Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon bas-3

by Mark Hodder

  “All right, all right,” Burton growled impatiently. “Let's leave it be. But if you ever pull a stunt like that again, Herbert, I'll throw your key into the middle of the Ukerewe Lake.”

  “I'm sorry, Boss.”

  Leading the horses, they moved to the edge of the rock, which the jungle overhung, and settled in the shade. The trees around them were crowded with blue monkeys that had fallen silent when the men appeared but which now took up their distinctive and piercing cries again-Pee-oww! Pee-oww! — and began to pelt the group with fruit and sticks. Sidi Bombay shouted and waved his arms but the tormentors took no notice.

  “Confound the little monsters!” Trounce grumbled. “We'll not get any peace here!”

  Swinburne removed the dressings from the detective's legs and applied fresh poultices. He checked the wound on his friend's arm. It was red and puckered but the infection had disappeared.

  They abandoned the clearing and plunged back into the jungle, the men trailing behind Spencer as he swiped his machete back and forth, clearing the route. Pox and Malady had elected to sit on one of the horse's saddles rather than in their habitual position on the clockwork philosopher's head, causing Swinburne to wonder whether Spencer had fallen out of favour with the two parakeets as well.

  The poet struggled with his thoughts. Hadn't he noticed something about the brass man's philosophical treatise back in Ugogi? Something unusual? What was it? Why couldn't he remember? Why was a part of him feeling ambivalent about Spencer? It didn't make sense-Herbert was a fine fellow!

  Moving to Burton's side, he opened his mouth to ask if the explorer shared his misgivings. Instead, he found himself saying, “It's awfully humid, just like in the coast regions.”

  “Humph!” Burton replied, by way of agreement.

  It was near sundown by the time they stumbled wearily out of the vegetation. They were at the base of a hill, with a wide, clear, and shallow stream crossing their path.

  The horses drank greedily. One of them collapsed.

  “It's done for, poor thing,” Trounce said. “I'd put a bullet through its brain if I could. It's the proper thing to do.”

  “If our guns worked,” Burton responded, “that would alert Speke to our presence.”

  “Allow me,” said Spencer, limping over to the stricken animal. He bent, took its head in his hands, and twisted it with all his mechanical might. The horse's neck popped. It kicked and died.

  They moved half a mile upstream, washed, ate, and set up camp.

  Burton spoke to Pox: “Message for Isabel Arundell. Please report. Message ends. Go.”

  Pox blew a raspberry, took to the air, and disappeared over the jungle.

  “Weasel thief!” Malady screeched, and flew after his mate.

  The men sat quietly for a little while then entered the tent and almost immediately fell into a deep slumber.

  Dawn came, and so did a warning from their clockwork sentry: “Rouse yourselves, gents! Twenty men approachin' an' they don't look very cheerful!”

  Burton, Swinburne, and Trounce crawled into the open and rubbed the sleep from their eyes. They found Spencer and Bombay watching a gang of men, some way off, marching toward them. Their hair was fashioned into multiple spikes and held in place with red mud, their faces striped with ridged scars, their noses adorned with copper rings, and their shadows stretched across the golden hillside. They were armed with spears and held long oval shields.

  “Wow! They are Wanyambo,” Sidi Bombay advised. “A peaceful people.”

  “Not if their expressions are anything to go by,” Burton observed. “Do you speak their language, Bombay?”

  “Yes. I shall talk with them.” The African set off to greet the newcomers, braving their scowls and brandished weapons. Burton and his friends watched as an argument commenced, gradually cooled to a heated debate, then settled into a passionate discussion, and, finally, became a long conversation.

  Bombay returned. “Wow! These fine warriors are from the village of Kisaho. They say the muzungo mbaya arrived at Kufro, which is nearby, and took all the food and weapons from the people. Wow! The jungle moved among them and killed nine men.”

  “The Prussian plant vehicle!” Burton murmured.

  “And a mighty wizard took the chief by the neck and turned him into a tree which killed three more villagers by sucking out their blood. The men had to burn it to kill it.” Bombay gestured back toward the Wanyambo. “These from Kisaho came to fight you but I told them that, although you are ugly and strange, you are an enemy of the wizard and you have come to punish the wicked white men. They will help.”

