Call of the Raven

by Smith, Wilbur

  ‘Have the Punu ever killed one of them?’ Mungo asked Pendleton.

  ‘They do not hunt the ibubu. But there are times when they must fight to protect themselves. That happened to Wisi when he was a boy. He was with his sister when they came across a family with babies. The female ibubu attacked Wisi’s sister and tried to rip off her face. That is what they do.’ Pendleton shaped his hand into a claw and pulled it down from his forehead to his chin. ‘Wisi drove his spear through the creature’s heart. But he could not save his sister. She lost too much blood.’

  The next day they turned north, across swathes of savannah and forest. Occasionally, they had to ford swift-flowing rivers. The pace they kept pushed many of the sailors to exhaustion, but they carried on with only mumbled complaints.

  Late in the afternoon of the second day, they spotted a hippopotamus among the reeds of a quiet bend. A few minutes later, they surprised a crocodile taking in the sun on a beach. It brandished its fearsome teeth, then threw itself into the muddy water, disappearing below the surface. After sighting the monster, some of the sailors refused to cross the river.

  ‘The village is that way,’ Mungo said, pointing back the way they had come. ‘Good luck finding your way there.’

  That cut short the mutiny. The men decided they were more frightened of the jungle – and Mungo’s anger – than the crocodiles. They crossed the river without mishap, and carried on until evening. They made camp in a patch of forest a short walk from a clear stream. While the sailors tended to their bruised and blistered bodies, the Punu tribesmen speared fish and built a fire, cooking the fish on a spit. They served it whole, and prepared their plan of attack for the following morning.

  Pendleton translated. There was a village, Wisi said, a little distance away, populated by a rival clan. They would make their approach in the hour before dawn, circling the settlement like a noose. On Wisi’s signal, they would fire their guns into the air and raise an alarm, while converging on the village from all sides and driving the people into a herd at the centre. Anyone who tried to escape would be killed. The rest would be lashed together with the rope and sticks, and marched back to the Nganga’s abode. Wisi and Pendleton described the process so simply that it sounded to Mungo more like a ritual than a raid.

  The night descended like a curtain over the forest. The sailors found it difficult to sleep. The sounds of the nocturnal forest were foreign to their ears – the calls of the night birds and the rustle of animals in the underbrush. When a leopard let out a screech, they pushed their bedrolls as close as they could to the fire. The Punu warriors, on the other hand, spread piles of leaves into padded beds and slept soundly.

  Exhausted after two days of marching, Mungo turned in early and fell into slumber. But though his body shut down, his soul drifted without rest through the world of dreams.

  He was asleep, and then he was awake in a land of shadow. Running. He heard the pounding of his feet, felt the jarring impact in his bones. He was panting, his lungs aflame, sweat streaming down his face. But the place was freezing, like the sunless void of a winter’s night.

  He heard a scream. It reached like a blade through his ribcage, transfixing his heart. The pain was greater than anything he had ever imagined. He tried to shriek, but no sound came from his throat.

  He glanced over his shoulder and saw the shadow among shadows. It was the ibubu. The pain inside him grew as the monster closed in. He heard the rough snort of animal breathing, the gallop of the monster’s knuckles on the ground. He spent the last of his strength in a mad dash, but the beast caught him with ease. He was flying through the air, hurled by powerful hands and arms.

  The gorilla emerged from the shadows and stood over him, its rancid stench like a cloud in the air. He saw the flare of its nostrils, felt the crush of its paws on his shoulders.

  Then the vision changed. There were snakes writhing in a pit and an old man in their midst, his withered body punctured by fangs. The man was Benjamin St John. Then the old man was gone, replaced by one much younger, his face shrouded by a mane of dark hair. His body had fewer wounds, his neck and chest were still unmarked. But the snakes were hissing at him, sensing his vulnerability. They came for him in a wave, driving their fangs into his throat and cheeks.

  A shake from Tippoo shocked Mungo’s eyes open, and the dream was gone.

