In Search of Spice, page 33
“Let me take a hundred of your warriors and we will flatten the village and take our people back.”
“A hundred? Not enough! We do not have the power to take their village. We need three or four hundred, they are behind a wall. They fear us.”
“A hundred will do the trick. We have big catapults on the ship to bombard them, and with the new tactics we will take them. Besides, our warriors have other talents you have not yet seen.”
“Ilikimi, if you tell Sara the situation at the village, she can plan what she needs to rescue our people and take revenge,” said Suzanne, unerringly getting him on board with the use of the word revenge.
“Do you have anyone who has been there to build a model?” Sara asked.
“What is a model?”
After an explanation, they sent for Walters along with his charts and Captain Larroche came to join them. Both were pretty much recovered now, Captain Larroche having reclaimed the captaincy on board, while leaving the girls in charge of negotiations. Walters’ lapses into religion became less frequent, particularly as he had persuaded an older crew girl to move into his cabin. He proceeded to build a scale model of the enemy village from his charts and details filled in by the kai Viti who knew it - not many, and usually from a raid. Sara patiently questioned them all, creating the defences in the model.
She turned to the Captain. “Can you send a boat here,” she pointed out a spot on the chart remote from the enemy village, “the pinnace, drop off Grey Fox, Pat and Mot in the evening, pick them up in the morning and meet with the Queen on her way?”
He nodded and she turned to Corporal Strachan. “Corporal, take four men, bowmen or crossbows, and create a secure outpost at the drop off point to cover them in case they need to come back in a hurry. Make sure the post is invisible to anyone, even from a metre away. Full camouflage. You come back to the ship, with Grey Fox when he reports. Pat, Grey Fox, take your time, memorise this model. We will take it with us on the ship, you must update it with as much information as you can. Do you want to take Mot, Pat?”
Pat nodded and looked at the model intently.
“Mactravis,” went on Sara, “I think we are best landing the troops on the beach front by boat, in silence before dawn. The Queen Rose will signal the attack with the ballistas. A few bolts will keep their heads down. Then a shield wall, three deep, advance up the main road to the gate. We don’t know the depth of the sea so we will assume the Queen Rose is unable to knock the gate down or bottle them inside.”
She looked up at the Ratu, for whom Suzanne translated the conversation while his leading warriors listened.
“Ratu, I assume the enemy will attack when they see only 100 warriors on the beach, even with the shields which they won’t have seen before?”
The Ratu answered, “They will attack for sure. They see shields before, many try them, but not as strong as these. They will expect to break them.”
“Good. Mactravis, you take half your lads up the left, Sergeant Russell takes half up the right, divide any other archers from the ship between you. There is a small hillock here from which you can take them in enfilade. Russell, you will need most of the crossbow men as there is no cover closer than these trees.” She pointed at the model which showed Russell would be firing from over 150 paces.
“Pat, you and Grey Fox are detached, take Rat with you. Your job is to make sure the rear gate is open when we arrive and to cut off escape to the interior.”
“Janis, I want the Spakka as the reserve, ready to be thrown in as needed. Also I need ten fast runners to take commands. Hinatea, that’s your girls.” They nodded, looking at the map.
“Questions anyone?”
Pat thought a moment, then spoke. “Perryn. Need him.”
Sara raised an eyebrow.
“Water fire,” said Pat. “He can make it. Will use some of the yellow flowers.”
“You’ve got him, good thought,” said Sara, while Suzanne explained to the astonished kai Viti that water fire was a chemical fire which burnt underwater and could not be put out.
“Where will you be?” Mactravis asked and everyone looked at her.
“Leading the shield wall,” said Sara flatly.
For the first time there was dissent, everyone speaking at once.
Lieutenant Mactravis cut through the argument, speaking plainly. “Ma’am, you must command from behind the shield wall. Place the runners and your personal guard around you. You would be a weak link in the wall, without the physical strength of these people. You would get men killed.”
Sara’s eyes narrowed and she shuffled in anger.
“I lead Shield Wall” the Ratu stated. “Then they attack for sure.” He smiled. “New axes will be fun.”
