Rincewind and the Redskins – 7
Warning: this is necessarily darker than the preceding chapters (for plot reasons), but get through the not-nice bit and there's a big dollop of Rincewind and another old friend to look forward to.
The cart bumped across the uneven prairie, swaying gently and rhythmically in the light breeze, cutting a swathe through the tall grass. Its driver hummed a song as he drove on, a man at peace with the world and totally happy in his occupation.
How – ow – wondaland! , where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain
And the wind comes right behind the rain…..
He saw the rising smoke, and frowned. It was too irregular, too black, to be any sort of smoke signal, unless it conveyed the most basic message of all – {{Help! My tepee's on fire!}}
He checked the grass. No, still green and wet. No risk of a prairie-fire, not yet. Too early in the season. But somebody was in trouble… he turned the horses towards the smoke and drove on.
_________________________________________-
The reason for the smoke was now a long way rimwards, making its way back to the army column.
"A good day's fighting, Captain Quirke, You are to be congratulated." said Colonel Rjuister.
"Thank you, sir." Quirke said, happy in the praise. Like Rjuister, Quirke could reckon his ancestry back to an Ankh-Morpork family. Remote cousins of his, in fact, served in the City Watch and the Regiments. Bullying, cruelty, malice and narrow-mindedness were Quirke family traits, as was a willingness to sacrifice others to their ambition and advancement.
"I'm sorry about Lieutenant Gibson, sir. I'm sure I can find a punishment detail for him"
The Colonel waved it off.
"A mere detail. I hope he can overcome his squeamishness for the greater battle ahead!"
Gibson, a newly-commissioned junior officer, coloured slightly. Behind them, a trooper snickered quietly.
Gibson felt like he wanted to die. Today had been the worst day of his life so far…
It had all began when the Scalbie scouts had reported an Indian village on the move, seeking to join the big gathering at the Little Big Horn. Quirke had sent a rider to Rjuister to report contact made, requesting permission to attack. Within half an hour, the General himself had ridden up with a small escort.
And the Regimental Band? Quirke wondered.
"I want to be a part of this, Captain Quirke. History is being made here! We are making these lands clean and safe for white settlers! It is the historical imperative!"
"Very good, sir" Quirke dutifully replied. The Scalbies, issued blue cavalry jackets to mark them down as loyal Indians who had accepted the New Order, fanned out in front.
"You will of course deploy your company as you see fit, Captain. I'm merely accompanying." Rjuister said, generously. Quirke nodded acknowledgement, and ordered his squadrons into line abreast. They trotted after the Indians until they saw it.
A loose caravan of Indians, their ponies each trailing a travois dragging after it, with their worldly goods wrapped up in buffalo skins tied to the trailing wooden frames.
Rjuister slapped his hand on his thigh with excitement.
Quirke, his mouth suddenly dry, ordered his bugler to sound the charge.
A hundred or so blue-coated cavalrymen unsheathed their sabres and spurred their horses on. Behind them, Rjuister nodded at the bandsmen…
As the flutes and drums launched into the regimental march Barely Owin', (1) the Indians realised the danger they were in. A scant thirty or so mounted warriors tried to put themselves in between the charging cavalrymen and the convoy of women, children and the old. A couple of Indians had elderly crossbows and sought to engage. Others had bows. Most of the shots went wide, but a trooper fell to earth with a final grunt.
I owe for my bread and the clothes that I wear,
And I owe to the barber for cutting my hair,
The wage that I get doesn't go very far,
I'm tempted to half-inch the charity jar!
I fear that Death's the man I'll see
When the final bill, he'll take from me,
And when these debts are lifted from me,
Then I shall barely owin' be!
The fight was brief and bloody and the Indian warriors were soon overcome. A couple of survivors attempted to run to the east, but were pursued by a half-squadron of bluecoats. A deathly still silence fell on the scene.
"Sir?" Quirke asked.
Rjuister looked as if he were in ecstacy.
"Kill them all! All!" he shouted.
"The women? Even the children? "
"I said all, Captain! Nits make lice!"
Young Lieutenant Gibson, his sabre still bloody after fighting one of the warriors, turned away, sickened. Quirke, sensing an opportunity for malice and making himself look good, called him over.
"Order your men, lieutenant. You have been given orders."
"I will not. Sir."
