Birds of Prey

by Wilbur Smith

  Then Sir Francis threw back his head and laughed. ‘All the more for us to share!’ he cried, and they laughed with him and cheered as he made his way to his cabin below the poop deck.

  For another hour Hal stayed at the masthead. He wondered how long the men’s buoyant mood could last, for they were down to a mug of water twice a day. Although the land and its sweet rivers lay less than half a day’s sailing away, Sir Francis had not dared detach even one of the pinnaces to fill the casks. The Dutchmen might come at any hour, and when they did he would need every man.

  At last a man came aloft to relieve Hal at the lookout. ‘What is there to see, lad?’ he asked, as he slipped into the canvas crow’s nest beside Hal.

  ‘Precious little,’ Hal admitted, and pointed out the tiny sails of the two pinnaces on the distant horizon. ‘Neither carries any signals,’ Hal told him. ‘Watch for the red flag – it’ll mean they have the chase in sight.’

  The sailor grunted. ‘You’ll be teaching me to fart next.’ But he smiled at Hal in avuncular fashion – the boy was the ship’s favourite.

  Hal grinned back at him. ‘God’s truth, but you need no teaching, Master Simon. I’ve heard you at the bucket in the heads. I’d rather face a Dutch broadside. You nigh crack every timber in the hull.’

  Simon let out an explosive guffaw, and punched Hal’s shoulder. ‘Down with you, lad, before I teach you to fly like an albatross.’

  Hal began to scramble down the shrouds. At first he moved stiffly, his muscles cramped and chilled after the long vigil, but he soon warmed up and swung down lithely.

  Some of the men on the deck paused at their labours on the pumps, or with palm and needle as they repaired wind-ripped canvas, and watched him. He was as robust and broad-shouldered as a lad three years older, and long in limb – he already stood as tall as his father. Yet he still retained the fresh smooth skin, the unlined face and sunny expression of boyhood. His hair, tied with a thong behind his head, spilled from under his cap and glistened blue-black in the early sunlight. At this age his beauty was still almost feminine, and after more than four months at sea – six since they had laid eyes on a woman – some, whose fancy lay in that direction, watched him lasciviously.

  Hal reached the main yard and left the security of the mast. He ran out along it, balancing with the ease of an acrobat forty feet above the curling rush of the bow wave and the planks of the main deck. Now every eye was on him: it was a feat that few aboard would care to emulate.

  ‘For that you have to be young and stupid,’ Ned Tyler growled, but shook his head fondly as he leaned against the whipstaff and stared up. ‘Best the little fool does not let his father catch him playing that trick.’

  Hal reached the end of the yard and without pause swung out onto the brace and slid down it until he was ten feet above the deck. From there he dropped to land lightly on his hard bare feet, flexing his knees to absorb the impact on the scrubbed white planks.

  He bounced up, turned towards the stern – and froze at the sound of an inhuman cry. It was a primordial bellow, the menacing challenge of some great predatory animal.

  Hal remained pinned to the spot for only an instant then instinctively spun away as a tall figure charged down upon him. He heard the fluting sound in the air before he saw the blade and ducked under it. The silver steel flashed over his head and his attacker roared again, a screech of fury.

  Hal had a glimpse of his adversary’s face, black and glistening, a cave of a mouth lined with huge square white teeth, the tongue as pink and curled as a leopard’s as he screamed.

  Hal danced and swayed as the silver blade came arcing back. He felt a tug at the sleeve of his jerkin as the sword point split the leather, and fell back.

  ‘Ned, a blade!’ he yelled wildly at the helmsman behind him, never taking his eyes off those of his assailant. The pupils were black and bright as obsidian, the iris opaque with fury, the whites engorged with blood.

  Hal leaped aside at the next wild charge, and felt on his cheek the draught of the blow. Behind him he heard the scrape of a cutlass drawn from the boatswain’s scabbard, and the weapon slide across the deck towards him. He stooped smoothly and gathered it up, the hilt coming naturally to his hand, as he went into the guard stance and aimed the point at the eyes of his attacker.

