Monsoon
Page 39
While Aboli and the three seamen scrambled over the battlements, Tom cast a quick look around the walls and the courtyard of the fort. Through the thick billows of dust and smoke he saw the indistinct shapes of the Arabs stumbling away from the ruins of the gateway. Along the catwalks at the top of the parapet a wailing mob was fighting to get away from the smoking shambles that had been the gate to the fort.
Then, through the shattered gateway poured a yelling mob of English seamen. They struggled over the rubble and raced up the ramps to fall upon the Arabs on the walks of the ramparts. There were a few scattered musket shots and Tom saw one seaman fall backwards down the ramp. Then the two sides met and became a confused mass of howling, hacking, fighting men.
Tom looked for his father in the mob. Usually Hal’s height and his black beard distinguished him even in the worst mêlée, but Tom could not find him. However, he could not spare the time to search longer. ‘This way!’ he called, and led his party along the catwalk to the ramp furthest from the gate. Their robes disguised them, and the Arabs around them let them pass without a second glance. Tom went down the ramp at a run, and reached the halfway landing unchecked. From there an arched doorway opened into the interior.
Two guards were at the entrance. One gawked at Tom’s pale eyes and European features, then swung his scimitar above his head. ‘Ferenghi!’ he screamed, and swung a full-blooded cut at Tom’s head with the curved blade.
Tom ducked under it and riposted with a clean thrust high in the line of engagement, which went deep into the Arab’s chest. As he withdrew his blade, the breath from the guard’s punctured lungs whistled out of the wound, and he dropped to his knees. Aboli killed the other guard as swiftly. Then they jumped over the corpses and ran into the dark narrow passage beyond.
‘Dorry!’ Tom screamed. ‘Where are you?’ He flung the robes back from his face and tore the turban from his head. He no longer needed the disguise and he wanted Dorian to recognize him. ‘Dorian!’ he cried again. His voice echoed weirdly along the passage and was answered by wild shouts in a babble of different languages.
Along both sides of the passage were the entrances to a dozen or more cells. The original doors must have rotted away a half-century ago, for they had been replaced by others of raw timber and crudely barred construction. Tom saw gaunt, bearded white faces peering through the openings and clawed hands reaching out towards him in supplication. He knew at once that these were the prisoners from the ships captured by al-Auf. Dorian must be among them, and his spirits soared.
‘Dorian!’
An English voice answered, ‘Jesus love you, sir, we have prayed for your coming.’
Aboli lifted the heavy locking bar from its brackets, the door burst open and the prisoners forced their way out of the tiny stone cell into the passageway. Tom was almost trapped in the flood of ragged, stinking humanity, and fought himself clear, hurrying on to peer into other cells.
‘Dorian!’ he bawled above the hubbub. He was trying to work out in which of the cells he had last seen his brother, but he was uncertain of his bearings.
He grabbed one of the released prisoners and shouted at him as he shook his shoulders. ‘Is there a young white boy here, with red hair?’
The man stared at him as though he was mad, then pulled himself free and ran to join the flood of released men streaming down into the courtyard. Tom reached the end of the passage and the last cell. The door was ajar and he stepped into the tiny stone-walled room. It was empty. There was a mattress of dried palm fronds against the wall but no other furnishing. The sunlight slanted in through the loophole set in the far wall, and Tom crossed to it quickly. He looked out at the sweep of the bay and the two ships lying off-shore.
‘This is the one,’ he muttered. He jumped onto the step below the loophole and stuck his head through the opening. The liana grew up the outside of the wall, almost close enough to touch. ‘This is the cell they had Dorry in. But where is he now?’
He jumped down from the step and looked around the empty cell. Iron rings were cemented into the stone blocks, to which men had been chained. The walls were covered with graffiti, scratched into the soft coral. He read Portuguese names and dates a hundred years old, worn and overgrown with moss and fungi. There were more recent additions in Arabic script, and he picked out a religious exhortation, a line from Sura 17 of the Koran that he recognized because Alf Wilson had made him learn it by heart: ‘The seven heavens and the earth, and all things therein, declare His glory.’ Below that there were was another scratching, made with a belt buckle or some other metal implement. It was fresh and raw, in lopsided childish letters: ‘dorian courtney – 3rd february 1691.’