For the first time Sara looked worried, and Suzanne knew why. The shield wall needed discipline and she didn’t think the Ratu possessed any.
The Ratu’s eyes twinkled. “Not to worry. I do what you say. You War Ratu, you in charge.” He laughed. “You forget I am the Great Ratu of the Islands, instead I am best axeman in Shield Wall!”
A roar went up from the Kai Viti, some acclamation but most disagreeing and pointing out that in fact they themselves were without question the best axeman in the wall.
“Very well,” said Sara. “If no further questions, scouts off, and load the ship. We sail in 30 minutes.”
Pat spoke again. “I want Wiwik and Mara too.”
“Your friends?”
“Yes. Trackers. They are good at night, good fighters.” Pat still didn’t believe in words.
“Fine by me. Ratu, do you agree?”
He looked at Pat. “Why you choose them?”
“They are your best night fighters,” answered Pat without hesitation.
The Ratu smiled. “Mara my son. Good, you take them.”
People went in all directions, leaving Sara and Mactravis. He looked at her and smiled. “Just like your father, always want to be in the thick of battle. You know damn well you shouldn’t be in the shield wall.”
She stared at him. “You knew damn well I wanted to be. That’s why you asked.” He nodded. “How did you guess.”
He smiled. “You look like your father and act like him. He saved my life once. You fight like him too. Same mannerisms in your sword play, though I would judge you to be considerably better, which is saying something. The way you give orders. The way you outfit yourself and clean your weapons, pure Kingdom Royal Horse. All just like your father. And he would throw a strop when we would stop him from playing silly buggers.”
“Don’t remember your record showing you spent any time at court to develop this courtier diplomat double talk.”
“Had to wet nurse a few of your relatives over the years.”
They walked down to the ship together.
The Bosun peered into the darkness, ready to move at the slightest noise. She could make out the beach, and hear the quiet hissing as the small waves ran up it. She couldn’t see any sign of the scouts.
“Where the hell are they?” she whispered to her mate, crouched beside her and also peering into the night. “Do you think they made it?”
“No bloody idea,” he whispered back. “Bet they can hear us whispering though.”
“I guess,” said the Bosun. “I didn’t hear a bloody thing, not even the dog shaking itself.”
A hundred yards away, Pat smiled in the dark. The whispers did carry over the sea at night, and he appreciated the Bosun’s concern. Mot had swum ashore and gone into the brush without shaking herself - he knew she wouldn’t till she finished searching the area. Pat stretched out naked on a rock, letting the worst of the water dry off. He scraped himself with a strigil he carried for the purpose - a small curved metal knife which picked up the water and removed it as he stroked the strigil over his flesh. Dry, or as dry as he could get, he slipped into his fighting garb.
Leather moccasins, thin and sensitive, he could feel tracks in the ground through them and they let him never, ever tread on a stick or even a dry leaf. Leather knee protectors, for when he crawled, with matching elbow protectors. On his left arm, the leather projected down his forearm as protection from his bowstring. He wore a leather belt that supported a leather loin cloth and kept his groin protected and secure. Nothing else, for Pat hated cloth when stalking - it brushed against leaves and made one hell of noise. Skin did not give the same result. But it did gleam, and he applied an ointment to darken his skin, removing all shine. He had mixed in some pigshit, giving him a slight odour, to Mot’s delight.
Mot returned and thumped her tail. He ruffled her hair, and let out a noise like a sleepy seabird, a noise he and the kai Viti settled on after much debate and practise.
The others drifted up to join him like so many ghosts. More than he intended, because Hinatea, Silmatea and Trieste refused to be left behind. They checked each other’s ointment with exquisite care, including the kai Viti whose dark skin otherwise shone in the starlight. Grey Fox refused the pigshit, and instead used his own from some roots he unearthed, giving him a rather piney odour. Pat found he could tell each apart by the smell as much as anything else.
Pat held his hand out, thumb up, and the others touched it, all together. Pat nodded, clicked his fingers at Mot and headed out, down a trail from the beach. Mot ranged ahead and he went swiftly, trusting in her nose. The others followed fifty paces apart, Grey Fox bringing up the rear. Corporal Strachan and his four soldiers set about finding the ideal location for the safety outpost and setting up.
