Текст книги "Birds of Prey"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 34 (всего у книги 47 страниц)

The Golden Bough "tore across Buffalo Bay like a runaway horse. Suddenly Schreuder shouted again, "Look there!" and pointed to where the entrance to the lagoon began to open to their view between the heads that towered on either hand.

Llewellyn threw back his head and gazed up the main, mast at the tiny figures that spread out along the high yard and wrestled with the reefed canvas. He recognized Vincent easily by his lean athletic form and his dark hair whipping in the wind.

"Bravely done thus far," Llewellyn whispered, "but hurry, lad. Give me a scrap of canvas to steer her by."

As he said it the studding-sail flew out and filled with a crack like a musket shot. For a dreadful moment Llewellyn thought the canvas might be shredded in the gale, but it filled and held and immediately he felt the ship's motion change.

"Sweet Mother Mary! We might make it yet!" he croaked, through a throat scoured and rough with salt. "Hard over!" he called to the helm, and the Golden Bough answered willingly and put her bows across the wind.

Like an arrow from a longbow, she drove straight at the western headland as though to hurl herself ashore, but her hull slid away through the water and the angle of her bows altered. The passage opened full before her, and as she passed into the lee of the land she steadied, darted between the heads, caught the tide, which was at full flow, and sped upon it through the channel into the quiet lagoon where she was protected from the full force of the storm.

Llewellyn gazed at the green forested shores in wonder and relief.

Then he started and pointed ahead. "There's another ship at anchor here already!"

Beside him Schreuder shaded his eyes from the slashing gusts of wind that eddied around the cliffs.

"I know that vessel!" he cried. "I know her well. "Tis Lord Cumbrae's ship. "Tis the Gull of Moray!"

"Eland!" whispered Althuda softly, and Hal recognized the Dutch name for elk, but these creatures were unlike any of the great red deer of the north that he had ever seen. They were enormous, larger even than the cattle that his uncle Thomas had raised on the High Weald estate.

The three Of them, Hal, Althuda and Aboli, lay belly down in a small hollow filled with rank grass. The herd was strung out among the open grove of sweet-thorn trees ahead. Hal counted fifty-two bulls, cows and calves together. The bulls were ponderous and fat so that, as they walked, their dewlaps swung from side to side and the flesh on their bellies and quarters quivered like that of a jellyfish. At each pace there came a strange clicking sound like breaking twigs.

"It is their knees that make that noise," Aboli explained in Hal's ear. "The Nkulu Kulu, the great god of all things, punished them when they boasted of being the greatest of all the antelope. He gave them this affliction so that the hunter would always hear them from afar."

Hal smiled at the quaint belief, but then Aboli told him something else that turned off that smile. "I know these creatures, they were highly prized by the hunters of my tribe, for a bull such as that one at the front of the herd carries a mass of white fat around his heart that two men cannot carry." For months now none of them had tasted fat, for all the game they had managed to kill was devoid of it. They all craved it, and Sukeena had warned Hal that for lack of it they must soon sicken and fall prey to disease.

Hal studied the herd bull as he browsed on one of the sweet-thorn trees, hooking down the higher branches with his massive spiralling. horns. Unlike his cows, who were a soft and velvet brown, striped with white across their shoulders, the bull had turned grey-blue with age and there was a tuft of darker hair on his forehead between the bases of his great horns.

"Leave the bull," Aboli told Hal. "His flesh will be coarse and tough. See that cow behind him? She will be sweet and tender as a virgin, and her fat will turn to honey in your mouth." Against Aboli's advice, which Hal knew was always the best available, he felt the urge of the hunter attract him to the great bull.

"If we are to cross the river safely, then we need as much meat as we can carry. Each of us will fire at his own animal." he decided. "I will take the bull, you and Althuda pick younger animals." He began to snake forward on his belly, and the other two followed him.

In these last days since they had descended the escarpment they had found that the game upon these plains had little fear of man. It seemed that the dreaded upright bipod silhouette he presented had no especial terrors for them, and they allowed the hunters to approach within certain musket shot before moving away.

Thus it must have been in Eden before the Fall, Hal thought, as he closed with the herd bull. The soft breeze favoured him, and the tendrils of blue smoke from their slow-match drifted away from the herd.

