Not so difficult, he thought.
They were the last words that flashed across his mind before thousands of volts put an end to everything.
—
As word of the attack spread through the cemetery, incredulous langurs emerged from their homes, looked up into the rain and saw panicked guards hurrying nervously around the tree canopy…and the dead Twopoint hanging in the power lines.
It was a grotesque image of failure. Far from being wiped out, their old enemy had returned to strike a blow at the very heart of their empire. And if the rhesus could attack the Great Vault in broad daylight, then nowhere was safe.
Tyrell was quick to visit the scene. Flanked by Breri, Sweto and General Pogo, he strode through the cemetery with a grim countenance.
It wasn’t just the audacity of the attack that worried Tyrell, nor was it the fact that it was another distraction from the great plan. What really worried him were the expressions on the faces of ordinary langurs as he inspected the scene. In the shocked silence he knew that something had shifted; whereas before the monkeys would look at him as the supreme dispenser of power, now Tyrell saw doubt in their eyes.
Decisive action was taken: the vault guard was doubled, a new perimeter patrol was established to police the cemetery wall day and night, and the families of the victims were generously compensated with food and relocated to the Eastern Province.
Tyrell gave a series of speeches reassuring his troop that security was a top priority, that every langur life was precious, and that no attack on the cemetery would ever again succeed.
General Pogo stood on the podium listening dutifully to the rhetoric, but he had already understood the truth—extra security was useless because the rhesus had no intention of striking at the cemetery again.
And so it proved.
In the days that followed, Mico’s monkeys pulled off a series of brilliant attacks on different targets using ever-changing tactics, each one catching the langur unawares.
In their wildest dreams, they couldn’t have hoped for a better start to the war.
Yet, despite this, Mico was worried. Only now did he understand the true scale of the challenge facing them. So one stormy evening, he and Gu-Nah called their troops together to thrash the problem out.
“I think we’ve proved that we can fight as well as any langur,” Mico said with a wry smile that was greeted with self-assured laughter.
“But winning a battle is very different to winning a war,” he went on in a more pensive mood. “We could go on as we are, chipping away at Tyrell’s empire, but where would that get us?”
The monkeys looked at him, puzzled. Their entire fighting philosophy was based on the idea that the huge imbalance of power was their friend. Now Mico seemed to be having doubts.
“Surely, the more we attack, the more the langur will lose confidence in Tyrell?” said Twitcher.
Papina agreed. “If we keep up the pressure, they’ll overthrow him for us.”
But Mico had already thought further than this. “In theory that’s what’ll happen; but in practice, how long will it take?”
“Depends how hard we hit them,” said Fig coldly.
“When the monsoon passes, we’ll lose a crucial advantage. Will Tyrell have fallen by then?” insisted Mico.
Silence from the monkeys. Pinpointing a specific moment in time suddenly made the task seem more daunting.
“And remember,” Mico continued, “the longer the war goes on, the more the balance of power shifts in their favor. At some point we’ll sustain casualties, deaths even. But deaths mean nothing to the langur—they have a massive army to draw on.”
“So what are you suggesting?” asked Papina.
“I wish I knew,” Mico confessed. “But unless we want to spend the rest of our lives fighting, we need to find a way of delivering a decisive blow. A shock that’ll stop the heart of the langur.”
Tyrell might have been lord high commander, supreme leader of the langur troop, overlord and protector of the provinces, general of the Twopoint Brigade and beacon of the future, but he was powerless to stop the rhesus attacks. No matter what the langur military did, the terrorists always found new targets and new tactics.
Eyewitness reports had built up a picture of the enemy, and Tyrell now knew the bitter truth: the rhesus forces were being led by the traitors Mico and Gu-Nah. It added a new layer of rancor to the war.
Worse than the hurt of betrayal was another feeling, one that Tyrell hadn’t experienced since he was a young monkey: the feeling of being a helpless victim. He had done everything he could to wipe the rhesus from the face of the city and still they persisted.
