Birds of Prey - Smith Wilbur (версия книг TXT) 📗
"Oh, yes, he does," said Sukeena sweetly. "Colonel Schreuder has the right of conquest in his favour. Your wife has been lying under him often enough with her legs in the air for him to call her darling, or even to call her whore and slut if he chose to be more honest."
"Quiet, Sukeena!" shrilled Katinka "Are you out of your mind? Remember your place. You are a slave."
"No, Mevrouw. A slave no longer. A free woman now, and your captor," Sukeena told her, "so I can say to you anything I please, especially if it is the truth." She turned to van de Velde. "Your wife and the gallant colonel have been playing the beast with two backs so blatantly as to delight every tattle-tale in the colony. They have set a pair of horns on your head that are too large for even your grossly bloated body."
"I will have you thrashed!" van de Velde gurgled apoplectically. "You slave bitch!"
"No, you won't," said Althuda, and placed the point of the jewelled scimitar against the Governor's pendulous belly. "Rather, you will apologize for that insult to my sister."
"Apologize to a slave? Never!" van de Velde began in a bellow, but this time Althuda pricked him with more intent and the bellow turned into a squeal, like air escaping from a pig's bladder.
"Apologize not to a slave, but to a free-born Balinese princess," Althuda corrected him. "And swiftly."
"I beg your pardon, madam," van de Velde gritted through clenched teeth.
"You are gallant, sir." Sukeena smiled at him. Van de Velde sank back in his seat and said no more, but he fixed his wife with a venomous stare.
Once they had left the settlement behind them, the surface of the road deteriorated. There were deep wheel ruts left by the Company wagons going out to fetch firewood, and the carriage rocked and lurched dangerously through them. Along the edge of the lagoon the water had seeped in to turn the tracks to mud and slush and, in many places, the seamen were forced to put their shoulders to the tall rear wheels to help the horses drag the vehicle through. It was late morning before they saw ahead the framework of the wooden bridge over the first river.
"Soldiers!" Aboli called. From his high seat he had picked out the glint of a bayonet and the shape of the tall helmets.
"Only four," said Hal. His eyes were still the sharpest of all. "They'll not be expecting trouble from this direction." He was right. The corporal of the bridge guard came forward to meet them, puzzled but unalarmed, his sword sheathed and the match on his pistols unlit. Hal and his crew disarmed him and his men, stripped them to their breeches and sent them running back towards the colony with a discharge of muskets over their heads.
While Aboli walked the carriage over the bridge and took it on along the rudimentary track, Hal and Ned Tyler climbed beneath the wooden structure and roped a barrel of gunpowder under the heavy timber king post When it was secure Hal used the butt of his pistol to drive in the bung of the barrel, thrust a short length of slow-match into it and lit it. He and Ned scrambled back onto the roadway and ran after the carriage.
Hal's leg was painful now. It was swelling and stiffening, but he was looking back over his shoulder as he hobbled along through the ankle-deep sand. The centre of the bridge suddenly erupted in a spout of mud, water, shattered planks and piers. The wreckage fell back into the river.
"That will not hold the good colonel long, but at least he will get his breeches wet," Hal muttered, as they caught up with the carriage. Althuda jumped down and called to him, "Take my place. You must favour that leg."
"There is little wrong with my leg," Hal protested.
"Other than that it can barely carry your weight," said Sukeena sternly, leaning over the door. "Come up here at once, Gundwane, or else you will do lasting damage to it."
Meekly Hal climbed up into the coach and took the seat opposite Sukeena Without looking at the pair, Aboli grinned to himself Already she gives the orders and he obeys. It seems they have the tide and a fair wind behind them.
"Let me look at that leg," Sukeena ordered, and Hal placed it on the seat between her and Katinka.
"Take care, clod!" Katinka snapped, and pulled away her skirts. "You will bloody my dress."
"If you do not have a care to your tongue, it will not be the only thing I will bloody," Hal assured her, and scowled. She withdrew into the farthest corner of the seat.
Sukeena worked over the leg with swift, competent hands. "I should lay a hot poultice on these bites, for they are deep and will certainly fester. But I need boiling water." She looked up at Hal.
"You will have to wait for that until we reach the mountains," he told her. Then, for a while, their conversation broke down and they gazed into each other's eyes bemusedly. This was as close as they had ever been and each found something in the other to amaze and delight them.
Then Sukeena roused herself. "I have my medicines in the saddle-bags, she said briskly, and climbed over the seat to reach the panniers on the back of the carriage. She hung there as she rummaged in the leather bags. The carriage jotted on over the rough track, and Hal looked with awe on her small rounded bottom, pointed skywards. Despite the ruffles and petticoats that shrouded it, he thought it almost as enchanting as her face.
She climbed back with cloths and a black bottle in her hand. "I will swab out the wounds with this tincture and then bind them up," she explained, without looking again into the distraction of his green eyes.
"Avast!" Hal gasped at the first touch of the tincture. "That burns like the devil's breath."
Sukeena scolded, "You have endured whip and shot and sword and savaging by an animal. But the first touch of medicine and you cry like a baby. Now be still."