He was so close now that he could make out the individual eyelashes that framed the huge liquid dark eyes of the bull, and the red and gold legs of the ticks that clung in-bunches to the soft skin between his forelegs. The bull fed, delicately wiping the young green leaves from the twigs between the thorns with its blue tongue.

On each side of him two of his young cows fed from the same thorn tree. One had a calf at heel while the other was full-bellied and gravid. Hal turned his head slowly and looked at the men who lay beside him. He indicated the cows to them with a slow movement of his eyes, and Aboli nodded and raised his musket.

Once more Hal concentrated all his attention on the great bull, and traced the line of the scapula beneath the skin that covered the shoulder, fixing a spot in all that broad expanse of smooth blue-grey hide at which to aim. He raised the musket and held the butt into the notch of his shoulder-, sensing the men on either side of him do the same.

As the bull took another pace forward he held his fire. It stopped again and raised its head, on the thick dew lapped neck, to full stretch, laying the massive twisted horns across its back, reaching up over two fathoms high to the topmost sprigs of the thorn tree where the sweetest bunches of lacy green leaves grew.

Hal fired, and heard the detonation of the other muskets on either side of him blend with the concussion of his own weapon. A swirling screen of white gunsmoke blotted out his forward view. He let the musket drop, sprang to his feet and raced out to his side to get a clear view around the smoke bank. He saw that one of the cows was down, kicking and struggling as her lifeblood spurted from the wound in her throat, while the other was staggering away, her near front leg swinging loosely from the broken bone. Already Aboli was running after her, his drawn cutlass in his right hand.

The rest of the herd was rushing away in a tight brown mass down the valley, the calves falling behind their dams. However, the bull had left the herd, sure sign that the lead ball had struck him grievously. He was striding away up the gentle slope of the low, grass-covered hillock ahead. But his gait was short and hampered, and as he changed direction, exposing his great shoulder to Hal's view, the blood that poured down his flank was red as a banner in the sunlight and bubbling with the air from his punctured lungs.

Hal started to run, speeding away over the tussocked grass. The injury to his leg was by now only a perfectly healed scar, glossy blue and ridged. The long trek over the mountains and plains had strengthened that limb so that his stride was full and lithe. A cable's length or more ahead, the bull was drawing away from him, leaving a haze of fine red dust hanging in the air, but then its wound began to tell and the spilling blood painted a glistening trail on the silver grass to mark his passing.

Hal closed the gap until he was only a dozen strides behind the mountainous beast. It sensed his pursuit and turned at bay. Hal expected a furious charge, a lowering of the great tufted head and a levelling of those spiral horns. He came up short, facing the antelope, and whipped his cutlass from the scabbard, prepared to defend himself.

The bull looked at him with huge puzzled eyes, dark and swimming with the agony of its approaching death. Blood dripped from its nostrils and the soft blue tongue lolled from the side of its mouth. It made no move to attack him, or to defend itself, and Hal saw no malice or anger in its gaze.

"Forgive me," he whispered, as he circled the beast, waiting for an opening, and felt the slow, sad waves of remorse break over his heart to watch the agony he had inflicted upon this magnificent animal.

Suddenly he rushed forward and thrust with the steel. The stroke of the expert swordsman buried the blade full length in the bull's flesh, and it bucked and whirled away, snatching the hilt out of Hal's hand. But the steel had found the heart and, its legs folded gently under it, the bull sagged wearily onto its knees. With one low groan it toppled over onto its side and died.

Hal took hold of the cutlass hilt and withdrew the long, smeared blade, then chose a rock near the carcass and went to sit there. He felt sad yet strangely elated. He was puzzled and confused by these contrary emotions, and he dwelt on the beauty and majesty of the beast that he had reduced to this sad heap of dead flesh in the grass.

A hand was laid on his shoulder, and Aboli rumbled softly, "Only the true hunter knows this anguish of the kill, Gundwane. That is why my tribe, who are hunters, sing and dance to give thanks to propitiate the spirits of the game they have slain."

"Teach me to sing me this song and to dance this dance, Aboli," Hal said, and Aboli began to chant in his deep and beautiful voice. When he had picked up the rhythm Hal joined in the repetitive chorus, praising the beauty and the grace of the prey and thanking it for dying so that the hunter and his tribe might live.

