Birds of Prey

by Wilbur Smith

  Aboli’s warning had given Hal just time enough to turn to face them. The dogs worked as a team, and one leaped for his face while the other rushed for his legs. Hal lunged at the first while it was in the air and sent his point into the base of the black throat where it joined the shoulders. The flying weight of the hound’s body drove the blade in full length, transfixing it cleanly through heart and lung and on into its guts. Even though it was dead, the momentum of its flight drove it on to crash into Hal’s chest, and he staggered backwards.

  The second hound snaked in low to the ground and, while Hal was still off balance, sank its fangs into his left shin just below the knee, jerking him over backwards. His shoulder crashed into the stone paving, but when he tried to rise the animal still had him in its grip and pulled back on all four braced legs, sending him sprawling again. Hal felt its teeth grate on the bone of his leg.

  ‘My hounds!’ Barnard yelled. ‘You are hurting my darlings.’ With his drawn sword in his hand he rushed to intervene. Again Hal tried to rise, and again the hound pulled him down. Barnard reached them and raised his sword to his full height above Hal’s unprotected head. Hal saw the blow coming and rolled aside. The blade struck the flint cobbles beside his ear in a sheet of sparks.

  ‘You bastard!’ Barnard roared, and lifted the sword again. Aboli swerved the team of horses and drove them deliberately at Barnard. The overseer’s back was turned to the approaching carriage, and he was so engrossed with Hal that he did not see it coming. As he was about to strike again at Hal’s head, the rear wheel caught him a glancing blow on the hip and sent him staggering aside.

  With a violent effort Hal hauled himself into a sitting position, and before the hound could drag him flat again, he stabbed it in the base of the neck, driving his blade at an angle back between its shoulder blades like the bullfighter’s coup, finding the heart. The beast let out an agonized howl and released its grip on his leg, staggered around in a circle then collapsed on the cobbles, kicking feebly.

  Hal heaved himself to his feet just as Barnard rushed at him. ‘You have killed my beauties!’ He was maddened with grief, and hacked again at Hal, a wild uncontrolled blow. Hal turned it effortlessly aside and let it fly an inch past his head.

  ‘You filthy pirate, I’ll cut you down!’ Barnard gathered himself and rushed in again. With the same apparent ease Hal deflected the next thrust, and said softly, ‘Do you remember what you and your dogs did to Oliver?’ He feinted high left, forcing Barnard to open his guard in the mid-line, and then, like a bolt of lightning, thrust home. The blade took Barnard just under the sternum, and sprang half its length out of his back. He dropped his sword and fell to his knees.

  ‘The debt to Oliver is paid!’ Hal said, placed his bare foot on Barnard’s chest and, against its resistance, pulled his blade clear. Barnard toppled and lay beside the carcass of his dying hound.

  ‘Come on, Gundwane!’ Aboli was struggling to hold the team of greys, for the shouting and the smell of blood had panicked them. ‘The magazine!’ It was only seconds since Hal had lighted the powder train, but when he glanced in that direction he saw clouds of acrid blue smoke billowing from the doorway of the armoury.

  ‘Hurry, Gundwane!’ Sukeena called softly. ‘Oh, please, hurry!’ Her voice was so filled with concern for his safety that it spurred him. Even in these dire straits, Hal realized that it was the first time he had ever heard her speak his nickname. He started forward. The dog had bitten deeply into his leg, but its fangs could not have severed nerves or sinews for Hal found that, if he ignored the pain, he could still run on it. He leaped across the yard and grabbed hold of the leading horse’s bridle. It tossed its head and rolled its eyes until the pink lining showed, but Hal hung on and Aboli gave the team its head.

  The carriage went rocking and clattering under the archway of the gates, across the bridge, over the moat and out onto the open Parade. Suddenly from behind them came a shattering explosion, and a shockwave of disrupted air swept over them like a tropical line squall. The horses reared and plunged in terror, and Hal was lifted off his feet. He clung desperately to the traces and looked back. A tower of dun-coloured smoke rose swiftly from the interior courtyard of the castle, spinning and revolving upon itself, shot through with dark flames and scraps of debris and wreckage. In the midst of this plume of destruction a single human body cartwheeled a hundred feet into the sky.

  ‘For Sir Hal and King Charley!’ Big Daniel roared, and the other seamen took up the cheering, beside themselves with excitement at their escape.

