by Wilbur Smith
Luke ran back to where his men had surrounded one of the sleeping bomas of the Arab guards. Almost immediately there came thudding volleys of musket fire all around the periphery of the camp and spurts of muzzle flame pricked the darkness as the sailors fired into the sleeping Arabs at close range. A low buzz ran through the camp as it came awake, and quickly built up into a screaming, shouting uproar. The Arab slave-masters came stumbling out of the bomas, half asleep and fumbling with their weapons to be met by volley after volley of musket fire and flights of whistling Lozi arrows.
The slaves were unable to move, for they had been chained down to the iron stakes that the slave-masters had driven into the hard earth. They lay where they were fettered and wailed and howled with terror, adding to the confusion.
Some of the Arabs were firing back, and a determined resistance was mounting. Tom galloped down the line towards the boma of thorn branches where, at sundown, he had watched the caravan leader take shelter. He carried a burning brand from the guards’ camp-fire in one hand, and now he hurled it on to the thatched roof of the hut. It caught quickly and the flames soared up, showering sparks and lighting the night for a hundred yards around. Driven out by the heat, the Arab leader came running from the hut with a jezail in one hand. He was without a turban and his oiled grey hair fell to his shoulders. His beard was in tangled disarray. Tom wheeled the horse and charged straight at him. The Arab stood to meet him, and threw up the jezail. Tom lay along the stallion’s neck and drove it on straight into the muzzle of the musket.
The Arab fired and in the bloom of powder smoke Tom heard the ball whir close past his head. He expected the old man to turn and run once his weapon was fired. Instead he stood proudly, helpless and unarmed, but with head up and fierce eye to meet his death. Tom felt a pang of admiration and respect as he leaned out and drove the glittering blue blade through the man’s heart with such force that the Arab was lifted clean off his feet and died before he struck the ground again. Tom rode back and looked down at him. Moved by the night breeze, his silver beard feathered across his chest. Tom might have felt remorse, but then he remembered Aboli’s massacred children, the girl who had been eaten alive by the hyena pack, and his guilt withered stillborn.
He wheeled away and, from the back of the stallion, looked down the line. At two places the slave-masters had taken cover and grouped together in small pockets of resistance. Tom called urgently to Aboli, ‘We must break them up. Ride with me.’ They stormed down upon them, swords bared, and, yelling with the furious ecstasy of battle, they cut them down. The Arabs who survived broke up under this onslaught. They threw down their empty muskets and ran out into the darkness.
‘Let them go!’ Tom stopped his men from pursuing them and consoled himself. ‘They will not get far and I will send Fundi and his archers after them as soon as it is light.’
In the fighting he had become separated from Aboli. He rode down the slave lines, searching for him. The fighting was over, but the encampment was a shambles. Many of the slaves had pulled up their stakes and were stumbling about in the firelight shouting and howling. The din was deafening, and Tom could not make his orders heard. When he tried to beat sense into some of the slaves with his scabbard, it only made them more witless with terror. He gave up any effort to quieten them and rode on looking for Aboli. He saw his horse, but with no rider. He felt a painful stab of concern that Aboli had been shot off its back. He urged his own horse forward, but then in the crowd he saw Aboli on foot, carrying two small boys in his arms, hugging their naked dusty bodies against his chest.
‘They are unharmed, Klebe, both of them,’ Aboli shouted to him, and Tom waved and wheeled back to find Sarah. He knew she would be somewhere in this sea of black bodies trying to minister to those who needed her help, and he felt real concern for her in this dangerous, volatile atmosphere: she could easily be trampled by the surging mob or run into an escaping Arab who carried a curved dagger on his belt.
He saw her golden hair like a beacon in the firelight, and pushed the stallion through the throng to reach her. He bent down, slipped an arm around her waist, lifted her up onto the horse’s withers in front of him and kissed her.
She threw both arms around his neck and hugged him so hard that it hurt. ‘You did it, my darling. They are free.’
‘And there is a fine load of Arab ivory to pick up.’ He grinned.
