Текст книги "Power of the Sword"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 51 страниц)

Take it back, you mean like you pull back your salty foreskin? When you play with it? Is that what you mean? Manfred asked. The applause had made him reckless, and he had moved closer, directly under the boy on the jetty.

Shasa launched himself without warning and Manfred had not anticipated that so soon. He had expected to trade a few more insults before they were both sufficiently worked up to attack each other.

Shasa dropped six feet and hit him with the full weight of his body and his outrage. The wind was driven out of Manfred's lungs in a whoosh as, locked together, they went flying backwards into the morass of dead fish.

They rolled over and with a shock Shasa felt the other boy's strength. His arms were hard as timber balks and his fingers felt like iron butcher's hooks as he clawed for Shasa's face. only surprise and Manfred's winded lungs saved him from immediate humiliation, and almost too late he remembered the admonitions of Jock Murphy, his boxing instructor.

Don't let a bigger man force you to fight close. Fight him off. Keep him at arm's length. Manfred was clawing at his face, trying to get an arm around him in -a half Nelson, and they were floundering into the cold slippery mass of fish. Shasa brought up his right knee and, as Manfred reared up over him, he drove it into his chest. Manfred gasped and reeled back, but then as Shasa tried to roll away, he lunged forward again for the head lock. Shasa ducked his head and with his right hand forced Manfred's elbow up to break the grip, then as Jock had taught him, he twisted out against the opening he had created. He was helped by the fish slime that coated his neck and Manfred's arm like oil, and the instant he was free he threw a punch with his left hand.

Jock had drilled him endlessly on the short straight left.

The most important punch you'll ever use. it wasn't one of Shasa's best, but it caught the other boy in the eye with sufficient force to snap his head back and distract him just long enough to let Shasa get onto his feet and back away.

By now the jetty above them was crowded with coloured trawler-men in rubber boots and blue rollneck jerseys. They were roaring with delight and excitement, egging on the two boys as though they were game cocks.

Blinking the tears out of his swelling eye, Manfred went after Shasa, but the fish clinging to his legs hampered him, and that left shot out again. There was no warning; it came straight and hard and unexpectedly, stinging his injured eye so that he shouted with anger and groped wildly for the lighter boy.

Shasa ducked under his arm and fired the left again, just the way Jock had taught him.

Never telegraph it by moving the shoulders or the head, he could almost hear Jock's voice, just shoot it, with the arm alone. He caught Manfred in the mouth, and immediately there was blood as Manfred's lip was crushed onto his own teeth.

The sight of his adversary's blood elated Shasa and the concerted bellow of the crowd evoked a primeval response deep within him. He used the left again, cracking it into the pink swollen eye.

When you mark him, then keep hitting the same spot. Jock's voice in his head, and Manfred shouted again, but this time he could hear the pain as well as the rage in the sound.

It's working, Shasa exulted. But at that moment he ran backwards into the wheelhouse and Manfred, realizing his opponent was cornered, rushed at him through the slimy fish, spreading both arms wide, grinning triumphantly, his mouth full of blood from his cut lip and his teeth dyed bright pink.

In panic Shasa dropped his shoulders, braced himself for an instant against the wheelhouse timbers and then shot forward, butting the top of his head into Manfred's stomach.

Once again Manfred wheezed as the air was forced up his throat, and for a few confused seconds they writhed together in the mess of pilchards, with Manfred gurgling for breath A. and unable to get a hold on his opponent's slippery limbs.

Then Shasa wriggled away and half crawled, half swam to the foot of the wooden ladder of the jetty and dragged himself onto it.

The crowd was laughing and booing derisively as he fled, and Manfred clawed angrily after him, spitting blood and fish slime out of his injured mouth, his chest heaving violently to refill his lungs.

Shasa was halfway up the ladder when Manfred reached up and grabbed his ankle, pulling both his feet off the rungs.

Shasa was stretched out by the heavier boy's weight like a victim on the rack, clinging with desperate strength to the top of the ladder, and the faces of the coloured fishermen e were only inches from his as they leaned over the jetty and howled for his blood, favouring their own.

With his free leg Shasa kicked backwards, and his heel caught Manfred in his swollen eye. He yelled and let go, and Shasa scrambled up onto the jetty and looked around him wildly. His fighting ardour had cooled and he was trembling.