  However, when Hal looked back again he could see that the massive outer walls of the castle were untouched by the detonation. The barracks had been built of the same heavy stonework, and almost certainly had withstood the blast. Two hundred men were housed in there, three companies of green-jackets, and even now they were probably recovering their wits after the explosion. Soon they would come pouring out through the castle gates in full pursuit – and where, he wondered, was Colonel Cornelius Schreuder?

  The carriage was pounding across the Parade at a gallop. Ahead ran a mob of escaped convicts. They were scattering in every direction, some leaping over the stone wall of the Company gardens and heading for the mountain, others running for the beach to find a boat in which to make good their flight. Out on the Parade were the few stunned burghers and house slaves who were abroad at this time of the forenoon. They gawked in amazement at the tide of fugitives, then at the rolling cloud of smoke that enveloped the castle and then at the even more extraordinary sight of the advancing Governor’s carriage, festooned with a motley array of desperate tatterdemalion outlaws and pirates, screaming like madmen and brandishing their weapons. As the vehicle bore down on them they scattered frantically.

  ‘The pirates have escaped from the castle. Run! Run!’ At last they recovered and spread the alarm. The cry was taken up and shouted ahead of them through the huts and hovels of the settlement. Hal could see the burghers and their slaves hurrying to escape the bloodthirsty pirate crew. One or two of the braver souls had armed themselves, and there was a desultory popping of musket fire from some of the cottage windows, but the range was long, the aim hurried and poor. Hal did not even hear the flight of the balls and none of the men or horses were hit. The carriage swept on past the first buildings, following the only road that skirted the curving beach of Table Bay, and headed out into the unknown.

  Hal looked back at Aboli. ‘Slow down, damn you! You’ll blow the horses before we’ve got past the town.’ Aboli stood upright and pulled the horses back. ‘Whoa, Royal! Slow down, Cloud!’ But the team were bolting and had almost reached the outskirts of the settlement before Aboli was able to wrestle them to a trot. They were all sweating and snorting from the gallop, but were far from spent.

  As soon as they were under control, Hal loosed his grip on the harness and turned back to jog beside the carriage. ‘Althuda,’ he called, ‘instead of sitting up there like a gentleman on a Sunday picnic, make sure all the muskets are primed and loaded. Here!’ He passed up the pistol with the burning match. ‘Use this to light the match on all the weapons. They’ll be after us soon enough.’ Then he looked from Althuda to his sister.

  ‘We have not been introduced. Your servant, Henry Courtney.’ He grinned at her, and she laughed delightedly at his formal manner.

  ‘Good morrow, Gundwane. I know you well. Aboli has warned me of what a fierce young pirate you are.’ Then she turned serious. ‘You are hurt. I should see to your leg.’

  ‘’Tis nothing that cannot wait until later,’ he assured her.

  ‘The bite of a dog will mortify swiftly if it is left untreated,’ she told him.

  ‘Later!’ he repeated, and turned to Aboli.

  ‘Aboli, are you acquainted with the road to the boundary of the colony?’

  ‘There is only one road, Gundwane. We have to go straight through the village, skirt the marshland then head out across the sandy flatlands towards the mountains.’ He pointed. ‘The bitter-almond fen
ce is five miles beyond the marsh.’

  Looking beyond the settlement, Hal could already see marshland and the lagoon ahead, stands of reeds and open water, over which hovered flocks of water birds. He had heard that crocodiles and hippopotami lurked in the depths of the lagoon.

  ‘Althuda, will there be any soldiers in our way?’ Hal asked him.

  ‘There are usually guards at the first bridge and there is always a patrol at the bitter-almond hedge to shoot any Hottentots who try to enter,’ Althuda replied, without looking up from the musket he was loading.

  Then Sukeena sang out, ‘There will be no pickets or patrols today. From dawn I kept a watch on the crossroad. No soldiers went out to take up their posts. They are all too busy nursing their aching bellies.’ She laughed gaily, as excited and wrought up as the rest of them. Suddenly she leaped up in the body of the carriage and called out in a ringing voice, ‘Free! For the first time in my life I am free!’ Her plait had tumbled down and come loose. Her hair streamed out behind her head. Her eyes sparkled, and she was so beautiful that she epitomized the dreams of every one of the ragged seamen.

  Although they cheered her, ‘You, and us also, darling!’ it was Hal at whom she was looking with those laughing eyes.

