Cleopatra and Amanirenas have discovered the Brood of Apep, a clutch of old “dragon eggs”!
33 BC
The head of a sandstone python reared high as a giraffe from the desert floor. Although centuries of wind and entropy had dulled the fangs in its open maw, the sculpture’s unblinking glare nonetheless sent a chill slithering up Amanirenas’s spine despite the balminess of early evening. If the old legends had spoken the truth, this idol represented the likeness of Apep, the giant serpent of chaos that lorded over the underworld and attacked the sun god Ra every night. And the earthen edifice that mounted the hill behind it was its shrine.
How could our ancestors have venerated such a monster? Amanirenas thought. Even allowing the ruined temple dated to the time when both the people of Kush and Kemet roamed the grasslands that had become the desert around them, she could not fathom that they worshiped the one being both cultures now considered the most malevolent in their whole pantheon. There had to have been a misunderstanding, or a meaning that her people and the Kemetians had forgotten over millennia. But what could it be?
Cleopatra, for her part, pouted her lip as she regarded the ruin behind the megalithic statue. “I was expecting something bigger, more magnificent.”
“Both our ancestors were nomads when they built this, remember?” Amanirenas said. “They only had so much time in their wandering lives to build it. What were you expecting, Cleo, something like your Khufu’s great pyramid?”
“Fair enough. I only hope the treasure turns out to be worth our trip.”
Princesses Cleopatra and Amanirenas must flee hostile Libyan tribesmen out in the Egyptian desert!
54 BC
The sun burned white hot from its zenith in the sky, yet the cool wind brushing past Cleopatra provided refreshing opposition to its baking wrath, even if the wind did blow dust into her eyes. She flipped the reins that were tied around her waist to keep her two horses galloping at top speed even as they maneuvered between the boulders strewn over the barren plain. The strength of the animals pulling on the reins while she gripped them was all that kept her stable in her chariot despite its constant shaking and bouncing.
Her friend Amanirenas was quickly closing the distance between them from behind. The way the Kushite princess’s horses, both of which she had brought with her from her homeland far up the Nile, were gaining ground, it would only be moments before she wrested the lead from her Kemetian counterpart. Already she had drawn close enough that, even through the billowing clouds of dust, Cleopatra could make out the details of her gold, carnelian, and ivory jewelry, including the twin cobras that reared on her gold skullcap crown. It had to be conceded, what they said about the Kushites’ horses was true. They really were among the fastest in the world.
Cover design for my alternate history novella Carthage Atlantica
These are the first two chapters from my newest novella, Carthage Atlantica, an alternate-history story about ancient Carthaginians from North Africa discovering North America (“Atlantis”) in 200 BC. You can purchase the full novella on Amazon.
The deckhouse door slammed open as the navigator barged in, his russet-brown face soaked with sweat. “Baal-Hammon be praised, we’ve sighted land at last!”
Isceradin’s cup of wine slipped down from his grasp as he took in the sailor’s words. It took his wife Arishat’s lightning reflexes to catch it before it could shatter on the floor. Not that he would miss it too much if it did spill and break, since the liquid was well over halfway to turning into vinegar at this point. Another week at sea, and they would have nothing left to drink unless they figured out how to turn seawater fresh.
Baal-Hammon be praised, indeed.
Gisco, the stout old captain, rose from his bench and laid both hands on the navigator’s shoulder. “Are you sure you haven’t gone mad?”
“You should see for yourself, Captain,” the navigator said. “One could mistake it for nothing else!”
Little Nikkal tugged on Isceradin’s arm, her eyes gleaming with innocence and wonder. “Did they really say they’ve found land, Abba?”
He gave his daughter’s crown of curly black hair a playful rub. “We can only hope so. Let’s find out for ourselves.”
Together, Isceradin and his family followed the captain and navigator out of the deckhouse to the bow of the galley and squinted at the western horizon. It first appeared as a green line on top of the dark blue sea that grew thicker with every rhythm of the drivers’ drumming. From underneath the drumming and the sailors’ chanted shanties, there rose the frantic cawing of distant seagulls.
“You see, beloved? I told you the gods would always be at our side,” Arishat said.
“Either that, or fate has been kinder to us than usual,” Isceradin said.
He wrapped his arms around his wife’s waist and pecked the black tattooed lines on her mahogany-skinned cheek with his lips. She repaid the favor, and then their mouths locked together in an embrace tighter than the one they made with their arms. Although they had been wed for eighteen years, Isceradin had been away at the war with Rome for fifteen of those years, so Isceradin had come to savor every moment of affection like this.
“Yuck, Abba and Amma!” Nikkal cried out with her tongue sticking out.
Isceradin withdrew from the kiss with a sheepish grin. “Sorry, little one, we forgot you were watching.”
Gisco slapped Isceradin’s shoulder with a laugh. “The girl’s got to find out about those things sooner or later, my Iberian friend. And I can’t say I blame you, either. It’s a good occasion to get another taste of that sweet, dark Carthaginian flesh, isn’t it?”
The captain winked with a jab of his elbow into Isceradin’s ribs. For his part, Isceradin’s only reply was a low groan. No matter how much he considered himself a citizen of Carthage, having wetted his blade with Roman blood many times under none other than Hannibal Barca himself, Carthage would never let him forget his family’s Iberian roots. Not that he could hide them, either. Given his light tan complexion and wavy brown hair, most people would sooner confuse him with a Latin or Greek than a typical Carthaginian from Africa. For that reason, he would always appear a foreigner among his own countrymen.
Nikkal walked up to the ship’s gunwale and jumped to get a better look at the approaching landmass. “What are we going to call this place, Captain?”
“Ever heard of the story of Atlantis, young one?” Gisco answered. “This Greek philosopher named Plato wrote about it a long time ago. He said they lived on a continent in the middle of this very ocean before the god Baal-Saphon—whom the Greeks call Poseidon—sank it to punish them for their greed. So, maybe we’ll call it Atlantis in honor of that?”
“What if there are people living there?” Arishat asked. “They might have a name for it already.”
