James Nelson - The Blackbirder

“Come on,” James said to the few men around him. He led them down to the water’s edge where they grabbed those men lying there by their coats or under their arms and dragged them up the beach. Some would be dead and some merely unconscious. They could sort them out later.

Then Marlowe’s voice, calling the men to him, and James was relieved to hear it. He trotted across the sand with the others.

“Who have we lost?” Marlowe asked. Bickerstaff, looking at once bedraggled and composed, stood beside him.

“Johnson…,” a voice called out.

“Llewelyn, but I don’t think he’s dead…”

“Starkey…”

Three more names after that. The first body count, and that was only fighting the surf.

“Very well,” said Marlowe. “I don’t expect anyone has a grain of dry powder left, so it’s cold steel. James, lead on.”

James circled the crowd, stood for a second beside Marlowe, then waved the men forward. They had been told what the factory would be like, how they would attack over the open ground, what kind of resistance they could expect.

Their ardor did not seem in the least cooled by the fact that they would now be fighting without the advantage of firearms. The Elizabeth Galleys were a greedy bunch, and largely amoral, but they were not cowards. Or at least their greed quite eclipsed any hesitation they might have had.

They stepped across the beach and onto the forest trail that James was coming to know quite well, despite himself. They moved between the trees, and the light from the moon was all but blotted out, leaving just enough for them to see the difference between beaten track and forest edge. Every now and again one of the men would stumble and curse his misstep. It was not the silent approach that James had envisioned. If anyone was listening, they would hear the sailors approaching from a long way off.

They pressed on, and James turned that thought around in his head. The trail was the perfect place for an ambush. If Madshaka had left a man on the beach, watching, there would have been plenty of time for that man to race back to the factory and report and for Madshaka to set up just such a surprise.

“Captain Marlowe…”

“Yes?”

“I going to press ahead, see if I can smoke any trap. Might be better if your men walk with weapons drawn.”

“Hmm, yes. Good idea.” It did not sound as if the thought of ambush had occurred to Marlowe, and now he did not sound too pleased with the possibility. “Good, then. Go on ahead.”

James pulled his cutlass from the frog of the shoulder belt, more to keep it from slapping as he ran, then broke into a trot. He rolled with each step, heel to toe, listened for the sound of his own footfall but could hear nothing.

Soon he had left the Elizabeth Galleys behind, one hundred yards at least, and he slowed his pace to a brisk walk. He was part of the forest again. His nose took in the cumulative smell, his brain deciphered its many parts. He listened to the sounds and knew the rustle of leaves and the creak of tree on tree and the scurry of the tiny night hunters in the undergrowth.

He walked at the edge of the trail, right up against the tree line, as invisible as he could be. He thought of what Bickerstaff had said to him. “It would have been nothing for you to disappear forever in this country…”

It was true, but that was all he could do. Disappear. Because his homeland was no longer his home. He had suspected it from the first mention of Africa, at the first meeting of the people he had freed from bondage. And now he knew. He had been gone too long. There was nothing for him there, not anymore.

Nor was he a part of the New World. Twenty years of slavery had taken everything but his life, had left him a floating entity, bobbing in the air, with no place left for him to come down.

And then a silent alarm rang in his head and he froze and all his introspection was whisked away. Something was wrong. He listened, but there was nothing for him to hear, save for a soft rustle. An animal, perhaps.

It was the smell. He caught it again, through the rotten vegetation and the warm dirt and the flowering plants. Human smell. Dried sweat on the soft breeze.

He crouched low, took a step back, wondered if the people to whom that smell belonged were aware of his presence. Back, he had to get back to Marlowe but he did not want to move, to give himself away.

If he was aware of them, then they, watching as they were, had to be aware of him. But why then did they not move on him? Because they knew he was a scout, and they were waiting for the main body of men.

He could hear the Elizabeth Galleys now, in their clumsy advance, somewhere down the trail. They were marching right into it.

Another step back. “Marlowe! Ambush! Here!” he shouted with all his voice, the sound startling in the night forest, and then they were on him.

They broke from the brush like furies, screaming, swords raised. A gun flashed, the bullet passed close. Kru warriors, a dozen or more. They still wore their pirate clothes, the clothes they had pillaged on the high seas, but there was no mistaking them. And in the flash of the gun, Madshaka, hanging back, a grinning mountain.

James brought his cutlass up, caught a sword as it came down on him, turned it aside. His vision had been hurt by the flash, but he reckoned it had blinded the others too, and when the counterstroke missed him by a foot he knew he was right. Thrust, and the point of his cutlass caught flesh, penetrated. A scream, very close, and James leapt back as another man hacked at him.

Another pistol shot, wider than the first, and a glimpse of the men arrayed against him, and from down the road the sound of Marlowe’s men running, shouting, cursing as they raced to the fight.

James stepped back into the tree line. Heard a cutlass swish past, searching him out. He jumped forward, slashed at the attacker, felt the blade cut, and then back into the trees.

Madshaka was shouting something in Kwa and his men were shouting back and James reckoned they were arranging themselves for Marlowe’s assault. His vision was coming back, he could see the men on the trail, Madshaka behind them. They were preparing for the real threat, the armed brigands coming up the trail. They had forgotten about him, for the moment.

He moved through the tree line, just feet from the trail, but unseen by the men there, crashing through until he was behind their line of defense. And directly in front of him, Madshaka, his focus on the trail, on the growing sound of Marlowe’s privateers hustling into battle.

James crashed out of the trees, cutlass raised. From his throat, a long, whooping battle cry, a Malinke cry, a sound he had not heard or uttered or even recalled for twenty years. Madshaka whirled, the look on his face shock, panic. He stumbled back, raised his sword just in time to prevent James from cleaving his skull in two. He shouted something in Kwa, took a step back, and then his dirk was in his other hand and he met James’s fresh attack with crossed blades, caught the attacking cutlass in the V, turned it aside.

Madshaka circled around, both blades before him. He was too much the warrior to be shaken for long by the surprise rush from the tree line, and he was recovered now, tensed, a dangerous man.

James backed up, his eyes darting from Madshaka to the Kru and back, afraid to linger on either for a split second more than necessary. And then a movement caught his eye, a great surge, as the Elizabeth Galleys burst round the bend in the trail and fell on the Kru and in that instant of distraction, Madshaka attacked.

James did not see it coming until it was there, the dirk shooting forward like a snake, striking at his belly, catching him in the side as he twisted to escape. There was screaming on the trail, guns going off, two, three, four, Madshaka lit with the flashes of orange light. He drove the dagger blade home and James screamed with the agony of it and twisted further. The blade cut its way free as he jerked sideways to avoid the death thrust from Madshaka’s sword.