  “Tell them we will be honoured if they join us. Ask them to send a man running ahead to inform the villages that we are approaching, and that we are here to avenge the dead.”

  This was done, and the Britishers packed their tent and set off up the hill, following the warriors over its brow and down into the forested valley beyond.

  They passed along a dirt path bordered by fruit-bearing trees and fragrant flowery shrubs, then stepped out into cultivated fields where peas grew in profusion. While they were crossing these, Pox and Malady returned.

  “Message from Isabel Arundell. The Arabs are holding stinking cesspit Kazeh. My witless reinforcements from Mzizima have arrived but Prussian numbers are building steadily. We're keeping them occupied. Isabella and Sadhvi are safe. Mucous-bag Mirambo is injured but will recover. When you get home, tell Palmerston to send troops as a matter of urgency. May Allah guide and protect you. Bettawfeeq!”

  “That means ‘good luck,’” Burton explained in response to a puzzled look from Trounce.

  “Are you going to send the bird to Maneesh?” the police detective asked.

  “No. I fear it's too great a distance by now.”

  The whole day was spent crossing valleys and hills. On the next, they trekked over an alluvial plain until they reached the Kitangule Kagera, a river that, according to Speke's account of his earlier expeditions, flowed into the Ukerewe Lake. Crossing it proved so awkward that their supplies got soaked and another of the horses died.

  The swelling terrain on the other side was alive with antelope, which scattered as the twenty Wanyambo led the Britishers up to the crest of a hill. From there they saw, stretching for miles and miles to their right, a rich, well-wooded, swampy plain containing large open patches of water.

  A band of light blazed across the horizon.

  Burton waved a fly away from his face and shaded his eyes.

  “Bismillah!” he exclaimed. “Look at the size of it!”

  “Is it a mirage?” Swinburne asked, squinting.

  “No, Algy. That's it. That's the lake!”

  “Ukerewe? Are you sure? It looks like the sea! Perhaps we've walked right across Africa-or we've wandered in an enormous circle!”

  Burton cast his eyes around the landscape, taking in every topographical detail, making rapid mental calculations, adding it to his knowledge of the country to the southwest, around Lake Tanganyika.

  “I think he was right all along,” he murmured. “I think Speke got it. Ukerewe has to be the source!”

  “But I don't want him to be right!” Swinburne objected. “He doesn't deserve it!”

  They continued west.

  The ground rose and fell, rose and fell, and rolled away to the hazy horizon. Through the moisture-heavy air, distant peaks faded into view, dark green at their base, blanching up to such a pale blue that they merged with the sky. Hovering above, as if floating, their jagged peaks were white.

  “It's wonderful!” Swinburne enthused, jerking and waving his arms. “Snow in the middle of Africa! No one will believe it!”

  “Our destination!” Burton announced. “The Mountains of the Moon!”

  “Wow! I do not want to go there again,” Sidi Bombay said softly. “But I shall because I am with you, and I am certain you will pay me very well indeed.”

  Yet another horse succumbed. The men were all on foot now, the baggage divided between t
he remaining animals. There wasn't much of it. Burton had no idea how they were going to make it back to Zanzibar.

  As they progressed, villagers turned out to greet them and to press food and weapons into their hands. Word had spread like wildfire across the lands between the lake and the mountains, and now the air throbbed with drums-a deep, thunderous booming, ominous and threatening and incessant.

  “I don't think we'll be taking Speke by surprise,” Swinburne commented.

  In one settlement, the p'hazi led them into a hut where four men lay groaning. Their skin was lacerated, in some places to the bone, and none were likely to live.

  Bombay translated: “Warriors attacked Mr. Speke's people but the jungle thing killed many. Wow! Five died in this village, and the p'hazi says that in the next, Karagu, you will discover all the men gone, for there was a very big battle there.”

  “How far behind Speke are we?” Burton asked.

  “He says the wicked muzungo mbaya are four or five villages ahead.”

