Power of the Sword

by Wilbur Smith

  ‘When they have grown into really big thick schmucks, we send them to Berlin where they join the Nazi storm troopers.’

  They gaped at him, not believing what they had heard and Shasa ended his recital, ‘And they teach them to say—’ he sprang to attention and raised his right hand ‘Heil – what is that fellow’s name again?’

  The sergeant let out a bellow and swung a wild right-handed punch. Shasa ducked, but unsteady with champagne he lost his balance and went down with a crash pulling the tablecloth with him, and the glasses shattered. The champagne bottle rolled across the floor, spurting wine, and two storm troopers jumped on top of Shasa and rained punches on his head and upper body.

  David leaped up to go to his assistance, and a storm trooper grabbed his arms from behind. David wrenched his right arm free, swung round and belted a beautiful righthander into the trooper’s nose. The man howled and released David to clutch his injured organ, but instantly two other troopers seized David from behind and twisted his arms up behind his back.

  ‘Leave him alone,’ screamed Mathilda Janine and with a flying leap landed on the shoulders of one of the troopers. She knocked his cap over his eyes and grabbed a double handful of his hair. ‘Leave David, you pig!’ She tugged at his hair with all her strength and the trooper spun in a circle trying to dislodge her.

  Women were screaming, and furniture was shattering. The proprietor stood in the doorway of his kitchen, wringing his hands, his face working pitifully.

  ‘Shasa Courtney,’ Tara yelled furiously. ‘You are behaving like a hooligan. Stop this immediately.’

  Shasa was half buried under a pile of brown uniforms and swinging fists and made no audible reply. The storm troopers had been taken by surprise, but now they rallied swiftly. Street fighting was their game.

  Mathilda was dislodged with a heave of broad brown-shirted shoulders and sent flying into the corner. Three troopers jerked Shasa to his feet, arms twisted up behind his back, and hustled him towards the kitchen door. David received the same treatment, a trooper on each of his arms. The one with the injured nose following close behind, bleeding down his shirt front and cursing bitterly.

  The proprietor stood aside hurriedly, and they ran Shasa and David through the kitchens, scattering chefs and serving maids, and out into the alley behind the coffee house, knocking over the garbage cans as Shasa struggled ineffectually.

  None of the storm troopers spoke. There was no need to give orders. They were professionals engaged in the sport they loved. Expertly they pinned the two victims to the brick wall of the alley, while a trooper went to work on each of them, switching punches from face to body and back to the face, grunting like pigs at the trough in time to the rhythm of their blows.

  Mathilda Janine had followed them out and again she tried to rush to David’s defence, but a casual shove sent her reeling back, tripping and falling amongst the garbage cans, and the trooper returned to his task.

  Tara was in the kitchen shouting angrily at the café proprietor. ‘Call the police, this instant. Do you hear, call the police. They are killing two innocent people out there.’

  But the proprietor made a helpless gesture. ‘No use, Fräulein. The police will not come.’

  Shasa doubled over and they let him fall. Then all three of them started in with the boot. The steel-shod jackboots crashed into his belly and back and flanks.

  The storm trooper working on David was sweating and panting with exertion. Now he stepped back, measured the shot carefully, and sent a final upper cut smashing into David’s dangling head. It took David full in the mouth and his head jerked backwards, cracking against the brickwork and they let him collapse, face down onto the paving stones.

  David lay slack and unmoving, making no effort to avoid the boots that smashed into his inert body, and the storm troopers tired of the sport. It was no fun to kick somebody who was not writhing and doubling up and screaming for mercy. Swiftly they gathered up their caps and banners and in a group trotted away, past the two police constables who were standing at the mouth of the alley trying to look disinterested.

  Mathilda Janine dropped on her knees beside David and lifted his battered head into her lap.

  ‘Speak to me, Davie,’ she wailed, and Tara came out of the kitchen with a wet dishcloth and stooped over Shasa, trying not to show her anxiety.

  It was some minutes before there were signs of life from the victims. Then Shasa sat up and put his head between his knees, shaking it groggily. David pulled himself up on one elbow, and spat out a tooth in a drool of blood-stained spittle.

