Текст книги "The Burning Shore"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

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Wilbur Smith – The Burning Shore

Synopsis:

Centaine screamed and drove the point of her stave down into the jaws with all her strength. She felt the sharpened end bite into the soft pink mucous membrane in the the back of its throat, saw the spurt of scarlet blood, and then the lion locked its jaws on the stave and with a toss of its flying mane ripped it out of her hands and sent it windmilling out and down to hit the earth below.

The passionate love of a beautiful French aristocrat for a courageous South African aviator is begun and extinguished in the blazing skies of war-torn France. But Centaine de Thiry is bent on realising some of the dreams which she and Michael Courtney had shared – and sets out to seek a future for his unborn child in the country of Michaels birth. But in a monumental odyssey of disaster and adventure she must first brave all the combined terrors of war, shipwreck, thirst , fever and the burning fastnesses of Nabia's Skeleton Coast before she sees another living soul...

WILBUR SMITH

The Burning Shore

So have I heard on Afric's burning shore, A hungry lion give a grievous roar.

William Barnes Rhodes, Bombastes Furioso, sc. IV

Michael awoke to the mindless fury of the guns.

It was an obscene ritual celebrated in the darkness before each dawn in which the massed banks of artillery batteries on both sides of the ridges made their savage sacrifice to the gods of war.

Michael lay in the darkness under the weight of six woollen blankets and -watched the gunfire flicker through the canvas of the tent like some dreadful aurora borealis.

The blankets felt cold and clammy as a dead man's skin, and light rain spattered the canvas above his head. The cold struck through his bedclothes and yet he felt a glow of hope. In this weather they could not fly.

False hope withered swiftly, for when Michael listened again to the guns, this time more intently, he could judge the direction of the wind by the sound of the barrage.

The wind had gone back into the south-west, muting the cacophony, and he shivered and pulled the blankets up under-his chin. As if to confirm his estimate, the light breeze dropped suddenly. The patter of rain on canvas eased and then ceased. Outside he could hear the trees of the apple orchard dripping in the silence, and then there was an abrupt gust so that the branches shook themselves like a spaniel coming out of the water and released a heavy fall of drops on to the roof of the tent.

He decided that he would not reach across to his gold half-hunter on the inverted packing-case which acted as a bedside table. It would be time all too soon. So he snuggled down in the blankets and thought about his fear.

All of them suffered under the affliction of fear, and yet the rigid conventions under which they lived and flew and died forbade them to speak of it, forbade them to refer to it in even the most oblique terms.

Would it have been a comfort, Michael wondered, if last night he had been able to say to Andrew as they sat with the bottle of whisky between them, discussing this morning's mission, Andrew, I'm frightened gutless by what we are going to do?

He grinned in the darkness as he imagined Andrew's embarrassment, yet he knew that Andrew shared it with him. It was in his eyes, and in the way the little nerve twitched and jumped in his cheek so that he had constantly to touch it with a fingertip to still it. All the old hands had their little idiosyncracies; Andrew had the nerve in his cheek and the empty cigarette-holder which he sucked like an infant's comforter. Michael ground his teeth in his sleep so loudly that he woke himself; he bit the nail of his left thumb down into the quick and every few minutes he blew on the fingers of his right hand as though he had just touched a hot coal.

The fear drove them all a little mad, and forced them to drink far too much, enough to destroy the reflexes of normal men. But they were not normal men and the alcohol did not seem to affect them, it did not dull their eyesight nor slow their feet on the rudder bars. Normal men died in the first three weeks, they went down flaming like fir trees in a forest fire, or they smashed into the doughy, shell-ploughed earth with a force that shattered their bones and drove the splinters out through their flesh.

Andrew had survived fourteen months, and Michael eleven, many times the life-span that the gods of war had allotted to the men who flew these frail contraptions of wire and wood and canvas. So they twitched and fidgeted, and blinked their eyes, and drank whisky with every thing, and laughed in a quick loud bray and then shuffled their feet with embarrassment, and lay in their cots at dawn, stiff with terror, and listened for footsteps.

Michael heard the footsteps now, it must be later than he had realized. Outside the tent Biggs muttered a curse as he splashed into a puddle, and his boots made obscene little sucking noises in the mud. His bull's-eye lantern glowed through the canvas as he fumbled with the flap and then he stooped into the tent.