  As they passed the buildings of the settlement, the warning cries had been shouted ahead of them. ‘Beware! The pirates have escaped. The pirates are on the rampage!’ The good citizens of Good Hope scattered before them. Mothers rushed into the street to seize their offspring and drag them indoors, to throw the door-bolts and slam down the shutters.

  ‘You are safe now. You have escaped clean away. Please will you not let me free, Sir Henry?’ Katinka had recovered from her shock sufficiently to plead for her life. ‘I swear I have never meant you harm. I saved you from the gallows. I saved Althuda also. I’ll do anything you say, Sir Henry. Just please set me free,’ she whimpered, clinging to the side of the carriage.

  ‘You may call me sir now and make me those declarations of goodwill but they would have stood my father in better stead while he was on his way to the gallows.’ Hal’s expression was so cold and remorseless that Katinka recoiled and fell back in the seat beside Sukeena, sobbing as though her heart were breaking.

  The seamen running with Hal shouted their scorn and hatred at her.‘You wanted to see us hanged,youpainted doxy, and we’re going to feed you to the lions out there in the wilderness,’ gloated Billy Rogers.

  Katinka sobbed afresh and covered her face with her hands. ‘I never meant any of you harm. Please let me go.’

  The carriage rolled steadily down the empty street, and the last few huts and hovels of the settlement were all that lay ahead when Althuda rose from his seat and pointed back down the gravel-surfaced road towards the distant parade. ‘Horseman coming at a gallop!’ he cried.

  ‘So soon?’ Big Daniel muttered, shading his eyes. ‘I had not expected the pursuit yet. Do they have cavalry to send after us?’

  ‘Have no fear of that, lads,’ Aboli reassured them. ‘There are no more than twenty horses in the whole colony, and we have six of those.’

  ‘Aboli is right. ’Tis only one horseman!’ shouted Wally Finch.

  The rider was leaving a pale ribbon of dust in the air behind him, leaning forward over his mount’s neck as he drove the animal to its top speed, using the whip in his right hand to flog it onwards mercilessly. He was still far off, but Hal recognized him from the sash that flowed out behind him with the speed of his gallop.

  ‘Sweet Mary, it’s Schreuder! I knew he would join us before too long.’ His jaw clenched in anticipation. ‘The hot-headed idiot comes alone to fight us. Brains he lacks, but he has a full cargo of guts.’ Even from his seat Aboli could see what Hal intended by the narrowing of his eyes and the way he changed his grip on his sword.

  ‘Don’t think of going back to give him satisfaction, Gundwane!’ Aboli called sternly. ‘You will place every soul here at risk for any delay.’

  ‘I know you think I’m no match for Schreuder but things have changed, Aboli. I can beat him now. I’m sure of it in my heart.’ Aboli thought that he might well do so, for Hal was no longer a boy. The months on the walls had toughened him, and Aboli had seen him match strength with Big Daniel. ‘Leave me here to see to this business, man to man, and I will follow you later,’ Hal cried.

  ‘No, Sir Hal!’ shouted Big Daniel. ‘Maybe you could best him but not with that leg bitten to the bone. Leave your feud with the Dutchman for another time. We need you with us. There will be a hundred green-jackets following close behind him.’

  ‘No!’ agreed Wally and Stan. ‘Stay with us, Captain.’

  ‘We’ve put our trust in you,’ said Ned Tyler. ‘We can never find our way through the wilderness without a navigator. You can’t desert us now.’

  Hal hesitated, still glaring back at the swiftly approaching rider. Then his eyes flicked to the face of the girl in the carriage. Sukeena stared at him, her huge dark eyes full of entreaty. ‘You are sorely wounded. Look at your leg.’ She leaned over the door of the carriage, so that she was very close, and spoke so softly that he could only just make out the words above the din of men and wheels and horses. ‘Stay with us, Gundwane.’

  He glanced down at the blood and pale lymph oozing from the deep puncture wounds. While he wavered Big Daniel ran back and jumped upon to the step of the carriage.

  ‘I’ll take care of this one,’ he said, and lifted the loaded musket from Althuda’s hands. Holding it, he dropped from the step into the dirt of the road and stood there checking the burning matchlock and the priming in the pan. He took his time as the carriage trotted away from him and Colonel Schreuder galloped down on him.

