The Ring Of Sheba Read online

  The man’s forehead cracked open under the impact and blood ran into his eyes as he dropped. Dead, dying, or unconscious, the man would not soon return to the fight if at all.

  “Ready, Cap’n!” Joao called.

  Quelling the blood lust for battle that filled him, Ngola forced himself to order the brief retreat. “Give ground!”

  Again, his men stepped back. Another of the men had fallen, but Ngola couldn’t tell who it was yet. At the command, the Portuguese slavers knew what was coming this time and most of them tried to flee. Two of them, however, lifted firearms and took aim.

  Ngola plucked the mambele from its sheath, set himself, and whipped the dagger forward. The multi-bladed weapon spun through the air, splintering the unsteady lantern light as the ship rocked at its anchor, then a thick blade buried in the chest of one of the men holding a leveled pistol. Instead of firing his weapon, the man stood transfixed and stared down at the knife that had split his heart.

  “Fire!” Ngola ordered.

  The blunderbuss exploded again. Caught by the fringe of the blast, the second slaver with a pistol went down. The bronze balls chewed through the retreating pack of men.

  “Reloading!” Joao sang out.

  “Advance!” Ngola strode forward, tossed his spent pistol, and grabbed the dead man’s fallen pistol from his slack grip.

  The Portuguese slavers hadn’t stopped running toward the ship’s prow. A slaver took brief aim with his pistol and fired, not waiting to see the effects of his shot. Ngola aimed and fired his pistol and the ball caught the fleeing man in the back of the neck, pitching him forward in a heap.

  Placing a foot on the dead man with the mambele in his heart, Ngola yanked free the blade and led the charge after their foes. Overwhelmed, the Portuguese fell in short order. A few dove over the side into the sea in an effort to elude their coming deaths.

  “Get the lanterns!” Drury ordered. He seized one from the railing himself, then grabbed a pistol from a dead Portuguese.

  The Irishman held the lantern up and out over the ship’s side. He steadied the pistol, his face lean and hard and merciless. He, too, bore scars from the slavers, and not all of them showed on his body. He had lost good men and several friends when the ship he’d served on had gone down to the Portuguese.

  The pistol cracked in Drury’s fist and the ball sped true, punching through the head of the slaver swimming for the coastline. The man stopped swimming and went slack as oily blood slicked the ocean’s surface. The corpse floated in the water till a triangular fin cut toward him. The dead man disappeared a moment later, then a severed arm floated to the top.

  Gray smoke plumed Drury’s head, and his grim satisfaction made Ngola think he must resemble a demon from the Christian Hell. Drury turned with a grin to face Ngola.

  “Fancy that,” Drury said. “We were swimming all that way with sharks in the water.”

  “Would you have stayed back if you had known?”

  “Of course not.” Drury knelt and found powder and shot on the dead man. “But I might not have been so carefree in doing it.”

  More sharks fed on the hapless Portuguese, yanking them down into the dark water. The sailors who knew how to swim didn’t know which direction to head. Ngola’s men fired at them as soon as they could find or reload weapons. The sharks steadily seized their prey, the living and the dead.

  “Later, when we tell this story over grog,” Drury said, “you and I will swear that the sharks swam with us.”

  Ngola grinned. The Irishman had a love of stories and often talked about the things they had done while in one port or another. Ngola scoured the ship’s deck. He sheathed his mambele and lifted powder and shot from the nearest dead man, then reloaded the pistol he’d picked up. He nodded at Drury.

  “Bring your lantern. Let’s go see what awaits us belowdecks.”

  Seeing men, women, and children shackled in the bowels of a slave ship was something Ngola had never gotten used to. He wasn’t looking forward to repeating the experience. He took a fresh grip on his cutlass and headed for the nearest hatch, stopping only for a moment to take a ring of iron keys from one of the dead Portuguese.

