Birds of Prey

by Wilbur Smith

  At that they came to the long, deep trench where forty of Cumbrae’s men were already back at work with spades. Among them were the three black seamen he had bought on the slave block at Good Hope.

  ‘Jiri!’ the Buzzard bellowed. ‘Matesi! Kimatti!’ The slaves jumped, threw down their spades and scrambled out of the ditch in trepidation to face their master.

  ‘Look at these great beauties, sir. I paid five hundred florins for each. It was the worst bargain I ever struck. Here before your eyes you have living proof that there are only three things a blackamoor can do well. He can prevaricate, thieve and swive.’ The Buzzard let fly a guffaw. ‘Isn’t that the truth, Jiri?’

  ‘Yes, lordy.’ Jiri grinned and agreed. ‘It’s God’s own truth.’

  The Buzzard stopped laughing as suddenly as he had begun. ‘What do you know about God, you heathen?’ he roared and, with a mighty swing of his fist, he knocked Jiri back into the ditch. ‘Get back to work all three of you!’

  They seized their spades and attacked the bottom of the ditch in a frenzy, sending earth flying over the parapet in a cloud. Cumbrae stood above them, his hands on his hips. ‘Listen to me, you sons of midnight. You tell me that the treasure I seek is buried here. Well, then, find it for me or you won’t be coming with me when I sail away. I’ll bury all three of you in this grave that you’re digging with your own sooty paws. Do you hear me?’

  ‘We hear you, lordy,’ they answered in chorus.

  He took Schreuder’s arm in a companionable grip and led him away. ‘I have come to accept the sad fact that they never truly knew the whereabouts of Franky’s hoard. They’ve been jollying me along all these months. My rascals and I have had just about a bellyful of playing at moles. Let me offer you the hospitality of my humble abode and a mug of whisky, and you can tell me all you know about this pretty little war that’s a-going on between the great Mogul and the Prester. Methinks, you and I might well find better occupation and more profit elsewhere than here at Elephant Lagoon.’

  In the firelight Hal studied his band as they ate, with ravenous appetite, their dinner of smoked meat. The hunting had been poor in these last days and most of them were tired. His own seamen had never been slaves. Their labour on the walls of the castle of Good Hope had not broken or cowed them. Rather it had hardened them, and now the long march had put a temper on them. He could want no more from them: they were tough and tried warriors. Althuda he liked and trusted, but he had been a slave from childhood and some of his men would never be fighters. Sabah was a disappointment. He had not fulfilled Hal’s expectation of him. He had become sullen and obstructive. He shirked his duties and protested at the orders Hal gave him. His favourite cry had become, ‘I am a slave no longer! No man has the right to command me!’

  Sabah would not fare well if matched against the likes of the Buzzard’s seamen, Hal thought, but he looked up and smiled as Sukeena came to sit beside him.

  ‘Do not make an enemy of Sabah,’ she whispered quietly.

  ‘I do not wish that,’ he replied, ‘but every man among us must do his part.’ He looked down at her tenderly. ‘You are the worth of ten men like Sabah, but today I saw you stumble more than once and when you thought I was not watching you there was pain in your eyes. Are you sickening, my sweetheart? Am I truly setting too hard a pace?’

  ‘You are too fond, Gundwane.’ She smiled up at him. ‘I will walk with you to the very gates of hell and not complain.’

  ‘I know you would, and it worries me. If you do not complain, how will I ever know what ails you?’

  ‘Nothing ails me,’ she assured him.

  ‘Swear it to me,’ he insisted. ‘You are not hiding any illness from me.’

  ‘I swear it to you, with this kiss.’ She gave him her lips. ‘All is as well as God ever intended. And I will prove it to you.’ She took his hand and led him to the dark corner of the stockade where she had laid out their bed.

  Though her body melted into his as sweetly as before, there was a softness and languor in her loving that was strange and, though it delighted him while his passion was in white heat, afterwards it left him with a sense of disquiet and puzzlement. He was aware that something had changed but he was at a loss as to exactly what was different.

