Birds of Prey (77 page)

Sukeena slept beside him that night with a deathlike stillness while Hal lay awake. By now he was convinced that she was not well, and that she was trying to hide her weakness from him. As she
slept her breathing was so light that he had to place his ear to her lips to reassure himself. He held her close and her body seemed heated. Once, just before dawn, she groaned so pitifully that he
felt his heart swell with love and concern for her. At last he also fell into a deep dreamless sleep. When he woke with a start and reached out for her, he found her gone.

He lifted himself on one elbow and looked around the stockade. The fire had died down to a puddle of embers, but the full moon, even though it was low in the west, threw enough light for him to
see that she was not there. He could make out the dark shape of Aboli: the morning star was almost washed out by the more brilliant light of the moon, but it burned just above his head as he sat
his watch at the entrance. Aboli was awake, for Hal heard him cough softly and then saw him draw his fur blanket closer around his shoulders.

Hal threw back his own kaross, and went to squat beside him. ‘Where is Sukeena?’ he whispered.

‘She went out a short while ago.’

‘Which way?’

‘Down towards the stream.’

‘You did not stop her?’

‘She was going about her private business.’ Aboli turned to look at him curiously. ‘Why would I stop her?’

‘I am sorry,’ Hal whispered back. ‘I meant no rebuke. She worries me. She is not well. Have you not noticed?’

Aboli hesitated. ‘Perhaps.’ He nodded. ‘Women are children of the moon, which lacks but a few nights of full, so perhaps her courses are in flood.’

‘I am going after her.’ Hal stood up and went down the rough path towards the shallow pool where they had bathed the previous evening. He was about to call her name when he heard a
sound that silenced and alarmed him. He stopped and listened anxiously. The sound came again, the sound of pain and distress. He started forward and saw her on the sandbank kneeling beside the
pool. She had thrown aside her blanket, and the moonlight shone on her bare skin, imparting to it the patina of polished ivory. She was doubled up in a convulsion of pain and sickness. As he
watched in distress, she retched and vomited into the sand.

He ran down to her and dropped on his knees beside her. She looked up at him in despair. ‘You should not see me thus,’ she whispered hoarsely, then turned her head away and vomited
again. He put his arm around her bare shoulders. She was cold and shivering.

‘You are sick,’ he breathed. ‘Oh, my love, why did you not answer me straight? Why did you try to hide it from me?’

She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. ‘You should not have followed,’ she said. ‘I did not want you to know.’

‘If you are sick, then I must know. You should trust me enough to tell me.’

‘I did not want to be a burden to you. I did not want you to delay the march because of me.’

He hugged her to him. ‘You will never be a burden to me. You are the breath in my lungs and the blood in my veins. Tell me now truthfully what ails you, my darling.’

She sighed and shivered against him. ‘Oh, Hal, forgive me. I did not want this to happen yet. I have taken all the medicines that I know of to prevent it.’

‘What is it?’ He was confused and dismayed. ‘Please tell me.’

‘I am carrying your child in my womb.’ He stared at her in astonishment and could neither move nor speak. ‘Why are you silent? Why do you look at me so? Please don’t be
angry with me.’

Suddenly he clasped her to his chest with all his strength. ‘It is not anger that stops up my mouth. It is joy. Joy for our love. Joy for the son you promised me.’

That day Hal changed the order of march and took Sukeena to walk with him at the head of the column. Though she protested laughingly, he took her basket from her and added it to his own load.
Thus relieved she was able to step out lightly and stay beside him without difficulty. Still he took her hand on the difficult places, and she did not demur when she saw what pleasure it gave him
to protect and cherish her thus.

‘You must not tell the others,’ she murmured, ‘else they will want to slow the march on my behalf.’

‘You are as strong as Aboli and Big Daniel,’ he assured her staunchly, ‘but I will not tell them.’

So they kept their secret, walking hand in hand and smiling at each other in such obvious happiness that even if Zwaantie had not told Althuda and he had not told Aboli, they must have guessed.
Aboli grinned as if he were the father and showed Sukeena such special favour and attention that even Sabah, in the end, fathomed the reason for this new mood that had come over the band.