‘He was here!’ Tom shouted aloud. ‘Aboli, Dorry was here!’
Aboli appeared in the doorway, blocking it with his massive dark body. ‘Where is he now, Klebe?’
‘We will find him.’
Tom paused only to rip off the constricting robe that hampered his movements, and hurled it against the wall. Then they ran together back down the passage and out into the sunlight. The fighting was still surging through the courtyard below them and over the ramparts of the fortress, but at a glance it was obvious that the defenders were in rout. Hundreds had escaped through the shattered gateway. They had thrown away their weapons and were streaming into the forest. Others were trapped within the walls. Many were on their knees pleading for quarter, but Tom saw others leap from the ramparts rather than face the English cutlasses. With their white robes ballooning around their bodies, they shrieked as they plunged to earth.
However, a few were still fighting. One isolated group of a dozen men was holding the east bastion and screaming their defiance, ‘Allah akbar! God is great,’ but as Hal watched, the Englishmen swarmed over them, cut them down and threw their bodies over the battlements.
Tom looked desperately for a small figure and a fiery patch of hair in the confusion, but there was no glimpse of his brother. A woman raced up the ramp towards Tom. Her black veil had blown away and her head was uncovered. Tom saw that she was little more than a child. Her long black hair streamed back from her terrified face, and her kohl-darkened eyes were those of a fawn pursued by the hounds. Shouting with excited laughter, four seamen followed her, their shirts soaked with the blood of the men they had killed, their faces speckled with bloody droplets, swollen and inflamed with lust.
They caught the girl at the edge of the ramp and threw her down. Three pinned her to the stone flags and, though she struggled, they pulled up the skirts of her robe and exposed her slim brown limbs and her smooth naked belly. The fourth sailor ripped open his own breeches and fell on top of her.
‘Grease the pink lane for us!’ his mates encouraged him. Tom had never imagined anything so horrific. As a novice of the Order of St George and the Holy Grail, he had been taught that war was noble and all true warriors were gallant. He ran forward to intervene, but Aboli seized his arm and held it in a grip of iron. ‘Leave them, Klebe. It is the right of the victors. Our duty is now to Bomvu.’ He used his pet name for Dorian, which meant ‘Red’ in the language of the forests.
‘We can’t let them!’ Tom blurted.
‘We can’t stop them.’ Aboli cut him short. ‘They will kill you if you try. Let us find Bomvu instead.’ The girl was sobbing pitifully but Aboli dragged Tom down the ramp to the ground level.
At this end of the courtyard they found a maze of old walls and doorways. Some of the doors stood open, but most were heavily barred and the windows shuttered. Dorian could be behind any of those. Tom knew his little brother would be lost and terrified. They had to find him before he was hurt in the fighting and the looting.
‘Take the far end,’ he shouted at Aboli, pointing down the covered terrace. ‘I will start here.’
He did not look back to see if Aboli had obeyed him, but ran to the nearest door. It was locked. He tried to barge it open with his shoulder, then stood back and tried to kick out the massive iron lock. It stood solidly, resisting his attempts. Tom l
ooked about him and recognized one of the topmastmen from the Seraph, who was running down the terrace, carrying a long-handled axe in one hand and a pistol in the other. His arms were bloody to the elbows and his expression was rapturous with the joy of battle.
‘Charley!’ Tom yelled at him, and even through the mists of fighting madness the man heard him. ‘Break this door in,’ Tom ordered.
Charley grinned at the invitation to further destruction. ‘Stand back, Tommy me lad,’ he cried, and rushed at the door. With two mighty swings of the axe he had dashed in the panels and sent the door sagging back on its hinges. Tom kicked it open the rest of the way and jumped through. He found himself in a labyrinth of small rooms and passageways. He ran forward, glancing into each room as he passed. Clearly they had all been hastily deserted: bedding and clothing were thrown about in disarray.