Aboli began to dance, shuffling, stamping and singing in a circle about the great carcass, and Hal danced with him. His chest was choked and his eyes were blurred when, at last, the song ended and they sat together in the slanting yellow sunlight to watch the tiny column of fugitives, led by Sukeena, coming towards them from far across the plain.

Before darkness fell Hal set them to building the stockade, and he checked carefully to make certain that the gaps in the breastwork were closed with branches of sweet-thorn.

They carried the quarters and shoulders of eland meat and stacked them in the stockade where scavengers could not plunder them. They left only the scraps and the offal, the severed hoofs and heads, the mounds of guts and intestines stuffed with the pulp of half-digested leaves and grass. As they moved away the vultures hopped in or sailed down on great pinions, and the hyena and jackal rushed forward to gobble and howl and squabble over this charnel array.

After they had all eaten their fill of succulent eland steaks, Hal allocated to Sukeena and himself the middle watch that started at midnight. Though it was the most onerous, for it was the time when man's vitality was at its lowest ebb, they loved to have the night to themselves.

While the rest of their band slept, they huddled at the entrance to the stockade under a single fur kaross, with a musket laid close to Hal's right hand. After they had made soft and silent love so as not to disturb the others, they watched the sky and spoke in whispers as the stars made their remote and ancient circuits high above.

"Tell me true, my love, what have you read in those stars? What lies ahead for you and me? How many sons will you bear me?" Her hand, cupped in his, lay still, and he felt her whole body stiffen. She did not reply and he had to ask her again. "Why will you never tell me what you see in the future? I know you have drawn our horoscopes, for often when you thought I was sleeping I have seen you studying and writing in your little blue book."

She laid her fingers on his lips. "Be quiet, my lord. There are many things in this existence that are best hidden from us. For this night and tomorrow let us love each other with all our hearts and all our strength. Let us draw the most from every day that God grants us."

"You trouble me, my sweet. Will there be no sons, then?" She was silent again as they watched a shooting star leave its brief fiery trail though the heavens and at last perish before their eyes. Then she sighed, and whispered, "Yes, I will give you a son but-" She bit off the other words that rose to her tongue.

"There is great sadness in your voice." His tone was disquieted. "And, yet, the thought that you will bear my son gives me joy."

"The stars can be malevolent, she whispered. "Sometimes they fulfill their promises in a manner that we do not expect, or relish. Of one thing alone I am certain, that the fates have selected for you a labour of great consequence. It has been ordained thus from the day of your birth."

"My father spoke to me of this same task." Hal brooded on the old prophecy. "I am willing to face my destiny, but I need you to help and sustain me as you have done so often already."

She did not answer his plea, but said, "The task they have set for you involves a vow and a talisman of mystery and power."

"Will you be with me, you and our son?" he insisted.

"If I can guide you in the direction you must go, I will do so with all my heart and all my strength."

"But will you come with me?" he pleaded.

"I will come with you as far as the stars will permit it," she promised. "More than that I do not know and cannot say.

"But-" he started, but she reached up with her mouth and covered his lips with her own to stop him speaking.

"No more! You must ask no more," she warned him. "Now join your body with mine once again and leave the business of the stars to the stars alone."

Towards the end of their watch, when the Seven Sisters had sunk below the hills and the Bull stood high and proud, they lay in each other's arms, still talking softly to fight off the drowsiness that crept upon them. They had become accustomed to the night sounds of the wilderness, from the liquid warble of night birds and the yapping, yodelling chorus of the little red jackals to the hideous shrieking and cackling of the hyena packs at the remains of the carcasses, but suddenly there came a sound that chilled them to the depths of their souls.

It was the sound of all the devils of hell, a monstrous roaring and grunting that stilled all lesser creation, rolled against the hills and came back to them in a hundred echoes. Involuntarily Sukeena clung to him and cried aloud, "Oh, Gundwane, what terrible creature is that?"

She was not alone in her terror for all the camp was suddenly awake. Zwaantie screamed, and the baby echoed her terror. Even the men sprang to their feet and cried out to God.

Aboli appeared beside them like a dark * moon shadow and calmed Sukeena with a hand on her trembling shoulder. "It is no phantom, but a creature of this world," he told them. "They say that even the bravest hunter is frightened three times by the lion. Once when he sees its tracks, twice when he hears its voice, and the third time when he confronts the beast face to face."