His escape down the jetty was open and he longed to take it. But the men around him were laughing and jeering and pride shackled him. He glanced around and, with a surge of dismay that was so strong that it almost physically nauseated him, he saw that Manfred had reached the top of the ladder.

Shasa was not quite sure how he had got himself into this fight, or what was the point at issue, and miserably he wished he could extricate himself. That was impossible, his entire breeding and training precluded it. He tried to stop himself trembling as he turned back to face Manfred again.

The bigger boy was trembling also, but not with fear. His face was swollen and dark red with killing rage, and he was making an unconscious hissing sound through his bloody lips. His damaged eye was turning purplish mauve and puffing into a narrow slit.

Kill him, kleinbasie! screamed the coloured trawler-men.

murder him, little boss. And their taunts rallied Shasa. He took a deep steadying breath and lifted his fists in the classic boxer's stance, left foot leading and his hands held high in front of his face.

Keep moving, he heard Jock's advice again, and he went up on his toes and danced.

Look at him! the crowd hooted. He thinks he is Jack Dempsey! He wants to dance with you, Manie. Show him the Walvis Bay Waltz However, Manfred was daunted by the desperate determination in those dark blue eyes and by the clenched white knuckles of Shasa's left hand.

He began to circle him, hissing threats.

I'm going to rip your arm off and stick it down your throat.

I'm going to make your teeth march out of your backside like soldiers. Shasa blinked but kept his guard up, turning slowly to face Manfred as he circled. Though both of them were soaked and glistening with fish slime and their hair was thick with the gelatinous stuff and speckled with loose scales, there was nothing ludicrous nor childlike about them. It was a good fight and promised to become even better, and the audience gradually fell silent. Their eyes glittered like those of a wolf pack and they craned forward expectantly to watch the ill-matched pair.

Manfred feinted left and then charged and rushed from the side. He was very fast, despite his size and the heaviness of his legs and shoulders. He carried his shining blond head low and the black curved eyebrows emphasized the ferocity of his scowl.

In front of him Shasa seemed almost girlishly fragile. His arms were slim and pale, and his legs under the sodden grey flannel seemed too long and thin, but he moved well on them. He dodged Manfred's charge and as he pulled away, his left arm shot out again, and Manfred's teeth clicked audibly at the punch and his head was flicked back as he was brought up on his heels.

The crowd growled, Vat horn, Manie, get him! and Manfred rushed in again, throwing a powerful round-house punch at Shasa's pale petal-smooth face.

Shasa ducked under it and, in the instant that Manfred was screwed off balance by his own momentum, stabbed his left fist unexpectedly and painfully into the purple, puffed-up eye. Manfred clasped his hand over the eye and snarled at him. Fight properly, you cheating Soutie!

Ja! a voice called from the crowd. Stop running away.

Stand and fight like a man. At the same time Manfred changed his tactics. instead of feinting and weaving, he came straight at Shasa. and kept on coming, swinging with both hands in a terrifying mechanical sequence of blows. Shasa fell back frantically, ducking and swaying and dodging, at first stabbing out with his left hand as Manfred followed him relentlessly, cutting the swollen skin that had begun to bag under his eye, hitting him in the mouth again and then again until his lips were distorted and lumpy. But it was as though Manfred was imuned to the sting of these blows now and he did not alter the rhythm of punches nor slacken his attack.

His brown fists, hardened by work at the winch and net, flipped Shasa's hair as he ducked or hissed past his face as he ran backwards. Then one caught him a glancing blow on the temple and Shasa stopped aiming his own counter-punches and struggled merely to stay clear of those swinging fists, for his legs started to turn numb and heavy under him.

Manfred was tireless, pressing him relentlessly, and despair combined with exhaustion to slow Shasa's legs. A fist crashed into his ribs, and he grunted and staggered and saw the other fist coming at his face. He could not avoid it, his feet seemed planted in buckets of treacle and he grabbed at Manfred's arm and hung on grimly. That was exactly what Manfred had been trying to force him to do, and he whipped his other arm around Shasa's neck.