The captain held his hand over his eyes as he scanned the coastline. “If there’s people over there, I don’t see any sign of them. Not even one trail of campfire smoke coming from the trees. But, even if they were, it would probably take a while to learn their language so we could ask them. Learning languages is never quick, you know. So, we’ve got to call the place something until then.”
Isceradin shrugged. “Atlantis is as good a name as any, I suppose. Though, in the end, it’ll be up to the Sophets to decide.”
“Then I’ll pitch it to them once we reach land.”
The drivers sped up the pace of their drumming, causing the ship to accelerate towards the awaiting shore. It was the foremost of a fleet of seventy that cut westward through the sea, the violet image of the fertility goddess Tanit dancing with outspread arms on their billowing sails. Together, their drumming, chanting, and the splashing of oars merged into a cacophony as festive as any banquet back in Carthage.
When the water beneath them had faded from dark to light blue closer to the coast, all the fleet wheeled around so that their sterns faced land before backing up. Each jolted as their keels began slicing through the alabaster beach. Sailors threw down the gangplanks, and everyone aboard the vessels filed down to the sand whooping and praising Baal-Hammon and the other gods of Carthage for their merciful fortune.
From the largest and grandest of the fleet strutted Absalon and Himilco, both of whom the Senate of Carthage had appointed as Sophets to govern this new colony. Numidian youths kept the two elders cool with ostrich-plumed fans while spearmen in bronze breastplates marched before and behind them. Once the trumpets had summoned all the people onto the beach, they arranged themselves into an audience encircling the Sophets like spectators at a Greek theater.
Absalon, after taking a deep inhale of the salty air through his nostrils, was the first to speak. “My people, once citizens and subjects of Carthage, none of us can overestimate the gratitude we owe our gods for our safe passage here. Many back home said we could not make it to the end of the western ocean alive, and yet here we are, without having suffered even one casualty to the best of our knowledge.”
“And yet, our journey has only begun,” Himilco said. “We have much work to do. We have land to clear, crops to grow, and a city to build. We trust that, with all our hard work, we can claim this land for Carthage and bring forth a new age of power and prosperity for our civilization. May Baal-Hammon and all the gods continue to watch over us!”
A Gallic servant handed the pair the banner of Carthage, which hung from a mast-like cross and displayed the icon of Tanit in purple, and they planted it into the sand together. All in the audience thundered with applause.
“But first, we must learn more about this new world we’ve landed on,” Absalon said. “Who among you offers to scout for us?”
From within the crowd, Isceradin raised his hand. “I’ll lead a party inland until sundown. We’ll take note of everything this country has to offer, and maybe see if there are any human inhabitants. Then we’ll make our way back.”
Nikkal pulled at his hand. “But what if you run into trouble, Abba?”
Isceradin held his daughter up in his arms and squeezed her with loving firmness. “Then they’ll send more men to rescue us if things get too bad. But don’t you worry, if the gods have kept us alive across a whole ocean, they shouldn’t let us down here on this new land either.”
Beyond the far side of the beach, the thick greenery of deciduous trees such as oak, hickory, and chestnut rose as a towering wall. There was no telling what—or who—awaited in the shadowy depths of the forest. And, in truth, the gods had let Carthage down before. They wouldn’t have lost two wars with Rome had that not been so, despite all the sacrifices the priests had made—including the lives of dozens of noble-born children. But then, who had the heart to trouble their own child with such worry?
Isceradin gave his wife and daughter another kiss each. “If I don’t come back before sundown, keep praying for me. I’ll need all the blessings I can get.”
Chapter Two
It was not the first time Phameas had ventured into a forest. He, Isceradin, and most of the men who now made up their troop had trudged through more of that than he cared for when they were marching through northern Iberia and Gaul on their way to Rome. The muggy summertime warmth, the brushing of foliage against his face and limbs, and all the squealing mosquitoes which kept pelting his skin with itching dark bumps, were like unpleasant memories that had come back to haunt him after almost twenty years.
Back in Europe, they had to keep constant watch for packs of ravenous wolves, giant brown bears, and most of all the local Gauls, those white-skinned barbarians who were always skulking around for heads to lop off with their broadswords and claim as trophies to mount on their huts’ walls. Did such savage beasts and men lurk in the darkness beneath the woodland canopy here as well? Or maybe even worse? What was the Senate back in Carthage thinking when they sent men to this faraway place without knowing what even lay in wait?
Then again, perhaps that was the whole point of exploration. When Dido and her Phoenician expedition came to Africa to establish the trading colony that would become Carthage six centuries ago, they would have undertaken similar risks. And, it had to be admitted, back in those days, it was the very native Africans from whom Phameas and most other Carthaginians were descended that those Phoenician colonists had to fear.
So far, an hour had passed since the scouting party first penetrated the forest from the beach. Other than the occasional scurrying small creature or fluttering bird, they had yet to spot anything of interest. If nothing else, the profusion of trees here would make plentiful timber for building the new colony. Phameas had overheard some suggesting the name Atlantis, after the legendary continent that had sunk under the sea, but he would have preferred something that didn’t imply an eventual doomsday. On the other hand, “New Carthage” had already been given to a colony set up on the southern Iberian coast, and he’d be hard pressed to think of something more imaginative himself.
Another mosquito buzzed too close to Phameas’s neck for comfort. He slapped it down into a tiny pulp. “This remind you of home, Iberian?”
Isceradin snorted. “For the last time, my family is from the southern part of the peninsula, near New Carthage. It’s scrubland over there, not dense forest like this. You of all men should know that, Phameas.”
“Sorry, then, my officer. It’s only that I’m still getting used to the thought of you bedding my sister.”
“Really? You’ve had eighteen years to ‘get used to it’. And, not to boast, but she couldn’t be better off nowadays. If there really are any natives here, she’ll make quite a killing selling her textiles to them.”
“If they have anything worthy to buy them with.”
An unpleasant whiff slithered into Phameas’s nose. It was the stench of decayed flesh, like a body that lain on the battlefield for too long. Something must have died nearby. He unsheathed his falcata and probed the undergrowth with it, following the smell the way a bloodhound might.
