it off with his arm.
Madshaka screamed again with pain under the jarring impact of the table but James hardly noticed, because turning the table over had opened his own wound again, like sticking a red-hot iron in his side. His head swam with the agony, his eyes watered, and he stumbled back, trying to clear his head, aware of the pistol, of Madshaka, six feet away.
He hit the wall and the impact sent another wave of pain through him, radiating from his shoulder and his side and crackling through his limbs like Saint Elmo’s fire.
His hand went out and wrapped around the hilt of a sword hanging on the wall and he jerked it free. It was a great, heavy, iron affair, heavier even than the cutlass he had carried, a long, straight blade, a hilt bound in leather. It was a sword like the swords he had been trained to wield as a boy, an African sword, and if it was not Malinke, it was certainly from that region.
He leaned back against the wall, breathing hard, the sword held before him. He blinked the tears from his eyes. Madshaka had fallen to his knees, clutching his wound, but now he looked up, then painfully regained his feet, as if he was aware that James had recovered, as if he knew the fight was now to resume.
The pistol was still in his hand. Madshaka straightened, as much as he could, leveled the pistol at James, thumbed the lock back.
The two men stood there, staring at each other, hating each other, breathing hard.
“You,” Madshaka said at last, and his voice was no more than a harsh whisper, “you are a sorry, sorry little worm…”
James shook his head, slowly. “No, Madshaka. No. I am a Malinke prince, from the House of Mane. And you… you are just a filthy… stinking… blackbirder, and all the gold you steal won’t change that.”
Madshaka flinched, he actually flinched, as if the words had physically struck him. He scowled, took a half step forward, the pistol held straight-armed before him, aimed right at James’s heart.
A second more and the arrogant, defiant Madshaka was back. “Well, Prince of the Malinke, I hope you got big magic that will make this bullet dance off you, because if you don’t, then you going to be just another dead bastard. You think you can run that sword through me before I shoot you?”
James knew he could not. As close as Madshaka was, he could not cover that distance before Madshaka put a bullet through him. Very well. That was the way it was.
He shook his head slowly, lowered his sword, a gesture of defeat. He saw Madshaka grin, saw his straight-arm grip on the pistol relax, and James guessed that that was as good as it would get, and might even buy him a step or two.
He held Madshaka’s eyes, felt his hands begin to shake, felt the war cry building silent in his gut, felt it creeping out along his limbs where before there had been only pain. He saw a moment’s hesitancy in Madshaka’s face, a wash of fear, and then he launched himself across the room, the big iron sword held shoulder high, point forward, aimed right at Madshaka’s chest.
One step, two steps, a leap over the upturned table, and Madshaka’s arm shot out straight. Over the table and the flash of the pan and the flash of the muzzle, those final seconds unfolding slow and dull, like moving underwater.
James felt the bullet tear into his chest, rip through his right lung, felt the searing heat of the heavy ball as it tore through his back, clean through, and then the tip of his sword was on Madshaka’s chest, right on his heart, and he saw Madshaka’s eyes go wide with surprise.
The momentum carried him on and the needle tip of the big iron blade pierced Madshaka’s chest and kept on going, going, deeper and deeper. There was a scream, a high anguished scream, but James did not know where it was coming from. Everything was becoming dulled and soft to his eyes and he was aware that he was no longer running, just falling, falling, pushing the big blade before him as he went down.
Down, down he fell and then he knew he had stopped but he had no sensation of hitting the ground, or of jarring or of anything. He thought there might be other people in the room, or some great commotion, but he was not able to turn his head and look, so instead he closed his eyes and let the warmth wash over him.
He was thirsty. There was liquid in his throat but it did not sate his thirst. Thirsty, but beyond that, not uncomfortable, not in any pain. He felt ready. More ready than he had felt in a long, long time.
Then something was disturbing the comfort, forcing him back to the surface. He opened his eyes; the effort seemed impossible, but he did it. Swimming in front of him, a fuzzy image. Marlowe. He looked so concerned. A good man, Marlowe. He cared, he cared more than he himself knew.
“James, oh James, damn it, damn it…,” Marlowe was saying. Silly. So hard to talk, why waste the effort?
James closed his eyes, tried to find the strength in his shattered and numb body. Had to tell Marlowe it was all right.
He opened his eyes. “I’m going now.” So quiet. Could Thomas hear him? Marlowe leaned closer. “I’m going to the only place I got left to go.”
He closed his eyes again. That was the last of his strength. He felt the soft darkness wash over him, the warm embrace, the gentle evening air, the warm water, the loving arms of Africa, his new Africa.
Chapter 34
He was dead. Marlowe laid his fingers gently on James’s face, eased his eyelids shut, laid him back on the dirt floor. He stood and looked at the fresh blood that covered his hands. James’s blood. He did not try to wipe it off.
The room was crowded with men: Bickerstaff, the Elizabeth Galleys. Less than a minute before, the Galleys had been a howling, blood-crazed mob, set on looting and tearing apart whatever fell in their path, but now they stood silent, respectful.
They all knew King James from the Elizabeth Galley’s fitting out. They had witnessed his final act as they raced for the factor’s hut, had seen him fling himself headlong into the pistol’s barrel, charging blade-first with such momentum that he had skewered his enemy and driven the sword right through him and through the mud wall of the hut, leaving the man pinned upright, even after he had suffered his mortal wound. The Elizabeth Galleys could respect such a man.
“A minute. A bloody goddamned minute more and we would have been here,” Marlowe said.
“And then what?” asked Bickerstaff. “Prevent James from dying thus, so that he could fulfill his promise to go back and be hanged like a dog? This thing”-Bickerstaff nodded toward the corpse pinned to the wall-“must be the infamous Madshaka. We should all be so lucky as to die quick at the moment of our ultimate triumph.”
Marlowe smiled a weak smile. “You are right, of course. As always. Now I pray, Francis, that you will be kind enough as to live until we return to Virginia? I shall tell the governor that we did indeed hunt King James down and we saw him dead, but I am not certain he will take my word on it. He will believe you, if you say it is so, but I am not convinced he would take my word alone.”
“I shall certainly endeavor to live that long and I will be happy to confirm your story. There is nothing in it that is not the truth.”
Marlowe looked around the wreckage of the room. A big ring of keys hung from a hook on the wall and he crossed the room, snatched them up. He turned to his men. “I need ten of you with me, the rest are free to find whatever is worth carrying away from here. Francis, you will never object to our looting slave traders, I assume?”
Bickerstaff sniffed. “I do not care to be involved with your moral relativism, Thomas.”
“Good, then come with me.”
They crossed the compound, approached the trunk carefully. To Thomas’s great relief there was one among the captives there who had a small amount of English and a small amount of the coastal pidgin, enough that Marlowe could convey to him what he intended, and he to some others, and those to others, until everyone in the trunk was reasonably sure that they were not in for greater torment from these new white men. And when Marlowe was sure they were sufficiently mollified, he opened the iron door and let them shuffle out and knocked the chains and yokes off those who were still so encumbered.
They met up with the rest of the Elizabeth Galleys, who had found a small quantity of gold and some firearms
