by Wilbur Smith
A bolt of vivid blue lightning tore open the clouds and, for an instant, turned the night to brilliant noonday. In that moment they saw the sweep of the bay before them, its surface churned to confusion by the gale, boiling and foaming, leaping and spouting white. Then the blackness closed over them again and the thunder crashed down in an avalanche of sound that numbed their eardrums.
‘The longboat is still there.’ Hal shouted his relief above the wind. The stark, fleeting image of the boat was imprinted upon his vision. ‘Hail them, Aboli!’
‘Seraph!’ Aboli bellowed into the night, and heard the reply faint upon the storm.
‘Ahoy!’ It was Alf Wilson’s voice, and they started down the dunes towards it. Hal’s burden, which had weighed so lightly at the beginning of the descent, now bowed him over, but he refused to relinquish it. They reached the foot of the dunes in a close group. Aboli opened the shutter of the lantern and shone the feeble yellow beam ahead.
‘On guard!’ he shouted a desperate warning, as he saw in the light that they were surrounded by the dark figures of men or beasts, he could not be certain which. ‘Defend yourselves!’ he cried, and they threw open their cloaks and drew their blades, instinctively forming a ring, back to back, facing outwards, the points of their levelled weapons forming a circle of steel.
Then lightning broke over them again, a blinding bolt that split the low clouds, lit the beach and the gale-beaten waters. In its light they saw a phalanx of menacing shapes charging down upon them. The lightning flashed on the naked blades they wielded, on the clubs and spears they brandished, and for a moment it revealed their faces. They were all Hottentots, not a Dutch face among them.
Tom felt a rush of superstitious dread as he saw the man coming at him. He was as hideous as a thing from a nightmare. Long tresses of black hair writhed in the wind, like serpents, about the terrible face, a livid scar slashed through the bloated nose and purple lips, the mouth was twisted and deformed, drooling saliva, and the eyes flashed fiercely as the creature rushed at him.
Then the darkness closed over them all again, but Tom had seen the man’s sword raised over his head, and he anticipated the stroke, twisting aside his shoulders and ducking under it. He heard the blade hiss past his ear, and the explosive grunt of the effort his attacker put into the blow.
All Aboli’s training came to the fore. Tom went smoothly on the riposte, lunging for the sound of the man’s breathing, and felt his blade sink into living flesh, a sensation he had never experienced before, which startled him. His victim shouted with pain, and Tom felt a surge of savage joy. He recoiled and shifted his feet, quick as a cat, and lunged blindly again. Once more he felt the hit, the soggy slide of steel into flesh, then the clash as the point struck bone. The man squealed, and for the first time in his life Tom rode the wild exhilaration of battle lust.
The lightning flamed across the heavens, and Tom saw his victim reel away, his sword dropped into the sand. He was clutching at his deformed face. His cheek was laid open to the bone, and the blood was black as tar in the blue light, pouring in a sheet down his chin and splashing over his chest.
Tom saw in the same flash of lightning that both his father and Aboli had killed: their victims were down, one kicking and convulsing in the sand, the other curled into a ball clutching his wound with both hands, his mouth open in a silent cry of agony.
Big Daniel was engaged, blade to blade with a tall, sinewy figure naked to the waist, body black and shiny as an eel-skin. But the rest of the attackers were backing away, repulsed by the vigour of the little knot of defenders.
Darkness shut down over them like the slamming of a door, and Tom felt Aboli’s fingers close on his upper arm, his voice close to his ear: ‘Back to the boat, Klebe. Keep together.’ They ran blindly through the soft sand, bumping into each other.
‘Is Tom with us?’ His father’s voice was harsh with concern for him.
‘Here, Father!’ he shouted.
‘Thank God! Danny?’
‘Here!’ Big Daniel must have killed his man, for his voice was close and clear.
‘Seraph!’ Hal bellowed. ‘On me!’
‘Seraph!’ Alf’s voice acknowledged the order, and the lightning flared again to reveal it all. The four of them were still a hundred paces from where the longboat lay at the edge of the roaring sea. Led by Alf, the eight men waiting with it were running to join the fight, brandishing their pikes, cutlasses and boarding axes. But the pack of Hottentots had rallied and like hunting dogs were baying at their heels.
