by Robert Adams
He sighed once more. "But if affairs with the ship are as bleak as you say . . . well, all right, strip the ship of anything and everything that might be of use and when your crew is done with her, I'll send out men to take her apart. All of your crew are familiar with guns? Of course they are. You have how many left?"
"Thirty-seven seamen and twelve sea-soldiers, Captain," replied Abdullah.
Otei nodded. "All right, sir knight, there're the cores of five gun crews. The men will receive all necessaries plus one-quarter onza in gold per month, sergeants or their equivalents will earn one-half onza, and you, their captain, will be paid five onzas."
Abdullah was staggered. "Captain . . . it is too much! And I am not even over-familiar with the arts of the cannoneer."
Otei smiled wanly. "Pah, you don't know the full worth of an experienced European officer, much less a knighted one, here on this coast. And forget about cannons, man, I want you to take over the command of a company of my Bornu calivermen. They're good troops, from a warrior race, trained from birth—like you—in the arts of the soldier and disciplined; I commanded a company of men just like them for years in Europe and other places, and some of my men were, indeed, the sires of some of these. I think you'll get along well with them—you're the kind of a man that they will automatically respect."
The Ana Gomez was reduced to only the skeleton of a ship, lying bleaching in the tropical sun, a perch for birds and a sunning rest for turtles, by the time that scouts brought back word that the huge aggregation of natives of the interior were within a day's march of the fortress, their journey having consumed better than three weeks.
Looking at the files of spearmen debouching from the forest edge two hundred yards distant through the brass long-glass from off the ship, Abdullah quickly noted that they were obviously not the same race as most of those in the fortress, being dark brown rather than truly black, not so tall on the average, and with thicker bodies, limbs, and facial features. A few had firearms—calivers, arquebuses, and long dags—but most carried three spears—a long, broad-bladed one and two much shorter ones with smaller heads—a war club or axe of some kind, and a large shield almost as tall as they were. A few wore steel helmets and ill-fitting bits of armor, but most were nearly mother-naked.
They were none of them anything approaching well armed, not by European standards; even the indios that Abdullah had faced in the Mexico campaigns had been better armed, far better protected in their bodies, and with at least a bare semblance of discipline in their movements. These, on the other hand, looked like just a large, ill-formed, leaderless mob. But Abdullah could also see just why Otei feared the savages: there looked to be thousands of them!
One of the Captain's bodyguards came up at a dead run and bade Don Abdullah attend at once upon his master at the rear gate. When Abdullah arrived he found Otei wearing an oversized mail hauberk and a visored, dog-faced bascinet, edged with gold leaf, a heraldic crest of silver and gold centered on its brow and a wealth of brightly dyed plumes socketed atop its crown.
One of the bodyguards handed a similar helmet and a padded mail coif to Abdullah, and Otei said, "Put it on, sir knight, you're going to accompany me to a brief meeting with whatever unhung thief is just now paramount chief of these grunting brown bush pigs."
"Here, help yourself, the more garish you look, the better; it impresses these childish barbarians, always. Why do you think I go as I do?" He held out an opened casket jammed with chains and rings, necklaces and bracelets of gold and of silver, some set with gems. "I mean to tell him that you're my new partner, and you have to look the part, you see. Make sure your pistols are loaded and primed and spanned tight—no one can ever be exactly certain just how these parleys will end up, not when dealing with such volatile, demon-ridden pagans as these. The only thing you can put stacks of golden onzas on is that they're all treacherous as snakes, so keep your eyes peeled out there, sir knight." Just before they entered the exit passage, Otei and Abdullah were joined by two other officers, an Egyptian knight Ali al-Baz and another Ghanaian, Patricius Olahda, each of them almost as weighed down with barbaric jewelry as Otei and Abdullah, though much of theirs was of silver, rather than gold.
