Nobody's Slave (12 page)

A crowd of yelling, hairy red-face pressed on up the street. Madu's mother screamed at him, tugging hysterically on his arm to get him from the door of the hut where he stood guard, but he broke loose and pushed her inside. Madu was shaking with shame and rage. He saw his stepfather in the line of warriors that faced the red-face. Nwoye's feathered war-spear glanced off the metal shirt of one of the leaders. Then he shoved the man away with his shield and shortened the spear to stab another red-face to his right. Madu saw what was going to happen - when he thought about it afterwards it was as though a witch had slowed time down so that a second lasted an hour. As Nwoye's spear-arm came back gathering strength for its thrust, the arm of a third red-face raider lifted, pointing one of those short devil's fire-sticks at his stepfather's head. He saw the fiendish snarl on the man's face, flame-lit by a burning hut, and heard his own urgent, futile yell of warning: ‘Nwoye! Look out!’

The yell was too late before it left his throat. Even as the thrust of Nwoye's spear went home, he saw the puff of white smoke from the fire-stick - though curiously he could never remember the sound - and the single shudder that went through all Nwoye's limbs as he fell, his head knocked to one side, his body collapsing instantly like a puppet whose strings have been cut.

Madu stood in the doorway, stunned, as the red-face invaders swarmed past. They were yelling, the mouths in their snarling, hairy faces like those of demons from deep underground. He started to run from the hut towards Nwoye, but a red-face grabbed his elbow and jerked him forward, off-balance. A huge arm crushed his head tight against the man's side and someone else lashed his wrists together behind him while he was kicking to regain balance. He bit the man’s arm through the cloth of the shirt and was knocked down by a great, ringing blow on the side of the head. Then while he lay on the ground the rope from his wrists was passed around his neck, and he was jerked to his feet and led forward by the neck like a dog. He pulled back - the rope tightened, hitching his wrists up behind him and throttling him so that he could hardly breathe.

He staggered forward, surrounded by the noise and chaos of the burning town. A group of Sumba warriors came round a corner and almost attacked the red-face, then turned to fight a group of Mani warriors instead. A Mani warrior leapt forward, perhaps to save him, and was shot by one of the fire-sticks the red-face held in their hands. Everywhere huts were blazing. They went through an area of flame and smoke where he could not breathe at all, so that when they came to the broken gates he could do nothing; his eyes were streaming and he was coughing and choking in a panic for air.

Then they were outside on the grass by the river, opposite the big firetubes that had broken the gates. Madu was tied to a tree with a group of others, no more than fifteen or twenty in all. He fell down, still choking and struggling for breath; then someone with his hands tied in front managed to get his thumb under the rope around Madu's neck and loosen it without the red-face seeing.

‘There - breathe steady. We're not dead yet.’

The voice was familiar. He saw with relief and horror that it was Temba. His friend's white teeth flashed in the darkness.

‘Stay together, Nwoye said. I do my best.’

Madu sucked in the air gratefully, and stared about him. A few red-face were guarding them; the rest were clustered in groups around small fires, or sitting near their boats, muttering among themselves and gazing at the flames in the city. He looked across the river and was amazed to see that the firetubes had wheels, and that the redface sat on them so casually while others beside them lit small fires.

‘Surely they won't cook us on those?’ he whispered fearfully.

‘I don't think so. Maybe they'll keep us for the morning.’

‘But they have won the battle. Why do they seem so angry?’

‘Because the Sumba drove them out. Didn't you see? The Sumba are killing our people now.’

Madu shuddered, and looked towards the glowing ruins of the town. To the left it was still blazing; sheets of flame leaping up as roofs collapsed with a crackling roar, sending showers of sparks soaring up to replace the stars hidden by the grey, billowing clouds of smoke. A few fires still smouldered in the rest of the town as well, but most of the huts there were burnt out. Through the broken gates Madu could glimpse figures moving, silhouetted against the blazing beacon that had once housed the kings. From all over the town came scattered screams and yells, but from the centre came something worse - a deep, triumphal chanting of the Sumba at their victory celebration.

A boy came between Madu and the town - a young red-face whose mouth was not yet covered by hair. Madu caught the stink of him from ten yards away, and marvelled at how the pale, sickly-looking body was covered by filthy, ragged clothes. If I were eaten, he thought, my own body would become part of that. He gagged in his throat at the thought, and the boy turned, and saw him.