Something cracked under his sandal. Bone. Right there, where the rotting stink was strongest, a whole human skeleton lay. Blood and scraps of flesh were still clinging to the remains, and the skull had cracked in half to reveal moldy, wrinkled fragments of brain tissue. Even after all the Romans and others he’d mutilated as a soldier of Carthage, Phameas recoiled from the sight with a yelp, nausea pouring into his insides.
“We’ve got to go back!” he said. “I’m not walking around here any longer!”
The other scouts huddled close to him, gasping and stuttering with horror as they looked upon the morbid remains. Even Isceradin’s face blanched a shade paler than usual. With a grimace, the Iberian knelt over the bones and picked up a wooden stick that lay near the skull. Hafted to it was a flint point stained dark red with dried blood.
“There are people in this land, we know that from this,” Isceradin said. “But it appears they’re still using stone tools.”
“That might not be too bad for us,” one of the other soldiers said. “It means that, if we get into trouble with them, we can hit them harder than they hit us.”
“But we don’t want to get into trouble with them,” Phameas said. “We ought to head back and stay away from those savages. I knew coming here was a bad idea!”
Isceradin held his palm out. “Hold on, we don’t know for sure how this man died. He might have been a criminal they put to death. Even if he’s a war casualty, one side might have the nobler cause. We can’t assume they’re all savages to be avoided.”
“Maybe, but I still wouldn’t want to mess with them. I say again, we should get back to camp. All those in favor?”
Phameas and almost everyone else in the party but Isceradin raised their hands, waving them about.
With a shake of his head, the Iberian muttered something in his native language. “Fair enough if that’s how you all vote. But we could’ve pressed on to find fresh water, at least.”
As the party hiked over the tracks their sandals had already left in the damp and spongy earth, the forest interior grew darker, and not only because the sunbeams arrowing through the canopy had dimmed with time’s passage. If the tribes here were anything like the Gauls, or even those Iberians who prowled the peninsula beyond the areas under Carthaginian influence, they would be worse than the most rabid wolves. Even the more civilized nations could be treacherous, the Romans being the exemplar par excellence of that. It was an experience Phameas had hoped to have left behind in the past.
A whistling cry pierced the calm within the forest. All the Carthaginians halted. Phameas’s heart pounded like a stampede of feral horses across the grasslands of Numidia back in Africa, the sweat on his brow chillier than a breeze among the Alps. Ahead of him, leaves in the undergrowth rustled, with shadows flashing between the trees and bushes.
From the cover of the brush emerged men in deerskin loincloths and trousers. Their muscular, stocky bodies were of a bronze hue, perhaps a little darker than Isceradin, the Iberian, but much less so than the Carthaginians proper, with their faces and limbs striped with tattooed black lines. Their straight black hair was shorn into crests with feathers attached to them, and many had pieces of bone or ivory piercing their noses and ears. Gripping spears tipped with flint points, these strange men stared at the Carthaginian party with narrowed eyes.
Phameas held his empty hands up in a gesture of surrender. “We won’t hurt you, see? Please, I beg you, have mercy on us…”
The local warriors blinked at one another, whispering in a language Phameas had never heard in his life.
“I doubt they know a word of Carthaginian,” Isceradin said.
“Fair enough,” Phameas said.
He patted himself on his breastplate of toughened linen while looking into the eyes of the native man nearest him. “Phameas. My name is Phameas.”
The warrior squinted at him. “Fah-me-us?”
“Yes, Phameas!” Phameas tapped his correspondent on the shoulder. “And you?”
“Huh, ‘and you’?” The native had less luck pronouncing the Carthaginian right.
Isceradin shook his head. “He wouldn’t know what ‘and you’ means yet, Phameas.”
The foremost of the native troop, a tall man with a necklace of bear claws and teeth, pointed his finger up with a nod, as if he had figured something out. He then tapped his own breast. “Sukamek.”
“Sue-ka-meck,” Isceradin repeated while pointing to the man.
The one who called himself Sukamek nodded with a smile, and then pointed back to the Iberian.
Isceradin replied with his own name and hand to his breastplate. He then drew an invisible circle that, from their point of view, would include the whole Carthaginian troop. “Carthaginians.”
“Carthaginians,” Sukamek repeated. He then drew a similar circle around his own companions. “Inu’naabe.”
“In-new-knob-bay?” Phameas recited.
The other Inu’naabe men snickered among themselves, but Sukamek gave Phameas an affirming nod while touching his shoulder. “Phameas.”
It warmed Phameas inside to see that the native had gotten his name right. Assuming he understood it to be a name, of course. Regardless, Phameas showed his gratitude by touching Sukamek in turn while saying his name the best he could. This time, not one of the Inu’naabe even so much as sneered or tittered.
These strange locals, as primitive as their attire and weaponry may have appeared, didn’t seem like such a bad lot after all. There were civilized men out there who could be far less welcoming than them.
Sukamek turned to face the forest behind his band and waved his hand toward it, a clear signal requesting that they follow him.
“I think he’s inviting us to his village, or wherever they live,” Isceradin said. “It can’t hurt to pay them a quick visit before sundown.”
“If you say so,” Phameas said. “They do seem the hospitable sort.”
Even so, he had not forgotten the spear they had found near the rotting skeleton. Or how, with its flint point, it so closely resembled the spears the Inu’naabe warriors carried.
The archaeologist Latonya Coleman must fend off a pack of hungry hyenas in the plains of the Ivory Coast!
Latonya Coleman lifted her eyes from the yellowed parchment map in her hands to gaze through the jeep window. The grassy plains of the northern Ivory Coast spread beyond her, reaching all the way to the horizon beneath a gold sky. Every so often, she spotted herds of wildlife cavorting through the tall grass, as well as the occasional cluster of thatch-roofed mud huts in the distance. Latonya wondered if any of her ancestors, before they were captured and shipped across the Atlantic in chains, would have called at least one of these little villages home centuries ago.