  ‘Are you all right, Davie my boy?’ Shasa asked through crushed lips.

  ‘Shasa, don’t ever come to my rescue again,’ David croaked. ‘Next time you’ll get me killed.’

  Mathilda Janine helped them to their feet, but now that Shasa had revived, Tara was bleak and disapproving.

  ‘That was the most despicable display I have ever seen, Shasa Courtney. You were obscene and rowdy, and you asked for everything that you got.’

  ‘That’s a bit hard, old girl,’ Shasa protested, and he and David leaned heavily on each other as they limped down the alley. One of the constables waiting at the corner snarled at them as they passed.

  ‘What did he say?’ Shasa asked Tara.

  ‘He says, quite rightly,’ she translated frostily, ‘that next time you will be arrested for public violence.’

  As the two of them made their painful way back down the Ku-damm, bloodied and battered, Mathilda Janine hovering close at hand and Tara marching a dozen paces ahead of them, trying to disassociate herself, they drew the quick horrified glances of passers-by who looked away immediately and then hurried on.

  As the four of them rode up in the elevator of the Bristol, Mathilda Janine asked thoughtfully, ‘That story of yours, Shasa, you know about growing things on the Mount of Olives. I didn’t understand it. Tell me, what is a schmuck?’

  David and Shasa doubled over with agonized mirth, clutching their injuries. ‘Please, Matty, don’t say anything more,’ David pleaded. ‘It hurts so when I laugh.’

  Tara turned on her sternly. ‘You just wait until I tell Daddy about your part in all this, young lady. He is going to be livid.’ She was right, he was, but not as furious as Centaine Courtney.

  It turned out that Shasa had broken four ribs and a collar bone and ever afterwards he maintained that his absence from the team accounted directly for the Argentinian victory over them by ten goals to four in the polo quarter-finals two days later. Apart from two missing teeth, David’s injuries were superficial contusions, sprains and lacerations.

  ‘Not too much harm done,’ Centaine conceded at last. ‘At least there will be no publicity – one of those horrid little newspaper men writing gloating spiteful articles.’ She was wrong. Amongst the clientele at the Kranzler coffee house had been the South African correspondent for Reuters, and his article was picked up by the South African Jewish Times. It played heavily upon Shasa Courtney’s part in defending his Jewish friend, the bronze medalist sprinter, and when they finally got back to Cape Town, Shasa found himself a minor celebrity. Both Shasa and David were asked to speak at a luncheon of the Friends of Zion.

  ‘The law of unforeseen consequence,’ Blaine pointed out to Centaine.

  ‘How many Jewish voters do you suppose there are on the rolls?’ Centaine squinted slightly as she calculated, and Blaine chuckled.

  ‘You truly are incorrigible, my sweeting.’

  The boxing hall in the great complex of the Reichssportfeld was filled to capacity for the final bout in the light heavyweight division, and there were ranks of brown-uniformed storm troopers lining each side of the aisle from the dressing-rooms, forming an honour guard for the contenders as they came down to the ring.

  ‘We thought it might be necessary to have them,’ Colonel Boldt explained to Heidi Kramer as they sat in their ringside seats, and he glanced significantly at the four judges. All of them were Germans, all members of the party, and it
had taken some delicate negotiation and trading on Colonel Boldt’s part to arrange it so.

  Manfred De La Rey was the first contender to enter the ring. He wore green silk shorts and a green vest with the springbok emblem on his chest and his hair was freshly cropped into a golden stubble. He swept a quick glance around the ringside seats as he clasped both gloved fists over his head to acknowledge the tremendous burst of applause that greeted him. The German sporting public had accepted him as one of their heroes; this evening he was the champion of white racial supremacy.

  He picked out Heidi Kramer almost immediately, for he knew where to expect her, but he did not smile. She looked back at him as seriously, but he felt the strength flow into his body, absorbed from her presence. Then suddenly his gaze switched away from her, and he scowled, rage mingling with the strength of his love.

