Blue Horizon c-3

by Wilbur Smith

  "And now, my old comrade in arms, it is time for us to part," Kadem said, 'but always remember your promise to me, if you should be so fortunate as to capture al-Salil or his puppy."

  "Yes, I shall remember it well." Koots smiled like a cobra. "You want them for yourself. I swear, if it is within my power, I shall deliver them to you. For myself I want only Jim Courtney and his pretty wench."

  "Go with God!" Kadem said, and watched Koots go down into the crowded boat and head for the shore. A swarm of small craft followed him. As they approached the river mouth, the swells sent them swooping in over the sandbar that guarded it. As soon as they were into the protected water, the boats turned into the bank. From each one twenty men jumped over side into the waist-deep water and waded ashore, their weapons and packs held high.

  They assembled in their platoons above the high-water mark and squatted in patient ranks. The empty boats returned to the anchored ships, the oarsmen driving them through the lines of waves at the river mouth. As soon as they were alongside the transports the next wave of men swarmed down into them from the high deck. As the boats ferried back and forth, and more and more men went ashore, the stretch of beach grew more crowded, but still none ventured into the thick jungle beyond.

  Kadem watched through his telescope and began to fret. What is Koots doing? he wondered. Every minute now, the enemy will be rallying. He is throwing away his chances. Then he turned his head and listened. The distant sound of the bombardment had ceased and there was silence from the direction of the bay. What has happened to the

  Caliph's attack? Surely he could not have overpowered the fort so swiftly- He looked back at the men on the beach. As for Koots, Kadem thought, he must move now. He cannot afford to waste more time.

  Since he had landed, Koots had been able to form a better estimate of the kind of terrain that lay ahead of him, and had been most unpleasantly surprised. He had sent scouting parties into the bush to find the easiest way through, but they had still not returned. Now he was waiting anxiously at the edge of the jungle, thumping a clenched fist into the palm of the other hand with frustration. He understood as well as Kadem how dangerous it was to allow the momentum of his attack to dissipate, but on the other hand he dared not rush into the unknown.

  Would it be better to take them along the beach? he wondered, and looked along the sweep of honey-brown sand. Then he glanced at his own feet. He was ankle-deep in it and the effort of walking even a few paces was demanding. Such a march under heavy packs would exhaust even the hardest of his men.

  An hour past low tide, he estimated. Soon the tide will be in full flow. It will flood the sand and force us off it and into the bush.

  While he still hesitated, one of the scouting parties pushed their way through the thick wall of vegetation and into the open. "Where have you been?" Koots bellowed at the leader. "Is there a way through?"

  "It is very bad for three hundred yards. There is a deep swamp directly ahead. One of my men was taken by a crocodile. We tried to save him."

  "You idiot." With his scabbard Koots struck the man across the side of the head, and he dropped to his knees in the sand. "Is that what you have been doing all this time, trying to save another useless bastard like yourself? You should have let the crocodile have him. Did you find a path?"

  The man came to his feet, swaying slightly and holding his injured face. "Have no fear, Pasha effendi," he mumbled. "After the swamp there is a spur of dry ground that leads towards the south. There is an open path running along it, but it is narrow. It will take only three men abreast."

  "Any sign of the enemy?"

  None, great Pasha, but there are many wild beasts."

  Lead us to the path at once, or I will find a crocodile for you also."

  ' " " f we attack them now, we will sweep them with a single charge

  I back into the sea whence they came," said Beshwayo, fiercely. JL "No, great king, that is not our purpose. There are still many more of them coming ashore. We want all of them," said Jim, in a reasonable tone. "Why kill a few of them when, if we wait awhile, we will kill them all?"

  Beshwayo chuckled and shook his head so that the earrings Louisa had given him jangled. "You are right, Somoya. I have many young warriors seeking the right to wed and I do not want to deprive them of that honour."

  Jim and Beshwayo had waited on the hills above the coast from where they had an uninterrupted view out to sea. They watched Zayn's fleet sail in and separate into two divisions. The five largest ships sailed into the bay, and the gunsmoke billowed up as they began to bombard the fort. It seemed that this was the signal for which the second, larger division had been waiting out at sea, for they immediately came directly in towards the mouth of the Umgeni river. Jim waited until they anchored close inshore. He watched them launch their boats, filled with men, and send them in towards the beach.

  "Here is the meat I promised you, mighty black lion," Jim told Beshwayo.

  "Then let us go down to the feast, Somoya, for my belly growls with hunger."

  The imp is of young warriors poured down on to the flat lands of the littoral strip. Silently as a pride of panthers they moved into their forward positions. Jim and Beshwayo ran ahead of the leading impi to the lookout position. They climbed high into the branches of the tall wild fig tree they had chosen days before. Its twisted serpentine air-roots and branches formed a natural ladder, and the bunches of yellow fruit and dense foliage sprouted directly from the trunk to screen them effectively. From their perch in one of the main forks they had a view through the foliage along the entire sweep of the beach south of the river mouth.

