‘Adam fought me off. We duelled the length of the ship, while the world burned around us. I was a strong fighter, and younger, but he was defending his family. He disarmed me. I was helpless.

  ‘Then fate intervened. The ship broke in half. A burning spar fell to the deck and pinned us both beneath it. That was how I got these scars on my face. I managed to get free, but Adam was not so lucky.

  ‘I went back to Lizzie in the stern and stood over her and the baby. In that moment, I could have ended everything. But . . .’ A shudder went through him, a deep convulsion of the soul. ‘I could not. My sword would not strike. I looked at Harry in his mother’s arms, and all I saw was an innocent child and his frightened mother.

  ‘The Tiger sank. Adam died. My own crew deserted me, and whether they managed to save themselves or drowned, I do not know. When dawn broke next morning, there was no sign of any other boat. I was left with another man’s widow, and the child I could not kill. The rest you know.’

  He fell silent.

  ‘I do not expect you to forgive me,’ he added. ‘I know what I am.’

  Ann shook her head. ‘You saved Harry. And everything you did – however dreadful it may have been – is what brought him to me. I know I should hate it, but I cannot.’

  She lifted her arm. She had meant to reach out, but Ralph cowered as if she was going to strike him. Or perhaps he wanted her to hit him, so the pain might somehow absolve him of his sins.

  She lowered her hand. Ralph straightened.

  ‘I should not have told you that.’

  ‘I am glad you did.’

  ‘You must never tell Harry,’ Ralph said. ‘He must never know.’

  He saw conflict in her face, but when Ann spoke her voice was firm. ‘I cannot hide Harry’s past from him. When he is older, he will need to know the truth. Then he can make his own decision.’

  Ralph wanted to tell her that it was a mistake: it would lead only to bloodshed and death. But it was too late for that. By telling her, he had made his choice. The secret was no longer his.

  While they had been talking, the rain shower had passed, and the clouds had cleared. The moon shone clear and full, lighting their way.

  ‘It is time to move on,’ Ralph said.

  As the new day broke, the river funnelled into a steep-sided valley, winding ever upwards. The valley walls hid their surroundings, so they could no longer see the mountains, though Ralph could feel the wild immensity of them all around. They picked their way over rocks where the slopes had collapsed; elsewhere, thick bush came down so close to the river that they had to wade through the shallows by its bank.

  The higher they climbed, the more Ralph dared to believe that he might have found the way he was looking for. Perhaps the river had carved a pass that would lead him through the mountains.

  Then he reached a bend and realised it had all been in vain.

  The land broadened out into a vast bowl, surrounded on three sides by a ring of mountains packed so close they merged into a single wall. Its face rose out of the valley, two thousand feet of sheer rock that reared above shreds of cloud like the ramparts of Heaven itself. And over it came the river, plunging off the mountain in a billowing white ribbon that seemed to fall for an eternity.

  There was no way through. No pass, no cleft, no river gully. After so much effort, Ralph had led them into the bottom of a sack. They were trapped.

  He glanced back, and saw his worst fears confirmed. A party of Zulus was climbing up the valley behind them. They must have marched at a blistering pace to whittle away Ralph’s head start, yet they showed no sign of fatigue as they leaped from rock to rock.

  But one of the men moved with more deliberate purpose. He stood almost a head taller than any of the others, able to stride over the gaps between the rocks. You could tell by his silhouette he was not a Zulu: he wore trousers instead of a kilt, a baggy shirt and a straw hat. The long barrel of a rifle protruded from over his shoulder where he had slung it.

  Marius.

  Ralph had never imagined the Dutchman would come himself. He had assumed he would stay close to the throne, guarding his stake as Dingane consolidated his power.

  He must be desperate to make sure I am dead.

  Or, Ralph thought, perhaps Jobe had persuaded Dingane to send Marius to do the job, so that Marius and Ralph would destroy each other. The final piece of his revenge.

  Rage flooded through Ralph. Marius was the reason all this had happened. He had shattered the alliance with Ralph and Jobe by trying to make Jobe a slave; he had given Dingane the backing he needed to overthrow Shaka.