The land through which they were passing now became more heavily wooded. Some of the trees were monstrous and seemed, like great arrows, to pierce the very heavens. ‘These must have been
old when Christ the Saviour was born upon this earth!’ Hal marvelled.

With Aboli’s wise counsel and guidance they were coming to terms with this savage terrain, and the great animals that abounded in it. Fear was no longer their constant companion, and Hal
and Sukeena had learned to take pleasure in the strangeness and beauty all around them. They would pause on a hilltop to watch an eagle sail on the high wind with motionless wings, or to take
pleasure in a tiny gleaming metallic bird, no bigger than Sukeena’s thumb, as it hung suspended from a flower while it sipped the nectar with a curved beak that seemed as long as its
body.

The grassland teemed with a plethora of strange beasts that challenged their imagination. There were herds of the same blue buck that they had first encountered below the mountains, and wild
horses barred with stark stripes of cream, russet and black. Often they saw ahead of them among the trees the dark mountainous shapes of the double-horned rhinoceros, but they had learned that this
fearsome beast was almost blind and that they could avoid its wild, snorting charge by making a short detour from the path.

On the open lands, beyond the forest, there were flocks of small cinnamon-coloured gazelles, so numerous that they moved like smoke across the hills. Their flanks were slashed with a horizontal
chocolate stripe, and lyre-shaped horns crowned their dainty heads. When alarmed by the sight of the human figures, they pranced with astonishing lightness of hoof, leaping high in the air and
flashing a snowy plume upon their backs. Each ewe was followed by a tiny lamb, and Sukeena clapped her hands with delight and exclaimed to see the young animals nudging the udder or cavorting with
their peers. Hal watched her fondly, knowing now that she also carried a child within her, sharing her joy in the young of another species and revelling with her in the secret they thought they had
kept from the others.

He read the angle of the noon sun, and everyone in the band gathered around him to watch him mark their position on the chart. The string of dots on the heavy parchment sheet crept slowly
towards the indentation on the coastline, which was marked on the Dutch chart as Buffels Baai or the Bay of the Buffaloes.

‘We are not more than five leagues from the lagoon now.’ Hal looked up from the chart.

Aboli agreed. ‘While we were out hunting this morning I recognized the hills ahead. From the high ground I saw the line of low cloud that marks the coast. We are very close.’

Hal nodded. ‘We must advance with caution. There is the danger that we might run into foraging parties from the
Gull
. This is a favourable place to set up a more permanent camp.
There is an abundance of water and firewood and a good lookout from this hill. In the morning, Aboli and I will leave the rest of you here while we go on ahead to discover if the
Gull
is
truly lying in Elephant Lagoon.’

An hour before dawn, Hal took Big Daniel aside and committed Sukeena to his care. ‘Guard her well, Master Daniel. Never let her out of your sight.’

‘Have no fear, Captain. She’ll be safe with me.’

As soon as it was light enough to see the track that led eastwards Hal and Aboli left the camp, Sukeena walked a short distance with them.

‘God speed, Aboli.’ Sukeena embraced him. ‘Watch over my man.’

‘I will watch over him, even as you watch over his son.’

‘You monstrous rogue, Aboli!’ She struck him a playful blow on his great broad chest. ‘How do you know everything? We were so sure we had kept it a secret even from you.’
She turned laughing to Hal. ‘He knows!’

‘Then all is lost.’ Hal shook his head. ‘For on the day it is born this rascal will take it as his own, even as he did with me.’

She watched them climb the hill and wave from the crest. But as they disappeared the smile shrivelled on her lips and a single tear traced its way down her cheek. On her way back, she stopped
beside the stream and washed it away. When she entered the camp again, Althuda looked up at her from the sword blade he was burnishing and smiled at her, unsuspecting of her distress. He marvelled
at how beautiful and fresh she looked, even after all these months of hard travel in the wilderness.

W
hen last they had been here, Hal and Aboli had hunted and explored these hills above the lagoon. They knew the run of the river, and they
entered the deep gorge a mile above the lagoon, following an elephant path down to a shallow ford that they knew. They did not approach the lagoon from this direction. ‘There may be watering
parties from the
Gull
,’ Aboli cautioned. Hal nodded and led them up the far side of the gorge and in a wide circuit around the back of the hills, out of sight of the lagoon.