  In the face of Hal’s menacing blade, the tall man checked his next rush and when, with his left hand, Hal drew from his belt his ten-inch dirk and offered that point also, the mad light in his eyes turned cold and appraising. They circled each other on the open deck below the mainmast, their blades weaving, touching and tapping lightly, as each sought an opening.

  The seamen on the deck left their tasks – even those on the handles of the pumps – and came running to form a ring around the swordsmen as though they watched a cockfight, their faces alight with the prospect of seeing blood spurt. They growled and hooted at each thrust and parry, and urged on their favourites.

  ‘Hack out his big black balls, young Hal!’

  ‘Pluck the cockerel’s saucy tail feathers for him, Aboli.’

  Aboli stood five inches taller than Hal, and there was no fat on his lean, supple frame. He was from the eastern coast of Africa, of a warrior tribe highly prized by the slavers. Every hair had been carefully plucked from his pate, which gleamed like polished black marble, and his cheeks were adorned with ritual tattoos, whorls of raised cicatrices that gave him a terrifying appearance. He moved with a peculiar grace, on those long muscular legs, swaying from the waist like some huge black cobra. He wore only a petticoat of tattered canvas, and his chest was bare. Each muscle in his torso and upper arms seemed to have a life of its own, serpents slithering and coiling beneath the oiled skin.

  He lunged suddenly, and with a desperate effort Hal turned the blade, but almost in the same instant Aboli reversed the blow, aiming once more at his head. There was such power in his stroke that Hal knew he could not block it with cutlass alone. He threw up both blades, crossing them, and trapped the Negro’s high above his head. Steel rang and thrilled on steel, and the crowd howled at the skill and grace of the parry.

  But at the fury of the attack Hal gave a pace, and another then another as Aboli pressed him again and again, giving him no respite, using his greater height and superior strength to counter the boy’s natural ability.

  Hal’s face mirrored his desperation. He gave more readily now and his movements were uncoordinated: he was tired and fear dulled his responses. The cruel watchers turned against him, yelling for blood, urging on his implacable opponent.

  ‘Mark his pretty face, Aboli!’

  ‘Give us a look at his guts!’

  Sweat greased Hal’s cheeks and his expression crumpled as Aboli drove him back against the mast. He seemed much younger suddenly, and on the point of tears, his lips quivering with terror and exhaustion. He was no longer counter-attacking. Now it was all defence. He was fighting for his life.

  Relentlessly Aboli launched a fresh attack, swinging at Hal’s body, then changing the angle to cut at his legs. Hal was near the limit of his strength, only just managing to fend off each blow.

  Then Aboli changed his attack once more: he forced Hal to overreach by feinting low to the left hip, then shifted his weight and lunged with a long right arm. The shining blade flew straight through Hal’s guard and the watchers roared as at last they had the blood they craved.

  Hal reeled sideways off the mast and stood panting in the sunlight, blinded by his own sweat. Blood dripped slowly onto his jerkin – but from a nick only, made with a surgeon’s skill.

  ‘Another scar for you each time you fight like a woman!’ Aboli scolded him.

  With an expression of exhausted disbelief, Hal raised his left hand, which still held the dirk, and with the back of his fist wiped the blood from his chin. The tip of his earlobe was neatly split and the quantity of blood exaggerated the severity of the wound.

  The spectators bellowed with derision and mirth.

  ‘By Satan’s teeth!�
�� one of the coxswains laughed. ‘The pretty boy has more blood than he has guts!’

  At the gibe, a swift transformation came over Hal. He lowered his dirk and extended the point in the guard position, ignoring the blood that still dripped from his chin. His face was blank, like that of a statue, and his lips set and blanched frosty white. From his throat issued a low growl, and he launched himself at the Negro.

  He exploded across the deck with such speed that Aboli was taken by surprise and driven back. When they locked blades he felt the new power in the boy’s arm, and his eyes narrowed. Then Hal was upon him like a wounded wildcat bursting from a trap.

  Pain and rage put wings on his feet. His eyes were pitiless and his clenched jaws tightened the muscles of his face into a mask that retained no trace of boyishness. Yet his fury had not robbed him of reason and cunning. All the skill that the lad had accumulated, over hundreds of hours and days upon the practice deck, suddenly coalesced.

