Fires of Change (The Fire Blossom Saga)

by Sarah Lark

  “You won’t be able to do that,” the sergeant said, “unless you want to travel by night.” He frowned.

  “Would you recommend it?” the captain asked doubtfully.

  The sergeant shrugged. “We generally advise people to pass the fort as quickly as possible at as great a distance as possible. It would be delusional to believe one could pass without being seen. However, their scouts have to go back to the fort and get authorization from the prophet before attacking. Before they get that far, whoever is trying to get through the area is usually out of range.”

  “Usually . . . ,” the captain muttered.

  The problem was instantly clear to Carol. If the prisoner convoy proceeded too slowly, they became an easy target.

  “If I were you,” the sergeant continued, “I’d stay here tonight and start early tomorrow morning.”

  The captain thought for a moment, then shook his head. “We’ll go a few miles farther and then set up camp. That means we’ll be able to get out of the dangerous area by early tomorrow morning. They won’t dare go so far from their fort. If we pass at a distance of about five miles, in this weather—that will have to be good enough.”

  The sergeant shrugged. “No one knows how organized the Hauhau are. In the last few months, we haven’t seen a single one of the fellows. At the most, we hear them if the wind is blowing in the right direction. Then we get the shivers from their singing. I can only wish you good luck.”

  It soon became clear that the captain’s decision had been a bad one. Barely half an hour after they had left the base, a downpour started, and the riders couldn’t make much progress. Then night fell. When they could no longer see anything, the captain gave the command to set up camp.

  A little later, Carol and Mara were sitting in a dark but at least partially dry tent. Fancy, soaking wet, tried to wiggle her way between them for warmth, and they pushed her away gently as they chewed listlessly on some bread and cheese they’d packed as emergency rations.

  “My kingdom for a cup of hot tea,” Mara grumbled. “We should have stayed at the base, and then run off quickly the next morning before the captain could get everyone together. We would have been well past Weraroa by now.”

  Carol felt it was her duty to contradict her younger sister, though the scenario was appealing. “Riding in a large group is much safer.”

  Mara snorted. “Riding, maybe, but how about camping out? You don’t really believe that the Maori will miss thirty people putting their tents up here, do you? We can only hope that the scouts aren’t looking very carefully. If they try to free the prisoners, it could get very dangerous.”

  Of course Carol knew that, and the thought robbed her of sleep, despite the redcoat guards making their rounds outside. However, the night passed without incident, and Mara slept as innocently as a babe. But Carol kept thinking about her “twin.” Carol wished with her whole heart to finally be with Ida. The Jensches must have heard from Linda. Mail from the South Island was sent by ship, after all. And she, too, would finally be able to write letters again. To Linda, and to Bill . . . She finally fell into a restless sleep toward morning, and was soon awakened by the soldiers. At first light, they struck camp.

  “I’m sorry for the lack of breakfast, ladies,” the captain said. “But I promise you, as soon as we have survived this day, everything will be much better.”

  At least it was no longer raining. As they rode, a few weak rays of sunshine worked their way through the rising morning mist, making the forest look enchanted. In better times, Carol and Mara would have told each other stories about dancing fairies. But now the effect was almost threatening. The spirits this place harbored were certainly not benevolent ones.

  Carol knew that Weraroa pa was about five miles away, but she still imagined she could make out the fortress through the fog. She listened nervously for the sound of Hauhau chants but only heard the hoofbeats of the horses, the rustling of the soldiers’ uniforms, and a few quietly exchanged words.

  No one spoke much, even though the captain hadn’t ordered silence. Carol could feel the tension almost physically, and wished to be far away as soon as possible. But their progress continued to be painfully slow. It would be hours until they reached relative safety.

  As it turned out, not even Mara, who relied so much on the sharp senses she’d developed alongside the children of the Ngai Tahu, heard the Hauhau warriors coming. The spears that flew out of the bushes were a surprise to everyone. The horses shied, and the men needed far too long to draw their weapons.

  “Rire rire! Kira, kira!”