Now, I've got you, he mumbled through swollen bloody lips, as he forced Shasa to double over, his head pinned under Manfred's left arm. Manfred lifted his right hand high and swung it in a brutal uppercuts Shasa sensed rather than saw the fist coming, and twisted so violently that he felt as though his neck had snapped. But he managed to take the blow on the top of his forehead rather than in his unprotected face. The shock of it was driven like an iron spike from the top of his skull down his spine. He knew he could not take another blow like that.

Through his starring vision he realized that he had tottered to the edge of the jetty, and he used the last vestiges of his strength to drive them both towards the very edge. Manfred had not been expecting him to push in that direction and was braced the wrong way. He could not resist as they went flying over and fell back onto the trawler's fish-laden deck six feet below.

Shasa was pinned beneath Manfred's body, still caught in the headlock, and instantly he sank into the quicksand of silver pilchards.

Manfred tried to swing another punch at his face, but it slogged into the soft layer of fish that was spreading over Shasa's head. He abandoned the effort and merely leaned his full weight on Shasa's neck, forcing his head deeper and still deeper below the surface.

Shasa started to drown. He tried to scream but a dead pilchard slid into his open mouth and its head jammed in his throat. He kicked and lashed out with both hands and writhed with all his remaining strength, but remorselessly his head was thrust downward. The fish lodged in his throat choked him. The darkness filled his head with a sound like the wind, blotting out the murderous chorus from the jetty above, and his struggles became less urgent until he was flopping and flapping his limbs loosely.

I'm going to die, he thought with a kind of detached wonder. 'I'm drowning, and the thought faded with his consciousness.

You have come here to destroy me, Lothar De La Rey accused her with his back against the closed door. You have come all this way to watch it happen, and to gloat on it!

You flatter yourself, Centaine answered him disdainfully.

I have not that much interest in you personally. I have come to protect my considerable investment. I have come for fifty thousand pounds plus accrued interest. If that was true you wouldn't stop me running my catch through the plant. I've got a thousand tons out there – by sunset tomorrow evening I could turn it into fifty thousand pounds. Impatiently Centaine lifted her hand to stop him. The skin of the hand was tanned a creamy coffee colour in contrast to the silver white diamond as long as the top joint of the tapered forefinger that she pointed at him.

You are living in a dream world, she told him. Your fish is worth nothing. Nobody wants it, not at any price, certainly not fifty thousand. It's worth all of that, fish meal and canned goods Again she gestured him to silence. The warehouses of the world are filled with unwanted goods. Don't you understand that? Don't you read a newspaper? Don't you listen to the wireless out here in the desert? It's worthless, not even worth the cost of processing it. That's not possible. He was angry and stubborn. Of course I've heard about the stock market, but people have still got to eat. I've thought many things about you, she had not raised her voice, she was speaking as though to a child, but I have never thought you stupid. Try to understand that something has happened out there in the world that has never happened before. The commerce of the world has died; the factories of the world are closing; the streets of all the major cities are filled with the legions of the unemployed. You are using this as an excuse for what you are doing.

You are conducting a vendetta against me. He came towards her. His lips were icy pale against the dark mahogany tan.

You are hounding me for some fancied offence committed long ago. You are punishing me. The offence was real! She stepped back from his advance, but she held his gaze and her voice though low-pitched was bleak and hard. It was monstrous and cruel and unforgivable, but there is no punishment I could deal out to you which would fit that crime. If there is a God, he will demand retribution. The child, he started.

The child you bore me in the wilderness, For the first time he penetrated the armour of her composure.

You'll not mention your bastard to me. She clasped one hand with the other to prevent them trembling. That was our-bargain. He's our son. You cannot avoid that fact. Are you content to destroy him also? He's your son, she denied. I have no part of him. He does not affect me or my decision. Your factory is insolvent, hopelessly, irredeemably insolvent. I cannot expect to recover my investment, I can only hope to retrieve a part. Through the open window there came the sound of men's voices, even at a distance they sounded excited and lustful, baying like hounds as they take the scent. Neither of them glanced in that direction; all their attention was concentrated on each other.

Give me a chance, Centaine. He heard the pleading timbre in his own voice and it disgusted him. He had never begged before, not with anybody, not once in his life, but now he could not bear the prospect of having to begin all over again. It would not be the first time. Twice before he had been rendered destitute, stripped of everything but pride and courage and determination by war and the fortunes of war. Always it had been the same enemy, the British and their aspirations of empire. Each time he had started again from the beginning and laboriously rebuilt his fortune.

