Birds of Prey c-1

by Wilbur Smith

  He abandoned the idea, however, as he came level with it and saw how shallow it was. Schreuder would hunt them out of there like a ferret driving out a couple of rabbits from a warren.

  "Hal Courtney!" a voice called from the dark crack in the rock. He peered into it and, in its depths, saw two men. One was Althuda, who had called him, and the other was a stranger, a bearded, older man dressed in animal skins. It was too dark to see his face clearly, but when both he and Althuda beckoned urgently neither Hal nor Aboli hesitated. They threw themselves at the narrow opening and squeezed in, between the two men already there.

  "Get down!" the stranger shouted in Hal's ear, and stood up with a short-handled axe in his hand. A soldier appeared in the opening of the crevice and raised his sword to thrust at the four men crowded into it, but Althuda threw up the pistol in his hand and shot him at close range in the centre of his chest.

  At the same time the bearded stranger raised the axe high then slashed down with a powerful stroke. Hal did not understand what he was doing, until he saw that the man had severed a rope of plaited bark, thick as a man's wrist and hairy. The axe bit cleanly through the taut rope, and as it parted the severed tail whipped away, as though impelled by some immense force. The end had been looped and knotted around a sturdy wooden peg, driven into a crack in the stone. The length of the rope ran round the corner of the crevice, then stretched upwards to some point lost in the gathering gloom higher up the steep gorge.

  For a long minute nothing else happened, and Hal and Aboli stared at, the other two in bewilderment. Then there was a creaking and a rustling from higher up the funnel of the gorge, a rumbling and a crackling as though a sleeping giant had stirred.

  "Sabah has triggered the rockfall!" Althuda explained, and instantly Hal understood. He stared out into the gorge through the narrow entrance to the crevice. The rumbling became a gathering roar, and above it he could hear the wild, terrified screams of green-jackets caught full in the path of this avalanche. For them there was neither shelter nor escape. The gorge was a death trap into which Althuda and Sabah had lured them.

  The roaring and grinding of rock rose in a deafening crescendo. The mountain seemed to tremble beneath them. The screams of the soldiers in its path were drowned, and suddenly a mighty river of racing boulders came sweeping past the entrance to the crevice. The light was blotted out, and the air was filled with dust and powdered rock so that the four men choked and gasped for breath. Blinded and suffocating, Hal lifted the tail of his ragged shirt and held it over his nose and mouth, trying to filter the air so that he could breathe in the tumultuous choking dust-storm thrown out by the tidal wave of rock and flying stone that poured past.

  The avalanche went on for a long time but gradually the stream of moving rock dwindled to become a slow, intermittent slither and tumble of the last few fragments.

  At last silence, complete and oppressive, weighed down upon them, and the dust settled to reveal the outline of the opening to their shelter.

  Aboli crawled out and balanced gingerly on the loose, unstable footing. Hal crept out beside him and both peered down the gloomy gorge. From wall to wall, it had been scoured clean by the avalanche. There was no sound or trace of their pursuers, not a last despairing cry or dying moan, not a shred of cloth or discarded weapon. It was as though they had never been.

  Hal's injured leg could no longer bear his weight. He staggered and collapsed in the opening of the crevice. The fever in his blood from the festering wounds boiled up and filled his head with darkness and heat. He was aware of strong hands supporting him and then he lapsed into unconsciousness.

  Colonel Cornelius Schreuder waited for an hour in the antechamber of the castle before Governor van de Velde condescended to see him.

  When, eventually, he was summoned by an aide-decamp, he strode into the Governor's audience chamber, but still van de Velde declined to acknowledge his presence. He went on signing the documents and proclamations that Jacobus Hop laid before him, one at a time.

  Schreuder was in full uniform, wearing all his decorations and stars. His wig was freshly curled and powdered, and his moustaches were dressed with beeswax into sharp spikes. Down one side of his face there were pink raw scars and scabs.

  Van de Velde signed the last document and dismissed Hop with a wave of his hand. When the clerk had left and closed the doors behind him, van de Velde picked up Schreuder's written report from the desk in front of him as though it was a particularly revolting piece of excrement.

  "So you lost almost forty men, Schreuder?" he asked heavily. "Not to mention eight of the Company's finest horses."

  "Thirty-four men, Schreuder corrected him, still standing stiffly to attention.

  "Almost forty!" van de Velde repeated, with an expression of repugnance. "And eight horses. The convicts and slaves you were pursuing got clean away from you. Hardly a famous victory, do you agree, Colonel?" Schreuder scowled furiously at the sculpted cornices on the ceiling above the Governor's head. "The security of the castle is your responsibility, Schreuder. The minding of the prisoners is your responsibility. The safety of my person and that of my wife is also your responsibility. Do you agree, Schreuder?"

  "Yes, your excellency." A nerve beneath Schreuder's eye began to twitch.

  "You allowed the prisoners to escape. You allowed them to plunder the Company's property. You allowed them to do grievous damage to this building with explosives. Look at my windowsP Van de Velde pointed at the empty casements from which the stained-glass panels had been blown.