  Jim had his eye to his spyglass. Suddenly he exclaimed in astonishment, "Sweet Mother Mary, if it's not Koots himself, all dressed up like a Mussulman grandee. No matter what his disguise, I would know that evil jib anywhere."

  He spoke in English, and Beshwayo scowled. "Somoya, I do not understand what you say," he rebuked Jim. "Now that I have taught you

  to speak the language of heaven, there is no reason for you still to jabber like a monkey in that strange tongue of yours."

  "Do you see that man on the beach down there in the headdress with the bright and shining band, the one closest to us? He is speaking to the other two. There! He has just struck one in the face."

  "I see him," Beshwayo said. "Not a good blow, for his victim is standing up again. Who is he, Somoya?"

  "His name is Koots," Jim answered grimly, 'my enemy to the death."

  Then I will leave him for you," Beshwayo promised.

  "Ah, it seems as though at last they have all their troops ashore, and that Koots has made up his mind to move."

  Even above the sound of the surf breaking on the sandbar, they could hear the Arab captains shouting their orders. The squatting ranks rose to their feet, hefting their weapons and packs. Quickly they formed up into columns and began to move into the bush and swamp. Jim tried to count them, but could not do so accurately. "Over two hundred," he decided.

  Beshwayo whistled and two of his indunas climbed up to him swiftly. They wore the head-rings of their rank, their short beards were grizzled and their bare chests and arms carried the scars of many battles. Beshwayo gave them a rapid string of orders. To each they replied in unison, "Yehbo, Nkosi Nkulul Yes, great king!"

  "You have heard me," Beshwayo told them. "Now obey!"

  Beshwayo dismissed them, and they slid down the trunk of the wild fig and disappeared into the undergrowth. Minutes later, Jim saw the surreptitious movements in the bush below as the regiments of Beshwayo warriors began to creep forward. They were well spread out, and even from above there was only the brief flash of oiled dark skin, or the glint of bare steel as they closed in quietly on each flank of the marching Omani columns.

  A detachment of Turks in their bronze bowl-shaped helmets passed almost directly under the fig tree in which they sat, but they were so intent on finding their way through the matted bush that none looked up. Suddenly there was a commotion of grunts, breaking
branches and splashing mud. A small herd of buffalo, disturbed in their mud wallows, burst out of the swamp and thundered away in a solid mass of black, mud-caked bodies and curved, gleaming horns, smashing a road through the forest. There was a scream and Jim saw the body of one of the Arabs tossed high as he was gored by the old cow buffalo that led the herd. Then they were gone.

  A few of his companions gathered about the man's crushed body, but the captains yelled at them angrily. They left him lying where he had

  fallen and went on. By this time the leading platoons had disappeared into the jungle, while the rear echelons were only just leaving the open beach and starting into the swamp.

  Once they were into the bush, none of them was able to see further ahead than the man in front of him, and they followed each other blindly. Already they were falling into mud holes in the swamp, and losing any but the most general sense of direction as they were forced to skirt the densest patches of thorny scrub. The insects swarmed off the algae-green puddles that steamed in the heat. The Turks sweated under their steel mail. The bronze helmets reflected arrows of light. The officers had to raise their voices to keep contact with their platoons, and any attempt at stealth was abandoned.

  On the other hand, this was the kind of terrain in which the Beshwayo hunted and fought best. They were invisible to the columns of Koots's men. They shadowed them on each flank. The indunas never uttered a word of command. To guide their imp is in for the kill, they used only birdcalls or the piping of tree frogs, which sounded so natural that it was difficult to believe they issued from a human throat.

  Beshwayo listened to these sounds intently. Cocking his huge shaven head first on one side then the other, he understood what they were telling him as if they spoke in plain language. "It is time, Somoya," he said at last. He threw back his head and filled his lungs; his barrel chest swelled, then contracted at the force with which he uttered the high, chanting cry of a fish-eagle. Almost immediately, from far out and much closer at hand, his cry was repeated from a dozen places in the thick jungle below where they sat. His indunas were acknowledging the king's order to attack.

  "Come, Somoya!" said Beshwayo softly. "Unless we are quick we will miss the sport." When Jim reached the ground he found Bakkat squatting beside the trunk of the fig tree.

  He greeted Jim with a sparkling grin. "I heard the fish eagle cry. So, now there is work to do, Somoya." He handed Jim his sword belt. Jim buckled it about his waist, then thrust the pair of double-barrelled pistols through the leather loops. Like a dark shadow Beshwayo had already disappeared into a dense stand of reeds. Jim turned back to Bakkat. "Koots is here. He leads the enemy brigade," he told him. "Find him for me, Bakkat."

  "He will be at the head of his troops," Bakkat said. "We must circle out around the main fighting so that we are not trapped in it, like a bull elephant in quicksand."

