Eric Flint: Grantville Gazette. Volume 21

The captain snickered.

"He spotted the children in a pen, but that was all."

"How old were they?"

"The boy thirteen, the girl eleven."

"Ah, a good age. They can be trained as domestic servants, or be taught a trade and hired out. Of course, they are long-term investments. "

Mauricio suppressed the urge to strangle the captain. "So, do you know what happened to them?"

"I can make a educated guess. But what's in it for me?"

Mauricio hesitated. He had already read the ship's log, and quizzed all of the other survivors of the slaver's crew. The captain, damn his soul, was Mauricio's last hope.

"I suppose I could do something about your rations, if I thought your answer was sufficiently helpful."

"My rations, eh? Well, that's not good enough. I want my freedom."

Mauricio turned and started to walk out.

"Wait, young fellow." Mauricio stopped.

"They can put a ball on this chain and let me walk about a bit, outside. Where would I run to, after all? If the Africans didn't get me, the Indians would."

"I promise that if you give me the information I need, I will speak to the governor, and request this boon."

"Not on my behalf. As a favor to you for all the… assistance

… you have given him. To redeem your word."

"Yes, as a favor to me! Now talk, damn you!"

The attack took the Indians by surprise. The men were too drunk to put up a fight at all. The women weren't in much better state.

The men of warrior age were slain and eaten, to the horror of their kin. Not that cannibalism was unknown in South America, but of course the Africans had different rituals and so far as the Indians were concerned, what the Imbangala were doing was completely wrong!

The younger boys were gathered together. They would be taught, brutally, that they were now Imbangala. The young women would become wives of the senior Imbangala warriors, and the older men and women would be put to work, as slaves, in the fields. If the old men thought that farming was beneath their dignity they would be beaten until they rethought the matter.

A week or so after the assault, one of the young women managed to escape. Tetube hid in an old hunter's shelter that her brother had once pointed out, until the Imbangala tired of searching for her. Then she slipped down river.

Long Rainy Season (April to July, 1635)

Carsten raised his hands. "All right, I can't hear anyone if you all talk at once."

"We've had goods stolen, time and again," one colonist, who frequently made trading forays across the river, complained.

"Anyone killed?"

"Not yet," the trader admitted.

"That's not all," said a second colonist. "The Africans are already killing each other."

"Are you surprised?" asked Henrique, Mauricio's white half-brother. "It's not as though they were all that friendly back in Africa, you know. That's how at least half of them ended up as slaves in the first place. They fight these little wars, and the prisoners get sold."

"So the villages are armed camps, now," added the trader. "It makes it tough to do business. The Africans are thinking more about fighting than about farming, I assure you. They have less to trade and sooner or later some nervous sentry is going to shoot an arrow or throw a spear into one of us."

"We just find out who started it, and teach them a lesson," said Heyndrick. "That's what cousin David did with the Indians in America."

"You mean kill them?" asked Michael Krueger. " I have a better idea. If a tribe can't keep its people from stealing or killing, then I think it should be considered lawful to re-enslave them all."

"Ah, lawful war," said Mauricio. "The Portuguese did that in Brazil, with the Indians. Funny thing was, there always seemed to be a lawful reason to enslave any tribe which was too weak to resist."

Henrique held up his hand. "There's worse news."

Carsten gave Henrique his full attention. He knew that Henrique was a woodsman, and he and Mauricio's Manao Indian brother-in-law, Coqui, moved freely among the Indians in the affected region. "What?"

"We've had reports that some of the Africans have real weapons. Steel swords. Guns even. Some Indian villages have been attacked."

"Where could they get them from?" Carsten wondered, aloud.

"The Spanish. Or the Portuguese," Denys Zager suggested. He scowled at Henrique and Mauricio.

Henrique scowled right back. "We are wanted men in Brazil. And Maria and Heyndrick transported us here, from hundreds of miles away. They can vouch for the fact that we brought only our personal weapons with us."

Zager folded his arms across his beer barrel chest. "You say you're refugees, but how do we know? Perhaps your Indian friends are helping you smuggle weapons here from your friends in Brazil."

"Enough," said Carsten firmly. "The accusation is ridiculous. Please don't distract us from the real problem."

"Perhaps," Maria offered tentatively, "we should help the good Africans, the ones who are just trying to defend themselves, deal with the troublemakers themselves."

"You mean, give arms to the 'good' Africans? That's crazy."

Carsten clapped his hands. "We will try to figure out which Africans are the source of the problem, and deal with them. With or without African allies, as seems best at the time.

"For the moment, the Africans who wish to trade will have to come to us, not us to them. We'll set up a trading post just outside Fort Lincoln. We'll strengthen the inland defenses there, too. And I think we better institute river patrols. Hopefully, the blacks'll all calm down after a while."

Borguri held out his favorite whetstone, and one of his new Arawak wives dutifully poured water over it, letting the liquid cascade down into a waiting basin. A tied-up African watched in fear, not knowing what would happen next.

He pointed to the basin. "Drink," he ordered. The cowering captive complied.

Borguri then hit him over the head with the stone. "My sword serves me, my stone serves my sword, my water washes my stone, you have drunk my water. Your ancestors have forgotten you; mine watch your every move, your every thought. You are mine."

He gave the slave a playful cuff, and ordered, "Back to work."

The slave should be thankful. Now that he was officially part of Borguri's lineage-albeit at the lowest level-he was unlikely to be picked as a pre-battle sacrifice.

Borguri frowned. The process of assimilation just wasn't fast enough. Borguri needed a cadre of true Imbangala to serve as role-models for the coerced recruits, and to discipline those who didn't comply with the rules. There were only so many new recruits he could absorb within a period of a few months.

But if he took too long to build up his strength, the Ndongo would make or buy themselves decent weapons, and counterattack.

So Borguri had made a decision. Just as the Imbangala of old had allied themselves to the Portuguese, Borguri would ally his tribe to one of the Carib Indian tribes. One which, he had learned, was not happy about the white presence in their vicinity. Borguri felt confident that they would be delighted by the prospect of revenge and plunder which Borguri would hold out to them.

Of course, once the whites were driven out, the Caribs would no doubt turn upon the Imbangala.

Except that the Imbangala would turn on them first.

Mauricio walked up beside Maria, coughed. "About that Coromantee man."

Maria looked up. "Yes? You thought of something?"

"I questioned the crew. Even the captain. They didn't remember the children, of course. What're two slaves among hundreds? But they did know which ship left Elmina before they did. And where it was headed."

"Well?"

"The Fenix. Bound for Havana."