He’d waved the sword in a crisscross before him, pushing the Bosun backward in an unconvincing mock attack.
The Bosun had moved but laughed at it.
Chikunda had then been out of the rocky outcrop that had cornered him. He’d turned and backed up to get around the outcrop and perhaps dash away again. The Bosun had followed into the gap his retreat had created.
Again, he’d swirled the sword but the Bosun had stood his ground.
“I want to go, sir. That’s all I want. I want my wife and to leave this place. We have served you well, but it is time. I am sorry I hit you, I don’t know why it happened, but all I want is to be gone.”
He’d heard himself pleading. He’d not planned any of it, not thought any of it through. He’d been reduced to pure animal desire for freedom and retreat in the face of circumstance.
“And just look at you, boy,” the Bosun had sneered, confident he had the dominant mind. “You’re no master, so you deserve to be a slave. Put that thing aside and we’ll see.”
He’d emphasized it by stepping into range.
Years of stick-fighting instinct fuelled by adrenaline sent the sword crossing between them, establishing the boundary in a blur.
In that instant, the Bosun had raised his arm up and that formidable snub tip of the sword had opened his forearm with just a whisper of sound. The wound had yawned wide open, a gush of blood spurting from it instantly.
The insolence of it had driven the Bosun over the edge. He’d checked his arm and then hadn’t checked his anger, lunging across the space.
Chikunda had fallen back a pace and parried to the side, the sword drawing a whoosh through the air in the shape of a rainbow’s arch.
With almost no impact from the carnage reporting through the katana’s handle, Chikunda had watched in horror as the Bosun fell, twitching and spurting, nearly cleaved in two, sliced diagonally from neck to sternum.
The ugly man had lay there gurgling, his eyes clouded in shock, his mouth working in soundless outrage.
A final macabre death dance ran through him and then there was only the breeze through the trees and the blood soaking into the thirsty earth.
Chikunda had stood back in shock at what he’d done.
In the rage and anguish, he’d reacted with as little force as he could, but no court of a white man would believe it.
This would be the end of the road. Before the sunset on this day, the course of his life or his death would be fixed.
To run?
To surrender?
And what of Faith?
What of Faith?
If he ran, she would be lost to him forever. His unborn child in slavery forever.
If he handed himself in, they’d be lost to him forever, because this was murder.
Chikunda had known too well how these people’s justice worked; he had helped execute plenty of men who had been guilty of far less than killing.
Could he spirit Faith away?
Could he bury this man and feign ignorance? Claim he had gone alone to fetch the rowing boat?
The site of all that blood was well off the path, nobody would find it.
But then, more than a few townsfolk had seen them walking up the hill together… and who else had this man told of their trudge to recover the boat?
Again, he’d looked down in disbelief at the scene around his feet.
He could clean this site, he could put the body in the boat and…
And, what? he’d asked himself.
Row it to the town, was the answer that had kept echoing in his mind. Let God’s will be done. “God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” He’d spoken the words of the Lord’s Prayer.
Now on the beach and covered in the man’s blood, Chikunda sat there looking at the state of the waves, still running large after the storm that had recently come through.
There were lulls between the sets and gaps enough between the waves to safely put to sea and begin the grim task of rowing to the fort.
He looked at the dead man at his feet. The Bosun had started to stiffen with rigor mortis, his pallor sallow. Even his red, pitted, alcohol-destroyed nose had faded ashen in death.
Chikunda started to cry.
Jack got up from where he’d been lying, perpetually guarding the perimeter as though he understood the gravity of the situation.
Chikunda cried for his wife, soon probably a widow. Jack nuzzled in next to him and he put his arm around the dog and cried into its coat.
He sobbed for his unborn child, coming into a world such as this.
And then he collapsed into lamentations for the dream that was shattered so many times. The dream he’d so often been forced to diminish, and then devalue in the cold reality of life going indifferently by—in the crosshairs of others whose ambitions traded in the currency of stranger’s lives.
He looked at the upturned boat and saw in its place a canoe, the schoolroom of his childhood. His eyes swept over the brilliant white sand to the azure blue of the sea, and he saw it not as what it was now, but as the memory of laughter and family and abundance.
He closed his eyes and the image did not fade, the touch of the dog leaning against him evaporated from his reality.
Palm trees as far as the eye could see down the coast, the crash of waves and wash of the shore morphed into laughter, and Chikunda began to laugh. In his laughter, he became too terrified to open his eyes to what he knew he would see before him, for what he knew he must now face.
And the laughter became mania, and the mania tumbled to tears once more.
It was at this instant, in the dark behind his lids, in the echo of his own crazed howling that he asked himself if the spirit of madness had leapt out of this dead thing at his feet and into him.
The thought of it sobered Chikunda and he opened his eyes again.
In the madness of these moments with his life collapsing to new lows, he sunk into a fetal position next to the dead man. He looked into those slit eyes still open and lifeless, the mouth yawning wide with rotten teeth. It was a vision of terror, and Chikunda turned away, got to his knees, stood and walked. He ascended the path onto the ridge and followed it until he came to the great granite rock at its end.