Suddenly he heard a loud thudding over his head, and looked up a rickety staircase at the end of the passage. It sounded as though someone was trying to escape from a locked room. Perhaps it’s Dorry! His heart pounded. Without another thought Tom raced up the stairs, taking them two at a time. He reached the top and found a heavy door standing open, the huge iron key still in the lock. He ran through into a long narrow room. The windows were shuttered, and it was in semi-darkness.
‘Dorry!’ he shouted, as he looked about him quickly. He saw at once that this was no prison. Along the wall opposite the shuttered windows was packed an assortment of small wooden chests. They were very similar to the chests they had captured from the dhow of al-Malik, the chests that had contained the ransom money for Dorian. He realized that this must be one of al-Auf’s storerooms, probably the one where he kept his most valuable booty.
Four of the chests stood open, the lids thrown back. Even in his concern for his brother, Tom was fascinated by the contents that were revealed. He recognized the typical Arab coin bags that filled them. He took up one and hefted it in his hand. The weight and the shape of the coins through the cloth dispelled any doubts he might have had. ‘Gold,’ he whispered. Then he noticed that someone had left a leather saddle-bag on the stone floor beside the chest. It was half filled with the bullion sacks. He must have interrupted someone in the act of filling it before making his escape from the beleaguered fortress. The banging noises Tom had heard were of the chests being broken open.
Whoever it was must still be here. As the realization dawned upon Tom, he heard the slither of a stealthy footstep on the stone flags behind him. The sound galvanized him, and he whirled towards the doorway.
Al-Auf had hidden behind the open door when he heard Tom’s running footsteps coming up the stairs and now Tom recognized him instantly. He had seen him on the deck of the Minotaur as the Seraph engaged the corsair. He was taller than Tom had thought, and his predatory eyes in their deep sockets were dark and fierce as those of a vulture. His head was bare – he wore no turban. His thick black tresses, laced with silver, fell to his shoulders, and merged with the curls of his beard. His lips were drawn back in a savage grimace as he lifted the pistol in his left hand and aimed at Tom’s head.
For a fleeting moment Tom looked deep into the gaping muzzle of the barrel, then into al-Auf’s bright eye, aiming at him over the sights of the pistol. With a metallic click that sounded deafening in the confines of the small room, the hammer fell and the pan flashed in a puff of white smoke. Tom winced as he waited for the ball to smash into his face, but it never came. The pistol had misfired.
For an instant al-Auf was blinded by the smoke and the flash in the pan, and in that brief time Tom had covered the space between them. He had seen that the pistol was double-barrelled, and that al-Auf’s forefinger was hooking around the second trigger. He knew that luck could not favour him twice, and that the second barrel would kill him.
He swung the sabre at the outstretched pistol hand, and the blade slashed across the inside of al-Auf’s wrist. Like a razor, it opened the cluster of veins and arteries beneath the brown skin, and the pistol dropped from the nerveless fingers. Hilt first, it struck the stone floor and with a vicious roar the second barrel fired. The ball splintered the wood of one of the bullion chests, and al-Auf reeled back, groping for the scimitar on the gem-encrusted belt around his waist. He cleared his blade just in time to counter the thrust that Tom sped at the centre of his sternum.
Tom had not expected him to be so quick. The silver streaks in al-Auf’s hair and beard had misled him. The corsair was leopard fast, and the power in the blade was that of a man half his age. As Tom recovered from his thrust, al-Auf dropped on one knee and slashed backhanded for his ankles, a stroke that might have maimed him. Tom did not have time to recoil. Instead he bounded into the air and the curved blade flickered under the soles of his boots. Still airborne, Tom cut at the Arab’s dark head, but al-Auf slipped away from him like a serpent sliding under a rock. He had left a puddle of blood on the stones, and his wrist was still spurting. Tom blocked the riposte and made a feint high in the tierce, but al-Auf countered, and lunged under his blade, aiming for his stomach. Tom jumped back and the thrust came up short. They circled, holding each other’s eyes, trying to divine the other’s thoughts. Their blades rasped and thrummed together as each probed for a weakness.
