Still no one paid him any attention.

  ‘Ralph,’ called a voice – it was low and cautious.

  He spun around, but saw only half a dozen gaunt-faced Africans, squatting on the sand. Most looked at the ground, rubbing every now and then at their ankles, where the chains had chafed them raw. But one had his head up, his eyes focused on Ralph.

  ‘Ralph,’ he said again.

  Ralph stared. Fixated on the guards, he had not looked closely at the captives. It was Jobe.

  ‘Did you not recognise me?’ Jobe’s face twisted in a sneer. ‘Marius also seems to have forgotten our bargain.’

  ‘I did not see you.’

  ‘Just another slave.’ Jobe nodded to the rifle on Ralph’s back. ‘Marius, I never trusted. But you . . .’ The angry stare Jobe gave him made Ralph’s soul shrivel in shame. ‘I thought more of you.’

  ‘I am not here with Marius.’ Ralph glanced over his shoulder. If the guards caught him talking with one of the captives, they would ask questions. ‘Ann found me. I came to rescue you.’ He saw Jobe did not believe him. ‘I swear it.’

  Jobe lifted his ankle, making the chains rattle. ‘Then set me free.’

  Up on the corner of the stockade, one of the guards had stopped moving and was staring at Ralph and Jobe.

  ‘I cannot.’

  ‘You mean you will not.’

  Ralph felt the weight of disgust in Jobe’s voice. ‘If I try to save you now, we will both be caught. Even if we escaped, what would happen to the others? Marius would have them moved onto the ship before we could act.’

  Ralph saw that Jobe was formulating a rebuttal, but Ralph’s answer had taken him by surprise. He followed up quickly: ‘Remember the beach at Blaauwberg. I told you then that I would come back for you, and I did not lie. I will come back again.’

  ‘I was not in chains.’

  ‘I will get you out of them.’

  ‘Easy to say when you are walking free.’

  It was too late. One of the guards had ambled across from the gate, rifle angled low, and was only a few paces away.

  ‘This Kaffir giving you trouble?’

  It would take a single word from Jobe to betray Ralph. Ralph thought he might do it simply because he was so angry – his face was twisted by a bitter fury.

  With a shudder, as if something had been torn loose inside him, Jobe turned his eyes down to the ground.

  ‘No trouble,’ said Ralph. ‘I think he wants some water.’

  ‘Hah.’ With a deft movement, the guard reversed his rifle and slammed the butt into the side of Jobe’s head. ‘Kaffirs get what they’re given.’ He glanced at the blockhouse. ‘Where’s Henderson? He should be on watch.’

  ‘Went for a piss,’ said Ralph, not looking at Jobe.

  ‘Bloody clap, more like,’ said the guard. ‘He’s tupped half these Kaffir girls already. His cock’s probably ready to rot off.’

  Laughing, he turned away. Ralph resisted the urge to stick a knife between his shoulders.

  At his feet, Jobe lay prone, clutching his head. Blood oozed into his hair from the gash the rifle had left. He gazed up at Ralph, and the space between them yawned like a chasm. Blood dribbled over his temple and ran into his eye.

  If a look could have held Ralph there, it would have been Jobe’s.

  ‘I will come back for you,’ Ralph promised, a whisper so faint he did not know if Jobe heard it.

  He wrenched himself away and followed the guard to the gate, leaving Jobe lying on the sand, clutching his wound.

  ‘It is impossible to free them,’ Ralph said.

  He was standing in a clearing in the bush, with Ann, Hamu, Thabisa and the Zulu company. This was where they had chosen to set up camp. Hamu had posted pickets, but even so, every snapping branch and rustling leaf alarmed Ralph.

  ‘You shoot, we charge,’ said Hamu, pragmatically.

  ‘I could not fire that quickly. Nor could you run fast enough.’

  Hamu had no concept of what a massed rank of rifles would do to his men. Brave as the Zulus were, Ralph did not believe that they could sustain a charge against Marius’s guns, even if they survived the first blast.

  ‘Then do not fight,’ said Hamu. ‘Why Zulus die for amaLala?’

  ‘What is amaLala?’ said Ann.

