Birds of Prey - Smith Wilbur (версия книг TXT) 📗
"Get down!" the stranger shouted in Hal's ear, and stood up with a short-handled axe in his hand. A soldier appeared in the opening of the crevice and raised his sword to thrust at the four men crowded into it, but Althuda threw up the pistol in his hand and shot him at close range in the centre of his chest.
At the same time the bearded stranger raised the axe high then slashed down with a powerful stroke. Hal did not understand what he was doing, until he saw that the man had severed a rope of plaited bark, thick as a man's wrist and hairy. The axe bit cleanly through the taut rope, and as it parted the severed tail whipped away, as though impelled by some immense force. The end had been looped and knotted around a sturdy wooden peg, driven into a crack in the stone. The length of the rope ran round the corner of the crevice, then stretched upwards to some point lost in the gathering gloom higher up the steep gorge.
For a long minute nothing else happened, and Hal and Aboli stared at, the other two in bewilderment. Then there was a creaking and a rustling from higher up the funnel of the gorge, a rumbling and a crackling as though a sleeping giant had stirred.
"Sabah has triggered the rockfall!" Althuda explained, and instantly Hal understood. He stared out into the gorge through the narrow entrance to the crevice. The rumbling became a gathering roar, and above it he could hear the wild, terrified screams of green-jackets caught full in the path of this avalanche. For them there was neither shelter nor escape. The gorge was a death trap into which Althuda and Sabah had lured them.
The roaring and grinding of rock rose in a deafening crescendo. The mountain seemed to tremble beneath them. The screams of the soldiers in its path were drowned, and suddenly a mighty river of racing boulders came sweeping past the entrance to the crevice. The light was blotted out, and the air was filled with dust and powdered rock so that the four men choked and gasped for breath. Blinded and suffocating, Hal lifted the tail of his ragged shirt and held it over his nose and mouth, trying to filter the air so that he could breathe in the tumultuous choking dust-storm thrown out by the tidal wave of rock and flying stone that poured past.
The avalanche went on for a long time but gradually the stream of moving rock dwindled to become a slow, intermittent slither and tumble of the last few fragments.
At last silence, complete and oppressive, weighed down upon them, and the dust settled to reveal the outline of the opening to their shelter.
Aboli crawled out and balanced gingerly on the loose, unstable footing. Hal crept out beside him and both peered down the gloomy gorge. From wall to wall, it had been scoured clean by the avalanche. There was no sound or trace of their pursuers, not a last despairing cry or dying moan, not a shred of cloth or discarded weapon. It was as though they had never been.
Hal's injured leg could no longer bear his weight. He staggered and collapsed in the opening of the crevice. The fever in his blood from the festering wounds boiled up and filled his head with darkness and heat. He was aware of strong hands supporting him and then he lapsed into unconsciousness.
Colonel Cornelius Schreuder waited for an hour in the antechamber of the castle before Governor van de Velde condescended to see him.
When, eventually, he was summoned by an aide-decamp, he strode into the Governor's audience chamber, but still van de Velde declined to acknowledge his presence. He went on signing the documents and proclamations that Jacobus Hop laid before him, one at a time.
Schreuder was in full uniform, wearing all his decorations and stars. His wig was freshly curled and powdered, and his moustaches were dressed with beeswax into sharp spikes. Down one side of his face there were pink raw scars and scabs.
Van de Velde signed the last document and dismissed Hop with a wave of his hand. When the clerk had left and closed the doors behind him, van de Velde picked up Schreuder's written report from the desk in front of him as though it was a particularly revolting piece of excrement.
"So you lost almost forty men, Schreuder?" he asked heavily. "Not to mention eight of the Company's finest horses."
"Thirty-four men, Schreuder corrected him, still standing stiffly to attention.
"Almost forty!" van de Velde repeated, with an expression of repugnance. "And eight horses. The convicts and slaves you were pursuing got clean away from you. Hardly a famous victory, do you agree, Colonel?" Schreuder scowled furiously at the sculpted cornices on the ceiling above the Governor's head. "The security of the castle is your responsibility, Schreuder. The minding of the prisoners is your responsibility. The safety of my person and that of my wife is also your responsibility. Do you agree, Schreuder?"
"Yes, your excellency." A nerve beneath Schreuder's eye began to twitch.
"You allowed the prisoners to escape. You allowed them to plunder the Company's property. You allowed them to do grievous damage to this building with explosives. Look at my windowsP Van de Velde pointed at the empty casements from which the stained-glass panels had been blown.
"I have estimates from the Company surveyor that place the damage at over one hundred thousand guilders!" He was working himself steadily into a rage. "A hundred thousand guilders! Then, on top of that, you allowed the prisoners to abduct my wife and myself and to place us in mortal danger-" He had to break off to get his temper under control. "Then you allowed almost forty of the Company's servants to be murdered, including five white men! What do you imagine will be the reaction of the Council of Seventeen in Amsterdam when they receive my full report detailing the depths of the dereliction of your duties, hey? What do you think they will say? Answer me, you jumped-up popinjay! What do you think they will say?" "They may be somewhat displeased," Schreuder replied stiffly.
"Displeased? Somewhat displeased?" shrieked van de Velde, and fell back in his chair, gasping for breath like a stranded fish. When he had recovered, he went on, "You will be the first to know whether or not they are somewhat displeased, Schreuder. I am sending you back to Amsterdam in the deepest disgrace. You will sail in three days" time aboard the Weltevreden, which is anchored in the bay at this moment."