  War cries cut through the air. Tattooed and painted men sprang from the trees like demons.

  “Hau hau, hau hau!”

  The prisoners enthusiastically joined the chant and swung their chains against the horses’ legs while the assailants attacked the riders with spears and knives. In no time, there was a cacophony of musket shots, screams, war cries, whinnying, and ineffectively shouted orders. The latter were quickly silenced, and Carol watched in horror as a warrior’s spear pierced the captain’s chest. His horse galloped away as he fell, and Mara followed the bay on her steed.

  “Run!” Carol cried.

  Fancy barked, and Carol screamed as a warrior kicked at her. Then she galloped off between the trees—and straight into the next wave of Hauhau who were waiting to attack. She peered through the fog in surprise as a warrior grabbed the bridle of her horse. She tried to push him away, but he blocked her efforts easily. Then she heard Mara scream as someone pulled her off her horse, and screamed herself as Fancy furiously leaped toward her foe and he threw a knife at the dog. Carol saw her body fall under a bush, and then she, too, was pulled from her horse. From the direction of the clearing where the warriors had attacked the soldiers, cries of triumph could now be heard. The Hauhau were lauding their own invulnerability and strength. There were no more sounds of musket fire. The English had been beaten, and the women were in the hands of the Hauhau.

  The sight that met the sisters’ eyes when the warriors dragged them back to the scene of the ambush was one they would never be able to forget. The fog had lifted, revealing a melee that had clear winners but was in no way over. Dying soldiers lay on the road. The cries of the Hauhau warriors mixed with the moaning of the redcoats, their shouts of horror, and their pleading as they bore witness to the Hauhau decapitating their comrades. It wasn’t easy to cut a man’s head off. The warriors hacked through tendons and bones with their knives, and cheered when they finally succeeded. They proudly raised the heads by the hair and swung them around. Others went to the injured men and slit their throats. The Hauhau took no prisoners.

  The leader of the attackers, an old warrior whose entire face was tattooed, attempted to free the cheering prisoners. Finally, he found a blood-smeared key in the pocket of the dead captain. The chains fell, and the men danced and took part in the desecration of the dead.

  “Prophet Kereopa told us to eat their eyes!” one of the men shouted, reaching for his knife. He plunged it into a dead man’s eye socket.

  Carol covered her eyes.

  “You can eat them all,” the leader said with a laugh. “Eat their eyes and their hearts. Sacrifice their hearts to the gods of war!” He pierced a dead man’s chest with his knife and cut out the heart, dancing in a circle with it.

  “Kill! Kill! Kill!”

  The men gathered around him and pounded their spears rhythmically on the ground.

  Paralyzed with shock and momentarily forgotten, Carol and Mara gaped in horror at the scene. Then one of the freed prisoners noticed the sisters.

  “Hau! You caught their women! You caught their women!” He ran to Carol and tore off her coat. “Don’t you want them?” He turned to the two warriors who stood on either side of Carol and Mara. “Then take them! Rire rire!” Howling, he ripped Carol’s dress from her shoulders. “White skin, pakeha brats!”

  Immediately, a group of laughing men approached and formed a circle around Carol. They grabbed her and pu
shed her to the ground. Others grabbed Mara.

  “But you’re—you’re Maori warriors!” Carol shouted at the men. “You don’t do this! My mother said you don’t, it’s not—it’s not tikanga!”

  The warriors paused for a heartbeat as they heard their language coming from the mouth of a white woman. But then they laughed.

  “Maybe we learned it from your people,” one of them said, ripping off his loincloth so Carol could see his erection.

  She screamed as he plunged into her without warning. She twisted backward and attempted to kick him, but she didn’t have a chance against the men who were holding her. As the first warrior raped her, others sat on her arms and clamped her legs. Carol groaned with pain. She tried to bite and spit, but her mouth was too dry to scream. She thought desperately of Mara. They couldn’t do this to her; she was still so young. Carol tried to look for her, but her view was blocked by the warriors who were holding her down. Carol’s assailant was still on top of her. He sweated and stank, he laughed . . .

