Gates of Stone

by Angus Macallan

  “Hai! Stop that!” A whip came from the darkness, the lash curling around Jun’s ribs in a jolt of white agony. The two Manchu were back—there was no sign of the Yawanese girl. One had his musket off his shoulder; he was pointing it at Jun, the spike bayonet glinting evilly in the dim light.

  “Back, back.” The Manchu was prodding the spike toward Jun, who moved cautiously away. The guard knelt beside the body of Kromo.

  He said something to his comrade, evidently reporting Kromo’s demise. Then he went over to the dwarf at Tenga’s feet.

  The two Manchu stood together and looked at Jun. Both had their muskets in their hands. Their eyes were black, hard and shiny as obsidian.

  “These two dead,” said one of them. “You kill. Now you dead.”

  The Manchu turned and pointed at Tenga, then at Ketut, who was standing beside her, then at Jun again. “You all dead.”

  CHAPTER 27

  Extract from Ethnographic Travels by Professor Tolmund K. Parehki of the University of Dhilika

  Into the vacuum left by the collapse of the Wukarta Empire stepped the Han merchant-pirates, setting up their fortified base on the uninhabited marshy island of Singarasam some three hundred years ago and slowly spreading their tentacles all across the Laut Besar. So the Wukarta faded away, and the Lords of the Islands rose in their place—but the Mother Temple endured the change. It did not return to its old bloodletting magical ways, nor did it insist on collecting its wealth-creating tithes. It even eschewed trade, relinquishing all that to the rapacious Han merchants. Instead, the High Priest of the Vharkashta embraced the spiritual life and as his piety grew so did his renown, and with that his spiritual power: soon he and his successors commanded the obedience of hundreds of thousands of souls across the seas from the Mother Temple in Yawa. Daughter temples sprang up like mushrooms in cities across the Laut Besar.

  About fifty years ago, however, disaster struck: the Mother Temple was destroyed by a great fire. No one knows how it happened but the stories go that a great sorcerer in a fit of rage smashed all the buildings into a thousand pieces and killed or drove off all the priests and novices. Certainly the Mother Temple is no more: the jungle has reclaimed it. Alas, such is the transitory glory of the world, as fleeting and lovely as the life of the Golden Yawa butterfly. The mighty Wukarta are gone, scattered across the seas; the Mother Temple is destroyed and with it a thousand years of learning. But the religion of Vharkash the Harvester is still with us. And there are still devotees in every city across the Laut Besar.

  In the deep jungles of Yawa, however, belief in the great Harvester God took a different, stranger direction after the destruction of the Mother Temple. The people who still venerated the God there—although fewer now in number—became more fanatical in their beliefs. There are, to this very day, remote tribes such as the Hantu Harimau people of eastern Yawa who believe, as their ancestors did, that to die in the service of Vharkash is to gain a place at His everlasting court in the afterlife. Accordingly, they do not fear death—but see it as the ultimate sacrifice to their God. Indeed, death is central to their version of the religion. They kill for the deity. They hunt down unbelievers to gain merit in the eyes of Vharkash. And they eat the flesh of their victims, particularly the heart, which they believe is the seat of the soul. They say they are doing the will of Vharkash by harvesting the bodies of unbelievers for the glory of the Great Harvester himself.

  The most terrible thing about this siege, Farhan decided, was the disappearance of the bodies. The painted men came in the night and removed them—their own and the fallen Dokra—and all their belongings and weapons, and when Farhan looked out over the top of the bamboo wall the next morning a little after dawn the space between the fort and the wall of jungle a hundred paces away, which had been filled with a couple of score of dead and dying bodies at sunset the night before, was now entirely clear. All that indicated that a battle had been fought was a patchwork of reddish-brown stains on the dusty ground. Farhan suspected that he knew why they had taken the bodies—if these strangely painted savages were who he thought they were—and suppressed a shudder of fear and revulsion.

  The painted men had not gone, though. From time to time, Farhan could glimpse them moving through the trees on the other side of the cleared space. They were too far for an accurate musket shot. Farhan might have tried a potshot with his longer-ranging rifle but it would still have been a very lucky shot that hit a single moving target at that distance and through trees and, besides, Farhan did not have the stomach for killing that morning.

  On the other side of the coin, the range of the blowpipes was evidently far shorter even than that of the Dokra muskets. It seemed that the painted men needed to be within about thirty paces to have a chance of hitting their enemies with their lethal darts. Which meant that the situation was one of stalemate. The defenders of the fort could not strike at the painted men without leaving their bamboo walls—which after Captain Ravi’s death nobody was eager to do. The painted savages could not attack their foes in the fort without coming in close and risking another mauling from the cannon.