  As he neared the opening, Ngola opened his mouth and breathed through it instead of his nose. The stench wasn’t so bad that way. Nothing would ever make it bearable. Despite the hard way many of the Portuguese sailors had died under the blades of his men, Ngola had no mercy in his heart for his enemies. If any yet lived, he would slit their throats.

  He stepped down into the hold and into the waiting darkness as Drury’s lantern held it at bay.

  2.

  The Scorpion

  The foul, fetid air that closed in on Ngola below the ship’s deck felt heavy and oppressive. He resisted the urge to cut through it with his cutlass as Drury lifted the lantern to shine farther down into the hold.

  Murmurs and whispers echoed in the confined space. Frightened eyes stared back at the lantern.

  No matter the number of horrors and degradations he’d seen in Africa, on Haiti, and while serving in Lord Nelson’s Navy, Ngola knew that he would never get used to seeing people stripped of their humanity as they were in that hold. Scores of men, women, and children lay bound by chains and dressed in filthy rags. Their helplessness tore at Ngola. He forced himself to be strong, knowing that most of them would be saved through his crew’s efforts tonight.

  And they would be given back their freedom.

  “My God,” Drury said hoarsely.

  Slowly, Ngola sheathed his cutlass, then spread his hands out before him, showing their emptiness. He spoke in Portuguese, which most of the coastal people had some experience with, though most of that was unpleasant. Too many tribal languages separated the people. Only the tongue of the oppressors linked them.

  “We mean you no harm. We are here to free you.” He repeated the words in English and French, then as best as he could with his limited knowledge of the half-dozen dialects he knew from the areas he had traveled through.

  Many of the men and women wept with relief and gave thanks to their gods and ancestors.

  Standing in front of them, Ngola’s memories of masters and whips and chains rolled through his thoughts. Sold into slavery as a child, impressed by the British Navy as a young man, he had been free for the last seven years, and he knew he would never serve a day as a slave again. He would die first, with an enemy’s blood in his teeth.

  Kneeling, Ngola used the keys he’d taken from the dead Portuguese slaver to open the locks holding the nearest, strongest man. He offered the man his hand and pulled him to his feet, then began on the next lock.

  Hanging his lantern on a nearby crossbeam, Drury called for more of the sailors above, then fell to opening the locks on chains as well with keys he too had found. The heavy links smacked against the deck again and again as Ngola and his second worked.

  A small girl only nine or ten years old wept and shivered and drew away from Ngola as he approached. Bloody sores at her wrists and ankles showed where the iron cuffs had worn at her tender flesh.

  “Easy, child.” Ngola’s voice rumbled softly as he reached for her chains. “I will not harm you.” He hated the fear that he saw in her dark eyes, but he twisted his lips into a reassuring smile.

  She trembled as he released her, then got up and ran to the back of the ship, screaming for her mother. A woman reached for the girl and took her into her arms. Both of them cried and wept as they clung each to the other.

  For a moment, Ngola thought of his wife and of their son. At times on Mambele, he considered putting down his sword and living with Kangela in her village, and of giving up his battle against the slavers. He hated being away from his family. But just as the scars on his back and his wrists and ankles would never fade, nor would his desire to fight those who subjugated others. As long as the Portuguese and others took slaves, he knew he would seek them out and kill them.

  He focused on the task at hand and reached for another lock.

  �
�Ngola!”

  The man’s voice was dry and thin, only brushing against Ngola’s ears. Ngola rose from his crouch and stared into the darkness at the end of the ship. His hand rested on the hilt of his cutlass.

  “Who calls my name?”

  “I do.” A thin arm rose from near the stern.

  Ngola took the lantern Joao handed him, then gave the younger man the key ring. Holding up the lantern, Ngola walked toward the stern till he reached the man who had called for him.

  The man was old and withered, gray with sickness. He looked up at Ngola and spoke in a croaking voice. “Do you know me?”

  The man’s features were familiar, but it took Ngola a moment to summon a name.

  “You are Olufemi. You are of my wife’s tribe.”

