is a barracuda, indeed." Then she turned away her face so that he coul
d not see the thoughtful smile that softened her handsome features. El Tazar. It is a good name for him, she thought, and then, irrelevantly, another notion occurred to her. I wonder if he is as fierce a lover as he is a warrior. It was the first time since God had chosen her to lead his legions against the pagan that she had looked at any man through a woman's eyes.
Colonel Cornelius Schreuder dismounted in front of the spreading tent of shimmering red &C and yellow silk. A groom took his horse and he paused to look around the encampment. The royal tent stood on a small knoll overlooking Adulis Bay. Up here the sea breeze cooled the air and made it possible to breathe. On the plain below, where the army of Islam was bivouacked around the port of ZuIla, the stones crackled in the heat and shimmered in the mirage.
The bay was crowded with shipping, but the tall masts of the Gull of Moray dominated all others. The Earl of Cumbrae's ship had come in during the night, and now Schreuder heard his voice raised in argument within the silken tent. His lips twitched in a smile that lacked humour, and he adjusted the hang of the golden sword at his side before he strode to the flap of the tent. A tall subahdar bowed to him. All the troops of Islam had come to know him well. in the short time he had served with them, Schreuder's feats of daring had become legend in the Mogul's army. The officer ushered him into the royal presence.
The interior of the tent was commodious and sumptuously furnished.
The entire floor was thickly covered with gorgeously coloured silk carpets and silken draperies formed a double skin that kept out the sun's heat. The low tables were of ivory and rare wood, and the vessels upon them were of solid gold.
The Great Mogul's brother, the Maharajah Sadiq Khan Jahan, sat in the centre on a pile of silk cushions. He wore a tunic of padded yellow silk and striped pantaloons of red and gold. The slippers on his feet were scarlet with long, curling toes and buckles of gold. His turban was yellow and secured above his brow by an emerald the size of a walnut. He was close-shaven, with only a kohl line of fine moustache upon his petulant upper lip. Across his lap was a scimitar in a scabbard so richly encrusted with jewels that the sparkle of them pricked the eye. On one gloved hand he held a falcon, a magnificent Saker of the desert. He lifted the bird and kissed its beak as tenderly as if it had been a beautiful woman or rather, Schreuder thought bleakly, as if it were one of his pretty dancing boys.
A little behind him, on another pile of cushions, sat Ahmed El Grang, the Left Hand of Allah. He was so wide-shouldered as to seem deformed, and his neck was thick and corded with muscle. He wore a steel war helmet and his beard was dyed with henna, red as that of the Prophet. His massive chest was covered with a steel cuirass, and there were bracelets of steel upon his wrists. His brows beetled and his eyes were as cold and implacable as those of an eagle.
Behind this ill-matched pair sat a host of courtiers and officers, all richly dressed. Before the Prince knelt a translator who, his forehead pressed to the ground, was trying to keep up with the Buzzard's flood of invective.
The Buzzard stood before the Prince with his fists bunched on his hips. On his head was his beribboned bonnet, and his beard was more bushy and fiery than the dyed, barbered curls that covered El Grang's chin. He wore half armour above his plaid. He turned with relief when Schreuder entered the tent and made deep and respectful obeisance, first to the Prince and then to El Grang.
"Jesus love you, Colonel. I need you now to talk some sense into these two lovely laddies. This ape." " Curnbrae spurned the grovelling translator with his boot. "This ape is blethering away, and making a nonsense of what I'm telling them." He knew that Schreuder had spent many years in the Orient, and that Arabic was one of the languages in which he was fluent.
"Tell them that I came here to take prizes, not to match my Gull against a ship of equal force and have her shot away beneath my feed" the Buzzard instructed him. "They want me to do battle with the Golden Bough."
"Explain the matter to me more fully," Schreuder invited. "That way I may be able to assist you."
"The Golden Bough has arrived in these waters we must presume under the command of young Courtney," the Buzzard told him.
Schreuder's face darkened at the name. "Will we never be rid of him?"