  ‘It is time.’

  It was still dark. As the men gathered, Tippoo distributed rations of dried fruit and salted beef. One of Wisi’s lieutenants handed out small iboga roots. Mungo waved off the basket and forbade his men from touching it.

  ‘Only a fool would refuse iboga,’ sniffed Pendleton. ‘You don’t want them shitting their breeches, do you?’

  ‘My men will stand up under fire. And if a man has a gun in his hands, I prefer him to have a clear head.’

  ‘As you wish.’

  Pendleton made a show of taking the largest root from the basket.

  After dousing the fire with water from the creek, they threw coils of bark rope over their shoulders and decamped under an order of silence. Wisi and his men took the lead. As Mungo moved through the darkness, he felt the grain of the rifle stock in his hands, the cold touch of the trigger. He saw stars peeking through gaps in the leaves and traced the head of the Dolphin not far from the feet of the Eagle. They reminded him of his grandfather. It seemed a lifetime ago – the nights he had spent as a boy with Benjamin St John, studying the planets through the lens of the telescope in the observatory at Windemere. The rings of Saturn, the moons of Jupiter, the blue orb of Venus, the nebula of Orion, the trio of Alpha Centauri . . . His grandfather had told him that they demonstrated the grandeur of God, but that was not what Mungo saw. To him, those cold and distant spheres said – if they deigned to speak at all – that he was a speck of dust in an infinite universe, beneath notice.

  Later he had seen those stars again, through the open roof of the observatory, lying on his back with Camilla naked beside him. On those nights, he had almost felt some trace of his grandfather’s reverence. Now, the memory was too painful to touch.

  His foot caught on a root; he stumbled, and almost discharged his rifle by mistake. He should watch his footing, he told himself angrily, not stare at the stars.

  When they reached the border of the plain, Mungo saw the outline of the village. The sky in the east was beginning to brighten; by the dawning light, Mungo could see at least a hundred wattle-and-daub huts clustered together on a low ridge that rose above the plain. Wisi had estimated the population at three hundred inhabitants, including children, but Mungo reckoned there must be double that number.

  The war party moved silently across the grass, fanning out until they encircled the village. Wisi waited until they were all in position before he mimicked the warble of the songbird and the men raised their guns to the sky, rending the tranquil morning with an explosion of gunpowder and shouts of bloodlust.

  Even though he was prepared for it, the sudden thunder of so many guns sounded to Mungo like the beginning of the end of the world. He scrambled to his feet and ran towards the village as the noose the Punu had made closed around it. The wattle fence that ringed it was no protection. The Punu smashed through it like charging elephants.

  Still the villagers had not woken to their danger. The Punu warriors were among the huts now, working through the village with practised efficiency – breaking open wicker doors, jamming their guns and spears through doorways, shouting their war cries and letting off shots to terrify their victims.

  But something was wrong. Instead of emerging with prisoners, they came out of the huts shaking their heads in confusion. The huts were empty. Even the women and children had gone. Had the village been abandoned? But no – there were goats and chickens in their pens, and the fires that Mungo had seen the night before still smouldered. Where was everyone?

  It was a trap. Mungo realised it a split second before it sprang. Somehow, the villagers must have seen the Punu coming. They had abandoned their homes
, letting the raiders in unopposed while they waited in the jungle beyond the village. Instead of being surrounded, they had surrounded their attackers.

  Now they struck. Mungo heard the whistle of air as a spear flew past his shoulder, and the wet crunch of the sharpened point burying itself in the Punu warrior beside him. The man screamed, but it was drowned out by the war cry that rose from the tribesmen who were suddenly racing towards them with spears and knives and shields.

  Bullets flew and bodies fell, but still the attackers came, throwing their spears with deadly accuracy. A Punu warrior took one through the neck. Another slumped to the ground with a shaft protruding from his stomach.

  ‘Keep in among the houses!’ Mungo shouted.