  The next day he watched her carefully during the long march, and it seemed to him that on the steeper ground her step was not as spry as it had been. Then, when the heat was fiercest, she lost her place in the column and began to fall back. Zwaantie went to help her over a rough place in the elephant path that they were following but Sukeena said something sharply to her and thrust away her hand. Hal slowed the pace, almost imperceptibly, to give her respite, and called the midday halt earlier than he had on the preceding days.

  Sukeena slept beside him that night with a deathlike stillness while Hal lay awake. By now he was convinced that she was not well, and that she was trying to hide her weakness from him. As she slept her breathing was so light that he had to place his ear to her lips to reassure himself. He held her close and her body seemed heated. Once, just before dawn, she groaned so pitifully that he felt his heart swell with love and concern for her. At last he also fell into a deep dreamless sleep. When he woke with a start and reached out for her, he found her gone.

  He lifted himself on one elbow and looked around the stockade. The fire had died down to a puddle of embers, but the full moon, even though it was low in the west, threw enough light for him to see that she was not there. He could make out the dark shape of Aboli: the morning star was almost washed out by the more brilliant light of the moon, but it burned just above his head as he sat his watch at the entrance. Aboli was awake, for Hal heard him cough softly and then saw him draw his fur blanket closer around his shoulders.

  Hal threw back his own kaross, and went to squat beside him. ‘Where is Sukeena?’ he whispered.

  ‘She went out a short while ago.’

  ‘Which way?’

  ‘Down towards the stream.’

  ‘You did not stop her?’

  ‘She was going about her private business.’ Aboli turned to look at him curiously. ‘Why would I stop her?’

  ‘I am sorry,’ Hal whispered back. ‘I meant no rebuke. She worries me. She is not well. Have you not noticed?’

  Aboli hesitated. ‘Perhaps.’ He nodded. ‘Women are children of the moon, which lacks but a few nights of full, so perhaps her courses are in flood.’

  ‘I am going after her.’ Hal stood up and went down the rough path towards the shallow pool where they had bathed the previous evening. He was about to call her name when he heard a sound that silenced and alarmed him. He stopped and listened anxiously. The sound came again, the sound of pain and distress. He started forward and saw her on the sandbank kneeling beside the pool. She had thrown aside her blanket, and the moonlight shone on her bare skin, imparting to it the patina of polished ivory. She was doubled up in a convulsion of pain and sickness. As he watched in distress, she retched and vomited into the sand.

  He ran down to her and dropped on his knees beside her. She looked up at him in despair. ‘You should not see me thus,’ she whispered hoarsely, then turned her head away and vomited again. He put his arm around her bare shoulders. She was cold and shivering.

  ‘You are sick,’ he breathed. ‘Oh, my love, why did you not answer me straight? Why did you try to hide it from me?’

  She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. ‘You should not have followed,’ she said. ‘I did not want you to know.’

  ‘If you are sick, then I must know. You should trust me enough to tell me.’

  ‘I did not want to be a burden to you. I did not want you to delay the march because of me.’

  He hugged her to him. ‘You will never be a burden to me. You are the breath in my lungs and the blood in my veins. Tell me now truthfully what ails you, my darling.’

  She sighed and shivered against him. ‘Oh, Hal, forgive me. I did not want this to happen yet. I have taken all the medicines that I know of t
o prevent it.’

  ‘What is it?’ He was confused and dismayed. ‘Please tell me.’

  ‘I am carrying your child in my womb.’ He stared at her in astonishment and could neither move nor speak. ‘Why are you silent? Why do you look at me so? Please don’t be angry with me.’

  Suddenly he clasped her to his chest with all his strength. ‘It is not anger that stops up my mouth. It is joy. Joy for our love. Joy for the son you promised me.’

  That day Hal changed the order of march and took Sukeena to walk with him at the head of the column. Though she protested laughingly, he took her basket from her and added it to his own load. Thus relieved she was able to step out lightly and stay beside him without difficulty. Still he took her hand on the difficult places, and she did not demur when she saw what pleasure it gave him to protect and cherish her thus.

  ‘You must not tell the others,’ she murmured, ‘else they will want to slow the march on my behalf.’