Top of the mornin& Sir, his tone was cheerful, but he kept it low, out of courtesy to the officers in the neighbouring tents who were not flying this morning wind has gone sou'-sou'-west, Sir, and she's clearing something lovely, she is. Stars shining out over Cambrai – Biggs set the tray he carried on the packing case and bustled about the tent, picking up the clothing that Michael had dropped on the duck-boards the night before.

What time is it? Michael went through the pantomime of awaking from deep sleep, stretching and yawning so that Biggs would not know about the hour of terror, so that the legend would not be tarnished.

Half-past five, Sir. Biggs finished folding the clothes away, then came back to hand him the thick china mug of cocoa. And Lord Killigerran is up and in the mess already. I Bloody man is made of iron, Michael groaned, and Biggs picked the empty whisky bottle off the floor beneath the cot and placed it on the tray.

Michael drained the cocoa while Biggs worked up a lather in the shaving mug and then held the polished steel mirror and the lantern while Michael shaved with the straight razor, sitting up in his cot with the blankets over his shoulders.

What's the book? Michael demanded, his voice nasal as he pinched his own nostrils and lifted the tip of his nose to shave his upper lip.

They are giving three to one that you and the major take them both with no butcher's bill. Michael wiped the razor while he considered the odds.

The sergeant rigger who ran the betting had operated his own book at Ascot and Aintree before the war. He had decided that there was one chance in three that either Andrew or Michael, or both of them, would be dead by noon, no butcher's bill, no casualties.

Bit steep, don't you think, Biggs? Michael asked. I mean, both of them, damn it? I've put half a crack on you, sir, Biggs demurred.

Good on you, Biggs, put on a fiver for me. He pointed to the sovereign case that lay beside his watch, and Biggs pressed out five gold coins and pocketed them. Michael always bet on himself. It was a racing certainty: if he lost the bet, it wasn't going to hurt much, anyway.

Biggs warmed Michael's breeches over the chimney of the lamp and then held them while Michael dived out from under the blankets into them. He stuffed his nightshirt into the breeches while Biggs went on with the complicated procedure of dressing his man against the killing cold of flight in an open cockpit. There followed a silk vest over the nightshirt, two cable-stitched woollen fisherman's jerseys, then a leather gilet, and finally an army officer's greatcoat with the skirts cut off so that they would not tangle with the controls of the aircraft.

By this time Michael was so heavily padded that he could not bend to pull on his own footwear. Biggs knelt in front of him and snugged silk undersocks over his bare feet, then two pairs of woollen hunting socks, and finally eased on the tall boots of tanned kudu skin that Michael had had made inAfrica. Through their soft, pliable soles, Billy Michael had touch and feel on the rudder bars. When he stood up, his lean muscular body was dumpy and shapeless under the burden of clothing, and his arms stuck out like the wings of a penguin. Biggs held the flap of the tent open, and then lit his way along the duckboards through the orchard towards the mess.

As they passed the other darkened tents beneath the apple trees Michael heard little coughs and stirrings from each. They were all awake, listening to his footsteps pass, fearing for him, perhaps some of them cherishing their relief that it was not they who were going out against the balloons this dawn.

Michael paused for a moment as they left the orchard and looked up at the sky. The dark clouds were rolling back into the north and the stars were pricking through, but already paling out before the threat of dawn. These stars were still strange to Michael; though he could at last recognize their constellations, they were not like his beloved southern stars, the Great Cross, Achernar, Argus and the others, so he lowered his gaze and clumped after Biggs and the bobbing lantern.

The squadron mess was a ruined labourers chaurnire which they had commandeered and repainted, covering the tattered thatch with tarpaulin so that it was snug and warm.

Biggs stood aside at the doorway. I'll ave your fifteen quid winnings for you when you get back, sir, he murmured. He would never wish Michael good luck, for that was the worst of all possible luck.

There was a roaring log fire on the hearth and Major Lord Andrew Killigerran was seated before it, his booted feet crossed on the lip of the hearth, while a mess servant cleared the dirty plates.

