The Roving Party Page 15

Then the Vandemonian stepped from the recessed shadows. He came forward with his fowling piece crosswise behind his neck. I’ll go, he said, and began to walk into the swath of rainforest funnelling away down the valley.

  Batman spat on the dirt. He ran his eye across the rovers waiting there before him. Gone to water, he said and shook his head.

  He was turning to follow Bill when a great spear flashed in flight from the trees, burying half its length in the damp earth at Batman’s feet where it stood ticking side to side. He stepped back. The spear was ten foot at least and as thinshafted as an arrow. He looked around at Bill who was similarly studying the weapon.

  Batman cried out into the forest. Manalargena, he said. puguleena toomla pawa.

  But it was just one spear that came. A single charred haft raised among the glades and stones of that place. They scanned the spread of gums and the thick understorey where it trailed away before them. Tangles of creeping heath hung from the branches and wavered in the wind. They watched but there were no clansmen to be seen. It was as if the haft had fallen from the snow clouds. All the while the women cried.

  You make any? said Batman.

  Bill scanned here and there. All I see is bush.

  Well seems they can see us sure enough.

  They’re out there some place.

  I dont see nothin, said Horsehead.

  Be quiet a minute.

  Above the moaning from the clanswomen could be heard another, more sinister sound. They listened, each man of that company, to a sound as of tigerwolves yowling. The war cry of the forest people.

  Christ, you hear that?

  What’ll we do?

  Bring em with us, said Batman.

  The trussed blacks were strung along a single rope all despairing, calling intermittently to the menfolk concealed nearby. There came no such call in reply however. The assignees found themselves some starters for chasing up the lazy and they hit at the prisoners with them and cursed them as cannibals or worse, whatever was needed to get them along. The party retraced their path up towards the mountain country they’d so recently quit and John Batman stood by, holding his doublebarrel gun and studying the clutch of scrub from where the spear had dropped. Then he turned to follow the women.

  They drove the women and children and boys up the valley before them. There was about the clanspeople a burdensome misery that put lead in their bones and but for some floggings they would not be moved at all. As they hiked into the hill country Batman brought up the rear, walking with his gun at his waist and searching the back trail for sign of the men. A wind stirred the bush into life and Batman saw everywhere new movements which from time to time caused him to raise his gun and fire. At that sound the women would cry out in anguish.

  We shall be made to earn this yet, he said to Bill.

  A host of game dogs followed at a distance. They crowded together in padding up the foreslope or out among the bracken with their obscene tongues flailing through their teeth. Across the afternoon as the company ascended into the hills and pushed onwards for the Swan River John Batman set to trimming their numbers, until there was left strewn along the trail a mix of the dead and dying, the wounded dragging their entrails, whining, licking at themselves. He finished some of them beneath his boot heel but others he left half alive on the wayside where they made a gruesome caveat for those clansmen following in pursuit. Soon the roving party approached a flat hilltop and crossed under the snow gums so prominent where the ground was stony. The captives no longer struggled but grew dour and resigned themselves to walking so that in time the men threw aside their switches and merely walked with them.

  Late in the day they took a spell on a stretch of sedge land, crouching in the button grass out of the weather. During that halt Batman brought the black men together but for what purpose he would not say. They’d come west across the flat and their path through the grass could be seen stretching back a mile or more; Batman squatted beside them in the growth and looked from one to the next. They watched as he called attention to the country with a sweep of his arm and then he turned momentarily to assess it himself as the wind swell laid the brown fields over and disturbed all the bushes.

  There is high ground off thataways, he said.

  You see em? Pigeon said.

  I dont need to. They’re comin.

  Black Bill scratched his whiskered chin. Then he stood and looped his knapsack over his head and retrieved his tall weapon.

  Watch for us at nightfall, he said.