  ‘You are as strong as Aboli and Big Daniel,’ he assured her staunchly, ‘but I will not tell them.’

  So they kept their secret, walking hand in hand and smiling at each other in such obvious happiness that even if Zwaantie had not told Althuda and he had not told Aboli, they must have guessed. Aboli grinned as if he were the father and showed Sukeena such special favour and attention that even Sabah, in the end, fathomed the reason for this new mood that had come over the band.

  The land through which they were passing now became more heavily wooded. Some of the trees were monstrous and seemed, like great arrows, to pierce the very heavens. ‘These must have been old when Christ the Saviour was born upon this earth!’ Hal marvelled.

  With Aboli’s wise counsel and guidance they were coming to terms with this savage terrain, and the great animals that abounded in it. Fear was no longer their constant companion, and Hal and Sukeena had learned to take pleasure in the strangeness and beauty all around them. They would pause on a hilltop to watch an eagle sail on the high wind with motionless wings, or to take pleasure in a tiny gleaming metallic bird, no bigger than Sukeena’s thumb, as it hung suspended from a flower while it sipped the nectar with a curved beak that seemed as long as its body.

  The grassland teemed with a plethora of strange beasts that challenged their imagination. There were herds of the same blue buck that they had first encountered below the mountains, and wild horses barred with stark stripes of cream, russet and black. Often they saw ahead of them among the trees the dark mountainous shapes of the double-horned rhinoceros, but they had learned that this fearsome beast was almost blind and that they could avoid its wild, snorting charge by making a short detour from the path.

  On the open lands, beyond the forest, there were flocks of small cinnamon-coloured gazelles, so numerous that they moved like smoke across the hills. Their flanks were slashed with a horizontal chocolate stripe, and lyre-shaped horns crowned their dainty heads. When alarmed by the sight of the human figures, they pranced with astonishing lightness of hoof, leaping high in the air and flashing a snowy plume upon their backs. Each ewe was followed by a tiny lamb, and Sukeena clapped her hands with delight and exclaimed to see the young animals nudging the udder or cavorting with their peers. Hal watched her fondly, knowing now that she also carried a child within her, sharing her joy in the young of another species and revelling with her in the secret they thought they had kept from the others.

  He read the angle of the noon sun, and everyone in the band gathered around him to watch him mark their position on the chart. The string of dots on the heavy parchment sheet crept slowly towards the indentation on the coastline, which was marked on the Dutch chart as Buffels Baai or the Bay of the Buffaloes.

  ‘We are not more than five leagues from the lagoon now.’ Hal looked up from the chart.

  Aboli agreed. ‘While we were out hunting this morning I recognized the hills ahead. From the high ground I saw the line of low cloud that marks the coast. We are very close.’

  Hal nodded. ‘We must advance with caution. There is the danger that we might run into foraging parties from the Gull. This is a favourable place to set up a more permanent camp. There is an abundance of water and firewood and a good lookout from this hill. In the morning, Aboli and I will leave the rest of you here while we go on ahead to discover if the Gull is truly lying in Elephant Lagoon.’

  An hour before dawn, Hal took Big Daniel aside and committed Sukeena to his care. ‘Guard her well, Master Daniel. Never let her out of your sight.’

  ‘Have no fear, Captain. She’ll be safe with me.’

  As soon as it was light enough to see the track that led eastwards Hal and Aboli left the camp, Sukeena walked a short distance with them.

  ‘God speed, Aboli.’ Sukeena embraced him. ‘Watch over my man.’

  ‘I will watch over him, even as you watch over his son.’

  ‘You monstrous rogue, Aboli!’ She struck him a playful blow on his great broad chest. ‘How do you know everything? We were so sure we had kept it a secret even from you.’ She turned laughing to Hal. ‘He knows!’

  ‘Then all is lost.’ Hal shook his head. ‘For on the day it is born this rascal will take it as his own, even as he did with me.’

  She watched them climb the hill and wave from the crest. But as they disappeared the smile shrivelled on her lips and a single tear traced its way down her cheek. On her way back, she stopped beside the stream and washed it away. When she entered the camp again, Althuda looked up at her from the sword blade he was burnishing and smiled at her, unsuspecting of her distress. He marvelled at how beautiful and fresh she looked, even after all these months of hard travel in the wilderness.