Porridge, my boy, he removed the amber cigarette holder from between his even white teeth as he greeted Michael, with melted butter and golden syrup. Kippers poached in milk– Michael shuddered. I'll eat when we get back. His stomach, already knotted with tension, quailed at the rich smell of kippers. With the cooperation of an uncle on the general staff who arranged priority transport, Andrew kept the squadron supplied with the finest fare that his family estates in the highlands could provide, Scotch beef, grouse and salmon and venison in season, eggs and cheeses and jams, preserved fruits, and a rare and won erful single malt whisky with an unpronounceable name that came from the family-owned distillery.

Coffee for Captain Courtney, Andrew called to the mess corporal, and when it came he reached into the deep pocket of his fleece-lined flying jacket and brought out a silver flask with a big yellow cairngorm set in the stopper and poured a liberal dram into the steaming mug.

Michael held the first sip in his mouth, swirling it around, letting the fragrant spirit sting and prickle his tongue, then he swallowed and the heat hit his empty stomach and almost instantly he felt the charge of alcohol through his bloodstream.

He smiled at Andrew across the table. Magic, he whispered huskily, and blew on his fingertips.

Water of life, my boy. Michael loved this dapper little man as he had never loved another man, more than his own father, more even than his Uncle Sean who had previously been the pillar of his existence.

It had not been that way from the beginning. At first meeting, Michael had been suspicious of Andrew's extravagant, almost effeminate good looks, his long, curved eyelashes, soft, full lips, neat, small body, dainty hands and feet, and his lofty bearing.

One evening soon after his arrival on the squadron, Michael was teaching the other new chums how to play the game of Bok-Bok. Under his direction one team formed a human pyramid against a wall of the mess, while the other team attempted to collapse them by taking a full run and then hurling themselves on top of the structure. Andrew had waited for the game to end in noisy chaos and had then taken Michael aside and told him, We do understand that you hail from somewhere down there below the equator, and we do try to make allowances for you colonials. However– Their relationship had thenceforth been cool and distant, while they had watched each other shoot and fly.

As a boy, Andrew had learned to take the deflection of a red grouse, hurtling wind-driven only inches above the tops of the heather. Michael had learned the same skills on rocketing Ethiopian snipe and sand-grouse slanting on rapid wingbeat down the African sky. Both of them had been able to adapt their skills to the problem of firing a Vickers machine-gun from the unstable platform of a Sopwith Pup roaring through the three dimensions of space.

Then they watched each other fly. Flying was a gift.

Those who did not have it died during the first three weeks; those who did, lasted a little longer. After a month Michael was still alive, and Andrew spoke to him again for the first time since the evening of the game of BokBok in the mess.

Courtney, you will fly on my wing today, was all he said.

It was to have been a routine sweep down the line.

they were going to blood two new chums who had joined the squadron the day before, fresh from England with the grand total of fourteen flying hours as their combined experience, Andrew referred to them as Fokker fodder, and they were both eighteen years of age, rosyfaced and eager. Did you learn aerobatics? Andrew demanded of them. "Yes, sir. In unison. We have both looped the loop."How many times? Shamefaced they lowered their shining gaze. "Once, they admitted.

God! muttered Andrew and sucked loudly on his cigarette-holder.

Stalls? They both looked bemused, and Andrew clutched his brow and groaned.

Stalls? Michael interposed in a kindly tone. You know, when you let your airspeed drop and the kite suddenly falls out of the sky. They shook their heads, again in unison. No, sir, nobody showed us that. The Huns are going to love you two, Andrew murmured, and then he went on briskly, Number one, forget all about aerobatics, forget about looping the loop and all that rot, or while you are hanging there upside down the Hun is going to shoot your anus out through your nostrils, understand? They nodded vigorously.

Number two, follow me, do what I do, watch for my hand signals and obey them instantly, understand? Andrew jammed his tam o shanter down on his head and bound it in place with the green scarf that was his trademark. Come along, children. With the two novices tucked up between them they barrelled down past Arras at 10,000 feet, the Le Rhone engines of their Sopwith Pups bellowing with all their eighty horsepower, princes of the heavens, the most perfect flying fighting machines man had ever devised, the machines that had shot Max Immelmann and his vaunted Fokker Eindekkers out of the skies.

