Between the glade and the cultivated fields beyond there was a thick band of forest. The trail led halfway through this, then veered sharply to the left. The African stopped at the bend and pointed down the path.
“It is the way to the village,” he said.
“I remember,” Burton replied. “The houses and bandani are in another clearing some way along. I had arranged for a forward party of Wanyamwezi porters to meet us at thy village with supplies, but the plan went awry.”
“Had they come, they would now be slaves, so it is good the plan did not work. Murungwana Sana, this is one of three paths from the village clearing. Another leads from it down to the plain and is better trodden than this.”
“I was wondering why this one is so overgrown,” said Burton. “The last time I was here, it was the main route.”
“We changed it after Manda attacked us.”
“And the third path?”
“Goes from the village, through the forest, to the fields. All these paths are now guarded by old men, as this one was. But let us not follow this way. Instead, we shall go through the trees here, and we will come to the fields at a place where the slavers would not expect to see a man, and will therefore not be looking. My brothers will meanwhile return to the village, for the grandmothers of those taken are sorely afraid.”
“Very well.”
Máví ya Gnombe nodded to his companions, who turned and continued down the trail, then he pushed through a sticky-leafed bush and disappeared into the undergrowth. Burton followed, and Swinburne stepped after him, muttering about leeches and ticks and fleas and “assorted creepy-crawlies.”
They struggled on for five minutes, then the trees thinned, and the men ducked low and proceeded as quietly as possible. They came to a bush, pushed aside its leaves, and looked out over cultivated fields, upon which was camped a large slave caravan.
There were, Burton estimated, about four hundred slaves, men and women, mostly kneeling, huddled together and chained by the neck in groups of twelve. Arabian traders moved among and around them—about seventy, though there were undoubtedly more in the large tents that had been erected on the southern side of the camp.
A little to the north, a great many pack mules were corralled, along with a few ill-looking horses.
Swinburne started to twitch with fury. “This is diabolical, Richard!” he hissed. “There must be something we can do!”
“We're vastly outnumbered, Algy,” Burton said. “And we have the Prussians breathing down our necks. But—”
“But what?”
“Perhaps there's a way we can kill two birds with one stone. Let's get back to the others.”
They retraced their steps through the foliage until they emerged once again onto the path. Burton addressed the elderly African: “Máví ya Gnombe, go thou to thy village and bring all who remain there to the glade where we encountered thee. Do not allow a single one to remain behind.”
The old man looked puzzled, but turned and paced away to do as commanded.
Burton and Swinburne returned to the clearing, where they found the porters restless and unhappy. The king's agent walked over to the bundle of robes that hid Herbert Spencer and reached up to the parakeet that squatted atop it. Pox jumped onto his outstretched hand, and Burton took the bird away from his companions and quietly gave it a message to deliver to Isabel. He included a description of their location, outlined a plan of action, and finished: “Report the enemy's numbers and position. Message ends.”
Pox disappeared into the green canopy overhead.
As if turned on by a switch, the day's rainfall began. Everyone moved to the more sheltered edges of the glade.
Burton called his companions over and told them what he intended.
“You've got to be bloody joking!” Trounce exclaimed.
“Chancy!” Thomas Honesty snapped.
“Perilous!” Krishnamurthy grunted.
“Inspired!” Swinburne enthused.
“I see no other way,” Burton said.
They ate a hurried meal while awaiting the parakeet's return.
The villagers arrived, pitifully few in number, and all elderly. Burton described to them what was soon to happen, and drilled into them that their silence would be essential. They huddled together, wet, miserable, and scared.
The expedition members took rifles and pistols from the supplies and began to clean and load them.
“You'll remain with the porters,” Burton told the two women.
Isabella Mayson picked up a revolver, flicked open its chamber, and started to push bullets into it. “Absolutely not,” she said.
Sister Raghavendra hefted a rifle. “Do you consider us too frail, Richard?”
“On the contrary, you have proven yourselves—”
“Equal to any man?” the Sister interrupted. “Good. Then we shall do what needs to be done and fight at your side, and don't you dare attempt to persuade us otherwise.”
Burton gave a curt nod.
Forty minutes later, Pox returned.
“Message from Isabel Arundell. We are ready. Estimate a hundred and fifty thumb-sucking men fast approaching your position. You have an hour at most, chamber-pot lover. Be prepared.”
“You all understand what you must do?” he asked his friends.
They gave their grim assent, pushed pistols into their belts, slung rifles over their shoulders, and divided into two teams of four: Trounce, Swinburne, Krishnamurthy, and Mayson; and Burton, Honesty, Spencer, and Raghavendra. Pox huddled on the explorer's shoulder.
Burton addressed Saíd: “To thee falls responsibility for the porters and villagers. It is vital that they neither flee nor make a sound.”
“I understand.”
The king's agent and his companions moved out of the glade and along the path. The rain hammered against the leaves around them, hissing loudly, soaking through their clothing, making the ground squelch beneath their feet.
They followed the trail as it veered to the right, and traipsed on until they eventually reached the abandoned village, which was some considerable distance from the original clearing. The second glade was much bigger. There were twenty or so beehive huts in it, and a well-built palaver house. A massive fig tree spread over the central space.