Like so many of her people, she had little if any way of knowing for sure. Even genetic tests were not always as reliable as their advertisers claimed.
She went back to studying the map, comparing it to the landscape in front of her eyes. So far, despite its medieval age and the stylized depictions of people, trees, and animals populating it, the old document of Malian origin had so far proven accurate regarding the position of settlements, waterholes, and other features of the region. In truth, it was a historical treasure no less priceless than the artifact Latonya had tucked in her knapsack. Once she was done with her mission, she would donate the map back to Timbuktu, where it belonged.
“We are coming as far as we can get,” the driver said with a thick Ivorian accent. “Any further and the road curves away from the ruins. Shall I accompany you to them, Mademoiselle Coleman?”
“No need for that,” Latonya replied. “I’d rather you stay here and guard the jeep.”
“Très bien, then. You stay safe out there. There might be predators about, or worse.”
“Which is why I always bring these beauties with me.”
With a proud smirk, Latonya pulled out both of her pistols from her thigh holsters and twirled them in her hands. The driver chuckled, more out of admiration than mockery.
After the jeep decelerated to a halt, Latonya hopped out and landed in grass as high as her waist. She scanned the surrounding savanna for any signs of life, human or animal. Given her line of work, she had to watch out for both, but even more so the former. Many men and women would be after what Latonya carried in her knapsack — and would kill for it. Some, she knew, already had.
Once Latonya was confident the coast was clear, she waded through the grass toward the hills on the horizon, holding the map out as she walked. If she read it correctly, it indicated that the ruins lay somewhere on the other side of the hills. She could already see a thin, finger-shaped silhouette sticking up from one of them like a monolithic marker.
Despite the waning evening temperature, it remained humid enough for perspiration to slather Latonya’s dark sienna-brown skin quickly, staining damp spots into her crop-top and shorts. Even the breezes that blew across the plains were too warm to provide any relief. As the sky darkened to deep red, the crickets and other nocturnal creatures began chirping and hooting songs of farewell to the sun and greetings to the rising moon. If there was anything that made Latonya feel slightly chilled at all, it was the knowledge that many of the savanna’s most infamous predators preferred to hunt at night.
An hour later, she reached the pillar on the hill. Though shaped like a slim cylindrical column, it had lines of glyphs chiseled down its sides like an Egyptian obelisk. It could have denoted the ancient city’s territorial limits, or maybe a milestone like those the Romans installed along their marvelously engineered roads to mark distances. Latonya turned on her phone flashlight and took several pictures of the inscriptions, which she would ask Scott to look at once she returned to their university. If anyone could help Latonya decipher them, it was her attentive boyfriend.
She unslung her knapsack and opened it for a moment to reveal the artifact within. “You’re almost home.”
A high-pitched whooping cry, almost like a laugh, shot a chill up Latonya’s spine. She unholstered her pistols, gripping the guns tight with cooling damp hands. Her heart thumped while the grass around her rustled and shook, parting in several places to make way for hunched doglike forms speeding toward her, laughing with predatory zeal.
They were spotted hyenas, the marauding wolves of Africa. Within moments, they surrounded her, their instinctive knack for herding and then attacking their prey playing out in front of her.
One of the beasts jumped at her with jaws open, baring sharp blood-stained fangs. She fired one pistol round into its mouth, dropping it to the ground. Another hyena lunged at her from the side. After sidestepping out of its reach, she swung her arm hard onto its skull, dazing it, and then finished it off with both guns. A third animal grabbed the cuff of her shorts with its teeth and pulled her until she kicked it off with the heel of her boot, losing a mouthful of cloth in the process.
More hyenas attacked, and Latonya banged more rounds at them. Even after she killed a few of the spotted monsters, they kept up their onslaught, forming a ring of snapping bloodthirsty jaws which tightened around their prey until they closed the space between her and them. They would not relent until they wore the fight out of her. Or until she ran out of rounds, whichever came sooner.
Latonya fired more double rounds into the circle of gnashing fangs. She then burst through the opening she had punched out and raced down the hill, the beasts giving chase. As Latonya ran, she shot back at the hyenas, whittling away at their numbers until only a small fraction of the original pack remained. It was at that point when they turned to retreat, their whooping and fierce yellow eyes giving way to panicked yelping as they disappeared into the distance.
Latonya leaned against an outcropping of rock to catch her breath and rest. She felt a pitted texture on the rock and shone her flashlight on it, illuminating more inscribed glyphs like those of the monolith on the hill. This time, the glyphs were on a stout pedestal that supported a tall sculpture, humanoid in body shape, but with a monstrous crocodile- or hippopotamus-like head that yawned with a mouth of gleaming iron teeth. She recognized it as one of two colossi that guarded an opening in a stone rampart that was as high as a giraffe’s head.
Latonya did not need to look at her map again to realize that she had found what she was looking for: the ancient city, known as the City of the Mother Goddess, which many dismissed as little more than legend. They’d done the same to Timbuktu, too, until it was excavated and dated to the 12th century. Yet the City of the Mother Goddess was standing right in front of her, ready to receive what had been unjustly stolen from it.
She drifted through the gateway in the city wall and entered a wide avenue overgrown with tall grass. Terraced stone platforms supported the eroded walls, columns, and sculptures that had once formed monumental buildings, presumably the homes and workhouses of the bygone people who had built and lived in this city centuries if not millennia ago. Latonya could not help but wonder if their descendants remained in the region, or if her own ancestors were among them. Maybe they were related to the local Senufo people?
As much as this ancient heritage needed protection, it could not hurt to study it some more. Study, not plunder.
The avenue ended before the steps leading up to the tallest structure within the city, a towering rotunda. It was capped with a stepped dome so enormous that it could put the Pantheon in Rome to shame. Columns inscribed with more of the cryptic glyphs framed a high portal in the edifice’s front wall, with the lintel bearing an image of the Mother Goddess herself in relief.
This had to be the temple she sought within the city, the Temple of the Mother Goddess.