It was a glorious day, with just a little fairweather cumulus too high up there to hide a boche Jagdstaffel, and the air so clear and bright that Michael spotted the old Rumpler reconnaissance biplane from a distance of ten miles. It was circling low over the French lines, directing the fire of the German batteries on to the rear areas.

Andrew picked out the Rumpler an instant after Michael, and he flashed a laconic hand signal. He was going to let the new chums take a shot at her. Michael knew of no other squadron commander who would stand aside from an easy victory when a big score was the high road to promotion and the coveted decorations. However, he nodded agreement and they shepherded the two young pilots down, patiently pointing out the lumbering German two-seater below them, but with their untrained eyes neither of them could pick it out. They kept shooting puzzled glances across at the two senior pilots.

The Germans were so intent on the bursting high explosive beneath them that they were oblivious of the deadly formation closing swiftly from above. Suddenly the young pilot nearest Michael grinned with delight and relief and pointed ahead. He had seen the Rumpler at last.

Andrew pumped his fist over his head in the old cavalry command, Charge! and the youngster put his nose down without closing the throttle. The Sopwith went into a howling dive so abrupt that Michael winced as he saw the double wings bend back under the strain and the fabric wrinkle at the wing roots. The second novice followed him just as precipitously. They reminded Michael of two half-grown lion cubs he had once watched trying to bring down a scarred old zebra stallion, falling over themselves in comical confusion as the stallion avoided them with disdain.

Both the novice pilots opened fire at a range of a thousand yards, and the German pilot looked up at this timely warning; then, judging his moment, he banked under the noses of the diving scoutplanes, forcing them into a blundering overshoot that carried them, still firing wildly, half a mile beyond their intended victim. Michael could see their heads screwing around desperately in the open cockpits as they tried to find the Rumpler again.

Andrew shook his head sadly and led Michael down.

They dropped neatly under the Rumpler's tailplane, and the German pilot banked steeply to port in a climbing turn to give his rear gunner a shot at them. Together Andrew and Michael turned out in the opposite direction to frustrate him, but as soon as the German pilot realized the manoeuvre had failed and corrected his bank, they whipped the Sopwiths hard over and crossed his stern.

Andrew was leading. He fired one short burst with the Vickers at a hundred feet and the German rear gunner bucked and flung his arms open, letting the Spandau machine-gun swivel aimlessly on its mounting as the .303 bullets cut him to pieces. The German pilot tried to dive away, and Andrew's Sopwith almost collided with his top wing as he passed over him.

Then Michael came in. He judged the deflection of the diving Rumpler, touched his port rudder bar so that his machine yawed fractionally just as though he were swinging a shotgun on a rocketing snipe, and he hooked the forefinger of his right hand under the safety bar of the Vickers and fired a short burst, a flurry of .303 ball. He saw the fabric of the Rumpler's fuselage ripped to tatters just below the rim of the pilot's cockpit, in line with where his upper body must be.

The German was twisted around staring at Michael from a distance of a mere fifty feet. Michael could see that his eyes behind the lens of his goggles were a startled blue, and that he had not shaved that morning, for his chin was covered with a short golden stubble. He opened his mouth as the shots hit, and the blood from his shattered lungs blew out between his lips and turned to pink smoke in the Rumpler's slipstream, and then Michael was past and climbing away. The Rumpler rolled sluggishly on to its back and with the dead men lolling in their straps, fell away towards the earth. It struck in the centre of an open field and collapsed in a pathetic welter of fabric and shattered struts.

As Michael settled his Sopwith back into position on Andrew's wingtip, Andrew looked across at him, nodded matter-of-factly, and then signalled him to help round up the two new chums who were still searching in frantic circles for the vanished Rumpler. This took longer than either of them anticipated, and by the time they had them safely under their protection again, the whole formation had drifted further west than either Andrew or Michael had ever flown before. On the horizon Michael could make out the fat shiny serpent of the Somme river winding across the green littoral on its way down to the sea.

They turned away from it and headed back east towards Arras, climbing steadily to reduce the chances of an attack from above by a Fokker Jagdstaffel.

As they gained height, so the vast panorama of northern France and southern Belgium opened beneath them, the fields a patchwork of a dozen shades of green interspersed with the dark brown of ploughed lands. The actual battle lines were hard to distinguish; from so high, the narrow ribbon of shell-churned earth appeared insignificant, and the misery and the mud and the death down there seemed illusory.

