Nation

by Terry Pratchett

  The path through the low forest was well worn. So much had been dragged out to the beach in the past months that even high-speed vines and voracious grasses had not been able to keep up everywhere. In places the forest floor was just shards of crumbling stone.

  “We go to the Sweet Judy for everything,” said Mau as he led the way. “It gives us wood and food and light. Without the Judy and her cargo, where would we be? What could we want that the Judy could not give us? That’s what people say. And now, since our gods have failed us…”

  He stood back.

  Someone had nailed a red fish to the planking of the ship. By the smell, it had been there for several days. And below it were a stick man and a stick woman, drawn very crudely in red, white, and black. Daphne stared at them.

  “That’s supposed to be me, isn’t it,” she said, “and that’s you with poor Captain Roberts’s cap on.”

  “Yes.” Mau sighed.

  “It’s a good one of the cap,” said Daphne diplomatically. “Where did they get the white?”

  “There’s a stick of it in the carpenter’s toolbox,” said Mau gloomily.

  “Ah, that would be called chalk,” said Daphne. “I suppose all these round things they have drawn here are barrels?”

  “Yes. This is a god place now. I’ve heard them talking, sometimes. Some of them think the gods sent the Judy here to help them! Can you believe that? Then who sent the wave? They’ll believe in anything! This morning I heard one of the new ones talking about ‘The Cave the Gods Made’! We made it! Men made the gods, too. Gods of cold stone, which we made so that we could hide from the dark in a shell of comfortable lies. But when the Raiders come, there will be five cannon on the beach, made by men! And when they speak, they will not tell lies!”

  “You will blow yourself up! Those cannon have been thrown about and dragged over rocks, and they were old and rusty to start with! Cookie said they’d turn into a tin banana if you fire them with more than half a load. They’ll blow up!”

  “We will not run. We cannot run. So we must fight. And if we fight, we must win. But least we know how they will fight.”

  “How can you possibly know that?”

  “Because when the Raiders come, they will pour onto the beach and challenge our chief to single combat.”

  “You? But you can’t—”

  “I have more than one plan. Please trust me.”

  “You will fire the cannon?”

  “Perhaps. They worship Locaha. They think he protects them. They collect skulls for him. They eat the flesh of men in his honor. They believe the more men they kill, the more slaves they will have in his country when he takes them. They don’t care if they die. But Locaha makes no bargains with anyone.”

  They were back on the beach now. In the distance, a couple of men were, very slowly, carrying a cannon up the track.

  “I don’t think we have much time,” said Mau. “The man with the big bleeding nose will tell Cox that we are an island of invalids and children and no trousermen. Except you.”

  “He won’t care who gets killed. He shot a butterfly in half, remember?” said Daphne.

  Mau shook his head. “How can he rise up every morning and decide to be him?”

  “I think that if you could understand him, you’d be him. That’s what he does. He turns people into creatures like himself. That’s what happened to Foxlip. And he’ll make sure that the only way to kill him is to be worse than him. It nearly worked on poor Captain Roberts. Make sure it doesn’t happen to you, Mau!”

  Mau sighed. “Let’s get back before they start worshiping us, shall we?”

  They followed the cannon and Daphne trailed behind a little. Even wearing the trousers, which were far too big for him, Mau still walked like a dancer. Daphne had been taken to the ballet several times by her grandmother, who wanted to make sure she grew up to be a proper lady and not marry a godless scientist. She’d been bored silly, and the dancers were nothing like as graceful as she had expected. But Mau walked as if every part of his body knew where it was and where it was going to and exactly how fast it had to go to get there. People would have paid good money just to see the muscles on his back move like they were doing now. She understood the maids back home a lot more when the sun gleamed on his shoulders. Ahem.

  In the morning they fired a cannon, an enterprise that consisted of lighting a really long fuse and then everyone running very fast in the opposite direction. The bang was impressive and most people got back on their feet in time to see the splash when the ball hit the water on the other side of the lagoon.

