On Burton's behalf, Bombay promised the women that vengeance would soon fall upon those responsible.
The expedition rested and ate a light meal, then prepared to move on.
“Kwecha!” Burton called. “Pakia! Hopa! Hopa!”
The Wanyambo gathered at the edge of the jungle. One of them shouldered through a screen of vegetation to the path beyond. He suddenly howled and came flying back out, cartwheeling over the heads of his fellows, spraying blood onto them. He thudded to the ground and lay still.
“What the—” Trounce began, then tottered back as the Prussian plant vehicle burst out of the undergrowth and plunged into the warriors. He cried out in horror as the thing's spine-covered tendrils lashed like whips, opening skin, sending blood splashing. The Wanyambo yelled in agony as their flesh was sliced and torn. Sidi Bombay was hoisted into the air and flung into the trees. The village women screamed and raced away. Trounce instinctively drew his pistol, aimed at the plant, and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. He threw the weapon down in disgust and swore at himself.
“Stop it!” Swinburne shouted. He hefted a spear and charged forward, plunging the shaft into the centre of the repulsive bloom. Its point sank into the driver's stomach but had little effect. A thorny appendage slashed across the poet's forehead and sent him spinning away, with red droplets showering around him. He crashed into the side of a wrecked hut, which collapsed under the impact, burying the poet beneath sticks and dried mud.
The Wanyambo fought desperately, dodging and ducking, lunging in then backing away. They fell over one another and became wet with each other's blood. They went down and struggled up again. They threw and jabbed their spears until the huge weed-like thing was bristling with shafts. But despite their efforts, the plant continued to lurch back and forth, with the Prussian cradled in its bloom screeching furiously in incomprehensible German.
Burton looked this way and that, hoping to see fire somewhere in the village—sticks burning beneath a cooking pot, anything that he might fling at the plant to set it alight—but there was nothing. He snatched a spear from the ground and started to circle the monstrosity, looking for an opening that would allow him to leap in and drive the weapon through the Prussian's head. He got too close; a thick ropey limb smacked against his torso and ripped upward, shredding his shirt and flaying a long strip of skin from his chest. He stumbled and dropped to his knees.
“Stay back, Boss!” a voice piped.
A bundled mass of robes dived past Burton and launched itself into the writhing vegetation. Herbert Spencer landed on top of the driver and was immediately entwined by creepers. His robes and polymethylene suit were ripped apart as he fought with the frenzied, flailing appendages. A thick coil whipped around him, its thorns gouging deep scratches into his brass body.
The philosopher groped downward and forced his right hand into the fleshy petals. His three brass fingers slid over the driver's face. The man hollered and the plant shook and bucked as two of Spencer's digits found his eyes. The philosopher put his full weight on his arm and drove his fingers through the back of the Prussian's eye sockets and into the brain behind. The vehicle convulsed. Burton ran over and thrust his spear through the man's neck, severing the spine. The plant's tendrils flopped down, a tremor ran through it, then it was still.
Spencer fell backward and clanged onto the ground.
“Oof!” he piped.
The Wanyambo—those who weren't dead, unconscious, or in too much pain to notice—stared at him in astonishment. A metal man!
Burton tottered away from the Eugenicist creation, pulled what remained of his shirt off, and pressed the material against the deep laceration that angled up over his chest onto his left shoulder. He groaned with the pain of it, but, upon looking at the African warriors, saw that many had suffered much worse injuries.
He made his way over to Swinburne, who was crawling out from beneath the collapsed hut. Blood was streaming down the poet's face, dripping onto his clothing.
The king's agent called to Trounce, who was standing dazed. “William, are you hurt?”
“What? Huh, no.”
“Come and bandage Algy, would you?”
The Scotland Yard man dragged a hand over his face as if to clear his mind, nodded, then ran over to the horses, which were being held on the far side of the village by a woman who'd had the foresight and courage to stop them from stampeding away. Pox and Malady were huddled on the saddle of one. The parakeets had slept through the entire drama.
Trounce retrieved the medical kit and returned to the poet.
Burton, meanwhile, spoke to Spencer: “Are you all right, Herbert?”
“Battered, Boss. Dented an' scratched all over—but tickin' an' serviceable.”
Burton saw that the able-bodied among the Wanyambo had drawn together and were talking quietly, with many a gesture in Spencer's direction.
“I don't think our friends consider you a leper any more,” he said.
Sidi Bombay crawled out of the undergrowth. “Wow! Mr. Spencer is like the thing called pocket watch, which you gave me long and long ago and which one of my six wives stole!”
“Yes, he is, Bombay,” Burton agreed. “Can you explain that to the Wanyambo?”
“I shall try, though none of them has met my wives.”
While Bombay joined the surviving warriors, Burton checked the injuries of the fallen. Three were dead and five too seriously hurt to continue on to the Mountains of the Moon. That left twelve—which meant his forces and Speke's were about even.
Bombay rejoined him and explained: “Wow! I told them that, just as the bad muzungo mbáyá has bad magic, so the good muzungo mbáyá has good magic. And Mr. Spencer is good magic.”
“And they believed you?”
“Not at all. But they will continue with us to the mountains anyway.”
“Good.”
“They will not go into them, though, for the Wanyambo are afraid of the Chwezi, who you say don't exist.”
“Very well. Help me with these injured, then we'll regroup and go after Speke. It's high time he and I brought our feud to an end—whatever it takes to do so.”
Sidi Bombay stood motionless and gazed up at the mountains. He made clicking noises with his tongue.
Burton watched him, then stepped to his side and asked, “You are sure this is the route Speke took?”
Without moving, his eyes remaining glued to the scene ahead, Bombay answered: “Oh yes, this is it. Wow! It is an evil place. There is a bad feeling in the air, like when my wives stop speaking to me because I have come home drunk.”
“It's certainly quiet,” Burton replied. “An oppressive silence.”
“There are no birds in the trees.”
“There are two. We're having the devil of a time getting Pox and Malady down. Algy is climbing up to them.”
“Your friend is like a little monkey.”
“I'll be sure to tell him.”
“I do not like these mountains, Mr. Burton. The Chwezi live here. The Chwezi who don't exist, and who serve the Batembuzi.”
“And who are the Batembuzi?”
“They are the children of the gods who once ruled these lands. Long and long ago they disappeared into the underworld.”
“We have no choice but to go on, Bombay,” Burton said, “but you aren't obliged to accompany us. Do you want to remain here in the camp with the Wanyambo?”
“Wow! I want to, but I will not, because I have five wives and I expect you will pay me much more if I accompany you.”
“I thought you had six wives?”
“I am trying to forget number four.”
It was early in the morning. Two days had passed since the plant vehicle had attacked them. In that time they'd trekked across sodden and difficult terrain, and had at last reached the base of the Mountains of the Moon. They were now camped at the tree line.