Latonya passed through the portal. A silver moonlight beam shone down from a circular aperture at the peak of the domed rotunda, falling upon a pedestal in the middle of the interior. Switching on her flashlight, Latonya could make out the portraits of forgotten deities mounted on the inner walls, the gazes of their unblinking eyes converging on the central pedestal. She did not need to read the gold-flecked inscriptions on the pedestal to guess that something was supposed to lay upon it.
Walking up to the pedestal, Latonya opened her knapsack and pulled out the one object the hallowed temple needed to again be complete. In her hands, underneath the moonlight, glistened the gold flesh of the Mother Goddess, her arms cradling a swollen stomach bearing the world and all its inhabitants, her onyx eyes twinkling with love for what she would bring into existence. Looking down at the Goddess’s plump face and full-lipped smile, Latonya thought it resembled her own mother.
A tear crept into her eye. “Welcome home, Mother Goddess,” she said as she placed the gold idol onto the pedestal. After it landed with the gentle clink of metal touching stone, the click of a cocked gun followed. Below the ends of her braids, the tiny hairs on the back of Latonya’s neck prickled.
Another woman stepped into the temple, her high-heeled boots clipping on the mossy stone floor. A khaki jacket and trousers hugged her slender, barely tanned figure, with wheat-yellow hair flowing down from beneath her wide-brimmed hat. Her eyes blazed like sapphire flames as she pointed her revolver at Latonya, her thin lips curling into a sneer.
Karen Cunningham, an English socialite and heiress who is my archaeologist heroine Latonya Coleman’s nemesis.
“Well, well, if it isn’t Latonya Coleman, the ‘Tomb Savior’, at last,” Karen Cunningham spoke, her accent posh English. “I must admit, my swarthy old friend, you’re jolly good at stealing things from me, whether that be priceless artifacts…or men.”
Latonya bared her teeth in a snarl. “For your information, Scott was never your man. And neither were any of those artifacts. Certainly not this one. I’m putting it back where it belongs!”
“I admire your commitment to defending people’s heritages, Miss Coleman, I really do. But the people who made that old idol don’t even exist anymore. In which case, I’d say it’s ripe for the taking. You know how it goes: hand it back to me, along with the map, and nobody gets hurt.”
Latonya whipped out both of her pistols and aimed them at Karen’s head. “You’ll have to try harder than that!”
“Very well. If anything can talk louder than gunshots, it’s money. How about my father and I personally fund every expedition you’ll ever go on? As you know, we’ve plenty to spare.”
Though Latonya still had her guns drawn, the tension in her arm muscles relaxed. Funding for her archaeological endeavors had never been easy to come by, and then there was rent and other expenses she needed to juggle back home. She needed every cent she could collect, wherever it came from. Furthermore, the Cunningham family had gathered as much esteem for their philanthropy as they had their business success. Connecting with them could benefit Latonya’s department in more ways than simple finances.
The Mother Goddess watched from the pedestal which Latonya had placed her. Was protecting the idol worth it if it flew in the way of riches and prestige? Was it even worth having a billionaire’s pampered daughter shoot at you, especially right after escaping a pack of ravenous hyenas? What was it worth, anyway? Maybe the old hunk of gold did deserve to collect dust somewhere in an English manor, little more than yet another piece of exotic décor. Like so many other treasures pillaged from the peoples of the world, being reduced to trophies and tokens of First World domination.
The glint of determination and reignited fury returned to Latonya’s eyes. “No matter what price you name, no matter what pain you inflict upon me, I will never let you steal any people’s heritage,” she said forcefully. “People like you and your family have raped and robbed the world for far too long, and the world still bleeds from it. Why, families like yours owe almost their entire fortune to the blood and sweat of the Global South, and that’s without accounting for all the ancient treasures they like to ‘collect’ for their own vanity. Well, sorry, Karen Cunningham, but other people’s heritages are not yours to exploit. And I will pay with blood to defend them if I must!”
Karen’s sneer widened into a haughty grin as she tapped her finger on her revolver’s trigger. “So, a duel it is, then.”
Latonya smirked. “Unfortunately for you, I brought more guns than you did.”
She pulled both her pistol’s triggers. They did not fire, but instead clacked empty. She had used up their magazines on the hyenas!
With a mocking cackle, Karen fired her revolver. Latonya dove to the temple floor as the bullet grazed a red streak across her shoulder. She covered the wound with her hand as she rolled her body toward the shadows on the far side of the rotunda, escaping another of the Englishwoman’s shots. As Karen banged three more rounds at her, Latonya maneuvered all around the chamber, dodging not only bullets but also chunks of masonry that the missed shots broke off from the walls.
The last of these was part of a god’s bust which plummeted onto Latonya’s back, filling her with intense pain while cutting her skin with its sharp edges. Karen laughed with cruel delight as she strutted over and pinned Latonya against the floor with her boot while pointing the barrel down at her victim.
“Any last words, my Negroid nemesis?” Karen asked.
Latonya heard more laughter. It was not the Englishwoman’s, nor was it human at all. It was more like a shrill whooping echoing from outside the temple, accompanied by pairs of glowing dots rushing toward the entry portal.
“I think your gunshots have invited some company over for dinner, Miss Cunningham,” Latonya said. “Or supper, as you Brits like to call it.”
After the pressure from Karen’s boot relaxed, Latonya rolled herself free, sprang back onto her feet, and whacked Karen onto the floor with a swipe of her forearm. The heiress to the Cunningham corporate empire scrambled to get up while the hyenas were pouring into the temple, their eyes glowing yellow with infernal hunger over their glistening wet fangs. The beasts’ laughter gained a diabolical reverberance within the rotunda walls.
Karen’s complexion turned white as alabaster while she held up her gun with a trembling hand. When she pulled the trigger, it clacked empty as Latonya’s pistols had earlier. She could only whimper and scream as the horde of beasts descended upon her.
Latonya frantically dug within her knapsack for another magazine so she could shoot the hyenas off her adversary. As much as she hated Karen and everything the Cunningham family stood for, it did not seem right to let the woman die. And if the Englishwoman’s arch-nemesis could save her, possibly she would have enough sense of honor to withdraw her pursuit of the idol as a token of gratitude.