This time the prospect appalled him. To be struck down by the mother of his child, the woman he had loved, and, God forgive him, the woman he loved still against all probabilities. He felt the exhaustion of his spirit and his body.

He was forty-six years old; he no longer had a young man's store of energy on which to draw, and he thought he glimpsed a softening in her eyes as though she was moved by his plea, wavering at the point of relenting.

Give me a week, just one week, Centaine, that's all I ask, he abased himself, and immediately realized that he had misread her.

She did not alter her expression, but in her eyes he could see that what he had mistaken for compassion was instead the shine of deep satisfaction. He was where she had wanted him all these years.

I have told you never to use my Christian name, she said. I told you that when I first learned that you had murdered two people whom I loved as dearly as I have ever loved anyone. I tell you that again. A week. just one week. I have already given you two years. Now she turned her head towards the window, no longer able to ignore the sound of harsh voices, like the blood roar of a bullfight heard at a distance.

Another week will only get you deeper into my debt and force heavier loss on me. She shook her head, but he was staring out the window and now her voice sharpened. What is happening down there on the jetty? She leaned her hands on the sill and peered down the beach.

He stepped up beside her. There was a dense knot of humanity halfway down the jetty, and from the factory all the idle packers were running down to join it.

Shasa! Centaine cried with an intuitive surge of maternal concern. Where's Shasa? Lothar vaulted lightly over the sill and raced for the jetty, overhauling the stragglers and then shouldering his way through the circle of yelling, howling trawler-men just as the two boys teetered on the edge of the jetty.

Manfred! he roared. Stop that! Let him go! His son had the lighter boy in a vicious headlock, and he was swinging overhand punches at his trapped head. Lothar heard one crack against the bone of Shasa's skull.

You fool! Lothar started towards them. They had not heard his voice above the din of the crowd, and Lothar felt a slide of dread, a real concern for the child and a realization of what Centaine's reaction would be if he were injured.

Leave him! Before he could reach the wildly struggling pair, they reeled backwards and tumbled over the edge of the jetty. Oh my God! He heard them hit the deck of the trawler below, and by the time he reached the side and looked down they were half buried in the deck-load of glittering pilchards.

Lothar tried to reach the ladder head, impeded by the press of coloured trawler-men who crowded forward to the edge so as not to miss a moment of the contest. He struck out with both fists, clearing his way, shoving his men aside, and then clambered down to the deck of the trawler.

Manfred was lying on top of the other boy, forcing his head and shoulders beneath the mass of pilchards. His own face was contorted with rage, and lumped and discoloured with bruises. He was mouthing incoherent threats through blood-smeared and puffed lips, and Shasa was no longer struggling. His head and shoulders had disappeared but his trunk and his legs twitched and shuddered in the spontaneous nerveless movements of a man shot through the head.

Lothar seized his son by the shoulders and tried to drag him off. It was like trying to separate a pair of mastiffs and he had to use all his strength. He lifted Manfred bodily and threw him against the wheelhouse with a force that knocked the belligerence out of him and then grabbed Shasa's legs and pulled him out of the engulfing quicksilver of dead pilchards. He came slithering free, wet and slippery.

His eyes were open and rolled back into his skull exposing the whites.

You've killed him, Lothar snarled at his son, and the furious tide of blood receded from Manfred's face leaving him white and shivering., with shock.

I didn't mean it, Pa! didn't, I There was a dead fish jammed into Shasa's slack mouth, choking him, and fish slime bubbled out of his nostrils.

You fool, you little fool! Lothar thrust his finger into the corners of the child's slack mouth and prised the pilchard out.

I'm sorry, Pa. I didn't mean it, Manfred whispered.

if you've killed him, you've committed a terrible offence in the sight of God. Lothar lifted Shasa's limp body in his arms. You'll have killed your own, He did not say the fateful word, but bit down hard on it and turned to the ladder.

I haven't killed him? Manfred pleaded for assurance. He's not dead. it will be all right, won't it, Pa? No. Lothar shook his head grimly. It won't be all right, not ever. Carrying the unconscious boy, he climbed up onto the jetty.

