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The bladders inflated. The petals curled open to reveal a tightly closed bud-like knot. The bladders contracted. Air blew from between the lips of the bud making a high-pitched squeal, like a child's balloon being deflated. The lips moved and shaped the squeal into words.
The plant spoke.
“My hat, Richard! You took your giddy time! What the blazes have you been up to?”
From the deep indigo of the African sky, a thin line descended.
It wobbled and wavered through the hot compressed air, arcing down into the crevasse.
Sidi Bombay shouted, “Spear!” an instant before it emerged from the heat haze and thudded into his chest, knocking him backward. He sat on the rocky ground, looked at the vibrating shaft, looked at the sky, then looked at Burton.
“Wow!” he said. “Mr. Burton, please send a message to my fourth wife. Tell her-”
He fell backward and the shaft swung up into a vertical position.
Blood gurgled out of his mouth. His eyes reflected the azure heavens and glazed over.
“Ambuscade!”Burton bellowed. “Take cover!”
The Englishmen dropped their packs and dived into the shadow of an overhanging rock. Spears rained down, clacking against the rocky ground.
From behind a boulder, Burton peered up at the opposite lip of the gorge. Figures were silhouetted there. A spear thwacked against the stone inches from his face. He ducked back.
Spencer was beside him. “Are you all right, Herbert?” Burton asked.
“Yus, Boss.”
“William!” the explorer shouted. “Are you fit?”
“As a fiddle! But I'd feel a lot better if our bloody rifles worked!” came the response from behind an outcrop some hundred and eighty feet away.
“Algy?” Burton called.
Swinburne-who'd thrown himself behind a rock off to Burton's right-leaped back into the open. He looked up and waved his arms like a lunatic.
“Hi!” he hollered at the shadowy figures overhead. “Hi there! You Prussians! Why don't you do us a favour and bloody well bugger off out of here?”
His voice bounced off the high walls. Spears descended and clattered around him.
“Algy!” Burton yelled. “Get under cover, you addle-brained dolt!”
Swinburne walked casually over to Burton and joined him behind the boulder.
“I'm trying to make them throw more of the bally things,” he said. “They don't have an infinite supply.”
“Actually, that's not too bad an idea,” Burton muttered, “but poorly executed. Try to remember the difference between fearless and foolhardy.”
He examined the rock-strewn fissure. The expedition's packs lay scattered, with multiple spear shafts rising out of them.
“There's not going to be much left that's usable in that lot-least of all the water bottles!” he grumbled.
Trounce's voice echoed: “How many bloody spears have they got up there?”
“Far fewer than before!” returned Burton. “Algy had it right-the more they waste, the better.”
“Perhaps not such a waste,” Swinburne said. “They're purposely trying to keep us pi
Burton called: “William! Can you make it over here?”
“Watch me!” came the response.
Trounce leaped into view and sprinted across the intervening space, weaving from side to side as spears started to rain around him. He swept up three of the packs as he passed them, dragging them along, then, batting a falling shaft aside, hit the ground and slid into shelter in a cloud of dust.
“Phew! Am I in one piece?”
“Not a single perforation as far as I can see. How do you fancy a little bit more of that?”
The Scotland Yard man handed over the packs for Swinburne to check. “I don't much. My legs are still afire with damned sores. What's the plan?”
“We'll dart from cover to cover and keep moving. Don't so much as pause for breath in the open or you'll end up a pincushion!”
“Right you are.”
The king's agent looked over at Sidi Bombay's body. Another death. Another friend lost. Another part of his world ripped out of him.
He wondered how much more of it he could take.
There was no option but to leave the African where he lay. Perhaps there'd be an opportunity to bury him later, if animals didn't get to the corpse first.
Trounce watched Swinburne reorganising the contents of the three bags, fitting it all into one pack. “What do we have?” he asked.
“Not a lot!” the poet replied. “One intact water bottle, a dented sextant, Herbert's key, an oil lamp, a box of lucifers, the field glasses from the Orpheus, and a small stock of food that looks as if it's been trampled by a herd of elephants.”
“What took a hundred and twenty men to carry at the start of the expedition now takes one!” Burton muttered. “Throw away the sextant, and let's get on with it.”
He took the bag, slung it over his shoulder, and pointed at fallen rocks farther up and to either side of the faint trail that wound through the middle of the crevasse. “William, you leg it to the base of the cliff, there. Algy, you dive beneath the overhang, there. And Herbert, you make for that boulder, there. I'm going to try for the rock at the bend in the trail-do you see it? From there, I'll survey the next stretch and call instructions to you. All ready? Good. Get set! Go!”
The three men-and one clockwork device-burst out of cover and dashed toward the locations the explorer had indicated. Spears started to fall, their points shattering as they landed.
Swinburne dived into cover first.
Burton was next, though his allotted position was farthest away.
Trounce stumbled when a rebounding shaft cracked painfully against the side of his face but made it without any more serious injury.
Herbert Spencer fared less well. Hampered by his damaged leg, his run was more of a fast shuffle, and three spears hit him. The first bounced from his shoulder with a loud chime.
“Ow! Bleedin' heck!” he piped
The second ploughed a furrow down his back.
“Aagh! They've got me!”
The third sliced through his left ankle, leaving his foot dragging behind him, attached by a single thin cable.
“Cripes! That's agony!” he hooted, falling into the shadow of the large boulder Burton had assigned to him.
“Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!” he said, and, reaching down, he tore the foot off completely and held it up so the others could see it. “Look at this!” he cried. “Me bloomin' foot's been chopped off!”
“Can you still walk, Herbert?” Burton called.
“Yus, after a fashion. But that ain't the point, is it?”
“What is the point?” Swinburne asked from his nearby position.
“That me bleedin' foot's come off, lad!”
“I'm sure Brunel will have you polished and repaired in no time at all after we get back to Blighty,” Swinburne responded. “There's no need to worry.”
“You're still missin' the point. Me foot's come off. It hurts!”
Burton, who'd identified points of cover among the rocks ahead, shouted instructions back to them.
They ran.
Herbert Spencer hobbled along, scraping his stump over the hard ground. A spear clunked into his hip and stuck there.
“Yow!” he cried. He yanked it out and threw it aside.
Another clanged off his head.
“Bloody hell! Bloody hell!”
He reached the sidewall, where it bulged outward, and collapsed into its shadow. He lay there, groaning.
“Herbert,” Swinburne called. “For the umpteenth time: it's all in your mind! You can't feel pain!”
“Ready for more dodging?” Burton called.
“Wait a moment!” Trounce shouted. A spear tip had scooped a furrow across his thigh and blood was flowing freely. He tore off one of his shirtsleeves and used it to bind the wound. “All set!”
Another mad dash, more spears-but far fewer this time-and they reached the space beneath a leaning slab without further injury.