The next morning, they proceeded with caution and with four Wanyamwezi scouting a little way ahead. Gunfire continued to crackle faintly from the west. It sounded like a battle was being fought. Burton unpacked all the spare rifles and distributed them among Mirambo's warriors, replacing the ancient matchlocks. He and the rest of his expedition kept their own guns cleaned, oiled, and loaded.
The forest was fairly easy going, its canopy high and the undergrowth light. Nevertheless, it required two more marches to traverse. When they finally emerged from it, they found themselves in a long valley through which sweet water bubbled in a wide stream. The hills to either side were swathed in bright-yellow grain, blazing so brightly that the travellers were forced to walk through it with eyes slitted, and the heat was so ferocious that Herbert Spencer compared this part of their trek to “walkin' on the surface of the bloomin' sun itself!”
The terrain gradually opened onto a flat plain, empty but for stunted trees. On the horizon ahead, low forested hills could be seen, though they folded and jumped in the distorting atmosphere. From the other side of them, the noise of battle raged on. The sound was carrying a long way.
They walked and walked and yet felt as if they made no progress.
“I can't judge the distance,” Trounce muttered. “Those hills are like the mirages we saw back in Arabia. One minute they spring up right in front of us, the next they're not there at all.”
“They're fairly close,” Burton advised.
“And so is one heck of a scrap by the sound of it!”
“Wow! It is from Kazeh!” Sidi Bombay noted.
Burton walked back along the line of porters and mules to where Swinburne was striding along. The poet had a rifle slung across his shoulder and was holding an umbrella over his head.
“I'm going to gallop ahead to take a peek over those hills, Algy. Will you join me? Can you bear it during the hottest part of the day?”
“Rather! Anything to break the monotony of this flatland.”
They stopped and waited for Isabel Arundell, who was riding near the middle of the column, to catch them up.
“I need two of your fittest horses,” Burton said as she drew abreast of them. “Algy and I are going to reconnoitre.”
“Very well, but I'm coming with you. If we're joining a battle, I want to see for myself how best to deploy my women.”
“Very well.”
Mounts were selected, supplies were packed into saddlebags, and the threesome rode back to the head of the safari.
Burton took the field glasses from Trounce and informed him of their intentions. “You're in charge while we're gone. Keep going until the heat gets too much. You'll not make Kazeh in a single march, or even the base of the hills, so stop when you must but don't erect the tents. Get what rest you can.”
They kicked their heels into the sides of their mounts and raced away, leaving a cloud of dust rolling in their wake.
It took them an hour to catch up with one of Mirambo's scouts. They stopped to greet him and offer water but he ignored them, as if by doing so he could make the muzungo mbayacease to exist.
The entire afternoon was spent pushing the horses to their limits until, with the sun swelling and melting in front of their eyes, they arrived at the edge of the plain and threw themselves down beside a narrow stream. They drank deeply and washed the dust from their faces, splashed their steeds to cool them, then left them reined to trees but with enough slack to be able to reach the water.
Gunfire stammered and echoed around them.
“They've been fighting for three days, at least,” Isabel noted.
“We'll take a look at the combatants presently,” Burton said. “First, eat, rest, and attend to your weapons.”
This was duly done, and slightly under an hour later they climbed the hill, passing through the trees, descended the other side, scrambled up the next slope, and crawled onto its summit. They looked out over the twilit plain on the other side. The sun had just set and the western horizon was blood-red, the sky above it deep purple and flecked with bright stars.
The land beneath was considerably more verdant than the ground they'd just crossed; large tracts had obviously been irrigated; there were grain fields and many trees, the latter casting very long shadows.
A little to the north, a monolithic verdure-topped outcrop of rock dominated the otherwise flat landscape, and just to the south of it, right in front of them, there was a small town, little more than a wide scattering of wooden houses and shacks, with a few larger residences at its centre.
Lights flashed all along its eastern and northern borders and the noise of gunfire punctured the African night.
Burton whispered, “The Prussians have Kazeh under siege!”
CHAPTER 9
“We do not see things as they are. We see them as we are.”
The plant was roughly the shape of a boat. It moved on thick white roots that grew in tangled bunches beneath its squat, flattened, and elongated stem. From this, ten white flowers grew in pairs, aligned in a row. Their petals were curled around the men who sat in them, forming extremely comfortable seats. Sir Richard Francis Burton was in one of the middle blooms. Generalmajor Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck was sitting beside him. Schutztruppenoccupied the others. The driver's head was pierced just above the ears by thorny tendrils through which he controlled the conveyance. The soldier beside him was positioned behind a seedpod, which, to Burton, looked exactly like a mounted gun. From the rear of the vehicle, three long leaves curved upward and forward like a canopy, protecting the passengers from the sun.
It was a bizarre conveyance. It was also a very fast one.
They'd left Stalag IV at Ugogi yesterday and were travelling along a well-defined trail-almost a road-in a westerly direction.
As the landscape unfolded around them, another unfolded inside Burton. His lost memories were returning, and each one inserted itself into his conscious mind with a violent stab that made his eyes water and caused a curious sensation in his sinuses, as if he'd accidentally snorted gunpowder instead of snuff.
The vehicle scuttled over the Marenga M'khali desert, and he recognised it. A grassy plain, a jungle, and rolling savannahs-he'd seen them all before. He was familiar with every hill, every nullah.He'd walked this route.
He remembered his companions and felt the hollow grief of untimely deaths. He knew who Al-Manat had been.
Isabel. Whatever became of you?
As if reading his thoughts, Lettow-Vorbeck said, “This road, it is built on the old trail that you followed so many years ago, ja?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“And the other trail, the one parallel to it, to the north, that is now our Tanganyika Railway Line, which the Greater German Empire employs to bring civilisation to Africa, and which your people attack and sabotage with such tedious frequency.”
Burton shrugged. He was sick of this war. He'd had more than enough of the twentieth century.
The plant raced across dusty ground and climbed into the Ugogo region.
“Nearly two hundred miles westward,” the generalmajor informed him, “then we shall steer north to avoid Tabora. An inconvenience, but one that we'll not have to put up with for much longer.”
“The ‘final solution’ you spoke of before?”
“Ja.It is on its way, even now, Herr Burton. We have a great flying ship, the L.59 Zeppelin, following inland the river that so obsesses you. I speak of the Nile, of course.”
Another missing shard of Burton's memory slammed into place, causing him to catch his breath and stifle a groan.
Lettow-Vorbeck continued, “The name Zeppelinis a very suitable one for das Afrika Schiff, I think, for it is widely held that a Zeppelin was present at the start of the war, and now a Zeppelin will be present at its end!”