Birds of Prey (31 page)

‘They have surprised our men in the forts. The Buzzard has led the Dutch to us, and shown them where our guns are placed.’ His voice trembled with outrage. ‘He will pay with
his blood for this day, I swear it.’

Katinka sprang up from the grass mattress and ran to the entrance beside him. ‘Look! It is a Dutch ship, come to rescue me from the den of your foul pirate father. I give thanks to God!
Soon I will be away from this forsaken place and safe at Good Hope.’ She danced with excitement. ‘When they hang you and your father from the gibbet on the parade outside the fort, I
shall be there to blow you one last kiss and to wave you farewell.’ She laughed mockingly.

Hal ignored her. He ran back into the cave, pulled on his clothing hastily and belted on the Neptune sword.

‘There will be fighting and great danger, but you will be safe if you stay here until it is over,’ he told her, and started down.

‘You cannot leave me alone here!’ she screamed after him. ‘Come back here, I command you!’

But he took no notice of her pleas and raced down the footpath through the trees. I should never have allowed her to tempt me from my father’s side, he lamented silently as he ran. He
warned me of the danger of the red comet. I deserve whatever cruel fate awaits me now.

He was in such distress that he was oblivious to all but the need to take up his neglected duties and almost ran full tilt into the lines of skirmishing soldiers moving through the trees ahead
of him. Just in time, he smelt the smoke of their burning match and then picked out their green doublets and the white cross belts as they wove their way through the trees of the forest. He flung
himself to the ground and rolled behind the trunk of a tall wild fig tree. He peered out from behind it, and saw that the strange green-clad ranks were moving away from him, advancing on the
encampment, pikes and muskets at the ready, keeping good order under the direction of a white officer.

Hal heard the officer call softly in Dutch, ‘Keep your spacing. Do not bunch up!’ There could be no doubt now whose troops these were. The Dutchman’s back was still turned, and
Hal had a moment’s respite to think. I must reach the camp to warn my father, but there is not enough time to find a way round. I will have to fight my way through the enemy ranks. He drew
the sword from its scabbard and rose on one knee, then paused as a thought struck him with force. We are outnumbered on land and on the water. This time there are no fireships to drive off the
Buzzard and the Dutch frigate. The battle may go hard for us.

Using the point of his sword, he scratched a hole in the soft, loamy soil at the base of the wild fig. Then he slipped the ring from his finger and the locket with the miniature of his mother
from his pocket and dropped them into the hole. After that he lifted the seal of the Nautonnier from his neck and laid it on top of his other treasures. He swept the loose soil back over them, and
tamped it down with the flat of his hand.

It had taken him only a minute but when he started to his feet the Dutch officer had disappeared into the forest ahead. Hal crept forward, guided to his quarry by the rustle and crackle of the
undergrowth. Without their officers these men will not fight so well, he thought. If I can take this one I will quench some of the fire in their bellies. He slowed as he drew closer to the man he
was stalking, and came up behind the Dutchman as he pushed his way through the undergrowth, the noise of his progress masking the fainter sounds of Hal’s approach.

The Dutchman was sweating in dark wet patches down the back of his serge coat. By his epaulettes Hal realized that he was a lieutenant in the Company’s army. He was thin and lanky, with
angry red pustules studding the back of his scrawny neck. He carried his bared sword in his right hand. He had not bathed for many days and smelt like a wild boar.

‘On guard, Mijnheer!’ Hal challenged him in Dutch, for he could not run him through the back. The lieutenant spun round to face him, lifting his blade into the guard.

His eyes were pale blue, and they flew wide with shock and fright as he found Hal so close behind him. He was not much older than Hal, and his face blanched with terror, emphasizing the rash of
purple acne that covered his chin.

Hal thrust and their blades rasped as they crossed. He recovered swiftly, but with that first light touch he had assessed his adversary. The Dutchman was slow and his wrist lacked the snap and
power of a practised swordsman. His father’s words rang in his ears. ‘Fight from the first stroke. Do not wait until you are angry.’ And he gave his heart over to a cold,
murderous rage to kill. ‘Ha!’ he grunted, and feinted high, aiming the point at the Dutchman’s eyes but balanced for his parry. The lieutenant was slow to counter, and Hal knew he
could risk the flying attack that Daniel had taught him against such a foe. He could go for the quick kill.

