The Tropic of Serpents: A Memoir by Lady Trent (A Natural History of Dragons) (34 page)

He left the Green Hell and climbed the rocky slope up to Point Miriam, drawing many stares, I imagine, from Scirlings unaccustomed to seeing a man in nothing more than a loincloth. At the gate to the fort he was stopped by one of the soldiers on guard, and in his careful Yembe, conveyed the news that an Ikwunde force intended to pass through Mouleen and attack them from the landward side.

What words he used to explain this, I do not know. My own conjecture had been translated into the language of the drums, which is (of necessity, owing to how that language functions) both long-winded and limited in its specifics. But the Moulish are practiced at sending a message the length of the swamp without distorting it, so I have faith it arrived at the coast in much the same shape it left our own drums in the west. Once there, however, it was interpreted by the local camps, then given to Nagoreemo, who then translated it into Yembe and relayed it to soldiers whose own grasp of that tongue was, I suspect, less than fully proficient.

Small wonder that no one believed him. One of the officers at the fort, an army major by the name of Joshua Maitland, believed Nagoreemo was a defector from his own people, come to warn them about an ill-advised
Moulish
assault on the fort. Others thought him simply mad. The result was that he was turned away—with, I am ashamed to say, many jeers, and even a few blows from rifle butts. That venerable elder deserved better from us.

In the meanwhile, events at the far end of Bayembe had become quite warm, to distract all eyes from anything that might be happening along the bay. The Ikwunde mounted a series of assaults along and across the Girama, including one that nearly made it to the Hembi before our forces caught them. This, as you may imagine, raised alarms all through that region, with the consequence that our side instituted new patrols to watch for any Ikwunde advance scouts. They not only found some of those; they also found Tom, Natalie, and Faj Rawango.

Had the patrol that found them been composed of Bayembe forces, all might have been well, for Faj Rawango was experienced enough in the ways of the oba’s court that he could have demanded, and likely received, a proper hearing. They were, alas, found by Scirlings—and promptly taken prisoner.

Did the lieutenant think those three were Ikwunde spies? No, of course not; only one was Erigan, and even the blindest Scirling private could see that the short, slight Faj Rawango was nothing like the tall, well-knit men in the Ikwunde army. But they were something inexplicable, and so they had to be detained. (The fact that Tom and Natalie both explained themselves to him at length did not dissuade him from this course.)

They were soon transferred into the care of a captain—but this fellow, alas, had heard complaints of their activities from the despicable Velloin, who had given a highly biased account of our meeting in the swamp. As a result, they were read a lengthy diatribe on civilized behaviour and the necessity for them to reflect well on Scirland; following this, they were summarily packed up with the wounded from the river fighting and shipped back across toward Nsebu. All three of them were somewhere in the middle of the savannah when the rest of this matter resolved.

The Ikwunde, from what we can determine, were following a plan more or less like the one I had posited, though with a great many subtle flourishes I could never have imagined and honestly cannot recall. (Those interested in such things can find an exhaustive discussion of all aspects of the Ikwunde War in Achabe n Kegweyu Gbori’s ten-volume work
Expansion and Retreat of the Ikwunde,
translated into Scirling by Ezekiel Grant.) Scouts like the ones I encoutered had been sent into Mouleen all along its length in the hope of locating a waterway suitable for transporting their army by boat; needless to say, this failed. The Ikwunde therefore took the information gathered by their scouts—including, I fear, some I provided myself—and sent five companies of Labane by the shortest route possible, from Osheth on the Eremmo border to Point Miriam.

Toward
Point Miriam, at least. They encountered some difficulty along the way.

*   *   *

I saw with my own eyes how rapidly the swamp-wyrm eggs hatched once placed in water, the “fangfish” wiggling free like the eels they resembled. They are a disturbing sight then, soft and almost helpless looking, but with mouths already full of teeth. We took great care in crossing the waterways as we traveled from egg cache to egg cache, and even more care after that task was done, when Yeyuama and I set out for the eastern edge of the Green Hell.