  The wind caught at his hat and he tugged it low over his forehead. He pushed out through the pasture with his shirt billowing and the Dharug men gathered up their effects and put out behind him. As the black men passed, the captives renewed their mournful calling, the tugging of the cheeks and hair, the smearing of dirt upon skin, straining against their bound hands for they understood the rearguard’s grim intent. The three black men walked with their firearms rattling across their backs and the cries of the clanspeople fading.

  They found some cover on an overlook which allowed a view across the neatly scrubbed plain. The tufts of trees were regular across it all and the wide trail the company had made in their procession snaked through the grass. A line of smooth rock ran the width of the hill and they sheltered behind this and out of sight. Not much remained of sunshine. As the shadows lengthened on the grasslands the black men looked over that discoloured world and waited. Bill produced his makings and packed a pipe from his pouch. He dragged a spark off the stones with his knife and into a wad of dry tinder, pressed the small flame to the bowl and drew back. They shared it as was their habit. And in that familiar action they found some comfort.

  The first of the dark figures emerged from the trees upon dusk. He stood and gazed out across the flat. Then two more appeared, and another two. In the fading sunlight the menfolk looked pieced from the waste of the frontier, garbed in skins and bits of battered clothing and painted up for war. Soon ten men stood grouped upon the plain. They formed up and made forward along the company’s trail, walking with the aid of their spears. At the head of that assemblage was Manalargena and all the men seemed pulled along in his wake as they forded the deep grasses in pursuit of the roving party. From their concealment the rovers looked along their ironsights at that ragged band.

  The first shot rang out in the twilight. One clansman pitched backwards, splayed out in the grasses where he lay clutching his bloodied shoulder. Crook repacked his rifle from the powder bag and watched as the clansmen came nervously around the fellow. Some of them gazed about in confusion looking for the shooters. From the barrel it was a distance best measured in furlongs yet Crook figured the wind against his aim and then fired again. Another man fell but promptly stood again, grasping at the hole in his arm. Several of their number pointed towards the stony hillside and when the three rovers moved from cover bearing their levelled pieces a collective roar went up that signalled the clansmen’s terror and bravery in equal measure.

  warlipare warlipare warlipare!

  Spears came hurling in from throws of fifty yards and the thin shafts skittered on the rocks or sank into the earth. The rovers held back a moment until the volley ceased and then continued swiftly down the hill. The menfolk made a general retreat now and as he walked down the slope Crook fired at their backs. One of the clansmen tumbled and fell, hauling himself through the grass, and his brothers dropped their heads and bolted for the trees. Only one man was left striding up the hill towards the injured man. The headman, fiercely howling, launched his blackwood waddy, sent it spinning end over end, until it clattered off the stones at Crook’s feet. The shot clansman struggled to his feet but Manalargena was with him and caught up his arms.

  The rovers jogged back within weapons range and brought up their guns and knelt to steady themselves. They fired at the headman, flame tongues flashing in the halfdark. He had draped the fallen warrior across his shoulder and the clansman cried out as the shot balls bit his flanks but the headman kept walking through the low gr
ass as if at leisure. The rovers repacked. For a time there was only the sound of their tamping, the sliding of rod along hollow iron. By now Manalargena had re-entered the trees and when they stood to fire he was nowhere to be seen. They scanned the weave of alpine scrub along their sights. To follow him into that realm was a near thing to suicide. Bill looked about at the Dharugs but there was no appetite for the chase written upon their faces. So he slung his firearm and wheeled away from the trees.

  The dead man lay staring up at the sky. A hole was punched through him which revealed his ruptured rib bones and another hole in his neck bled darkly on the grass. Bill studied the trees where the clansfolk had vanished for a moment before he knelt beside the body. The man was shaven clean about the cheeks, young of face and build, and ochred in the patterns of his clansmanship. He was suited up in verminous canvas breeches and hung about with a wallaby pelt secured by means of a chewed leather string. When Bill turned out the fellow’s pockets he found a handful of throwing stones for birding but nothing by way of food.

