Birds of Prey (97 page)

As the
Gull
came slowly around, the
Golden Bough
flew at her and, for a moment, Hal thought they might be alongside her before her guns could bear.

They closed the last hundred yards and Ned had already given the order to shorten to fighting sail, when the
Gull
turned through the last few degrees of arc and all her guns were aimed
straight at where Hal stood.

Looking directly into the
Gull
’s battery, Hal’s eyeballs were seared by the brilliant crimson glow as she fired her broadside into the
Golden Bough
at point-blank
range.

A tempest of disrupted air struck them so viciously that Hal was hurled backwards and thought that he had been hit by a ball. The deck around him dissolved into a buzzing storm of splinters and
the knot of Amadoda nearest him were struck squarely and blown into nothingness. The
Golden Bough
heeled over sharply to the weight of shot that tore through her, and the choking fog of
gunsmoke drifted over her shattered hull.

The terrible silence that followed the thunder of the broadside was marred only by the screams and groans of the wounded and the dying. Then the wall of gunsmoke was blown aside, and from across
the narrow gap of water came the cheering of the other crew. ‘The
Gull
and Cumbrae!’ and Hal heard the rumble of the gun trains as they were run in-board to be reloaded.

How many of my lads are dead? he wondered. A quarter? Half? He looked back at his own decks, but the darkness hid from his eyes the torn timbers and the heaps of dead and dying.

From across the water he heard the thudding of ramrods forcing powder and shot down the barrels of the guns. ‘Faster!’ he whispered. ‘Faster, my darling. Close the gap and do
not make us face another such blast.’

He heard the squeal of the tackle and the rumble as one of the swiftest guncrews completed loading before the others and ran out its culverin. The two ships were now so close together that Hal
saw the monstrous gaping barrel come poking out through its gunport. With the muzzle almost touching the
Golden Bough
’s side it roared again, and timbers shattered and men screamed as
the heavy ball tore through them.

Then before any more of the
Gull
’s guns could be run out, the two ships came together with a rending, grinding crash. In the light of the
Gull
’s battle lanterns Hal saw
the grappling hooks hurled over her side and heard them clatter on her deck. He did not hesitate but sprang to the gunwale and leaped across the narrow strip of water as the two hulls surged
alongside each other. He landed lightly as a cat among the nearest of the Buzzard’s guncrews and killed two men before they could draw their cutlasses.

Then a wave of his boarders followed him over her side, led by the Amadoda armed with pike and axe. Within seconds the
Gull
’s upper deck was transformed into a battlefield. Men
fought chest to chest and hand to hand, shouting and yelling with rage and terror.

‘El Tazar!’ roared the men of the
Golden Bough
, to be answered by, ‘The
Gull
and Cumbrae!’ as they came together.

Hal found himself confronted by four men simultaneously and was driven back to the rail before John Lovell tore into them from behind and killed one with a thrust between the shoulder-blades.
Hal killed another as he hesitated and the other two broke and ran. Hal had a moment to look about him. He saw the Buzzard on the far side of the deck, roaring with rage, the great claymore
swinging high above his head as he hacked down the men in front of him.

Then from the corner of his eye Hal caught the glint of Judith Nazet’s steel helmet and, towering on each side of her, the forms of Aboli and Big Daniel. They drove across the deck and
disappeared down the companionway to the stern cabin. That moment of distraction might have cost Hal his life for a man stabbed at him with a pike, and he turned only just in time to avoid the
thrust. Then he was in the midst of the fight again as it swayed back and forth across the deck.

He put down another man with a thrust in the belly, then looked about for the Buzzard. He saw him in the waist, and shouted at him, ‘Cumbrae, I am coming for you!’ But in the uproar
the Buzzard did not look round at him, and Hal started towards him cutting a path for himself through the mob of fighting men.

At that moment one of the main shrouds was cut loose by a swinging axe that missed the head at which it was aimed, and the battle lantern that was suspended from it came crashing to the deck at
Hal’s feet. He sprang back from the blaze of burning oil that roared up into his face then gathered himself and leapt through the flames to reach the Buzzard.

He landed on the far side and looked about him swiftly, but the Buzzard had disappeared and instead two of his sailors charged at Hal. He took them on and slashed through the sinews of an
extended sword arm as one lunged at him. Then, in the same movement, he changed cut to thrust and drove his point deeply into the second man’s throat.

