Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon

“To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace.”

–TACITUS

Warm rain hammered against Burton's tin helmet and poured from its brim down the back of his greatcoat. An explosion momentarily deafened him, knocked him to his hands and knees, and showered him with clods of mud and lumps of bloody flesh. The black water at the bottom of the flooded trench immediately sucked at his limbs, as if the earth were greedy for yet another corpse. A head floated to the surface. Half of its face was missing. He recoiled in shock, splashing back to his feet, and ducked as another pea burst just yards away. Men and women shrieked in agony, cried out for their mothers, spat the same profanity over and over and over.

A seed thudded into a soldier's face. Blood sprayed. His helmet went spinning. He slumped as if his bones had suddenly vanished, and slid into the mire.

Burton stumbled on, sloshing forward, peering at the troops who were lining the right side of the trench and firing their rifles over its lip. He eventually saw the man he was searching for—a big Askari with a patch covering his right eye. He climbed up beside him and shouted into his ear: “Are you Private Usaama?”

“What?”

“I'm looking for Private Usaama. I was told he knows Wells.”

“I'm him. What wells?”

“Herbert Wells. The correspondent. I think he's with your company.”

The man's answer was lost as a squadron of hornets swept overhead, flying low, buzzing furiously, their oval bodies painted with the Union Jack, their guns crackling.

“What did you say?” Burton hollered.

“I said if he hasn't bought it he'll be in the forward listening post. Keep on down the trench until you come to an opening on your right. It's there.”

They both ducked as seeds howled past them and embedded themselves in the opposite wall of the trench. Rain-loosened dirt collapsed inward.

Burton jumped back down into the water and moved along, picking his way past the dead and the mutilated, whispering a Sufi meditation to keep himself sane.

A female Askari, who was propped against a pile of saturated sandbags, grabbed at his sleeve and said in a pleading tone: “I've lost my boot. I've lost my boot. I've lost my boot.”

He looked down and saw that the woman's left leg was a ragged mess beneath the knee. The foot was missing.

“I've lost my boot. I've lost my boot.”

He nodded helplessly and yanked his arm from her grasp.

Another explosion. More terrible screams.

The passage to the listening post, seen dimly through the downpour, was now just a few steps away. He waded toward it, the smell of cordite and rotting flesh and overflowing latrines thick in his nostrils.

Sirens wailed through the staccato gunfire and thumping detonations: “Ulla! Ulla! Ulla!”

He entered the narrow passage and pushed through the water to its end, which widened into a small square pit. Its sides were shored up with wood, its upper edges protected by sandbags. To his right, a mechanical contrivance rested on a table beneath a canvas hood. Nearby, a corpse lay half-submerged, its eyes gazing sightlessly at the sky. Straight ahead, a short and plump man was standing on a box and peering northward through a periscope. He had a bugle slung over his shoulder and his tin helmet was badly dented on one side.

“Bertie?”

The man turned. The left side of his face was badly disfigured by a burn scar. He was unshaven and smeared with dirt.

“Lieutenant Wells, if you don't mind,” he shouted. “Who the devil are you?”

“It's me. Burton.”

Wells squinted through the rain, then gave a sudden whoop of joy and jumped from the box. He splashed over to Burton and gripped him by the hand.

“It's true! It's true!” he yelled, his voice pitched even higher than usual. “By gum, Burton, it's been two years! I thought I'd imagined you! But look at you! Alive! In the flesh! The chronic argonaut himself!” Wells suddenly stepped back. “What happened to you? You look like a skeleton!”

“War has been happening to me, Bertie, and to you too, I see.”

They both jerked down as something whistled overhead and exploded in the trenches behind them.

“This is the ugliest it's ever been,” Wells shouted. “It's attrition warfare now. The Hun has abandoned all strategy but that of battering us into oblivion. Grab a periscope and join me. Ha! Just like when we first met! What happened to you after the Battle of the Bees?”

“The what?”

“Tanga, man!”

Burton took one of the viewing devices from the table and climbed onto the box beside Wells.

“I fell in with a group of guerrilla fighters. We spent eighteen months or so raiding Hun outposts around Kilimanjaro before I suffered a fever and severe leg ulcerations that had me laid up in a field hospital for seven weeks. While I was there, the guerrillas were killed by A-Spores. During my final week in the hospital, I heard from—” They both crouched as three explosions tore up the battlefield nearby. “—From another patient that you were heading to Dut'humi, for the attack on the Tanganyika Railway, so I hooked up with a company that was heading this way.”

“I can't tell you how good it is to see you again!” Wells exclaimed. “By heaven, Richard, your inexplicable presence is the one spark of magic in this endlessly turgid conflict! Is your memory restored? Do you know why you're here?”

Burton peered through the periscope. He saw coils of barbed wire forming a barrier across the landscape ahead. Beyond it there were German trenches, and behind them, the terrain rose to a ridge, thick with green trees. The Tanganyika railway line, he'd learned, was on the other side of that low range.

“I remember a few more things—mainly that there's something I have to do. The trouble is, I don't know what!”

From over to their left, a machine gun started to chatter. Four more explosions sounded in quick succession and lumps of mud rained down on them. Someone screeched, coughed, and died.

“Forgive the mundanity,” Wells said, “but I don't suppose you've got biscuits or anything? I haven't eaten since yesterday!”

“Nothing,” Burton replied. “Bertie, the forest—”

“What? Speak up!”

“The trees on the ridge. There's something wrong with them.”

“I've noticed. A verdant forest—and one that wasn't there two days ago!”

“What? You mean the trees grew to maturity in just forty-eight hours?”

“They did. Eugenicist mischief, obviously.”

“They aren't even native to Africa. Acer pseudoplatanus. The sycamore maple. It's a European species.”

“For a man whose memory is shot through you know far too much Latin. Down!”

They ducked and hugged the dirt wall as a pea thumped into the mud nearby and detonated.

Wells said something. Burton shook his head. He couldn't hear. His ears had filled with jangling bells. The war correspondent leaned closer and shouted: “The Hun have recently solved the problem with growing yellow pea artillery. The shrapnel from these projectiles is poisonous. If you're hit, pull the fragments out of your wound as fast as you can.”

An enormously long, thin leg swung over the listening post as a harvestman stepped across it. Burton looked up at the underside of its small oval-shaped body and saw a trumpet-mouthed weapon swivelling back and forth. He straightened, wiped the rain from his eyes, and lifted the scope. A long line of the mechanised spiders was crossing the forward trenches and approaching the barbed-wire barrier. There were at least twenty vehicles. Their weapons began to blast out long jets of flame.

All of a sudden the downpour stopped, and in the absence of its pounding susurration, the loud clatter of the vehicles' steam engines and the roar of their flamethrowers sounded oddly isolated.

A strong warm breeze gusted across the battlefield.

Burton was shaken by a sense of uneasiness.

Wells obviously felt it too. “Now what?” he muttered.

A shell, fired from the German trenches, hit one of the harvestmen. “Ulla!” it screamed, and collapsed to the ground. Its driver spilled from the saddle, started to run, and was shredded by gunfire.

“Something's happening up on the ridge,” Wells said.

Burton turned his attention back to the distant forest. He frowned and muttered, “Is there something wrong with my sense of perspective?”

“No,” Wells answered. “Those trees are gigantic.”

They were also thrashing about in the strengthening wind.

“This doesn't feel at all natural,” Burton said.

“You're right. I think the Hun weathermen are at work. We'd better stand ready to report to HQ.”

“HQ? Are you Army now, Bertie?”

“Aren't you? You're in uniform.”

“My other clothes rotted off my back—”

Another pea burst nearby. A lump of it clanged off Burton's helmet.

“—and I was given these at the field hospital. No one has officially drummed me into service. I think they just assume I'm a soldier.”

