What need of intermediaries? There is the word of God, and God; that is enough for a believer. But you had better not say that where one of the Mourides can hear you, especially if it?s a Baye Fall madman.
There were two of them always with the Marabout, wild-looking men with their hair in plaits and great brass-bound ebony clubs in their hands. Both loomed like giants, and Abdou was not a small man.
And… how did he know where to find these so-called Muslims? It was as if they were waiting for him here on this begotten-of-Shaitan wilderness shore. ?Well, at least the plunder should be good,? Jawara said, working his hands in his gloves; one dropped caressingly to the pearl-encrusted hilt of his scimitar.?This nest of pagans has been scouring the God-smitten cities on these coasts longer than we have. And they make some very clever things themselves.? ?And they?re a nuisance when they clash with our people,? Abdou said.?Yes, we?ll probably get a richer cargo than we could scavenging the ruins ourselves. But I hate losing good men getting it. This will cost us more than fighting a few ignorant cannibal savages in the dead lands. These Norrheimers may be pagans, but they know too cursed much how to make good armor and war engines and fight in ranks, for instance. Bad as fighting the Ashanti.?
Jawara brightened.?There?ll be women, at least, when we take the place. That warms a man up!?
Abdou shrugged. The dwellers here were polytheists and so legitimate prey by sharia, the holy law, but experience had shown these northern peoples were useless as slaves. If you took them back to a civilized climate they just sickened and died of the fevers. On balance it was a good thing, because it made it impossible for the English Nazarenes to invade the House of Peace rather than just make punitive raids. Besides, he found the fishbelly skins and skeletal faces of whites repulsive; even after so long at sea, he?d wait until he got home to Fatima. ?Get your mind out from between these hypothetical womens? thighs, Jawara: first we have to break their wall and beat their fighting men,? he said sourly.? And hope no English ships come by before we can. This is far too close to the Gezira-al-Said, the Isle of the Prince; may God sink it.?
The coast of the river estuary ran northwest-southeast here, with a hook of land protecting the site of the town. On the landward side was a wall of tree trunks, squared and sunk deep, bolted together with heavy steel rods and wound each to the next with metal cable. A little in from that was another wall, and the space between was tight-packed with rock and rubble to make a bulwark of solid strength. Blockhouses of large tight-fitted logs laid horizontally studded the wall, with two by each of the gates. The seaward approach was protected by more logs-but those were sunk in the seabed, angled outward, their ends tipped with vicious metal blades like the heads of giant spears. He could see some of them from here, frosted and menacing and bearded with icy tendrils of weed, but some were always underwater even at low tide. Only the dwellers knew the paths through them.
His own ships were anchored safely out of range offshore, their rigging half blocked from here by the rearing complexity of the pagan temple?s shingle roofs. Both were two-masters built in the Saloum delta of sapele and iroko, low fast snakelike craft designed for speed at sea and handiness around shallow coasts. The pagan war boats were formidable where they had room to move, but they couldn?t thread their way out through their own obstacles, not when they had to come slowly and in the face of catapults throwing globes of stick flame.
He?d come in out of the dawn three days ago and caught them tied up. That blockade duty pinned his ships down as long as he stayed here, though. Which also meant he couldn?t dismount more than a pair of light engines for besieging the town, not nearly enough to do significant damage.
The Marabout-Cheik Ibra, he was called-was in conversation with one of the strangers. They were too far away for Abdou to follow the talk, but close enough for him to hear that it was in English. That made his mouth tighten. How had Ibra learned that tongue? In the lands of the Emirate of Dakar only seafarers did, and of them only a few. ?Ahmed,? Abdou said, raising his voice slightly.
His son trotted over, proud in his fifteen years, a slim young man who already bid fair to be taller than his tall father someday. He was prouder still of being on his first foreign voyage. ?My father? I mean, Captain?? ?Fetch the learned Cheik for us.?
The boy walked over to the strangers with self-conscious dignity. He transferred his spear to the left hand that also held the grip of his shield, so that his right could touch brow and lips and breast as he bowed and murmured a polite formula. The perhaps-holy man nodded and walked over to the two corsair captains. ?I have good news, God willing,? he said cheerfully; he didn?t even seem to mind the vile weather here. ?God willing indeed,? Abdou said.?What could be good about this place except seeing the last of it, when that is His will?? ?Confounding the pagans and plundering their goods?? the Marabout asked dryly.?And then seeing the last of it??
Jawara nodded.?Yes, but how? Charging those walls would leave nothing but heaped corpses-and if I?m to be a martyr, I want to be a victorious one. And we can?t sit here long. Too likely a warship of the accursed English Nazarenes will come by, may God confound them. Their merchants put in here to trade every now and then, too.?
All three men nodded. In theory the Emir of Dakar had agreed to forbid these waters to ships from his realm after the defeat he suffered at the Canaries from the united kufr fleets a decade ago. Abdou and Jawara had both been there, fighting beside their fathers in their first real war, and had been among the lucky minority who escaped alive from the arrows and flamethrowers and the waiting sharks.
In practice the Emir had neither the power nor the wish to control the ships that sailed from the tangled swamps and creeks of the Saloum delta, looking for revenge as well as wealth. Their folk needed the salvage of the ruined cities, not just metals but gears and springs and glass and a hundred other things; and the English charged usurer?s rates for such. But the treaty allowed their navy to attack vessels in the exclusion zone on sight, which they did with ghastly efficiency.
The Mouride cleric went on:?These men-who are veritably followers of the Prophet-?
Abdou caught a glimpse of something he didn?t like in the man?s eyes then; something like mockery. He gritted his teeth and ignored it. There was work to do. ?-say they can build a trebuchet. There?s plenty of timber in the barns and outbuildings, and their savages to do the rough work. They need some help with tools, and our ship?s carpenters and smith, but they have an engineer who has erected one before and knows the proportions.?
The corsair leader rubbed his chin beard, shuddering a little as bits of ice condensed from his breath fell off it. The strangers had already built mantlets, thick sloped wooden shields on wheels that would stop arrows and bolts. The corsairs had brought two light pieces of deck artillery ashore; a rover ship was built for that sort of flexibility. But the six-pounders wouldn?t knock that wall down, not if they threw roundshot from now until the Day of Judgment or until the ships? ammunition ballast was all gone.
We might be able to set it on fire. Or the town. But charred ruins yield little plunder. A trebuchet could break down the timbers and spill the rubble core.
A trebuchet was the most powerful of war engines, and the simplest; a giant lever pivoting between uprights, with a box of rock fastened to the short end and a throwing sling to the long one. Given one of those and enough time they could batter their way through walls of well-fitted stone blocks, or even ferroconcrete, much less timber with rubble fill. A big trebuchet could throw a half-ton rock the better part of a mile, but they weren?t naval weapons-more a matter of fortress and siege warfare-and none of his carpenters and metalworkers were familiar with them.