  The bowl under the mountains was so huge it was almost a world in itself, divided by ridges and outcrops knotted into fantastical shapes. Ralph could not see where the waterfall met the ground, but it seemed to him that the river had somehow carved and twisted the rock over centuries.

  In the shadow of those enormous cliffs, the lesser formations seemed mere ripples in the landscape, though in reality each was a formidable hill in its own right. Ralph scanned the landscape until he found a kopje, the top of which was divided by a cleft. The slopes in front of it were steep, loose scree, giving anyone who held the summit a wide field of fire.

  ‘There.’

  Ralph and his companions floundered up the slope, often losing their footing in the shifting stones, expecting at any moment to feel the impact of a bullet. Ralph could hear their pursuers’ shouts behind him. Something clattered off the rocks to his left – a spear or a falling rock, he did not see. He pushed onwards. His legs burned with the effort; his hands were raw from scrabbling over the rocks, but he forced himself to keep going.

  He rolled over the lip of the slope into the shadow of the krans at its summit. Thabisa was almost at the top, but Ann was lagging behind. Harry had stumbled and fallen; she was trying to help him up, but he kept sliding away from her on the loose stones.

  Three Zulus ran out at the foot of the slope. Two carried short stabbing spears, but one had a javelin. He dropped into a crouch, arm cocked to throw. Not an easy throw, against the slope, but Ralph had seen the Zulu hunters hit targets over greater distances many times.

  Ralph brought up his rifle and fired. The spearman fell back, clutching his ribs, while the other two retreated.

  ‘Harry,’ Ann screamed.

  Ralph looked down. Harry should have gained the top by now; instead, he was skidding down the slope. The sound of the shot had surprised him. He had lost his grip and was slipping further and further away.

  More Zulus were gathering at the foot of the slope. Soon Harry would slide right into their hands. Ralph had no time to think. With a curse, he vaulted over the lip and plunged after the boy. He stumbled, half leaping, half sliding, so fast he thought he would break his neck.

  Harry had managed to grab a tree stump midway down the slope and slow his descent. Ralph almost flew past him. He dug his heels into the ground to stop himself, then grabbed the boy’s shoulder, almost wrenching his arm from its socket.

  ‘Come on!’

  Inch by inch, he dragged Harry back up. His feet were slipping as he tried to climb. He could hear Ann shouting warnings to him from the top of the kopje. He knew men were coming up behind him. The stones he dislodged tumbled on to the Zulus, battering their hands and heads, but one warrior was more agile than the rest. He sprang up the slope and Ralph, dragging Harry, could not outrun him.

  A shot rang out. The Zulu was thrown backwards. He lost his balance and cartwheeled down in a welter of blood and flailing limbs. Ralph saw Thabisa at the top of the escarpment, holding a smoking rifle.

  Never underestimate a woman’s resolve, he thought to himself.

  With a final effort, he tucked Harry under his arm and staggered into the lee of the cliff.

  Ann handed him another rifle. She had loaded it: the pan was primed and the hammer cocked. As soon as her hands were free, she wrapped Harry in an embrace that almost crushed him.

  ‘In there,’ Ralph shouted, pointing to the cleft in the rock. The mouth of the fissure was wide enough that two of them could stand shoulder to shoulder, while the others sheltered further back.

  Four of the Zulus were still climbing up. Ralph sent one sprawling with a well-aimed shot; Thabisa managed to hit another in the thigh. The other two scrambled back down the slope.

  Smoke hung in the air. Ralph’s ears rang with the noise of the gunshots so that the world seemed distant and muted. For a moment, a strange silence descended.

  The Zulus gathered at the bottom of the slope. A sapling on the edge of the bush shuddered as Marius pushed past it and came out into the open. He stared up at the kopje, hands on his hips.

  ‘You led us quite a chase, hey?’ He looked gaunt. His cheeks were hollow, fringed with a ragged beard. But he was still tall and broad, and his limbs had lost none of their restless power. ‘Now we have you.’