The two veteran pilots never ceased for an instant their search of the sky and the spaces beneath them. Their heads turned to a set rhythm in their scan, their eyes never still, never allowed to focus short or become mesmerized by the fan of the spinning propellor in front of them. In contrast, the two novices were carefree and selfcongratulatory. Every time Michael glanced across in their direction they grinned and waved cheerfully. In the end he gave up trying to urge them to search the skies around them, they did not understand his signals.

They leveled out at 15,000 feet, the effective ceiling of the Sopwiths, and the sense of unease that had haunted Michael while he had been flying at low altitude over unfamiliar territory passed as he saw the town of Arras abeam of them. He knew that no Fokker could be lurking above them in that pretty bank of cumulus, they simply did not have the ability to fly that high.

He swept another searching glance along the lines.

There were two German observation balloons just south of Mons, while below them a friendly flight of DH2 single-seaters was heading back towards Amiens, which meant they were from No. 24 Squadron.

In ten minutes they would be landing, Michael never finished the thought, for suddenly and miraculously the sky all around him was filled with gaudily painted aircraft and the chatter of Spandau machine-guns.

Even in his utter bewilderment Michael reacted reflexively. As he pulled the Sopwith into a maximum-rate turn, a shark-shaped machine checkered red and black with a grinning white skull superimposed on its black Maltese cross insignia flashed across his nose. A hundredth of a second later and its Spandaus would have savaged Michael. They had come from above, Michael realized; even though he could not believe it, they had been above the Sopwiths, they had come out of the cloud bank.

One of them, painted red as blood, settled on Andrew's tail, its Spandaus already shredding and clawing away the trailing edge of the lower wing, and swinging inexorably towards where Andrew crouched in the open cockpit, his face a white blob beneath the tam al shanter and the green scarf. Instinctively, Michael drove at him, and the German, rather than risk collision, swung away.

Ngi dIa! Michael shouted the Zulu warcry as'he came on to the killing quarter on the tail of the red machine, and then in disbelief watched it power away before he could bring the Vickers to bear. The Sopwith juddered brutally to the strike of shot and a rigging wire above his head parted with a twang like a released bow string as another one of these terrible machines attacked across his stern.

He broke away and Andrew was below him, trying to climb away from yet another German machine which was swiftly overhauling him, coming up within an ace of the killing line. Michael went at the German head-on and the red and black wings flickered past his head, but instantly there was another German to replace him, and this time Michael could not shake him off, the bright machine was too fast, too powerful, and Michael knew he was a dead man.

Abruptly the stream of Spandau fire ceased, and Andrew plunged past Michael's wingtip, driving the German off him. Desperately Michael followed Andrew around, and they went into the defensive circle, each of them covering the other's belly and tail while the cloud of German aircraft milled around them in murderous frustration.

Only part of Michael's mind recorded the fact that both the new chums were dead. They had died in the first seconds of the assault; one was in a vertical dive under full power, the maimed Sopwith's wings buckling under the strain and at last tearing away completely, while the other was a burning torch, smearing a thick pall of black smoke down the sky as it fell.

As miraculously as they had come, the Germans were gone, untouched and invulnerable, they disappeared back towards their own lines, leaving the pair of battered, shot-torn Sopwiths to limp homewards.

Andrew landed ahead of Michael and they parked wingtip to wingtip at the edge of the orchard. Each of them clambered down and walked slowly round his own machine, inspecting the damage. Then at last they stood in front of each other, stony-faced with shock.

Andrew reached into his pocket and brought out the silver flask. He unscrewed the cairngorm and wiped the mouth of the flask with the tail of the green scarf, then handed the flask to Michael.

Here, my boy, he said carefully, have a dram. I think you earned it, I really do. So on the day that Allied superiority was wiped from the skies above France by the shark-nosed AlbatrosD type scoutplanes of the German jagdstaffels, they had become comrades of desperate necessity, flying at each other's wingtips, forming the defensive mutually protective circle whenever the gaily painted minions of death fell upon them. At first they were content merely to defend themselves, then between them they tested the capability of this new and deadly foe, poring together at night over the intelligence reports that belatedly came in to them, learning that the Albatros was driven by a 160 horsepower Mercedes engine, twice as powerful as the Sopwith's Le Rhone, and that it had twin Spandau 7.92 `men machine-guns with interrupter gear firing forward through the arc of the propeller, against the Sopwith's single Vickers .303. They were outgunned and outpowered. The Albatros was 700 pounds heavier than the Pup and could take tremendous weight of shot before it fell out of the sky.