The strain started to show on his face. His eyes looked sunken and tired; his brow knitted with a permanent frown; his shoulders, no longer arrogant and proud, began to sag forward.
Tyrell was made of stubborn stuff, though, and the more he was pushed into a corner, the harder he fought back. With grim determination, he convened a council of war and ordered them to create a new strategy to defeat the insurgents.
“It’s simple: our army is in shock,” explained General Pogo, a blunt but candid analysis that only the old warhorse could get away with. “We’ve been conquerors for so long, our troops have forgotten what it means to fight. I mean really fight, to the death, with tooth and claw.”
“When you say ‘troops,’ do you include their commanders?” asked Tyrell pointedly.
But Pogo was beyond these kind of political games—this was war and he knew what he was talking about.
“The rhesus are now ruthless and hungry, hard as steel, while our fighting forces are flabby. But every defeat we suffer makes us stronger, more battle hardened. Lord Tyrell, I really believe that the longer this war goes on, the more the balance will shift in our favor.”
Tyrell swirled the analysis round his mind. What exactly was the general proposing? Do nothing and wait until the enemy started to tire. Easy to say, but Tyrell knew that with every defeat his own authority weakened.
Mind you, Tyrell reflected, perhaps that was the general’s devious strategy. Perhaps Pogo saw himself as the next ruler of the langur. Yes, that made sense. Offer advice that sounded loyal, but was in fact designed to topple the leadership.
The lord ruler was not going to be fooled so easily. He had built his empire through single-minded determination—it was his vision, his political maneuvering, his will that had achieved all this. He should trust his instincts, and right now they were urging him to seize the reins of battle.
He stood up, trying his best to exude confidence. “From this moment on, all battlefield decisions will be taken by me. Breri, set up a command chain so that my exact orders are conveyed to the troops, day and night.”
“Very good, my lord.” Breri bowed humbly, dazzled by the prospect of yet another sphere of operations being put under his control.
“This is the turning point,” pronounced Tyrell to the council of war. “I am personally taking responsibility for the campaign and, as history has shown, the more I take control of a situation, the better the outcome.”
With a cursory nod, Tyrell turned and started to sweep from the room, when a lone voice dared to speak up.
“With all due respect, my lord…”
Tyrell spun round, and met the gaze of General Pogo.
“Forgive me, Lord Tyrell,” the general went on, getting the deference out of the way early, “but I fear that will only play into the enemy’s hands.”
“You doubt my military competence?”
“We’re dealing with something quite different here. Gu-Nah is putting his unorthodox fighting methods into practice.”
“Well,” said Tyrell, “I proved him wrong once. I’ll just have to do it again. A little more forcefully, this time.” Which garnered some sycophantic laughter from Breri and Sweto.
“We’ve seen how the rhesus operate in battle, my lord. Their success is based on speed of reaction,” persisted the general, gaining confidence as he mov
ed on to military strategy. “If we’re going to win this war, we have to be as fast and fluid as the enemy.”
Tyrell glared icily at him. “So I am wrong?”
“Central command of the battlefield is the opposite of what we need, my lord.”
The silence was so tense the air almost crackled.
The lord ruler felt his mind swim as rage took hold; he could hear the blood pumping through his temples.
“YOU!!!” he screamed at Pogo with terrifying malevolence. “If you had done your job we wouldn’t even be in this war! DEAD! I wanted them all dead! Was that so much to ask? But you couldn’t even do that!”
Tyrell loomed menacingly toward him. “You are to blame for all this! YOU! And now you dare to question my judgment?”
He reached out and grabbed hold of the fur on Pogo’s neck, shaking him. “Why did you let Mico live? What are you plotting with him?! Are you a traitor too?” And with the terrifying energy of rage he slammed Pogo to the floor.