The crowd opened silently for Lothar. Like Manfred, they were appalled and guilty, unable to meet his eyes as he shouldered past them.

Swart Hendrick, Lothar called over their heads to the tall black man. You should have known better. You should have stopped them. Lothar strode away up the jetty, and none of them followed him.

Halfway up the beach path to the factory Centaine Courtney waited for him. Lothar stopped in front of her with the boy hanging limply in his arms.

He's dead, Centaine whispered hopelessly.

No, Lothar denied with passion. It was too horrible to think about, and as though in response Shasa moaned and vomited from the corner of his mouth.

Quickly. Centaine stepped forward. Turn him over your shoulder before he chokes on his own vomit. with Shasa hanging limply over his shoulder like a haversack, Lothar ran the last few yards to the office and Centaine swept the desktop clear.

Lay him here, she ordered, but Shasa was struggling weakly and trying to sit up. Centaine supported his shoulders and wiped his mouth and nostrils with the fine cloth of her sleeve.

It was your bastard. She glared across the desk at Lothar.

He did this to my son, didn't he? And she saw the confirmation in his face before he looked away.

Shasa coughed and brought up another trickle of fish slime and yellow vomitus, and immediately he was stronger. His eyes focused and his breathing eased.

Get out of here. Centaine leaned protectively over Shasa's body.

I'll see you both in hell, you and your bastard. Now get out of my sight. The track from Walvis Bay ran through the convoluted valleys of the great orange dunes, thirty kilometres to the railhead at Swakopmund. The dunes towered three and four hundred feet on either side. Mountains of sand with knife-edge crests and smooth slip faces, they trapped the desert heat in the canyons between them.

The track was merely a set of deep ruts in the sand, marked on each side by the sparkling glass of broken beer bottles. No traveller took this thirsty road without adequate supplies for the journey. At intervals the tracks had been obliterated by the efforts of other drivers, unskilled in the art of desert travel, to extract their vehicles from the clinging sands, leaving gaping traps for those who followed.

Centaine drove hard and fast, never allowing her engine revolutions to drop, keeping her momentum even through the churned-up areas and holes where the other vehicles had bogged down, directing the big yellow car with deft little touches of the wheel so that the tyres ran straight and the sand did not pile and block them.

She held the wheel in a racing driver's grip, leaning back against the leather seat with straight arms ready for the kick of the wheel, watching the tracks far ahead and anticipating each contingency long before she reached it, sometimes snapping down through the gears and swinging out of the ruts to cut her own way around a bad stretch. She scorned even the elementary precaution of travelling with a pair of black servants in the back seat to push the Daimler out of a sand trap.

Shasa had never known his mother to bog down, not even on the worst sections of the track out to the mine.

He sat up beside her on the front seat. He wore a suit of old but freshly laundered canvas overalls from the stores of the canning factory. His soiled clothing stinking of fish and speckled with vomit was in the boot of the Daimler.

His mother hadn't spoken since they had driven away

from the factory. Shasa glanced surreptitiously at her, dreading her pent-up wrath, not wanting to draw attention to himself, yet despite himself unable to keep his eyes from her face.

She had removed the cloche hat and her thick dark cap of hair, cut fashionably into a short Eton crop, rippled in the wind and shone like washed anthracite.

,Who started it? she asked, without taking her eyes from the road.

Shasa thought about it. I'm not sure. I hit him first, but he paused. His throat was still painful.

Yes? she demanded.

It was as though it was arranged. We looked at each other and we knew we were going to fight. She said nothing and he finished lamely. 'He called me a name. What name? I can't tell you. It's rude. "I asked what name? Her voice was level and low, but he recognized that husky warning quality.

He called me a Soutpiel, he replied hastily. He dropped his voice and looked away in shame at the dreadful insult, so he did not see Centaine struggle to stifle the smile and turn her head slightly to hide the sparkle of amusement in her eyes.

I told you it was rude, he apologized.

So you hit him, and he's younger than you. He had not known that he was the elder, but he was not surprised that she knew it. She knew everything.

He may be younger, but he's a big Afrikaner ox, at least two inches taller than I am, he defended himself quickly.

