Birds of Prey (58 page)

Hal appeared in the armoury doorway with a sword in one hand and a burning torch that he had seized from its bracket in the other.

‘I am counting to ten,’ Hal shouted, ‘and then I am lighting the powder train!’ In his rags, and with his great bushy black beard and wild eyes, he looked like a maniac.
A moan of horror and fear went up from every man in the yard. One of the convicts threw down his spade and followed the fleeing soldiers in a rush for the gate. Immediately pandemonium overwhelmed
them all. Two hundred convicts and soldiers stormed the gates in a rush for safety.

Van de Velde struggled in Aboli’s grip and screamed, ‘Let me go! The idiot is going to blow us all to perdition. Let me go! Run! Run!’ His shrieks added to the panic, and
within the time it takes to draw and hold a long breath the courtyard was deserted except for the group of seamen around the carriage and Hal. Katinka was screaming and sobbing hysterically, but
Sukeena slapped her hard across the face. ‘Keep quiet, you simpering ninny, or I’ll give you good reason to blubber,’ and Katinka gulped back her distress.

‘Aboli, get van de Velde into the carriage! He and his wife are coming with us,’ Hal called, and Aboli lifted the Governor bodily and hurled him over the top of the door. He landed
in an ungainly heap on the floorboards and struggled there, like an insect on a pin. ‘Althuda, put your sword point to his heart and be ready to kill him when I give the word.’

‘I look forward to it!’ Althuda shouted, dragged van de Velde upright and thrust him into the seat facing his wife. ‘Where should I give it to you?’ he asked him.
‘In your fat gut, perhaps?’

Van de Velde had lost his wig in the scuffle and his expression was abject, every inch of his huge frame seeming to quiver with despair. ‘Don’t kill me. I can protect you,’ he
pleaded, and Katinka started weeping and keening again. This time, Sukeena merely held her a little tighter, lifted the point of the dagger to her throat and whispered, ‘We don’t need
you now we have the Governor. It won’t matter at all if I kill you.’ Katinka choked back the next sob.

‘Daniel, load the powder and the spare weapons,’ Hal ordered, and they piled them into the carriage. The elegant vehicle was no wagon, and the coachwork sagged under the load on its
delicately sprung suspension.

‘That’s enough! It will take no more.’ Aboli stopped them throwing the last few powder kegs on board.

‘One man to each horse!’ Hal commanded. ‘Don’t try to board them, lads. You’re none of you riders. You’ll fall off and break your necks, which won’t
matter much, but your weight will kill the poor beasts before we have gone a mile, and that will matter. Lay hold of their rigging and let them tow you along.’ They ran to their places around
the team of horses, and latched onto their harness. ‘Leave space for me on the larboard bow, lads,’ he called, and even in her excitement and agitation Sukeena laughed aloud at his use
of the nautical terms. His men understood, though, and left the offside lead horse for him.

Aboli leaped to his place on the coachman’s seat, while in the body of the carriage Althuda menaced van de Velde and Sukeena held her dagger to Katinka’s white throat.

Aboli wheeled the team and shouted, ‘Come on, Gundwane. It’s time to go. The garrison will wake up at any moment now.’ As he said it they heard the flat report of a pistol
shot, and a garrison officer ran from the doorway of the barracks across the square waving his smoking pistol, shouting to his men to form up on him. ‘Stand to arms! On me the First
Company!’

Hal paused only a moment to light the slow-match of one of his pistols from the burning torch, then tossed the torch onto the powder train and waited to see it flare and catch. The smoking flame
started snaking back through the doors of the armoury into the passageway that led to the main powder magazine. Then he sprang down the steps into the courtyard and raced to meet the overloaded
carriage as Aboli drove the horses in a circle and lined up for the gates.

He was almost there, raising his hand to seize the bridle of the leading grey gelding, when suddenly Aboli shouted in agitation, ‘Gundwane, behind you! Have a care!’

Hugo Barnard had appeared in the doorway where he and his hounds had taken shelter at the first sign of trouble. Now he slipped both dogs from the leash and with wild yells of encouragement sent
them in pursuit of Hal. ‘
Vat hom!
Catch him!’ he yelled and the animals raced towards him in a silent rush, running side by side, striding out and covering the length of the
courtyard like a pair of whippets coursing a hare.

