Birds of Prey Read Online Free

coup sped at his chest, glancing through his guard like a sunbeam. He twisted aside his upper body, but the thrust raked under his raised left arm. He felt no pain but heard the rasp of
the razor edge against his ribs, and the warm flood of blood down his flank. And he had ignored the weapon in Hal’s left fist and the boy used either hand with equal ease.
    At the edge of his vision he saw the shorter, stiffer blade speed towards his heart and threw himself back to avoid it. His heel caught in the tail of the yard brace, coiled on the deck, and he
went sprawling. The elbow of his sword arm slammed into the gunwale, numbing it to the fingertips, and the cutlass flew from his fingers.
    On his back, Aboli looked up helplessly and saw death above him in those terrifying green eyes. This was not the face of the child who had been his ward and special charge for the last decade,
the boy he had cherished and trained and loved over ten long years. This was a man who would kill him. The bright point of the cutlass started down, aimed at his throat, with the full weight of the
lithe young body behind it.
    ‘Henry!’ A stern, authoritative voice rang across the deck, cutting through the hubbub of the blood-crazed spectators.
    Hal started, and stood still with the point against Aboli’s throat. A bemused expression spread across his face, like that of an awakening dreamer, and he looked up at his father on the
break of the poop.
    ‘Avast that tomfoolery. Get you down to my cabin at once.’
    Hal glanced around the deck, at the flushed, excited faces surrounding him. He shook his head in puzzlement, and looked down at the cutlass in his hand. He opened his fingers and let it drop to
the planks. His legs turned to water under him and he sank down on top of Aboli and hugged him as a child hugs his father.
    ‘Aboli!’ he whispered, in the language of the forests that the black man had taught him and which was a secret no other white man on the ship shared with them. ‘I have hurt you
sorely. The blood! By my life, I could have killed you.’
    Aboli chuckled softly and answered in the same language, ‘It was past time. At last you have tapped the well of warrior blood. I thought you would never find it. I had to drive you hard to
it.’
    He sat up and pushed Hal away, but there was a new light in his eyes as he looked at the boy, who was a boy no longer. ‘Go now and do your father’s bidding!’
    Hal stood up shakily and looked again round the circle of faces, seeing an expression in them that he did not recognize: it was respect mingled with more than a little fear.
    ‘What are you gawking at?’ bellowed Ned Tyler. ‘The play is over. Do you have no work to do? Man those pumps. Those topgallants are luffing. I can find mastheads for all idle
hands.’ There was the thump of bare feet across the deck as the crew rushed guiltily to their duties.
    Hal stooped, picked up the cutlass, and handed it back to the boatswain, hilt first.
    ‘Thank you, Ned. I had need of it.’
    ‘And you put it to good use. I have never seen that heathen bested, except by your father before you.’
    Hal tore a handful of rag from the tattered hem of his canvas pantaloons, held it to his ear to staunch the bleeding, and went down to the stern cabin.
    Sir Francis looked up from his log-book, his goose quill poised over the page. ‘Do not look so smug, puppy,’ he grunted at Hal. ‘Aboli toyed with you, as he always does. He
could have spitted you a dozen times before you turned it with that lucky coup at the end.’
    When Sir Francis stood up there was hardly room for them both in the tiny cabin. The bulkheads were lined from deck to deck with books, more were stacked about their feet and leather-bound
volumes were crammed into the cubby-hole that served his father as a bunk. Hal wondered where he found place to sleep.
    His father addressed him in Latin. When they were alone he insisted on speaking the language of the educated and