In Search of Spice (45 page)

Mot returned and thumped her tail. He ruffled her hair, and let out a noise like a sleepy seabird, a noise he and the kai Viti settled on after much debate and practise.

The others drifted up to join him like so many ghosts. More than he intended, because Hinatea, Silmatea and Trieste refused to be left behind. They checked each other’s ointment with exquisite care, including the kai Viti whose dark skin otherwise shone in the starlight. Grey Fox refused the pigshit, and instead used his own from some roots he unearthed, giving him a rather piney odour. Pat found he could tell each apart by the smell as much as anything else.

Pat held his hand out, thumb up, and the others touched it, all together. Pat nodded, clicked his fingers at Mot and headed out, down a trail from the beach. Mot ranged ahead and he went swiftly, trusting in her nose. The others followed fifty paces apart, Grey Fox bringing up the rear. Corporal Strachan and his four soldiers set about finding the ideal location for the safety outpost and setting up.

The night was quiet, a gentle breeze sloughing through the few trees, with the noise of cicadas buzzing constantly. Pat registered all these noises, following the route of a nearby stream by the frog calls, cataloguing them and listening for the pockets of silence that meant men. It was warm, and he noticed one distinct advantage from his ointment - no mosquitoes.

Coconut trees sky lined themselves against the starry night sky, about two miles away. Pat thought this would be the village, a thought confirmed in his mind as he realised the path led through cultivated fields. He noted a rat scuttling off the path at his approach and smelt something rank which he didn’t recognise.

The path was sand, with a coarse grass at the edges and he picked up speed to a dog trot, still moving without a sound. He scanned the fields as he went, worried a farmer might be sleeping by his crops to protect it from the rats. Seeing a little hut just off the path, a dark shape in the moonless night, he stopped and slipped to the ground, making the chirruping sound of a cicada as he moved silently and slowly along the ground. Mot responded to his call and shoved him with her nose. He waved at the hut and she was away, Pat following at half pace.

Mot disappeared into the hut, he could hear a slight scuffling and scratching, and she reappeared swallowing something. Pat frowned, annoyed, guessing it was poi, left by a farmer for his meal tomorrow. Mot shot off down the path, waving her tail to show she knew perfectly well he was annoyed with her and didn’t give a damn.

He kept her in sight as they approached the village and scanned for a base point, deciding on a tall palm near the path, a good five hundred yards short of the village, with a depression behind the roots. He ducked in and waited for the others to join him, lying on the raised lip of the depression, formed where another palm had fallen over and pushed the roots into the sky.

They came in one by one, and once all arrived, he leaned over, touched Wiwik and Mara’s shoulders, pointed to the right, indicating the left to Grey Fox and Rat. Hinatea and the girls he nodded to - their agreed duty to keep watch from a circle further out. He pointed to a bright star, moved his hand a span to indicate two hours, then pointed to the hollow. The others all nodded and he snaked out of the hollow, moving straight towards the village.

Moving with even more care, his eyes constantly moving to avoid after images, Pat eased towards the dark boundary of the village which he guessed to be the wall. Mot slipped back to touch his hand in reassurance. Knowing this meant no guard, Pat glided up to the gap in the wall, his feet feeling for branches before putting his weight on them. A rough door lay inside the compound where it could be pulled across the gap if required. The nearest hut was thirty yards away, a stuttering snore coming from inside.

At this point Pat realised, despite all his caution, he was discovered. An angry eye glared at him, while its owner snuffled in his direction and a boar came through some bushes with an angry squeal, to stand in the path looking round in fury, snuffling in the sand.

Pat faded into the wall, ready to shin up if necessary, and grinned to himself, realising this boar had detected the musk of a rival boar in his ointment.

The boar’s angry grunting cut off abruptly as he found himself snout to snout with Mot, a Mot with her hackles up. Now, a boar will see off most dogs, but Mot wasn’t most dogs and knew just what pigs could and could not do. The boar looked at Mot uncertainly, snarled to expose his tusks, and slowly backed up, retreating under the house from whence came a loud squealing as the boar took out his frustration on a junior boar. Pat realised a lot of pigs lived under the house, all stirring about now.