  That woman was here. He always thought of Centaine Courtney as ‘that woman’. She sat only three seats away from his beloved Heidi. Her dense dark plume of hair was unmistakable, and she wore yellow silk and diamonds, elegant and poised; he hated her so strongly that he could taste it in his mouth, like gall and alum.

  ‘Why does she always come to hound me?’ he wondered. She had been there in the crowd more than once during the other matches he had fought, and always that tall arrogant man, with large nose and ears, sat beside her.

  Centaine was watching him with that disconcerting enigmatic expression in her dark eyes that he had come to recognize so well. He turned his back on her deliberately, trying to convey the full force of his contempt and hatred, and watched Cyrus Lomax climb into the ring across from where he stood.

  The American had a well-muscled body the colour of milk chocolate, but his magnificent head was all African, like one of those antique bronze castings of an Ashanti prince, with deep-domed brow and wide-spaced eyes, thick lips sculpted into the shape of an Assyrian war bow, and a broad flat nose. He wore the red, white and blue stars and stripes on his chest and there was an air of menace about him.

  ‘This one is the worst you will ever meet,’ Uncle Tromp had warned Manfred. ‘If you can beat him, you can beat them all.’

  The referee called them to the centre of the ring and announced them and the crowd roared at Manfred’s name. He felt strong and indomitable as he went back to his corner. Uncle Tromp smeared Vaseline on his cheeks and eyebrows and slipped the red gumshield into his mouth.

  He slapped Manfred’s shoulder, an open-handed stinging blow that was like the goad to the bull and he hissed in his ear.

  ‘Fast as a mamba! Brave as a ratel!’ Manfred nodded, mouthing the bulky rubber shield, and went out to the chime of the gong, into the hot white glare of lights. The American came to meet him, stalking him like a dark panther.

  They fought matched and equal, they fought close and hard, blows with the power to maim and stun slipping by just a shade wide, sensing each other’s intention with almost supernatural concentration and shifting the head, pulling back, ducking, using the spring of the ropes, blocking with forearm and glove and elbows, neither ever quite connecting but both of them hostile and quick and dangerous.

  The gong tolled the rounds – five, six and seven – Manfred had never been forced to fight this long. Always his victories had come swiftly, ending in that sudden barrage of blows that smashed his opponent into the canvas. However, the hard training that Uncle Tromp had imposed upon him had given him long wind, and toughened his legs and arms. He felt strong and invulnerable still, and he knew it had to come soon. He had only to wait it out. The American was tiring. His punches no longer snapped with quite the same velocity. The mistake must come and Manfred waited for it, containing his passionate hunger to see the American’s blood.

  It came halfway through the seventh round.

  The American threw one of those straight hissing lefts, and not even seeing it, sensing it with animal instinct, Manfred reared back pulling in his chin and the blow brushed his face but stopped short.

  Manfred was poised on the balls of his feet, with his weight back but ready to move forward, his right arm was cocked, the fist clenched like a blacksmith’s hammer, and the American was a hundredth part of a second slow on the recovery. Seven hard rounds had tired him and he dragged a fraction, and his right side was open. Manfred could not see the opening, it was too minute, too fleeting, but again that instinct triggered him and experience guided his arm; he knew by the set of the American’s shoulders, the angle of his arm and the cock of his head where the opening was.

  It was too quick for conscious decision, and the punch was already launched before he could think but the decision was made instinctively and it was to end it in one. Not his usual two-handed, swarming battering finish, but the single stroke, decisive and irretrievable, that would end it all.

  It began in the great elastic muscles of his calves and thighs, accelerating like a stone in the swing of a slingshot through the twist of his pelvis and spine and shoulders, all of it channelled into his right arm like a wide roaring river trapped in a narrow canyon; it went through the American’s guard and burst into the side of his dark head with a force that made Manfred’s teeth clash together in his own skull. It was everything he had, all his training and experience, all his strength, all his guts and his heart and every finely tuned muscle was behind that blow, and it landed solid and cleanly.