  Bill stood up.

  That’s enough, he said.

  And so the three men returned along the company’s trail, alone now upon that plain.

  On nightfall the menfolk returned to the flats, abandoning their cover to gather around the body. Manalargena called to him and the others also spoke his name. They pulled him upright but the fellow was long dead and he slumped over soundlessly. The land lay wholly in shadow now and the men in the sinking dark sat beside their kinsman and held his cold hands. A fresh snowfall began upon them but they neither moved nor looked up.

  THE TRIO WALKED THROUGH THE WOODS down to the plains before the Swan River where a signal fire burned. It glowed on the flat lands like the gateway to some infernal realm and led them onwards until, much used up by the trek, they found camp. One of the clan dogs was hung on skewers over the flames. It had been roughly skinned but the head and feet remained and its teeth were bared in a strange petrified grin. Some meat was passed to them and it was thoroughly blackened and speckled with sandy ash. They ate and Batman put his questions to them.

  You see them off?

  We did.

  A sorrier bunch of crows I never knew.

  Bill pulled dog hair from his mouth. He chewed the black and fibrous meat around and tried to swallow. They wont catch us, he said.

  They couldnt catch clap in a cat house. Batman tossed his tea dregs on the fire.

  The night lay heavy upon them. But for the dim flare of the coals as the wind worked through the campsite there was no light at all and Black Bill slept uneasily. He woke once and sat upright in his blankets. The two remaining native dogs fought over the offal from their gutted comrade, snatching at each other or snarling, until Bill stood, kicked one dog in the rump, sending it skittering, and both scattered into the darkness. When he turned back the cleverwoman was staring at him. She was perched like a black abomination near the coal glow and the shells at her throat chattered as she raised her jowled arms towards the sky.

  She said the moon sat wrongly.

  Bill looked up but there was nothing beyond the press of limbs and leaves, nothing but the night itself.

  weeta mayangti byeack, he said.

  She told him to look again and when he gazed upwards the cloud cover dispersed and there was a ponderous moon as white as the rolling eye of a convulsive. Black Bill studied the awful sight then turned his face away. The cleverwoman whispered something through the darkness but he was not listening. He lowered himself onto his bedding and gathered the blankets around his shoulders. The cleverwoman continued to whisper. She claimed that Manalargena was conjuring beneath this moon and his retribution would be proffered blind and bloodslicked like the battles of old. She held up her own bound hands as if to show how that act might be done. Bill lowered his hat over his eyes and in that unspoiled darkness his mind worked upon the image of a woman and her swollen belly and his own hand placed on her. He huddled there and kept his thoughts ever enclosed. Soon the cleverwoman fell silent.

  In the night his unborn son found him as he sometimes had. Bill carried him through a stand of fired sassafras and all about was blackened and the burnt ground shattered as he trod it. They moved between the killed trees and into a clearing, father and son. At the centre of the burn stood a black gibbet and from the noose swung a body. A charred body, its white eyes open. Bill placed the boy down on that cauterised country and the child looked up at the gently swaying corpse. Who is it? he said.

  But Bill was gone rigid with grief.

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING WAS COLD IN the shadowed trenches of those back hills, cold enough to quiet the bird call and quiet the captives as well. But they slogged on and by midday had reached Brushy River. It was muddied with meltings from the snows and it seeped down the valley through the wooded hills like the discharge from some sore on the planet’s crust. As they tracked along the banks squalls of mosquitoes lit on their bare skin, broad things the size of Spanish dollars, and the assignees beat at themselves with long switches of gum to drive them away. The clansfolk shuffled along clinging each to the other, mothers to children, sisters to sisters, and only the young warrior boys watched the white men, but they did so out of fear. For two days Jimmy Gumm had been carrying a child, a girl round of cheek and belly. During the spells he passed the child back to its mother and when they moved out he hauled it once more onto his back. The child did not grin or show any enjoyment but nonetheless Gumm persisted in befriending the little girl and seemed to derive some sort of satisfaction from caring for her. The next morning from a hill’s crown they saw the crenellated mountains away north lying sunlit under snows with the mythic blue of Ben Lomond looming above them all. Thus the distance home was laid out before the party men.