  The watchers bayed as this miracle took place before their eyes. It seemed that, in that instant, the boy had become a man, had grown in stature so that he stood chin to chin and eye to eye with his dark adversary.

  It cannot last, Aboli told himself, as he met the attack. His strength cannot hold out. But this was a new man he confronted, and he had not yet recognized him.

  Suddenly he found himself giving ground – he will tire soon – but the twin blades that danced before his eyes seemed dazzling and ethereal, like the dread spirits of the dark forests that had once been his home.

  He looked into the pale face and burning eyes and did not know them. He felt a superstitious awe assail him, which slowed his right arm. This was a demon, with a demon’s unnatural strength. He knew that he was in danger of his life.

  The next coup sped at his chest, glancing through his guard like a sunbeam. He twisted aside his upper body, but the thrust raked under his raised left arm. He felt no pain but heard the rasp of the razor edge against his ribs, and the warm flood of blood down his flank. And he had ignored the weapon in Hal’s left fist and the boy used either hand with equal ease.

  At the edge of his vision he saw the shorter, stiffer blade speed towards his heart and threw himself back to avoid it. His heel caught in the tail of the yard brace, coiled on the deck, and he went sprawling. The elbow of his sword arm slammed into the gunwale, numbing it to the fingertips, and the cutlass flew from his fingers.

  On his back, Aboli looked up helplessly and saw death above him in those terrifying green eyes. This was not the face of the child who had been his ward and special charge for the last decade, the boy he had cherished and trained and loved over ten long years. This was a man who would kill him. The bright point of the cutlass started down, aimed at his throat, with the full weight of the lithe young body behind it.

  ‘Henry!’ A stern, authoritative voice rang across the deck, cutting through the hubbub of the blood-crazed spectators.

  Hal started, and stood still with the point against Aboli’s throat. A bemused expression spread across his face, like that of an awakening dreamer, and he looked up at his father on the break of the poop.

  ‘Avast that tomfoolery. Get you down to my cabin at once.’

  Hal glanced around the deck, at the flushed, excited faces surrounding him. He shook his head in puzzlement, and looked down at the cutlass in his hand. He opened his fingers and let it drop to the planks. His legs turned to water under him and he sank down on top of Aboli and hugged him as a child hugs his father.

  ‘Aboli!’ he whispered, in the language of the forests that the black man had taught him and which was a secret no other white man on the ship shared with them. ‘I have hurt you sorely. The blood! By my life, I could have killed you.’

  Aboli chuckled softly and answered in the same language, ‘It was past time. At last you have tapped the well of warrior blood. I thought you would never find it. I had to drive you hard to it.’

  He sat up and pushed Hal away, but there was a new light in his eyes as he looked at the boy, who was a boy no longer. ‘Go now and do your father’s bidding!’

  Hal stood up shakily and looked again round the circle of faces, seeing an expression in them that he did not recognize: it was respect mingled with more than a little fear.

  ‘What are you gawking at?’ bellowed Ned Tyler. ‘The play is over. Do you have no work to do? Man those pumps. Those topgallants are luffing. I can find mastheads for all idle hands.’ There was the thump of bare feet across the deck as the crew rushed guiltily to their duties.

  Hal stooped, picked up the cutlass, and handed it back to the boatswain, hilt first.

  ‘Thank you, Ned. I had need of it.’

  ‘And you put it to good use. I have never seen that heathen bested, except by your father before you.’

  Hal tore a handful of rag from the tattered hem of his canvas pantaloons, held it to his ear to staunch the bleeding, and went down to the stern cabin.

  Sir Francis looked up from his log-book, his goose quill poised over the page. ‘Do not look so smug, puppy,’ he grunted at Hal. ‘Aboli toyed with you, as he always does. He could have spitted you a dozen times before you turned it with that lucky coup at the end.’

  When Sir Francis stood up there was hardly room for them both in the tiny cabin. The bulkheads were lined from deck to deck with books, more were stacked about their feet and leather-bound volumes were crammed into the cubby-hole that served his father as a bunk. Hal wondered where he found place to sleep.

