Nation - Пратчетт Терри Дэвид Джон - Страница 56

“We will not run. We cannot run. So we must fight. And if we fight, we must win. But least we know how they will fight.”

“How can you possibly know that?”

“Because when the Raiders come, they will pour onto the beach and challenge our chief to single combat.”

“You? But you can’t — ”

“I have more than one plan. Please trust me.”

“You will fire the cannon?”

“Perhaps. They worship Locaha. They think he protects them. They collect skulls for him. They eat the flesh of men in his honor. They believe the more men they kill, the more slaves they will have in his country when he takes them. They don’t care if they die. But Locaha makes no bargains with anyone.”

They were back on the beach now. In the distance, a couple of men were, very slowly, carrying a cannon up the track.

“I don’t think we have much time,” said Mau. “The man with the big bleeding nose will tell Cox that we are an island of invalids and children and no trousermen. Except you.”

“He won’t care who gets killed. He shot a butterfly in half, remember?” said Daphne.

Mau shook his head. “How can he rise up every morning and decide to be him?”

“I think that if you could understand him, you’d be him. That’s what he does. He turns people into creatures like himself. That’s what happened to Foxlip. And he’ll make sure that the only way to kill him is to be worse than him. It nearly worked on poor Captain Roberts. Make sure it doesn’t happen to you, Mau!”

Mau sighed. “Let’s get back before they start worshiping us, shall we?”

They followed the cannon and Daphne trailed behind a little. Even wearing the trousers, which were far too big for him, Mau still walked like a dancer. Daphne had been taken to the ballet several times by her grandmother, who wanted to make sure she grew up to be a proper lady and not marry a godless scientist. She’d been bored silly, and the dancers were nothing like as graceful as she had expected. But Mau walked as if every part of his body knew where it was and where it was going to and exactly how fast it had to go to get there. People would have paid good money just to see the muscles on his back move like they were doing now. She understood the maids back home a lot more when the sun gleamed on his shoulders. Ahem.

In the morning they fired a cannon, an enterprise that consisted of lighting a really long fuse and then everyone running very fast in the opposite direction. The bang was impressive and most people got back on their feet in time to see the splash when the ball hit the water on the other side of the lagoon.

But Daphne didn’t join in the celebrations. Of course, according to Cookie, everything on the Judy was far too old and ready for the scrap heap, but she’d looked into the barrels of the cannon, and they were a mess. Four had cracks in them, and the last one’s inside looked as knobbly as the moon. They did not look like the kind of cannon you wanted to fire if you had been raised in the belief that, when it came to cannon, the ball should come out of the front. But Mau wouldn’t listen to her when she tried to talk to him about it, and a look came over his face that she’d seen before. It said: “I know what I’m doing. Don’t bother me. Everything will be all right.” And in the meantime, down by the fire, Milo and Pilu banged mysteriously at empty tins from the Judy’s galley, hammering them flat for no reason they were prepared to give. Some of the men and older boys were trained in firing the cannon, but since there wasn’t any gunpowder to spare for actually firing any more of the things, they made do with pushing wooden cartridges into the barrel and shouting, “Bang!” They got quite good at that, and were proud at the speed with which “Bang!” could be shouted. Daphne said she hoped the enemy would be trained to say “Aargh!”

Nothing happened and went on happening. They finished the pig fence, which meant that the last of the planting could be done. They started a new hut, but this was a lot higher up the slope. Trees were planted. One of the men got his leg ripped open on the first boar hunt since the wave and Daphne sewed it up again, washing the wound in mother-of-beer to keep it clean. Mau stood guard on the beach every night, often with the Unknown Woman nearby, but now at least she trusted people enough to leave her little boy with them. And that was just as well, because she had taken a sudden interest in papervine, cutting the longest leaves of it from all over the island and then endlessly plaiting them into string after green string. So now, because it’s how people’s minds work, the Unknown Woman was known as the Papervine Woman.

Once she solemnly handed her baby to Daphne, and Cahle made a remark that Daphne didn’t quite catch but which made all the women laugh, so it was almost certainly something like, “It’s about time you made one!”

People relaxed.

And the Raiders came, just at dawn.

They came with drums and torchlight.

Mau ran up the beach to the huts, shouting, “The Raiders are coming! The Raiders are coming!”

People woke up and ran, mostly into one another, while outside the clanging and drumming went on. The dogs barked and got under people’s feet. In ones and twos men hurried up to the cannons on the hill, but by then it was too late.

“You’re all dead,” said Mau.

Out on the lagoon the mists faded. Milo and Pilu stopped their drumming and banging and paddled their canoe back to the beach. People looked around feeling stupid and annoyed. Nevertheless, up on the hill a man shouted “Bang!” at the top of his voice and looked very pleased with himself.

Later, though, Mau asked Daphne what the casualties were.

“Well, one man dropped his spear on his own foot,” she said. “A woman sprained her ankle because she tripped over her dog, and the man up on the cannon got his hand stuck up in the barrel.”

“How can you possibly get your hand stuck up the barrel of a cannon?” said Mau.

“Apparently he was pushing the ball in and it rolled back onto his fingers,” said Daphne. “Perhaps you should write a letter to the cannibals, telling them not to come. I know you don’t know how to write, but they probably don’t know how to read.”

“I must organize people better,” said Mau, sighing.

“No!” said Daphne. “Tell them to organize themselves! There should be lookouts. There should always be a man up on the guns. Tell the women to make sure they know where to go. Oh, and tell them that the fastest gun crew will get extra beer. Make them think. Tell them what’s got to be done, and let them work out how. And now, thank you, I’ve got some beer half made!”

Back in her hut, with the reassuringly homely smells of the cauldron, the beer, and Mrs. Gurgle, she wondered about Cookie: whether he had survived the wave, because if anyone should have done so, it was Cookie.

Daphne had spent a lot of time in the Sweet Judy’s galley, because it was only another type of kitchen, and she was at home in kitchens. It was also a safe place. Even at the height of the mutiny, everyone was friends with Cookie, and he had no enemies. Every seaman, even a madman like Cox, knew that there was no point in upsetting the cook, who had all kinds of little opportunities to get his own back, as you might find out one night when it was you hanging over the rail, trying to throw up your own stomach.

And on top of this Cookie was good company and seemed to have sailed to everywhere on just about any kind of ship, and he was constantly rebuilding his own coffin, which he’d brought aboard. It was now part of the furniture of the galley, and most of the time the saucepans were piled up on top of it. He seemed surprised that Daphne thought all this was a touch on the odd side.

Perhaps this was because the most important thing about this coffin was that Cookie did not intend to die in it. He intended to live in it instead, because he had designed it to float. He had even built a keel on it. He took great pleasure in showing her how well appointed it was inside. There was a shroud, in case he actually did die, but which could easily be used as a sail until that unlucky day; there was a small folding mast for this very purpose. Inside the coffin, which was padded, there were rows of pockets that held ship’s biscuits, dried fruit, fishhooks (and fishing line), a compass, charts, and a wonderful device for distilling drinking water from the sea. It was a tiny floating world.