  On the morning of their fourth day of walking, the disordered party gazed across a vast plain and saw in the dawn the hamlet of Campbell Town clustered around the green row of river trees that wound through it. There was no wind to speak of, no clouds, so that the chimney smoke tracked straight up into the sky. Among the stubbled wheatfields wandered sheep in flocks and some early risers were seen to move along the cart roads. The assigned men wiped their noses and smoothed down their matted hair as best they might and the party set out towards the settlement and their first civilisation in a month.

  They entered Campbell Town by noon. Folk stood in their doorways staring as the nine of the roving party moved the captives along the main street. A load of turds tossed from a night bucket reeked on the road ahead. At Batman’s command the rovers circled around the captives and held their firearms readied. They stepped over the ruts and watched the wary townsfolk pick up their children and spit in the direction of the blacks, but after the party passed the townsfolk formed to the rear and followed them down the roadway. A number of public houses lined the main street, squalid huts ruinous and wrongly aligned and clad with palings cut from whatever grew at the riverbanks. Raw timber slabs were stood upon sawhorses to function as bars and the drinkers wheezed over their rum and made the sign of finger and circle at the black women. One toothless old fellow tottered forward and thanked the party men for ridding those parts of babyeaters. He shook their hands one by one, the paddock dirt still black upon his own. When he reached Bill he looked up into that hardened face and his eyes opened wide.

  We’ll be paid. No need for thankin. John Batman moved the fellow aside with his forestock. Then some of the children began to peg rocks at the clansfolk. They called obscenities and gave names to the blacks even Bill had never heard.

  We’ll have us some nice black shoes, said one, when they’s tanned up this lot.

  His hair was cut high around his ears and his young teeth were already yellowed but in truth every child in that group was as wretched and wild as the rovers themselves. They dashed in with sticks and stabbed at the warrior boys. Pigeon caught one by the shirt and shook him viciously then cuffed him around the ears, and the rest of the children hung back after that but they called and sang the
ir crude songs just the same.

  The only stone building on the high street was the gaol. Its squared fronting rested along a section of cobble and the assigned men stood in the street before the place they’d so freshly quit and they muttered under their breath and spat. A set of wooden double doors stood ajar and through the crack was heard the rough hacking of the inmates. An evil stink of disinfecting vinegar hung upon the whole place. John Batman brought the party up before the doorway. He straightened his wide-brimmed hat and his coat and took himself inside the doors, his boots clapping away over the flagstones as he disappeared. The rovers gripped their weapons while the people in the street gathered to watch the unfolding of events. They clamoured about as if some medicine show had pitched its tent and promised acts of miracle. Batman re-emerged bearing his hat in his hand. He was accompanied by Sergeant Bickle who, on seeing the mob of captives, twitched his moustache and stood off as if they were diseased. The clansfolk gazed on him with near identical disdain.

  You’ve gone and done it, he said. By God you have.

  He called inside the double doors and two more soldiers in misused livery stepped onto the street. They stared at the women’s bare breasts.

  Bickle wiped his sweaty neck. How many you got?

  Eleven.

  Eleven. Well I’ll be damned. He waved at the lockup, a gesture of dismissal. I aint got nowheres to keep that many.

  I’m contracted to collar the bastards, said Batman, or shoot them. So as you can see, Sergeant, my part is played. Their lodgings dont much concern me.

  Plenty round here would see the mongrels hang, said Bickle.

  Batman looked at him. Then hang em.

  The gathered crowd roared in approval.

  They aint worth a length of rope, cried one.

  Said another: We burn heathens, dont we?

  They ought to be speared just how they speared Mrs. Gough and her tots.