The night was quiet, a gentle breeze sloughing through the few trees, with the noise of cicadas buzzing constantly. Pat registered all these noises, following the route of a nearby stream by the frog calls, cataloguing them and listening for the pockets of silence that meant men. It was warm, and he noticed one distinct advantage from his ointment - no mosquitoes.
Coconut trees sky lined themselves against the starry night sky, about two miles away. Pat thought this would be the village, a thought confirmed in his mind as he realised the path led through cultivated fields. He noted a rat scuttling off the path at his approach and smelt something rank which he didn’t recognise.
The path was sand, with a coarse grass at the edges and he picked up speed to a dog trot, still moving without a sound. He scanned the fields as he went, worried a farmer might be sleeping by his crops to protect it from the rats. Seeing a little hut just off the path, a dark shape in the moonless night, he stopped and slipped to the ground, making the chirruping sound of a cicada as he moved silently and slowly along the ground. Mot responded to his call and shoved him with her nose. He waved at the hut and she was away, Pat following at half pace.
Mot disappeared into the hut, he could hear a slight scuffling and scratching, and she reappeared swallowing something. Pat frowned, annoyed, guessing it was poi, left by a farmer for his meal tomorrow. Mot shot off down the path, waving her tail to show she knew perfectly well he was annoyed with her and didn’t give a damn.
He kept her in sight as they approached the village and scanned for a base point, deciding on a tall palm near the path, a good five hundred yards short of the village, with a depression behind the roots. He ducked in and waited for the others to join him, lying on the raised lip of the depression, formed where another palm had fallen over and pushed the roots into the sky.
They came in one by one, and once all arrived, he leaned over, touched Wiwik and Mara’s shoulders, pointed to the right, indicating the left to Grey Fox and Rat. Hinatea and the girls he nodded to - their agreed duty to keep watch from a circle further out. He pointed to a bright star, moved his hand a span to indicate two hours, then pointed to the hollow. The others all nodded and he snaked out of the hollow, moving straight towards the village.
Moving with even more care, his eyes constantly moving to avoid after images, Pat eased towards the dark boundary of the village which he guessed to be the wall. Mot slipped back to touch his hand in reassurance. Knowing this meant no guard, Pat glided up to the gap in the wall, his feet feeling for branches before putting his weight on them. A rough door lay inside the compound where it could be pulled across the gap if required. The nearest hut was thirty yards away, a stuttering snore coming from inside.
At this point Pat realised, despite all his caution, he was discovered. An angry eye glared at him, while its owner snuffled in his direction and a boar came through some bushes with an angry squeal, to stand in the path looking round in fury, snuffling in the sand.
Pat faded into the wall, ready to shin up if necessary, and grinned to himself, realising this boar had detected the musk of a rival boar in his ointment.
The boar’s angry grunting cut off abruptly as he found himself snout to snout with Mot, a Mot with her hackles up. Now, a boar will see off most dogs, but Mot wasn’t most dogs and knew just what pigs could and could not do. The boar looked at Mot uncertainly, snarled to expose his tusks, and slowly backed up, retreating under the house from whence came a loud squealing as the boar took out his frustration on a junior boar. Pat realised a lot of pigs lived under the house, all stirring about now.
An angry, sleepy shout came from the hut above and somebody emptied a bucket of water through the floor slats on to the pigs, causing more squeals and angry shouts now from the next huts.
Pat decided he had looked enough and faded back out of the entrance, keeping close enough to record what happened in the village.
A gentle thunk wafted up from the darkness below the boarding rail announced the return of the pinnace and Grey Fox came up a rope ladder as if walking a road, Corporal Strachan following considerably more gingerly. He knocked on the Captain’s cabin.
“Come in,” came a rumble from inside and he slipped inside. The Captain sat at his desk, talking with the Ratu, Lieutenant Mactravis and Sara.
“Ah, well done that man,” said the Captain. “All sorted?”