  “We're too done in to catch up with him today. Ask if we can stay here overnight.”

  Permission was granted, and the Britishers slept with drums pounding through their dreams.

  In the morning, the women intoned a warlike chant as the expedition set off again. Burton, Swinburne, Trounce, Spencer, Bombay, and the twenty Wanyambo marched out of the village and onto marshy plains studded with rounded knolls, each topped by an umbrella cactus. They pushed through tall grasses where buffalo were numerous and mosquitoes were legion.

  At noon, they arrived at Karagu, which was nestled against a strip of jungle, and found it half-wrecked and filled with keening women. The men, as the p'hazi had stated, were all dead.

  On Burton's behalf, Bombay promised the women that vengeance would soon fall upon those responsible.

  The expedition rested and ate a light meal, then prepared to move on.

  “Kwecha!” Burton called. “Pakia! Hopa! Hopa!”

  The Wanyambo gathered at the edge of the jungle. One of them shouldered through a screen of vegetation to the path beyond. He suddenly howled and came flying back out, cartwheeling over the heads of his fellows, spraying blood onto them. He thudded to the ground and lay still.

  “What the-” Trounce began, then tottered back as the Prussian plant vehicle burst out of the undergrowth and plunged into the warriors. He cried out in horror as the thing's spine-covered tendrils lashed like whips, opening skin, sending blood splashing. The Wanyambo yelled in agony as their flesh was sliced and torn. Sidi Bombay was hoisted into the air and flung into the trees. The village women screamed and raced away. Trounce instinctively drew his pistol, aimed at the plant, and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. He threw the weapon down in disgust and swore at himself.

  “Stop it!” Swinburne shouted. He hefted a spear and charged forward, plunging the shaft into the centre of the repulsive bloom. Its point sank into the driver's stomach but had little effect. A thorny appendage slashed across the poet's forehead and sent him spinning away, with red droplets showering around him. He crashed into the side of a wrecked hut, which collapsed under the impact, burying the poet beneath sticks and dried mud.

  The Wanyambo fought desperately, dodging and ducking, lunging in then backing away. They fell over one another and became wet with each other's blood. They went down and struggled up again. They threw and jabbed their spears until the huge weed-like thing was bristling with shafts. But despite their efforts, the plant continued to lurch back and forth, with the Prussian cradled in its bloom screeching furiously in incomprehensible German.

  Burton looked this way and that, hoping to see fire somewhere in the village-sticks burning beneath a cooking pot, anything that he might fling at the plant to set it alight-but there was nothing. He snatched a spear from the ground and started to circle the monstrosity, looking for an opening that would allow him to leap in and drive the weapon through the Prussian's head. He got too close; a thick ropey limb smacked against his torso and ripped upward, shredding his shirt and flaying a long strip of skin from his chest. He stumbled and dropped to his knees.

  “Stay back, Boss!” a voice piped.

  A bundled mass of robes dived past Burton and launched itself into the writhing vegetation. Herbert Spencer landed on top of the driver and was immediately entwined by creepers. His robes and polymethylene suit were ripped apart as he fought with the frenzied, flailing appendages. A thick coil whipped around him, its thorns gouging deep scratches into his brass body.

  The philosopher groped downward and forced his right hand into the fleshy petals. His three brass fingers slid over the driver's face. The man hollered and the plant shook and bucked as two of Spencer's digits found his eyes. The philosopher put his full weight on his arm and drove his fingers through the back of the Prussian's eye sockets and into the brain behind. The vehicle convulsed. Burton ran over and thrust his spear through the man's neck, severing the spine. The plant's tendrils flopped down, a tremor ran through it, then it was still.

  Spencer fell backward and clanged onto the ground.

  “Oof!” he piped.

  The Wanyambo-those who weren't dead, unconscious, or in too much pain to notice-stared at him in astonishment. A metal man!

  Burton tottered away from the Eugenicist creation, pulled what remained of his shirt off, and pressed the material against the deep laceration that angled up over his chest onto his left shoulder. He groaned with the pain of it, but, upon looking at the African warriors, saw that many had suffered much worse injuries.