“Such is our state of disorganisation,” Wells responded. “The fact is, Richard, everyone is a soldier now. That's how desperate things have become. There's no such thing as a British civilian in the entire world. And right now, I'm assigning you as my Number Two. The previous, Private Michaels—” Wells gestured toward the half-submerged corpse Burton had barely registered earlier, “—poked his head over the sandbags, the silly sod, and got hit by a sniper. Be sure you don't do the same. Get over to the wireless.”

Burton glanced back at the apparatus on the table. “Wireless? I—er—I don't know how to use it.”

“Two years here and you still can't operate a bloody radio?”

“I've been—”

He was interrupted by whistles sounding all along the frontline trench.

“This is it!” Wells exclaimed. “The lads are going over!”

To the left and right of the listening post, Askari soldiers—with some white faces standing out among them—clambered from the waterlogged trenches and began to move across the narrow strip of no-man's-land in the wake of the advancing harvestmen. They were crouching low and holding bayoneted rifles. Seeds from the opposing trenches sizzled through the air. Men's heads were jerked backward; their limbs were torn away; their stomachs and chests were rent open; they went down, and when they went down, others, moving up from behind, replaced them. Peas arced out of the sky and slapped into the mud among them. They exploded, ripping men apart and sending the pieces flying into the air. Still the British troops pressed on.

“Bismillah!” Burton whispered as the carnage raged around him.

“Look!” Wells yelled. He pointed up at the ridge. “What the hell is that?”

Burton adjusted his viewer and observed through its lens a thick green mass boiling up from the trees. Borne on the wind, it came rolling down the slope and passed high above the German trenches. As it approached, he saw that it was comprised of spinning sycamore seeds, and when one of them hit the leg of a harvestman, he realised they were of an enormous size—at least twelve feet across. The seed didn't merely hit the spider's leg, either—its wings sliced right through it; they were as solid and sharp as scimitars. He watched horrified as thousands upon thousands of the whirling seeds impacted against the lofty battle machines, shearing through the long thin legs, chopping into the oval bodies, decapitating the drivers. As the harvestmen buckled under the onslaught, the seeds spun on toward the advancing troops.

“Take cover!” Wells bellowed.

Burton and the war correspondent dropped to their knees in filthy water and hugged the base of the observation pit's forward wall. Eight sycamore seeds whisked through the air above them and thudded into the back of the excavation. A ninth sliced Private Michaels' corpse clean in half. A green cloud hurtled overhead and mowed into the frontline trenches.

Its shadow passed. The wind stopped. Burton looked up at the sky. The rainclouds were now ragged tatters, fast disappearing, and the blistering sun shone between them down onto a scene of such slaughter that, when Burton stood, climbed back onto the box, and looked through his periscope, he thought he might lose his mind with the horror of what he saw. He squeezed his eyes shut. Ghastly moans and whimpers and shrieks of agony filled his ears. He clapped his palms over them. The stench of fresh blood invaded his nostrils.

He collapsed backward and fell full length into the trench water. It closed over him and he wanted to stay there, but hands clutched at his clothing and hauled him out.

“Run!” Wells cried out, his voice pitched even higher than usual. “The Germans are coming!”

Burton staggered to his feet. His soaked trousers clung to his legs; filthy liquid streamed from his jacket and shirt.

“Move! Move!” Wells shouted. He grabbed Burton and pushed him toward the connecting passage. As they splashed through it, the little war correspondent lifted his bugle to his lips and sounded the retreat. With the urgent trumpeting in his ears, Burton blundered along and passed into the forward trench. It looked as if hell itself had bubbled up out of the mud. The sycamore seeds were everywhere, their blades embedded in sandbags, in the earth, and in soldiers. The troops had been diced like meat on a butcher's slab; body parts were floating in rivers of blood; and in the midst of the carnage, limbless men and women lay twitching helplessly, their dying eyes wide with terror and shock.

As Burton and Wells raced from the foremost trench and made their way through the connecting ditches toward the rear, the smaller man blew the retreat with frantic desperation, while the taller, whenever he spotted a soldier still capable of moving, gathered wits enough to shout: “Withdraw! Withdraw!”

Eventually they came to the final trench, clambered out of it, their uniforms red with other men's gore, and began to run.

Burton glanced to either side and saw a straggling line of fleeing soldiers—so few!—then looked back and gasped: “What are they?”

Wells said something but it was lost as a barrage of explosive peas came whistling down, punched into the ground just behind them, and sent up huge spouts of mud.

The world slowed down, became utterly silent, and revolved majestically around Burton. The sky passed underneath. Men performed loose-limbed pirouettes through it. Some of the loose limbs weren't attached to the men.

I have to be somewhere.

The ground swung upward to meet him.

Time resumed.

The earth smacked into his face.

He coughed, groaned, spat soil from his mouth, and lifted himself onto all fours.

Wells was spreadeagled nearby.

Burton crawled over to him. His friend was alive and conscious and his mouth was moving but there was no sound. There was no sound anywhere.

Wells pointed at the trenches.

Looking back, Burton saw the Schutztruppen approaching. One of the Germans was very near. He was dressed in a slate-grey uniform and his helmet was spiked at its crown. He held in his hands, like a rifle, a long seedpod with a vicious thorn dripping venom at its end.

The Schutztruppen weren't human.

Burton pushed himself backward through the mud, kicking his feet, trying to get away. He couldn't take his eyes off the approaching soldier. Though a man in shape, the German's head was deformed—his jaws were pushed forward into a snout, and his slavering mouth was filled with long canines. He was a tawny-yellow colour, and black-spotted, and his golden eyes had vertical irises.

The name Laurence Oliphant jumped into Burton's mind, and in a flash he recalled a duel, a clashing of swords, with a man half human and half white panther. The memory was hallucinogenic in its power. He reached for his sword, looked into the thing's feline eyes, and whispered: “Good lord! What have you done to yourself?”

When his hand came whipping up there was not a sword in it, but a pistol, and without even thinking, he pumped four bullets into the German.

He watched as the trooper staggered, dropped the seedpod, and teetered to one side. The creature—a leopard given human shape—flopped to the ground. There were more approaching. Some of them were similarly formed from lithe jungle cats; others were bulky rhinoceros men, or vicious hyena things. Hardly any were fully human.

Fingers closed over Burton's arm. He jerked free of them and scrabbled away before realising they belonged to Bertie Wells. The war correspondent was on his feet. His mouth was working, and faintly, as if from a long way off, Burton heard: “Come on, man! We have to get out of here!”

A chunk of dirt was thrown up near his head. Something tugged violently at his wet sleeve and scored the skin beneath. It finally registered that he was being shot at.

He pushed himself to his feet and, with Wells, started to run as hard as he could.

They passed between two Scorpion Tanks whose tail cannon were spewing fire at the oncoming enemy troops. A pea smashed square into one and the war machine flew apart, sending shards of splintered carapace skittering past the two men.

Burton's hearing returned with a clap, and the dissonances of battle assaulted his already overwhelmed senses.

He and Wells veered to the right, ducked behind the swollen carcass of a long-dead mega-dray horse, and bolted through a field of broken wagons and wrecked wooden shacks.

They ran and ran and eventually reached the base of the Dut'humi Hills.

Seven British hornets, flying extremely low, came buzzing from behind the higher ground. They swept down, passed over the two men, and raked the battlefield with bullets. One of the giant insects was struck mid-thorax by an enemy cannon. It hit the earth and tumbled, enveloped in flames.

At the edge of the undergrowth, Burton noticed a bright poppy—a red beacon amid the foliage.

“This way!” he shouted, and pulled Wells toward it. They threw themselves past the little flower and into thick purplish vegetation. Careless of thorns, they heaved themselves through bushes, climbed over twisted roots, ducked under looped lianas, and forced their way uphill until the frightful noise of conflict began to fade behind them.

Vegetation snagged at and tore their uniforms. Wet leaves dripped on them, though they were already soaked to the skin. Still they kept going, passing over the brow of a jungly hill and down into a stinking swamp. They waded through it, thigh-deep, careless of crocodiles, and emerged onto firmer land where the terrain once again sloped upward. The vegetation was slightly less dense here, and they slowed to walking pace as they passed between tree boles, with a tightly packed canopy overhead.