  Wisi’s men and the Raven’s sailors were vastly outnumbered. If they fought on open ground, they would be slaughtered. Instead, they ran to one of the larger huts, near the middle of the village, and took up a defensive position. Mungo’s men fought with their backs to the wall, firing their rifles at the oncoming villagers, while Wisi and his warriors guarded their flanks. The surrounding buildings gave their enemies cover – but they also broke up their attacks. Instead of rushing at the war party and overrunning them, they were forced into narrow approaches where the Hall rifles could hold them off.

  In Baltimore, Mungo had hand-picked the Raven’s crew to be hardened fighters. Wisi’s men were warriors. The villagers, by contrast, were farmers and labourers. They were fighting for their freedom, for their village and their families – but nothing had prepared them for the ferocity they faced. The Hall rifles cut them down with devastating effect. Some of the villagers took balls through the heart, others through the head, their skulls exploding on impact.

  The attack faltered. Some of the villagers fell to their knees in surrender. A few disappeared into the forest.

  ‘Don’t let them get away!’ cried Pendleton. ‘Those are the men we came for!’

  The Raven’s crew charged forward after the fleeing villagers. Some of the Punu followed them. But they had gone too soon. Unseen in the melee, a group of villagers had crept around the rear of the house where the raiding party had made their stand, to attack from behind. They burst out now from around the corner, catching the remnants of the Punu unawares. Half a dozen warriors went down before they even saw their attackers. Others turned, but too late.

  Mungo had already started to follow the fleeing villagers when he heard Wisi’s war cry. By the time he looked back, only two of the Punu remained alive – Wisi and one of his lieutenants, caught in a swarm of villagers. The two warriors stood back to back and cut down every man who assailed them. One villager lost his hand; another took a blade through the throat; a third fell after being struck in the head with Wisi’s spear. But there were more, and they kept coming. They fought with abandon, knowing that capture would be worse than death.

  Mungo saw Wisi’s lieutenant fall, stabbed by a sword from behind. Wisi let out a blood-curdling yell and swung his spear like a mace, striking the attacker with a blow to the head. A second man lashed out at his exposed flank. One of the blades pierced Wisi’s leg. Another spear flew past his neck, missing his throat by an inch. To Mungo’s amazement, Wisi shook off his wounds and struck out with his short sword, slicing the arm of one of the men down to the bone. The man howled and stumbled backwards, as blood erupted from the wound.

  But Wisi’s strength was flagging. The last three attackers thrust their blades at his stomach and head. With twists of his body, he managed to evade all of them, but the effort left him winded, his leg coated with blood and buckling where it had been stabbed.

  Mungo ran in. He swung his rifle like a club, knocking the attacker nearest him off his feet, then drove his knife into the side of the next man. That gave Wisi precious moments. He feigned an attack with his sword, and as the last villager twisted away he exposed his legs to the sweep of Wisi’s spear. The man went down in a tangle of limbs. With a fearsome cry, Wisi raised his sword to plunge it through the man’s spine. He would have killed him, had Mungo not shouted, ‘He’s worth nothing to us dead!’

  Although Wisi knew no English, he seemed to understand. He wiped the blade on his loincloth and used it to prod the fallen man’s buttocks. Doubled over, the man crawled towards the circle at the centre of the village.

  The battle was over. The survivors – those who had surrendered, or been captured – were herded back to the central square. Soon Wisi’s men found their women and children, who had been hiding in a clearing in the forest nearby. The Punu warriors dragged them back to join their menfolk. Some were sobbing and babbling in their indecipherable tongue. Others stared vacantly at the ground, faces set hard in defeat. Wisi’s men bound them by their necks with the bark ropes, while the Raven’s crew guarded them with their rifles.

  Pendleton stepped forward and grabbed a young woman by the arm. A man beside her lunged towards him, but one of Wisi’s men struck him with the butt of his knife and put his boot on the man’s neck, while aiming his weapon at the crowd. The villagers recoiled, their pleas turning to sobs. Pendleton dragged the girl away, towards the nearest hut.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Mungo asked.