For although I esteemed the Moulish greatly and knew they would be of more use than I in opposing the Ikwunde, I could not bring myself to sit idly by while this matter played out. If nothing else, I needed to see enough that I could accurately inform the men at Point Miriam of what had transpired.

Which meant I was there to see one of the Labane companies—already much worse off for their travels to that point—attempt a crossing of fangfish-filled water.

They had searched for a way around it, and been thwarted by creative Moulish troublemakers; now they had no choice but to build rafts and attempt to pole across. Yeyuama had refused to try and provoke any fully grown dragons into troubling them, because these Labane carried guns, but he could not stand in the way of a swamp-wyrm’s own inclination. One took great exception to the Labane trespassing upon his territory, and rammed a raft before anyone aboard it saw him there.

I had thought to feel triumph at watching the forest eat those who would trespass in it. When the moment came, I merely felt sick. There was no pleasure to be had in the screaming—for even a Tsebane will scream when a dozen infant dragons latch onto him. It is a horrible way to die, and yet those who did may well have been luckier than those who were merely bloodied, for the latter faced near-certain infection, which in many cases was only a more protracted way to go.

But I knew better than to think we could warn them off their course; these were, after all, the most dedicated troops the inkosi possessed. And when my resolve faltered, I had only to remind myself of the casualties my allies suffered. Despite warning and care, the Moulish had not been able to stay entirely safe; Labane scouts had caught some of them, and one camp was overrun as they tried to move out of the army’s line of march. All in all, twenty-one Moulish died, which is a massacre for numbers as small as theirs.

Because of this, some among the western camps argued in favor of actively hunting and killing those the forest had not disposed of. But the youths brought out the
legambwa bomu,
the dragon mask, and charged around with it, reminding all that killing was what cursed humankind with mortality; and while killing for food might be a tragic necessity, killing these men was not. They therefore took the surviving Labane prisoner.

Prisoners were not something they had much experience with. The Moulish deal with their own internal problems by talking it out or walking away to a new camp, not by waging war. Tying people up was something done only when a person had run mad (or, as they would put it, was targeted by serious witchcraft). What should they do with their captives?

Had I not just spent seven months in the swamp, flung myself off a cliff, crash-landed in the trees, been a captive myself, and then run the length of the Green Hell, I might have thought my answer through more thoroughly. As it was, I asked whether they would be willing to send enough hunters with me to escort the prisoners to Point Miriam, and the Moulish, glad to be rid of them, agreed.

This is how I marched out of the jungle toward the fort with what, at first glance, might understandably be mistaken for a small invading army.

*   *   *

Our slow pace (limited to the speed of hobbled Labane) and general disorganization went some way toward establishing us as no threat. Soldiers, however, are apt to get nervous around armed strangers, even when the weapons in question are nets and fire-hardened sticks of wood. I placed myself prominently at the front of the group, intending to draw the eye and give the soldiers something like a familiar (by which I mean a Scirling) face to reassure them.

This might have been more successful had I looked less a scarecrow. I had been in the same clothing since the morning I parted from Tom and Natalie, and it had seen a great deal of abuse in the interim. I was unwashed, underfed, and giddy with the success of our plan. So it was that when rifles were leveled in our direction, I waved my arms above my head, hallooed the fort, and cried out in a loud, laughing voice, “Do you believe us now?”

It was of course my luck that Major Maitland answered me from the wall (though I did not know he was the one who had misinterpreted Nagoreemo until later). He shouted down at us, “You and your army of savages can stop right there!”

“
My
army?” I looked at the Moulish with exaggerated surprise. “These do not belong to me, sir. Unless you mean our prisoners? I would not claim them if you paid me, for it was their intent to sneak up on you from a direction you did not expect—as I believe you were warned, though you did not listen. Fortunately for you, the Moulish believe in sharing what they have, and they have wit and common sense in abundance. More than enough to make up for its lack elsewhere.

“I, by contrast, am Scirling, and less well schooled in generosity. I therefore say that if you and your masters do not promise to clap these Ikwunde in irons and then reward these brave people as they deserve, then we jolly well may just let these fellows go, for they are not worth the nuisance of keeping.”