  Farhan, upon reflection, could not decide whether Captain Ravi had been unbelievably stupid or quite remarkably heroic. By forming his little suicide squad and marching out to meet the savages in the tree line, he had probably saved the lives of a good many Buginese and Dokra while they were trying to get to safety. His thin double line of red-coated men had stopped the painted men from flooding into the open space and skewering scores of their comrades as they tried desperately to get into the fort and were held up by the crush of people at the narrow door. Captain Ravi had actually held the enemy back in the tree line for many crucial moments by marching his twenty men forward so splendidly, and having them fire off their volleys to such deadly effect—even if it did mean condemning them all to die in such a horrible fashion.

  Farhan offered up a mental salute to the dead captain’s ghost and wished him well in whatever afterlife he now found himself.

  With the Dokra keeping a good watch under the eye of their nervous new commander—a gangling young fellow called Sublieutenant Rohit—Farhan attended a council of war with Mamaji and Captain Lodi in the senior officers’ tent.

  “If General Vakul were here,” began Mamaji, “I am sure that he would offer his condolences to all of us for the loss of Captain Ravi. I humbly offer them on his behalf: the noblest sacrifices are made to preserve our fellow men. The gallant captain will long be remembered and honored in the Federation.”

  “How very kind of the General,” said Captain Lodi, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “And do you think our great commander might have any platitudes to offer to remedy the fact that we are now marooned in the jungle with two holes in the sides of a beached ship, very little food and a horde of savages armed with poisoned darts all around? I’m sure he would have some marvelously original words of wisdom on our predicament: to fight on and die nobly for the honor of the Federation, perhaps.”

  “There is no need to be rude about our good General, Cyrus dear,” said Mamaji, “He has all our best interests at heart.”

  “What are we going to do?” said Farhan.

  “We will just have to wait them out,” said Mamaji. “They cannot attack us without risking very heavy casualties. And I would strongly suggest that we do not attack them, unless they come close to our walls. We sit and wait. Perhaps they will grow bored and leave us in peace. They must have other things to concern themselves with. They can’t just sit out there forever. They must run out of food at some point.”

  “They have plenty of food—now,” said Farhan. “Lots of fresh meat, at least.”

  The other two stared at him, horrified.

  “What do you know about these people, Farhan?” said Mamaji. “If you know something relevant to our situation, perhaps you’d be so kind as to share it with us.”

  So Farhan told them everything he knew about
the painted people, everything he had learned in his studies at Dhilika University. He was not trying to show off his erudition, at least not only that; it was important for these two to understand who they were facing, and why these white-painted enemies would not meekly walk away when they tired of the fight.

  “You are saying, Farhan, that these people are religious fanatics,” said Captain Lodi, “some obscure and forgotten sect of the Vharkashta religion—and that as part of their foul religion they eat their enemies?”

  “In a nutshell, yes.”

  A servant came into the tent with a tray, and began to lay out plates of food. None of them felt like eating. Sublieutenant Rohit chose that moment to report that he had nothing to report. The enemy could still be seen moving about beyond the tree line but they had made no hostile moves. He said he planned to relieve the sentries who had been on duty all morning. None of the three people to whom he made this report had anything to say.

  “The point I’d like to emphasize,” said Farhan, when the Dokra officer had gone, “is that, from the savages’ perspective, we are not so much enemies engaged in a ferocious battle with them as obstinate livestock they have managed to pen in a convenient bamboo corral. They are merely waiting the opportunity to harvest some more fresh meat.”

  Farhan enjoyed the reaction to his words. It felt extremely gratifying to be able to knock the self-satisfied smirk off Mamaji’s plump face.

  After a very long pause, she said, “Well, Farhan dear, it sounds as if you are quite the expert on these poor, misguided souls. What do you suggest we do?”

  “I have absolutely no idea; ideally, we should kill every last one of them. But I don’t know how to achieve that without most of us dying horribly as well.”

  “Could we talk to them, Farhan dear? You are such a clever-boots—would you be able to talk to them? Perhaps come to some arrangement?”

  Farhan said, “All I know about them comes from reading the old travel diaries of Federation explorers in the library at Dhilika University. And that was twenty years ago when I was a student there. But it does seem that these people speak an archaic form of Yawanese. I have been able to understand some of their utterances.”

  “There it is,” said Mamaji. “That’s the answer. You pop out and talk to them, make them understand our position, see if we can’t find a way out of this mess.”

  Farhan’s jaw sagged. Was the woman mad?

  “Pop out and talk to them?” he said. “With the greatest respect, Mamaji, have you been paying attention at all? These people would slaughter me on sight.”

  “You could go under a flag of truce.”

  “A flag of . . .” Farhan stopped. Something emerged from the dusty tangles of his capacious mind. “Actually, there was a symbol that used to be in currency in Yawa. It was back in the old Wukarta days anyway . . . I wonder. A pair of palm leaves, crossed. If they reciprocate the signal, it means the truce will be observed. It’d be an enormous gamble . . .”

  “It is an absurd gamble,” said Captain Lodi, suddenly very frightened for his old friend. “They’d fill Farhan full of poisoned darts before he had a chance to say a word.”