“Sir,” replied Grey Fox, “I need to make some slight changes to the model.”
Mactravis nodded assent, pushed back his chair and went to watch Grey Fox make his adjustments, followed by the others. He smiled at Sara. “Grey Fox is the only person on board who speaks less than Pat!”
Grey Fox looked at him reproachfully and made minute adjustments to the beach, then remodelled the wall at the rear of the village, showing the gate and the paths. While he worked, the Captain’s servant came up and placed a glass of fruit juice beside him. He nodded his thanks and continued, placing the carvings of huts in various positions, changed a few round for size, and indicated the one by the gate. “Pigs.”
Mactravis rolled his eyes. “What do you mean, Grey Fox?”
“Pat found lots of pigs here, under hut.”
“Ready for the victory feast,” interjected the Ratu. “Instead we will eat them tomorrow!”
“Can we make use of them?” asked Sara. “Are they locked up?”
“No,” replied Grey Fox. “Pat plans to drive them through the village.”
“Perfect,” breathed Sara; she looked up at him. “Does Pat need a signal?”
Grey Fox just looked at her, his head giving the tiniest shake.
The Ratu studied the model with great interest. “This very good,” he declared. “I will use this again.”
“I am glad you like it, Ratu,” said Sara who turned to Grey Fox. “Thank you Grey Fox, good work by the team.” She smiled at him, while he returned her look without expression. “Fine, get your gear, collect Perryn and go. Take the outpost people with you.” She turned back to the Ratu as Grey Fox left, the door closing without a sound.
“Ratu, we will teach you how to make them, but first we will show you the entire attack planning method. Now we can make our final plans, which we will tell the team leaders, and they will borrow the model to pass their own orders on to their teams.”
“Hurr, I understand. Is good. Then I keep?”
“We’ll bring it back to your town for you. Mactravis, how in the wide world do you make Grey Fox happy? Must be the only soldier I ever saw who didn’t appreciate me telling him he had done well.”
“Oh, he liked it. He will tell Pat and the others what you said, word for word. He will even get the inflection of your voice perfectly. He just never lets his feelings show in his face.”
For Perryn, the following few hours would enshrine themselves in his nightmares. Sitting in the pinnace, it was surprisingly cold, especially as he slowly became soaking wet from the spray. The unfamiliar small boat movement jostled him and for some reason he felt intensely seasick. Normally he knew enough mind tricks to sort out problems of this kind, but with the impending action he couldn’t concentrate, so just sat on the bench, smelling the brine, the nauseating odour coming from Grey Fox’s ointment and what resembled pigshit for some reason.
The boat slowed down, and came to a halt. He raised his head, hopelessly, unable to see a thing in the pitch dark and opened his mouth to ask a question. Immediately a strong, smelly hand came across his face and he gagged, unable to even wonder how Grey Fox had known he was about to speak. Belatedly, he remembered being told not to make any noise at all.
At the insistent pulling, he rose to a crouch, and tried to squeal as Grey Fox ripped his robe off him, the hand again cutting off his cry of alarm. His hands automatically went to cover his groin, and he felt physically sick as a horrible memory from his early years boarding in the monastery came back to him. Numbly, he crawled over the side, convinced he would drown and rather looking forward to meeting his God. He eased into the water, paddling quietly as he vaguely remembered his instructions and panicked as he noticed the disappearance of the pinnace, nor had the slightest idea where the shore lay.
A strong hand grabbed him, turned him and he swam in the direction indicated. He tended to drift off to one side, he realised, as the hand kept coming out of nowhere and adjusting his direction.
The hand gripped his shoulder and pulled back. Startled, he stopped swimming and tried to tread water, to feel sand under his feet. His toe knuckles hit something and it hurt! Miserable, he started out of the sea, shivering with the cold. Hands grasped him, pulled him along most un-gently. He couldn’t see a thing, except a vague sparkling from the stars. A large, fearsome shadow loomed out of the dark and he flinched before recognising a bush. The hands manoeuvred him into a space and he felt a cloth being run over him. Warmth came from it, and he began to feel a little better.