She wanted to ask Shasa what her other son looked like.

Was he blond and handsome as his father had been? What colour were his eyes? Instead she said, And so he thrashed you. I nearly won. Shasa protested stoutly. I closed his eyes and I bloodied him nicely. I nearly won. Nearly isn't good enough, she said. In our family we don't nearly win, we simply win!

He fidgeted uncomfortably and coughed to relieve the pain in his injured throat.

You can't win, not when someone is bigger and stronger than you, he whispered miserably.

Then you don't fight him with your fists, she told him.

You don't rush in and let him stick a dead fish down your throat. He blushed painfully at the humiliation. You wait your chance, and you fight him with your own weapons and on your own terms. You only fight when you are sure you can win. He considered that carefully, examining it from every angle. That's what you did to his father, didn't you? he asked softly, and she was startled by his perception so that she stared at him and the Daimler bumped out of the ruts.

Quickly she caught and controlled the machine, and then she nodded. Yes. That's what I did. You see, we are Courtneys. We don't have to fight with our fists. We fight with power and money and influence. Nobody can beat us on our own ground. He was silent again, digesting it carefully, and at last he smiled. He was so beautiful when he smiled, even more beautiful than his father had been, that she felt her heart squeezed by her love.

I'll remember that, he said. Next time I meet him, I'll remember what you said. Neither of them doubted for a moment that the two boys would meet again, and that when they did, they would continue the conflict that had begun that day.

The breeze was onshore and the stink of rotting fish was so strong that it coated the back of Lothar De La Rey's throat and sickened him to the gut.

The four trawlers still lay at their berths but their cargoes were no longer glittering silver. The fish had packed down and the top layer of pilchards had dried out in the sun and turned a dark, dirty grey, crawling with metallic green flies as big as wasps. The fish in the holds had squashed under their own weight, and the bilge pumps were pouring out steady streams of stinking brown blood and fish oil that discoloured the waters of the bay in a spreading cloud.

All day Lothar had sat at the window of the factory office while his coloured trawler-men and packers lined up to be paid. Lothar had sold his old Packard truck and the few sticks of furniture from the corrugated shack in which he and Manfred lived. These were the only assets that did not belong to the company and had not been attached. The second-hand dealer had come across from Swakopmund within hours, smelling disaster the way the vultures do, and he had paid Lothar a fraction of their real value.

There is a depression going on, Mr De La Rey, everybody is selling, nobody is buying. I'll lose money, believe me. With the cash that Lothar had buried under the sandy floor of the shack there was enough to pay his people two shillings on each pound that he owed them for back wages.

He did not have to pay them, of course, it was the company's responsibility, but that did not occur to him, they were his people.

I'm sorry, he repeated to each one of them as they came to the pay window. That's all there is. And he avoided their eyes.

When it was all gone, and the last of his coloured people had wandered away in disconsolate little groups, Lothar locked the office door and handed the key to the deputy sheriff .

Then he and the boy had gone down to the jetty for the last time and sat together with their legs dangling over the end. The stink of dead fish was as heavy as their mood.

I don't understand, Pa. Manfred spoke through his distorted mouth with the crusty red scab on the upper lip. We caught good fish.

We should be rich. What happened, Pa? We were cheated, Lothar said quietly. Until that moment there had been anger, no bitterness, just a feeling of numbness. Twice before he had been struck by a bullet. The .303

Lee Enfield bullet on the road to Ornaruru when they were opposing Smuts invasion of German South West Africa, and then much later the Luger bullet fired by the boy's mother.

He touched his chest at the memory, and felt the rubbery puckered pit of the scar through the thin cotton of his khaki shirt.

It was the same thing, first the shock and the numbness and then only much later the pain and the anger. Now the anger came at him in black waves, and he did not try to resist. Rather he revelled in it; it helped to assuage the memory of abasing himself, pleading for time from the woman with the taunting smile in her dark eyes.

Can't we stop them, Pa? the boy asked, and neither of them had to define that them'. They knew their enemy.

They had grown to know them in three wars; in 1881 the first Boer War, then again in the Great Boer War of 1899

when Victoria called her khaki multitudes from across the oceans to crush them, and then in 1914 when the British puppet Jannie Smuts had carried out the orders of his imperial masters.