By the time Latonya had her hand on a spare magazine, it was too late. She had already heard Karen Cunningham’s death rattle beneath the ripping of flesh and the crunching of bone.
Latonya hid in an alcove on the far side of the rotunda and waited until the pack had finished their meal, not daring to look at the pile of gore they left behind when they exited the temple. Horrifying as Karen’s death had been, it might have been a small mercy for Latonya that the beasts had eaten their fill and were showing no interest in seconds. It was a tragic shame that someone had to die to bring about peace here, but that would always be the price of imperialistic greed.
Before she left the temple and headed back to the jeep, Latonya Coleman took one last look at the Mother Goddess on the pedestal. If there was anything that would bring her peace that night, it was the knowledge that she had done her job, and that the Mother Goddess had returned home at last, right where she belonged.
There are few experiences more heartwarming to an artist like me than finding out that your work has made an impact on people. One of them, a scholar by the name of Marta Garcia Morcillo, even cited my work in an academic paper published in the book Orientalism and the Reception of Powerful Women in the Ancient World.
“The graphic artist Brandon S. Pilcher…has created a series of illustrations of famous ancient African women that address post-colonial deconstructions of Western classicism. These colorful black-African characters include Hatshepsut, Nefertiti, Cleopatra VII, Hypathia and Sophonisba.”
— Garcia Morcillo, M. (2020). “Exotic, Erotic, Heroic? Women of Carthage in Western Imagination”. In F. Carlà-Uhink, & A. Wieber (Eds.), Orientalism and the Reception of Powerful Women from the Ancient World (pp. 134-158). Bloomsbury.
You can read the full text of the paper here. It’s only a brief mention toward the end, but I love how she characterized my work as “addressing post-colonial deconstructions of Western classicism” nonetheless.
Grayscale version of my illustration for “The Black Cross”.
1940
The uneven chopping of the rickety old fan was never enough to beat back the heat of a San Diego summer. I’ve been meaning to install a new one, but business hasn’t been too good for me since the big depression started. Most workdays see me baking in my little office for hours, waiting for a call, a visit, or anything else to liven things up. So far as the morning was proceeding, today looked like it wasn’t going to be much different from the usual.
I was ready to pour myself a glass of lukewarm bourbon for the slightest refreshment when Lizzie, my petite blonde secretary, chimed in with an announcement and a pearly smile. “Someone’s here to see you, Mr. O’Sullivan.”
I straightened myself in my chair and wiped the sweat off my brow. She held the door open, and there shuffled in a gentleman in a white robe with a tiny gold cross hanging from his neck. He was balding at the top, the hair on the side fading from black to gray, and his tawny complexion was typical for a Mexican or other mestizo. I don’t normally receive clients from the swarthier races, but my family’s always been Catholic, so as far as I was concerned, he would have been a brother by faith if not by blood.
“Well, well, it’s not every day I have a man of the cloth come down to my humble workplace,” I said. “Not that it’s an unwelcome change of pace, to be honest. How can I help you?”
The old priest entwined his hands with a calm smile. “Good morning to you, Señor O’Sullivan. Call me Father Manuel, of the Mission Santa Isabella, a little out into the countryside east of town. It’s small as the old missions go, I will admit, and not very remarkable until recently.”
“Until recently? How so?”
“I know a Frenchman by the name of Pierre Dupont who is like an explorer or antiquarian. He was in the Belgian Congo a year ago, and he was kind enough to donate to our establishment a special relic he’d uncovered there. But first, Señor, have you heard of the legend of Prester John?”
I scratched the back of my head. “Can’t say I recall the name.”
“They say he was descended from one the three wise men who visited baby Christ, ruling over a Christian kingdom hidden somewhere in the Orient. At first, people thought he was in India or perhaps Central Asia, but then the Portuguese started looking for him in darkest Africa. And now my friend Pierre believes he has located the ruins of Prester John’s kingdom, whence he obtained this.”
Father Manuel laid a photograph on my desk. Despite the picture’s murky quality, I could make out a dark artifact shaped like a thick cross or arithmetic plus sign, with an ovular human face sculpted in its center, standing on a stone altar amidst tropical vegetation. The face’s exaggerated features resembled those of a native African mask or idol, but situated on a cross like that, it did nonetheless recall the Crucifixion.
“Imagine, this holy Christian icon has lain rotting in the jungle, surrounded by pagan ignorance, for who knows how many centuries!” the priest said. “It is only by the grace of God that my friend Pierre has found it, brought it back to civilization, and entrusted our mission with protecting it. And protect it we have, until it went missing last night.”
I leaned forward. “Went missing? Any idea where it could have gone, Father?”
“That is where you come in, Señor. At first, we tried contacting the police, but they told us they were stretched too thin, and you know how they are with brown folk like us anyway. So, it is to you we turn. We need your keen eyes to examine the scene of the crime and find who may have taken the cross and why. If you can get it back, the mission would be most grateful.”
Father Manuel bowed his head with palms together as if in prayer. His case was more serious than what I usually received. This cross of his wouldn’t have been the first stolen article I’d been asked to retrieve, but it sounded much more significant than, say, a fancy necklace or a missing cat. The Lord Himself might judge me if I refused.
“I would be more than happy to help, but it’ll cost you a bit,” I said. “Nothing personal, it’s just business.”
“Oh, I expected as much, my child,” he replied. “How does five thousand sound?”
I could not help but grin like a schoolboy examining a shiny new toy he’d gotten for Christmas. “It’s more than what most folks offer me.”
“Excellent! You are truly blessed, Señor O’Sullivan. I must warn you, though, the scene is a bit grisly.”
For once, despite the summertime temperature, I felt a tingling chill in my back.
Map of the setting of my short story, Scorpions of the Sea.
100 AD
A commotion buzzed at the edge of the trading souq next to the harbor of al-Mukha on the southwestern coast of Arabia. All eyes of the spectators followed a slender galley of ebony fringed with gold and inlaid ivory as it slid and anchored beside one of the earthen quays. On its billowing crimson sail glowered the gold face of a ram supporting the sun on its horns, the royal insignia of Kush.