  Carol felt as though she would vomit. Everything spun before her eyes until the man finally got off of her. Then the others began to fight over who was next, which gave Carol a few seconds to spot Mara. Her sister stood against a tree, kicking, hitting, and biting the men who attempted to get close. Laughing, they taunted the desperate girl until one of the freed prisoners in the circle of rapists staggered forward and pointed.

  “She’s the one! She told the pakeha leader he should make us walk faster! Whip us like horses! I want to kill her. Let me kill the woman!”

  The warrior approached Mara with a knife, his face twisting with hatred.

  “I didn’t say that! I only wanted to move more quickly,” Mara said in Maori, defending herself. “I am a warrior’s wife. I have nothing against your people. Leave me alone. I—”

  “Kill, kill!”

  The men danced around her. None of them seemed to believe that the warrior was serious. Mara tried to push him away, but he cut her hand with his knife, and she screamed as he spun her around to hold the knife against her throat.

  “Don’t you want to stab her with something else first, Koro?”

  The warriors were still joking.

  “If she’s dead, it won’t be fun anymore!”

  “I want to see her beg!”

  The warrior seemed to consider for a moment, and then threw Mara to the ground. “On your knees! And say, ‘Koro, please, mai merire!’ Say it, now! Beg me for mercy!”

  Mara spat in his face. “Pokukohua!”

  Carol gasped as her sister shouted the worst curse word they knew in Maori.

  She saw Koro’s knife flash, but then someone tore it out of his hand before it reached Mara’s throat. The leader of the warriors stepped between them.

  “Leave her! You are not worthy!”

  Mara stared into the tattooed face of her apparent rescuer. The man returned her gaze, taking in her tangled black hair that had come loose in the struggle, her fine-featured face, flushed with anger, and her green eyes. Slowly he loosened the skirt of dried flax that covered his genitals.

  “She’s mine!”

  Chapter 45

  “Where are we?”

  As Carol regained consciousness, she heard Mara crying. Burning pain radiated from her lower body, and her arms and legs were black and blue. Even her head hurt. But she couldn’t remember having been hit. She had lost consciousness as the fourth or fifth warrior had thrown himself on her. Now she fought her way back with difficulty, trying to orient herself in the dim room. It was small, with no furniture. The architecture looked Maori, but with no traditional carvings. It was like a storage room. Or perhaps a prison.

  “Is there—water?” she asked with difficulty.

  Mara shook her head. “No water or food. We’re in a pa. Probably Weraroa. They brought us here. I walked, and they threw you over a horse. You fell off twice. And all the blood—I thought you were dead. Like the others. All dead. All dead . . .”

  Carol realized that her skirts were completely soaked in blood. Mara had draped what was left of Carol’s bodice around her to cover as much of her breasts as she could. She, too, was in pain; Carol remembered having seen one of the warriors bite her.

  “They locked us in here. I don’t know what it is. Probably slaves’ quarters. They were calling us slaves. The man who made me—he called me that.” She shivered. “It’s so terribly cold, Carol.”

  Carol felt the cold now too. Above all, she was thirsty. She wished she could wash, even if the water was icy. The men’s sweat and sticky semen clung to her skin.

  “They want to keep us alive?” she asked.

  Mara shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  Carol tried to sit up. The memories were slowly returning. “Fancy—” she said softly. “Did you see Fancy?”

  Mara shook her head. “I think she’s dead,” she murmured. “They’re all dead. All dead.”

  Carol managed to focus her gaze on her sister. Mara was sitting upright against the wooden wall of their prison, arms wrapped around her knees. She was rocking back and forth rhythmically.

  “All dead, all dead . . .”

  “Mara, stop it!” Carol wanted to shout, but she couldn’t manage more than a weak croak. “You sound like the Hauhau!”

  “All dead, all dead . . .”

  Mara’s eyes were empty. Her spirit seemed to have escaped somewhere.

  Carol sat up, gathered all her strength, and slapped her sister in the face. The movement caused a stabbing pain to tear through her ravaged body, but it served its purpose. Mara went silent.