Aboli’s warning had given Hal just time enough to turn to face them. The dogs worked as a team, and one leaped for his face while the other rushed for his legs. Hal lunged at the first
while it was in the air and sent his point into the base of the black throat where it joined the shoulders. The flying weight of the hound’s body drove the blade in full length, transfixing
it cleanly through heart and lung and on into its guts. Even though it was dead, the momentum of its flight drove it on to crash into Hal’s chest, and he staggered backwards.

The second hound snaked in low to the ground and, while Hal was still off balance, sank its fangs into his left shin just below the knee, jerking him over backwards. His shoulder crashed into
the stone paving, but when he tried to rise the animal still had him in its grip and pulled back on all four braced legs, sending him sprawling again. Hal felt its teeth grate on the bone of his
leg.

‘My hounds!’ Barnard yelled. ‘You are hurting my darlings.’ With his drawn sword in his hand he rushed to intervene. Again Hal tried to rise, and again the hound pulled
him down. Barnard reached them and raised his sword to his full height above Hal’s unprotected head. Hal saw the blow coming and rolled aside. The blade struck the flint cobbles beside his
ear in a sheet of sparks.

‘You bastard!’ Barnard roared, and lifted the sword again. Aboli swerved the team of horses and drove them deliberately at Barnard. The overseer’s back was turned to the
approaching carriage, and he was so engrossed with Hal that he did not see it coming. As he was about to strike again at Hal’s head, the rear wheel caught him a glancing blow on the hip and
sent him staggering aside.

With a violent effort Hal hauled himself into a sitting position, and before the hound could drag him flat again, he stabbed it in the base of the neck, driving his blade at an angle back
between its shoulder blades like the bullfighter’s coup, finding the heart. The beast let out an agonized howl and released its grip on his leg, staggered around in a circle then collapsed on
the cobbles, kicking feebly.

Hal heaved himself to his feet just as Barnard rushed at him. ‘You have killed my beauties!’ He was maddened with grief, and hacked again at Hal, a wild uncontrolled blow. Hal turned
it effortlessly aside and let it fly an inch past his head.

‘You filthy pirate, I’ll cut you down!’ Barnard gathered himself and rushed in again. With the same apparent ease Hal deflected the next thrust, and said softly, ‘Do you
remember what you and your dogs did to Oliver?’ He feinted high left, forcing Barnard to open his guard in the mid-line, and then, like a bolt of lightning, thrust home. The blade took
Barnard just under the sternum, and sprang half its length out of his back. He dropped his sword and fell to his knees.

‘The debt to Oliver is paid!’ Hal said, placed his bare foot on Barnard’s chest and, against its resistance, pulled his blade clear. Barnard toppled and lay beside the carcass
of his dying hound.

‘Come on, Gundwane!’ Aboli was struggling to hold the team of greys, for the shouting and the smell of blood had panicked them. ‘The magazine!’ It was only seconds since
Hal had lighted the powder train, but when he glanced in that direction he saw clouds of acrid blue smoke billowing from the doorway of the armoury.

‘Hurry, Gundwane!’ Sukeena called softly. ‘Oh, please, hurry!’ Her voice was so filled with concern for his safety that it spurred him. Even in these dire straits, Hal
realized that it was the first time he had ever heard her speak his nickname. He started forward. The dog had bitten deeply into his leg, but its fangs could not have severed nerves or sinews for
Hal found that, if he ignored the pain, he could still run on it. He leaped across the yard and grabbed hold of the leading horse’s bridle. It tossed its head and rolled its eyes until the
pink lining showed, but Hal hung on and Aboli gave the team its head.

The carriage went rocking and clattering under the archway of the gates, across the bridge, over the moat and out onto the open Parade. Suddenly from behind them came a shattering explosion, and
a shockwave of disrupted air swept over them like a tropical line squall. The horses reared and plunged in terror, and Hal was lifted off his feet. He clung desperately to the traces and looked
back. A tower of dun-coloured smoke rose swiftly from the interior courtyard of the castle, spinning and revolving upon itself, shot through with dark flames and scraps of debris and wreckage. In
the midst of this plume of destruction a single human body cartwheeled a hundred feet into the sky.

‘For Sir Hal and King Charley!’ Big Daniel roared, and the other seamen took up the cheering, beside themselves with excitement at their escape.

