The Shaduf’s patient explanation that the hearing of such names was destruction to an unprepared mortal and that the Vehme would secrete one of their own Baal Shem aboard the Sultan’s ship, went a long way to convince Slovo. Now he understood why the Vehme would pit a mere hundred fighting men against the floating fortress he knew they would meet. A deep and secret leviathan was being awakened on his behalf and the opposition would be vouchsafed a glimpse of God – at the price of their lives.
There were inconsistencies and unanswered questions Slovo would have liked to pursue but he’d felt it indelicate to do so. He had purchased waxen earblocks for all the crew and put his trust in his new employers. It was this unprecedented sentiment that had so alarmed Bosun. Slovo couldn’t find it in his heart to blame him.
Then, just as he was pondering the degree to which the Islamic fatalism of Tripoli was influencing his present decisions, the look-out bellowed, ‘Ship-ahoy!’
Even the Captain had second thoughts when they drew close to the monster containing the Sultan’s daughter. The great galleon sat heavy in the sea, indicating the manpower packed within, although she moved along nippily enough when heaved by myriad banks of oars. The ominously huge bow and stern cannons discouraged proximity and the side facing Slovo was packed with a crowd of armoured welcomers.
It was to Bosun’s credit that he moved swiftly to silence the murmurs of dismay. To encourage the others he split the head of one too plainly frightened sailor. Thus exhorted, the crew embraced the wisdom of their Captain’s wishes and closed for battle, urged on by the strokemaster’s allegro song – and an impulse to get the thing over and done with, one way or the other. Slovo noted the skilful positioning of the Egyptian ship to permit her stern gun to fire, but allowed Bosun to judge when to make the vital ‘flick’ to port or starboard that would avoid the crushing ball. True, the ship was bigger than any they had faced before but the basic play had been run through a hundred times. And, supposedly they had a friend aboard.
When the Bosun had done his job and they were all soaked by the vast impact in the sea a score of paces to port, Slovo wound his ship up to attack speed. Then, reverentially on one knee (but weapons to hand), Slovo commended himself to Mary and her Son, not forgetting a word of praise to Jehovah (since Judaism seemed occasionally persuasive).
The galley Slovo was liberally hosed down with Egyptian bow and shot and men started to slump at the oars. The crew would normally have returned suppressing fire and plainly wished with all their hearts to do so. However, above the noise of the dying, Captain Slovo forbade it. At the same time he ordered his men to insert their earplugs.
Obeying the stupid Barbary pirate custom of the ship’s Captain standing fearless and prominent to face the worst the enemy could throw, Slovo at last had the opportunity to study his target at leisure – even whilst it tried to end his observations for ever.
It was a behemoth! A forest’s worth afloat, made to look even more unnatural atop the waves by the rich, primary-colour decorations the Mohammedan Royals seemed to like so much. After painful translation and with mounting amusement, Slovo noted that the mighty white sail was emblazoned with a profession of faith: There is no God but God and Mohammed is His prophet. He smiled even as a whistling arrow’s passage disturbed the fall of his hair. One God there might well be, he mused, but there was the hope that they might soon learn that He went under a number of names.
Abandoning attempts to escape by slave or sail from their more nimble pursuer, the lumbering Egyptian craft shipped oars and more or less awaited what might be. Happy to show them, a mere two lengths off and still weathering a storm of missiles, the galley Slovo banked for the cannon-free side and the final approach. The iron grapples and boarding platform were made ready and, since no ram was intended, the oarsmen were ordered to abandon their charges and tool up, allowing momentum to finish the job.
Slovo traversed his ship to join the elite group of particularly bestial sailors who always led the first charge. In lieu of commands they could no longer hear, he smiled encouragement.
The Royal Egyptian ship was high-sided but, burdened by her load, she sat low and permitted a clear view of her deck from the galley Slovo. Ordinarily, at this point it would have been time to hurl the fiery naphtha-pots and baskets of vipers to shed confusion and worse amidst the massed enemy, but Slovo ignored the pleading looks of the toughs around him. This time, just this once, he would have faith right up to the last possible moment.
The Baal Shem very nearly did leave it too late and exhaust Slovo’s feeble trust. The grapples had dropped, the platform had crashed down, its spikes biting into the Egyptian deck, before he showed his hand. The front ranks of pirates and marines were already in intimate and deadly embrace before his voice was heard. It was as well he acted, for they were hopelessly outnumbered.
Standing beside the gorgeous divan within the Royal pavilion, was a negro among a frightened huddle of courtiers. Unhurriedly laying down his ostrich feather fan, he stepped forward and began to speak.
What he had to say carried above the clamour and what he said caused all clamour to cease.
One by one the Egyptians stopped what they were doing, their attention now clearly held by something far more important than a mere life-and-death struggle. Some of the pirates unchivalrously took the opportunity to dispatch their distracted opponents. And now that the identity of their helper was known, Slovo seized his own chance and took out the ship’s Captain with a crossbow-bolt to the throat.
In the event, he need not have bothered. At the call of the Baal Shem all those who could hear began to cry – with joy or horror Slovo could not discern – and then they started to die. A few pirates who had seen fit to discard the earplugs rapidly joined them.
Soon the Egyptian deck was choked with dead and dying, either neatly in rows as with the captured Christian oarsmen, or in twitching heaps of armoured marines and silk-garbed courtiers. Slovo had hoped to be able to watch and read the Baal Shem’s lips but it had all happened too fast, and perhaps that was just as well.
The surviving pirates howled with pleasure at such wild success and, casting their earplugs aside, poured on to the Egyptian prize. Their Captain followed suit. Then the coal-black Baal Shem stepped forward to meet them and thereby reversed the tide, leaving Slovo irritably wondering why he was being buffeted by routing men just as the battle was apparently won. But the crush before him cleared and all his doubts were resolved. As the Baal Shem casually advanced upon him, Captain Slovo found it supremely easy to forget courage and purpose and dignity. He discovered himself strangely willing to leap athletically back to his own ship and trample anyone between him and its familiar deck.
Fortunately it was all just by way of an effect, and the Baal Shem turned off his aura of approaching death-plus-something-worse as abruptly as he’d inflicted it. He leaned on the grappled rail of his galley-hecatomb and studied the shivering pirates with a neutral expression. ‘How much do they know?’ he asked in a touching falsetto, speaking directly to Slovo, and gesturing towards the crew.
‘Just enough,’ Slovo said, his speech emerging as a croak, ‘and no more.’
‘Then let them come and play,’ replied the Baal Shem, ‘while we talk.’
He stood aside and bowed everyone back aboard, the action as smooth and practised as that of any Sultan’s flunkey. The prospect of good plunder overcame the pirates’ fear and, like mice bypassing a watchful cat, they cautiously edged on to the ship of the dead, where they regained their normal instincts and fell whooping upon the fallen.