Burton noticed another poppy off to his left. He steered his companion in that direction.

“There's a place I must go, Bertie.”

“Where?”

“I wish I knew.”

A prickly and malformed plant to Wells's right twitched spasmodically. Milky liquid spurted from it and hit the sleeve of the war correspondent's greatcoat. The material immediately started to smoulder.

Wells swore, ripped the garment open, and pulled it off, throwing it to the ground. He pushed Burton onward, leaving the plant and the coat behind.

“Bloody Eugenicist creations are starting to sprout up all over the place,” he growled. “And they're all acid-spitting, bloodsucking, needle-shooting, poison-scent-emitting atrocities! Look at those, for instance—” He nodded toward the base of a nearby tree. Burton looked and saw a clump of bulbous white fungi.

“Those are Destroying Angel mushrooms—the species they get the A-Spores from. Not native to Africa until the Eugenicists meddled with them. Now they're everywhere!”

They steered carefully past a nest of pismire ants. They were natural, but nevertheless dangerous. Burton knew from painful experience that their bite was like the jab of a red-hot needle.

For the next hour, the two men forced their way onward. Twice more, Burton saw poppies and altered his direction in order to pass by them. He did not mention this to Wells.

Finally, with gasps of relief, they emerged into a small glade. It was carpeted with the bright-red blossoms, and in its very centre, upon a mound, a profusion of multicoloured flowers were thriving. A single beam of sunlight angled through tree branches and brightly illuminated the vivid reds, yellows, blues, and purples. The air was filled with pollen, which shone like gold dust in the shaft of light. Butterflies danced over the flowers. Everything was glowing with an almost supernatural radiance.

“A patch of beauty, at last!” Wells cried. “My eyes can hardly bear it! And look—your favourite poppy is everywhere!”

The two men threw themselves down beside the mound. For thirty minutes or so, they sat in silence, each dealing in his own way with the atrocities they'd witnessed.

Eventually, Burton spoke: “What is it about you, Bertie, that attracts death from the sky? When I first met you it was the spores. Then it was bees. This time, sycamore seeds. What next? Boulder-sized hailstones? Acidic rain? Explosive bloody bird shit?”

“Whatever else I might have to say about them,” Wells responded, “I can't deny that the Germans are damned creative.”

“Unquestionably. What the hell were those Schutztruppen?”

“The Eugenicists are turning animals into soldiers,” Wells replied. “Because they're running out of Africans.”

Burton groaned. “So the loathsome treatment of this continent now extends even to its flora and fauna? I swear to you, I wish a plague would wipe mankind from the face of this world! How despicable we are!”

The smaller man shrugged. “I don't think a plague is required—we're doing a pretty good job of it ourselves. You know, there was a time in my life when I fancied that we could all work together as equals for the good of the species, when I thought that our true nationality was Mankind. Now I recognise that I vastly overestimated the human race. We disguise imperialism as the spread of higher civilisation, but it's blatantly animalistic in its nature. We are no better than carnivores or carrion eaters. Having beast-men fighting this dreadful war is wholly appropriate.”

He took a canteen from his belt and drank from it.

Burton said, “I remember you saying that Palmerston was responsible.”

“Yes.”

“And now you say the imperialistic drive is an animal impulse. Yet I can think of no one more divorced from nature than Palmerston!”

“Pah!” Wells snorted. He handed the canteen to Burton. “Did it never strike you that in his efforts to conquer the natural in himself, he was merely signposting the trait of his that he felt most vulnerable to? All those Eugenics treatments he paid for, Richard—they were the mark of the Beast!”

“Humph! I suppose.”

“And where was nature better symbolised in your age than in Africa? No wonder this continent fell victim to his paranoia!”

Burton shook his head despairingly. “I don't know how you can endure it.”

“Somehow, I still have hope,” Wells answered, “or I could not live.”

Burton took a gulp from the canteen. He coughed and spluttered as brandy burned its way down his throat.

“I was expecting water!” he croaked.

Wells watched two dragonflies flitting back and forth over the flowers. “It's ironic,” he said softly.

“What is?”

“That I'm fighting the Germans.”

“Really?”

“Yes, for in some respects, since he seized power, Nietzsche has expanded upon the beliefs I held as a younger man, and I feel strongly drawn to his philosophy.” Wells looked at Burton. “You were right, by the way: Nietzsche did seize power in 1914 and Rasputin did die. According to our Intelligence agents, he suffered a brain haemorrhage. It happened in St. Petersburg, so your claim that you were responsible doesn't hold up—unless, that is, you possess extraordinary mediumistic powers, in which case I should deliver you to Colonel Crowley at the soonest possible moment.”

Burton shook his head. “I have no such abilities, Bertie. So what is Nietzsche's philosophy?”

Wells sighed and was silent for a moment. Then he said: “He proposes an entirely new strain of human being. One that transcends the bestial urges.”

A memory squirmed uncomfortably at the back of Burton's mind. He reached out, picked a flower from the mound, and held it in front of his face, examining its petals. They did nothing to aid his powers of recollection.

“The Greek Hyperanthropos?” he asked.

“Similar. The term he uses is Übermensch. A man free from the artificial limitations of moral codes.” Wells snorted contemptuously. “Moral codes! Ha! As much as we invoke God with our exclamations and curses, we all know that he's dead. Your Darwin killed him outright, and the concept of supernaturally defined morals should have died with the deity!”

Burton held up an objecting hand and blew out a breath. “Please!” he exclaimed. “He was never my Darwin!”

“He was a man of your time. Anyway, without a God to impose ideas of right and wrong, mankind is left with a moral vacuum to fill. Nietzsche's Übermensch populates it according to an inner inclination that is entirely divorced from social, cultural, or religious influences. What blossoms within him is therefore utterly authentic. Such an individual will, according to Nietzsche, transcend his animal instincts. Furthermore, from amid all these singular standards of behaviour, certain common values will emerge, and they will be so completely in tune with the zeitgeist that human evolution will accelerate. God left a vacancy. We shall fill it.”

Burton considered this for a moment, then said, “If I understand you correctly, the implication is that the zeitgeist, time itself, has some sort of beneficial purpose.”

“Yes. Nietzsche posits that, through living as we do, we have impeded our proper relationship with time. We misunderstand it. We see only one aspect of it and we allow that to dominate us. It keeps us bound to the natural world. Only by becoming an Übermensch can an individual grow beyond it.”

The sky suddenly grew darker. The sun was beginning to set.

Wells said, “You don't happen to be an Übermensch, I suppose? You have, after all, somehow managed to defy the normal limitations of time.”

Burton gave a wry smile. “I very much doubt that I'm anything Nietzsche might aspire to.”

He reached among the flowers and brushed idly at a flat moss-covered stone. “Beresford. That's who I've been trying to remember. Henry—um—Henry de La Poer Beresford. Yes! The Mad Marquess! Bismillah! Bertie! This Übermensch business is remarkably similar to something the creator of the Libertine and Rake movements came up with. He was obsessed with the idea of what he termed the trans-natural man, and he was inspired in that by—by—bloody hell!”

“What is it?” Wells asked, puzzled.

“By Spring Heeled Jack!”

“By folklore?”

“By Edward Oxford!”

“Are you referring to the man who assassinated Queen Victoria?”

“Yes—and no.”

“You're not making any sense, Richard!”

“I'm—I'm trying to remember!”

Burton scrubbed furiously at the stone, as if cleaning it of moss might also clear his foggy memory.

“The Libertines,” Wells said. “I believe they opposed the Technologists for a period but pretty much died out during the 1870s or 80s.”

Burton didn't answer. He was leaning forward and frowning. Wells looked at him curiously then moved to his side. He reached out, pushed flowers out of the way, and, in the dwindling light, peered at the flat stone.

“Are those letters on it?” he asked.