His wrist tempered to steel by hours with Aboli on the practice deck, he caught up the Dutchman’s blade, and whirled it with a stirring motion that threw the point off the line of defence.
He had created an opening, but to exploit it with the flying attack he must open his own guard and place himself in full jeopardy of the Dutchman’s natural riposte – suicide in the face
of a skilled opponent.

He committed himself, throwing his weight forward over his left foot, and sped his point in through the other man’s guard. The riposte came too late, and Hal’s steel spiked through
the sweat-stained serge cloth. It glanced off a rib and then found the gap between them. Despite the days he had spent with a sword in his hand this was Hal’s first kill with the cold steel,
and he was unprepared for the sensation of his blade running through human flesh.

It was a soggy, dead feeling, which smothered the speed of his thrust. Lieutenant Maatzuyker gasped and dropped his own sword as Hal’s point stopped at last against his spine. He clutched
at Hal’s razor-sharp blade with bare hands. It slashed his palms to the bone, severing the sinews in a quick flush of bright blood. His fingers opened nervelessly, and he sank to his knees
staring up into Hal’s face with watery blue eyes, as though he were about to burst into tears.

Hal stood over him, and tugged at the sapphire pommel of the Neptune sword, but the Toledo blade clung fast in the wet flesh. Maatzuyker gasped in agony and held up his mutilated hands in
appeal.

‘I am sorry,’ Hal whispered in horror, and heaved again on his sword hilt. This time Maatzuyker opened his mouth wide and whimpered. The blade had passed through his right lung, and
a sudden gout of blood burst through his pale lips, poured down his coat front and splashed Hal’s boots.

‘Oh God!’ Hal muttered, as Maatzuyker toppled backwards with the blade between his ribs. For a moment, he stood helplessly, watching the other man choke on and drown in his own
blood. Then, close behind him, came a wild shout from the bushes.

A green-jacketed soldier had spotted him. A musket boomed, the pellets rattled into the foliage above Hal’s head and sang off the tree trunk beside him. He was galvanized. All along he had
known what he must do but, until that moment, he had not been able to bring himself to do it. Now he placed his booted heel firmly on Maatzuyker’s heaving chest and leaned back against the
resistance of the trapped blade. He tugged once and then again with all his weight behind it. Reluctantly the blade slid out until suddenly it came free and Hal reeled backwards.

Instantly he recovered his balance and leapt over Maatzuyker’s body just as another musket shot crashed out and the pellets hissed past his head. The soldier who had fired was fumbling
with his powder flask as he tried to reload and Hal ran straight at him. The musketeer looked up in fright, then dropped his empty weapon and turned his back to run.

Hal would not use the point again but slashed at the man’s neck, just below his ear. The razor edge cut to the bone, and the side of his neck opened like a grinning red mouth. The man
dropped without a sound. But all around him the bushes were alive with green-jacketed figures. Hal realized there must be hundreds of them. This was not a raiding party but a small army attacking
the encampment.

He heard shouts of alarm and anger, and now a constant barrage of musket fire, much of it wild and undirected, but some slashing into the undergrowth close on either side of him as he ran with
all his speed and strength. In the midst of the uproar Hal recognized, by its power and authority, one stentorian voice.

‘Get that man!’ it bellowed in Dutch. ‘Don’t let him get away! I want that one.’ Hal glanced in the direction from which it was coming, and almost tripped with the
shock of seeing Cornelius Schreuder racing through the trees to head him off. His hat and wig flew from his head, but the ribbons and sash of his rank were gold. His shaven head gleamed like an
eggshell. His moustaches were scored heavily across his face. For such a big man, he was fast on his feet, but fear made Hal faster.

‘I want you!’ Schreuder yelled. ‘This time you will not get away.’

Hal put on a burst of speed and, within thirty flying paces, had forged ahead to see the stockade of the encampment through the trees. It was deserted and he realized that his father and every
other man would have been decoyed away to the lagoon’s edge by the heavy fire of the two warships, and that they must be manning the culverins in the emplacements.

‘To arms!’ he screamed as he ran, with Schreuder pounding along only ten paces behind him. ‘Rally to me, the
Resolution
. In your rear!’