Gibson saluted, and rode away, ignoring Quirke's furiously shouted orders for him to return. At least a few of his men followed him. But the rest… he knew the rest would ignore his order for them to stop, seeing that he had just had his authority undermined by his captain and colonel. But at least he could keep his own soul clean.
Eventually nothing stirred. Many troopers rode away with trophies. They'd heard Indians took scalps. And had indulged in a little pre-emptive atrocity. They drove away the captured horses and ponies, and left only bodies and flames. (2)
The Scalbie scouts, who had been looting the wrecked travoises for useful and valuable things, looked at each other and nodded. Some things sicken even scavengers. They had agreed on a course of action.
And two sets of frightened eyes looked out from the tall grass.
___________________________________________-
Anana Ogg looked up from the half-gourd of water she was concentrating on.
"Just bung your hand here, will you? I could do with better reception!"
Recognising that the old medicine woman was scrying, and glad to discharge a little of the raw magic stirring in him, Rincewind obliged. He rested a hand on the bowl and felt magic pulse out into it.
"See if I can find out what those white buggers are doing – present company excepted, of course. Find out how near they are. That's better! "
She and Rincewind watched the pictures in the dark water.
He watched her eyes narrow and her face darken as the massacre unfolded itself.
"Ugggh" said Rincewind.
"Even the KIDDIES!" she blazed. "What did they ever do to anyone? I tell you, [[He-Who-Washes-The-Wind}}, that's not how Indians fight! Kill the men, yes, that's allowed in a fair fight, torture anyone you capture – I'm not saying that's right or wrong, it's just our way – but you give their women a chance, right? Tell them their men are dead, if you've got any brains you'll accept that and join our tribe, plenty brave warriors looking out for new wives. And you take their papooses and kiddies in and bring them up as your own! Good sense, that, more warriors and squaws, as well as it bein' the decent thing to do! But this! Is this how white men fight, mr Wizard?"
"Yes. With these white men."
She nodded.
"I'm off to tell the Bull!"
She stomped off, quivering with anger, full of purpose and intent, leaving Rincewind wondering what sort of bloodthirsty savage maniacs he was about to confront this time. At least when he did, he had an entire Indian nation behind him…
________________________________________-
The man in the cart took one look at the scene, retched, and looked for somewhere to vomit. There were too many bodies to bury, and in any case, he knew the Plains Indians practiced air-burial. (3) Maybe it was best to just leave them and move on… he muttered a general prayer in the direction of any Gods that might be listening, and returned to his cart.
The grass rustled to his left, making him jump. Then he realised it was a pair of Indian children, a boy and girl about eight and ten, terrified, faces wet with tears. But they seemed in no fear of him.
"Oh hell." he said. He also said: {{Get in the cart and stay out of sight. If we see white soldiers, I'll do the talking, OK?}}
With his new cargo, the trader snapped the whip and set off again, his cart dwindling to a dot on the wide grassy plain.
_____________________________________________---
Lieutenant Gibson was angry. The anger replaced the helpless impotent uselessness of the afternoon.
"So I failed to obey orders. Very well, then, sir. Take me before the General. Court-martial me."
He glared at Quirke, hoping he had the strength to face him down and call his bluff. At a court-martial, the circumstances of his refusal to obey orders would come out. And it wouldn't look good for Quirke. Or Rjuister.
He had the satisfaction of watching Quirke back down, eyes uncertain. Gibson felt nothing more would be said of his refusal to obey an illegal order. He saluted, about-turned and left the command tent.
Major Reno, no friend of Rjuister or Quirke, met him Gibson explained the afternoon's events. Reno nodded.
"Watch your back. Never let Quirke get behind you in a skirmish. You could sink him. He knows it. I'll try to get you transferred to my command where you'll be safest."
"Will the Colonel wear it?"
Reno grinned.
"The colonel is even as we speak being roasted by the General. The real General. So he'll have more on his mind than a naughty subaltern. I think you'll find, in the Seventh, all the officers Rjuister can't stand end up being posted to my company. I look forward to seeing you there!"
The Major tipped his hat, and walked off.
________________________________________--
The cart lumbered on towards the distant pattern of spiralling smoke from many fires that marked the main Indian camp. He wasn't surprised to find himself intercepted by a group of mounted and warpainted braves.
As he was known here, he prided himself that he would be recognised and allowed to carry on.
At least, he hoped he would be recognised and allowed to carry on. After the massacre, white faces were going to be in low regard around here.