It was by no means unusual for a Kushite vessel to dock at al-Mukha. Plenty of merchants from all sides of the Red Sea and beyond would flock to the Himyarite port to sell their wares and restock for the next trip. Yet the black galley that had come in was a rare giant that would have dwarfed the typical merchantman, never mind the puny native dhows. Above the deck glimmered the iron-bladed spears, axes, and swords of the soldiers aboard.
Once they laid the gangplank down, there descended a svelte woman whose skin was dark as the galley itself, with her short ringlets of frizzy hair reddened with ocher. The black-spotted red sashes over her bosom bound a bow and quiver to her back while a slim sword rested along her white linen skirt. From her neck hung a string of ivory fly-shaped medals that honored her as a fighting champion of Kush.
After the woman followed her entourage of spearmen with oval cowhide shields. As she and her bodyguards advanced up the quay, the audience that had watched their arrival parted to give them as broad a berth as they could, with nervous murmurs in Himyaritic passing between the spectators.
Placing both hands on her hip, the woman cleared her throat with her head held up. “I am Nensela, Admiral of Kush. You need not fear anything, for we mean you no harm. We come to al-Mukha with only two purposes: to resupply and to find information.”
From the ranks of the crowd, a white-bearded local shot his bony hand up. “What do you mean by ‘information’, my lady?”
Nensela pulled out a scroll of papyrus from her belt and unfolded it, revealing a painted illustration of a blue scorpion with claws serrated like a lobster’s. “Have any of you ever heard of the Scorpions of the Sea?”
Most of the people dispersed back to the souq while the old man squinted at the scroll, his tawny face blanching a shade paler. “By Rahmanan, who in al-Mukha hasn’t? They come here every season. Are they wanted?”
Nensela marched to him with her hand clenched on her sword’s hilt. “I hope you are not feigning ignorance with me, old man. You ought to know they’ve been a menace for generations. Why, I lost my little brother to them! So, please, tell me everything you know!”
The old Himyarite scratched the back of his keffiyeh and shook his head. “The truth is, I recall not when they last dropped by. But Hussein the pot merchant may know. He’s done business with them more than once. I’d look for him in the northeast part of the souq, over there.”
He pointed his walking stick in the direction of the souq‘s far corner.
Nensela tossed him a bag of silver. “May Amun bless you for your aid, then.”
The souq of al-Mukha was a bustling maze of people thronging between rows of stalls that were shaded with awnings of sagging cloth. Most of the traders and their customers were native Himyarites and other Arabians, along with similar-looking peoples such as Judaeans, Phoenicians, and Mesopotamians. Yet speckled amid the bronze-faced majority were darker-skinned nationalities such as Kemetians, Aksumites, and even a few Kushites, the latter of whom saluted Nensela and her men as they passed. The fragrances of perfume, fresh fruit, and cooked meat mixed in the air with the less pleasant odors of fish, musty cloth, and camels being dragged about on rope leashes.
Over the chatter of the customers and the music of trilling flutes, twanging lyres, and banging drums, Nensela heard a man yell about having the finest collection of ceramics along the Red Sea. That must have been the pot merchant the old man at the docks had cited.
Taking advantage of her feminine wile, she smiled and swayed her hips as she sauntered towards his stall. “You wouldn’t happen to be a handsome gentleman by the name of Hussein, would you?”
A toothy grin spread across the man’s pudgy face as he nodded. “Well, aren’t you a welcome sight around here! Of course, it is I, Hussein bin Abdullah. Why, did someone recommend my wares to you?”
All over his stall and beside it stood stacks of almost every ceramic form that could be found all over the known world. Wide-topped Kemetian jars inscribed with hieroglyphic texts sat beside orange-and-black Greek vases, Chinese porcelain, and native Arabian oil lamps with elongated nozzles. Nensela noticed there were also some Kushite bowls on display, distinguished from the rest by their black tops grading to red towards the bottom. She could not help but pick one of them up, for it had reminded her of the bowls her mother would make for her and her brother Akhraten to eat from when they were children.
Those were simpler, happier times. But they had fallen into the past. With them had gone Akhraten, all courtesy of the vile Sea Scorpions.
“My mother made pots like this,” Nensela said. “Where do you get these, my dear Hussein?”
Hussein’s eyes twitched sideways. “I’m afraid my suppliers wish to remain anonymous.”
“Oh, is that so? Because I’ve been informed that you have connections with those known as the Sea Scorpions…”
“What? Don’t be silly, woman!”
Nensela slammed her hands onto the stall, shaking the stacks of pottery until some of it fell and shattered on the ground. “Tell me the truth, Hussein bin Abdullah. When did you last deal with them?”
“I can’t say, but it isn’t them! I swear by Rahmanan, I would never profit from piracy!”
Nensela grabbed him by the collar of his tunic and hauled him off his feet. “Do not lie to me anymore! Tell me, for the safety of all around the Red Sea, whom you get your goods from. Do you hear me? Talk!”
Hands clapped as loud as the crack of thunder, and then the whole souq fell silent.
The one who had clapped was a stout Himyarite man, robed in black, with a white keffiyeh draped over the sides of his head. Everyone else in the souq stepped back to make way for him as he hurried towards Nensela and Hussein with a gentle smile under his gray-streaked mustache.
“There is no need for violence, my child,” he said. “Please put him down.”
Nensela obeyed with a grumble. “Please, do not call me ‘child’, for I am the Admiral of Kush. And I’ve good reason to believe this Hussein character is collaborating with pirates!”
“It is a lie, I assure you!” Hussein yelped.
“I will assess the truth of the matter later, Hussein bin Abdullah,” the black-robed man said. “Pardon me for my condescension there, O Admiral of Kush, but I am the Sheikh of al-Mukha. These are all my people, so I must implore you that you treat them with care while you are here.”
