Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon

sides by riotous vegetation, with the Indian Ocean glittering in the starlight beyond, and, behind him, the endless expanse of unexplored Africa.

“I feel that we're up against impossible odds,” he said to Burton.

The king's agent replied, “We probably are.”

Mzizima village was five miles south of the camp. Originally, it had been composed of thatch-roofed beehive huts and a bandani-a wall-less palaver house, just a thatched roof standing upon six vertical beams-which were all positioned in an orderless cluster around an open central space. Surrounding the village, amid cocoa, mango, and pawpaw trees, there had been fields of rice, holcus, sugarcane, and peas, separated by clumps of basil and sage. This cultivated land stretched to the edge of a mangrove forest in the south, to the hills in the west, and to a small natural bay on the coast.

In the distant past, the Wamrima inhabitants had been farmers of the land and fishers of the sea, but the slave trade had made lying, thieving, shirking, and evasiveness the tools of survival, reducing a once-prosperous village to a clump of hovels occupied by men and women who, in the knowledge that life could be literally or metaphorically taken from them at any moment, did not bother to apply themselves to the business of living.

And now the Prussians had come.

It was four o'clock in the morning. Sir Richard Francis Burton was lying on his stomach at the top of a bushy ridge to the north and was using the field glasses he'd retrieved from the Orpheus to spy upon the settlement. Only a few of its original structures remained-the palaver house being one of them-and in their place wood-built barracks of a distinctly European design had been erected. There were six of these, plus six more half-built, and beyond them a sea of tents that spread out into the once-cultivated fields. The canvas dwellings were especially numerous farther to the south, where man groves had obviously been chopped and burned away. More half-erected wooden buildings were visible there, too.

“It looks like they're planning a permanent camp here,” Trounce whispered. “Building a village a little to the south of the original one.”

Burton grunted an agreement.

By the bright light of the stars, he could see that his stolen supplies were stacked up in the bandani. One of his harvestman vehicles squatted beside the structure. The other one was closer to his and Trounce's position, standing motionless at the outer edge of the tented area just in front of the ridge, obviously left there by its driver. A guard was standing beside it, with a rifle over his shoulder and a pipe in his mouth.

Mzizima was silent, with only a few men on patrol. Of the Wamrima, there was no sign, and Burton felt certain that the villagers had either been pressed into service as lackeys or killed.

“What the bloody hell is that?” Trounce hissed, pointing to the other side of the encampment.

Burton focused his glasses on the thing that flopped along there. Even before he caught a clear view of it, its shadowy shape caused him to shudder. Then it floundered into an area of silvery luminescence and he saw that it was a huge plant, propelling itself along on thick white roots. To Burton's astonishment, there was a man sitting in the thing, cocooned in a fleshy bloom and surrounded by flailing tendrils. He appeared to be steering the plant by thought alone, for there were coiling threadlike appendages embedded into the skin of his scalp, and when he moved his head, the grotesque vehicle turned in the direction he was looking.

“There are others,” Trounce said. “They're patrolling the outer perimeter.”

A few minutes later, it became apparent why.

One of the plants suddenly lunged forward and grabbed at something. A man, screaming wildly, was yanked out of the undergrowth and hoisted into the air. It was a Wamrima native, obviously trying to escape, and now he paid the price. Held aloft by creepers entangled around his wrists, he was mercilessly whipped by the plant's spine-encrusted limbs until his naked back was streaming blood, then he was cast back into the camp-sent spinning through the air to land in a heap between tents, where he lay insensible.

“This complicates matters,” Burton said.

“Should we call it off?”

“No. We'll need those supplies if we're to catch up with Speke. He's got a tremendous lead on us, but if we have all our resources, we can cut straight through all the circumstances that will slow him down.”

“What circumstances?”

“Mainly the obstructions the natives will throw in his path. I'm counting on his incompetence as an expedition leader, inability to communicate in any language other than English, and the fact that, believing us blown up on the Orpheus, he has no idea we're on his tail.”

Fifteen minutes later, Pox swooped out of the sky and landed on Burton's shoulder.

“Message from Isabel Arundell!” the parakeet announced.

“Shhh!” Burton hissed, but it was an instruction the bird didn't understand.

“In position, you lumpish clotpole. Awaiting the word. Message ends.”

“The guard by the harvestman is looking this way,” Trounce said softly.

“Message to Isabel Arundell,” Burton whispered. “Consider the word received. Beware. There are Eugenicist plants. Message ends.”

Pox gave a squawk and flew away.

“It's all right,” Trounce said. “He just saw Pox. Probably thinks it's nothing but a noisy jungle bird. He's giving his attention back to his pipe.”

“I think it's time to take care of him, anyway,” Burton said.

He pulled his spine-shooter from its holster.

Steadying the cactus gun on his left forearm, he took careful aim and gently squeezed the nodule that functioned as a trigger. With a soft phut!, the pistol fired.

Seven spines thudded into the guard's chest. He looked down at them, muttered, “Was sind diese?” then crumpled to the ground.

“Quietly now,” Burton hissed. “To the outer tents. Stay low.”

The two men slipped over the brow of the ridge and slithered silently down to the perimeter of the camp. They crouched in the dark shadow of a tent and waited.

When it happened, it did so with such suddenness that even Burton and Trounce, who were expecting it, were taken by surprise. One minute there was nothing but the sound of snoring men under canvas, the next the night was rent by rifle fire, the pounding of horses' hooves, and the ululation of women.

The Daughters of Al-Manat came thundering over the crest of the hill on the northwestern border of the camp, and even before a warning shout could be raised by the guards, they had stampeded over tents, set burning brands to three of the barracks, and wheeled their horses and raced back up the hill and out of sight.

The Prussian guards barely got a shot off, so panicked were they at this unexpected onslaught.

“Wir wurden angegriffen! Wir wurden angegriffen!” they bellowed. “Verteidigt das Lager!”

Men blundered out of the burning buildings, came running out of the others, and emerged from the tents, rubbing their eyes and peering around in confusion. Gunfire banged and flashed from the summit of the hill. Many of the soldiers fell to the ground with bullets in them.

Snatching up their rifles, the Prussians raced to meet the attacking forces. Burton grabbed Trounce by the arm and pointed to the Eugenicist plant vehicles. They, too, were lumbering to the northwesternmost part of the settlement.

The gunfire from one particular area of the hills intensified. The Prussians returned it, shooting blind. While their attention was thus engaged, twenty riders burst out of the verdure a little farther to the south, dashed across an overgrown field, and put torches to two of the plant creatures. Burton could barely repress a cheer when the starlight revealed that Isabel Arundell was the leader of this cavalry charge. She held a pistol in one hand and a spear in the other, and, expertly controlling her mount with her knees, she sent her charge leaping across tents to another of the Eugenicist creations. Plunging her spear into the densest part of it, she reared her horse away from its lashing tendrils, brought her pistol to bear, and shot the plant's driver through the head. She barked a command, galloped away with her band following, and disappeared into the darkness.

The part of Mzizima closest to Burton and Trounce was almost entirely abandoned now.

“Let's move,” Burton urged. “We have to get this done before the southern part of the camp joins the fray.” He and Trounce crept forward until they reached the nearest of the two harvestmen. The explorer reached up to