An angry, sleepy shout came from the hut above and somebody emptied a bucket of water through the floor slats on to the pigs, causing more squeals and angry shouts now from the next huts.

Pat decided he had looked enough and faded back out of the entrance, keeping close enough to record what happened in the village.

A gentle thunk wafted up from the darkness below the boarding rail announced the return of the pinnace and Grey Fox came up a rope ladder as if walking a road, Corporal Strachan following considerably more gingerly. He knocked on the Captain’s cabin.

“Come in,” came a rumble from inside and he slipped inside. The Captain sat at his desk, talking with the Ratu, Lieutenant Mactravis and Sara.

“Ah, well done that man,” said the Captain. “All sorted?”

“Sir,” replied Grey Fox, “I need to make some slight changes to the model.”

Mactravis nodded assent, pushed back his chair and went to watch Grey Fox make his adjustments, followed by the others. He smiled at Sara. “Grey Fox is the only person on board who speaks less than Pat!”

Grey Fox looked at him reproachfully and made minute adjustments to the beach, then remodelled the wall at the rear of the village, showing the gate and the paths. While he worked, the Captain’s servant came up and placed a glass of fruit juice beside him. He nodded his thanks and continued, placing the carvings of huts in various positions, changed a few round for size, and indicated the one by the gate. “Pigs.”

Mactravis rolled his eyes. “What do you mean, Grey Fox?”

“Pat found lots of pigs here, under hut.”

“Ready for the victory feast,” interjected the Ratu. “Instead we will eat them tomorrow!”

“Can we make use of them?” asked Sara. “Are they locked up?”

“No,” replied Grey Fox. “Pat plans to drive them through the village.”

“Perfect,” breathed Sara; she looked up at him. “Does Pat need a signal?”

Grey Fox just looked at her, his head giving the tiniest shake.

The Ratu studied the model with great interest. “This very good,” he declared. “I will use this again.”

“I am glad you like it, Ratu,” said Sara who turned to Grey Fox. “Thank you Grey Fox, good work by the team.” She smiled at him, while he returned her look without expression. “Fine, get your gear, collect Perryn and go. Take the outpost people with you.” She turned back to the Ratu as Grey Fox left, the door closing without a sound.

“Ratu, we will teach you how to make them, but first we will show you the entire attack planning method. Now we can make our final plans, which we will tell the team leaders, and they will borrow the model to pass their own orders on to their teams.”

“Hurr, I understand. Is good. Then I keep?”

“We’ll bring it back to your town for you. Mactravis, how in the wide world do you make Grey Fox happy? Must be the only soldier I ever saw who didn’t appreciate me telling him he had done well.”

“Oh, he liked it. He will tell Pat and the others what you said, word for word. He will even get the inflection of your voice perfectly. He just never lets his feelings show in his face.”

For Perryn, the following few hours would enshrine themselves in his nightmares. Sitting in the pinnace, it was surprisingly cold, especially as he slowly became soaking wet from the spray. The unfamiliar small boat movement jostled him and for some reason he felt intensely seasick. Normally he knew enough mind tricks to sort out problems of this kind, but with the impending action he couldn’t concentrate, so just sat on the bench, smelling the brine, the nauseating odour coming from Grey Fox’s ointment and what resembled pigshit for some reason.

The boat slowed down, and came to a halt. He raised his head, hopelessly, unable to see a thing in the pitch dark and opened his mouth to ask a question. Immediately a strong, smelly hand came across his face and he gagged, unable to even wonder how Grey Fox had known he was about to speak. Belatedly, he remembered being told not to make any noise at all.

At the insistent pulling, he rose to a crouch, and tried to squeal as Grey Fox ripped his robe off him, the hand again cutting off his cry of alarm. His hands automatically went to cover his groin, and he felt physically sick as a horrible memory from his early years boarding in the monastery came back to him. Numbly, he crawled over the side, convinced he would drown and rather looking forward to meeting his God. He eased into the water, paddling quietly as he vaguely remembered his instructions and panicked as he noticed the disappearance of the pinnace, nor had the slightest idea where the shore lay.