  “What would you have us do then, Captain?” said Mamaji. “Wait until our rice runs out? Or until they come at us one dark night and swarm over the walls?”

  Captain Lodi said nothing. Farhan was now desperately wishing he had never tried to display his erudition. What had he got himself into?

  “I know that General Vakul would be very impressed indeed if you were to undertake this bold mission for our company,” said Mamaji. “He is always so grateful to brave men who are willing to put the good of others, indeed of the Federation itself, before their own personal safety. He has been known to be generous to them as well. Very generous. What do you say, Farhan dear? Will you bravely step forward and save us from our predicament?”

  There was a long, uncomfortable silence.

  “Let’s talk about my mission bonus,” croaked Farhan. His throat was tinder dry. Can I do this? he thought. Can I actually do this thing? If they accepted the truce . . .

  “Ah yes, your bonus,” said Mamaji. “I believe I have already promised you a hundred ringgu. And I will double that amount, if you will undertake to parlay with the savages and find a suitable accommodation that will get us all out of here. Two hundred ringgu.”

  “Twenty thousand ringgu,” said Farhan, his voice now squeaking like a child’s.

  Mamaji laughed. “I do enjoy a joke, Farhan dear. But you cannot be serious.”

  “Twenty thousand ringgu or you can go out there and try to talk to these white devils.”

  Mamaji looked at him for a moment. “All right. Ten thousand ringgu, and not a kupang more,” she said. “I mean it—not one kupang more.”

  For a moment Farhan could not believe his ears. Ten thousand ringgu would clear all his debts with Xi Gung and others and give him a healthy sum left over to begin a new life of leisure anywhere in the world. Perhaps that governorship of a pretty, obat-producing island was still within reach. Perhaps he might yet be able to entice her to come and share his life in a remote paradise. She must be tired of her existence in the frozen north—and the company of all those dull, drink-sodden, fur-clad barbarians. She’d love being the Governor’s lady, in effect, the queen of the whole island; that he knew for sure. She had always said that she wanted to rule.

  All he had to do was avoid getting stuck with poison darts, persuade a horde of blood-crazed religious cannibals to let the Mongoose’s company go away uneaten, and get back to Istana Kush in one piece to claim his reward. That was all.

  Still, he’d always liked a flutter, he told himself mirthlessly, always been a keen gambler. And this would undoubtedly be the greatest gamble he’d ever taken; the greatest stake of all for the greatest prize: his very life, perhaps even his soul, to be wagered against enough money to make his wildest dreams come true.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll try.”

  CHAPTER 28

  For the twentieth time in the past hour, Katerina slapped her neck hard and then looked at the tiny spatter of blood and mosquito fragments on the palm of her hand. Ahead of her two Legionnaires were slashing rhythmically at the dense jungle with long, steel parangs, cutting a narrow path for the landing force to follow. Ari Yoritomo stood a little behind her, silent and seemingly unmoved by the heat and the insects—although she had seen a tiny bead of perspiration slide down the side of his uncovered face. Behind her, a long tail of nearly two hundred and fifty men, most in identical blue-cotton tunics and heavy packs, carrying long brown muskets and swords buckled to their black-leather belts, struggled and sweated up the incline, their heads bowed under the weight of their equipment. She caught the eye of Major Chan marching alongside his troops, a short, slight, mild-mannered man with large, watery eyes who seemed to be suffering more than the rest of his Legionnaires. However, she noted that he had not complained once about the speed of the march in this foul heat, nor had he tried to take command from her. He would do, she decided.

  She looked once again at the brass compass in her hands, checking the bearing, then at what little sky she could see. The fragments of light that she could make out through the leaves above her had changed from the bright white of noon to the yellowing color of late afternoon and still they seemed to be some distance from the dry, bare slopes of the Barat Cordillera, where she planned to camp. This was her first time trekking through jungle—and she very much hoped it would be her last.

  The landing at Kara Bay on the western side of the Island of Sumbu had gone well. The Legionnaires selected by Colonel Wang had been disembarked onto the beach by the small boats without too much fuss and, as the three ships filled their sails and headed north out of the bay, they had formed up on the sand in two blocks of a hundred men each. They were not handpicked men, something Katerina had decided to overlook; they were instead the two sp
ecialist companies of the Legion: the Scouts, who were light, fast men, all exceptional shots with their longer muskets, who were highly trained in reconnaissance, ambush and mobile-battle tactics. They were an elite company, and Colonel Wang said they were among the best and most intelligent soldiers in the Legion. The second group of men was the Storm Company, all tall, well-built, older men of proven steadiness under fire. These men, known as Stormers, were usually held in reserve but also used to punch through well-defended enemy fortifications when other attacks failed, or provide stubborn rear guards for retreating Legions. They were paid more than the other Legionnaires and a man could not become a Stormer until he had served in a Legion at least seven years. They were, Colonel Wang told her, a proud, extremely tough company and the bravest men of all.