  But Daphne didn’t join in the celebrations. Of course, according to Cookie, everything on the Judy was far too old and ready for the scrap heap, but she’d looked into the barrels of the cannon, and they were a mess. Four had cracks in them, and the last one’s inside looked as knobbly as the moon. They did not look like the kind of cannon you wanted to fire if you had been raised in the belief that, when it came to cannon, the ball should come out of the front. But Mau wouldn’t listen to her when she tried to talk to him about it, and a look came over his face that she’d seen before. It said: “I know what I’m doing. Don’t bother me. Everything will be all right.” And in the meantime, down by the fire, Milo and Pilu banged mysteriously at empty tins from the Judy’s galley, hammering them flat for no reason they were prepared to give. Some of the men and older boys were trained in firing the cannon, but since there wasn’t any gunpowder to spare for actually firing any more of the things, they made do with pushing wooden cartridges into the barrel and shouting, “Bang!” They got quite good at that, and were proud at the speed with which “Bang!” could be shouted. Daphne said she hoped the enemy would be trained to say “Aargh!”

  Nothing happened and went on happening. They finished the pig fence, which meant that the last of the planting could be done. They started a new hut, but this was a lot higher up the slope. Trees were planted. One of the men got his leg ripped open on the first boar hunt since the wave and Daphne sewed it up again, washing the wound in mother-of-beer to keep it clean. Mau stood guard on the beach every night, often with the Unknown Woman nearby, but now at least she trusted people enough to leave her little boy with them. And that was just as well, because she had taken a sudden interest in papervine, cutting the longest leaves of it from all over the island and then endlessly plaiting them into string after green string. So now, because it’s how people’s minds work, the Unknown Woman was known as the Papervine Woman.

  Once she solemnly handed her baby to Daphne, and Cahle made a remark that Daphne didn’t quite catch but which made all the women laugh, so it was almost certainly something like, “It’s about time you made one!”

  People relaxed.

  And the Raiders came, just at dawn.

  They came with drums and torchlight.

  Mau ran up the beach to the huts, shouting, “The Raiders are coming! The Raiders are coming!”

  People woke up and ran, mostly into one another, while outside the clanging and drumming went on. The dogs barked and got under people’s feet. In ones and twos men hurried up to the cannons on the hill, but by then it was too late.

  “You’re all dead,” said Mau.

  Out on the lagoon the mists faded. Milo and Pilu stopped their drumming and banging and paddled their canoe back to the beach. People looked around feeling stupid and annoyed. Nevertheless, up on the hill a man shouted “Bang!” at the top of his voice and looked very pleased with himself.

  Later, though, Mau asked Daphne what the casualties were.

  “Well, one man dropped his spear on his own foot,” she said. “A woman sprained her ankle because she tripped over her dog, and the man up on the cannon got his hand stuck up in the barrel.”

  “How can you possibly get your hand stuck up the barrel of a cannon?” said Mau.

  “Apparently he was pushing the ball in and it rolled back onto his fingers,” said Daphne. “Perhaps you should write a letter to the cannibals, telling them not to
come. I know you don’t know how to write, but they probably don’t know how to read.”

  “I must organize people better,” said Mau, sighing.

  “No!” said Daphne. “Tell them to organize themselves! There should be lookouts. There should always be a man up on the guns. Tell the women to make sure they know where to go. Oh, and tell them that the fastest gun crew will get extra beer. Make them think. Tell them what’s got to be done, and let them work out how. And now, thank you, I’ve got some beer half made!”

  Back in her hut, with the reassuringly homely smells of the cauldron, the beer, and Mrs. Gurgle, she wondered about Cookie: whether he had survived the wave, because if anyone should have done so, it was Cookie.

  Daphne had spent a lot of time in the Sweet Judy’s galley, because it was only another type of kitchen, and she was at home in kitchens. It was also a safe place. Even at the height of the mutiny, everyone was friends with Cookie, and he had no enemies. Every seaman, even a madman like Cox, knew that there was no point in upsetting the cook, who had all kinds of little opportunities to get his own back, as you might find out one night when it was you hanging over the rail, trying to throw up your own stomach.