  Suddenly the jungle around them echoed and resonated with the clamour of fighting men: the thudding reports of musket and pistol, the

  thunder of assegai and kerrie drumming on rawhide shield, wild splashing in the swamps, and the crackle of breaking brush as men charged through it. Then the war chant of Beshwayo's men was answered by shouted challenges in Arabic and Turkish.

  Bakkat darted away, avoiding the sounds of battle, circling out towards the river to get ahead of the Omani brigades. Jim ran hard to keep up with him. Once or twice he lost sight of him in the denser patches of jungle, but Bakkat whistled softly to lead him on. They reached the spur of dry ground at the far side of the swamp. Bakkat found a narrow game path and ran back along it. After a few hundred paces he stopped again, and they both stood listening. Jim was panting like a dog, and his shirt was dark with sweat, plastered to his body like a second skin. The battle was so close that, underlying the uproar, they could clearly make out the more intimate sounds of death, the crunch of a skull splitting at the blow from a kerrie, the grunt as a spearman thrust home, the hiss of a scimitar blade through the air, the gush of blood spilling upon the earth, the thud of a falling body, the groans and laboured breath of the maimed and dying.

  Bakkat looked at Jim, and made a gesture of closing in upon the battle, but Jim raised a hand to restrain him and cocked his head. His breath was returning swiftly. He loosed his pistols in their loops, and drew his sword.

  Suddenly there was a bull-like bellow from the thickets close at hand. "Come, my sons! Come, the children of heaven! Let us devour them!"

  Jim grinned, it could be none other than Beshwayo. He was answered by another voice, crying out in heavily accented Arabic: "Steady! Steady! Hold your fire! Let them come in close!"

  That's him!" Jim nodded at Bakkat. "Koots!"

  They left the game path and plunged into the undergrowth. Jim forced his way through a wall of thorns, and before him stretched an opening of bright green swamp grass. In its centre there was a tiny island not more than twenty paces across. On this last refuge Koots was making his stand with a dozen of his men, Arabs in mud-soaked robes and Turks in splattered half-armour. They had formed a ragged line, some kneeling, others standing with their muskets at high port. Koots was striding up and down behind the second rank, carrying his musket at the trail. A bloody cloth was wrapped round his forehead, but he was grinning like a skull, a fearsome rictus that exposed his clenched teeth.

  Across the narrow neck of swamp they were confronted by a mass of Beshwayo's warriors, with the Great Bull at their head. Beshwayo threw back his head and gave one last bellow: "Come, my children. This way goes the road to glory!" He bounded forward into the pools, scum med

  with thick clumps of stinking green algae. His warriors raced after him and the swamp exploded into spray under their charge. "Steady!" Koots shouted. "One shot and they will be on us."

  Beshwayo never faltered: he galloped forward, straight into the levelled muskets like a charging buffalo.

  "The mad fool," Jim lamented. "He knows the power of the gun."

  "Wait!" Koots called, quite softly. "Wait for it!" Jim saw that he had chosen the king, and was aiming at his chest. He snatched one of his pistols from the loop on his belt and fired instinctively, without seeing the iron sights. It was a forlorn effort. Koots did not even flinch as the ball flew past his head. Instead, his voice rang out harshly, "Fire!" The volley crashed out, and in the smoke Jim saw at least four of the charging warriors go down, two killed outright, the others thrashing around in the mud. Their companions ran over the top of them. Jim searched desperately for a glimpse of Beshwayo. Then as the smoke cleared he saw him untouched and undaunted still in the front of the charge, bawling lustily as he came: "I am the Black Death. Look upon me, and know fear!" He hurled himself into the front rank of Arabs, and knocked two flat on to the earth with a sweep of his shield. He stood over them and stabbed down so swiftly that his blade blurred. Each time he drew it out again a bright crimson tide followed the steel.

  Koots threw aside his empty musket, and whirled round. He crossed the island with long, loping strides and plunged into the swamp, heading straight back towards where Jim stood. Jim stepped out from the thicket of thorns. He drew his sword, and waited for him at the edge of marshy ground. Koots recognized him and stopped ankle deep in the mud.

  "The Courtney puppy!" He was still smiling. "I have waited long for this moment. Keyset will still pay good gold guilders for your head."

  "You'll have to reap it first."

  "Where is your blonde whore? I have something for her also." Koots took a handful of his crotch and shook it lewdly.

  "I will hack it off and take it to her," Jim promised him grimly.

  Koots glanced over his shoulder. His men were all dead. With slashes of the assegai, the Beshwayo were disembowelling their corpses, allowing their spirits to escape: a last tribute to men who had fought well. But some had already started in pursuit of Koots, splashing towards him through the swamp.

  Koots hesitated no longer. He came straight at Jim, stepping high through the mud, still smiling, those pale eyes starin
g into Jim's face to read his intentions. His first thrust came with no warning, straight at Jim's throat. Jim touched his blade, just enough to turn it off line so that the point flew over his shoulder. In the moment that Koots was at