  Marius’s words came back to Ralph: A cross between an Irishman and a Kaffir. ‘It is the Zulus’ word for the people who live beyond their borders. They do not mean it as a compliment.’

  The expression made him think of Jobe. I am amaLala, the Xhosa warrior had lamented. Why should Ralph expect Zulus to risk their lives to save people they despised?

  I will get you out of those chains. I swear it.

  Ralph could still walk away. Many times in his life, he had backed out of a fight, and there had not been a time that he had regretted it. But that would be to break faith with Jobe – and with Ann.

  He turned to Hamu, trying to marshal his thoughts. ‘If you let this happen, Marius will grow rich. With more money, he will buy more guns. With more guns, he will mount bigger raids. Eventually, he will take Zulus as slaves, and when you try to stop him, you will find you have let him become monstrously powerful.’

  Ralph could see that what he had said made sense to Hamu. The induna frowned, unable to hide his distress at the future Ralph had described for his land and his people.

  ‘You saw how Marius treated King Shaka,’ Ralph went on. ‘Even when he was alone, he would not bow to the king. Think what he would do with a thousand men at his back, all carrying guns.’

  Hamu had seen what one man with a rifle had done against the Ndwandwes. It was easy for him to imagine what a thousand firesticks might do.

  ‘I fight with you,’ he announced with pride.

  Ralph clasped the induna’s arm. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘But how?’

  The question hung unanswered between them. In numbers, the slavers and the Zulus were more or less evenly matched. But the slavers had a gun each, and the cannons aboard the ship. Ralph and his men possessed a rifle and a small cask of black powder.

  ‘We would need a cannon to stand any chance against them,’ Ralph mused. ‘But I do not suppose there is one between here and Port Elizabeth, besides those on the ship.’

  Ann was thinking. She bit her lip, as if she did not quite trust herself to speak. ‘Perhaps there is a way,’ she said hesitantly.

  Marius wiped the sweat from his eyes and cursed the blacks for what felt like the thousandth time. It had taken Sterling’s men days to hunt them down after they fled the stockade, and some were still loose.

  ‘We should have stuck with cattle, hey?’ he said to Ratray. ‘They are not half so much trouble.’

  ‘But there’s not half so much profit.’ Ratray stood over a brazier, fanning it with a palm leaf. The coals pulsed red.

  ‘They will not get away again,’ said Marius.

  It was all the fault of that bitch, Ann Waite. If not for her, the prisoners would be aboard the Nanticoke and on the way to Havana by now. She had betrayed her race, and betrayed him, and that was unforgivable.

  Marius had thought it would be easy to recapture Ann. A white woman and a small boy could not go far; nor could they survive long in the wilderness. Yet she had eluded him for longer than he had thought possible, even with patrols scouring the bush for fugitives. It had angered him. He would happily have swapped half a dozen of the blacks they had found for the chance to get his hands on her.

  It did not matter, he told himself. There was nowhere for her to go. When she was hungry and desperate, she would slink back. She would use all her womanly charms to make Marius forgive her. He chuckled. He would hold out his hand, coaxing and gentle, as if he was calling a rare bird from the forest. He would let her think she was safe. He would put on his smile, so she would see that Marius the stupid Dutchman was simply happy that she had returned.

  And then, when he had her in his grasp, he would wring her neck. After he had taught her a few harsh lessons, of course. A lascivious grin spread across his face as he imagined what he would do to her – he could almost taste it – and what his men would do afterwards when he threw them her fragile, starving body.

  ‘You thinking about the darkie women again?’ Ratray asked. He pointed to the brazier. The coals were so hot that flames licked out from among them. ‘Seems a shame to spoil them like this.’

  Marius shrugged. ‘It is what we do with cattle.’

  He picked up the branding iron. It was a crude implement: a marlinspike from the ship, with its tip bent to make a rough circle, and a wooden handle fitted to the end. As he held it in the coals, his mind turned to Ralph Courtney. The day before, one of the guards had gone missing and another, Henderson, had been attacked and knocked out – not by a prisoner, but by a white man. Henderson had not recognised his assailant, but when he described the tall man with blue eyes and a knot of scars on his cheek, Marius knew at once who it must be.

  Ralph Courtney had returned.