‘You base creature.’ She smiled back at him. ‘Is that all you can think of in this glorious moment?’
‘My father taught me, “Do good to all men, but at the end remember to collect your fee.” ’
It took the rest of the night to restore order among the hordes of slaves. Most were still in chains, but as soon as it was light they began the work of freeing them. Tom found an enormous bunch of keys on the belt around the waist of the old Arab headman he had killed. The keys fitted the locks, and as they were released, Tom ordered the slaves to be placed in separate groups, divided by tribes and villages. Then he made them the responsibility of their own chieftains and headmen.
Sarah tended first to Aboli’s family. The two boys were unhurt and still healthy. Zete and Falla were beside themselves with terror but Aboli spoke to them sternly, and they quietened. When Sarah was certain they no longer needed her help, she went among the others. First she picked out the children who needed medical attention. Many were smitten with dysentery and she dosed them with a binding potion, then treated their chain and rope galls with healing ointment. Though she worked tirelessly through the night and into the following day, she could not do enough with her small medicine chest for the hundreds who called to her for help.
While this was going on Tom sent Fundi and his band of archers after the fleeing Arabs who had escaped during the night. They had not gone far, and most were unarmed. Fundi’s men hunted them down quickly, and finished them off with the wickedly barbed arrows. The poison turned the flesh around the entry wounds purple, then ran through the blood like liquid fire. It was not a kind death, but when the hunters brought back the severed heads of their victims as proof of the kill, Tom looked upon them dispassionately. The deeds of the dead men were fresh in his mind, and his anger was not yet appeased.
Under their officers the sailors ransacked the camp, and piled the spoils in a heap for Tom to count and enter in his log book. Apart from the mountain of ivory, they found a small iron chest in the ashes of the caravan master’s hut. It had withstood the heat of the flames, and when they broke it open they found it contained gold dinar coins worth almost three hundred pounds. ‘That adds up to fair profit for a day’s work of good deeds,’ Tom said to Sarah, with satisfaction.
They gathered up the food baskets and the muskets, the kegs of powder and the bars of lead for casting shot, bales of trade cloth, sacks of beads and mounds of other valuable equipment.
‘How are you going to carry all this back to Fort Providence?’ Sarah wanted to know. ‘You may be forced to leave it here.’
‘We will see to that,’ Tom promised grimly, and had Fundi and Aboli bring all the headmen of the released slaves to him. He explained to them that he would divide up the food stores between the people from the different tribes, and that the women and children were free to return to their villages. However, in exchange for their freedom every one of the men must act as porter to carry the spoils down to Lozi Land. After that, they would be free to follow the women back to their homes. He explained to them that they would be paid in trade goods for their labour. The chieftains were delighted with this arrangement, for naturally all the wages of their subjects would come directly to them. Until that moment they had not realized that they were free again, and had believed that they had merely exchanged one set of slave-masters for another.
It took several days to share out the food and make up the splinter caravans before Tom was able to send the women on their way home. They went singing their thanks and praises to the white men who had saved them. Then the heavily burdened caravan of men started into the south, with T
om and Sarah, mounted on captured Arab horses, at the head of the column.
Tom left Fundi and twenty of his most intrepid hunters to patrol the slave road during the rest of the dry season. As soon as they spotted the approach of another Arab caravan Fundi had his orders to send runners to Fort Providence to alert Tom.
When they reached Fort Providence, Tom realized that he had more than a full cargo of ivory for the little Centaurus.
‘We will not be forced to hunt again, for this season at least,’ he told Sarah. ‘I will be able to concentrate all my efforts on freeing more of these miserable slaves from the clutches of the wicked Mussulmen.’
His expression was pious and virtuous, but she saw the twinkle in his eyes and was not taken in. ‘I wish those were honest sentiments, Thomas Courtney, but I know you too well. You are in this for the ivory and the fun of a good fight.’
‘You are too harsh a judge, my pretty darling,’ he protested, with a grin, ‘but why should you quibble? It’s those brats you care about, and I am giving them into your care. This way we both have our heart’s desire.’