  "I have estimates from the Company surveyor that place the damage at over one hundred thousand guilders!" He was working himself steadily into a rage. "A hundred thousand guilders! Then, on top of that, you allowed the prisoners to abduct my wife and myself and to place us in mortal danger-" He had to break off to get his temper under control. "Then you allowed almost forty of the Company's servants to be murdered, including five white men! What do you imagine will be the reaction of the Council of Seventeen in Amsterdam when they receive my full report detailing the depths of the dereliction of your duties, hey? What do you think they will say? Answer me, you jumped-up popinjay! What do you think they will say?" "They may be somewhat displeased," Schreuder replied stiffly.

  "Displeased? Somewhat displeased?" shrieked van de Velde, and fell back in his chair, gasping for breath like a stranded fish. When he had recovered, he went on, "You will be the first to know whether or not they are somewhat displeased, Schreuder. I am sending you back to Amsterdam in the deepest disgrace. You will sail in three days" time aboard the Weltevreden, which is anchored in the bay at this moment."

  He pointed out through the empty windows at the cluster of ships lying at anchor beyond the surf line. "My report on the affair will go to Amsterdam on the same ship, together with my condemnation of you in the strongest possible terms. You will stand before the Seventeen and make your excuses to them in person." He leered at the colonel gloatingly. "Your military career is destroyed, Schreuder. I suggest you consider taking up the calling of whoremaster, a vocation for which you have demonstrated considerable aptitude. Goodbye, Colonel Schreuder. I doubt I shall have the pleasure of your company ever again."

  Aching with the Governor's insults as though he had taken twenty lashes of the cat, Schreuder strode out to the head of the staircase. To give himself time in which to regain his composure and his temper, he paused to survey the damage that the explosion had inflicted on the buildings surrounding the courtyard. The armoury had been destroyed, blown into a rubble heap. The roof timbers of the north wing were shattered and blackened by the fire that had followed the blast, but the outer walls were intact and the other buildings only superficially damaged.

  The sentries who once would have leapt to attention at his appearance now delayed rendering him his honours, and when finally they tossed him a lackadaisical salute, one accompanied it with an impudent grin. In the tiny community of the colony news spread swiftly, and clearly his dishonourable discharge from
the Company's service was already known to the entire garrison. Jacobus Hop must have taken pleasure in spreading the news, Schreuder decided, and he rounded on the grinning sentry. "Wipe that smirk off your ugly face or, by God, I will shave it off with my sword." The man sobered instantly and stared rigidly ahead. However, as Schreuder crossed the courtyard, Manseer and the overseers whispered together and smiled behind their fists. Even some of the recaptured prisoners, now wearing chains, who were repairing the damage to the armoury stopped work to grin slyly at him.

  Such humiliation was painfully hard for a man of his pride and temperament to bear, and he tried to imagine how much worse it would become when he returned to Holland and faced the Council of Seventeen. His shame would be shouted in every tavern and port, in every garrison and regiment, in the salons of all the great houses and mansions of Amsterdam. Van de Velde was correct. he would become a pariah.

  He strode out through-the gates and across the bridge of the moat.

  He did not know where he was going, but he turned down towards the foreshore and stood above the beach staring out to sea. Slowly he brought his turbulent emotions under some control, and began to look for some escape from the scorn and the ridicule that he could not bear.

  I shall swallow the ball, he decided. It's the only way open to me. Then, almost instantly, his whole nature revolted against such a craven course of action. He remembered how he had despised one of his brother officers in Batavia who, over the matter of a woman, had placed the muzzle of a loaded pistol in his mouth and blown away the back of his skull. "It is the coward's way!" Schreuder said aloud. "And not for me."

  Yet he knew he could never obey van de Velde's orders to return home to Holland. But neither could he remain here at Good Hope, nor travel to any Dutch possession anywhere upon this globe. He was an outcast, and he must find some other land where his shame was unknown.

  Now his gaze focused on the cluster of shipping anchored out in Table Bay. There was the Weltevreden, upon which van de Velde wished to send him back to face the Seventeen. His eye moved on over the three other Dutch vessels lying near it. He would not sail on a Dutch ship but there were only two foreign vessels. One was a Portuguese slaver, outward-bound for the markets of Zanzibar. Even the thought of sailing on a slaver was distasteful he could smell her from where he stood above the beach. The other ship was an English frigate and, by the looks of her, newly launched and well found. Her rigging was fresh and her paintwork only lightly marred by the Atlantic gales. She had the look of a warship, but he had heard that she was privately owned and an armed trader. He could read her name on her transom. the Golden Bough. She had fifteen gun ports down the side, which she presented to him as she rode lightly at anchor, but he did not know whence she had come nor whither she was bound. However, he knew exactly where to find this information so he settled his Hat firmly over his wig and struck out along the shore, heading for the nearest of the insalubrious cluster of hovels that served as brothels and gin halls to the seafarers of the oceans.