Jack trotted next to him, keeping vigil for any threat.
They climbed onto the granite prominence at the ridge’s end and below them was the shell beach and the spring of sweet water.
He went down, past the cave he’d inhabited with Faith for two moons and on to the sacred rock in the shape of a praying nun that had kept them safe.
Before it, he fell to his knees and began to pray.
Chikunda lost track of how long he had stayed there, but when he stood, the blood from the carcass that had covered him was stiff and cracking.
God had answered him and he knew what he must do.
It was to allow fate to take its course, and for him to be a man and face whatever was due and coming.
Without another thought and with no more fear, he stood and walked away.
The rhythmic plop of the oars and sigh of the boat slipping over the ocean was the most comforting sound Chikunda had ever heard.
Jack would not be coaxed aboard. He would not be trapped in such close confines to the corpse of the Bosun.
Looking out over the stern as he went, he watched Jack become a lonely dot on the snow-white beach. And as he watched, Jack turned and began to trot toward the path over the saddle of the mountain, as if he understood.
The vast mountain range running south seemed suddenly to Chikunda to be men standing shoulder to shoulder facing his direction out over the Atlantic, the peaks as their heads.
He felt an urge to count them and came to a dozen.
Twelve.
He counted them again.
Twelve? he thought, twelve like the Apostles!
The coincidence of it struck him.
Before the very alter of the praying nun and under the bowed heads of twelve mountainous apostles, God had s
poken to him and he could only obey.
It was without fear then that he pulled on those oars, a fathom of travel at a time, closer and closer to the destiny that delivering the butchered Bosun would bring.
Seals languishing in siesta on the surface raised their heads as he passed, a whale courted death blowing its plume just a league out to sea, and a pod of dolphins turned from their busy southerly migration heading in the opposite direction to cruise under and alongside his dinghy until they satisfied themselves that it was of no interest, and went clicking and squeaking away.
Gallows Hill came ominously into view.
He passed the few stragglers of the fishing fleet still out in the fading afternoon, upping the last of their lobster traps and preparing to row for home. They waved enthusiastically to him and shouted happy greetings.
Their cheer washed over him as if in a dream world and he pretended at a carefree response. But one glance down into the boat, where his feet braced against the oars, stripped his optimism. The hull was awash with water that had shipped aboard as the dinghy had punched out through the waves from the beach.
In that water, the carcass of the hated Bosun sloshed back and forth with each surging pull on the oars.
The man’s gaping wound yawned as wide as a gutted sheep, the crimson water washing and re-washing the tattered meat, painting and re-painting the inside of the boat with dire accusation.
Chikunda felt transfixed by it.
He looked at the lifeless thing there and then across at the cheerful men singing overtures of heroism to him in their unique, toothless colourful manner. They recalled in poetic prose the quickly growing legend that his exploits in saving the shipwrecked damned had recently earned for him.
He wondered what they might think, if only they knew what cargo he carried.
Soon enough they would. Soon enough he would find out what they thought… if he lived that long.
“Jy my broer,” the closest of the boats yelled in the local dialect of Dutch, minus his front teeth. “Jy’t ‘n fokken groot vis gevang, of ‘n rob? Or is that the Bosun asleep there?” the man asked, switching to English.
Then the man roared heartily.
Chikunda could not reply, fearing what he might say, but he knew well enough what the man had shouted, speculating if he’d caught a seal or was bringing in a large fish.
They’d seen it.
The man had guessed right and as he slid away from them, there was a vigorous debate between the seafarers speculating about it.
Rumour always ran through the town like wind over wheat.
Some, of course, would have seen the Bosun leading him up the mountain pass in the morning and everyone in town would by now have known where they’d been headed… to retrieve the boat.
Now that they’d spotted his load and made the connection, the stories would begin to fly and quickly embellish.
If he landed second to another boat on the beach, rumour would already be crackling through the town that the Bosun was mysteriously laying and not sitting in the boat.
He couldn’t afford to lag.
He needed to land and get to the InDuna of the town—to the Governor—before the town criers got there first with an already elaborate account of what had definitely occurred.
He leaned on the oars with fresh vigour, pulling fast ahead of all others heading in the same direction.
And then he realized that he needed to get directly to the fort and as far from the gaggle and throng at the boat beach as possible.
Forgoing the safety of an easier and relatively wave-free landing at De Waterkant near the Bree or broad street, Chikunda aimed his bow directly for the fort.
This course took him on a close approach to the ships at anchor in the bay.
Up in the forest of masts, crew scampered about on the yards and rigging, working with the reefed sails of a frigate or making a ship of the line ready for departure. Their vantage allowed them to look down into his boat and no doubt observe the villainous, bloodied cargo it carried.
English shouts filtered down to him as he went by.
The beach in front of the fort was more exposed to the open ocean and picked up heavier swells, but it was a gamble he had to make.