“The first shot is yours,” Burton said to Trounce. “Judge it well. Don't be too eager.”
“Understood.”
Trounce led his team to the eastern edge of the village and they disappeared into the vegetation, following the path down the hill to the marshy ground where the rhinoceros carcass lay. Burton and the rest went in the opposite direction, cautiously proceeding along the trail toward the fields. Halfway along it, they left the path and pushed into the bushes and plants that crowded around the boles of the trees. Struggling through the roots and vines and thorns and branches, they made their way to the edge of the forest until, through the dripping verdure, they saw the cultivated land and the slave encampment.
The sun was low in the sky by now, and it turned the fringes of the passing clouds a radiant gold.
The rain stopped.
“It won't be long,” Burton said softly. “Spread out. Don't shoot until I do. And remember—keep moving.”
Honesty, Spencer, and Sadhvi Raghavendra slipped away.
Burton lay flat on his stomach and levelled his rifle, aiming at the slavers who were moving around their tents and captives.
He flicked a beetle from his cheek and crushed a leech that had attached to the back of his left hand.
Pox hopped from his shoulder to his head and mumbled, “Odious pig.”
The shadows lengthened.
A seemingly endless line of ants marched over the mulch just in front of him. They were carrying leaf fragments, dead wasps, and caterpillars.
He heard Honesty sneeze close by.
A rifle cracked in the near distance.
All of a sudden, gunfire erupted and echoed through the trees, the sound rising up from the base of the hil
l on the other side of the village. Burton knew what it meant: the Prussians were very close, and Trounce and his team had opened fire on them.
Sheltered behind the roots of trees, the police detective's team could take pot-shots at the hundred and fifty Prussians with impunity. Not only were they concealed but they were also on higher ground, while the pursuing party had to struggle through the marsh before ascending a slope that, while forested, was considerably more open than the uppermost part of the hill.
Trounce, Swinburne, Krishnamurthy, and Isabella Mayson would be silently and invisibly moving backward as they picked off the enemy, drawing the Prussians toward the village and away from the other clearing.
The noise of battle had reached the Arabs. Burton watched as they grabbed rifles and gestured at the forest. A large group of them started running toward where he and the others were hidden.
He took aim at a particularly large and ferocious-looking slaver and shot him through the heart.
Immediately, rifles banged loudly as Honesty, Spencer, and Raghavendra opened fire.
Burton downed two more of the slavers, then, as the other Arabs started shooting blindly into the undergrowth, he crawled backward and repositioned himself behind a tangle of mangrove roots from where he could see the beginning of the path to the village.
Bullets tore through the foliage but none came close to him. He put his rifle aside and pulled two six-shooters from his belt. Four Arabs ran into view. He mowed them down with well-placed shots then crawled away to reposition himself once again.
Slowly, in this fashion, Burton and his friends retreated toward the village.
The slavers followed, and though they sent bullet after bullet crashing into the trees, they didn't once find a target.
On the other side of the empty settlement, Trounce and his companions were performing exactly the same manoeuvre. They had slightly less luck—a bullet had ploughed through Krishnamurthy's forearm and another had scored the skin of Isabella Mayson's right cheek and taken off her earlobe—but the effect was the same: the Prussians were advancing toward the village.
After some minutes, Burton came closer to the end of the path where it opened into the clearing. He fired off three shots and wormed his way under a tamarind tree whose branches slumped all the way to the ground forming an enclosed space around the trunk, and here he found Herbert Spencer collapsed and motionless in the dirt.
A rifle cracked, tamarind leaves parted, and Thomas Honesty crawled in. He saw the bundle of Arabian robes and whispered: “Herbert! Dead?”
“He can't die,” Burton replied in a low voice. “He's clockwork. Fool that I am, I forgot to wind him up this morning—and the key is back with the supplies!”
“Manage without him. Almost there!”
“Let's get into position,” Burton said. “Stay low—things are about to get a lot hotter around here!”
He dropped onto his belly and—followed by the Scotland Yard man—wriggled out from beneath the tamarind, through thorny scrub, and into the shelter of a matted clump of tall grass. Using his elbows, he propelled himself forward until he reached the edge of the village clearing. Honesty crawled to his side. They watched the action from behind a small acacia bush. The police detective glanced at it and murmured, “Needs pruning, hard against the stem.”
Guns were discharging all around them, and they immediately saw that the thing they'd hoped for had come to pass. The slavers had entered the village from the west, while Trounce and his team had lured the Prussians into it from the east; and now the two groups, convinced that the other was the enemy, were blazing away at each other.
“Now we just lie low and wait it out,” Burton said.
Four of the plant vehicles he'd seen at Mzizima were slithering into view, and cries of horror went up from the Arabs, who aimed their matchlocks at the creatures and showered them with bullets. Burton plainly saw the men sitting in the blooms hit over and over, but they appeared unaffected, apart from one who took a shot to the forehead. He went limp, and his plant thrashed wildly before flopping into a quivering heap.
Over the course of the next few minutes, the two forces battled ferociously while the king's agent and his friends looked on from their hiding places in the surrounding vegetation. Then a slight lull in the hostilities occurred and a voice shouted from among the slavers: “We shall not submit to bandits!”
