Brasyl

While the Iguapá lashed the canoes into a tight raft between the piers, shifting barrels as close to the structure as possible, Qui

An arrow drove into the clay a span from Qui

“I would have been surprised had Father Gonçalves entrusted the protection of his dam to old men and boys alone,” Qui

The loading was complete. The Iguapá scrambled up onto the dam; Waitacá plugged the end of a fuse line into the barrel and reeled it out behind him as Qui

“We must blow it now,” Waitacá said.

“We’re too close.”

“Mair, now or never.”

“Lord have mercy,” Qui

Spray drenched Qui

Dripping from every hem and seam, Falcon threw himself through the safe gap in the bamboo palisades into the foremost trench. Dry earth beneath his cheek. Leeches clung to the exposed flesh where his stockings had rolled down. An Iguapá pagé applied paste ground from forest bark. Stones, wooden shot, arrows flew overhead in a constant gale. Then Falcon heard a deeper report from the hilltop and, leeches to the devil, stood up to see five loads of hot stones arc over his head and burst in an impressive roar of steam where they struck among the gunboats. As trebuchets were recranked and fresh stones heated in the hilltop fires, the ballistas spoke, spears of fire stabbing out at the canoes. Falcon had devised the adhesive coating of resins and gums: a dreadful threat to gunboats heavy with shot and powder. Those so struck battled beneath a withering fire of slingshots and poison barbs to extinguish the clinging fire; when a gunboat blew up, a cheer rang around the hill, and a second when the swivel-guns retreated into the cover of the varzea, there to lay down a steady bombardment of Zemba’s artillery.

Falcon worked his way uphill through the linked trench-lines, past battalions of grim-faced boys; gold-faced, strange-skulled 1guapá; Caibaxé with lip-plates, though they were too young to have undergone the formal rites of manhood, war makes any boy a man; the Manaos, their foreheads and crowns shaved into a singular tonsure. Each clutched a spear and wooden knife, waiting, waiting for the word from Zemba’s Imbangala lieurenants. Falcon threw himself to the earth, hands clutched around his shaven head, as fresh bombard came screaming in. He felt the hilltop quake through his belly; blind, primal panic, what to clasp hold of when the earth itself shakes?

A dulled roar of voices from behind him; the war-rejoicing of the Guabirú. Pushing his green glasses up his nose, Falcon saw the hilltop in ruin; a trebuchet smashed, two ballistas burning. Yet Zemba’s artillerists spoke again; hot stone plunged down through the leaf canopy, and now the heavy bowmen opened up, lying on their backs, bow braced against feet, bowstring hauled back with all the strength of two arms.

Zemba himself waited with his reserves and the cross of Our Lady of All Worlds in the trench-line beneath the battery. A constant chain of girl-ru

“Aîuba.”

“General, the water is still rising. The foremost positions will be inundated within the hour.”

“I am aware of it. You suggest that the Mair has failed?”

“I suggest only that we evacuate the women and children, the old, the sick and halt, while the way is still open.”

“They will surely perish in that forest.”

“They will surely perish here. This is no entrada. This is destruction.”

Zemba hesitated but an instant.

“Evacuate the women and children.”

His ru

“I will not desert you,” she said fiercely. The women and smallest chilldren quit the trench, the infants tear-streaked, wailing past all fear. “You need someone to watch over you.”

A new mortar barrage punished the hill. The smoke and dust cleared, and there was silence from the battery. A great cry came from the hilltop. Zemba stood, spear raised, the cross of Nossa Senhora do Todos os Mundos lifted high behind him, burning in the sun. Falcon turned to see canoes push out from the deep forest. There was not clear water between the hulls, so many were they; Portuguese in buff and blood, the genipapo-stained skins of the Guabirú. The gunboats laid down a suppressing bombardment, but the cry sounded again and was taken up by the Imbangala captains and iâos, the morbichas and the pagés, by Caixa beside him, and then by Falcon himself as he drew his sword and went over the top of the trench, roaring down to meet the enemy.

Qui

“Mair, I think … ” Waitacá did not need to complete the warning.

Qui