The warriors crowded round, looking unfriendly, lance-points levelled to his chest. The carter raised his right hand, palm out, in the universal gesture for "Peace" and said {{Take me to the chiefs. I have news for them. It will grieve them, but they should hear truth spoken}}
And then the two Indian children poked their heads out of the back . A rush of words followed. The warriors looked at each other. Then the lance-points dropped and the riders became an escort.
They led the cart and its driver to the heart of the camp, where he was indeed known. Anana Ogg took the two children into her care, and the cart's owner leapt down from the box to stretch himself, gratefully.
Regard the cart's driver. He is a white man, weatherbeaten by a life in the open air. He is small-to-medium built, in frontiersman's fringed buckskins and a beaverskin cap with a somewhat moth-eaten tail dangling down at the back. He has a furtive, somewhat rat-like expression.
He was instantly recognised by One-Man-Bucket, who forced his way to the front of the crowd.
"Oi, you bastard!" he roared. "I want a word with you about this bloody firewater you sold me!"
"Oh, yeah?" said the ratlike one. "What's wrong with it, chief?"
"I'll tell you what's bloody wrong with it! It's water, yes, but there's no bloody fire! I bin conned!"
"There's some alcohol in there, chief. Best homeopathic sipping whiskey!" (4)
Rincewind watched, recognising something oddly familiar.
Chief Bear strode up. He was holding a crossbow. He did not look amused.
{{Man-who-sells-crossbow-that-fire-backwards!}} he said, holding it up as if it were a six-week dead fish.
"Got more of them in the cart for you, chiefy!" the trader said, mistaking the Indian's intent. "I'll take Klatchian dollars, Boor rand, Ankh-Morpork dollars if you got 'em, but no Hersheban dong, any gold you might have lying around, for this cartload of crossbows and tomahawks, come and get'em! Firewater for after the battle! Guaranteed vision quest with every bottle!"
Chief Bull thrust the crossbow at One-Man-Bucket. He turned it over and read:
"Hines Brothers, Ankh-Morpork. Manufactured 1860. The sticker underneath reads "UNSAFE FOR USE! CONDEMNED! Pratoria City Watch."
Bucket glared at the trader.
"Just what sort of crap are you trying to fob off on us, friend?"
The trader laughed, nervously. Rincewind couldn't hold it in any more. He stepped forward and said
"I'm betting, and I think it's a safe bet, your name is something like Skin-Meself-Alive-Over-Three-Agonising-Days Dibbler, am I not wrong?"
Skin- Meself- Alive Dibbler looked at Rincewind with respect.
"You wizards are getting better all the time, Arch-chancellor! Can I interest you in some mandrake root, got it fresh in?"
"No."
Rincewind sighed. Firewater with no fire, crossbows that either fired backwards and killed the man behind you, or else were so old and badly maintained that they disintegrated on cocking the string… classic Dibbler goods, wherever in the world you went.
But from what he'd seen in the scrying water, these people desperately needed better weapons. You might not want to invite Lakota Sioux round for Sunday lunch, but by the look of it, the people they were up against were even bigger bastards.
He sighed, and leant on Dibbler's cart, wondering what he could do to help… and then he glimpsed Coyote, winking at him from those glowing yellow eyes.
Try a change spell, Rinso! he heard inside his head.
Rincewind felt the magic surge up… he tried to visualise a cart full of clapped out condemned weaponry and bottles of flavoured water. What if the world and the possibilities inherent in it changed, just subtly, and just so far as to renew those crossbows and make them good as new… and while we're at it, a crate or two of Winkles' Old Peculiar would be good… and with all this magic slurping about, let's go for the best, a crate or two of the Macarbre…
Rincewind felt multicolour lights going off in his head. He spoke an unbidden syllable or two. The trader's cart was surrounded with an octarine glow.
"Bloody Norah!" he heard Dibbler say.
As the octarine glow faded, and Rincewind swayed with the effort and the orgasmic elation of performing real magic – or was the magic of the totem pole working through him? – Dibbler reached into the back of his cart. In one hand he pulled out a gleaming, new, perfectly functioning, crossbow. In the other was a bottle of the finest Bearhugger's Macabre Export.
He looked at both, one and then the other, disbelievingly.
