Birds of Prey - Smith Wilbur (версия книг TXT) 📗
Sukeena ignored his immodest language and went on with her task. She bound the poultice in place with a fresh cloth, then from her saddle-bags she fetched a loaf of bread and a dried sausage. She cut these into slices, folded bread and sausage together, and handed one to each of the men.
"Bless you, Princess." Big Daniel knuckled his forehead, before taking his ration from her.
"God love you, Princess," said Ned, and all the others adopted the name. From then on she was their princess, and the rough seamen looked upon her with increasing respect and burgeoning affection.
"You can eat on the march, lads." Hal hauled himself to his feet.
"We have been lucky too long. Soon the devil will want his turn." They groaned and muttered but followed his lead.
As Hal was helping Sukeena to mount, there was a warning shout from Daniel. "There the bastards come at last." He pointed back down at the open vlei at the bottom of the slope. Hal pushed Sukeena up between the saddlebags and limped back to the rear of the column. He looked down the hillside and saw the long file of running men who had emerged from the edge of the scrub and were crossing the open ground. They were led by a single horseman who came on at a trot.
"It's Schreuder again. He has found another mount." Even at that range there was no mistaking the Colonel. He sat tall and arrogant in the saddle, and there was a sense of deadly purpose about the set of his shoulders and the way he lifted his head to look up the slope towards them. It was obvious that he had not yet spotted them, hidden in the thick scrub.
"How many men with him?" Ned Tyler asked, and they all looked at Hal to count them. He slitted his eyes and watched them come out of the thick scrub. With their swinging trot they kept up easily with Schreuder's horse. "Twenty," Hal counted.
"Why so few?" Big Daniel demanded.
"Almost certainly Schreuder has chosen his fastest runners to press us hard. The rest will be following at their best speed." Hal shaded his eyes. "Yes, by God, there they are, a league behind the first platoon, but coming fast. I can see their dust and the shape of their helmets above the scrub. There must be a hundred or more in that second detachment."
"Twenty we can deal with," Big Daniel muttered, "but a hundred of those murdering green-backs is more than I can eat for breakfast without belching. What orders, Captain?" Every man looked at Hal.
He paused before replying, carefully studying the lie and the grain of the land below before he said, "Master Daniel, take the rest of the party on with Althuda to guide you. Aboli and I will stay here with one horse to slow down their advance."
"We cannot outrun them. They've proved that to us, Captain," Daniel protested. "Would it not be better to fight them here?"
"You have your orders." Hal turned a cold, steely eye upon him.
Daniel again knuckled his brow. "Aye, Captain," and he turned to the others. "You heard the orders, lads."
Hal limped back to where Sukeena sat on her horse, with Althuda. holding the lead rein. "You must go on, whatever happens. Do not turn back for any reason," he told Althuda, and then he smiled up at Sukeena "Not even if her royal highness commands it."
She did not return his smile but leaned down closer and whispered, "I will wait for you on the mountain. Do not make me wait too long."
Althuda led the column of horses forward again, and as they crossed the skyline there was a distant shout from the vlei below.
"So they have discovered us," Aboli muttered.
Hal went to the single remaining horse, and loosened one of the fifty-pound kegs of gunpowder. He lowered it to the ground, and told Aboli, "Take the horse on. Follow the others. Let Schreuder see you go. Tether it out of sight beyond the ridge and then come back to me."
He rolled the keg to the nearest outcrop of tock and crouched beside it. With only the top of his head showing, he again studied the slope below him, then turned his full attention to Schreuder and his band of green-jackets. Already they were much closer, and he could see that two of the Hottentots ran ahead of Schreuder's horse. They watched the ground as they came on, following exactly the route that Hal's party had blazed.
They read our sign from the earth, like hounds after the stag, he thought. They will come up the same path we followed.
At that moment Aboli dropped back over the ridge and squatted beside him. "The horse is tethered and the others go on apace. Now what is your plan, Gundwane?"
"Tis so simple, there is no need to explain it to you," said Hal, as he prised the bung from the keg with the point of his sword. Then he unwound the length of the slow match he had tied around his waist. "This match is the devil. It either burns too fast or too slow. But I will take a chance on three fingers" length," he muttered as he measured, then lopped off a length. He rolled it gently between the palms of his hands in an attempt to induce it to burn evenly, then threaded one end into the bunghole of the keg and secured it by driving back the wooden plug.
"You had best hurry, Gundwane. Your old fencing partner, Schreuder, is in great haste to meet you again."
Hal glanced up from his task and saw that the pursuers had crossed the meadow and were already starting up the slope towards them. "Keep out of sight," Hal told him. "I want to let them get very close." The two lay flat on their bellies and peered down the hillside. Sitting high in the saddle, Schreuder was in full view, but the two trackers who led him were obscured by the scrub and flowering bushes from the waist down. As they came on Hal could make out the ugly gravel graze down Schreuder's face, the rents and dirt smears on his uniform. He wore neither Hat nor wig, had probably lost them along the way, perhaps in his fall. Vain though he was, he had wasted no time in trying to regain them, so urgent was his haste.
