They broke from the brush like furies, screaming, swords raised. A gun flashed, the bullet passed close. Kru warriors, a dozen or more. They still wore their pirate clothes, the clothes they had pillaged on the high seas, but there was no mistaking them. And in the flash of the gun, Madshaka, hanging back, a grinning mountain.
James brought his cutlass up, caught a sword as it came down on him, turned it aside. His vision had been hurt by the flash, but he reckoned it had blinded the others too, and when the counterstroke missed him by a foot he knew he was right. Thrust, and the point of his cutlass caught flesh, penetrated. A scream, very close, and James leapt back as another man hacked at him.
Another pistol shot, wider than the first, and a glimpse of the men arrayed against him, and from down the road the sound of Marlowe’s men running, shouting, cursing as they raced to the fight.
James stepped back into the tree line. Heard a cutlass swish past, searching him out. He jumped forward, slashed at the attacker, felt the blade cut, and then back into the trees.
Madshaka was shouting something in Kwa and his men were shouting back and James reckoned they were arranging themselves for Marlowe’s assault. His vision was coming back, he could see the men on the trail, Madshaka behind them. They were preparing for the real threat, the armed brigands coming up the trail. They had forgotten about him, for the moment.
He moved through the tree line, just feet from the trail, but unseen by the men there, crashing through until he was behind their line of defense. And directly in front of him, Madshaka, his focus on the trail, on the growing sound of Marlowe’s privateers hustling into battle.
James crashed out of the trees, cutlass raised. From his throat, a long, whooping battle cry, a Malinke cry, a sound he had not heard or uttered or even recalled for twenty years. Madshaka whirled, the look on his face shock, panic. He stumbled back, raised his sword just in time to prevent James from cleaving his skull in two. He shouted something in Kwa, took a step back, and then his dirk was in his other hand and he met James’s fresh attack with crossed blades, caught the attacking cutlass in the V, turned it aside.
Madshaka circled around, both blades before him. He was too much the warrior to be shaken for long by the surprise rush from the tree line, and he was recovered now, tensed, a dangerous man.
James backed up, his eyes darting from Madshaka to the Kru and back, afraid to linger on either for a split second more than necessary. And then a movement caught his eye, a great surge, as the Elizabeth Galleys burst round the bend in the trail and fell on the Kru and in that instant of distraction, Madshaka attacked.
James did not see it coming until it was there, the dirk shooting forward like a snake, striking at his belly, catching him in the side as he twisted to escape. There was screaming on the trail, guns going off, two, three, four, Madshaka lit with the flashes of orange light. He drove the dagger blade home and James screamed with the agony of it and twisted further. The blade cut its way free as he jerked sideways to avoid the death thrust from Madshaka’s sword.
The sword missed his neck, scraped along his shoulder, cutting through shoulder belt and jerkin and shirt and then flesh, a hot, searing pain. But Madshaka had committed everything to the lunge and now he was off balance and James grabbed the big man’s wrist, pulled him forward, slashed with his own cutlass. He felt the blade bite, somewhere around Madshaka’s waist, but the two men were face-to-face, too close for James to deliver any mortal wound.
And for a second, less than a second, they stood there, face-to-face, their breath intermingling, huge Madshaka looking down at James, as if they were telling each other secrets. Then Madshaka grinned his horrible leer, and twisted his wrist free. Strong as James was, Madshaka was stronger still and he broke the grip, pushed James away.
They stumbled apart, two bleeding fighters, ready to go at each other again, when they were swept away by a wave of men, Marlowe’s men pushing the Kru up the trail, locked in bloody fighting. All the guns had been fired, and now it was steel on steel, and the Galleys’ superior numbers were telling. James was knocked to the earth and he saw Madshaka look to his side, saw the surprise register, and then he too was knocked down by the press of men, the Kru yielding ground, first inches, then feet.
They would yield, but they would not run. They would hold that ground until they died, because they were Kru warriors.
Screaming, blades flashing in the dull light, cursing, shouts of fury and anguish in Kwa and English, men doubling over with wounds to the belly, hacked down by heavy blades.
James’s cutlass was gone and he flailed around with his hands on the ground, searching for it, eyes up, waiting for Madshaka to appear, looming over him, his face in that grin, his sword dropping like an ax for the execution.
His hand touched cold steel. He put his palm down on it. Cold steel and hot, sticky blood-it was the blade of his cutlass. He found the hilt and snatched it up, pushed himself to a crouch. The cloth of his shirt pulled free from the wound in his side, sending a shaft of pain through him. He cried out in agony and in battle fury, pushed aside the man in front of him, and staggered through the combatants, looking for Madshaka.
Through the dark and the struggling men James could not see him, but he knew he had to be there. He saw him fall, saw him lose his sword. He could not have moved so far in the few seconds since they had been shoved apart.
But he was not there. He was not in the fight, not one of the handful of Kru still battling the privateers. Had he been, James knew he could not miss him. Madshaka was the biggest of them all, his great stature was the very thing that gave him the permanent aura of command, a quality he had used well. But he was not there.
James staggered back. He pressed a hand against the wound in his side, felt the hot blood oozing between his fingers, but the pressure felt good. The tip of his cutlass dragged on the ground.
The factory. Madshaka must have gone back there. He looked up the trail, as far as he could see. There was no sign of him. But there was no other explanation. James fought through the clouds of pain in his head. The Kru would all be dead soon, and if he, James, could see that, then Madshaka could see it as well. So Madshaka would be taking his leave, ahead of Marlowe’s men.
No, he must not. That was all that James could think. No, he must not.
He took a stumbling step up the trail, found his footing, took another. With his hand pressed to his side it was not so bad. He could move fast, not a run but something like it. The sounds of the fight were behind him, already growing more distant, the trees staggering past as he moved at his best pace, his breathing loud in his own ears.
Madshaka. He would kill Madshaka. There was no other thought. That was all he had left.
Chapter 33
The slash wound in Madshaka’s side was hot, searing, the pain shooting through him with each jarring step. The blood was pulsing down his leg.
No longer was his the lion’s charge, or the powerful, silent lope of the leopard: it was the gait of a cripple, and it made Madshaka furious, his perfect body marred, his power sapped from him by one lucky stroke of King James’s sword.
Damn him, damn him, damn him. Madshaka let the loathing flow with his blood as he raced for the factory, raced as best he could with the pain lashing him. James had ruined it all and now he, Madshaka, could do nothing but escape and take what little he could carry from the factor’s hut.
A lesser man would have thought of revenge. A lesser man would have at that very instant been making absurd promises to himself to hunt the world over for the man who had brought him down and kill him.
Madshaka had heard plenty of broken drunks puking out such nonsense, but he would have none of it. He would survive. He would build himself up again. That was real revenge. And then, perhaps, when he was worthy again, the gods would deliver James to him.