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 youwho 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.