As they walked out from the dim tunnel into the glare of the sun, Otei spoke rapidly to Abdullah. "No need for you to say a word—you don't know the language, anyway. Patricius does, though. Listen for his whisper—he'll be close behind you translating the bestial grunts of that swine's droppings. See that one there who's crammed his misshaped body into a hauberk? He'll be the boar in charge, I can tell from the devices on his shield. I don't like the shape of this affair already. They are fielding no more than the agreed-upon four—that's not like them, and it means that they have something up their nonexistent sleeves."
When they halted, facing two of the four brown-skinned men, Abdullah stood perfectly still, his right hand hanging by his side and his left resting on the pommel of his sword, facing straight ahead but using his wandering eyes to take in the paramount chief, with whom Otei was conversing.
From just behind him, the younger Ghanaian spoke in a hushed whisper. "That animal on two legs is called Ngona. He asked who you were and the Captain said that you were a great warrior from Spain and one of his new partners. The gracious gentleman said that you should have stayed in your own country then, because he had kept the last man of Spain they had captured alive and in agony for four days before he finally died and they ate him, and he remarked that your liver would probably be no less tasty after you have been properly tenderized with torture."
The brown man in the too-tight hauberk said something, Otei said something, then the brown man said something else and grinned widely, showing teeth that had been filed to sharp points.
The whisper said, "He asked where was the Arab called the Butcher, and the Captain said that he was abed of a fever. Then the pig said that he is very familiar with that kind of fever, that one brought about by a spear in the back."
There was a few minutes more of "conversation," Otei conducting his end of it all with a cool hauteur, while the brown man, his face running with sweat in the unaccustomed and weighty confines of the hauberk, began to shout, gesticulate, and finally alternately shake his seven-foot spear and pound its butt on the ground, white patches of froth gathering at the corners of his unbelievably thick lips.
Finally, two of the other brown men took the chief by his arms and turned him about, and then all began to walk back toward the dense line of brown spearmen who, Abdullah noted with a bit of alarm, had slowly shuffled forward until they had halved the distance at which they had been standing at the start of the conference. Whirling about and setting a stiff pace in the direction of the fortress, Abdullah spoke swiftly in Arabic, a language that he knew all three of them understood. "Immediately that son of a sow is back to his littermates, they are going to attack, on all three sides and in full force. That's what has happened before when they moved up that way during a parley, and they're too dumb to realize I would remember something like that."
"We won't have time to reach the gate, I don't think, before the guns are going to have to fire for full effectiveness. So when I give the signal, all of you drop flat and stay that way until all of the big guns have fired and drawn inside for swabbing and reloading. Then get up and run as fast as you can to the gate."
There was a roar of sound from behind them, men's deep-toned voices chanting something over and over again, and then, through his bootsoles, Abdullah felt the vibration of thousands of big, calloused feet striking the hard earth. A quick glance over his shoulder showed him the entire long, dense line of savages running straight at the wall of the fortress, waving spears and clubs and shields over their heads and shouting.
Bugles pealed from within the fortress, drums rolled. Then all along the length of the wall within sight, gunports gaped open and with a deep rumbling audible even at the distance, the guns of all levels were wheeled up into battery, their barrels extending out from within the walls
' casemates.
Otei dropped flat on his huge belly, and the other three quickly followed suit. Seeing as he dropped that the other three men had closed their visors, Abdullah did the same. The feet kept drum-drumming, coming nearer and nearer, and his every instinct ordered Abdullah to get up, either to flee or fight, but not to just lie supine and be speared in the back; nonetheless, he controlled himself and stayed put.
He heard one or two guns fired off, from somewhere far down the wall to the northeast. Then, suddenly, he was in the midst of a living noise so loud that he nearly swooned of its effects and just lay there, feeling drugged or very drunk, hearing nothing, until something began to beat upon the back-plate of his cuirass insistently. He raised his head groggily to see the Arab officer standing over him slamming the flat of his drawn sword yet again onto the back-plate. With the man's aid, he got up and staggered the distance to the gate. Immediately they passed under the spikes of the half-raised portcullis, it was slammed back down into place and the crew strained to close and rebar the ironwood gates.
