Golden Lion (47 page)

But then she heard an explosive crackle that she recognized at once as gunfire: a few individual shots and then, in percussive crashes that steadily increased in volume, the sound of volleys being brought to bear with rising numbers of guns. For a moment it struck her that she was probably the only bride in all Africa who could decode the apparently random sounds of battle with such precision.

But even if brides could not work out what was happening, the Buzzard could. ‘Stay here,’ he said. ‘For your safety’s sake. I’m going to see what’s happening.’

Again she was obliged to see the force in his argument. Whoever won, a woman in a low-cut silk gown would be ravished with a ruthless voracity that would make the hyenas that had eaten Ann seem tame.

Hal pointed up ahead of him and Aboli saw at once what he meant. For there were the stone gateposts that rose on either side of the drawbridge that led into the rhino’s enclosure. And there was the windlass that wound the rope that lifted the drawbridge up and down. Hal dashed to it and began hacking at the rope while Aboli and the Amadoda formed a shield wall around him.

Hal knew full well that animal-hide shields would be no defence against musket rounds, but the repeated combination of soaking rain and baking sun seemed to have fused and hardened the fibres of the rope and it was the devil’s own job to cut through them. Again and again he brought the blade of the panga down onto the rope. Not twenty yards away the overseers were reloading the muskets that they had already fired.

Biting the end off their cartridges.

Come on!

Pouring powder into the priming pan.

Cut, damn you!

Ramming the rounds into the barrels.

Almost there!

Raising the guns into the firing position.

Yes!

With an almighty crash, almost as loud as gunfire, the hardwood drawbridge smashed down onto the earth of the enclosure and the Amadoda broke ranks and ran across it into the darkness, towards the waiting rhino.

There was a crackle of individual musket shots behind them, but none of the rounds hit.

They did, however, serve one purpose, which was to rouse the bull rhino.

Hal and Aboli almost ran straight into him as he loomed up out of the darkness.

A rhinoceros has very poor eyesight. Its hearing and sense of smell, however, are both extremely acute. It is therefore at least as dangerous at night as it is by day since its strongest senses work equally well in both circumstances. And irrespective of the hour, a bull rhino is an equally cussed, irascible, ill-natured beast.

It may not have seen Aboli waving his sword, but it certainly heard him yelling at it in the language of the forests, and perhaps it understood those words for the challenge they were, for it tossed its head, answering Aboli’s challenge by saluting him with his magnificent horn, which was nearly five feet long, and charging straight at him. Aboli jumped out of its path at the last instant, rolling in the mud and coming onto his feet again as lithe as a panther. The massive beast would have smashed every bone in Hal’s body had he not thrown himself aside, sprawling into the mud as the rhino barrelled past, Hal’s nostrils full of its musty stink.

The bull tore across the baked mud ground impossibly fast for its size and kept going past the scattering Amadoda and onto the drawbridge where the first of the pursuers had been running into the enclosure. Now, too late, they realized the doom that was bearing down upon them and they turned to try to retreat, but the press of men behind them made it impossible to escape.

The hammering of the rhino’s feet against the boards of the drawbridge sounded in the ears of Lobo’s men like the crack of doom itself. The bull lowered his horn and speared one young man right through the belly, impaling him. The rhino stopped, as if confused by the weight it was bearing across its head. It snorted and grunted, wheeling round and round its bloody horn protruding three feet out of the young man’s back. It thrust its head down, hammering the earth in frustration and swinging this way and that, but try as it might, the bull could not remove the offending object.

One of Lobo’s men yelled, ‘Now!’ and a dozen spears streaked through the gloom, every one of them hitting the beast and every one of them glancing off its armour-like hide, serving only to wake it up and start it moving again, ploughing through the line of flesh, bone and gold, killing and maiming, trampling bodies into the earth, tossing men into the air as a bull will toss dogs at a baiting.

Once again the muskets fired, but they too did nothing to the rhino but spur it on to greater fury and suddenly it was rampaging off towards the guards’ huts and the slaves’ stockade, scattering and trampling men as it went.

Hal, Aboli and the surviving Amadoda found themselves alone in an empty enclosure, with nothing between them and Lobo’s fort. They ran back out across the drawbridge then Hal stopped, grabbing Aboli’s arm with one hand and pointing at the fort with the other as he said, ‘Look! All those men on the battlements.’

Hal sensed rather than saw the African grin. ‘They are looking down at the rhino, watching their friends being trampled.’

‘Aye, and feeling pleased that they’re not down there. But they have left three sides of the fort completely unguarded.’

They ran round the far side of the fort, still unseen. The slave rebellion, however short-lived it might be, was providing Hal with more distraction than he’d dared hope for. They were within thirty paces of the fort, with just a stretch of open ground between them and an apparently unguarded wall when Aboli said, ‘Let me go first, Gundwane. I do not glow like a white shell on the beach, as you do.’

Hal would not hear of it. ‘I must be the first, Aboli,’ he said, for he could not, he would not, lead other than from the front. He took the rope and grappling hook from Aboli and slung them over his shoulder. Then he tucked the panga into his belt. Hal looked up at the moon and waited for the next skein of cloud to sail across it like a galleon riding the sea.

The cloud came. It had to be now.

He ran across the uneven ground towards the fort then threw himself against the cool, whitewashed mud wall. It was not high to a man used to climbing masts and Hal knew he would almost fly to the top of it, assuming the grappling hook caught and that the sound of it did not bring the guards with their steel and shot.

His ears strained the sounds of the bush for human voices. Nothing. The men on the far wall were blissfully unaware of the danger behind them. Hal stepped out of the shadow, his heart pummelling his ribs, and looked back towards Aboli who nodded. Taking the rope, Hal swung the hook once, twice, three times, then hurled it up and over the wall.