However, when Hal looked back again he could see that the massive outer walls of the castle were untouched by the detonation. The barracks had been built of the same heavy stonework, and almost
certainly had withstood the blast. Two hundred men were housed in there, three companies of green-jackets, and even now they were probably recovering their wits after the explosion. Soon they would
come pouring out through the castle gates in full pursuit – and where, he wondered, was Colonel Cornelius Schreuder?

The carriage was pounding across the Parade at a gallop. Ahead ran a mob of escaped convicts. They were scattering in every direction, some leaping over the stone wall of the Company gardens and
heading for the mountain, others running for the beach to find a boat in which to make good their flight. Out on the Parade were the few stunned burghers and house slaves who were abroad at this
time of the forenoon. They gawked in amazement at the tide of fugitives, then at the rolling cloud of smoke that enveloped the castle and then at the even more extraordinary sight of the advancing
Governor’s carriage, festooned with a motley array of desperate tatterdemalion outlaws and pirates, screaming like madmen and brandishing their weapons. As the vehicle bore down on them they
scattered frantically.

‘The pirates have escaped from the castle. Run! Run!’ At last they recovered and spread the alarm. The cry was taken up and shouted ahead of them through the huts and hovels of the
settlement. Hal could see the burghers and their slaves hurrying to escape the bloodthirsty pirate crew. One or two of the braver souls had armed themselves, and there was a desultory popping of
musket fire from some of the cottage windows, but the range was long, the aim hurried and poor. Hal did not even hear the flight of the balls and none of the men or horses were hit. The carriage
swept on past the first buildings, following the only road that skirted the curving beach of Table Bay, and headed out into the unknown.

Hal looked back at Aboli. ‘Slow down, damn you! You’ll blow the horses before we’ve got past the town.’ Aboli stood upright and pulled the horses back. ‘Whoa,
Royal! Slow down, Cloud!’ But the team were bolting and had almost reached the outskirts of the settlement before Aboli was able to wrestle them to a trot. They were all sweating and snorting
from the gallop, but were far from spent.

As soon as they were under control, Hal loosed his grip on the harness and turned back to jog beside the carriage. ‘Althuda,’ he called, ‘instead of sitting up there like a
gentleman on a Sunday picnic, make sure all the muskets are primed and loaded. Here!’ He passed up the pistol with the burning match. ‘Use this to light the match on all the weapons.
They’ll be after us soon enough.’ Then he looked from Althuda to his sister.

‘We have not been introduced. Your servant, Henry Courtney.’ He grinned at her, and she laughed delightedly at his formal manner.

‘Good morrow, Gundwane. I know you well. Aboli has warned me of what a fierce young pirate you are.’ Then she turned serious. ‘You are hurt. I should see to your
leg.’

‘’Tis nothing that cannot wait until later,’ he assured her.

‘The bite of a dog will mortify swiftly if it is left untreated,’ she told him.

‘Later!’ he repeated, and turned to Aboli.

‘Aboli, are you acquainted with the road to the boundary of the colony?’

‘There is only one road, Gundwane. We have to go straight through the village, skirt the marshland then head out across the sandy flatlands towards the mountains.’ He pointed.
‘The bitter-almond fence is five miles beyond the marsh.’

Looking beyond the settlement, Hal could already see marshland and the lagoon ahead, stands of reeds and open water, over which hovered flocks of water birds. He had heard that crocodiles and
hippopotami lurked in the depths of the lagoon.

‘Althuda, will there be any soldiers in our way?’ Hal asked him.

‘There are usually guards at the first bridge and there is always a patrol at the bitter-almond hedge to shoot any Hottentots who try to enter,’ Althuda replied, without looking up
from the musket he was loading.

Then Sukeena sang out, ‘There will be no pickets or patrols today. From dawn I kept a watch on the crossroad. No soldiers went out to take up their posts. They are all too busy nursing
their aching bellies.’ She laughed gaily, as excited and wrought up as the rest of them. Suddenly she leaped up in the body of the carriage and called out in a ringing voice, ‘Free! For
the first time in my life I am free!’ Her plait had tumbled down and come loose. Her hair streamed out behind her head. Her eyes sparkled, and she was so beautiful that she epitomized the
dreams of every one of the ragged seamen.

Although they cheered her, ‘You, and us also, darling!’ it was Hal at whom she was looking with those laughing eyes.