A strong hand grabbed him, turned him and he swam in the direction indicated. He tended to drift off to one side, he realised, as the hand kept coming out of nowhere and adjusting his direction.

The hand gripped his shoulder and pulled back. Startled, he stopped swimming and tried to tread water, to feel sand under his feet. His toe knuckles hit something and it hurt! Miserable, he started out of the sea, shivering with the cold. Hands grasped him, pulled him along most un-gently. He couldn’t see a thing, except a vague sparkling from the stars. A large, fearsome shadow loomed out of the dark and he flinched before recognising a bush. The hands manoeuvred him into a space and he felt a cloth being run over him. Warmth came from it, and he began to feel a little better.

“Where’s my robe?” He whispered, as quietly as he could.

Cloth was shoved into his hands, and he hastily donned it, then squawked a protest as he realised it was a LOT shorter than expected and hands were now roughly applying the pigshit to HIS body!!!! Ineffectually, he tried to push them off.

“For fuck’s sake Perryn!” Pat hissed in his ear. “Stop playing the fool!”

Perryn had never heard anger in Pat’s voice before, and he had never heard him swear either, and the anger rattled him more than anything else. This served to steady him, and he stood quietly while they performed shitty indignities to his body. His briefing came back to him, and he remembered the ointment to stop him shining. Ointment! He thought angrily, it’s bloody pigshit!

His anger brought him back to himself and he took stock, doing a mental audit. Ah, this was the problem, fear, getting in the way. Deliberately, he recited a mantra, while helping apply the last of the ointment, and felt the fear recede to the depths of his mind. Once out of the way, he could bring his mental faculties back into line and cast about, feeling for the magnetic force he could use for power, and sensing for other wizards and people. All the time cursing himself as a fool for not doing this earlier.

He felt the tension in the person beside him, and realised the others had gone. He ran his hands around the ground, feeling for his bag, before remembering Pat was carrying it for him. He put out a hand as he stood and felt a breast. In shock, he recognised Trieste, and he blushed as he remembered how she had applied the pigshit to him. She pulled his arm and reluctantly he followed her down the path. He trod on a stone, which hurt, and he wished for his sandals, remembering Pat instructing him to go barefoot. Fortunately there weren’t any more stones, Pat had said it was a soft dusty path and he wouldn’t need sandals. Well, he thought, maybe not, if we were walking, but, damn it, running is something else! His toes hurt at the unaccustomed exercise, but every time he slowed, the bloody girl kicked him up the arse. She hadn’t at first, but was getting annoyed at Perryn’s slowness.

It went on forever, it seemed; he couldn’t believe the night could last so long and it turned into a mind numbing journey of pain, as his legs turned to jelly, his feet surely bleeding with no skin left and his robe rubbing him raw wherever it touched, while his balls had shrunk up into his body to get away from the raging agony where his thighs rubbed together as he stumbled along. It was pitch dark, he couldn’t see the path and Trieste kept prodding him to keep him straight, while he could hear all manner of horrible noises from either side, all of which were clearly vicious and bloodthirsty animals. One horrific bokking noise came from right beside the path and he started to jump away, but Trieste caught him and hurried him on.

Finally it ended, and she dropped him into a hollow where he was allowed to curl up in his misery.

The Bosun took a jolly boat and went to plumb the sea approaches. She eased the Queen Rose into position off the beach in front of the village. Sergeant Russell dug in his trees, creating a defensive position in less than 15 minutes while Lieutenant Mactravis’ team took a boat to shore and moved on to the hill.

Sara breathed a sigh of relief to see the professionals in position to cover the landing of the kai Viti which she feared would be noisy. She listened in amazement and heard nothing as they went ashore in several boats. Not one showed any disquiet at being on the Queen Rose and they took orders superbly, forming up into a perfect shield wall on the beach as she landed with her runners and the crew coming behind her. She noticed these supposed professionals made more noise than the kai Viti.