Tom glanced over his shoulder and saw the man that he had wounded had recovered and was charging along at the head of them. Though his face was a mask of blood he was slashing the air with his sword, and screeching a war-cry in a strange language. He had singled out Tom, and was rushing directly at him.
Tom tried to estimate how many there were. Perhaps nine or ten, he guessed, but the darkness closed down again before he could be sure. His father and Alf Wilson were shouting to keep contact with each other, and now the two groups came together. Immediately Hal called, ‘Meet them! Skirmish line!’
Even in darkness they smoothly executed the manoeuvre they had practised so often on the Seraph’s deck. Shoulder to shoulder they stood to meet the attack, which burst into them like a wave out of the night. There was the clatter and clash of metal on metal and the shouts and curses of men struggling together. Then the lightning flared again.
Hannah staggered to the edge of the milkwood grove with fifteen men. The night had been too long for them, the fury of the storm debilitating, and the boredom of the ambush had overcome them. They had crept away into the grove to find a spot out of the wind in which to curl up and sleep. Then the shouting and the sounds of battle had roused them. They had seized their weapons and now poured out from among the trees.
The lightning revealed the struggling, evenly matched men, close to the water’s edge where the empty longboat lay. In the same flash, Hannah saw Henry Courtney clearly. He was in the first rank of the fight, his face turned towards her, his cutlass lifted high in his right hand then slashing down at the head of one of the Hottentots.
‘Dis hom!’ Hannah screeched. ‘It’s him! Ten thousand guilders for the picking. Kom kerels! Come, lads!’ She waved the pitchfork with which she was armed, and charged down the dune. The men, who had hesitated at the edge of the grove, were galvanized by her example. Now they raced down behind her, a howling, shrieking mob.
Dorian was alone in the longboat. He had been curled up asleep on the floorboards when the fighting started, but now he crawled to the bows and knelt behind the falconet. He was wide-eyed with sleep, but in the lightning he had seen Tom and his father beset by the enemy, and the new threat rushing down upon them from out of the dunes.
During battle practice on the Seraph, Aboli had shown Tom how to swing and aim the falconet in its swivel seating, and how to fire it. Dorian had watched avidly and begged for a chance to try it. As always, he had been met with the infuriating answer, ‘You are too small. When you are older.’
Now was the chance he had been denied, and Tom and his father needed him. He reached for the length of burning match in the tub of sand below the gun. Alf Wilson had lit it and placed it at hand for just such an emergency. He took it in one hand, seized the long monkey-tail of the falconet with the other and swivelled it in the direction of the screams and shouts of the mob charging down the dunes. He looked over the barrel but could not see the sights of the gun, nor any glimpse of his target in the darkness.
Then the thunder crashed directly overhead, and the beach was lit brilliantly by the lightning. Directly under his barrel Dorian saw them coming, led by a witch from mythology, a terrible female creature waving a pitchfork, long grey hair streaming out behind her, her white dugs swinging and flopping out of the bodice of her gown, a face ravaged by age and debauchery, screaming. Dorian pressed the burning match to the touchhole of the falconet.
Twenty feet of flame shot from its muzzle, and a buc
ketful of grapeshot, each ball the size of a man’s eye, was hurled down the beach. The range was just sufficient for the blast to reach its optimum spread. Hannah caught the full brunt of it: a dozen lead balls shattered her chest, and one struck her in the centre of the forehead, taking the top off her skull like the shell off an egg. She was flung backwards into the white sand with another six of her troop down around her. The rest staggered with the shock and disruption of the air around them. Three of those still on their feet howled with terror and fled back towards the protection of the grove. The others were stunned, and milled in confusion, stumbling over their dead companions, some bleeding from their wounds, uncertain which way to turn.
The burning wad from the falconet was blown into the long windrow of dry driftwood at the top of the beach. The flames took hold swiftly and, fanned by the wind, burned brightly, showering blue sparks from the salt crystals, which lit the beach with a wavering, flickering light.
