Birds of Prey - Smith Wilbur (версия книг TXT) 📗

"Let him hang there all night, "Ned Tyler ordered. "We'll cut him down in the morning and throw him to the sharks." Then he stooped and picked up the stiletto from the deck where Hal had flung it. He studied the blood-smeared blade and his tanned face turned yellow grey.

"Sweet Mary, let it not be so!" He looked up again at Sam Bowles's corpse swaying to the ship's motion high above him.

"Your death was too easy. If it were in my power, I would kill you a hundred times over, and each time more painfully than the last." al laid Sukeena on the bunk in the main cabin. "I should cauterize the wound but tH the hot iron would leave a scar." He knelt beside the bunk and examined it closely. "It is deep but there is almost no bleeding." He wrapped her arm in a fold of white linen that Aboli brought him from the sea-chest at the foot of the bunk.

"Bring me my bag," Sukeena ordered, and Aboli went immediately.

As soon as they were alone, Hal bent over her and kissed her pale cheek. "You took Sam's throw to save me," he murmured, his face pressed to hers. "You risked your own life and the life of the child in your womb for me. It was a bad bargain, my love."

"I would strike the same bargain-" She broke off and he felt her stiffen in his arms and gasp.

"What is it that ails you, my sweetheart?" He drew back and stared into her face. Before his eyes, tiny beads of perspiration welled up out of the pores of her skin, like the dew on the petals of a yellow rose. "You are in pain?"

"It burns," she whispered. "It burns worse than the hot iron you spoke of."

Swiftly he unwrapped her arm and stared at the change in the wound that had taken place as they embraced. The arm was swelling before his eyes, like one of the Toby fish of the coral reef that could puff itself up to many times its original size when threatened by a predator.

Sukeena lifted the arm and nursed it to her bosom. She whimpered involuntarily as the pain flowed up from the wound to fill her chest like glowing molten lead.

"I do not understand what is happening." She began to writhe upon the bunk. "This is not natural. Look how it changes colour."

Hal stared helplessly as the lovely limb slowly bloated and discoloured with lines of crimson and vivid purple, that ran up from the elbow to her shoulder. The wound began to weep a viscous yellow fluid.

"What can I do?" he blurted.

"I do not know," she said desperately. "This is something beyond my understanding." A spasm of agony seized her in a vice, and her back arched. Then it passed and she pleaded, "I must have my bag. I cannot endure this pain. I have a powder made from the opium poppy."

Hal sprang to his feet and bounded across the cabin. "Aboli, where are you?" he bellowed. "Bring the bag, and Swiftly!"

Ned Tyler stood upon the threshold of the door. He held something in his hand and there was a strange expression on his face. "Captain, there is something I must show you."

"Not now, man, not now." Hal raised his voice again. "Aboli, come quickly."

Aboli came down the companionway in a rush, carrying the saddle-bags. "What is it, Gundwane?"

"Sukeena! There is something happening to her. She needs the medicine-" "Captain!" Ned Tyler forced his way past Aboli's bulk into the cabin and seized Hal's arm urgently. "This cannot wait. Look at the dagger. Look at the poi nd He held up the stiletto, and the others stared at it.

"In God's name!" Hal whispered. "Let it not be so."

A narrow groove down the length of the blade was filled with a black, tarry paste that had dried hard and shiny.

"It is an assassin's blade," Ned said quietly. "The groove is filled with poison."

Hal felt the deck sway under his feet as though the Golden Bough had been struck by a tall wave. His vision went dark. "It cannot be," he said. "Aboli, tell me it cannot be."

"Be strong," Aboli muttered. "Be strong for her, Gundwane." He gripped Hal's arm.

The hand steadied Hal and his vision brightened, but when he tried to draw breath the leaden hand of dread crushed in his ribs. "I cannot live without her," he said, like a confused child.

"Do not let her know," Aboli said. "Do not make the parting harder for her than it need be."

Hal stared at him uncomprehendingly. Then he began to understand the finality, the significance of that tiny groove in the steel blade, and of the fatal threats that Sam Bowles had shouted at him with the hangman's noose around his neck.

"Sukeena is going to die," he said, in a tone of bewilderment.

"This will be harder for you than any fight you have ever fought before, Gundwane."

With an enormous effort Hal fought to regain control of himself. "Do not show her the dagger," he said to Ned Tyler. "Go! Hurl the cursed thing overboard."

When he got back to Sukeena he tried to conceal the black despair in his heart. "Aboli has brought your bags." He knelt beside her again. "Tell me how to prepare the potion."

"Oh, do it swiftly," she pleaded as another spasm gripped her. "The blue flask. Two measures in a mug of hot water. No more than that, for it is powerful."

Her hand shook violently as she tried to take the mug from him. She had only the use of the one hand now. her wounded arm was swollen and purpled, the once dainty fingers so bloated that the skin threatened to burst open. She had difficulty holding the mug and Hal lifted it to her lips while she gulped down the potion with pathetic urgency.