The batteries along the walls roared once more while still they were passing through the passage to the inner gate, but although he felt the pressure and vibration, Abdullah heard the cannon fire only dimly.
Hours later, after he had rested in the palace, changed his bloody, befouled clothing, and washed his face—blood having sprung from his ears, nose, and even the corners of his eyes as he had lain on the ground outside the walls—he and Captain Otei returned to the top of the rear wall, then slowly walked the circuit of the walls before descending to tour the casemates and praise the tired gunners, all gunpowder-black now, no matter their original colors.
"They got a bloody and very deadly surprise, Ngona's swine did," remarked Otei, as they surveyed the hundreds of square yards upon which bloody brown bodies and chunks of bodies lay still or twitching or writhing and screaming. "The last time they tried it, seven years back, I had far fewer heavy pieces on this wall and the two flanking ones, all of my heavy guns were in the front wall back then, and that's where they took their heaviest losses on that occasion and that's why they wouldn't attack it today. But the simpletons didn't stop to think that I might've added guns since they were here before."
"How many do you think we killed or wounded. Captain?" asked Abdullah. "It is said that very few ever reached the walls and none of those ever left the foot of them. Will they have enough men left to launch another attack, do you think?"
"Oh, yes, sir knight, they'll attack again, probably tonight, but surely in the morning, for all that at least half of their effectives are lying out there or dying slowly in the bush of their wounds." Otei's voice bore a tinge or more of admiration for his persistent foes. "They are a brave, determined, often suicidally stubborn people. They'd make first-rate soldiers, could they be disciplined and taught the proper use of modern arms. The firearms that some of them bear are used as clubs, you see, not reloaded and fired at those they're captured from. With the exceptions of their javelins and thrown clubs or axes or knives, they have no missile weapons in war, although they use bows and arrows for hunting. They are a backward, superstition-bound race of pagans and I hate having to deal with them at all, but they fight a lot and therefore take many captives. They can't eat them all, usually, so they sell them to me or to others. But sometimes they get bigger ideas and either try to or succeed in taking the captives back to resell to another buyer. When Ngona's older brother first became chief, he marched down here and attacked us, and, because of a number of factors, I ended it all through dint of buying the bugger off. He was killed in the course of their latest war, upcountry, and Ngona was chosen to replace him. It was he who led the ambush of Haroun and took back the captives, and, I suppose, he just decided to try to do what his brother had done seven years ago all over again. I can only hope that the pig is lying somewhere out there in the open and that he still is alive enough to feel it when the hyenas come for him tonight."
There had been no waiting at all for the vultures and lesser carrion birds. Thick as flies, they had descended onto the feast so thoughtfully spread for them and now could be seen stalking and hopping about, sometimes rising to fly a few yards to another tempting morsel—internal organs, entrails, and gobbets of more solid meat attracting most of the larger birds, the smaller dining upon eyes, tongues, and brains from smashed skulls. Occasionally there was a ghastly screaming from somewhere around the body-littered fields as a cannibal warrior too badly injured to move or defend himself was eaten alive by the avian scavengers.
On the flanks of the lines of attackers, a few wounded individuals, desperate for water, had crawled toward the riverbanks, and some of them had made it. These dead or bleeding bodies had piqued the interest of nearby crocodiles, and soon the river was debouching the scaly, toothy beasts in numbers and in a vast assortment of sizes. Abdullah could never have dreamed that so many of the reptiles had been lurking unseen in that section of river; he had never seen more than a few, here and there, sunning themselves on the riverbanks as the ships sailed past, and none at all around the area of the fortress.