The fight swung back and around. Although they had reduced the odds against them with pike and blade, Hal’s men were still heavily outnumbered. Hal had three men against him, circling him like a pack of hyena harassing a black-maned lion. He was fighting for his life and could not even glance in the direction of his son.
Jan Oliphant was intent on his revenge for the gaping slash across his cheek, and he went after Tom, swearing and shouting his rage, using only the edge of his sabre with wild cuts and overhead slashes. Tom gave ground before him, outmatched in height, reach and strength by the burly Hottentot. For these fatal seconds Tom was on his own: he could count on no help from Aboli or Daniel, or even his father. His manhood would have its full flowering this night, or he would die on these blood-soaked sands. He was afraid, but not unmanned by his fear. Rather, it gave power to his wrist and sword arm. He found something within him that he had not known was there until this moment.
He fell naturally into the rhythmic fighting grace that Aboli had instilled into him through all these years of training. Now that the flames from the burning driftwood were lighting the beach, he found his confidence growing. He felt the steel in his arm, as he realized that the brute he faced was a brawler and not a swordsman, although the power in his swinging blade was enormous – it was as irresistible as a landslide. Tom did not make the mistake of trying to match it. Instead, he anticipated each wild, hacking stroke before it was launched. There was no subtlety in the way Jan Oliphant signalled his intention with his glaring eyes and contorted blood-smeared face, or in how he moved his feet and opened his shoulders to make the stroke.
As it came whistling down at Tom’s head, he reached out and touched it with his own blade, never attempting to stop it in the air, lightly deflecting it, so that it flew harmlessly an inch past his head. Each time Tom did this Jan Oliphant’s rage swelled until it overwhelmed him. He held his sword high above his head with both hands and rushed straight at Tom, roaring like a bull seal in the rut. He made no attempt to cover himself from any counter-stroke, and his body was wide open.
Hal winged one of his antagonists, hitting him high in the right shoulder with his riposte. The man screamed and reeled back, dropping his sword, clutching at his wound. The other two Hottentots fighting on each side of him lost heart and dropped back. Hal had an instant of respite to glance around in the flickering light of the flames.
His heart froze in his chest as he saw Tom stand full in the path of the towering Hottentot captain. They were too far for Hal to intervene before Jan Oliphant charged home. A shout of warning and despair rose in his throat, but he choked it back. It would have served only to distract Tom.
Tom was as pale as the sand beneath his feet, but his face was set and hard with determination, his eyes bright and intent, no glimmer of fear in them as he sighted over the weaving point of his sabre. Hal expected him to drop back before the charge of the huge beast of a man bearing down on him. The set of his shoulders and the balance of his slim body signalled just that intention. But suddenly his left foot swung forward and he launched himself en flèche, like an arrow from a bow, straight at Jan Oliphant’s throat. The big man had no time to bring down his guard or turn aside from the thrust. Tom’s point caught him precisely in the hollow at the base of his neck, an inch above where his collarbones met. It flew deep, a handspan through Jan Oliphant’s throat, found the juncture of two vertebrae in his spine and severed them cleanly. The steel drove on until, smeared pink with blood in the firelight, it sprang out a foot from the nape.
The raised sword fell from Jan Oliphant’s nerveless fingers, and his limbs flew wide, for a moment forming a dark crucifix against the flames. Then he fell backwards, hitting the sand with all his slack, lifeless weight. Tom’s blade jerked free, plucked from the dead man’s throat by his own weight and momentum, and the air from Jan Oliphant’s lungs was driven out through his punctured windpipe in an explosive sigh by the force of his fall. It burst from the wound in his throat in a tall pink feather of froth.
There was a long moment when every man on the beach froze, and stared at the grotesque corpse. Then one of the Hottentots facing Hal wailed with despair, turned and fled up the dunes. In an instant the others were racing after him in panic, leaving their dead and wounded where they had fallen.
Tom was still staring down at the man he had killed. His face crumpled and he started to shake with shock and the release of fear and rage. Hal went to him immediately and placed an arm around his shoulders. ‘Well fought, lad,’ he said, and hugged him.
‘I killed him!’ Tom whispered, in tones of disbelief.
‘Before he killed you,’ Hal told him. He looked around at his men scattered along the beach.
