Excerpt from Monsoon by Wilbur Smith, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Tom almost said, -He ran away,' but he stopped the disloyal words before they were spoken. 'He went home, I think, sir.'

Hal rode on in silence, feeling the two warm bodies pressed gratefully against him, and hurting for them as he knew they were hurt. Yet he felt a sense of angry helplessness. This was far from the first time he had been sucked into this primeval conflict of siblings, the children of his three wives. He knew it was a competition in which the odds were heavily loaded against the youngest, and from which there could be only one possible outcome.

He scowled in frustration. Hat Courtney was not yet forty-two--William had been born when he was only eighteen-yet he felt old and weighed down with care when he confronted the turmoil of his four sons. The problem was that he loved William as much, if not more, than even little Dorian.

William was his first-born, the son of his Judith, that fierce, beautiful warrior-maid of Africa, whom he had loved with deep awe and passion. When she had died under the flying hoofs of her own wild steed she had left an aching void in his existence. For many years there had been nothing to fill the gap except the beautiful infant she had left behind.

Hal had reared William, had taught him to be tough and resilient, clever and resourceful. He was all those things now, and more. And in him there was something of the wildness and cruelty of that dark, mysterious continent that nothing could tame. Hal feared that and yet, in all truth, he would not have had it any other way. Hal himself was a hard, ruthless man, so how should he resent those qualities in his own first-born son?

'Father, what does primogenital mean?' Tom asked suddenly, his voice muffled by Hal's cloak.

He was so in step with Hal's own thoughts that his father started. 'Where did you learn that?' he asked.

'I heard it somewhere,' Tom mumbled. 'I forget where.' Hal could guess very well where it had been but he did not press the boy, who had been hurt enough for one day. Instead he tried to answer the question fairly, for Tom was old enough now. It was high time that he began to learn what hardships life held in store for him as a younger brother.

'You mean primogeniture, Tom. It means the right of the first-born.'

'Billy,' said Tom softly.

'Yes. Billy,' Hal agreed frankly. 'In accordance with the law of England, he follows directly in my footsteps. He takes precedence over all his younger brothers.'

'Us,' said Tom, with a touch of bitterness.

'Yes, you,' Hal agreed. 'When I am gone, everything is his.'

'When you are dead, you mean,' Dorian bored in, with indisputable logic.

'That's right, Dorry, when I am dead.'

'I don't want you to die,' Dorian wailed, his voice still hoarse from the damage to his throat. 'Promise me you won't ever die, Father.'

'I wish I could, lad, but I can't. We're all going to die one day.'

Dorian was silent for a moment. 'But not tomorrow?'

Hal chuckled softly. 'Not tomorrow. Not for many a long day, if I can help it. But one day it will happen. It always does.' He forestalled the next question when it does, Billy will be Sir William,' Tom said. 'That's what you're trying to tell us.'

'Yes. William will have the baronetcy, but that's not all. He will have everything else as well.'

'Everything? I don't understand,' said Tom, lifting his head from his father's back. 'Do you mean High Weald? The house and the land?'

'Yes. It will all belong to Billy. The estate, the land, the house, the money.'

'That not fair,' Dorian expostulated. 'Why can't Tom and Guy not have some? They're much nicer than Billy. It's not fair.'

'Perhaps it isn't fair, but that's the law of England.'

'It isn't fair,' Dorian persisted. 'Billy's cruel and horrible.'

Reprinted from Monsoon by Wilbur Smith, a St Martin's Press publication, by permission of St Martin's Press. © 1999 by Wilbur Smith