(In hindsight, I can see how this may have been construed as a threat.)

Maitland went quite purple. I think he might have given the order to fire—a few warning shots to put me on better behaviour, at least—but by then Sir Adam had attained the top of the wall and seen what lay outside. “Mrs. Camherst?” he called down, shocked, and I answered, “What is left of her.”

“What the devil is all of this?” he demanded, gesturing at the mass of people I stood with.

This time I answered him with more decorum, although Maitland provoked me sorely with his own interjections. Sir Adam continued to question me—how had we captured them; how many there were; what on earth did I think I was wearing—until I said, “Sir, I will answer everything to your satisfaction, but not by shouting it up at you. This is dreadfully public, and my voice will give out. Will you take the prisoners, and give your surety that the Moulish will be rewarded? They, not I, have done the work of capturing these Labane, and have killed a great many more besides, at no small risk and cost to themselves.”

Maitland snorted loudly enough for me to hear it, even at that range. “You expect us to believe that your savages killed Labane warriors with—with what? Sharpened sticks?”

“No, Major,” I said coolly. “They killed the Labane with dragons. As a gentlewoman and natural historian, I assure you it is true.”

I suspect it was my declaration more than anything else that opened the gates of Point Miriam to us, for everyone wanted to know what I meant by
they killed the Labane with dragons.
We shuffled in, me at the front, the Moulish surrounding the hobbled prisoners, and I made sure to find a soldier with good Yembe to serve as an interpreter before I let Sir Adam take me off for questioning.

If that strikes you as a phrase that might be applied to the suspect in a crime, you are not far wrong. Sir Adam was deeply suspicious of my tale; he called in a doctor to examine me before anything else, so certain was he that I had lost my reason. (I blame the trousers.) Much tedious back-and-forth ensued after that, but the important moment came when I told Sir Adam what I intended going forward.

“In return for their work in saving this colony and Bayembe,” I said, mustering what remained of my energy, “the Moulish do have a price.”

“Gold?” Sir Adam asked. “Guns? Out with it, Mrs. Camherst; tell me what you have promised them.”

“Nothing so mercenary, I assure you. But it is the forest known as the Green Hell that has protected Bayembe and this colony; it must be protected in return. I understand that you intend to build a dam in the west, across one or more—I presume all three—of the rivers. The plans for this must stop.”

The governor shot to his feet. “Mrs. Camherst, I do not know where you have gotten your information—”

Under no circumstances was I going to name Natalie. “Do you think no one knows what your engineers are here to build? Do not fear for the defense of Bayembe, Sir Adam. Even without your lake, I assure you, this country will be safe.”

I was extraordinarily lucky that he stopped me before I said anything more.

“Damn the defense,” he growled. “Our soldiers can stop the Ikwunde. There are
contracts
depending on that dam, Mrs. Camherst—blast it, what do you think the point of this colony is?”

“What do you mean?” I asked, mostly to purchase time to think.

He made a disgusted noise. “Power, of course. Of all kinds. Power from the dam, and we have contracts saying that eighty percent of it will be ours for a period of fifty years after construction is done. With that and Bayembe’s iron, our profits will be enormous. Think of what the effects of
that
will be. And you expect us to throw all that away, simply because a few naked savages stopped a raid?”

My hands were shaking; I clutched them tight in my lap. “I knew nothing of this.”

“Of course you didn’t. You are nothing more than a reckless young woman—”

“Who just saved this colony from invasion and possible destruction.” My voice wanted to shake, too; keeping it steady made my words come out loudly. “You should perhaps consider keeping the young ladies around you better informed, Sir Adam—but in this case I am glad you did not. Can you not see the headlines now?
SCIRLING GENTLEWOMAN SAVES NSEBU. DARING FLIGHT REVEALS DASTARDLY PLAN. SWAMP NATIVES DEFEAT LABANE WARRIORS. HUMILIATED PRISONERS BROUGHT IN CHAINS TO FORT.
And then can you imagine the response if people learn that you turned your back on those who kept Labane spears out of it?”