Aboli left his station at the starboard battery of cannon and ran back to where Hal paced his quarterdeck. Hal looked up at him sharply, but before he could snap a reprimand, Aboli pointed out over the starboard bow.
"That ship with the red sail. The man in the stern. Do you see him, Gundwane?"
Hal felt the prickle of apprehension on his arms and the cold sweat sliding down his back as he recognized the tall figure standing and leaning back against the tiller arm. He was clean-shaven now, the spiked moustaches were gone. He wore a turban of yellow, and the heavily embroidered dolman of an Islamic grandee over baggy white breeches and soft knee-high boots, but his pale face stood out like a mirror among the dark-bearded men around him. There may have been others with the same wide set of shoulders and tall athletic figure, but none with the same sword upon the hip, in its scabbard of embossed gold.
"Bring the ship about, Mister Tyler. Heave to alongside that dhow with the red sail," Hal ordered.
Ned looked where he pointed then swore. "Son of a bawd, that's Schreuder! May the devil damn him to hell." The Arab crew ran to the side of the dhow as the tall frigate bore down upon them. They jumped overboard and tried to swim back towards the beach, choosing the sabres of the Ethiopian cavalry rather than the gaping culver ins of the Golden Bough's broadside. Schreuder stood alone in the stern and looked up at the frigate with his cold, unrelenting expression. As they drew closer, Hal saw that his face was streaked with dust and powder soot, and that his clothing was torn and soiled with the muck of the battlefield.
Hal strode to the rail and returned his stare. They were so close that Hal had hardly to raise his voice to make himself heard. "Colonel Schreuder, sir, you have my sword."
"Then, sir, would you care to come down and take it from me?" Schreuder asked.
"Mister Tyler, you have the con in my absence. Take me closer to the dhow so that I may board her.
"This is madness, Gundwane,"Aboli said softly.
"Make sure neither you nor any man intervenes, Aboli," Hal said, and went to the entry port As the little dhow bobbed close alongside, he slid down the ladder and jumped across the narrow gap of water, landing lightly on her single deck.
He drew his sword and looked to the stern. Schreuder stepped away from the tiller bar and shrugged out of the stiff dolman tunic.
"You are a "romantic fool, Henry Courtney," he murmured, and the blade of the Neptune sword whispered softly from its scabbard.
"To the death?" Hal asked, as he drew his own blade. "Naturally." Schreuder nodded gravely. "For I am going to kill you."
They came together with the slow grace of two lovers beginning a minuet. Their blades met and flirted as they circled, tap and brush and slither of steel on steel, their feet never still, points held high and eyes locked.
Ned Tyler held the frigate fifty yards off, keeping that interval with deft touches of helm and trim of her shortened sails. The men lined the near rail. They were quiet and attentive. Although few understood the finer points of style and technique, they could not but be aware of the grace and beauty of this deadly ritual.
"An eye for his eyes!" Hal seemed to hear his father's voice in his head. "Read in them his soul!"
Schreuder's face remained gravel but Hal saw the first shadow in his cold blue eyes. It was not fear, but it was respect. Even with these light touches of their blades, Schreuder had evaluated his man. Remembering their previous encounters, he had not expected to be met with such strength and skill. As for Hal he knew that, if he lived through this, he would never again dance so close to death and smell its breath as he did now.
Hal saw it in his eyes, the moment before Schreuder opened his attack, stepping in lightly and then driving at him with a rapid series of lunges. He moved back, checking each thrust but feeling the power in it. He hardly heard the excited growl of the watchers on the deck of the frigate above them, but he watched Schreuder's eyes and met him with the high point. The Dutchman drove suddenly for his throat, his first serious stroke, and the moment Hal blocked he disengaged fluidly and dropped on bent right knee and cut for Hal's ankle, the Achilles stroke intended to cripple him.
Hal vaulted lightly over the flashing golden blade but felt it tug at the heel of his boot. With both feet in the air he was momentarily out of balance and Schreuder straightened and like a striking cobra turned the angle of his blade and went for Hal's belly. Hal sprang back but felt it touch him, no pain from that razor edge but just a tiny snick. He bounced back off his left foot, and aimed for one of Schreuder's blue eyes. He saw the surprise in that eye, but then Schreuder rolled his head and the point slit his cheek.
They backed and circled, both men bleeding now. Hal felt the warm wetness soaking through the front of his shirt, and a scarlet snake ran slowly down past the corner of Schreuder's thin lips and dripped from his chin.
"First blood was mine, I think, sir?" Schreuder asked.
"It was, sir." Hal conceded. "But whose will be the last?" And the words were not past his lips before Schreuder attacked in earnest. While the watchers on the Golden Bough howled and danced with excitement, he drove Hal step by step from the stern to the bows of the dhow and pinned him there, with their blades locked, and forced his back against the gunwale. They stood like that with their blades crossed in front of their faces, and their eyes only a hand's span apart. Their breath mingled and Hal watched the drops of sweat form on Schreuder's upper lip as he strained to hold him like that.
Deliberately Hal swayed backwards, and saw the gleam of triumph in the blue eyes so close to his own, but his back was loaded like a longbow taking the weight of the archer's draw. He unleashed and, with the strength of his legs, arms and upper body, hurled Schreuder backwards. With the impetus of that movement Hal went on the attack and, their blades rasping and clashing together, he forced Schreuder back down the open deck to the stern.
With the tiller arm digging into his spine, Schreuder could retreat no further. He caught up Hal's blade and with all the power of his wrist forced him into the prolonged engagement, the ploy with which he had killed Vincent Winterton and a dozen others before him. Their swords swirled and shrilled together, a silver whirlpool of molten sunlight that held them apart yet locked them together.
On it went, and on. The sweat streamed down both their faces, and their breath came in short, urgent grunts. It was death to the first man to break. Their wrists seemed forged from the same steel as their blades, and then Hal saw something in Schreuder's eyes that he had never dreamed of seeing there. Fear, Schreuder tried to break the circle and lock up the blades as he had with Vincent, but Hal refused and forced him on and on. He felt the first weakness in Schreuder's iron sword arm, and saw the despair in his eyes.
Then Schreuder broke, and Hal was on him in the same instant that his point dropped and his guard opened. He hit him hard in the centre of his chest and felt the point go home, strike bone, and the hilt thrill in his hand.
The roar from the men on the deck of the frigate broke over them like a wave of storm-driven surf. In the moment that Hal felt the surge of triumph and the live feeling of his blade buried deep in his opponent's flesh, Schreuder reared back and raised the gold-inlaid blade of the Neptune sword to the level of his eyes in which the sapphire lights were beginning to fade, and lunged.