Hal sprang up, and called to the others, "Throw fresh logs on the fire. Light the slow-match on all the muskets. Place the women and the child in the centre of the stockade."

They crouched in a tight circle behind its flimsy walls, and for a while all was quiet, quieter than it had been all that night for now even the scavengers has been silenced by the mighty voice that had spoken from out of the darkness.

They waited, their weapons held ready, and stared out into the night where the yellow light of the flames could not reach. It seemed to Hal that the flickering firelight played tricks with his eyes, for all at once he thought he saw a ghostly shape glide silently through the shadows. Then Sukeena gripped his arm, digging her fingernails into his flesh, and he knew that she had seen it also.

Abruptly that gale of terrifying noise broke over them again, raising the hair on their scalps. The women shrieked and the men quaked and tightened their grip on the weapons that now seemed so frail and inadequate in their hands.

"There!" whispered Zwaantie, and this time there could be no doubt that what they saw was real. It was a monstrous feline shape that seemed as tall as a man's shoulder, which passed before their gaze on noiseless pads. The flames lit upon its brazen glossy hide, turning its eyes to glaring emeralds like those in the crown of Satan himself. Another came and then another, passing in swift and menacing parade before them, then disappearing into the night once more.

"They gather their courage and resolve," Aboli said. "They smell the blood and the dead flesh and they are hunting us."

"Should we flee from the stockade, then?" Hal asked. "No!" Aboli shook his head. "The darkness is their domain. They are able to see when the night stops up our eyes. The darkness makes them bold. We must stay here where we can see them when they come."

Then, from out of the night, came such a creature as to dwarf the others they had seen. He strode towards them with a majestic swinging gait, and a mane of black and golden hair covered his head and shoulders and made him seem as huge as a haystack. "Shall I fire upon him?" Hal whispered to Aboli.

"A wound will madden him," Aboli replied. "Unless you can kill cleanly, do not fire."

The lion stopped in the full glare of the firelight. He placed his forepaws apart and lowered his head. The dark hair of his mane came erect, swelling before their horrified gaze, seeming to double his bulk. He opened his jaws, and they saw the ivory fangs gleam, the red tongue curl out between them, and he roared again.

The sound struck them with a physical force, like a storm-driven wave. It stunned their ear-drums and startled their senses. The beast was so close that Hal could feel the breath from its mighty lungs blow into his face. It smelt of corpses and carrion long dead.

"Quietly now!" Hal urged them. "Make no sound and do not move, lest you provoke him to attack." Even the women and the child obeyed. They stifled their cries and sat rigid with the terror of it. It seemed an eternity that they remained thus, the lion eyeing them, until little one-eyed Johannes could bear it no longer. He screamed, flung up his musket and fired wildly.

In the instant before the gunsmoke blinded them Hal saw that the ball had missed the beast and had struck the dirt between its forelegs.

Then the smoke billowed over them in a cloud, and from its depths came the grunts of the angry lion. Now both women screamed and the men barged into each other in their haste to run deeper into the stockade. Only Hal and Aboli stood their ground, muskets levelled, and aimed into the bank of smoke. Little Sukeena shrank against Hal's flank but did not run.

Then the lion burst in full charge out of the mist of gunsmoke. Hal pressed the trigger and his musket misfired. Aboli's weapon roared deafeningly, but the beast was a blur of movement so swift, in the smoke and the darkness, that it cheated the eye. Aboli's shot must have flown wide for it had no effect upon the lion, which swept into the stockade, roaring horribly. Hal flung himself down on Sukeena, covering her with his own body and the lion leapt over him.

It seemed to pick out Johannes from the huddle of terrified humanity. Its great jaws closed in the small of the man's back and it lifted him as a cat might carry a mouse. With one more bound it cleared the rear wall of the stockade and disappeared into the night.

They heard Johannes screaming in the darkness, but the lion did not carry him far. just beyond the firelight it began to devour him while he still lived. They heard his bones crack as the beast bit into them, then the rending of his flesh as it tore out a mouthful. There was more roaring and growling as the lionesses rushed in to share the prey, and while Johannes still shrieked and sobbed they tore him to pieces. Gradually his cries became weaker until they faded away entirely and from the darkness there were only the grisly sounds of the feast.

