Tai-Pan

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

Brock watched Struan climb the path that led up the knoll from the shadow of the roofless abandoned church. He saw the bunched fighting iron and felt somewhat nauseated. Yet he was glad that at long last there was to be a showdown.

He shifted the thong of his own fighting iron, stood up, and moved into the open. He grasped his knife with his left hand.

Struan saw Brock the instant he moved from the cover of the church and momentarily forgot the plan that he had decided upon. He stopped. All he could remember was that this was his enemy whom he must destroy. With an effort Struan cleared his head and continued to climb the path, his muscles quivering with the anxiety to begin.

At last the two men confronted each other.

“Thee planned elopement and duel, didn’t thee?” Brock snarled.

“Aye.” Struan let the bunched fighting iron fall. It jingled hatefully. Again he had to strain to recall what he had decided to say.

Brock gripped the haft of his fighting iron and eased forward a step and readied.

Only Struan’s eyes moved. “I’m sorry Gorth died the way he died,” Struan said. “I’d have enjoyed killing him.”

Brock made no answer. But he shifted his weight imperceptibly, the east wind ruffling his hair.

Struan’s dirk appeared in his left hand and he crouched slightly. “Tess be poxed.”

Brock stopped in his tracks. “She baint. Doctor sayed Culum were clean.”

“Doctors can be bought,” Struan said, feeling the blood lust swamping him. “She was poxed deliberately!”

“Why, you—” Brock swung the fighting iron viciously and lunged at Struan. The metal barb missed Struan’s eyes by only a fraction of an inch. Struan swayed back and hacked, but Brock sidestepped and they began to circle each other like two animals.

“By Gorth! That’s what Gorth planned,” Struan said. He wanted to have done with talking. “You hear? That was Gorth’s doing.”

Brock’s head was pounding. All he could think of was to close with the enemy and kill.

Again there was a violent skirmish, and again they flailed at each other with the fighting irons. Brock parried a knife slash by Struan, who twisted out of range and knew that he could not contain himself and back off much longer. “Gorth planned the pox!”

“God curse thy lies!” Brock stalked Struan slowly.

“Gorth gave Culum spiked liquor. And an aphrodisiac. Gorth paid a whorehouse to put him with a poxed woman. He wanted Culum poxed! That’s your cursed son. Understand?”

“Liar!”

“But by the grace of God, Culum’s na poxed—I only said it to make you understand why I wanted to kill Gorth. Culum’s na poxed. Tess neither.”

“Wot?”

“Aye. That’s the truth, before God.”

“Devil! Blasphemer! You lie afore God!”

Struan feinted and Brock backed and readied menacingly. But Struan did not hack with the weapon. He went through the open door of the derelict church and stood in front of the altar.

“Before God I swear that’s the truth!”

He turned, and his control snapped. All sound seemed to cease, and the whole world was Brock and the frantic urge to kill. He began to come back down the aisle, slowly. “Gorth murdered a whore in Macao and another here,” he hissed. “That’s more truth. His blood is na on my hands, but yours will be.”

Brock backed out of the doorway, his gaze never wavering from Struan’s. The wind had dropped and he knew it to be strange, untoward strange. But he paid it no heed.

“Then—then thee . . . had cause,” Brock said. “I—takes back wot I sayed. Thee had cause, by God.” Now he was outside on the ground and he stopped, at bay. “I takes it all back about Gorth. But that baint the settling twixt thee an’ me.” His rage at Gorth and at Struan and at all the years scorched him, and he knew only that now he must fight and hack and kill. To stay alive.

Then he felt the new wind on his cheek.

Abruptly his head cleared. He stared at the mainland.

Struan was momentarily put off balance by the suddenness of Brock’s movement, and he hesitated.

“Wind be changed,” Brock croaked.

“Eh?” Struan made an effort to concentrate and backed away, not trusting Brock.

Now they were both staring over mainland China, listening intently, tasting the wind.

It was coming from the north.

Gently but unmistakably.

“It be squall, mayhaps,” Brock said, his voice wounding him, his heart thundering; all strength was gone from him.

“Na from the north!” Struan said, feeling equally depleted. Oh God, for a moment I was an animal. But for the wind changing—

“Typhoon!”

They looked at the harbor. The junks and sampans were scurrying for shore.

“Aye,” Struan said. “But that was the truth. About Gorth.”

Brock tasted the bile in his mouth and he spat it out. “I be apologizing for Gorth. Yus. That were provoked and he be dead an’ more’s the pity.” Where be I goin’ wrong? he asked himself. Where? “Wot be done, be done. I sayed my piece to thee at Settlement. Yus, I were wrong to call thee out today, but I sayed my piece in Canton and I baint changing. I baint changing any more than thee. But the day thee come again’ me with cat in thy hand be the day there baint a stopping twixt us’n. Thee choose that day, as I sayed afore. Agreed?”

Struan felt curiously faint. “Agreed.” He backed off and unfastened his fighting iron and sheathed his knife, watching Brock, distrusting him.

Brock also put away his weapons.

“And you’ll forgive Culum and Tess?”

“They’s dead afore my face, like I sayed. Till Culum be part of Brock and Sons and Brock and Sons be Noble House and I be Tai-Pan o’ Noble House.”

Struan dropped his metal whip on the ground and Brock dropped his.

Both men swiftly left the hill by different paths.