Carefully, slowly, he pulled the hook back, wincing at the soft scrape it made against the ramparts, but then it would come no further, at least one claw having caught hold. And that was all Hal needed. He climbed. No sooner was the rope in his hands than he was atop the wall, crouching low against the parapet, panga ready. Cupping his left hand over his mouth he gave the call of a nightjar, which was the signal for Aboli and the Amadoda to follow him. Hal ran along the wall, bent low, and then looked over his shoulder to see that Aboli and his men were on top of it.

But then a man on the far wall happened to turn away from the carnage down below him, and saw the shadowy figures running along it on the far side of the courtyard and shouted in alarm. A musket cracked, spitting flame into the night as Hal saw some steps leading down into the yard, where one of Lobo’s men loomed out of the darkness, his blade flashing as Hal twisted away from it and scythed his panga up, taking the man under his left arm. Then he hammered his right fist into the man’s face, dropping him, and turned back toward the collection of tents and mud-brick buildings set against the north wall.

‘Gundwane!’ Aboli yelled. Hal turned, parrying by instinct a strike from a second attacker that would have opened his side between the ribs. He stepped inside, punching his cutlass’s hilt into his attacker’s face, sending him reeling, as another sword streaked for his face and he knocked it aside, slashing his own blade across the man’s neck even as he strode forward. Aboli made three parries then killed a man with one cut to his neck, then Hal heard the Buzzard rasp his name, pointing his sword at Hal above other men’s heads. Yet Lobo’s men were in the way, and the Scotsman could no more get to Hal than Hal take the fight to him.

Just then two shots rang out, just behind him and close enough to make his ears ring, and two of Lobo’s men, both of them armed with muskets, fell from the roof down to the courtyard floor.

Hal glanced around to see where the shots had come from and shouted with joy. For there stood Judith!

Judith had heard the feet running across the roof above her head and had known with absolute, unshakable certainty that Hal had come for her. She had stepped right out of the dress she had been about to lace up and back into the dead cabin boy’s canvas trews, for if she were going to flee for her life across the African savannah she knew which would be of more use to her.

She ran to the door of her room and peered out into the courtyard. Hal was directly in front of her, but with his back turned towards her and Aboli next to him. Around them were the familiar faces of the Amadoda, their expressions lit up with the glee of natural-born warriors who were only truly alive when every next second could bring them death.

One of Lobo’s men was lying on the floor right in front of her. He had a sword in his dead hand and two pistols in his belt. Judith took one of the pistols, steadied herself, aimed at a man on the roof about forty feet away and fired. Before he had even hit the ground she was reaching for the other pistol and repeating the process.

In front of her Hal was now staring up at her and joyously shouting her name. Aboli and the Amadoda were moving forward. There were battles going on right across Lobo’s entire mining complex, but this particular one was swinging in their favour.

The Buzzard was calculating the odds, as he always did. He could sense the tide turning in Courtney’s favour, too. That being the case his first thought, apart from saving his own skin, had to be of Balthazar Lobo. Having made a mortal enemy of Prince Jahan, the Buzzard was in need of powerful friends and if he couldn’t win Lobo’s favour by providing him with a bride, he would do it by saving his scrawny old neck.

He ran back across the courtyard and into Lobo’s bedchamber. The old goat was nowhere to be seen. But then he heard a quavering voice from behind the four-poster bed cry out, ‘Who goes there?’

‘It is I, the Earl of Cumbrae, come to save you, sir,’ the Buzzard replied. Then he walked over to where Lobo was hiding, pulled him to his feet and said, ‘Quick, sir! We must leave this building while there is still time!’

Then the Buzzard ran back out into the courtyard, with the raddled old mine-owner hot on his heels, took one look at the ever-growing dominance of Courtney, his savage friends and his black bitch and scurried for the main gate, pulling Balthazar Lobo behind him.

The sight of their master’s retreat was the final straw for his men at the fort. As one they turned tail and ran after him.

Hal watched them go then turned to see Judith trying to pull free the dead man’s bandolier, on which he carried fresh powder and rounds for his pistols. ‘No, my darling, leave that be,’ he said. ‘We need speed more than weapons. And we must leave at once.’

‘Yes,’ said Aboli. ‘And we must run.’

It took the rest of the night to subdue the slave rebellion Aboli had inadvertently started. Only when dawn had broken could the Buzzard convene a council of war with Lobo and Capelo. ‘The men who came after Courtney were part of his ship’s crew. They must have followed him when he sailed from Zanzibar. Where did he come ashore?’

‘Quelimane,’ said Capelo.

‘Then there or near there is where the
Golden Bough
will be, waiting for its master. Capelo. Do you know the way to Quelimane?’

‘Of course.’

‘Then, with your permission, Senhor Lobo, I suggest that we set off at once. Our first aim should be to catch Courtney, his woman and his men before they get aboard their ship. In that case, senhor, I promise you I will bring that woman back to you.’

‘So I shall have my wedding night after all!’ Lobo enthused.

‘Quite so, sir,’ the Buzzard agreed. ‘But if, by some chance, Courtney should happen to sail away before we catch him, all is not yet lost. I know where he will be going. And if I can catch him at his destination then, senhor, I will bring you Courtney’s head, Courtney’s woman and Courtney’s gold as well.’

A smile lit up Lobo’s face. ‘His gold? Oh, yes please, I would like that. I would like that very much indeed.’

he Buzzard and Capelo rode mules and marched their men hard, but they were no match for the Amadoda. Like them, Judith had a seemingly limitless well of energy that kept her running, albeit with a shorter stride, but still to the same relentless rhythm. And Hal kept up, day after day, no matter how much harder he found it to do so because he had no choice, and because as long as he had Judith beside him he had wings on his feet.