But there they were, clambering out of the water, climbing the banks and moving amazingly fast to the edges of the area of carnage. Before their advances, the vultures and other birds protested loudly but in vain, for their sharp beaks were useless against the thickly armored water beasts. Long, tooth-studded jaws opened and clamped down on dead men, pieces of dead men, and some not yet dead, to drag them all relentlessly back to the riverbank and down it to disappear with delicacy under the brown water of the Rio Kongo. Here and there occurred a furious, tail-lashing tug-of-war between the big beasts over a tasty bit, but there was more than enough for all and even the loser of these was certain to leave with a prize of its own.
They dined early that evening in the fortress, for all in the reduced garrison would have to take turns watching for a possible new attack by the cannibals. Prior to the meal, Abdullah had tried to return the costly golden baubles to Otei, only to be told to keep them and the antique helmet, in case another conference occur, so the Spaniard dropped them into a suede bag, dropped that into his sea chest, and forgot about them.
There had been a handful of deaths or severe injuries that day, all due to unavoidable accidents, though not a single spearman had ever reached a position from which he could have killed or hurt anyone in the garrison.
After the hurried meal, Otei addressed the assembled officers saying, "Gentlemen, that was a beautiful piece of work out there today. I am justly proud of all of you and of your men. I'd guess that we killed or close enough to it above two thousand of the pigs. And I doubt me not that not a few more had painful cause to regret that they laid up in the bush over there within range of our catapults, too. I know that some of you wanted permission to blast carcasses out of the mortars into the bush, but I forbade it, and, presently, you'll learn why."
"There may be another attack tonight and there may not; it's dependent on a host of variables over which we have and can have no control. These are not in the least subtle opponents. If they attack tonight they'll do it in the same full-tilt, suicidal way they did it today—chanting, shouting, screaming, and running right into the range of our weapons. If the moon is visible tonight, most likely they won't attack until moonset; if not, if it's a cloudy night, then expect it at any time."
"I pray, however, that they not attack tonight for this reason: gentlemen, those splendid cannonades today burned up a great deal of gunpowder. My plans had been to treat them to two volleys, but when more and more kept coming out of the bush, we had no choice but to fire two more, than blow apart the diehards with the swivels, and even then some dozens made it to the walls and had to be downed with long guns and pistols."
"I've assigned more men to the powdermill and it will be at it all through the night, but there is a limit to how much can be made, for the stocks of priests' powder are very low. Yes, we do have some hundredweight barrels of raw niter, but in order to make decent gunpowd
er of the stuff it has to be refined, and that is a long process."
"So I am not saying don't touch off a piece if it is really necessary, just be damned certain that it is before you blow away at a hyena or three with a twenty-two-pounder culverin. If you have to fire or feel you have to at a suspicious something, then please do it with a swivel gun, a small-bored one, or better yet, with a caliver loaded with ball and shot. God be praised, we own still a very good amount of charging and priming powder for the smaller arms."
"But, as I said, let us all pray that they elect to launch their next attack at a time when we will have enough light to clearly see just what we're shooting at."
Michael Otei's prayers were apparently heard and answered, for the cannibals did not offer to attack that night, with the huge equatorial moon riding high above the beleaguered fortress and its heterogeneous garrison of defenders. But from somewhere back in the bush, drums rumbled sullenly through all the hours of darkness, a satanic-sounding accompaniment to the lunatic cackles of hyenas, the hissings and bellowings of crocodiles, the low coughing of leopards, and the hundred and one other noises made by other feasters on the cleared land outside the walls. The approaching drums and the chanting voices commenced at dawn, first a distant grumble and murmur, but growing louder and louder as the cannibals neared. They came from the north, where they had probably camped the night through, but they divided somewhere out of sight of the fort to once more emerge on three sides, another and smaller contingent of them issuing from out a swampy area just downstream of the fort to threaten the riverside wall. They were none of them brown that morning, however. Save only for rivulets cut through by sweat, each of them was whitish-gray from pate to horny soles.