“Yes,” Burton murmured. “There's some sort of inscription.”

Wells reached into his pocket and pulled out a dagger. “Here, use this.”

Burton took it and used the blade to scrape the moss away. Words were revealed. They read:

Thomas Manfred Honesty

1816-1863

Lost His Life While

Liberating the Enslaved.

R.I.P.

On the morning the expedition departed Nzasa, having stayed there for a single night, Sir Richard Francis Burton sent Pox to Isabel to report his position. When the parakeet returned, it squawked: “Message from Isabel Arundell. We are still harassing the stinky-mouthed enemy. I have so far lost eighteen of my women to them. They are preparing a moronic party to follow you. We will try to hold them back. Grubby pants. Message ends.”

With the threat of pursuit, Burton tried to establish a greater sense of urgency among his porters, but already his safari was assailed by problems. Upon packing to leave the village, it was discovered that two boxes of equipment were missing and three of the Wasawahili had deserted; one of the mules appeared to be dying; and water had found its way into three sacks of flour, rendering them unusable.

The explorer, who from previous experience had resigned himself to such misfortunes, put a bullet through the mule's head, discarded the flour, redistributed the loads, and got his people moving.

The second day saw them trek from Nzasa to Tumba Ihere. The route led over gently undulating grasslands and through miry valleys, past a bone-strewn burial ground where witches and other practitioners of ucháwi—black magic—had been burned at the stake, and across a fast-flowing stream where they lost another mule after it slipped and broke a leg.

They rested for an hour.

Swinburne abandoned his stretcher.

“I'm fine and dandy! In the pink! Fit as a fiddle!” he announced. “How far to the next village?”

“At least four hours' march,” Burton replied. “You can't possibly be in full bloom. You had half your blood sucked out a couple of days ago.”

“Pah! I'm perfectly all right. Confound it! I was hoping the village would be closer.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to try that pombe African beer you once told me about!”

They started moving again, crossing a plain that seethed with wildlife, and for half an hour, Swinburne, who was now riding a mule while holding an umbrella over his head, amused himself by shouting the names of every species he spotted: “Zebra! Koodoo! Giraffe! Guinea-fowl! Lion! Quail! Four-legged thingummy!”

He then fell off his mount, having fainted.

They put him back onto the stretcher.

After wrestling their way through a long stretch of sticky red soil and onto firmer, hilly ground, they were met by men from the village of Kiranga-Ranga. These Wazamaro warriors each bore three long puckered scars extending across both cheeks from their earlobes to the corners of their mouths. Their hair was plastered down with ochre-coloured mud and twisted into a double row of knobs that circled their heads. They wore loincloths of unbleached cotton and had strings of beads looped around their necks, which were also fitted with tightly beaded bands, known as mgoweko collars. A solid ring of brass circled their wrists. They carried muskets, spears, bows with poisoned arrows, and long knives.

They were not friendly.

Tribute was demanded, haggled over, and finally paid in the form of two doti of cloth and some much-prized sami-sami beads.

The safari continued, meandering past fertile fields of rice, maize, and manioc before coming up against a snarled and riotous jungle, which they were still hacking through when the rains started. They eventually stumbled out of it, soaked to the skin and covered with ticks, and found themselves amid fetid vegetation from which misshapen dwarf mango trees grew, and in this unlikely spot—Tumba Ihere—they were forced to establish their camp.

That evening, in the main Rowtie, Isabella Mayson announced that she was feeling out of sorts. By the morning she was trembling with ague and hallucinating that ravenous birds were trying to peck out her eyes. Swinburne gave up his stretcher for her.

“I have developed a horror of the horizontal!” he declared.

“Sit on your mule,” Burton instructed, “and don't overexert yourself.”

The explorer ordered the commencement of the next march.

“Kwecha! Kwecha!” Saíd bin Sálim and his Askaris yelled. “Pakia! Hopa! Hopa!” Collect! Pack! Set out! Safari! A journey! A journey today!

So began the third day of their hike.

Pox made the daily flight eastward and back again. The report was not good. A ship had delivered two thousand Prussian reinforcements to Mzizima. The Daughters of Al-Manat had divided into two groups of ninety women, one continuing to wage a guerrilla campaign against the burgeoning town, the other harassing a contingent of men that had set off in pursuit of Burton's expedition.

“We have to move faster,” the king's agent told Saíd.

“I will do all I can, Mr. Burton,” the ras kafilah promised in his habitually polite manner, “and the rest is as Allah wills it.”

They tramped through alternating bands of richly cultivated land and matted flora, with Saíd's Askaris forcing the porters to a brisk pace wherever possible, until they eventually found themselves in a large forest of copal trees that oozed resin and filled the air with a cloying perfume. Horseflies attacked them. Thomas Honesty was stung below the left eye by a bee and the side of his face swelled up like a balloon. Trounce started to feel a stiffness in his limbs. For an hour a strange whistling noise assaulted their ears. They never discovered its source.

They kept going.

About noon, Burton—who'd succumbed to the turgid heat and was gazing uncomprehendingly at the back of his mule's head—was roused by Swinburne, who, in his piping voice, suddenly announced:

“The dense hard passage is blind and stifled

That crawls by a track none turn to climb

To the strait waste place that the years have rifled

Of all but the thorns that are touched not of time.

The thorns he spares when the rose is taken;

The rocks are left when he wastes the plain.

The wind that wanders, the weeds wind-shaken,

These remain.”

“What?” Burton mumbled.

“Police pottery,” Swinburne replied. “Do you remember Matthew Keller in Leeds? Feels like a long time ago, durn't it?”

“I'm losing track,” Burton replied. “Since we left the Orpheus, I've been forgetting to record the date in my journal. I don't know why. It's out of character.”

He squinted against the glaring light and for the first time realised that the forest had been left behind; they were now traversing broad grain fields. He recognised the place—he'd passed through it during his previous expedition.

“We're approaching the village of Muhogwe. Its people have a reputation for violence but last time I was here they settled for mockery.”

William Trounce cleared his throat and said, “My apologies, Richard.” He slipped to the ground.

It was another case of seasoning fever.

“We're succumbing considerably sooner than I expected,” Burton said to Sister Raghavendra as they lowered the police detective onto a litter.

“Don't worry,” she replied. “There's usually a fairly long incubation period with this sort of affliction but the medicine I've been feeding you negates it. The stuff brings on the fever more rapidly, makes it burn more fiercely, and it's all over and done with in a matter of hours instead of weeks.”

Burton raised his eyebrows. “I should have liked that during my previous expedition!”

They came to Muhogwe. It was abandoned.

“Either the slavers have taken the entire population, or the entire population has upped and moved to avoid the slavers,” Burton observed.

“The latter, I hope,” Swinburne responded.

Beyond the village it was all jungle and forest again, then a quagmire where they had to fire their rifles into the air to scare away a herd of hippopotami.

A slope led up to a plateau, and here they found a boma—a fenced kraal—and decided to set up camp. No sooner had they erected the last tent than the clouds gathered and the rain fell.

They ate and rested, except for Burton who braved the downpour to take stock of the supplies. He found that two more porters had run away and three bundles of specie were missing.

Night came. They tried to settle but the air smelled of putrefying vegetation, the mosquitoes were remorseless, and they all felt, to one degree or another, ill and out of sorts.

Hyenas cackled, screamed, and whined from dusk until dawn.

And so it went. The days passed and the safari crept along, seemingly at a snail's pace, and wound its way over the malarious plain of the Kinganí River toward the low peaks of the Usagara Highlands. Each in turn, they came down with fever then made an astonishingly rapid recovery. Burton was in no doubt that Sister Raghavendra was a miracle worker, for there could be no greater contrast than that between his first Nile expedition, during which he and John Speke had been permanently stricken with an uncountable number of ailments, and this, his second, where illness was the exception rather than the rule.

Isabel's reports came every morning. A force of four hundred men was now following in the expedition's tracks. The Daughters of Al-Manat were making daily attacks against them but nine more of her followers had been killed and the distance was closing between the two groups.