  When last they had been here, Hal and Aboli had hunted and explored these hills above the lagoon. They knew the run of the river, and they entered the deep gorge a mile above the lagoon, following an elephant path down to a shallow ford that they knew. They did not approach the lagoon from this direction. ‘There may be watering parties from the Gull,’ Aboli cautioned. Hal nodded and led them up the far side of the gorge and in a wide circuit around the back of the hills, out of sight of the lagoon.

  They climbed the back slope of the hills until they were a few paces below the skyline. Hal knew that the cave of the ancient rock paintings, where he and Katinka had dallied, lay just over the crest in front of them, and that from the ridge there would be a panoramic view across the lagoon to the rocky heads and the ocean beyond.

  ‘Use those trees to break your shape on the skyline,’ Aboli told him quietly.

  Hal smiled. ‘You taught me well. I have not forgotten.’ He inched his way up the last few yards, followed by Aboli, and, gradually, the view down the far side opened to his gaze. He had not had sight of the sea for weeks now, and he felt his heart leap and his spirits soar as he looked upon its serene blue expanse, flecked with the white horses that pranced before the south-easter. It was the element that ruled his life and he had missed it sorely.

  ‘Oh, for a ship!’ he whispered. ‘Please, God, let there be a ship!’

  As he moved up, there before his eyes appeared the great grey castles of the heads, the bastions that guarded the entrance to the lagoon. He paused before taking another step, steeling himself for the terrible disappointment of finding the anchorage deserted. Like a gambler at Hazard, he had staked his life on this coup of the dice of Fate. He forced himself to take another slow step up the slope, then gasped, seized Aboli’s arm and dug his fingers into the knotted muscles.

  ‘The Gull!’ he muttered, as though it were a prayer of thanks. ‘And not alone! There is another fine ship with her.’

  For a long while neither spoke again, until Aboli said softly, ‘You have found the ship you promised them. If you can seize it, you will be a captain at last, Gundwane.’

  They crept forward and, on the crest of the hill, sank on their bellies and gazed down upon the wide lagoon below.

  ‘What ship is that with the Gull?’ Hal asked. ‘I cannot make out her name from here.’


  ‘She is an Englishman,’ said Aboli, with certainty. ‘No other would cross her mizzen topgallant yard in that fashion.’

  ‘A Welshman, perhaps? She has a rake to her bows and a racy style to her sheer. They build them that way on the west coast.’

  ‘It is possible, but whoever she is, she’s a fighting ship. Look at those guns. There would be few to match her in her class,’ Aboli murmured thoughtfully.

  ‘Better than the Gull, even?’ Hal looked at her with longing eyes.

  Aboli shook his head. ‘You dare not try to take her, Gundwane. Surely she belongs to an honest English sea captain. If you lay hands upon her you turn all of us into pirates. Better we try for the Gull.’

  For another hour they lay on the hilltop, talking and planning quietly while they studied the two ships and the encampment among the trees on the near shore of the lagoon.

  ‘By heavens!’ Hal exclaimed abruptly. ‘There is the Buzzard himself. I would know that bush of fiery hair anywhere.’ His voice was sharp with hatred and anger. ‘He is going out to the other ship. See him climb the ladder without a by-your-leave, as if he owns it.’

  ‘Who is that greeting him at the companionway?’ Aboli asked. ‘I swear I know that walk, and the bald scalp shining in the sunlight.’

  ‘It cannot be Sam Bowles aboard that frigate … but it is,’ Hal marvelled. ‘There is something very strange afoot here, Aboli. How may we find out what it is?’

  While they watched the sun begin to slide down the western sky, Hal tried to keep his rage under control. Down there were the two men responsible for his father’s terrible death. He relived every detail of his agony and he hated Sam Bowles and the Buzzard to the point where he knew that his emotions might override his reason. His strong instinct was to throw all else aside, go down to confront them and seek retribution for his father’s agony and death.