He recovered and glanced back over his shoulder. The flames from the shattered lantern had taken hold and were lighting the deck brightly. Streamers of fire were running up the dangling shroud
towards the rigging. Through the dancing flames he saw Judith Nazet leap out of the entrance to the stern companionway. She was followed closely by Big Daniel carrying the Tabernacle of Mary,
balanced easily on his shoulder as though it were light as a down-filled bolster. The golden angels on its lid sparkled in the light of the flames.

A sailor rushed at Judith with his pike, and Hal shouted with horror as the gleaming spearhead struck her full in the side under her raised arm. It tore through the thin cotton of her tunic, but
glanced harmlessly off the shirt of steel chain-mail beneath the cloth. Judith whirled like an angry panther, and her blade flashed as she aimed at his face. Such was the fury of her blow that the
point came out of the back of the pirate’s skull, and the man dropped at her feet.

Judith’s fierce dark eyes met Hal’s across the teeming deck.

‘Iyasu!’ she shouted. ‘He is gone!’

The flames were leaping up between them, and Hal yelled through them, ‘Go with Daniel! Get off this ship! Take the Tabernacle to safety on the
Golden Bough
. I will find
Iyasu.’

She neither argued nor hesitated but ran, with Daniel beside her, to the rail and leaped across onto the
Golden Bough
’s deck. Hal started to fight his way towards the companionway
to reach the lower decks where the child must be hidden, but a phalanx of Amadoda led by Jiri swept across the deck and cut him off. The black warriors had locked their shields together into the
solid carapace of the testudo and, with their pikes thrust through the gaps, the pirates could not stand before their charge.

In every battle there comes a moment when its outcome is decided and as the
Gull
’s sailors scattered before that rush of howling, prancing warriors it had come. The Buzzard’s
men were beaten.

‘I must find Iyasu and get him off the
Gull
before the flames reach the powder magazine,’ Hal told himself, and turned towards the break in the forecastle as his easiest
access to the lower decks. At that moment a bellow stopped him dead.

The Buzzard stood on high, lit by the dancing yellow light of the flames. ‘Courtney!’ he roared. ‘Is this what you are searching for?’

His head was bared and his tangled red locks tumbled about his face. In his right hand he held his claymore, and in his left he carried Iyasu. The child was screaming with terror as the Buzzard
lifted him high. He wore only a thin nightshirt, which had rucked up above his waist, and his slender brown legs kicked frantically in the air.

‘Is this what you are looking for?’ the Buzzard bellowed again, and lifted the child high above his head. ‘Then come and fetch the brat.’

Hal bounded forward, cutting two men out of his way, before he reached the foot of the forecastle ladder. The Buzzard watched him come. He must have known that he was beaten, with his ship in
flames and his crew being cut down and hurled overboard by the rush of the pikemen, but he grinned like a gargoyle. ‘Let me show you a fine little trick, Sir Henry. It’s called catch
the bairn on the steel.’

With a sweep of his thick hairy arm he threw the child fifteen feet straight up in the air, and then held the point of the claymore beneath him as he dropped.

‘No!’ Hal screamed wildly.

At the last instant before the child was impaled on the point the Buzzard flicked aside the sword and Iyasu fell back unscathed into his grasp.

‘Parley!’ Hal shouted. ‘Give me the child unharmed and you can go free, with all your booty.’

‘What a bargain! But my ship is burned and my booty with it.’

‘Listen to me,’ Hal pleaded. ‘Let the boy go free.’

‘How can I refuse a brother Knight?’ the Buzzard asked, still spluttering with laughter. ‘You shall have what you ask. There! I set the little black bastard free.’ With
another mighty swing of his arm he hurled Iyasu far out over the ship’s side. The child’s shirt fluttered around his little body as he fell. Then, with only a soft splash, the dark sea
swallowed him.

Behind him Hal heard Judith Nazet scream. He dropped his sword to the deck and with three running strides reached the rail and dived head first over the side. He struck the water and knifed
deep, then turned for the surface.