“If we can just make it to Kazeh before they catch up,” Burton told his friends. “The Arabians there are well disposed toward me—they will loan us men and weapons.”

They trudged on.

Plains. Hills. Forests. Swamps. Jungle. The land challenged their every step.

Sagesera. Tunda. Dege la Mhora. Madege Madogo. Kidunda. Mgeta. The villages passed one after the other, each demanding hongo, each whittling away at their supplies.

Desertions. Theft. Accidents. Fatigue. The safari became ever more frayed and difficult to control.

One night, they heard distant gunshots.

They were camped at Kiruru, a small and semi-derelict village located deep in a plantation of holcus, whose tall, stiff canes almost completely hid the ragged beehive huts and slumping bandani.

Herbert Spencer, freshly wound up, had been explaining to them some of his First Principles of Philosophy when the crackle and pops of rifle fire echoed faintly through the air.

They looked at each other.

“How far away?” Thomas Honesty asked.

“Not far enough,” Maneesh Krishnamurthy grunted.

“It's from somewhere ahead of us, not behind,” Burton noted.

“Lardy flab!” Pox added.

“Sleep with your weapons beside you,” the explorer ordered. “Herbert, I want you to patrol the camp tonight.”

“Actually, Boss, I patrol the camp every blinkin' night,” the philosopher answered.

“Well, with extra vigilance tonight, please, and I think Tom, William, Maneesh, Algy, and I will stand shifts with you.”

Burton turned to Saíd. “Wilt thou see to it that we are packed and on the move well before sunrise?”

Saíd bowed an acknowledgement.

The night passed without incident but the march the following morning was one of the worst they'd so far experienced.

They found themselves fighting through thick razor-edged grass, which towered over their heads and dripped dew onto them. The black earth was greasy and slippery and interlaced with roots that caught at their feet. The mules brayed in distress, refused to be ridden, and had to be forced along with swipes of the bakur, not moving until the cat had raised welts on their hindquarters.

Pox, who'd been sent to Isabel earlier, returned and shrieked: “Message from Isabel Big Nose Arundell. We have reduced their cretinous number by a quarter but they are less than a day behind you. Move faster, Dick. Message bleeding well ends.”

“We're moving as fast as we bleeding well can!” Burton grumbled.

The grass gave way to a multitude of distorted palms, then to a savannah which promised easier going but immediately disappointed by blocking their progress with a sequence of steep nullahs—watercourses whose near-vertical banks dropped into stinking morasses that sucked them in right up to their thighs.

“I suspect this plain is always water-laden,” Burton panted, as he and Krishnamurthy tried to haul one of the mules through the mire. “The water runs down from Usagara and this area is like a basin—there's no way for it to quickly drain. Were we not in such a confounded hurry, I would have gone around it. The ridge to the north is the best route, but it would've taken too long to get there. Bismillah! I hope they don't catch us here. This is a bad place for armed conflict!”

Krishnamurthy pointed ahead, westward, at plum-coloured hills. “Higher ground there,” he said. “Hopefully it'll be easier going. The height would give us an advantage, too.”

Burton nodded an agreement and said, “Those are the hills of Dut'humi.”

They finally reached the slopes.

Burton guided his expedition along a well-trodden path, up through thick vegetation, over a summit, and down the other side. They waded through a swamp that sent up noxious bubbles of hydrogen sulphide with their every step. The rotting carcass of a rhinoceros lay at the far edge of the morass, and beyond it a long, sparsely forested incline led them to an area of tightly packed foliage. Monkeys and parrots squabbled and hooted in the branches around them.

They forced their way along the overgrown trail until they suddenly came to a clearing, where seven elderly warriors stood, each holding a bow with a trembling arrow levelled at them. The old men were plainly terrified and tears were streaming down their cheeks. They were no threat and they knew it.

Saíd called for the porters to halt, then stepped forward to speak to the old men, but one suddenly let loose a cry of surprise, dropped his weapon, pushed the Arab aside, and ran over to Burton.

“Wewe! Wewe! Thou art Murungwana Sana of Many Tongues!” he cried. “Thou wert here long long days ago, and helped our people to fight the p'hazi whose name is Manda, who had plundered our village!”

“I remember thee, Mwene Goha,” Burton said, giving the man his title. “Thy name is Máví ya Gnombe. Manda was of a neighbouring district, and we punished him right and good, did we not? Surely he has not been raiding thy village again?”

“No, not him! The slavers have come!” The man loosed a wail of despair. “They have taken all but the old!”

“When did this happen?”

“In the night. It is Tippu Tip, and he is still here, camped beyond the trees, in our fields.”

A murmur of consternation rose from the nearest of the porters and rippled away down the line. Burton turned to Saíd. “See to the men. Bring them into this clearing. Do not allow them to flee.”

The ras kafilah signalled to his bully boys and they started to herd the porters into the glade.

The king's agent instructed Trounce, Honesty, Krishnamurthy, Spencer, Isabella Mayson, and Sister Raghavendra to help the Arab guard the men and supplies. He gestured for Swinburne to join him, then addressed Mávi ya Gnombe: “Mwene Goha, I wouldst look upon the slavers' camp, but I do not wish the slavers to see me.”

“Follow, I shall show thee,” the elder said. He and his companions, who'd put away their arrows, led Burton and Swinburne to the far side of the clearing where the path continued.

Between the glade and the cultivated fields beyond there was a thick band of forest. The trail led halfway through this, then veered sharply to the left. The African stopped at the bend and pointed down the path.

“It is the way to the village,” he said.

“I remember,” Burton replied. “The houses and bandani are in another clearing some way along. I had arranged for a forward party of Wanyamwezi porters to meet us at thy village with supplies, but the plan went awry.”

“Had they come, they would now be slaves, so it is good the plan did not work. Murungwana Sana, this is one of three paths from the village clearing. Another leads from it down to the plain and is better trodden than this.”

“I was wondering why this one is so overgrown,” said Burton. “The last time I was here, it was the main route.”

“We changed it after Manda attacked us.”

“And the third path?”

“Goes from the village, through the forest, to the fields. All these paths are now guarded by old men, as this one was. But let us not follow this way. Instead, we shall go through the trees here, and we will come to the fields at a place where the slavers would not expect to see a man, and will therefore not be looking. My brothers will meanwhile return to the village, for the grandmothers of those taken are sorely afraid.”

“Very well.”

Máví ya Gnombe nodded to his companions, who turned and continued down the trail, then he pushed through a sticky-leafed bush and disappeared into the undergrowth. Burton followed, and Swinburne stepped after him, muttering about leeches and ticks and fleas and “assorted creepy-crawlies.”

They struggled on for five minutes, then the trees thinned, and the men ducked low and proceeded as quietly as possible. They came to a bush, pushed aside its leaves, and looked out over cultivated fields, upon which was camped a large slave caravan.

There were, Burton estimated, about four hundred slaves, men and women, mostly kneeling, huddled together and chained by the neck in groups of twelve. Arabian traders moved among and around them—about seventy, though there were undoubtedly more in the large tents that had been erected on the southern side of the camp.

A little to the north, a great many pack mules were corralled, along with a few ill-looking horses.

Swinburne started to twitch with fury. “This is diabolical, Richard!” he hissed. “There must be something we can do!”

“We're vastly outnumbered, Algy,” Burton said. “And we have the Prussians breathing down our necks. But—”

“But what?”

“Perhaps there's a way we can kill two birds with one stone. Let's get back to the others.”

They retraced their steps through the foliage until they emerged once again onto the path. Burton addressed the elderly African: “Máví ya Gnombe, go thou to thy village and bring all who remain there to the glade where we encountered thee. Do not allow a single one to remain behind.”

The old man looked puzzled, but turned and paced away to do as commanded.