‘Which of you fired the falconet?’ he shouted against the wind. ‘That saved us all.’
‘Not me.’
‘Nor me.’
All heads turned towards the longboat, and they stared at the small figure in the bows.
‘Not you, Dorian?’ Hal asked, in wonder.
‘Yes, Father.’ Dorian held up the smoking slow-match in his hand.
‘Two cubs of the old lion,’ said Aboli softly. ‘But now we should go, before the garrison from the castle comes to that cannon and the fire.’ He gestured at the piles of burning driftwood.
‘Did we lose anyone?’ Hal shouted.
‘I saw Dick Foster go down,’ Alf Wilson shouted back, and went to kneel beside the body. There was a fearsome wound in the chest. Alf felt for the carotid artery in the man’s throat beside his windpipe. ‘He’s gone.’
‘Any others?’ Hal asked.
‘No, only the one,’ Alf replied.
Hal felt a lift of relief. It could have been much worse – he could have lost a son, or a dear friend. ‘Right, then. Get Dick into the boat. We’ll give him a Christian burial when we get to sea.’ He picked up the leather sack that held his father’s remains.
‘What shall we do with this trash?’ Big Daniel kicked one of wounded Hottentots, and the man groaned. ‘We should slit their throats.’
‘Leave them. Don’t waste time.’ Hal looked around and saw that half of his crew had shallow cuts and sword nicks, but none had bothered to remark on it. This was the first time he had seen them fight. They’re a good hard crew indeed, he thought, with satisfaction. They will give good account against Jangiri, or any other foe.
‘Back to the boat!’ he ordered, and four men picked up Dick Foster’s body, handling it with respect, and laid it on the floorboards. Hal placed the leather bag beside it, then jumped over the stern to take his place at the tiller. The men seized hold of the boat and ran it down over the sands as easily as if it were a coracle. The bows were thrown high by the first wave and they leaped aboard and seized the oars.
‘Heave away!’ Hal shouted, and the next storm-driven wave crashed over the bows, tumbling aboard so that they were flooded knee-deep.
‘Heave!’ Hal exhorted them, and they shot forward, climbing at an impossible angle up the steep slope of the next wave. They reached the crest and hovered
a moment on the very brink of capsizing end over end, then dropped forward and hit the trough with a crash.
‘Heave!’ Hal roared, and they shot out into the clear where the waves were tall but not steep enough to up-end them. Half the men set aside their oars and began to bail her out, while the others rowed hard for the distant Seraph.
‘Dorian!’ Hal called the boy to him. ‘Sit by me.’ He spread the wing of his cloak over his son and under its cover hugged him close. ‘How did you learn to fire the falconet?’
‘Tom showed me,’ Dorian said uncertainly. ‘Did I do wrong?’
‘You did well.’ Hal hugged him harder. ‘God knows, you could not have done better.’
Hal carried the leather sack into the stern cabin. The two boys followed him, sea-water pouring from their clothing onto the deck. The Seraph plunged and rolled at her anchor cables as the storm lashed her mercilessly.
Hal laid the sack and its precious burden on the deck beside the coffin. The screws that held down the lid were already loosened and it took only a few turns to free them. Hal lifted the lid and laid it aside. Carefully he placed the leather sack in the chest. He had to turn and angle it to get it to fit, then he packed raw oakum around his father’s corpse, to prevent the fragile bones being shaken and broken during the long voyage ahead. Tom helped him replace the lid. He took the turn-screw from his father’s hands. ‘Let me have the honour, Father.’
‘You have earned it,’ Hal agreed. ‘Both of you. Let Dorian help you.’
He handed the younger boy another turn-screw from the tool chest, and watched them secure the coffin lid.
‘We will give your grandfather a Christian service when we lay him in the stone sarcophagus in the crypt at High Weald that I prepared for him twenty years ago,’ he told them, and wondered if all his sons would be together on that day. He put the gloomy doubt from his mind, as he watched them finish the task. ‘Thank you,’ he said simply, when they had finished. ‘Go and change into dry clothes. Then see if, in this foul weather, the cook still has a fire burning in his galley and can give you something hot to eat and drink.’