  His father addressed him in Latin. When they were alone he insisted on speaking the language of the educated and cultivated man. ‘You will die before you ever make a swordsman, unless you find steel in your heart as well as in your hand. Some hulking Dutchman will cleave you to the teeth at your first encounter.’ Sir Francis scowled at his son, ‘Recite the law of the sword.’

  ‘An eye for his eyes,’ Hal mumbled in Latin.

  ‘Speak up, boy!’ Sir Francis’s hearing had been dulled by the blast of culverins – over the years a thousand broadsides had burst around his head. At the end of an engagement, blood would be seen dripping from the ears of the seamen beside the guns and for days after even the officers on the poop heard heavenly bells ring in their heads.

  ‘An eye for his eyes,’ Hal repeated roundly, and his father nodded.

  ‘His eyes are the window to his mind. Learn to read in them his intentions before the act. See there the stroke before it is delivered. What else?’

  ‘The other eye for his feet,’ Hal recited.

  ‘Good.’ Sir Francis nodded. ‘His feet will move before his hand. What else?’

  ‘Keep the point high.’

  ‘The cardinal rule. Never lower the point. Keep it aimed at his eyes.’

  Sir Francis led Hal through the catechism, as he had countless times before. At the end, he said, ‘Here is one more rule for you. Fight from the first stroke, not just when you are hurt or angry, or you might not survive that first wound.’

  He glanced up at the hourglass hanging from the deck above his head. ‘There is yet time for your reading before ship’s prayers.’ He spoke in Latin still. ‘Take up your Livy and translate from the top of page twenty-six.’

  For an hour Hal read aloud the history of Rome in the original, translating each verse into English as he went. Then, at last, Sir Francis closed his Livy with a snap. ‘There is improvement. Now, decline the verb durare.’

  That his father should choose this one was a mark of his approval. Hal recited it in a breathless rush, slowing when he came to the future indicative. ‘Durabo. I shall endure.’

  That word formed the motto of the Courtney coat-of-arms, and Sir Francis smiled frostily as Hal voiced it.

  ‘May the Lord grant you that grace.’ He stood up. ‘You may go now but do not be late for prayers.’

  Rejoicing to be free, Hal fled from the cabin and went bounding up the companionway.

  Aboli was squatting in the lee of one of the hulking bronze culverins near the bows. H
al knelt beside him. ‘I wounded you.’

  Aboli made an eloquent dismissive gesture. ‘A chicken scratching in the dust wounds the earth more gravely.’

  Hal pulled the tarpaulin cloak off Aboli’s shoulders, seized the elbow and lifted the thickly muscled arm high to peer at the deep slash across the ribs. ‘None the less, this little chicken gave you a good pecking,’ he observed drily, and grinned as Aboli opened his hand and showed him the needle already threaded with sailmaker’s yarn. He reached for it, but Aboli checked him.

  ‘Wash the cut, as I taught you.’

  ‘With that long black python of yours you could reach it yourself,’ Hal suggested, and Aboli emitted his long, rolling laugh, soft and low as distant thunder.

  ‘We will have to make do with a small white worm.’

  Hal stood and loosed the cord that held up his pantaloons. He let them drop to his knees, and with his right hand drew back his foreskin.

  ‘I christen you Aboli, lord of the chickens!’ He imitated his own father’s preaching tone faithfully, and directed a stream of yellow urine into the open wound.

  Although Hal knew how it stung, for Aboli had done the same many times for him, the black features remained impassive. Hal irrigated the wound with the very last drop and then hoisted his breeches. He knew how efficacious this tribal remedy of Aboli’s was. The first time it had been used on him he had been repelled by it, but in all the years since then he had never seen a wound so treated mortify.

  He took up the needle and twine, and while Aboli held the lips of the wound together with his left hand, Hal laid neat sailmaker’s stitches across it, digging the needle point through the elastic skin and pulling his knots up tight. When he was done, he reached for the pot of hot tar that Aboli had ready. He smeared the sewn wound thickly and nodded with satisfaction at his handiwork.