Burton and Swinburne returned to the clearing, where they found the porters restless and unhappy. The king's agent walked over to the bundle of robes that hid Herbert Spencer and reached up to the parakeet that squatted atop it. Pox jumped onto his outstretched hand, and Burton took the bird away from his companions and quietly gave it a message to deliver to Isabel. He included a description of their location, outlined a plan of action, and finished: “Report the enemy's numbers and position. Message ends.”

Pox disappeared into the green canopy overhead.

As if turned on by a switch, the day's rainfall began. Everyone moved to the more sheltered edges of the glade.

Burton called his companions over and told them what he intended.

“You've got to be bloody joking!” Trounce exclaimed.

“Chancy!” Thomas Honesty snapped.

“Perilous!” Krishnamurthy grunted.

“Inspired!” Swinburne enthused.

“I see no other way,” Burton said.

They ate a hurried meal while awaiting the parakeet's return.

The villagers arrived, pitifully few in number, and all elderly. Burton described to them what was soon to happen, and drilled into them that their silence would be essential. They huddled together, wet, miserable, and scared.

The expedition members took rifles and pistols from the supplies and began to clean and load them.

“You'll remain with the porters,” Burton told the two women.

Isabella Mayson picked up a revolver, flicked open its chamber, and started to push bullets into it. “Absolutely not,” she said.

Sister Raghavendra hefted a rifle. “Do you consider us too frail, Richard?”

“On the contrary, you have proven yourselves—”

“Equal to any man?” the Sister interrupted. “Good. Then we shall do what needs to be done and fight at your side, and don't you dare attempt to persuade us otherwise.”

Burton gave a curt nod.

Forty minutes later, Pox returned.

“Message from Isabel Arundell. We are ready. Estimate a hundred and fifty thumb-sucking men fast approaching your position. You have an hour at most, chamber-pot lover. Be prepared.”

“You all understand what you must do?” he asked his friends.

They gave their grim assent, pushed pistols into their belts, slung rifles over their shoulders, and divided into two teams of four: Trounce, Swinburne, Krishnamurthy, and Mayson; and Burton, Honesty, Spencer, and Raghavendra. Pox huddled on the explorer's shoulder.

Burton addressed Saíd: “To thee falls responsibility for the porters and villagers. It is vital that they neither flee nor make a sound.”

“I understand.”

The king's agent and his companions moved out of the glade and along the path. The rain hammered against the leaves around them, hissing loudly, soaking through their clothing, making the ground squelch beneath their feet.

They followed the trail as it veered to the right, and traipsed on until they eventually reached the abandoned village, which was some considerable distance from the original clearing. The second glade was much bigger. There were twenty or so beehive huts in it, and a well-built palaver house. A massive fig tree spread over the central space.

“The first shot is yours,” Burton said to Trounce. “Judge it well. Don't be too eager.”

“Understood.”

Trounce led his team to the eastern edge of the village and they disappeared into the vegetation, following the path down the hill to the marshy ground where the rhinoceros carcass lay. Burton and the rest went in the opposite direction, cautiously proceeding along the trail toward the fields. Halfway along it, they left the path and pushed into the bushes and plants that crowded around the boles of the trees. Struggling through the roots and vines and thorns and branches, they made their way to the edge of the forest until, through the dripping verdure, they saw the cultivated land and the slave encampment.

The sun was low in the sky by now, and it turned the fringes of the passing clouds a radiant gold.

The rain stopped.

“It won't be long,” Burton said softly. “Spread out. Don't shoot until I do. And remember—keep moving.”

Honesty, Spencer, and Sadhvi Raghavendra slipped away.

Burton lay flat on his stomach and levelled his rifle, aiming at the slavers who were moving around their tents and captives.

He flicked a beetle from his cheek and crushed a leech that had attached to the back of his left hand.

Pox hopped from his shoulder to his head and mumbled, “Odious pig.”

The shadows lengthened.

A seemingly endless line of ants marched over the mulch just in front of him. They were carrying leaf fragments, dead wasps, and caterpillars.

He heard Honesty sneeze close by.

A rifle cracked in the near distance.

All of a sudden, gunfire erupted and echoed through the trees, the sound rising up from the base of the hill on the other side of the village. Burton knew what it meant: the Prussians were very close, and Trounce and his team had opened fire on them.

Sheltered behind the roots of trees, the police detective's team could take pot-shots at the hundred and fifty Prussians with impunity. Not only were they concealed but they were also on higher ground, while the pursuing party had to struggle through the marsh before ascending a slope that, while forested, was considerably more open than the uppermost part of the hill.

Trounce, Swinburne, Krishnamurthy, and Isabella Mayson would be silently and invisibly moving backward as they picked off the enemy, drawing the Prussians toward the village and away from the other clearing.

The noise of battle had reached the Arabs. Burton watched as they grabbed rifles and gestured at the forest. A large group of them started running toward where he and the others were hidden.

He took aim at a particularly large and ferocious-looking slaver and shot him through the heart.

Immediately, rifles banged loudly as Honesty, Spencer, and Raghavendra opened fire.

Burton downed two more of the slavers, then, as the other Arabs started shooting blindly into the undergrowth, he crawled backward and repositioned himself behind a tangle of mangrove roots from where he could see the beginning of the path to the village.

Bullets tore through the foliage but none came close to him. He put his rifle aside and pulled two six-shooters from his belt. Four Arabs ran into view. He mowed them down with well-placed shots then crawled away to reposition himself once again.

Slowly, in this fashion, Burton and his friends retreated toward the village.

The slavers followed, and though they sent bullet after bullet crashing into the trees, they didn't once find a target.

On the other side of the empty settlement, Trounce and his companions were performing exactly the same manoeuvre. They had slightly less luck—a bullet had ploughed through Krishnamurthy's forearm and another had scored the skin of Isabella Mayson's right cheek and taken off her earlobe—but the effect was the same: the Prussians were advancing toward the village.

After some minutes, Burton came closer to the end of the path where it opened into the clearing. He fired off three shots and wormed his way under a tamarind tree whose branches slumped all the way to the ground forming an enclosed space around the trunk, and here he found Herbert Spencer collapsed and motionless in the dirt.

A rifle cracked, tamarind leaves parted, and Thomas Honesty crawled in. He saw the bundle of Arabian robes and whispered: “Herbert! Dead?”

“He can't die,” Burton replied in a low voice. “He's clockwork. Fool that I am, I forgot to wind him up this morning—and the key is back with the supplies!”

“Manage without him. Almost there!”

“Let's get into position,” Burton said. “Stay low—things are about to get a lot hotter around here!”

He dropped onto his belly and—followed by the Scotland Yard man—wriggled out from beneath the tamarind, through thorny scrub, and into the shelter of a matted clump of tall grass. Using his elbows, he propelled himself forward until he reached the edge of the village clearing. Honesty crawled to his side. They watched the action from behind a small acacia bush. The police detective glanced at it and murmured, “Needs pruning, hard against the stem.”

Guns were discharging all around them, and they immediately saw that the thing they'd hoped for had come to pass. The slavers had entered the village from the west, while Trounce and his team had lured the Prussians into it from the east; and now the two groups, convinced that the other was the enemy, were blazing away at each other.

“Now we just lie low and wait it out,” Burton said.

Four of the plant vehicles he'd seen at Mzizima were slithering into view, and cries of horror went up from the Arabs, who aimed their matchlocks at the creatures and showered them with bullets. Burton plainly saw the men sitting in the blooms hit over and over, but they appeared unaffected, apart from one who took a shot to the forehead. He went limp, and his plant thrashed wildly before flopping into a quivering heap.

Over the course of the next few minutes, the two forces battled ferociously while the king's agent and his friends looked on from their hiding places in the surrounding vegetation. Then a slight lull in the hostilities occurred and a voice shouted from among the slavers: “We shall not submit to bandits!”

A Prussian, in the Arabic language, yelled back: “We are not bandits!”

“Then why attack us?”

“It was you who attacked us !”

“You lie!”

“Wait! Hold your fire! I would parley!”