“You are NOTHING! Nothing but a weak and incompetent soldier who dreams of things he doesn’t have the courage to grasp! You will apologize to me, Pogo!” Tyrell stood over the general, trembling with anger. “APOLOGIZE!!!”
Silence.
Pogo was shocked to the core. In all the time he’d known Tyrell, he had never seen him like this.
“APOLOGIZE!”
The general felt indignation churning in the pit of his stomach. Apologize for what? he thought.
It was Tyrell who had brought about this bloody war. He had failed to appreciate Gu-Nah’s military brilliance; he had personally taken charge of the hunt for Mico and failed; he had created the monster they were now fighting.
But that was not how Tyrell remembered it.
Pogo knew that if he so much as raised a finger to protest, he would be finished. He would disappear like countless others.
Survival, that was what mattered. Survival at any cost; that was how the world worked. Pride, honor, truth counted for nothing if you were dead. For so many years Pogo’s cynicism had justified his compliance, and now that he needed something of substance to hold on to, it eluded him.
So the great general, a monkey who had always fought with such dazzling physical courage, bowed his head in utter humiliation and said quietly, “I’m sorry if I have offended you, my lord. I was only trying to serve.”
Which was exactly what Tyrell wanted to hear.
He bent down, extended his hand to help Pogo to his feet, then embraced him like an old friend.
The feeling on the street was not so deferential. Much as the langur command tried to restrict the flow of information, footsoldiers kept talking, and the long series of military defeats had not passed unnoticed.
The official line was that langur forces had won the last two battles; that some rhesus terrorists were dead, with others now in captivity…though no one had actually seen the prisoners with their own eyes.
Tyrell’s spies reported back nervously some of the strange ideas starting to take root. Some monkeys believed that the Barbaries were going to return to save the langur; others believed that nothing could save them because the rhesus had developed special powers, like invisibility, and even the capacity to fly.
All this wild speculation damaged Tyrell. How could he hope to wage war on the humans when he couldn’t even deal with a few outcast monkeys?
His response was ruthless: he ordered Sweto and the Twopoint Brigade to clamp down on unpatriotic thinking. No mercy was to be shown to monkeys who spread malicious rumors at a time when everyone should be pulling together for the war effort.
The Twopoints were obedient and diligent; beating, torturing, imprisoning, silencing. But even their cruel hands couldn’t stop the rumors from spreading.
In the disused water tower at the steelworks, Papina had been waking up night after night, plagued by the same dream.
It always started so pleasurably, scrambling through a tree canopy in the brilliant sunlight, relishing the freedom, the clean air, the glowing green of the sunlit leaves. But as she ran, the branches would start to get thinner and thinner, until impossibly, she was somehow running on twigs…and the moment she saw this, Papina would fall, plunging down and down, the air rushing through her fur, branches flailing painfully past her hands, until finally she would grasp a hanging vine and swing into the tree.
And then the moment of horror as she realized it wasn’t a vine she was holding, but the tail of a massive snake. She’d turn to run, but the snake was always quicker, whipping round to engulf her.
Papina opened her mouth to scream, but nothing would come out; her lungs were empty as the huge snake crushed her body…and then the sickening click of the monster’s jaws unhinging—
Papina woke with a start, trembling. She sat bolt upright in the darkness and fearfully checked the shadows between the sleeping monkeys to make sure that no snake had slithered in. Reassured, she clambered up the ladder and stood on the roof, breathing in the sticky night air, trying to calm down.
Always the same dream, and she always woke at the same point. At first she put it down to old memories raked up by the stress of battle; then another idea occurred to her: perhaps there was a reason for the dreams, perhaps her mind wasn’t tormenting her, but was trying to tell her something.
As she sat on top of the water tower, letting the sweat from her nightmare ease away, Papina tried to think how a vision of her own death could possibly help the war.
As thoughts collided in an unexpected way, slowly the notion came to her: the problem of the unbeatable could be solved by conquering the unthinkable.