  Even at this hour of the morning the tavern was crowded, and the windowless interior was dark and rank with tobacco smoke and the fumes of cheap spirits and unwashed humanity. The whores were mostly Hottentots but there were one or two white women who had grown too old and pox-ridden to work in even the ports of Rotterdam or St. Pauli. Somehow they had found ships to carry them southwards and had come ashore, like rats, to eke out their last days in these squalid surroundings before the French disease burned them out entirely.

  His hand on the hilt of his sword, Schreuder cleared a small table for himself with a sharp word and haughty state. Once he was seated he summoned one of the haggard serving wenches to bring him a tankard of small beer. "Which are the sailors from the Golden Bough?" he asked, and tossed a silver rix-dollar onto the filthy table top. The trull snatched up this largesse and dropped it down the front of her grubby dress between her pendulous dugs before she jerked her head in the direction of three seamen at a table in the far corner of the room.

  "Take each of those gentlemen another chamber pot filled with whatever foul piss you're serving them and tell them that I'm paying for it."

  When he left the tavern half an hour later Schreuder knew where the Golden Bough was heading, and the name and disposition of her captain. He sauntered down to the beach and hired a skiff to row him out to the frigate.

  The anchor watch on board the Golden Bough spotted him as soon as he left the beach, and could tell by his dress and deportment that he was a man of consequence. When Schreuder hailed the deck of the frigate and asked for permission to come aboard, a stout, florid-faced Welsh petty-officer gave him a cautious greeting at the entry port then led him down to the stern cabin where Captain Christopher Llewellyn rose to welcome him. Once he was seated, he offered Schteuder a pewter pot of porter. He was obviously relieved to find that Schreuder spoke good English. Llewellyn soon accepted him as a gentleman and an equal, relaxed and spoke easily and openly.

  First they discussed the recent hostilities between their two countries, and expressed themselves pleased that a satisfactory peace had been concluded, then went on to speak about maritime trade in the eastern oceans and the temporal powers and politics that governed the regions of the East Indies and Further India. These were highly involved, and complicated by the rivalry between the European powers whose traders and naval vessels were entering the Oriental seas in ever greater numbers.

  "There are also the religious conflicts that embroil the eastern lands," Llewellyn remarked. "My present voyage is in response to an appeal by the Christian King of Ethiopia, the Prester John, for military assistance in his war against the forces of Islam."

  At the mention of war in the East Schreuder sat up a little straighter in his chair. He was a warrior, at the moment an unemployed warrior, and war was his trade. "I had not heard of this conflict. Please tell me more about it."

  "The great Mogul has sent his fleet and an army under the command of his younger brother, Sadiq Khan Jahan, to seize the countries that make up the seaboard of the Great Horn of Africa from the Christian king." Llewellyn broke off his explanation to ask, "Tell me, Colonel, do you know much about the Islamic religion?"

  Schreuder nodded. "Yes, of course. Many of the men I have commanded over the last thirty years have been Muslims. I speak Arabic and I have made a study of Islam."

  "You will know, then, that one of the precepts of this militant belief is the hadj, the pilgrimage to the birthplace of the prophet at Mecca, which is situated on the eastern shores of the Red Sea."

  "Ah!" Schreuder said. "I can see where you are heading. Any pilgrim from the Great Mogul's realm in India would be forced to enter the Red Sea by passing around the Great Horn of Africa. This would bring the two religions into confrontation in the region, am I correct in my surmise?"

  "Indeed, Colonel, I commend you on your grasp of the religious and political implications. That is precisely the excuse being used by the Great Mogul to attack the Prester John. Of course, the Arabs have been trading with Africa since before the birth of either our Saviour, Jesus Christ, or the prophet Muhammad. From a foothold on Zanzibar island they have been gradually extending their domination onto the mainland. Now they are intent on the conquest and subjugation of the heartland of Christian Ethiopia."

  "And where, may I be so bold to ask, is your place in this conflict?" Schreuder asked thoughtfully "I belong to a naval chivalric order, the Knights of the Temple of the Order of St. George and the Holy Grail, committed to defend the Christian faith and the holy places of Christendom. We are the successors to the Knights Templar."

  "I know of your order," Schreuder said, "and I am acquainted with several of your brother knights. The Earl of Cumbrae, for one."

  "Ah!" Llewellyn sniffed. "He is not a prime example of our membership."

  "I have also met Sir Francis Courtney," Schreuder went on.

  Llewellyn's enthusiasm was unfeigned. "I know him well," he exclaimed. "What a fine seaman and gentleman. Do y
ou know, by any chance, where I might find Franky? This religious war in the Great Horn would draw him like a bee to honey. His ship joined with mine would make a formidable force."

  "I am afraid that Sir Francis was a casualty of the recent war between our two countries." Schreuder phrased it diplomatically, and Llewellyn looked distraught.

  "I am saddened by that news." He was silent for a while then roused himself. "To give you the answer to your question, Colonel Schreuder, I am on my way to the Great Horn in response to the Prester's call for assistance to repel the onslaught of Islam. I intend sailing with the tide this very evening."