David Drake - Balefires

Captain de Vriny swigged and eyed the circle. He was a man of middle height with the roundedness of a bear, a seeming softness which tended to mask the cruelty beneath. Across from him, Sparrow dragged on the cigarette he had rolled and lit his face orange. The captain smiled. Only because his mistress, the mad noblewoman, had demanded it, did Sparrow sit with the officers. He wore a cheap blue-cotton shirt, buttoned at the cuffs, and denim trousers held up by suspenders. Short and narrow-chested, Sparrow would have looked foolish even without the waist belt and the pair of huge double-action revolvers hanging from it.

Dame Alice was unarmed by contrast. Like the men she wore trousers, hers tucked into low-heeled boots. De Vriny looked at her and, shaping his mocking smile into an expression of friendly interest, said, "It surprises me, Dame Alice, that a woman as well-born and, I am sure, delicate as yourself would want to accompany an expedition against some of the most vicious sub-men on the globe."

Dame Alice lifted the faintly bulbous tip of her nose and said, "It's no matter of wanting, Captain."She eyed deVriny with mild distaste."I don't suppose you want to come yourself-unless you like to shoot niggers for lack of better sport? One does unpleasant things because someone must. One has a duty."

"What the Captain is suggesting," put in Trouville, "is that there are no lines of battle fixed in this jungle. A spearman may step from around the next tree and snick, end all your plans-learned though we are sure they must be."

"Quite," agreed Dame Alice, "and so I brought Sparrow here-" she nodded to her servant-"instead of trusting to chance."

All heads turned again toward the little American.

In French, though the conversation had previously been in English to include Sparrow, deVriny said, "I hope he never falls overboard. The load of iron-mongery he carries will sink him twenty meters through the bottom muck before anyone knows he's gone."

Again the Belgians laughed. In a voice as flat and hard as the bottom of a skillet. Sparrow said, "Captain, I'd surely appreciate a look at your nice pistol there."

De Vriny blinked, uncertain whether the question was chance or if the American had understood the joke of which he had been made the butt. Deliberately, his composure never more than dented, the Belgian unhooked the flap of his patent-leather holster and handed over the Browning pistol. It was small and oblong, its blued finish gleaming like wet sealskin in the firelight.

Sparrow rotated the weapon, giving its exterior a brief scrutiny. He thumbed the catch in the grip and stripped out the magazine, holding it so that the light fell on the uppermost of its stack of small brass cartridges.

"You are familiar with automatic pistols, then?" asked Trouville in some surprise at the American's quick understanding of a weapon rarely encountered on his native continent.

"Naw," Sparrow said, slipping the magazine back home. His fingers moved like those of a pianist doing scales. "It's a gun, though. I can generally figure how a gun works."

"You should get one like it," de Vriny said, smiling as he took the weapon back from Sparrow. "You would find it far more comfortable to carry than those-yours."

"Carry a toy like that?" the gunman asked. His voice parodied amazement. "Not me, Captain. When I shoot a man, I want him dead. I want a gun what'll do the job if I do mine, and these. 45s do me jist fine, every time I use'um." Sparrow grinned then, for the first time. De Vriny felt his own hands fumble as they tried to reholster the Browning. Suddenly he knew why the askaris gave Sparrow so wide a berth.

Dame Alice coughed. The sound shattered the ice that had been settling over the men. Without moving, Sparrow faded into the background to become an insignificant man with narrow shoulders and pistols too heavy for his frame.

"Tell me what you know about the rebellion," the Irishwoman asked quietly in a liquid, attractive voice. Her features led one to expect a nasal whinny. Across the fire came snores from Osterman, a lieutenant by courtesy but in no other respect an officer. He had ignored the wine for the natives' own malafou. The third calabash had slipped from his numb fingers, dribbling only a stain onto the ground as the bearded Fleming lolled back in his camp chair.

Trouville exchanged glances with de Vriny, then shrugged and said, "What is there ever to know about a native rebellion? Every once in a while a few of them shoot at our steamers, perhaps chop a concessionaire or two when he comes to collect the rubber and ivory. Then we get the call"-the Colonel's gesture embraced the invisibleArchiduchesse Stephanie and the dozen Baenga canoes drawn up on the bank beside her. "We surround the village, shoot the niggers we catch, and burn the huts. End of rebellion."

"And what about their gods?" Dame Alice pressed, bobbing her head like a long-necked diving bird.

The Colonel laughed. De Vriny patted his holster and said,"We are God in the Maranga Concession."

They laughed again and Dame Alice shivered. Osterman snorted awake, blew his nose loudly on the blue sleeve of his uniform coat. "There's a new god back in the bush, yes," the Fleming muttered.

The others stared at him as if he were a frog declaiming Shakespeare. "How would you know?"de Vriny demanded in irritation."The only Bantu words you know are 'drink' and 'woman'."

"I can talk to B'loko, can't I?" the lieutenant retorted in a voice that managed to be offended despite its slurring."Good ol'Baloko, we been together long time, long time. Better fella than some white bastards I could name… "

Dame Alice leaned forward, the firelight bright in her eyes."Tell me about the new god," she demanded. "Tell me its name."

"Don' remember the name," Osterman muttered, shaking his head. He was waking up now, surprised and a little concerned to find himself center of the attention not only of his superiors but also of the foreigner who had come to them in Boma as they readied their troops. Trouville had tried to shrug Dame Alice aside, but the Irishwoman had displayed a patent signed by King Leopold himself…"Baloko said it but I forget," he continued, "and he was drunk too, or I don' think he would have said. He's afraid of that one."

"What's that?"Trouville interrupted. He was a practical man, willing to accept and use the apparent fact that Osterman's piggish habits had made him a confidant of the askaris. "One of our Baenga headmen is afraid of a Bakongo god?"

Osterman shook his graying head again. Increasingly embarrassed but determined to explain, he said, "Not their god, not like that. The Bakongos, they live along the river, they got their fetishes just like any niggers. But back in the bush, there's another village. Not a tribe; a few men from here, a few women from there. Been getting together one at a time, a couple a year, for Christ… maybe twenty years. They got the new god, they're the ones who started the trouble.

"They say you don' have to pay your rubber to the white men, you don' have to pray to any fetish. Their god gonna come along and eat up everything. Any day now."

Osterman rubbed his eyes blearily, then shouted, "Boy! Malafou!"

A Krooman in breeches and swallow-tailed coat scurried over with another calabash. Osterman slurped down the sweet, brain-stunning fluid in three great gulps. He began humming something meaningless to himself. The empty container fell, and after a time the Fleming began to snore again.

The other men looked at one another."Do you suppose he's right?"the Captain asked Trouville.

"He could be, "the slim Colonel admitted with a shrug."They might well have told him all that. He's not much better than a nigger himself despite the color of his skin."

"He's right," said Dame Alice, looking at the fire and not at her companions. Ash crumbled in its heart and a knot of sparks clawed toward the forest canopy. "Except for one thing. Their god isn't new, it isn't new at all. Back when the world was fresh and steaming and the reptiles flew above the swamps, it wasn't new either. The Bakongo name for it is Ahtu. Alhazred called it Nyarlathotep when he wrote twelve hundred years ago." She paused, staring down at her hands tented above the thin yellow wine left in her goblet.