They climbed the back slope of the hills until they were a few paces below the skyline. Hal knew that the cave of the ancient rock paintings, where he and Katinka had dallied, lay just over the
crest in front of them, and that from the ridge there would be a panoramic view across the lagoon to the rocky heads and the ocean beyond.

‘Use those trees to break your shape on the skyline,’ Aboli told him quietly.

Hal smiled. ‘You taught me well. I have not forgotten.’ He inched his way up the last few yards, followed by Aboli, and, gradually, the view down the far side opened to his gaze. He
had not had sight of the sea for weeks now, and he felt his heart leap and his spirits soar as he looked upon its serene blue expanse, flecked with the white horses that pranced before the
south-easter. It was the element that ruled his life and he had missed it sorely.

‘Oh, for a ship!’ he whispered. ‘Please, God, let there be a ship!’

As he moved up, there before his eyes appeared the great grey castles of the heads, the bastions that guarded the entrance to the lagoon. He paused before taking another step, steeling himself
for the terrible disappointment of finding the anchorage deserted. Like a gambler at Hazard, he had staked his life on this coup of the dice of Fate. He forced himself to take another slow step up
the slope, then gasped, seized Aboli’s arm and dug his fingers into the knotted muscles.

‘The
Gull
!’ he muttered, as though it were a prayer of thanks. ‘And not alone! There is another fine ship with her.’

For a long while neither spoke again, until Aboli said softly, ‘You have found the ship you promised them. If you can seize it, you will be a captain at last, Gundwane.’

They crept forward and, on the crest of the hill, sank on their bellies and gazed down upon the wide lagoon below.

‘What ship is that with the
Gull
?’ Hal asked. ‘I cannot make out her name from here.’

‘She is an Englishman,’ said Aboli, with certainty. ‘No other would cross her mizzen topgallant yard in that fashion.’

‘A Welshman, perhaps? She has a rake to her bows and a racy style to her sheer. They build them that way on the west coast.’

‘It is possible, but whoever she is, she’s a fighting ship. Look at those guns. There would be few to match her in her class,’ Aboli murmured thoughtfully.

‘Better than the
Gull
, even?’ Hal looked at her with longing eyes.

Aboli shook his head. ‘You dare not try to take her, Gundwane. Surely she belongs to an honest English sea captain. If you lay hands upon her you turn all of us into pirates. Better we try
for the
Gull
.’

For another hour they lay on the hilltop, talking and planning quietly while they studied the two ships and the encampment among the trees on the near shore of the lagoon.

‘By heavens!’ Hal exclaimed abruptly. ‘There is the Buzzard himself. I would know that bush of fiery hair anywhere.’ His voice was sharp with hatred and anger. ‘He
is going out to the other ship. See him climb the ladder without a by-your-leave, as if he owns it.’

‘Who is that greeting him at the companionway?’ Aboli asked. ‘I swear I know that walk, and the bald scalp shining in the sunlight.’

‘It cannot be Sam Bowles aboard that frigate … but it is,’ Hal marvelled. ‘There is something very strange afoot here, Aboli. How may we find out what it is?’

While they watched the sun begin to slide down the western sky, Hal tried to keep his rage under control. Down there were the two men responsible for his father’s terrible death. He
relived every detail of his agony and he hated Sam Bowles and the Buzzard to the point where he knew that his emotions might override his reason. His strong instinct was to throw all else aside, go
down to confront them and seek retribution for his father’s agony and death.

I must not let it happen, he told himself. I must think first of Sukeena and the son that she carries for me.

Aboli touched his arm and pointed down the hill. The rays of the sinking sun had changed the angle of the shadows of the trees of the forest, so that they could see down more clearly through
them into the encampment.

‘The Buzzard is digging fortifications down there.’ Aboli was puzzled. ‘But there is no plan to them. His trenches are all higgledy-piggledy.’

‘Yet all his men seem to be at work in the diggings. There must be some plan—’ Hal broke off and laughed. ‘Of course! This is why he came back to the lagoon! He is still
searching for my father’s hoard.’