  The news made Marius furious. But after he had taken out his anger on one of the slave girls, he had become more philosophical. Most likely, Ralph had simply come for more powder. When he had seen Marius’s strength – the men and the ship in the bay – he had surely become frightened, and decided to run away with the powder like a thief. That Ralph was able to penetrate Marius’s stockade so easily, and in the middle of the day, left a sliver of anxiety in Marius’s mind. He would hunt Ralph down. I will teach you to steal from me, Marius thought. But first, he had to get the slaves away.

  The iron was glowing red-hot now. Marius nodded to the man at the stockade’s gate, one of Sterling’s crew.

  ‘We’re ready.’

  The guard cracked the gate open. With shouts and the prod of a sword, Jobe was pushed out on to the sand and driven to the brazier. He was naked, but his hands and feet were still chained, his scalp heavily scabbed from being clubbed by the rifle butt. Marius grabbed his arms and held him tight.

  ‘Keep still,’ he grunted. ‘It will hurt more if you move, hey?’

  Jobe twisted and tugged against Marius’s grip, but he had spent too long on starvation rations to break free.

  ‘You are not a man,’ he hissed. ‘You are a devil. You make promises, and then you sell a man’s soul.’

  ‘Kaffirs don’t have souls.’

  Ratray took the red-hot iron and pressed it into the soft skin below Jobe’s shoulder. Jobe tried to keep silent, but even pride could not withstand the pain. He screamed, drowning out the angry hiss of the iron on his flesh. Marius held him fast, until Ratray was satisfied with his handiwork.

  Finally, Marius freed his prisoner. Jobe staggered away, his chains restricting his movement, holding him back as he tried to run down to the lagoon. Marius watched him as he fell, scrambled to his feet and fell again. The pain drove Jobe on and he began crawling down the beach until he reached the water and began desperately scooping it over his arm. Jobe screamed again as the salt bit into his raw flesh.

  ‘You need to go faster,’ Marius told Ratray as he watched two of Sterling’s men grab Jobe and begin to haul him back to the stockade. ‘We’ve dozens of these to do.’

  Normally they would have completed the branding several days before embarking, to give the scars time to heal before the slaves were confined in the foetid hold. But after the escape, and Ralph’s appearance in the stockade, none of the slavers were in the mood to delay any longer.

  The next victim was a young woman, no more than eighteen. Trying to cover herself with her hands, she stumbled forward a few paces – straight into Marius. He looked her up and down.

  ‘No time for that,’ said Ratray. He dug the branding iron into the coals, sending up a shower of sparks. ‘Hold her still.’

  He pulled out the iron and advanced towards the girl. She held herself stiff, refusing to cower as Ratray brought the iron closer to her chest. Only the tremble of her lower lip betrayed her fear.

  A shout from the stockade interrupted them. Ratray and Marius looked up, following the guard’s outstretched arm to the line of trees where he was pointing. Ralph was walking across the sand, unarmed, his hands in the air. The sight made Ratray lose his grip on the branding iron. It swung down and knocked against his knee with a fizz of scalded flesh. He howled with pain and dropped it onto the sand.

  Marius pushed the girl away and wheeled around to confront Ralph.

  ‘So you came back, hey?’ he said easily. ‘Was the powder you stole yesterday not enough?’

  Ralph’s blue eyes surveyed the men on the beach, and an amused smile played at the corners of his mouth. As if two dozen men armed like pirates were nothing more than an entertainment.

  ‘I can see you have been busy.’

  ‘Busy making money. Can you say as much?’

  ‘I’m sure you planned to share the profits,’ Ralph said. ‘But this is not a trade I wish to be part of.’

  ‘Then we have nothing to discuss.’

  ‘I do not wish you to be part of it either.’

  ‘That’s a shame,’ said Ratray. ‘Because you ain’t one to tell us what we can be doing.’

  ‘Let the prisoners go,’ said Ralph. ‘Or suffer the consequences.’

  ‘Consequences?’ Ratray gave a laugh. ‘The sole consequence is that you’ll get a thrashing you won’t forget. Unless we put you aboard, too.’ He jabbed his finger at Ralph. ‘There’d be a few pennies to be made selling a good-looking boy like you to the right buyer.’