So, old boy, what we'll do is learn to fly the arses off them, Andrew commented, and they went out against the massed formations of the Jastas and they found their weaknesses. There were only two. The Sopwiths could turn inside them, and the Albatros radiator was situated in the upper wing directly above the cockpit. A shot through the tank would send a stream of boiling coolant hissing over the pilot, scalding him to a hideous death.

Using this knowledge, they made their first kills, and found that in testing the Albatros they had tested each other and found no fault there. Comradeship became friendship, which deepened into a love and respect greater than that between brothers of the blood. So now they could sit quietly together in the dawn, drinking coffee laced with whisky, waiting to go out against the balloons, and take comfort and strength from each other.

Spin for it? Michael broke the silence, it was almost time to go.

Andrew flicked a sovereign into the air and slapped it on to the table-top, covering it with his hand.

Heads, said Michael and Andrew lifted his hand.

Luck of a pox-doctor! he grunted, as they both looked down on the stern, bearded profile of George V.

I'll take number-two slot, said Michael, and Andrew opened his mouth to protest.

I won, I call the shot. Michael stood up to end the argument before it began.

Going against the balloons was like walking on to a sleeping puff-adder, that gross and sluggish serpent of the African veld; the first man woke it so that it could arch its neck into the S of the strike, the second man had the long recurved fangs plunged into the flesh of his calf.

With the balloons they had to attack in line astern, the first man alerted the ground defences and the second man received their full fury. Michael had deliberately chosen the number-two slot. If he had won, Andrew would have done the same.

They paused shoulder to shoulder in the door of the mess, pulling on their gauntlets, buttoning their coat's and looking up at the sky, listening to the rolling fury of the guns and judging the breeze.

The mist will hang in the valleys, Michael murmured. The wind won't move it, not yet. Pray for it, my boy, Andrew answered, and, hampered by their clothing, they waddled down the duckboards, to where the Sopwiths stood at the edge of the trees.

How noble they had once appeared in Michael's eyes, but how ugly now when the huge rotary engine, vomiting forward vision, was compared to the Albatros sleek shark-like snout, with its in-line Mercedes engine. How frail when considered against the Germans robust airframe.

God, when are they going to give us real aeroplanes to fly! he grunted, and Andrew did not reply. Too often they had lamented the endless wait for the new SEsa that they had been promised, the Scout Experimental No. 5a that would perhaps allow them to meet the Jastas on equal terms at last.

Andrew's Sopwith was painted bright green, to match his scarf, and the fuselage behind the cockpit was ringed by fourteen white circles, one for each of his confirmed victories, like notches on a sniper's rifle. The aircraft's name was painted on the engine housing: The Flying Haggis.

Michael had chosen bright yellow, and there was a winged tortoise with a worried frown painted below his cockpit and the appeal, Don't ask me, I just work here. His fuselage was ringed by six white circles.

Assisted by their ground crews, they clambered up on to the lower wing, and then eased themselves into the narrow cockpits. Michael settled his feet on to the rudder bars and pumped them left and right, peering back over his shoulder to watch the response of the rudder as he did so. Satisfied, he held up a thumb at his mechanic who had worked most of the night to replace one of the cables shot away on the last sortie. The mechanic grinned and ran to the front of the machine.

Switches off? he called.

Switches off! Michael confirmed, leaning out of the cockpit to peer around the monstrous engine.

Suck in" Suck in! Michael repeated, and worked at the handle of the hand fuel pump. When the mechanic swung the propeller, he heard the suck of fuel into the carburettor under the cowling as the engine primed.

Switches on! ContactV Switches on! At the next swing of the propeller the engine fired and blathered. Blue smoke blew out of the exhaust ports, and there was the stink of burning castor oil. The engine surged, and missed, caught again and settled down to its steady idling beat.