Authors: Wilbur Smith
Golden Lion
HarperCollins
Publishers
An imprint of HarperCollins
Publishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
Published by HarperCollins
Publishers
2015
Copyright © Orion Mintaka (UK) Ltd 2015
Map © John Gilkes 2015
Cover layout design © HarperCollins
Publishers
Ltd 2015
Cover photographs © Joel W. Rogers/Corbis (ship); GS/Gallery Stock (beach scene)
Wilbur Smith asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it, while at times based on historical figures, are the work of the author’s imagination.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007535705
Ebook Edition © 2015 ISBN: 9780007535736
Version: 2015-07-22
I dedicate this book to my wife, Niso.
From the day we first met she has been a constant and powerful inspiration to me, urging me on when I falter and cheering me when I succeed. I truly do not know what I would do if she were not by my side. I hope and pray that day never comes.
I love and adore you, my best girl,
words cannot express how much.
Contents
hey were no longer men. They were the detritus of war cast up by the Indian Ocean upon the red sands of the African continent. Most of their bodies were torn by grape shot or hacked by the keen-edged weapons of their adversaries. Others had drowned and the gas in their swollen bellies as they rotted had lifted them to the surface again like cork bungs. There the carrion-eating seabirds and the sharks had feasted upon them. Finally a very few of them had been washed through the breaking surf onto the beaches, where the human predators waited to pick them over once again.
Two small boys ran ahead of their mother and grandmother along the water’s edge, squealing with excitement every time they discovered anything deposited upon it by the sea, no matter how trifling and insignificant.
‘There is another one,’ cried the eldest in Somali. He pointed ahead to where a ship’s wooden spar was washed ashore, trailing a long sheet of torn canvas. It was attached to the body of a white man who had lashed himself to the spar with a twist of hempen rope whilst he still lived. Now the two boys stood over his carcass laughing.
‘The birds have pecked out one of his eyes,’ shouted the eldest boy.
‘And the fish have bitten off one of his arms,’ his little brother gloated, not to be outdone. A shred of torn sail canvas, obviously applied by the man while still alive, was knotted around the stump of his amputated arm as a tourniquet, and his clothing had been scorched by fire. It hung off his gaunt frame in tatters.
‘Look!’ screeched the elder boy. ‘Look at the buckle on his sword-belt. It must be made of gold or silver. We will be rich.’ He knelt beside the body and tugged at the metal buckle. At which the dead man groaned hollowly and rolled his head to glare at the boys with his one good eye. Both children screamed with horror, and the elder released his grip on the sword-belt and sprang to his feet. They rushed back to their mother and clung to her skirts whimpering and whining with terror.
The mother ran to examine the booty, dragging the children along with her on her skirts. The grandmother hobbled along behind them. Her daughter dropped to her knees beside the body and she slapped the man’s face hard. He groaned again.
‘Zinky is right. The Ferengi is still alive.’ She reached into the pocket of her skirt and pulled out the sickle with which she cut the grass to feed her chickens.
‘What are you going to do?’ Her mother panted from her run.
‘I am going to cut his throat, of course.’ The woman took hold of a handful of the man’s sodden hair and pulled his head back to expose his throat. ‘We don’t want to have to argue with him about who owns the belt and buckle.’ She laid the curved blade against the side of his neck, and the man coughed weakly but did not resist.
‘Wait!’ ordered the grandmother sharply. ‘I have seen that buckle before when I was in Djibouti with your father. This man is a great Ferengi Lord. He owns his own ship. He has great wealth. If we save his life he will be grateful and he might give us a gold coin, or even two!’
Her daughter looked dubious, and considered the proposition for a while, still holding the sickle blade to his throat. ‘What about his beautiful metal buckle of great value?’
‘We will keep it, naturally.’ Her mother was exasperated with her daughter’s lack of acuity. ‘If he ever asks for it we will tell him we have never seen it.’ Her daughter removed the sickle blade from the man’s throat.
‘So what do we do with him now?’
‘We take him to the doctor in the village.’
‘How?’
‘We lay him on his back on this strip of lembu.’ She indicated the canvas strip wrapped around the spar. ‘And you and I pull him.’ She turned to regard her grandchildren sternly. ‘The boys will help us, of course.’
In his head the man was screaming. But his vocal cords were so parched and cracked and ravaged by smoke and flame that the only sound that emerged was a reedy, tremulous wheezing, as pitiful as the air escaping from a pair of broken bellows.
There had been a time, barely a month or two ago, when he had set his face to the storm and grinned with savage glee as the wind and sea-spray hurled themselves against his weather-beaten countenance. Yet now the warm, jasmine-scented breeze that barely wafted into the room through the open windows felt to him like thorns being dragged across the pitiful tatters of his skin. He was consumed by pain, scourged by it, and though the doctor lifting the bandages from his face was doing his best to work with the most consummate delicacy, each additional inch of exposure stabbed him with another needle-sharp stiletto of pure, concentrated agony. And with every infliction came a new, unwanted memory of battle: the searing heat and brightness of the flame; the deafening roar of gunfire and burning wood; the crushing impact of timber against his bones.