Looking up from twenty feet deep, the water was clear as mountain air. He could see the weed-fouled bottom of the
Gull
drifting past him, and the reflection of the flames from the burning
ship dancing on the surface ripple. Then, between him and the firelight, he saw a small dark shape. The tiny limbs were struggling like a fish in a net and silver bubbles streamed from
Iyasu’s mouth as he turned end over end in the wake of the hull.

Hal struck out with arms and legs and reached him before he was whirled away. Holding him to his chest he shot to the surface, and lifted the child’s face clear.

Iyasu struggled feebly, coughing and choking, then he let out a thin, terrified wail. ‘Blow it all out of you,’ said Hal, and looked around.

Big Daniel must have recalled his men, then cut the grappling lines to get the
Golden Bough
away from the burning hull. The two ships were drifting apart. The seamen from the
Gull
were leaping over her sides as the heat of the flames washed over them and her main sail caught fire. The
Gull
began to sail with flaming canvas and no hand on her helm. She bore down slowly
on where Hal trod water, and he struck out desperately with one hand, dragging Iyasu out of her path.

For a long, dreadful minute it seemed that they would be trodden under, then a fluke of the wind pushed the bows across a point and she passed less than a boat’s length from them.

With amazement Hal saw that the Buzzard still stood alone on the break of the forecastle. The flames surrounded him, but he did not seem to feel their heat. His beard began to smoke and blacken,
but he looked down at Hal and choked with laughter. He gasped for breath then opened his mouth to shout something to him, but at that moment the
Gull
’s foresail sheets burned clean
through and the huge spread of canvas came floating down, covering the Buzzard. From under that burning shroud Hal heard one last terrible shriek and then the flames leapt high, and the stricken
Gull
bore away her master on the wind.

Hal watched him go until the swells of the ocean intervened and he lost sight of the burning ship. Then a freak wave lifted him and the child high. The
Gull
was a league off, and at that
instant the flames must have reached her powder magazine for she blew up with a devastating roar, and Hal felt the waters constrict his chest as the force of the explosion was transmitted through
them. He watched still as burning timbers were hurled high into the night sky then fell to quench in the dark waters. Darkness and silence descended again.

There was neither sight nor sign of the
Golden Bough
in the night. The child was weeping piteously, and Hal had no word of Geez to comfort him, so he held his head clear and spoke to him
in English. ‘There’s a good strong lad. You have to be brave, for you are born an Emperor, and I know for certain that an Emperor never cries.’ But Hal’s boots and sodden
clothing were drawing him down, and he had to swim hard to resist. He kept the two of them afloat for the rest of that long night, but in the dawn he knew that he was near the end of his strength
and the child was shivering and whimpering softly in his arms. ‘Not long now, Iyasu, and it will be bright day,’ he croaked through his salt-scalded throat, but he knew that neither of
them could last that long.

‘Gundwane!’ He heard a well-beloved voice call to him, but he knew it was delirium and he laughed aloud. ‘Don’t play tricks on me now,’ he said, ‘I do not
have the stomach for it. Let me be in peace.’

Then, out of the darkness, he saw a shape emerge, heard the splash of oars pulling hard towards him, and the voice called again, ‘Gundwane!’

‘Aboli!’ his voice cracked. ‘I am here!’

Those great black hands reached down and seized him, lifted him and the child over the side of the longboat. As soon as he was aboard Hal looked about him. With all her lanterns lit, the
Golden Bough
lay hove to half a league across the water but Judith Nazet sat before him in the stern sheets and she took the child from Hal and wrapped him in her cloak. She crooned to Iyasu
and spoke soothingly to him in Geez, while the crew pulled back towards the ship. Before they reached the
Golden Bough
Iyasu was asleep in her arms.

‘The Tabernacle?’ Hal asked Aboli hoarsely. ‘Is it safe?’

‘It is in your cabin,’ Aboli assured him, and then dropped his voice. ‘All of this is as your father foretold. At last the stars must set you free, for you have fulfilled the
prophecy.’

Hal felt a deep sense of fulfilment come over him, and the desperate weariness slid from his shoulders like a discarded mantle. He felt light and free as though released from some long, onerous
penance. He looked across at Judith, who had been watching him. There was something in her dark gaze that he could not fathom, but she dropped her eyes before he could read it clearly. Hal wanted
to move closer to her, to touch her, speak to her and tell her about these strange, powerful feelings that possessed him, but four ranks of rowers separated them in the small, crowded boat.