“Damn it!” Burton said under his breath. “We can't let this happen, but if any of us shoots now, they'll realise a third party is present.”

“Is this trickery, son of Allah?” the Prussian shouted.

“Nay!”

“Then tell me, what do you want?”

“We want nothing but to be left alone. We are en route to Zanzibar.”

“Why, then, did you set upon us?”

“I tell you, we did not.”

Burton saw the Prussian turn to some of his men. They talked among themselves, holding their weapons at the ready and not taking their eyes from the Arabs, some of whom were crowded around the end of the westernmost path, while others crouched behind the native huts.

Moments later, the Prussian called: “Prove to us that you are speaking the truth. Lay down your weapons!”

“And allow you to slaughter us?”

“I told you—we are not the aggressor!”

“Then you lay down your guns and withdraw those—those—plant abominations!”

Again, the Prussian consulted with his men.

He turned back to the slavers. “I will only concede to—”

Suddenly, one of the slavers—swathed in his robes and with his head wrapped in a keffiyeh—ran out from among his fellows, raised two pistols, and started blasting at the Prussians.

Immediately, they jerked up their rifles and sent a hail of bullets into the man. He was knocked off his feet, sent twisting through the air, and hit the ground, where he rolled then lay still.

The battle exploded back into life, and, on both sides, man after man went down.

A stray bullet ripped into the tall grass, narrowly missing Burton. He turned to make sure Honesty was unharmed but the Scotland Yard man had, at some point, silently moved away.

“Message to Isabel Arundell,” Burton said to Pox. “Your company is requested. Message ends.”

As the parakeet flew off, one of the plant vehicles writhed past Burton's position and laid into a group of slavers. Its spine-covered tendrils whipped out, yanked men off their feet, and ripped them apart. Some tried to flee but were shot down as the Prussians began to gain control of the clearing. One group of about twenty Arabs had secured itself behind a large stack of firewood in the bandani, and it wasn't long before they were the last remaining men of the slave caravan's force. The Prussians, by contrast, had about fifty soldiers left, plus the three moving plants. Individuals in both groups were drawing swords as ammunition ran out: wicked-looking scimitars on the Arabian side; straight rapiers on the Prussian.

Pox returned: “Message from Isabel Arundell. We had problems getting the buttock-wobbling horses through the bloody swamp but are now regrouping at the bottom of the hill. We'll be with you in a stench-filled moment. Message ends.”

One of the mobile plants crashed into the barrier behind which the slavers were sheltering and lashed out at them, tearing their clothes and flaying their skin. Screaming with terror, they hacked at it with their scimitars, which, in fact, turned out to be a more efficient way to tackle the monster than shooting at it.

An Arab climbed onto the woodpile and jumped from it into the centre of the bloom, bringing his blade swinging down onto the head of the man sitting there. The plant shuddered and lay still.

The cavalry arrived.

The Daughters of Al-Manat, eighty strong and all mounted, came thundering into the village, emerging in single file from the eastern path. With matchlocks cracking, they attacked the remaining Prussians. Spears were thrust into the plant vehicles and burning brands thrown onto them.

Those few slavers who remained alive took the opportunity to flee and plunged away down the path, disappearing into dark shadow, for now the sky was a deep purple and the sun had almost set.

The last Prussian fell with a bullet in his throat.

The Daughters of Al-Manat had been savage—ruthless in their massacre of the enemy who, at Mzizima, had killed thirty or so of their number. Now they reined in their horses and waited while Sir Richard Francis Burton and the others emerged from the vegetation.

Krishnamurthy was holding his forearm tightly and blood was dribbling between his fingers. Isabella Mayson's right ear had bled profusely and her clothes were stained red. Swinburne, Trounce, and Sister Raghavendra were uninjured. They were all wet through and covered with dirt and insects.

“Well done,” Burton told them.

“Where's Tom?” Trounce asked.

“Probably dragging Herbert out of the bushes—his spring wound down. Sadhvi, would you see to Isabella and Maneesh's wounds?”

While the nurse got to work, Burton indicated to Trounce the area where Spencer had been left, then paced over to Isabel Arundell, who was sitting on her horse quietly conversing with her Amazons.

“That was brutal,” he observed.

She looked down at him. “I lost a lot of good women at Mzizima and on the way here. Revenge seemed…appropriate.”

He regarded her, moistened his lips, and said, “You're not the Isabel I met twelve years ago.”

“Time changes people, Dick.”

“Hardens them?”

“Perhaps that is necessary in some cases. Are we to philosophise while slaves remain in shackles or shall we go and liberate them?”

“Wait here a moment.”

He left her and approached Swinburne.

“Algy, I want you and Maneesh to leg it along to the other clearing. Bring the villagers, Saíd, and our porters back here. They can help move the bodies out to the fields. They'll need to start work digging a pit for a mass grave.”

He returned to Isabel. She indicated a riderless horse, which he mounted. Holding burning brands to light the way, they led a party of ten of the Daughters out of the glade and along the path to the fields. Burton felt sickened by the slaughter he'd witnessed but he knew it was the only option. On the one hand, the Prussians would certainly have killed him and his party, but on the other, he couldn't allow the villagers to fall into the hands of Tippu Tip.

They rode out of the forest and approached the caravan. Five Arabs were guarding it.

“He who raises a weapon shall be shot instantly!” Burton called.

One of the guards bent and placed his matchlock on the ground. The others saw him do it and followed suit.

Burton and Isabel stopped, dismounted, and walked over to them.

“Where is el Murgebi, the man they call Tippu Tip?” Burton asked, in Arabic.

One of the men pointed to a nearby tent. Burton turned to Isabel's Amazons and said, “Take these men and make a chain gang of them. Then get to work liberating the slaves.”

The women looked for confirmation from Isabel. She gave them a nod, then she and Burton strode over to the tent, pushed aside its flap, and stepped in.

By the light of three oil lamps, they saw colourful rugs on the ground, a low table holding platters of food, and piles of cushions upon which sat a small half-African, half-Arabian individual. His teeth were gold, and though he appeared less than thirty years old, his beard was white. He raised his turbaned head and they noted that a milky film covered his eyes. He was blind.

“Who enters?” he asked in a reedy voice.

“Thy enemy,” Burton replied.

“Ah. Wilt thou take a sweet mint tea with me? I have been listening to the noise of battle. An exhausting business, is it not? Refreshment would be welcome, I expect.”

“No, Tippu Tip, I will not drink with thee. Stand up, please.”

“Am I to be executed?”

“No. There has been enough death this night.”

“Then what?”

“Come.”

Burton stepped forward, took the trader by the elbow, and marched him out of the tent and over to the chained-up slaves. Isabel followed and said nothing. Her women were busily releasing the four hundred captives, who, in a long line, were making their way toward the village.

As Burton had ordered, the five guards were now tethered together, with short chains running from iron collar to iron collar, and from ankle manacle to ankle manacle. Their hands were tied behind their backs. The king's agent positioned Tippu Tip at the front of the line and locked him in fetters, joining him to the chain gang but leaving his hands unbound. He then pulled the prisoners along, away from the crowd of slaves and out into the open field.

“What are you doing?” Isabel whispered.

“Administering justice,” he replied, and brought them to a halt. “Aim your matchlock at Tippu Tip, please, Isabel.”

“Am I to be a firing squad of one?”

“Only if he attempts to point this at us,” the king's agent responded, holding up a revolver. He placed it in the Arabian's hand and stepped away. The slaver's face bore an expression of bafflement.

“Listen carefully,” Burton said, addressing the prisoners. “You are facing east, toward Zanzibar. However, if you walk straight ahead, you will find yourselves among the villagers and slaves we have just liberated and they will surely tear you limb from limb. You should therefore turn to your left and walk some miles north before then turning again eastward. In the morning, the sun will guide you, but now it is night, a dangerous time to travel, for the lions hunt and the terrain is treacherous in the dark. I can do nothing to make the ground even, but I can at least give you some protection against predators. Thus, your leader holds a pistol loaded with six bullets. Unfortunately, he is blind, so you must advise him where to point it and when to pull the trigger to ward off anything that might threaten you, but be cautious, for those six bullets are the only ones you have. Perhaps if walking all the way to Zanzibar is too challenging a prospect for you—well, there are six bullets and there are six of you. Need I say more?”