Madu looked away, disgusted, but the boy stared on. Even his untidy, straggly hair was a reddish-brown, and his eyes in the leaping firelight glowed a pale, unearthly blue. He muttered something to another red-face, who picked up a blazing log from a fire and carried it over. Madu squirmed to get away but there was nowhere to go. The boy laughed and thrust him roughly over on his face, poking and tugging at the ropes around his wrists. The stink was even greater at this range. Madu turned his head to the ground, shivering with fear as he waited for the flames on his flesh. Then the boy grunted, said some more incomprehensible words in a strange whine that seemed to come from his nose rather than his throat, and turned away to examine the next man's bonds.

Madu waited until he knew, by the sweet smell of the grass returning to his nostrils, that the boy was gone, and then slowly sat up. ‘They are foul, uncle,’ he murmured to a warrior on the other side of him, away from Temba. ‘They stink worse than the swamps, or a kill that no jackal has found.’

The man grunted in agreement. ‘They are not men, but demons whom the Sumba witches have called to their aid. They live underground, and do not come forth until their masters call them.’

Madu's eyes widened. ‘But how can they live underground?’

The man paused, as though wondering whether to go on; but fear had loosened his tongue.

‘They are the dead, nephew,’ he said solemnly. ‘They are the dead whose souls have been caught by the witches' magic. That is why they are so foul to smell and to look upon. Their bodies begin to rot out of the sight of the sun, and they cover them with clothes for shame. But they cannot live without our flesh; that is why they come to aid the Sumba when they are called.’

The man ended, and Madu sat rigid, shivering despite the warmth of the night, trying hopelessly to wriggle his hands free of his bonds as he stared at the monstrous, undead guards, and wondered when the feast would begin.

It did not begin that night, for the red-face had more to think about than their bellies. In the middle of the night, when the fires in the town were dying down to a red glow, and the moon and clear stars could be seen through the smoke and sparks, the noise from the town suddenly rose. It was a dreadful sound; a grim compound of shrieks and dull, terrified moans that grew with every minute. The red-face muttered to each other uneasily, and a group, led by a sharp-faced man with an iron shirt, hurried over towards the town to see what it was.

At first Madu could see nothing, except the silver moonlight glinting on the red-faces' weapons as they strode towards the shattered gates. But then the gateposts disappeared in shadows, shadows that only extended about halfway up, as though a black mist had swallowed their roots. Then Madu realised that the black mist was men, a great tide of men flowing out of the town, spreading in an inky pool over the grass in a way that threatened to engulf the group of red-face entirely.

Many of the men were armed Sumba warriors, whose weapons gleamed in the moonlight. They were herding a dark mass in their midst, who were nearly all naked and weaponless. They shrieked and moaned pitifully, and Madu recognised some of the words.

‘Those are our people,’ said the man beside him bitterly. ‘Do you not hear them calling on the gods? The Sumba will kill them. But the red-face want to buy them first.’

There was more shouting - angry words between the Sumba and the red-face. Madu saw the Sumba bows raised, and spears lifted. The whining red-face voices grew higher in reply, while the black pool of Mani prisoners spread steadily out of the town.

‘We can escape, now!’ hissed Temba. ‘Look - no-one is watching us!’ It was true; the few red-face still near them were all staring towards the town, muttering angrily and fiddling with their weapons. Some were busily pushing things into the mouths of the great fire-tubes.

‘My ropes are too tight,’ hissed Madu despairingly. ‘I've tried for hours!’

‘Turn round - let me try. I've got one hand loose.’

Madu turned, and felt Temba's hands fiddling clumsily with the rope around his wrists. Temba's hand was freer than his, but only a little. Madu felt the fingers find the knot, lose it again, find it, tug, and drop away, exhausted, with nothing gained. The red-face boy nearest them coughed, spat in the grass, and half-turned; then his friend grabbed his arm, speaking angrily, and pointing to something that was happening in the crowd.

The fingers found their way back, weak, clumsy, persistent. Madu thought he felt something give; another tug, and a rope was definitely coming free. One hand was out quickly, his fingers fumbling in their haste; he undid the other, loosened the rope from his neck, and was free!