Every few strokes, he looked over his shoulder and the surging bow to check his distance from the breaking surf line.
Up on the parapets of the fort, he could make out the Governor’s wife at her easel. An artist, she would spend hours and days crafting one or another of the town’s magnificent views into paint.
Today she had her back to the ocean with her easel before her, reproducing the magnificence of Table Mountain.
The closer he came, the more his worry grew.
A band of children had broken off from the traditional wave-free beach where boats landed and fish were sold.
They’d locked onto this more interesting prospect of a dinghy heading for the large dumpers at the foot of the fort.
They yelled and cavorted as they ran, signalling exuberantly to Chikunda to know why he was landing here.
It was a disaster.
The soldiers on the fort’s parapets noticed and turned to watch.
Other stragglers, drunks and beachcombers joined in—some signalling urgently for Chikunda to head back to the safer beach, some calling their timing to help him come in between the wave sets.
He looked over to those from the fleet that he’d passed and saw that two of the boats were on the beach already, five cables of distance down the coast.
Now the panic started to rise.
He looked once more at the Bosun, dead and butchered in the blood-soaked boat, and in that death he saw his own body swinging from the gallows.
A set of waves passed, the last of the dumpers kicking spray so high that for an instant the fort and onlookers were gone, only the rock of Table Mountain’s timeless outline remained, untouched by the hand of man beyond it.
This was the moment.
Chikunda leaned on the oars and began to build momentum to come in on the back of a smaller wave.
And then he saw it.
Out over the stern, toward the horizon, stood what looked like a reflection of the great mountain beyond the bow behind him.
It was colossal and already beginning to foam at its crest.
It was a freak set, the first in a train of waves that dwarfed all others that day.
It was too far to the beach to make it; Chikunda’s only chance was to turn and face the curl.
He slammed his right hand forward on the oar, hauling with every sinew on the left oar—twice, three times, he pulled with the left, punched with the right.
The little boat rotated on its axis.
With the bow facing the onrushing wall of water, Chikunda stood on the oars, hauling till he saw bright bursts of colour before his eyes.
He dared not turn to look, it was terror enough to see the reactions over the stern of those on the beach screaming for him to make it, some laughing cruelly in anticipation that he wouldn’t.
The air seemed to fizz with sound and then it detonated like the shot of a cannon and the whole dinghy shuddered.
It was over, the curl had beaten him.
Chikunda looked over his shoulder and in horror saw that the white water was as tall as a tree.
In that instant it hit him and the boat was gone from under him.
He was under, swirled round and round, explosions of white and dark behind tightly sealed eyes. Slammed into the sand below, spun and savaged by the fury of water, as if in the grip of a monster.
“Calm,” he heard his mother’s voice speaking Swahili in his head. “Be calm, my boy.”
And Chikunda let himself go loose, let the water do with him what it will. “Thy will be done,” he told himself in the savagery of the moment.
He felt another detonation of the next wave, and as his head broke the surface, there was just an instant to suck air and then the wave had him like a terrier with a rabbit.
“Ca
lm!” the voice soothed him and he didn’t fight. He let the wave tire itself out on his dead limp body, trying as it was to tear each limb off and twist it in a different direction.
A third detonation, the shockwave punching his lungs, then a little suck of air but mostly water and another brutal pummelling as the white water went over.
His lungs screamed for oxygen as slowly everything faded to black.
When he awoke, groggy and feeling near death, there was a forest of legs about him and a fire raged in his chest.
He tried to speak and it brought on a vomit reflex, a cup of saltwater belched through his lips, his lungs feeling ripped out.
Most of his clothes were torn away, but he didn’t care. Another wave ran up the beach and the bystanders dragged him further onto dry land out of its icy grip as it washed around him.
“Was that the Bosun with you?” someone was asking him urgently. “Why was he lying down?”
“Has anyone seen him?” Others in the crowd picked up the call.
Chikunda was nodding weakly, still unable to speak.
“We saw him in the undertow. Was he ill?”
Chikunda nodded again.
“There’s no sign of him,” another voice spoke.
“Good!” someone called.
“I’ll drink to that,” another voice declared.
“Let’s sit him up.”
Strong hands grabbed Chikunda and brought him to a seated position. He felt drunk, beaten and hopeless.
“Lay him over the rowing seat,” someone suggested. “I have seen that work.”
They picked him up and dragged him.
His head hanging down, he watched his feet ploughing two furrows through the sand, and then the dinghy’s gunwale went below his vision. They placed him on his knees inside the salvaged boat, the rowing seat pressing into his stomach.
“Get his head below the stomach, it lets the water out,” the voice was instructing.
Strong hands once again did the bidding.
Through salt burned eyes, Chikunda focused at close range on the boat decking right where the Bosun had been lying, where all that water awash with blood had sloshed—and it was clean and pristine, the evidence washed away.
The Reckoning (Slave Shipwreck Saga Book 2) Page 12