"It seems not." Cumbrae chuckled. "In any event, he is flying the white cross of the Empire, and whaling into El Grang's transports with a vengeance. He has sunk and captured twenty-three sail in the last week, and no Mussulman captains will put out to sea while he is in the offing. Single-handed he is blockading the entire coast of Ethiopia." He shook his head in reluctant admiration. "From the Cliffs above Tenwera, I watched him fall upon a flotilla of El Grang's war dhows. He cut them to pieces. By Jesus, he handles his ship as well as Franky ever could. He sailed circles around those Mussulmen and shot them out of the water. The entire fleet of Allah the All Merciful is all bottled up in port, and El Grang is starved of reinforcements and stores. The Mussulmen call young Courtney El Tam, the Barracuda, and not one will go out to face him."
Then his grin faded and he looked lugubrious. "The Golden Bough is bright and clean of weed. My Gulf has been at sea for nigh on three years. Her timbers are riddled with shipworm. I would guess that, even on my best point of sailing, the Golden Bough has at least three knots of speed on me."
"What do you want me "to tell his highness!" Schreuder asked scornfully. "That you are afraid to meet young Courtney?" , "I am afraid of no man living or dead, for that matter. But there is no profit in it for me. Hal Courtney has nothing I want, but if it comes to a single-ship fight, he could do me and my Gull fearful damage. If they want me to fight him they will have to sweeten my cup a little."
Schreuder turned back to the Prince and explained this to him in carefully chosen diplomatic terms. Sadiq Khan Jahan stroked his falcon as he listened expressionlessly, and the bird ruffled out its feathers and hooded its yellow eyes. When Schreuder had finished, the Prince turned to El Grang. "What did you say they called this red-bearded braggart?"
"They call him the Buzzard, your highness," El Grang replied hoarsely.
"A name well chosen, for it seems he prefers to pick out the eyes of the weak and the dying and scavenge the leavings of fiercer creatures rather than to kill for himself. He is no falcon."
El Grang nodded agreement, and the Prince turned back to Schreuder. "Ask this noble bird of prey what payment he demands for fighting El Tazar."
"Tell the pretty boy I want a lakh of rupees in gold coin, and I want it in my hands before I leave port," Cumbrae replied, and even Schreuder gasped at the audacity. One lakh was a hundred thousand rupees. The Buzzard went on amiably, "You see, I have got the Prince with his bum in the air and his pantaloons round his ankles. I intend to tup him full length, but not the way he likes it."
Schreuder listened to the Prince's reply, then turned back to Cumbrae. "He says that you could build twenty ships like the Gull for a lakh."
"That may be so, but it won't buy me a pair of balls to replace the ones that Hal Courtney shoots away."
The Prince smiled at this response. "Tell the Buzzard he must have lost them long ago, but he makes a fine eunuch. I could always find a place for him in my harem."
The Buzzard guffawed at the insult, but shook his head. "Tell the pretty pederast, no gold and the Buzzard flies away."
The Prince and El Grang whispered to each other, gesticulating. At last, they seemed to reach a decision.
"I have another proposition that the bold captain might find more to his taste. The risk he takes will not be so great, but he will receive the lakh he demands." The Prince rose to his feet, and all his court fell upon their knees and pressed their foreheads to the ground. "I will leave Sultan Ahmed El Grang to explain this to you in secrecy."
He retired through the curtains at the back of the tent, and all his retinue went with him, leaving only the two Europeans and the Sultan in the cavern of silk.
El Grang gestured to both men to come closer and to sit in front of him. "What I have to say is for the ears of
no other living soul." While he arranged his thoughts, he fingered the old lance wound that ran in a ridge of raised scar tissue from below his ear, down under the high collar of his tunic. half his vocal cords had been severed by that old injury. He began to speak, in his hoarse, wheezing voice. "The Emperor was slain before Suakin and his infant son Iyasu has inherited the crown of Prester John. His armies were in disarray when there arose a female prophet who proclaimed that she had been chosen by the Christian God to lead his armies. She came down from the mountains leading fifty thousand fighting men and carrying before her a religious talisman that they call the Tabernacle of Mary. Her armies, inspired by religious fanaticism, were able to check us at Mitsiwa."
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.
Wilbur Smith - C09 Birds Of Prey Page 74