A Prussian, in the Arabic language, yelled back: “We are not bandits!”
“Then why attack us?”
“It was you who attacked us !”
“You lie!”
“Wait! Hold your fire! I would parley!”
“Damn it!” Burton said under his breath. “We can't let this happen, but if any of us shoots now, they'll realise a third party is present.”
“Is this trickery, son of Allah?” the Prussian shouted.
“Nay!”
“Then tell me, what do you want?”
“We want nothing but to be left alone. We are en route to Zanzibar.”
“Why, then, did you set upon us?”
“I tell you, we did not.”
Burton saw the Prussian turn to some of his men. They talked among themselves, holding their weapons at the ready and not taking their eyes from the Arabs, some of whom were crowded around the end of the westernmost path, while others crouched behind the native huts.
Moments later, the Prussian called: “Prove to us that you are speaking the truth. Lay down your weapons!”
“And allow you to slaughter us?”
“I told you—we are not the aggressor!”
“Then you lay down your guns and withdraw those—those—plant abominations!”
Again, the Prussian consulted with his men.
He turned back to the slavers. “I will only concede to—”
Suddenly, one of the slavers—swathed in his robes and with his head wrapped in a keffiyeh—ran out from among his fellows, raised two pistols, and started blasting at the Prussians.
Immediately, they jerked up their rifles and sent a hail of bullets into the man. He was knocked off his feet, sent twisting through the air, and hit the ground, where he rolled then lay still.
The battle exploded back into life, and, on both sides, man after man went down.
A stray bullet ripped into the tall grass, narrowly missing Burton. He turned to make sure Honesty was unharmed but the Scotland Yard man had, at some point, silently moved away.
“Message to Isabel Arundell,” Burton said to Pox. “Your company is requested. Message ends.”
As the parakeet flew off, one of the plant vehicles writhed past Burton's position and laid into a group of slavers. Its spine-covered tendrils whipped out, yanked men off their feet, and ripped them apart. Some tried to flee but were shot down as the Prussians began to gain control of the clearing. One group of about twenty Arabs had secured itself behind a large stack of firewood in the bandani, and it wasn't long before they were the last remaining men of the slave caravan's force. The Prussians, by contrast, had about fifty soldiers left, plus the three moving plants. Individuals in both groups were drawing swords as ammunition ran out: wicked-looking scimitars on the Arabian side; straight rapiers on the Prussian.
Pox returned: “Message from Isabel Arundell. We had problems getting the buttock-wobbling horses through the bloody swamp but are now regrouping at the bottom of the hill. We'll be with you in a stench-filled moment. Message ends.”
One of the mobile plants crashed into the barrier behind which the slavers were sheltering and lashed out at them, tearing their clothes and flaying their skin. Screaming with terror, they hacked at it with their scimitars, which, in fact, turned out to be a more efficient way to tackle the monster than shooting at it.
An Arab climbed onto the woodpile and jumped from it into the centre of the bloom, bringing his blade swinging down onto the head of the man sitting there. The plant shuddered and lay still.
The cavalry arrived.
The Daughters of Al-Manat,
eighty strong and all mounted, came thundering into the village, emerging in single file from the eastern path. With matchlocks cracking, they attacked the remaining Prussians. Spears were thrust into the plant vehicles and burning brands thrown onto them.
Those few slavers who remained alive took the opportunity to flee and plunged away down the path, disappearing into dark shadow, for now the sky was a deep purple and the sun had almost set.
The last Prussian fell with a bullet in his throat.
The Daughters of Al-Manat had been savage—ruthless in their massacre of the enemy who, at Mzizima, had killed thirty or so of their number. Now they reined in their horses and waited while Sir Richard Francis Burton and the others emerged from the vegetation.
Krishnamurthy was holding his forearm tightly and blood was dribbling between his fingers. Isabella Mayson's right ear had bled profusely and her clothes were stained red. Swinburne, Trounce, and Sister Raghavendra were uninjured. They were all wet through and covered with dirt and insects.
“Well done,” Burton told them.
“Where's Tom?” Trounce asked.
“Probably dragging Herbert out of the bushes—his spring wound down. Sadhvi, would you see to Isabella and Maneesh's wounds?”
While the nurse got to work, Burton indicated to Trounce the area where Spencer had been left, then paced over to Isabel Arundell, who was sitting on her horse quietly conversing with her Amazons.
“That was brutal,” he observed.
She looked down at him. “I lost a lot of good women at Mzizima and on the way here. Revenge seemed…appropriate.”
He regarded her, moistened his lips, and said, “You're not the Isabel I met twelve years ago.”
“Time changes people, Dick.”
“Hardens them?”
“Perhaps that is necessary in some cases. Are we to philosophise while slaves remain in shackles or shall we go and liberate them?”
“Wait here a moment.”
He left her and approached Swinburne.
“Algy, I want you and Maneesh to leg it along to the other clearing. Bring the villagers, Saíd, and our porters back here. They can help move the bodies out to the fields. They'll need to start work digging a pit for a mass grave.”