The women were hysterical and Bobby waited and beat his little fists in terror against Althuda's chest. Hal quieted Sukeena, who responded swiftly to the feel of his arm around her shoulder. "Do not run. Move quietly. Sit in a circle. The women in the centre. Reload the muskets, but do not fire until I give the word." Hal rallied them, then looked at Daniel and Aboli.

"It is our Store of meat that draws them. When they have finished with Johannes they will charge the stockade again for more."

"You are right, Gundwane."

"Then we will give them eland meat to distract them from us," Hal said. "Help me."

Between the three of them they seized one of the huge hindquarters of raw eland flesh and staggered with it to the edge of the firelight. They threw it down in the dust.

"Do not run," Hal cautioned them again, "for as the cat pursues the mouse, they will come after us if we do." They backed into the stockade. Almost immediately a lioness rushed out, seized the bloody hindquarter and dragged it away into the night. They could hear the commotion as the others fought her for the prize, and then the sounds as they all settled down to feed, snarling and growling and spitting at each other.

That hunk of raw meat was sufficient to keep even that voracious pride of the great cats feeding and squabbling for an hour, but when once more they began to prowl at the edge of the firelight and make short mock charges at the huddle of terrified humans Hal said, "We must feed them again." It soon became clear that the lions would accept these offerings in preference to rushing the camp, for when the three men dragged out another hindquarter from the stockade, the beasts waited for them to retire before a lioness slunk out of the night to haul it away.

"Always it is the female who is boldest," Hal said, to distract the others.

Aboli agreed with him. "And the greediest!"

"It is not our fault that you males lack courage and the sense to help yourselves," Sukeena told them tartly, and most of them laughed, but breathlessly and without conviction. Twice more during the night Hal had them carry out legs of eland meat to feed the pride. At last as the dawn started to define the tops of the thorn trees against the paling sky the lions seemed to have assuaged their appetites. They heard the roaring of the black-maned male fading with distance as he wandered away. He roared for the last time a league off, just as the sun pushed its flaming golden rim above the jagged tops of the mountain range that ran parallel with the route of their march.

Hal and Althuda went out to find what remained of poor Johannes. Strangely the lions had left his hands and his head untouched, but had consumed the rest of him. Hal closed the staring eyes and Sukeena wrapped these pathetic remnants in a scrap of cloth and prayed over the grave they dug. Hal placed slabs of rock over the fresh turned earth to deter the hyenas from digging it up.

"We can spend no more time here." He lifted Sukeena to her feet. "We must start out immediately if we are to reach the river today. Fortunately, there is still enough meat left for our purpose."

They slung the remaining legs of eland meat on carrying poles, and with a man at each end staggered with them over the rolling hills and grasslands. It was late afternoon when they reached the river and, from the high bluff, looked down onto its broad green expanse, which had already proved such a barrier to their march.

The Golden Bough dropped her anchor at the head of the channel in Elephant Lagoon, and at once Llewellyn set his crew to work, pumping out the bilges and repairing the storm damage to the hull and the rigging. A full gale still raged overhead, but though the surface of the lagoon was whipped into a froth of white wavelets the high ground of the heads broke its main force.

Cornelius Schreuder fretted to go ashore. He was desperate to get off the Golden Bough and rid himself of this company of Englishmen whom he had come to detest so bitterly. He looked upon Lord Cumbrae as a friend and an ally and was anxious to join him and ask him to act as his second in the affair of honour with Vincent Winterton. In his tiny cabin he packed his chests hurriedly and, when a man could not be spared to help him, lugged them up onto the deck himself. He stood with the pile of his possessions at the entry port staring out across the lagoon to Cumbrae's shore base.

The Buzzard had set up his camp on the same site as Sir Francis Courtney's, which Schreuder had attacked with his green-jackets. A great deal of activity was taking place among the trees. It seemed to Schreuder that Cumbrae must be digging trenches and other fortifications and he was puzzled by this. he saw no sense in throwing up earthworks against an enemy that did not exist.

Llewellyn would not leave his ship until he was certain that the repairs to her were well afoot and that, in all other respects, she was snugged down and secure. Eventually he placed his first mate, Arnold Fowler, in charge of the deck and ordered one of his longboats made ready.