  ‘You should have let me go,’ Ralph called back. ‘Stayed and got rich with your new master. No doubt he will reward his lapdog well.’

  He had chosen his words to wound.

  ‘No Kaffir will ever be my master,’ Marius snarled. ‘He has his kingdom, for now. But things change.’

  Ralph wished the Zulus could understand what Marius said. If only they knew what he really thought of their king.

  ‘If we fight, many of you will die,’ Ralph said loudly, switching to isiZulu so that the warriors could understand. ‘This is not your fight. It is between me and the abelumbi.’

  The Zulus gazed back impassively. They had followed Ralph relentlessly for days: it was foolishness to hope he could change their minds now. Even so, he could not believe they wanted to die here, like this.

  He ran his eyes over the row of faces below him. Dingane would not have sent his most trusted men: he would have needed them close at hand. He would have sent men who had served Shaka faithfully, who would know that they must prove their loyalty to the new regime or be deemed traitors.

  Sure enough, among the faces was one he recognised. A slim, wiry man with darker-than-average skin and finely drawn cheekbones. He wore a white eagle feather in his hair and carried a shield of brown and white hide.

  ‘I see you, Sibebu,’ Ralph called. ‘We fought alongside each other at eZindololwane. My firestick saved your life that day. I have no quarrel with you.’

  Sibebu would not meet Ralph’s gaze. He stared ahead, gripping his spear.

  Marius laughed. ‘You have no authority now,’ he jeered. ‘These men will do whatever I say. If I give a good account of them to the king, maybe he will give them some of the lands that were yours.’

  ‘Dingane will already be plotting how to get rid of you,’ Ralph warned. ‘I would go back now, before you find Nativity Bay burned to the ground.’

  Marius shook his head. His mouth twisted in a grin. ‘I have come too far for this.’

  ‘There is no profit in it.’

  ‘There is always profit in claiming a debt.’

  Marius barked a command to his men. He must have learned enough Zulu to make himself understood, for Ralph did not hear the echo of a translation. The Zulus stamped their feet and readied their weapons.

  ‘Are they going to attack?’ Harry had crawled forward to peer over the edge. His face was alight with excitement. ‘Will we fight them?’

  ‘Do you remember how to load a gun the way I showed you?’ said Ralph.

  Harry nodded.

  ‘Then stay behind me. Every time I fire, you have another gun ready.’ Ralph looked at Ann. ‘You can reload for Thabisa?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. She looked as if she was about to be sick.

  All the hours they had struggled under the weight of the guns were worth it now. Ralph took his rifle, checked the priming carefully, and then looked for Marius. For all their bravado, he did not think the Zulus wanted to assault his position. Without their leader, they would probably slink back to Dingane. They would say that they had killed Ralph, and no one would be able to contradict them.

  But Marius had retreated into the shelter of the trees, and Ralph could not get a clear shot. He counted at least a hundred Zulus.

  ‘Do we have enough bullets?’ Ann asked.

  ‘We are about to find out.’

  With a great shout, the Zulus charged.

  On a level battlefield, Marius’s men would have overcome Ralph before he could have fired his third shot. Here, fighting the slope and the ever-shifting footing, the odds turned against them. Ralph waited until they had advanced twenty yards up the hillside, then began to fire. The first man he hit fell into the man behind and knocked them both back. His second victim went down and tripped one of his companions. Thabisa blasted away beside him. Some men panicked and turned away, colliding with those coming up behind them and causing more chaos. The line buckled.

  Ralph took no pleasure in it. It was like shooting game that had been driven into a trap – except these were men, forced to fight because of a grudge they had no part of. He shot them down in the grim knowledge that if he did not, they would massacre him and his companions.

  The Zulu charge petered out and the survivors scrambled down the slope to regroup. Ralph heard Marius shouting angrily, damning them as dogs and cowards. He counted seven dead, and as many again nursing wounds.

  ‘Have we won?’ Harry asked.

  ‘No.’

  There were still too many Zulus. And they would not underestimate the power of the guns again. Ralph could see them studying the landscape, working out where they could outflank the defenders.