  Manfred felt it go. He felt the bones of his right hand break, snapping and crackling like dry twigs, and the pain was a white electric thing that flared back up his arm and filled his head with flames. But in the pain was triumph and soaring joy for he knew it was over. He knew he had won.

  The flames of agony cleared from his vision and he looked to see the American crumpled on the canvas at his feet, but the wild soaring of his heart stopped and turned to a plunging stone of despair. Cyrus Lomax was still on his feet. He was hurt and staggering, his eyes dull and sightless, his legs filled with cotton waste and his skull with molten lead, tottering on the very brink, but he was still on his feet.

  ‘Kill him!’ screamed the crowd. ‘Kill him!’

  Manfred could see how little it needed, just one more with the right hand, for the American was out on his feet – just one more. But there was no more, nothing left. The right hand was gone.

  The American was reeling about drunkenly, bouncing off the ropes, knees sagging and then by some immense effort of will recovering again.

  ‘The left hand.’ Manfred summoned it all, everything that remained. ‘I’ve got to take him with the left.’ And through his own agony he went after him again.

  He threw the left hand, going for the head, but the American smothered it with an uncoordinated forward lunge, and he threw both arms around Manfred’s shoulders and clinched him, clinging to him like a drowning man. Manfred tried to throw him off and the crowd noise was a berserk thunder, the referee shouting above it ‘Break! Break!’ but the American held on just long enough.

  When the referee got them apart, Cyrus Lomax’s eyes were sighted and focused; and he backed away in front of Manfred’s desperate efforts to land with the left hand – and the bell rang.

  ‘What is it, Manie?’ Uncle Tromp seized him and guided him to his corner. ‘You had him beaten. What went wrong?’

  ‘My right,’ Manfred mumbled through the pain, and Uncle Tromp touched it, just above the wrist and Manfred almost screamed. The hand was ballooning, the swelling spreading up the arm even as they stared at it.

  ‘I’m throwing in the towel,’ Uncle Tromp whispered. ‘You can’t fight with that hand!’

  Manfred snarled at him, ‘No!’ His eyes were fierce and yellow as he looked across the ring to where they were working on the dazed American, cold compresses and sal volatile, slapping his cheeks, talking to him, talking him round.

  The bell rang for the start of the eighth round and Manfred went out and saw with despair the new strength and coordination with which the American was moving. He was still afraid and uncertain, backing off, waiting for Manfred’s attack,
but getting stronger every minute, obviously puzzled at first by Manfred’s failure to use the right hand again, and then realization dawning in his eyes.

  ‘You all gone,’ he growled in Manfred’s ear in the next clinch. ‘No right hand, white boy. I’m going to eat you up now!’ His punches started hurting, and Manfred began to back away. His left eye was closing up and he could taste the coppery salt of blood in his mouth.

  The American shot out a hard straight left-hander, and instinctively Manfred blocked with his right, catching the blow on his glove; the pain was so intense that blackness shaded his vision and the earth tipped under him, and the next time he was afraid to block with the right and the American’s punch got through and slammed into his injured eye. He could feel the swelling hanging on his face like a bloated blood-sucking tick, a fat purple grape that closed the eye completely and the bell rang to end the eighth round.

  ‘Two more rounds,’ Uncle Tromp whispered to him, compressing the swollen eye with an ice-pack. ‘Can you see it out, Manie?’ Manfred nodded and went out to the gong for the ninth and the American came eagerly to meet him – too eagerly, for he dropped his right hand for the big punch and Manfred beat him to it, slamming in a hard lefthander that jolted Lomax back on his heels.

  If he had had the use of his right hand Manfred could have taken him yet again, following up in that raging cross storm of blows that no opponent could survive, but the right was maimed and useless, and Lomax ducked away, backing off, recovering and circling in again, working on Manfred’s eye, trying to cut it open and with the last punch of the round he succeeded. He slashed the fat purple sac that closed the eye with a glancing left, catching it with the inside of the glove, ripping it open with the cross hatching of the laces, and it burst. A sheet of blood poured down Manfred’s face and splashed over his chest.