"Captain Llewellyn!" Schreuder accosted him, as he came to the ship's side. "I have decided that, with Lord Cumbrae's agreement, I will leave your ship and transfer to the Gull of Moray."

Llewellyn nodded. "I understood that was your intention and, in all truth, Colonel, I doubt there will be many tears shed on board the Golden Bough when you depart. I am going ashore now to find where we can refill the water casks that have been contaminated with seawater during the gale. I will convey you and your possessions to Cumbrae's camp, and I have here the fare money which you paid to me for your passage. To save myself further unpleasantness and acrimonious argument, I am repaying this to you in full."

Schreuder would have dearly loved to give himself the pleasure of disdainfully refusing the offer, but those few guineas were all his wealth in the world and he took the thin purse that Llewellyn handed him, and muttered reluctantly, "In that, at least, you act like a gentleman, sir. I am indebted to you."

They went down into the longboat, and Llewellyn sat in the stern sheets while Schreuder found a seat in the bows and ignored the grinning faces of the crew and the ironical salutes from the ship's officers on the quarterdeck as they pulled away. They were only half-way to the beach when a familiar figure wearing a plaid and a beribboned bonnet sauntered out from amongst the trees, his red beard and tangled locks blazing in the sunlight, and watched them approach with both hands on his hips.

"Colonel Schreuder, by the devil's steaming turds!" Cumbrae roared as he recognized him. "It gladdens my heart to behold your smiling countenance." As soon as the bows touched the beach Schreuder leapt ashore and seized the Buzzard's out thrust hand.

"I am surprised but overjoyed to find you here, my lord." The Buzzard looked over Schreuder's shoulder, and grinned widely. "Och! And if it's not my beloved brother of the Temple, Christopher Llewellyn! Well met, cousin, and God's benevolence upon you."

Llewellyn did not smile, and showed little eagerness to take the hand that Cumbrae thrust at him as soon as his feet touched the sand. "How do ye do, Cumbrae? Our last discourse in the Bay of Trincomalee was interrupted at a crucial point when you left in some disarray."

"Ah, but that was in another land and long ago, cousin, and I'm sure we can both be magnanimous enough to forgive and forget such a trifling and silly matter."

"Five hundred pounds and the lives of twenty of my men is not a trifling and silly matter in my counting house. And I'll remind you that I'm no cousin nor any kin of yours," Llewellyn snapped, and his legs were stiff with the memory of his old outrage.

But Cumbrae placed one arm around his shoulder and said softly, "In Arcadia habito."

Llewellyn was obviously struggling with himself, but he could not deny his knightly oath, and at last he gritted the response, "Flumen sacrurn bene cognosco."

"There you are." The Buzzard boomed with laughter. "That was not so bad, was it? If not cousins, then we are still brothers in Christ, are we not?"

"I would feel more brotherly towards you, sir, if I had my five hundred pounds back in my purse."

"I could set off that debt against the grievous injury that you inflicted on my sweet Gull and my own person." The Buzzard pulled back his cloak to display the bright scar across his upper arm. "But I'm a forgiving man with a loving heart, Christopher, and so you shall have it. I give you my word on it. Every farthing of your five hundred pounds, and the interest to boot."

Llewellyn smiled at him coldly. "I will delay my thanks until I feel the weight of your purse in my hands." Cumbrae saw the purpose in his level gaze and, without another look at the Golden Bough's row of gun ports and the handy businesslike lines of her hull, he knew that they were evenly matched and it would be hard pounding if it came to a fight between the two ships, just as it had been four years previously in the Bay of Trincomalee.

"I don't blame you for trusting no man in this naughty world of ours, but dine with me today, here ashore, and I will place the purse in your hands, I swear it to you."

Llewellyn nodded grimly. "Thank you for that offer of hospitality, sir, but I well remember the last time I availed myself of one of your invitations. I have a fine cook on board my own ship who can provide me with a meal more to my taste. However, I will return at dusk to fetch the purse you have promised me." Llewellyn bowed and returned to his longboat.

The Buzzard watched him go, with a calculating look in his eyes. The longboat headed up the lagoon towards the stream of fresh water that flowed into its upper end. "That dandy bastard has a nasty temper," he growled and, beside him, Schreuder nodded.