  And on top of this Cookie was good company and seemed to have sailed to everywhere on just about any kind of ship, and he was constantly rebuilding his own coffin, which he’d brought aboard. It was now part of the furniture of the galley, and most of the time the saucepans were piled up on top of it. He seemed surprised that Daphne thought all this was a touch on the odd side.

  Perhaps this was because the most important thing about this coffin was that Cookie did not intend to die in it. He intended to live in it instead, because he had designed it to float. He had even built a keel on it. He took great pleasure in showing her how well appointed it was inside. There was a shroud, in case he actually did die, but which could easily be used as a sail until that unlucky day; there was a small folding mast for this very purpose. Inside the coffin, which was padded, there were rows of pockets that held ship’s biscuits, dried fruit, fishhooks (and fishing line), a compass, charts, and a wonderful device for distilling drinking water from the sea. It was a tiny floating world.

  “I got the idea off a harpooner I met when I was working on the whalers,” he told her one day as he was adding yet another pocket to the insides of the coffin. “He was a rum ’un and no mistake. Had more tattoos than the Edinburgh Festival and all his teeth filed as sharp as daggers, but he lugged this coffin onto every ship he sailed with so’s if he died, he’d have a proper Christian funeral and not be chucked over the side sewn up in a bit o’ canvas with a cannonball for company. I thought about it myself—it’s a good basic idea, but it needs a little bit of changing. Anyway, I didn’t stay long on that ship on account of coming down with bowel weevils just before we rounded the cape, and I had to put ashore at Valparaiso. It was probably a blessing in disguise, ’cause I reckon that ship was heading for a bad end. I’ve seen a few mad captains in my time, but that one was as crazy as a spoon. And you may depend upon it, when the captain is crazy, so is the ship. I often wonder what happened to ’em all.”

  Daphne finished making the mother-of-beer and walked down the slope until she could see the little crumbling cliff that overlooked the beach. Mau was there, and so were all the gunners, including the Papervine Woman, for some reason.

  The cannon are useless, she thought. He must know that. So what does he think he’s doing?

  There was a distant shout of “Bang!” and she sighed….

  Two of the Gentlemen of Last Resort ran up onto the deck and joined the captain at the ship’s rail.

  “What is the emergency?” said Mr. Black. “Surely we’re nowhere near the Mothering Sundays yet?”

  “The lookout said he saw a maroon fired,” said the captain, his telescope to his eye. “Some poor soul’s been shipwrecked, I daresay. There’s an island there. It’s not on the charts. Technically, Mr. Black, I need your permission to change course.”

  “Of course you must, aha, change course, Captain,” said Mr. Black. “Indeed, I note that you already have.”

  “That is correct, sir,” said the captain carefully. “The sea has its own laws.”

  “Well done, Captain. I should listen to your advice.” There was a moment’s silence, caused by nobody mentioning the king’s daughter.

  “I’m sure Roberts got her through, sir,” said the captain, looking carefully at the distant island again.

  “It’s kind of you to say so.”

  “In the meantime,” the captain went on cheerfully, “I do believe I am looking at a very lucky shipwrecked mariner. Someone else may have discovered an island over there before us. I can see a fire, and a man fishing from a—” He stopped, and adjusted the telescope. “Well, I have to say he seems to be sitting in a coffin….”

  There was no alarm the next day, but there was one the day after, which Mau said went well. Every morning, people became better and better at shouting “Bang!” And every day Daphne wondered what Mau was really planning.

  CHAPTER 13

  Truce

  THE RAIDERS CAME JUST before dawn.

  They came with drums and torchlight making red suns in the mists.

  Mau’s ears heard them. In his eyes the flames were reflected. Then he awoke from what was not exactly a sleep, and felt the future happening.