His heart was pounding against his ribs like a crazy child playing a drum. He flexed his stiff fingers and bent them to Temba's wrists, kneeling close to his friend to avoid being seen. But the argument with the Sumba was getting worse, and the red-face were quite absorbed in it, growling in their throats like dogs as they watched. He broke a fingernail on a knot - if only the rope were not tied so hard, if he only could see! But then, at last, it moved - Temba's hands were free!

‘Now me, nephew - set
me
free!’ a man near them pleaded, his voice urgent with desperation. Madu left Temba to free his own neck, and knelt behind the man. He felt ripples of excitement spreading amongst those around him. How many others would he have to untie before he could run? But Temba was bending behind someone now, a young woman. And when this man is free ...

‘Is he free? Someone's free! Me next, boy - over here!’ It was the weak, quavering voice of a fat man, with a rich woven shirt like that of a trader. Madu ignored him, tugging at the stubborn knots, trusting to the others to quieten the man. But the quavering voice came again, low and urgent.

‘Over here next, boy! Just behind you!’

There was a sharp hiss, and a thud and a yelp as though a kick had landed; then an appalled, thunderstruck silence.

Madu peered over the man's shoulder, knowing what he would see. The red-face boy had turned, and was staring at them in the darkness, trying to make out what was wrong. He snapped something at them in his foul language. No-one moved. Madu looked carefully to his left, and swallowed cautiously, all the moisture in his mouth draining away in fright. Temba stood quite still, frozen, hoping his silhouette would be hidden by the outline of the tree behind him.

The red-face boy spoke to another guard, who went off to get a brand from the fire. The boy snapped at him to hurry. Then he lifted his fire-tube and stepped towards the prisoners. At that moment Temba ran.

Temba ran very fast and silently, away to the left, and at first Madu thought he would get away. Then Temba tripped over something, and fell; and when he got up, the red-face boy was only a few yards behind him. The fire-stick barked; and Temba fell without a scream.

The man Temba had freed ran too, and more red-face men hurried from the fire to cut him off. But the man was too quick for them, too strong. He knocked one down, ducked under the arms of another, and ran, ducking and weaving, for the shelter of the trees. Two fire-sticks barked, but the man ran on, and the red-face turned back.

Madu had not moved. He knew he should run but not without Temba. He knew he could not help him at all but he could not leave without him. He stood up, his whole body trembling with fear and indecision, and limped quietly, quickly, to where Temba had fallen.

There was no movement, no hope. Only a crumpled body lying quite still on its face in the grass, the moonlight gleaming on the smooth black skin of its back. Madu bent down, and touched a patch of something warm and sticky, halfway down on the left. He would have turned his friend over to see his face, but the red-face caught him before that, and dragged him roughly away. One of the red-face - the boy with the hairless face who had shot him - kicked Temba's body over with his foot, and said the short bitter word that in their language must mean ‘dead’.

T
HE JOURNEY downriver was nothing for Madu. He knew he would die soon and it did not matter to him how or where. After a long morning's bargaining, the red-face had persuaded the Sumba to sell them some more prisoners, and their boats were so crowded they could hardly float. Many of the prisoners were weeping and moaning for fear, but Madu ignored them. There was no-one he knew, not even anyone from his village.

A woman near him was almost hysterical about her bad luck in being sold to the cruel red-face rather than kept by the Sumba; but when they came past a low headland near a bend in the river, she fell silent. A solid line of Sumba warriors was pushing Mani people into a marsh. The marsh extended for miles; it was full of reeds and quicksands and deep pools full of water-snakes. No one could cross it without a boat. The weakest were up to their shoulders in water already, women holding their babies on their shoulders and screaming. But there was no escape. The Sumba advanced, relentlessly, behind them; and in front of them, slithering through the mud and reeds, the crocodiles gathered.

Even the great floating houses of the red-face which they found at the mouth of the river did not shock Madu as they might have done before. He gazed at them through the numbing mist of his grief, wondering dully how boats could possibly be this big, without his having heard of them. They were bigger than any house he had ever seen. Great leafless trees festooned with ropes rose into the sky above them. Ikezue had told him the red-face came over the sea, in war canoes, like the one he was in. But these were not war canoes; they were like palaces, floating on the sea.