Chief Bull pulled the crossbow from his hand, derisively throwing away the old broken-down model. One-Man-Bucket leapt forward and appropriated the whiskey, swiftly breaking the foil and uncorking it. He took a deep swig, wiped his mouth, and then threw back his head in a whooping Lakota ululation of pure joy.
Chief Bull and Dibbler looked into the back of the cart.
"Bloody hell! They're all like this!" Dibbler exclaimed.
He then assumed a calculating expression and looked at Bull.
"Going to have to charge you more? Premium stock?"
The Bull levelled the crossbow at him and cocked it. Dibbler swiftly allowed himself to be haggled downwards.
"OK, Chief, the usual price. And that's skinnin' meself alive painfully."
The Bull then registered something else.
{{All firewater, and I MEAN all firewater, is to be stored in a safe place under armed guard till after the battle! I mean it! Nobody gets to commune with the Newt God Pistasarat until we've won! Victory feast, OK? Apart from you, Bucket, you've earned it.}}
Later on, Rincewind and Dibbler found themselves eating dinner together from the trader's store of white man's food, to which the wizard added some gratefully received potatoes. And to Rincewind's gratification, there were bottles of Turbot's Old Peculiar. He'd never been a whiskey man. He studied the label closely, It looked old, archaic, a design from a long time ago. But probably current for 1903, he thought. He wondered where the beer and whiskey had come from. Ponder Stibbons would have a lot of alternative ideas on that: maybe the sheer power of the magic had teleported it from the nearest place where whiskey and beer could be found.
"Thanks." Dibbler said, sincerely. "I could still have talked my way out of it, but I'm not ungrateful for the help!"
Afte dinner, women of the tribe shyly presented themselves and showed off what to Rincewind's eyes were rather good native tapestries, picked out in beadwork and coloured thread, on some sort of soft supple leather. Dibbler was, it seemed, ready to accept the best in payment for a cartload of weapons.
"Always a market for these back at the fort" he reflected. Rincewind studied one. It was realy quite attractive, in its way. The leather was incredibly soft and supple and glowed a coppery-red colour. There were a couple of brown irregular patches on it, with a little knobbly bit in the centre of each, but then they'd been expertly worked into the design.
"Some sort of pigskin?" he asked Dibbler.
The trader looked shifty.
"Yeeaah.. some of the tribes do refer to Long Pig. It's not unknown."
"I've just not seen any pigs round here."
"Best if you just call it Long Pig."
Rincewind nodded, and set the tapestry on top of a pile of similar examples of needlework.
Then he recognised the girl: she'd been there on that first day, when that dried up old harridan had pulled his robes open and inspected him critically. She smiled at him.
"The Ladies' Sewing Circle?"
Dibbler nodded.
Rincewind went pale as his gibbering mind made the necessary association. He lifted the tapestry and held it to his chest, noting where the two brown irregularities in what he forced himself to call the leather fell, in relation to his own torso. The girl smiled and nodded.
{{You've worked it out, then?}} she said.
Rincewind nodded back.
"Mr Dibbler, I don't normally drink whiskey, but?"
"Help yourself" the trader nodded.
Rincewind helped himself. He found in circumstances like this, it helped.
(1) On Roundworld, the Irish air Garryowen, adopted by Army regiments the world over as a march. The British Light Brigade rode to their doom at Balaclava with the band playing this tune. It was, and remains, the regimental march of the US Army's Seventh Cavalry, even after Little Big Horn. Despite its association with two of the world's best-known military disasters and most incompetent generals. (Cardigan and Custer).
(2) At the Battle of Washita River in 1873, George Armstrong Custer is reported to have ordered the destruction of an Indian village - although he did relent and take some prisoners. The film Little Big Man unfairly attributes a different massacre to Custer – the Sand Creek massacre of 1864, where a rabid Indian-hating loony called Colonel Chivington ordered total destruction of a Cheyenne village and the massacre of every living Indian in it. The slogan "Nits make Lice!" is attributed to Chivington. As popular story and a well-known film have transferred Chivington's guilt to Custer, I've used it here as a plot device to establish that Rjuister, like his rust forbears, is not a nice chap to know.
(3) The Plains Indians buried their dead in vultures, bald eagles and other scavenging birds.
(4) As has been pointed out elsewhere, homeopathic treatments rely on dilution for efficiency – the more dilute the solution, the stronger the effect. Dibblers have reckoned, therefore, that just being in the same room with a bottle of Homeopathic Sipping Whiskey should get you incapably drunk.