  How did that work? he wondered. On the very first day he’d stood guard on the Nation, he’d had the memory of this. It had been flying toward him from the future. He’d always had that trick with the silver thread that pulled him toward the future he pictured in his head. But this time it was the future that had been tugging at him, pulling him to this place, at this time.

  “They are here,” someone whispered beside him. He looked at the Unknown Woman. He’d never seen much of an expression on her face before, but now it terrified the life out of him. It was sheer poisonous hatred.

  “Ring the bell!” he snapped, and she hurried up the beach. Mau walked backward, watching the mist. He hadn’t expected that. He hadn’t seen it!

  The sound of the Sweet Judy’s bell sang out across the lagoon. Mau ran up the track, and was relieved to see faint shapes hurrying through the damp billows. Where was the sun? It must be time for dawn!

  Over toward the low forest, the first grandfather bird threw up, and was immediately attacked by its archenemy.

  “Waark! Yer lying ol’ hypocrite!”

  And with that the dawn chorus exploded, with every bird, frog, toad, and insect screaming its head off. Golden light rolled in from the east, melting ragged holes in the mist. It was a beautiful picture, apart from the black-and-red war canoes. Most of them were too big to enter the lagoon. They had grounded on the spit of land by Little Nation, and figures were pouring onto the sand.

  No voices in my head, Mau thought. No dead people. It’s just me in here. I’ve got to get this right….

  Pilu hurried up with a heavy package wrapped in papervine cloth. “It’s been kept dry. It will be fine.”

  Mau looked along the high ground. Someone was standing by each cannon with a long fuse in his hand, or in the case of one, her hand. They were watching him anxiously. Everyone was watching him.

  He looked down at the beach again and saw Cox, towering over the Raiders.

  He’d been expecting someone like Foxlip, skinny and unhealthy-looking, but this man was a good foot taller and nearly the same size as Milo. He had feathers sticking up around his trouserman hat. They were red, the feathers of a chief. So he’d done what the ghost girl had said he’d do: He’d taken over. That was their law. The strongest man led. That made sense. At least, it made sense to strong men.

  The Raiders were holding back, though. They were staying near their boats; only one was coming up the beach, with his spear held over his head.

  In a way, and it was a strange kind of way, this was a big relief. Mau didn’t like having two plans.

  “He looks very young,” said the gh
ost girl behind him. He spun around and there she was, dwarfed beside Milo, who was carrying a club the size of a medium-sized tree; in fact it was a medium-sized tree, without the branches.

  “You should have gone into the forest with the others!” he said.

  “Really? Well, now I’m coming with you.”

  Mau glanced at Milo, but he’d get no help there. Since Guiding Star had been born, the ghost girl could do no wrong as far as his father was concerned.

  “Besides,” she said, “it’s going to end up the same way for all of us if this goes wrong. Why aren’t they charging toward us?”

  “Because they want to talk.” Mau pointed to the approaching man. He looked like he was young and trying not to be afraid.

  “Why?”

  The young man stuck his spear into the sand and then turned and ran.

  “Maybe it’s because they have seen the cannon. I was hoping for this. Look at them. They’re not happy.”

  “Can we trust them?”

  “With a truce? Yes.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. There are rules. Pilu and Milo will talk to them. I’m just a boy, with no tattoos. They won’t speak to me.”

  “But you are the chief!”

  Mau smiled. “Yes, but don’t tell them.”

  Was it like this at the Battle of Waterloo? Daphne wondered as they walked down to the beach and the waiting group. This is…strange. It’s so…civilized, as if a battle is something that starts when somebody blows a whistle. There are rules, even here. And here comes Cox. Oh Lord, even the air he breathes needs a wash afterward.

  First Mate Cox came toward them, smiling like someone greeting a long-lost friend who owed him money. You never saw Cox frown. Like crocodiles and sharks, Cox always had a grin for people, especially when he had them at his mercy, or at least where his mercy would be if he had any.