11. In the Forest

The Sergeant took the arm and examined it closely. The fingers were missing and it was clear that this was an old injury. “Thumbs, right enough.” He turned to look round at the Gardener who was retching. “You’d better sit down, your Reverence,” he said. “Have a drink of water. Now where’s Lieutenant Haziki?”

The Lieutenant, too, was looking a bit green and the Sergeant walked over to him.

“You OK, Sir?” he asked.

“I’m fine. It’s just the smell that got to me for a moment there.”

“Right, then. I guess that you should let me get the men to search the area to see if we can find out what happened here.”

“Good idea, Sergeant.” The Lieutenant smiled wanly. “And post a couple of lookouts with the rifles. Whoever did this is probably far away by now but it would be a bit unpleasant if they were to come back.”

Most of the rest of the day was spent in a search of the area. It was clear that anything up to a dozen people had been killed in the camp before it had been set on fire. Pieces of skeletons had been dragged some distance into the jungle by scavenging animals. Insects had already picked many of the bones quite clean. The attack had been sudden and deadly, with people killed as they lay sleeping by a stroke of a machete or axe. Thumbs, however, must have put up a fierce resistance. His skeleton was marked with cuts from machetes and the back of his skull had been broken open by a blow from an axe.

The camp was burned out but every metal item had been taken and the amount of man-made material in the debris was small enough to indicate that the place must have been quite thoroughly looted before being torched.

As evening closed in, we moved away to find a camp site for the night that was out of range of the stink of the fire and the massacre. I think that none of us could shake off the smell of destruction – I don’t know whether it had penetrated our skins and clung to us like swamp mud or perhaps it had just penetrated our brains and our imagination. Even the Gardeners, who had not been involved in sifting through the camp seemed to have little appetite that evening, contenting themselves with a pot of soup and some roasted vegetables.

The next morning, as we were about to set off, we heard the Gardeners shouting. They had found Starling opening one of his packs and he was handing out axes – brought along to trade – to the rest of the troops. “Put those back into the pack!” Lomu, the senior Gardener was shouting. “Those items are the property of Our Granny, to be traded with the savages. You are not entitled to use them. Lieutenant! Lieutenant! This man is disobeying our orders.”

The Lieutenant and the Sergeant walked over. “What is the problem, precisely, Sir?” The Sergeant asked.

“This man has broken into the packs of trade goods and is stealing the contents.”

“Starling is obeying my orders, sir.” The Sergeant replied. “I told him to give the axes to the men.”

“Well if you do not instruct him to replace them, then I will ensure that you are all severely punished when we get back to the village.”

'Maybe it would be wise, Sir, to retract that statement. Arming the men with axes materially increases our chances of reaching the village.'

The Gardener glared at him. 'Under no circumstances. I have spoken on behalf of Our Granny and I demand that you do as you are ordered!'

'Perhaps you should think more carefully, Sir,' the Sergeant looked back grimly, 'and Our Granny will change her mind. I said that arming our men increases all our chances of returning safely to the village but, with respect, Sir, retracting that instruction materially increases your own personal chances of a safe return.'

'I see.' The Gardener stood a moment as if he meant to reply but in the end he just said. 'Very well. If that is the way that you want it. You had better arm the men.” And he turned on his heel and walked angrily out of the camp.' ”

Bahla paused in his account and looked at me. “As you can see,” he said, “the relationship between the Guardians and the Gardeners was already tense, even at this early stage.”

“This all sounds horrific, Bahla,” I commented. “I don’t think that the official report by the Gardeners mentioned any of this.”

“Well, knowing the skill of the Gardeners at turning things in their own direction, would you expect anything else?

It was decided that we should continue as planned to locate another group of tribes-people who lived a few miles to the west, quite near to the edge of the escarpment. They had also been regular visitors to the village, bringing their forage of spices and fibrous leaves to barter and they had not been down to the trading site in nearly a year. They were particularly missed because their territory included the site at which a particularly large airplane had fallen during the war and they were in the habit of bringing down pieces of scrap metal that were very valuable resources for the Guardians in their continual struggle to maintain The Tractor.

We moved forward cautiously through the forest. Lieutenant Haziki, even though he was young, seemed to have a good grasp of tactics and he used two of the forest-bred guardians as scouts ahead, followed by the remaining Guardians in single file. The two rifles (one now carried by Starling) were two thirds of the way down the column ready to defend in any direction.

As we walked forward through the empty forest, each scuffle in the undergrowth as birds and animals moved out of our path seemed like an imminent threat. We had the sensation again, before long, of being watched and, when we halted mid-morning, the scouts returned to report that they thought that our march was being observed. They reported birds and animals being disturbed alongside our line of movement and they were sure that we were not alone as we progressed forward.

Stopping for lunch, the scouts confirmed their view that we were being followed. Lomu, the Gardener, called a meeting of the officers.

“I demand that you send out men to attack these ‘followers’.” He stormed. “You are here to protect this mission and you place us all at risk by allowing us to be tracked by invisible watchers.”

Lieutenant Haziki, inches shorter than the burly Gardener, drew himself up to his full height, “A first rule of military engagement,” he said, “Is not to split your forces if there is a danger of attack. We don’t know how many of them there are, or even that they are hostile. We will continue our march with caution until it is clear what we are dealing with.”

The march progressed through the afternoon heat and humidity. No-one spoke. Sweat trickled down our backs in the humid gloom. The only sounds, apart from those we made ourselves, came from birds and animals disturbed by our passage. From the centre of the column we could not see any sign that we were not alone but gradually it began to feel as if the jungle were full of eyes watching us. Occasionally we would hear the sound of an animal or bird escaping at a distance and that provided food for our fears, so that soon we were imagining vast armies moving along and waiting to attack us when the moment was ripe.

In the late afternoon, we began to see signs of human activity. We came across a path that led us to some abandoned shelters under the trees. We could see that some of the clearings created by fallen trees had been burned out to allow a few crops to be planted and in some the taro looked healthy and ready for digging. There were paths and trails so that progress was faster.

All the time we were on the alert. Fortunately, the leafy canopy overhead did not allow much undergrowth on the forest floor, making a surprise attack more difficult. We avoided walking out into the open spaces of the clearing where we would not have been able to see back into the surrounding jungle through the vegetation along their edges.

Late in the afternoon, when we were almost ready to look for a camp site for the night, the scouts halted us and came back to report to the Lieutenant. They had seen a structure in one of the clearings that they could not recognise. It was definitely man-made but it was like no shelter they had ever seen. They were reluctant to offer an opinion on what it might be and the Lieutenant went forward to see what they had found.

After a while, he sent word back to the Sergeant and guards were posted in the jungle around the clearing while the rest of us entered. In the centre of the clearing, a construction of sticks, bound together with creepers and vines had been build. The central part was a platform on the front part of which a rectangular cage had been carefully built. Behind it was a seat. Front and back, it was supported by saplings, cut down and held off the ground on posts, short at the front and taller at the rear.

At the end of each support, circular bundles of vines were lashed into the shape of tires. Saplings projected upwards from the front cage to form an air intake and an exhaust. We were looking at a quite realistic copy, made entirely from saplings, branches and vines, of a tractor.