‘It won’t be as easy next time,’ she warned him. ‘The Arab merchants will be expecting you.’
‘Ah! But I also have a few ideas on that score.’
They had captured almost two hundred Arab muskets, and a goodly store of powder and lead. Instead of elephant hunting, Tom and his crew trained fifty Lozi warriors as musketeers. They had picked the most promising men, but even these had difficulty in mastering a weapon so alien to their culture. They never truly overcame their fear and awe of the firearm, or the instinct to close their eyes tightly in anticipation of the discharge. Tom soon realized that they would never be marksmen. He accepted this, and instead drilled them to fire massed volleys at close range, loading the jezails with a handful of specially cast buckshot that would spread, rather than a single ball.
Within weeks, one of Fundi’s runners had come into Fort Providence from the north with news of another slave caravan coming down from the lake country. ‘Time to see if my new strategy works,’ Tom said to Sarah. ‘I don’t suppose I can prevail upon you to remain here at Fort Providence out of harm’s way?’ For answer she smiled and went to pack her medical stores.
When at last they came up with the caravan, they found that it was even larger and richer than the first, but more heavily escorted with Arab infantry and mounted men. Tom’s men were outnumbered by almost two to one. He and Aboli shadowed the Arabs for days while they worked out a plan to attack them.
Very soon it became clear that the Arab slave-masters had learned of the fate of the first caravan. They were very much on the alert. On the march they threw out a screen of scouts, and at the first sign of trouble pulled back into defensive formations in businesslike style. They went into carefully constructed defensive bomas when they halted at night, and kept a vigilant cordon of sentries around their encampments to guard against a night attack.
Tom and Aboli scouted ahead of the column and found the ford of a wide river where the slave caravan would be forced to cross. They moved their own force up and concentrated all their men in the dense riverine forest on the far bank.
When the slave caravan reached the river, the long unwieldy column began the crossing. Tom allowed the head of it to cross unmolested. Then, when half of the slaves and their escorts were across, he cut them off and fell on the head of the column.
From their carefully concealed positions, the Lozi musketeers fired massed volleys at point-blank range into the Arab guards. Using the spread of small shot, even they could not miss and the effect was murderous. For a while the fighting was fierce but the Arab advance guard was outnumbered and shot to pieces by those first volleys. When their comrades on the far bank tried to cross the river to reinforce them, they were forced to wade almost chest-deep through the current, and were driven back in confusion by the accurate fire of Tom’s sailors.
By nightfall the fighting on this bank was over. Tom’s men had captured the head of the caravan and wiped out all the Arab guards. They had also captured the entire Arab stores of black powder. Tom now had the advantage of numbers, and the remaining Arabs on the far bank were desperately short of ammunition.
Tom moved his men across the river, and launched a series of lightning raids on the Arab positions, forcing the slave-masters to defend themselves and use up the last of their powder. Once their muskets were empty he attacked in earnest and shattered the Arab line. With the last of their powder gone, the defenders were wiped out in desperate hand-to-hand fighting in which the Lozi used their short stabbing spears to savage effect. The last of the Arabs was driven into the river where, drawn by the scent of blood in the water, the crocodiles had gathered.
In the aftermath of the fighting, Tom freed over three thousand slaves, and marched south to Fort Providence with a long file of porters carrying vast booty.
Although Fundi’s scouts maintained the watch on the slave roads, that was the last caravan to try to win through to the Fever Coast during that dry season. ‘We must pray for better business next time,’ Tom said to Sarah, as they stood together on the quarterdeck of the little Centaurus as she ran downriver to the ocean at the beginning of the Big Wet.
‘If business grows any better, you will sink the ship under us,’ she told him. ‘I cannot even use my cabin because it’s stuffed so full of elephant tusks.’
‘It’s all these children of yours that weigh us down,’ Tom said accusingly.