  Pendleton paused. The iboga root had had its usual effect, putting a grotesque bulge in his trousers.

  ‘Sampling the merchandise,’ he said with a smirk.

  Mungo levelled his rifle. ‘You don’t touch any of them.’

  The chill command in Mungo’s voice cut through even the iboga daze. Pendleton took one step forward, saw Mungo’s finger tighten on the trigger, and stopped.

  ‘I thought we were partners,’ he complained.

  ‘And that is why we will do nothing to spoil our cargo. Let her go.’

  With a sour look, Pendleton released the girl. She ran back to the crowd and squeezed in among them. Pendleton spat on the ground. He took up a coil of bark rope and thrust it into Mungo’s hands.

  ‘Tie them up – by the neck, mind you, not the waist. That way they won’t pretend to fall. And you’d better make sure the knots are tight. If there is a shortfall, it will come out of your share.’

  A dawn mist rose off the mouth of the Nyanga river, blotting out the sun and turning the world grey. Birds sang and monkeys screeched from the trees, but the sound was muted; the river surface was still and glassy. The only ripples that disturbed it came from the prow of a longboat cutting through the water, and the sixteen oars that drove it forward.

  In the stern of the boat, Captain Edwin Fairchild of HMS Maeander peered through the mist for the dark shape of the ship he knew must be moored nearby. It had been a poor year for him. Either the war against the slave trade had had more success than he dared hope, or – more likely, he feared – the slavers were getting better at avoiding the Royal Navy. In the months the Maeander had been sailing these waters, they had barely caught anyone. Then there had been the storm – which the Maeander had barely survived – and more fruitless days patrolling the coast. It was late in the season, and pickings were slim, but Fairchild had driven his crew relentlessly. He was convinced there might still be ships in the area, and would not give up the chase.

  ‘If there is any hope of saving even one poor African from bondage, we owe all our best endeavours to save him,’ he had lectured the crew.

  Even so, he could not keep the ship at sea forever. With provisions running low, Fairchild had been about to turn back to their base at Freetown. Then his prayers had been answered. All his weeks of searching and doubt had simply been the Lord’s way of testing him. Coasting north, looking to take on water, an eagle-eyed lookout had spotted a masthead in a river estuary. As soon as they were around the point, hidden by a thickly wooded peninsula, the Maeander had dropped anchor.

  Fairchild’s officers had counselled caution. Better to wait until she sailed, when the evidence of her crime would be incontrovertible. But Fairchild was impatient. The shame of his last voyage aboard the Fantome still burned in his breast. He had stood on the slave ship’s deck and fa
iled to save her captives. Worse, he had only escaped with his life thanks to Mungo St John. True, the London papers had lionised him as a hero for standing alone against the slavers, and he had earned a promotion from the engagement. But that was hollow praise. What he needed was redemption.

  ‘Besides,’ he argued, ‘once the slaves are loaded aboard, we will not be able to use our cannon without risk of hurting them. Better to take the ship at anchor, when she has no chance of escape.’

  And that was why, at first light, Fairchild found himself leading a boarding party of three boats up the river. His scouts had reported that the slave ship appeared lightly manned, but he was taking no chances.

  ‘There.’

  He saw a dark shadow ahead and altered course. The mist hid their approach until they were almost under her stern. Even when they were close enough to read the name picked out on her transom – Raven – no one saw them. The crew had not bothered to post a guard.

  The longboat sidled against the Raven’s hull. The coxswain – a sturdy man whose preferred weapon was a boarding axe – made to climb her ladder, but Fairchild waved him back.

  ‘I will go first,’ he whispered. He would lead by example.

  His heart raced as he climbed the ladder. He kept waiting for shouts or shots, any sign that he had been seen. But none came. He reached the top, paused a second to draw his pistol, then vaulted over the side.