“Surely thou cannot expect us to walk all the way to the coast in chains?” Tippu Tip protested.

“Didst thou not expect just that of thy captives?” Burton asked.

“But they are slaves!”

“They are men and women and children. Now, begin your journey, you have far to go.”

“Allah have mercy!” one of the men cried.

“Perhaps he will,” Burton said. “But I won't.”

The man at the back of the line wailed, “What shall we do, el Murgebi?”

“Walk, fool!” the slave trader barked.

The chain gang stumbled into motion and slowly moved away.

“Tippu Tip!” Burton called after it. “Beware of Abdullah the Dervish, for if I set mine eyes on thee again, I shall surely kill thee!”

No one slept that night.

The liberated slaves carried the dead Arabs and Prussians along the path and into the fields, leaving them in a distant corner, intending to dig a mass grave when daylight returned. A number of Isabel's women stood guard over the corpses to prevent scavengers getting to them. The Africans were too afraid to do the job, believing that vengeful spirits would rise up and attack them.

Of the four hundred slaves, most had been taken from villages much farther to the west. This turned out to be a blessing, for Burton's porters had been so terrified by the sounds of battle and proximity of slavers that they'd overpowered Saíd and his men and had melted away into the night. No doubt they were fleeing back the way the expedition had come. Fortunately, their fear had outweighed their avariciousness and they'd departed without stealing supplies. The released slaves agreed to replace the porters on the understanding that each man, as he neared his native village, would abandon the safari in order to return home. Burton calculated that this would at least cover the marches from Dut'humi to distant Ugogi.

The Arab camp was stripped of its supplies, which were added to Burton's own and stored in the village's bandani. Tippu Tip's mules were also appropriated.

A large fire was built and the plant vehicles were chopped up and thrown into the flames.

The Daughters of Al-Manat corralled their hundred and eight horses.

“We're starting to lose them to tsetse bites,” Isabel informed Burton. “Twelve, so far. These animals were bred in dry desert air. This climate is not good for them—it drains their resistance. Soon we'll be fighting on foot.”

“Fighting whom?”

“The Prussians won't give up, Dick. And remember, John Speke almost certainly has a detachment of them travelling with him.”

“Hmm. Led by Count Zeppelin, no doubt,” Burton muttered.

“He may be taking a different trail from us,” Isabel observed, “but at some point we're bound to clash.”

Swinburne bounded over, still overexcited, and moving as if he'd come down with a chronic case of St. Vitus's dance.

“My hat, Richard! I can't stop marvelling at it! We were outnumbered on both sides yet came out of it without a scratch, unless you count the five thousand three hundred and twenty-six that were inflicted by thorns and hungry insects!”

“You've counted them?” Isabel asked.

“My dear Al-Manat, it's a well-educated guess. I say, Richard, where the devil has Tom Honesty got to?”

Burton frowned. “He's not been seen?”

“Not by me, at least.”

“Algy, unpack some oil lamps, gather a few villagers, and search the vegetation over there—” He pointed to where he'd last seen the Scotland Yard man. “I hope I'm wrong, but he may have been hit.”

Swinburne raced off to organise the search party. Burton left Isabel and joined Trounce at the bandani. The detective was rummaging in a crate and pulling from it items of food, such as beef jerky and corn biscuits.

“I'm trying to find something decent for us to chow on,” he said. “I don't think the villagers will manage to feed everybody. I put Herbert over there. He still needs winding.”

Burton looked to where Trounce indicated and saw the clockwork man lying stiffly in the shadow of the woodpile. The king's agent suddenly reached out and gripped his friend's arm. “William! Who found him?”

“I did. He was in a hollow under a tree.”

“Like that?”

“Yes. What do you mean?”

“Look at him, man! He had Arabian robes covering his polymethylene suit. Where are they?”

“Perhaps they hindered his movement, so he took them off. Why is it important?”

Burton's jaw worked. For a moment, he found it impossible to speak. His legs felt as if they couldn't hold him, and he collapsed down onto a roll of cloth, sitting with one arm outstretched, still clutching Trounce.

“Bismillah! The bloody fool!” he whispered and looked up at his friend.

Trounce was shocked to see that the explorer's normally sullen eyes were filled with pain.

“What's happened?” he asked.

“Tom was next to me when the Prussians and Arabs started to powwow,” Burton explained huskily. “We were near Herbert, just a little way past him. The parley threatened to ruin our entire plan. The Arab who lost patience with the conflab and ran out shooting saved the day for us. Except—”

“Oh no!” Trounce gasped as the truth dawned.

“I think Tom may have crawled back to Herbert, taken his robes, put them on, and—”

“No!” Trounce repeated.

They gazed at each other, frozen in a moment of anguish, then Burton stood and said, “I'm going to check the bodies.”

“I'm coming with you.”

They borrowed a couple of horses from Isabel and, by the light of brands, guided their mounts along the path to the fields then galloped across the cultivated ground to where the dead had been laid out. Dismounting, they walked up and down the rows, examining the corpses. The Prussians were ignored, but each time either man came to a slaver, he bent and pulled back the cloth that covered the corpse's face.

“William,” Burton said quietly.

Trounce looked up from the man he'd just inspected and saw the explorer standing over a body. Burton's shoulders were hunched and his arms hung loosely.

Something like a sob escaped from the Scotland Yard man, and the world seemed to whirl dizzyingly around him as he staggered over to his friend's side and looked down at Thomas Manfred Honesty.

His fellow detective was wrapped in the robes—ragged and blood-stained—that he'd borrowed from Spencer. He'd been riddled with bullets and must have died instantly, but it was no consolation to Trounce, for the little man, who'd mocked him for nearly two decades over his belief in Spring Heeled Jack, had, in the past couple of years, become one of his best friends.

“He sacrificed himself to save us,” Burton whispered.

Trounce couldn't reply.

They buried Thomas Honesty the next morning, in the little glade to the north of the village.

Burton spoke of his friend's bravery, determination, and heroism.

Trounce talked hoarsely of Honesty's many years of police service, his exemplary record, his wife, and his fondness for gardening.

Krishnamurthy told of the respect the detective inspector had earned from the lower ranks in the force.

Swinburne stepped forward, placed a wreath of jungle flowers on the grave, and said:

“For thee, O now a silent soul, my brother,

Take at my hands this garland, and farewell.”

Sister Raghavendra softly sang “Abide with Me,” then they filed back along the trail to the village, a subdued and saddened group.

For most of the rest of the day, Burton and his fellows caught up with lost sleep. Not so William Trounce. He'd found a large flat stone on the slope beneath the village, and, borrowing a chisel-like tool from one of the locals, he set about carving an inscription into it, sitting alone, far enough away from the huts that his chipping and scraping wouldn't disturb his slumbering companions. It took him the better part of the day to complete it, and when it was done, he took it to the glade, placed it on the grave, and sat on the grass.

“I'm not sure I really understand it, old chap,” he murmured, “but apparently the whole Spring Heeled Jack business sent us all off in a different direction. None of us is doing what we were supposed to be doing, although I rather think I would have carried on as policemen no matter what.”

He rested a hand on the stone.

“Captain Burton says this history we're in isn't the only one, and, in any of the others, meddlers like Edward Oxford might be at work, and whenever they tamper with events, they cause new histories. Can you imagine that? All those different variations of you and me? The thing of it is, my friend, I hope—I really hope—that, somewhere, a Tom Honesty will be tending his garden well into old age.”

He sat for a few minutes more, then bent over and kissed the stone, stood, sighed, and walked away.

The tear he left behind trickled into the inscription, ran down the tail of the letter “y,” and settled around a seed in Swinburne's wreath.