  Though Ngola had lived sporadically among his wife’s people for six years, and her people didn’t feel comfortable around him, he had gotten to know a few of them. Eight years ago, he’d almost been killed in an attack on a Portuguese fort and escaped into the jungle, more dead than alive. There he had found Kangela and she had nursed him back to health.

  Since his recovery and his marriage to Kangela, he had not mixed with the tribal people on a regular basis. Their ways were not his, and he had never quite been accepted among them. Ngola would always be known as an outsider among them. He had not made many friends even though they knew he fought the Portuguese. His wife’s people also hated him for taking their young sons to crew his ship. Many of those young men did not return, either because they were dead or because they wanted to see the world.

  “I am Olufemi. My wife is aunt to your wife’s father.”

  Ngola thought he might have known that, but the familial relationships among the tribe were too many and too complicated to keep track of.

  “What are you doing here?” Ngola asked.

  “Salazar and his slavers attacked our village.”

  A chill passed through Ngola and he held the lantern up high so he could survey the nearby faces. His heart sped up as he realized he recognized at least a dozen more people from Kangela’s tribe. He didn’t see her there, nor did he see Emeka, their son. But his relief was washed away by the old man’s next words.

  “The slavers took Kangela, Ngola, and they have your son too. Lukamba ordered that they and others be brought along with the shore party to look for the captain’s treasure. They are to be sacrificed to the demons Lukamba seeks.”

  *

  Olufemi sat on a stool on the ship’s deck. The fresh air seemed to do the old man some good, as did the bread and wine Ngola had one of his men bring from the ship’s galley.

  Ngola struggled to keep himself calm, forcing himself to think when every fiber of his being demanded that he set sail to the coast to look for his lost family. From what those captured in the hold said, the captain and his captive as well as the witch doctor had sailed for shore only a short time ago. Ngola clung to the belief that Kangela and Emeka were still alive, but knowing they lived to become prey for Lukamba almost unhinged him.

  “The slavers came to our village four or five days ago.” Olufemi shook his head. “I think I have kept track, but I cannot say for certain how much time has passed.” He sipped wine from a bottle. “Captain Salazar came among us looking for you.”

  “Me?” That surprised Ngola. He was careful to leave no trail back to the village, which was farther inland than many of the Portuguese traveled. Normally they depended on the African tribes that dealt in slavery to sell prisoners into chains.

  “Yes.” The old man nodded. Pain showed in his rheumy eyes, but it wasn’t from his current physical distresses. He was afraid for those who had been taken. “Someone in the village told the Portuguese captain that you lived among us.”

  “Who did such a thing?”

  “I do not know. I have heard that whoever gave the slaver captain the information did so for gold, or revenge over a son that was lost to your crew and never returned.”

  Ngola said nothing. He had the blood of several of the tribe’s young men on his hands, and there was no way he could dispute that.

  “The slavers came in the dead of night. We had no chance for escape. Your wife fought bravely, but they captured your son. Once the Portuguese had Emeka, Kangela surrendered.”

  Ngola breathed in, forcing himself to listen.

  “You should have seen her, Ngola. She killed two of the men before she surrendered, and she would have killed more.” The old man looked proud, but the fearful sadness quickly shone again in his eyes. “There were men among the slavers that would have murdered her for those that she killed, but Captain Salazar stayed their hands.”

  “Where are they now?”

  The old man waved at the darkened coastline to the east over the prow. “There. While the slavers took prisoners from the village, Lukamba killed Uzochi and raided his house.”

  Uzochi was the tribe’s houngan, versed in the ways of the vodun spirits and the art of healing.

  “Lukamba searched among Uzochi’s belongings and took from them the medicinal roots and fetishes the houngan had made. Among those things, Lukamba found a map.”

  “What kind of map?”

  “I do not know. I only heard this, and saw that Captain Salazar was at once interested. A Portuguese ship’s name was mentioned. Escorpiao.”

  Drury glanced at Ngola. “The Scorpion?” He shook his head. “That ship is a myth, Ngola, a tale that is told by men with wine to drink and time on their hands.”