  He made his way over to Swinburne, who was crawling out from beneath the collapsed hut. Blood was streaming down the poet's face, dripping onto his clothing.

  The king's agent called to Trounce, who was standing dazed. “William, are you hurt?”

  “What? Huh, no.”

  “Come and bandage Algy, would you?”

  The Scotland Yard man dragged a hand over his face as if to clear his mind, nodded, then ran over to the horses, which were being held on the far side of the village by a woman who'd had the foresight and courage to stop them from stampeding away. Pox and Malady were huddled on the saddle of one. The parakeets had slept through the entire drama.

  Trounce retrieved the medical kit and returned to the poet.

  Burton, meanwhile, spoke to Spencer: “Are you all right, Herbert?”

  “Battered, Boss. Dented an' scratched all over-but tickin' an' serviceable.”

  Burton saw that the able-bodied among the Wanyambo had drawn together and were talking quietly, with many a gesture in Spencer's direction.

  “I don't think our friends consider you a leper any more,” he said.

  Sidi Bombay crawled out of the undergrowth. “Wow! Mr. Spencer is like the thing called pocket watch, which you gave me long and long ago and which one of my six wives stole!”

  “Yes, he is, Bombay,” Burton agreed. “Can you explain that to the Wanyambo?”

  “I shall try, though none of them has met my wives.”

  While Bombay joined the surviving warriors, Burton checked the injuries of the fallen. Three were dead and five too seriously hurt to continue on to the Mountains of the Moon. That left twelve-which meant his forces and Speke's were about even.

  Bombay rejoined him and explained: “Wow! I told them that, just as the bad muzungo mbaya has bad magic, so the good muzungo mbaya has good magic. And Mr. Spencer is good magic.”

  “And they believed you?”

  “Not at all. But they will continue with us to the mountains anyway.”

  “Good.”

  “They will not go into them, though, for the Wanyambo are afraid of the Chwezi, who you say don't exist.”

  “Very well. Help me with these injured, then we'll regroup and go after Speke. It's high time he and I brought our feud to an end-whatever it takes to do so.”

  Sidi Bombay stood motionless and gazed up at the mountains. He made clicking noises with his tongue.

  Burton watched him, then stepped to his
side and asked, “You are sure this is the route Speke took?”

  Without moving, his eyes remaining glued to the scene ahead, Bombay answered: “Oh yes, this is it. Wow! It is an evil place. There is a bad feeling in the air, like when my wives stop speaking to me because I have come home drunk.”

  “It's certainly quiet,” Burton replied. “An oppressive silence.”

  “There are no birds in the trees.”

  “There are two. We're having the devil of a time getting Pox and Malady down. Algy is climbing up to them.”

  “Your friend is like a little monkey.”

  “I'll be sure to tell him.”

  “I do not like these mountains, Mr. Burton. The Chwezi live here. The Chwezi who don't exist, and who serve the Batembuzi.”

  “And who are the Batembuzi?”

  “They are the children of the gods who once ruled these lands. Long and long ago they disappeared into the underworld.”

  “We have no choice but to go on, Bombay,” Burton said, “but you aren't obliged to accompany us. Do you want to remain here in the camp with the Wanyambo?”

  “Wow! I want to, but I will not, because I have five wives and I expect you will pay me much more if I accompany you.”

  “I thought you had six wives?”

  “I am trying to forget number four.”

  It was early in the morning. Two days had passed since the plant vehicle had attacked them. In that time they'd trekked across sodden and difficult terrain, and had at last reached the base of the Mountains of the Moon. They were now camped at the tree line.

  A steep ravine lay ahead of them. Tall pointed rocks of a blueish hue stood like gateposts at the foot of the slope leading into it. According to Bombay, this was the path to the Temple of the Eye.

  “I found them!” Swinburne announced as he shinned down the trunk of the Red Stinkwood tree into which the parakeets had vanished the night before. “They've nested in a hollow-and Pox has laid an egg!”

  “By Jove!” Trounce exclaimed. “And what did the happy parents-to-be have to say on the matter?”