  The women started as something moved at the entrance to their prison. A very young man opened the door and pushed in a bucket.

  “Wash yourselves,” he ordered. “The prophet wants to see you.”

  He was gone again before the women could say anything. Carol dragged herself across the floor to the bucket and began to drink voraciously. The water tasted stale. She had to cough after the first sip, but it still quenched her thirst and made her feel a little better. Then she found a ladle, filled it with water, and held it up for Mara.

  “Here, you have to drink. Pull yourself together, Mara! You’re not dead!”

  “Maybe I am . . . ,” Mara whispered.

  Carol threw the water in her face. “How many were there?” she asked softly.

  “With you?” Mara asked back. “I don’t know. It was terrible, they—they wouldn’t stop, they—”

  She began to rock again. Carol dragged over the bucket, held her tightly, and pushed the ladle against her lips.

  “Drink!” she ordered again. “I wasn’t asking about me. How many were with you?”

  “Just one,” Mara whispered. “Just their leader. It wasn’t—it wasn’t even so bad compared to . . . But what he did afterward was so terrible, I—I wished that the one they called Koro had killed me. Then—then I wouldn’t have had to see it. At least you didn’t have to.”

  Carol remembered the leader’s words. You can eat them all . . .

  “Did they eat the—” She couldn’t manage to complete her thought.

  Mara finally reached for the ladle. “Don’t ask,” she whispered. “I—I’m going to wash off the blood now. It’s not mine. And then, maybe—maybe the prophet will kill us after all. It really doesn’t matter if they kill me. I just don’t—I don’t want them to eat me.” Mara broke into sobs.

  Carol pulled her sister into her arms and rocked her gently until the young Maori returned. He was hardly more than a child, certainly not one of their attackers. She wondered how long ago the ambush on the convoy had been, and if the English would respond. Perhaps troops were already on their way.

  “You should come with me now, to see the prophet.” There was an unnatural gleam in the eyes of the young man at the mention of Haumene. “Can you walk?”

  Carol struggled to her feet. Mara helped her up and supported her sister while trying to hold her bodice over her breasts. It wasn’t unseemly to the tribes to
expose the upper body, male or female. But it was important to Carol, especially on this day. She glanced at Mara’s dress and realized that it was smeared with blood but hardly torn at all.

  “I’ll manage,” she told the young man. “When we come back, could we have a few blankets? It’s so cold.”

  The Maori shrugged. “They don’t know what they’re going to do with you yet,” he said emotionlessly. “We’ll have to wait and see if you’re really coming back. Come now!”

  The women followed the young man through a series of trenches. They weren’t tall enough to see over the edges. The trenches led from one building to the next. The entire fortress grounds seemed to be crisscrossed with them. Carol had heard that they provided the warriors protection from enemy shots. Soon they passed a palisade fence, and a ladder led upward.

  Carol pulled herself up the ladder with difficulty. She thought she was starting to bleed again but didn’t have the energy to dwell on it. She blinked in the winter sunlight. The scenery reminded her of a marae. Various buildings were arranged around meeting grounds and drill grounds, each one with a niu in the center.

  She didn’t have much time to look. Two warriors met the women and drove them forward with their spears. They crossed a square between two buildings and then saw a traditional chieftain’s house. It was built among a grove of trees, set apart from the meetinghouses, isolated from the tribe, and clearly tapu.

  Two men were sitting in front of a fire, wearing chieftain’s garb, with large, valuable traditional feathered cloaks against the winter cold. In front of them stood two other men gesticulating and complaining. They seemed to be defending themselves. It looked as though the prophet was passing judgment on them. Carol realized with disgust and Mara with mortal fear that one of them had been the leader of the attack. The other man was young Koro. Before, Carol had been leaning on Mara, but now she had to support her sister’s weight instead. Mara’s entire body shook. She stopped short, and only continued when the warriors aggressively poked their spears toward her to urge her forward. Finally, they came close enough that they could hear the men’s words. Mara whimpered.