  The Scorpion had supposedly sailed West Africa over a hundred years ago. Captain Antonio de Cardoso had gotten rich from the slave trade, then he had vanished. Some said that he had sunk at sea, weighed down by his riches, or that a tentacled water demon dragged him below the waves.

  Others insisted that de Cardoso had sailed up a West African river to hide his treasure.

  “Perhaps the tale of The Scorpion is only a legend.” Ngola stared at the shadow-filled coastline. “But there is where Captain Salazar has gone, so I will follow.”

  *

  Clad in boots and a thick cotton shirt to blunt the wind’s cruel teeth, a brace of pistols slung across his chest, Ngola clambered down the side of the ship to the waiting longboat. His pulse beat at his temples even though he was certain his heart felt frozen in his chest.

  Eight of his men sat ready at the oars, all of them armed to the teeth. Joao crouched in the stern to man the tiller. The wind came out of the west and blew toward the dark coast a quarter mile to the east.

  Before Ngola could take his place at one of the oars, Drury dropped down into the longboat beside him. Ngola looked at his friend with displeasure. “You’re not coming.”

  Drury’s eyes narrowed and he shook his head. “I’m not staying, mate.”

  “Someone has to remain with Mambele.” Ngola’s ship had sailed nearer, only a stone’s throw from the slave vessel and stood tall and proud under the scudding clouds.

  “I put Olamilekan in charge of the ship.”

  “Olamilekan is not a captain.”

  “He is till we get back.” Drury sat on the bench on the other side of Ngola.

  Anger and uncertainty rolled like fiery coals in Ngola’s belly. “I do not want to lose my ship.”

  Drury returned Ngola’s gaze full measure. “You don’t want to lose your wife and son, mate. I will not lose them. I was the first to hold that boy when he was born.” He put a hand on Ngola’s shoulder. “You need me. And if you don’t, then Kangela and Emeka do. I’m not going to hang about and hope for the best.” He took a breath and picked up his oar. “Now…are you going to argue some more? Or are we going to go save your family?”

  *

  Feeling the power of the sea as he braced himself and flexed, Ngola pulled the oar with even strokes. All of the longboat’s crew did. At one time or another, they had all been sailors or slaves. Most of them had been both.

  The longboat rose and fell with the waves that rolled in to the coast. The prow cleaved the white caps.
/>   Ngola shook his head and concentrated on his rowing. Some of his rage and anxiety uncoiled with the familiar toil. Each pull took him closer to the coast, closer to his family…and closer to the men he would kill.

  “Do you think Lukamba knows he has your wife and child?” Drury asked.

  Ngola pulled again. Stories were often told among the tribes of the things Lukamba knew, and the bloodthirsty way he learned of those things. “Perhaps I will ask Lukamba when I see him. Perhaps I’ll just cut his throat and listen to him drown in his own blood. Why he has done what he has done will not matter because he will be dead.”

  *

  Wading through the knee-high rolling tide, Ngola helped pull the longboat up onto the beach only a few feet from the four longboats that had been left on the sand by the Portuguese and Lukamba. Captain Salazar had taken a large number of men with him.

  In the pale moonlight, Ngola spotted the imprints of boots as well as the smaller footprints of women and children.

  “Wait here.” Ngola held up a hand to hold his men back. Slowly, like a hunting cat, he walked across the beach, senses alert to the jungle twenty feet away.

  Making himself remain patient, telling himself that the time he spent now would increase his chances of getting Kangela and Emeka back alive, Ngola studied the impressions of boots and footprints by torchlight. He noted the differences among them, thrusting sticks into the ground as he distinguished the tracks, trailing them for a ways till he was certain of his deductions.

  He looked back at the sticks standing up in the sand and quickly counted them. The torch whipped in the wind and burned warmly across his cheek. “There are five or six children, four women, and twenty-seven or twenty-nine slavers.” He looked at his warriors. “We will be outnumbered, but I do not want to send for more men. That would take too long and a larger group will be harder to hide as we pursue them.”