Sarah had not been able to resist taking into her care four of the most appealing orphans from the released slave caravans. She lavished her maternal instincts upon them, and now they clustered around her, dressed in the clothes she had sewn for them, sucking their thumbs and clinging to her skirts. ‘Thomas Courtney, I do declare you are jealous of a few little babies.’
‘When we reach Good Hope I will buy you a pretty bonnet to win back your love,’ he promised.
She opened her mouth to tell him she would prefer a baby son, but that was a painful subject for both of them. Instead she smiled. ‘And a pretty dress to go with it. I have lived in rags these past months.’ She hugged his arm. ‘Oh, Tom, it will be so good to reach civilization again. Even for so short a time.’
The Caliph of Oman, Abd Muhammad al-Malik, was dying in his Muscat palace, and not even the wisest of his physicians could fathom the cause of the mysterious disease that had assailed him. They had purged him until blood dribbled out of his anus. They had lanced the veins in his arms and bled him until his gaunt face was écru and sallow, with plum-coloured eye-sockets. They had blistered his chest and back with hot irons to burn out the sickness, all to no avail.
The disease had begun to manifest itself shortly after Prince Zayn al-Din had returned from the long pilgrimage to Mecca and the holy places of Islam that his father had ordered him to undertake as a penance for his treachery. On his return to Muscat, Zayn al-Din had once again made the most abject petitions to his father. He tore his fine raiment and slashed his cheeks and chest with a sharp knife. He poured ash and dust on his head and crawled on his hands and knees into his father’s presence, wailing for forgiveness.
Al-Malik had stepped down from the ivory throne, lifted him to his feet and, with the hem of his own robe, had wiped away the blood and dirt from his son’s fat face. Then he kissed him on the lips. ‘You are my son, and although once I had lost you, now you are restored to me,’ he said. ‘Go and bathe yourself, change your apparel. Put on the blue robes of a royal Omani and take your seat on the cushion at my right hand.’
Soon after this the terrible headaches began, which left the Caliph confused and drowsy. Then he was attacked by fits of convulsions and vomiting. His stomach ached and his stools were black and tarry, his urine dark red with blood.
While the physicians treated him and looked for improvement, the disease worsened. His fingernails turned blue. His hair and his beard fell out in tufts. He drifted in and out of coma and his flesh melted away, so that his bald and hai
rless head resembled that of a cadaver.
Knowing that the end was near, thirty of his sons gathered around his bed in the dark, shuttered, airless bedchamber. The eldest, Zayn al-Din, sat closest to his bed and led the chanted prayers for the intervention of Allah in their father’s suffering.
Once, in the pause between prayers, Zayn al-Din lifted his tear-filled eyes and looked sorrowfully across the chamber at his half-brother. Ibn al-Malik Abubaker was the son of one of the lesser concubines. He had always been Zayn al-Din’s trusted companion from their childhood days in the zenana on Lamu island. Because of his lowly status in the royal household Abubaker might have dropped into obscurity. However, there is a saying in the desert that every man needs a camel to carry him over the sands. Zayn al-Din was Abubaker’s camel. On the back of his elder half-brother, Abubaker was determined to ride one day to power. He knew also that Zayn al-Din needed him, for Abubaker was the faithful servant, shrewd and resourceful, committed to his brother. He had been at Zayn al-Din’s side at the battle of Muscat, and had tried to protect him when the Ottoman Turks had been routed, but in the mêlée he had been lanced in the chest and thrown from his horse.
After the battle he had recovered from his wound, and received a pardon from the new Caliph; al-Malik was always benevolent and generous to his sons. Instead of being grateful for this mercy, though, Abubaker was fiercely resentful. Like Zayn al-Din, he was ambitious and devious, a born conspirator, and greedy for power. He knew that, despite his father’s expression of forgiveness, his treachery would be remembered for the rest of the Caliph’s life. May that be short, he thought, as he looked across the crowded bedchamber, fogged with incense smoke, and caught the eye of Zayn al-Din. His brother gave him a barely perceptible nod, and Abubaker lowered his eyes then smoothed his moustache as a sign that he had understood.