Tom’s foot slipped in the blood, and the moment he was off-balance al-Auf released himself like a bolt from a cross-bow, going low again, trying for the hip. Tom deflected, and forced him to scramble away. Tom was reading his man now. He was fast and elusive, and age had not eroded the strength in his wrist. If they continued fencing then in the end al-Auf’s experience would tell. Tom knew that he must turn it into trial of strength.
He swayed across the Arab’s strong side, flirting with him, offering a fleeting opening, but as al-Auf accepted and thrust low again, Tom blocked his blade with a dead hit, and trapped it with his own. Now they were almost chest to chest, their blades crossed at eye-level. Tom put all the weight of his broad young shoulders into it, and al-Auf gave a step. Tom could feel the strength going out of him, dribbling from the open veins in his left wrist. Tom heaved again, but al-Auf was not as weak as he had pretended. He gave way so rapidly that Tom stumbled forward against no resistance, and again al-Auf went low. Tom should have read it, for he knew his man well enough by now to guard against the low thrust. It was only by a miracle of speed and catlike balance that he swayed his lower body aside and the thrust grazed his thigh. It split the stuff of his breeches and opened a shallow cut in the rubbery muscle of his leg.
It was not a damaging wound, and at the end of his thrust al-Auf was at full extension. As he tried desperately to recover Tom gathered up his blade, and forced him into a rolling engagement. The two swords swirled together, the sound of steel on steel screeching so shrilly as to set their nerves on edge, the hilts vibrating in their hands.
Tom had succeeded at last in making it a straight trial of strength, for al-Auf dared not try to disengage. To do so he must open his guard, and he knew the riposte would come like a lightning bolt. This was the classic prolonged engagement, which Tom had learned from Aboli. ‘With this coup, your father killed Schreuder,’ Aboli had told him, ‘and that Dutchman was the greatest swordsman I have ever seen wield a blade – after your father, that is.’
Tom leaned all his weight into his wrist and al-Auf gave a pace. Round and round the two blades swirled, and sweat broke out across the brown forehead, which by now was deeply creased with effort, and streamed down into the eyes and beard. Triumphantly Tom felt the other man weakening. The blood still fell in heavy drops from his wound, and al-Auf’s lips twisted into a horrid rictus of despair. Dismay and death bloomed in his eyes.
Suddenly Tom changed the angle of his wrist, the point of his sword flashed an inch from al-Auf’s eyes, and he broke. Against the Arab’s will, his long brown fingers opened and the hilt of his scimitar slipped from them. Tom used his own blade to pluck it away and, with a flick of his wrist, hurled it against the far wall where it fell and clattered on the stone floor.
Al-Auf stared at him. He held his injured arm against his chest, trying to staunch the bleeding by squeezing his wrist with his other hand.
‘Answer me,’ Tom said, and pressed the sword-point deeper into his throat. ‘Speak to me, you offspring of a diseased sow. Give me the boy and I will let you live.’
The Arab winced at the prick of the steel. ‘I do not know this child of whom you speak.’
‘You know him well. The one with red hair,’ Tom interrupted his protests.
Al-Auf twisted his lips into a mocking smile. ‘Why do you want al-Amhara, the Red One?’ He said, and there was a terrible hatred in his eyes. ‘Was he your bum-boy?’
Tom’s sword hand trembled with anger at the insult. ‘Al-Amhara is my brother.’
‘Then you are too late,’ al-Auf gloated. ‘He has gone where you will never find him.’
Tom felt as though an iron hoop was tightening around his chest. His breathing came short. Dorian was gone. ‘You are lying.’ In his distress the Arabic words tripped his tongue. ‘I know he is here. I saw him with my own eyes. I will find him.’
‘He is not on this island, search where you will.’ Al-Auf laughed now, a painful, twisted sound.
Tom cut it short with the pressure of the steel point. He stared into the Arab’s dark eyes, and a confused jumble of thoughts raced through his brain. ‘No!’ Tom did not want to believe it. ‘You’re hiding my brother here. You are lying.’ But there was something in al-Auf’s manner that warned Tom he was telling the truth. He knew they had lost little Dorry and, slowly, black despair filled the empty place that Dorry had left in his heart.