  Eventually, they would find a way to get up onto the krans behind Ralph. He looked behind him. The cleft where they had lodged themselves went deeper into the kopje and vanished around a corner. Was it a dead end?

  ‘See where that goes,’ he told Harry.

  Harry scampered down the rocky passage. He was gone longer than Ralph expected, and when he returned, it was with triumph on his face.

  ‘It goes all the way through,’ he announced. ‘It comes out the other side.’

  That was good – and bad.

  ‘It gives us a line of retreat,’ said Ralph, ‘but it also means they could come up behind us.’

  ‘They are coming now.’

  Thabisa had been keeping watch on Marius’s men, who had reformed and were advancing again. This time they divided into three groups: two skirting either flank of the slope while a third came up the centre, crawling on their stomachs. Marius loitered in the trees, directing operations with jerks of his gun. Still Ralph could not get a clear shot at him.

  ‘This will be harder.’

  The Zulus might not be used to facing gunfire, but they learned quickly. They came spread out in a long line, plenty of space between them. Ralph managed to knock two back, but Thabisa’s shots, less practised, went wide. The further the Zulus climbed, the more Ralph and Thabisa had to lean out of their redoubt.

  ‘Do not get too far in the open,’ Ralph cautioned Thabisa.

  To see her enemies, she had come well forward from the cliff. Up on one knee, squinting down the barrel, she would make a tempting target for a throwing spear – or for Marius, still prowling at the foot of the slope with his rifle.

  Thabisa ignored Ralph. She fired again, passed the musket to Ann and took the reloaded gun. Ralph had no time to see what she had hit. He was firing as fast as he could, alternating between the men on his left flank and those coming up the middle. Each time he managed to check one party, the other came forward.

  Every yard they advanced, his advantage was reduced. He had relied on the shock power of the guns to break the Zulus’ spirit, or else to inflict so many casualties at a distance that they gave up. Now, however frantically he fired his gun, he could not hold them back.

  Something sharp scratched his cheek, cutting into the scar tissue. He turned. In the rock face next to him was a small crater where a bullet had hit, throwing off the stone splinters that had grazed him. An inch higher and he would have lost his eye. It must have been Marius. Ralph could not see him through the smoke, and he had not noticed the shot above the din of his own firing.

  ‘Be careful,’ he called to Thabisa, pointing down the slope. He doubted she heard him. He could barely hear himself. The roar of the guns was deafening.

  The Zulus on the left had been pushed back, but those on the right had come up so close to the cliff that the defenders no longer had a clear shot at them. The group in the middle had found a shallow depression in the slope, where they could hide from the bullets if they pressed themselves flat.

  For a moment there was a lull while they gathered their strength. Ralph glanced back. Harry crouched behind him, laying out spare cartridges on a flat stone as neat as toy soldiers. His lips were pursed in concentration.

  The sight sparked a rage in Ralph. The boy should not be fighting for his life. His eyes met Ann’s, and he could see she was thinking the same thing.

  I will not let him die here. He wanted to say the words to comfort her, but they would not come.

  ‘Where is the rest of the ammunition?’ he asked.

  ‘This is all of it,’ Harry said.

  From the foot of the hill, Marius fired again. The bullet passed wide of Ralph, but that was not its purpose. It was the signal for the Zulus to attack.

  They rose as one and charged. The moment they were up, Ralph and Thabisa opened fire. At that distance they could not miss. Several men went down, but there were more to take their place. The gap closed.

  Seeing their objective so close spurred the attackers on. If Ralph had been a remote observer, he would have been in awe of their courage, charging head first into a fusillade of gunfire. Instead, he could only fire, pass the weapon back and fire again.

  The row of cartridges Harry had lined up grew shorter.

  The first of the Zulus reached the top of the slope and gave a triumphant shout. Ralph discharged the gun at him point-blank. The bullet shattered his skull, spraying blood everywhere. Ralph did not bother passing the gun back to Harry – there was no time. The next attacker was already on him. He swung the weapon round and smashed the butt into the man’s chest. It knocked him back over the edge and down the slope.