  Marius was blunter. ‘I will give you one minute to leave this beach alive. And if you ever come back . . .’ He smacked his fist into the palm of his hand.

  Ralph didn’t move. ‘I will be more generous. Five minutes, to free all of those slaves. Otherwise, I will order my men to attack.’

  A few of the slavers glanced anxiously at the bush, but most just laughed. Marius advanced towards Ralph.

  ‘What men? A handful of starving Kaffirs with spears? Bring them on. There is enough space in our ship to hold them.’

  ‘As you wish,’ said Ralph. He put out his arm and windmilled it up and down.

  Nothing happened. Ratray leered at him; Jobe glared at him with furious disappointment.

  ‘Is this a joke?’ said Marius.

  An explosion sounded from one of the low hills overlooking the bay. All the men spun around and saw a column of smoke rising from the trees, and a plume of spray erupt from the water just off the Nanticoke’s bow.

  ‘What the devil?’ said Ratray.

  ‘I have a cannon,’ Ralph announced.

  ‘That is not possible!’ Marius looked as if he was about to explode himself. ‘Kaffirs do not have cannons.’

  ‘These do. And they are not Kaffirs. They are Zulus.’

  Another shot boomed around the bay. Another spout of water fountained, this time only half a cable from the Nanticoke.

  Steady, Ralph thought. You were only supposed to fire once. You will split the old gun in half if you keep that up.

  ‘My gunners are finding their range,’ he said. ‘Will you keep talking until they start shooting holes in your ship?’

  Across the water, he could see the Nanticoke’s crew running about her deck in confusion. They stared at the hills – but the gun was hidden by the bush. All they had to tell her position was smoke rising from the trees, and the squawking of a flock of startled parrots. Even if they had wanted to try their luck, the ship was anchored in a position where her guns could not be brought to bear on the hillside, and there were not enough men aboard to warp her around.

  ‘You see that smoke?’ said Ralph. ‘That is not just gunsmoke.’ Within the drifting white haze, a column of dark woodsmoke was rising into the sky. ‘They have a furnace lit. You know what heated shot could do to an anchored ship?’

  ‘Where did you get the cannon?’ Marius demanded.

  Ralph’s grin broadened. ‘You should never underestimate the Zulus.’

  It had been Ann’s doing. She had led them through the undergrowth along the trail that Harry had found, to the clearing with the graves by the ruined house. She had shown them the iron cannon embedded in the ground.

  Hamu had stared at it as if it were made of gold. For the Zulus, iron was a scarce and precious commodity. To see so much in one object was like looking at a gold reef.

  ‘How many spear blades you can make from this,’ said Hamu.

  Ralph had clapped him on the shoulder. ‘We can do better than spear blades.’

  Ann pulled away the creepers that shrouded its breech and exposed the design she had seen embossed in the metal. The letters C.B.T.C.

  ‘Do you know what that stands for?’

  Courtney Brothers Trading Company, thought Ralph. The company my ancestors used to make their fortunes.

  ‘It must be the foundry mark.’

  Ann pulled the creepers back further. Underneath the letters, a date was stamped: 1711.

  ‘So long ago,’ said Ann. ‘Do you think it still works?’

  The barrel must have been there for over a hundred years. If they tried to fire it, the shock of a powder charge might split it in half, or shatter it into razor-sharp fragments that would cut through anyone near it.

  But the paint on it was still thick, and when Ralph rapped the barrel, it rang sound and true.

  ‘There is only one way to find out.’

  They had dug out the soil around it, then attached vines to the trunnions and hauled the cannon up the hillside to a place where they could see the ship in the bay. Even with two dozen men pulling it, and logs underneath as rollers, it was laborious work.

  There was no gun carriage, nor had they the time to build one. Ralph had laid the cannon on the ground, its barrel propped up on rocks, pointing towards the Nanticoke. They did not need to be able to change its aim. It had only a single target.

  But they would need ammunition to hit it.

  ‘What shall we fire?’ Ann had asked. ‘We have no cannon balls.’

  The Zulus had their spear blades, but that was not enough metal for even a half-sized cannonball. Nor did they have the time, or the skill, to make a forge to melt them.

  Ralph had picked up a stone. It was smooth, about the size of his fist.