As he burst into camp he saw, with huge relief, Big Daniel and a dozen seamen responding to his call, rushing back from the beach to support him. Immediately Hal rounded on the Dutchman.

‘Come, then,’ he said, and went on guard. But Schreuder came up short as he saw the
Resolution
’s men bearing down on him and realized that he had outrun his own troops,
had left them without a leader, and was now outnumbered twelve to one.

‘Again you are lucky, puppy,’ he snarled at Hal. ‘But before this day ends, you and I will speak again.’

Thirty paces behind Hal, Big Daniel pulled up short and lifted the musket he carried. He aimed at Schreuder but, as the lock snapped, the Colonel ducked and spun on his heels, the shot went wide
and he bounded back into the forest, shouting to rally his attacking musketeers as they came swarming forward through the trees.

‘Master Daniel,’ Hal panted, ‘the Dutchman leads a strong force. The forest is full of men.’

‘How many?’

‘A hundred or more. There!’ He pointed as the first of the attackers came running and dodging towards them, stopping to fire and reload their muskets, then running forward again.

‘What’s worse, there are two warships in the bay,’ Daniel told him. ‘One is the
Gull
but the other is a Dutch frigate.’

‘I saw them from the hill.’ Hal had recovered his breath. ‘We are outgunned in front and outnumbered in the rear. We cannot stand here. They will be on us in a minute. Back to
the beach.’

The coloured troops behind them clamoured like a pack of hounds as Hal turned and led his men back at a run. Ball and shot thrummed and whistled around them, kicking up spurts of damp earth at
their heels, speeding them on their way.

Through the trees he could see the piled earth of the gun emplacements and the drifting bank of gunsmoke. He could make out the heads of his own gunners as they reloaded the culverins. Out in
the lagoon the stately Dutch frigate bore down on the shore, wreathed in her own powder smoke. As Hal watched, she put her helm over, bringing her broadside to bear, and again her gunports bloomed
with great flashes of flame. Seconds later the thunder of the cannonade and the blast of howling grape shot swept over them.

Hal flinched in the turmoil of disrupted air, his eardrums singing. Whole trees crashed down, and branches and leaves rained upon them. Directly in front of him he saw one of the culverins hit
squarely, and hurled off its train. The bodies of two of the
Resolution
’s sailors were sent spinning high into the air.

‘Father, where are you?’ Hal tried to make himself heard in the pandemonium but then, through it all, he heard Sir Francis’s voice.

‘Stand to your guns, lads. Aim at the Dutchmen’s ports. Give those cheese-heads out there some of our good English cheer.’

Hal leapt down into the gunpit beside his father, seized his arm and shook it urgently.

‘Where have you been, boy?’ Sir Francis glanced at him, but when he saw the blood on his clothing he did not wait for an answer. Instead he grunted, ‘Take command of the guns
on the left flank. Direct your fire—’

Hal interrupted, in a breathless rush, ‘The enemy ships are only creating a diversion, Father. The real danger is in our rear. The forest is full of Dutch soldiers, hundreds of
them.’ He pointed back with his blood-stained blade. ‘They’ll be on us in a minute.’

Sir Francis did not hesitate. ‘Go down the line of guns. Order every second culverin to be swung round and loaded with grape. The front guns continue to engage the ships, but hold your
fire with the back guns until the attack in our rear is point-blank. I will give the order to fire. Now, go!’ As Hal scrambled out of the pit, Sir Francis turned to Big Daniel. ‘Take
these men of yours, and any other loafers you can find, go back and slow the enemy advance in our rear.’

Hal raced down the line, pausing beside each gunpit to shout his orders and then running on. The sound of the barrage and the answering fire from the beach was deafening and confusing. He reeled
and almost went sprawling to the ground as another broadside from the black frigate swept over him like the devil-winds of a typhoon, smashing through the forest and ploughing the earth around him.
He shook his head to clear it and ran on, hurdling a fallen tree-trunk.

As he passed each emplacement and alerted the gunners, they began to train the culverins around, aiming them back into the forest. Back there they could already hear musket fire and angry shouts
as Big Daniel and his small band of seamen charged into the advancing hordes that poured from the forest.