The idea was so perfect it sent a physical jolt through Papina’s body. Unable to contain her excitement, she swung down into the tank and shook Mico, who woke with a start.
“What’s wrong?!” He sat up and went to cradle her in his arms.
“I know how to beat the langur,” she burbled excitedly. “I’ve seen it in my sleep!”
Mico took her hand to guide her to the ladder. “You need some fresh air.”
“No, listen to me!” she insisted. “The killer blow…I know what it is.”
The monkeys were often tetchy first thing in the morning, so Mico thought it best to wait until they’d all had breakfast before calling the meeting. Only then did they gather in the shade under the water tower.
“Papina’s got an idea,” he said, trying to sound nonchalant. “We all know she’s not prone to flights of fancy, so you should listen to her with…an open mind.” He gave a wry smile. “It’s a bold plan. It may even be an insane plan, but I think it’s brilliant.”
He looked expectantly to Papina, who immediately felt the intensity of all the monkeys gazing at her. What had seemed like a good idea in the middle of the night suddenly felt ridiculous in the harsh light of morning, but it was too late to back down now.
“There’s a snake, a huge snake—a python—that lives under the trash mountain in the slums.” Papina saw the monkeys shuffle uneasily just at the mention of the word python.
“When we first escaped from the cemetery, this snake killed one of our females. Swallowed her whole. And it would’ve got me if it hadn’t been for the quick thinking of my mother.”
Papina hesitated. Suddenly she remembered what it meant to be loved by a mother, and like an ache deep in her heart, she felt a longing for peace. That was why they needed this plan, she reminded herself, forcing her thoughts back on track.
“If we want to win this war, we need to capture that snake. We need to take it into the heart of langur territory and release it, so that it can kill Tyrell and all his henchmen.” Papina sat down. “That’s my plan.”
Her calm, matter-of-fact delivery was utterly at odds with the astonishing conceit of the plan; it left the monkeys frozen with incredulity.
“Exactly,” said Mico. “Just hearing the plan has shocked you into silence. Imagine how you’d feel if you’d witnessed it…watched as your leader was devoured by a giant snake.”
&n
bsp; Mico gazed into the anxious faces. “This is about striking a blow so terrifying the enemy won’t understand how mere monkeys could’ve achieved it.”
“It’s also suicidal,” pointed out Cadby.
Joop and the other young monkeys laughed, relieved that someone had objected to the madness.
“I don’t want to disappear down a python’s gullet,” agreed Twitcher. “Dying in battle’s one thing, but a snake…” He shuddered at the thought.
“Fear is the point,” replied Mico. “By conquering our own fears, we’ll terrify the langur all the more.”
“But it’s impossible!” exclaimed Cadby. “We can’t catch a python—it’ll kill us!”
“Look at the victories we’ve already pulled off,” countered Mico. “Not so long ago you’d have said those were impossible too. How could a small band of refugees take on the langur empire? But we trained; we used our brains; we found a way. It’s the same now. We know the objective…all we have to do is think of a plan.”
The monkeys exchanged anxious glances. This was so far outside their normal thinking they found it hard to make any kind of rational decision.
It was left to young Jola to break the deadlock. She turned to Gu-Nah and asked with disarming frankness, “Can it be done?”
The old warrior scratched his head thoughtfully. “Can it be done? I don’t know. But if we could find a way…” A mischievous grin spread across his face.
So they talked.
They talked through the oppressive heat of midday, and through the torrential rain that deluged the city in the afternoon.
And as they talked, the python became less a terrifying monster and more a strategic problem. With the fear removed, the monkeys were able to roll the problem around their heads, experimenting with different approaches, treating the whole thing as a game.
Until gradually a plan started to emerge. A plan that was strong and bold, that held its shape no matter how hard it was prodded and pulled, a plan that stood a fighting chance of achieving the impossible.
Monkey Wars Page 28