  Despite all their pleas and warnings Hal started back to intervene. ‘Daniel, don’t kill the fool.’ He wanted to explain that he and Schreuder had a destiny to work out together. It was a matter of chivalric honour in which no other should come between them, but there was no time to give voice to such a romantic notion.

  Schreuder galloped to within earshot and stood in his stirrups. ‘Katinka!’ he shouted. ‘Have no fear, I am come to save you, my darling. I will never let these villains take you.’

  He plucked the bell-muzzled pistol from his sash and held the matchlock in the wind so that the smouldering match flared. Then he lay flat along his horse’s neck with his pistol arm outstretched. ‘Out of my way, oaf!’ he roared at Daniel, and fired. His right arm was thrown high by the discharge and a wreath of blue smoke swirled around his head, but the ball flew wide, hitting the earth a foot from Daniel’s bare right leg, showering him with gravel.

  Schreuder threw aside the pistol and drew the Neptune sword from its scabbard at his side. The gold inlay on the blade glinted as he wielded it. ‘I’ll cleave your skull to the teeth!’ Schreuder roared, and raised the blade high. Daniel dropped on one knee and let the Colonel’s horse come on the last few strides.

  Too close, Hal thought. Much too close. If the musket misfires Danny is a dead man. But Daniel held his aim steadily and snapped the lock. For an instant Hal thought his worst fear had been realized but then, with a sharp report, a spurt of flame and silver smoke, the musket discharged.

  Perhaps Daniel had heeded Hal’s shout, or perhaps the horse was a bigger and surer target than the rider upon its back, but he had aimed into the animal’s wide, sweat-drenched chest and the heavy lead ball for once flew true. At full charge Schreuder’s steed collapsed under him. He was thrown over its head, slamming face and shoulder into the ground.

  The horse struggled and kicked, lying on its back, thrashing its head from side to side while its heart-blood pumped from the wound in its chest. Then its head fell back to earth with a thump and, with one last snorting breath, it lay still.

  Schreuder lay motionless on the sun-baked road, and Hal felt a moment’s fear that his neck was broken. He almost ran back to aid him, but Schreuder made a few disjointed movements, and Hal paused. The carriage was drawing away swiftly, and the others were shouting
to him, ‘Come back, Gundwane!’

  ‘Leave the bastard, Sir Henry.’

  Daniel sprang up, grabbed Hal’s arm. ‘He ain’t dead, but we soon will be if we lie becalmed here much longer,’ and dragged him away.

  For the first few steps Hal resisted and tried to shake off Daniel’s hand. ‘It can’t end like this. Don’t you understand, Danny?’

  ‘I understand well enough,’ Big Daniel grunted, and at that Schreuder sat up groggily in the middle of the road. The gravel had torn the skin off one side of his face, but he was trying to get to his feet, lurching and falling, then trying again.

  ‘He’s all right,’ said Hal, with a relief that almost surprised him, and allowed Daniel to pull him away.

  ‘Aye!’ said Daniel, as they caught up with the carriage. ‘He’s right enough to crop your acorns for you when next you meet. We’ll not be rid of that one so easily.’

  Aboli braked the carriage to allow them to catch up, and Hal grabbed the bridle of the leading horse and allowed it to lift him off his feet. He looked back to see Schreuder on his feet in the middle of the road, dusty, and bleeding. He staggered after the carriage like a man with a bottle of cheap gin in his belly, still brandishing the sword.

  They pulled away from him at a brisk trot and Schreuder gave up the attempt to overhaul the departing carriage, instead screamed abuse after it: ‘By God, Henry Courtney, I’m coming after you, even if I have to follow you to the very gates of hell. I have you in my eye, sir, I have you in my heart.’

  ‘When you come, bring with you that sword you stole from me,’ Hal shouted back. ‘I’ll spit you with it like a sucking pig for the devil to roast.’ His seamen hooted with laughter and gave the colonel an assortment of obscene farewell gestures.

  ‘Katinka! My darling!’ Schreuder changed his tone. ‘Do not despair. I will rescue you. I swear it on my father’s grave. I love you with my very life.’

  Throughout all the shouting and the musket fire, van de Velde had been crouching on the floor of the carriage but now he heaved himself back onto the seat and glared at the battered figure in the road. ‘Is he raving mad? How dare he address my wife in such odious terms?’ He rounded on Katinka with a red face and wobbling jowls. ‘Mevrouw, I trust you have given the dolt of a soldier no cause for such licence.’