“You are the Sheikh?” Nensela bowed at the waist before him. “Then I must apologize for my behavior. I must admit I have little love for pirates, or those I am told are involved with their crimes.”
From the corner of her eye, she cast a glare at Hussein while he was picking up pieces of broken pottery. He repaid with a rude look of his own.
“You speak of pirates, Admiral? It so happens that I have information of my own on them,” the Sheikh of al-Mukha said. “And unlike that gentleman over there, I’ll be more than willing to share it…within the privacy of my own home, mind you. Why don’t you and your men come over for some refreshment after your long voyage?”
Book cover for The Slave Prince of Zimbabwe, designed by the author himself
Chapter One
Southern Africa, 1215 AD
Even as a slim crescent in the black heavens, the moon bestowed enough light upon the ramparts to give their layers of granite blocks a silver luster. These walls rose so high that not even the tallest giraffes of this far southern country could crane their necks up to look over them… or so Drazhan Khazanov imagined. Not that the man from the distant land known as Ruthenia had never seen grand architecture in his life, but after riding across wild savanna and hills for the past several days, he had not expected to discover such a colossal castle in this remote hinterland.
With defenses like that to scale, his mission would present more of a challenge than expected. Such would be the price of his freedom.
It was not like Drazhan had arrived unprepared. After tethering his donkey to an aloe tree, the Ruthenian removed a coil of rope from his packsaddle and stole up to the foot of the wall on the toes of his boots. He turned his head sideways twice to check if there were any glowing balls of guards’ torchlight drifting over the top.
Nothing. Drazhan unwound the rope, whirled one end above his head as high as he could, and flung it over the wall’s upper edge until he heard the faint clink of the attached grappling hook. He tugged to ensure it had found a secure purchase and then heaved himself up the rampart’s height, sprinting over its surface to propel himself faster.
Although the mighty fortification was almost twenty feet wide where Drazhan had scaled it, it did not have the parapets or crenellations that many others across the known world sported to shield guards or archers. Instead, his hook had caught onto one of several soapstone posts sticking up from the wall, those posts carved in the form of seated eagles, the heraldic birds of the Kingdom of Zimbabwe. Studying the wall again, the Ruthenian could not find any stairs or ladders connecting the top of the wall to the ground. Had the Zimbabwean palace’s architects ever intended for men to mount these defenses? Drazhan didn’t think so.
Still, it was a view that commanded awe, even at night. Within the space enclosed by the great ramparts sat several neighborhoods of thatch-roofed rondavels, many of which were separated from one another with shorter inner walls, built of the same stone as the outer wall.
Overlooking this entire complex to the southeast was a stout, knob-topped tower — the royal granary, as Drazhan recalled being informed. If he squinted through the darkness to the northwest, looking beyond the whole palatial enclosure, he could tease out the moonlit contours of an even vaster city of huts sprawling to the horizon, the smog left behind by evening cooking fires still floating over it.
Or, he wondered, did that burning smell have something to do with the orange firelight flickering through the open entryway within the outer wall further north of him?
The Ruthenian glided along the base of the wall until he was directly right above the entrance. Two men stood outside next to torches on posts, each man armed with an iron spear and a cowhide shield. Drazhan looked at the situation and reasoned he could possibly carry on his mission while leaving them alone. Could he work without them looking?
It would be safer to draw them away from the picture altogether, he concluded.
He unslung his bow and shot an arrow far into the distant blackness. While it flew, he hid from the men’s sight, lying flat down on the top of the wall. Then the guards, upon hearing the impact, hurried off to investigate where his arrow had hit. Perfect.
Drazhan hopped into a mopane tree at the rampart’s inner flank and climbed down into the enclosure’s dusty floor, careful not to let the leaves and branches scratch him too loudly. Having memorized the layout of the royal complex from his earlier scans, he tiptoed through a labyrinth of huts and inner walls, hovering his right hand above his sheathed saber’s hilt just in case things went sour. He squeezed himself through a gap in one of the interior walls — and suddenly found himself standing before the largest hut in the area, which sat alone within its own subdivision.
If Zimbabwean rulers were like those of every other kingdom in the world, this had to be their Mambokadzi’s bedchamber.
The Ruthenian stepped into the hut through an arched doorway framed with elephant tusks. Narrow rectangular apertures in the building’s earthen sides drew in enough moonlight to reveal a broad bed atop a gold-ringed ebony frame in the middle of the room. The lion-skin bedspread, fringed with leopard hide, rose and fell with gentle regularity over a form with curves like an hourglass.
Drazhan peeled off both the bedspread and cotton sheets for a better view at his mission’s target. He saw her voluptuous figure, dark and sleek as onyx, and unclothed except for the copper, ivory, and diamond-studded gold jewelry looped around her limbs, neck, and brow. Even the short, frizzy coils of her hair sparkled like the stars in the sky above. Beneath each of her eyes ran a short line of dot-shaped scarifications, which accentuated her beauty in Drazhan’s eyes, even if other Ruthenians would have considered it an ugly heathen custom. Small wonder his master wanted this woman in his harem!
Then Drazhan noticed something else, clutched between her fingers as she slept. A glinting dagger sporting three elongated blades, like a forked stiletto.
He would have to disarm her first. Holding his breath, he began by pinching the dagger’s hilt and sliding it out of her hands. Her grip tightened. Once it relaxed again, he inserted his fingertips under hers and pulled them open without any sudden jerks, releasing the weapon at last. She didn’t stir. He smirked with triumph and reached to touch the stiletto himself.
Something growled behind him. A pair of yellow dots blazed like twin flames in the shadows beside the bed, with bared fangs beneath them glistening wet with drool. The Ruthenian stepped back to the doorway and tore out his saber, brandishing it as a warning threat. Stepping into the light, the black leopard responded with a cough-like roar, launching hot spittle onto his face and flinging its front paw at him. Its claws sliced through the fabric of his tunic to cut the skin of his chest.
Drazhan staggered backward against a dresser as the feline assailant sprang for another attack. He thrust his fist into its nose. With a high-pitched yowl, the cat rolled on the floor away from him before leaping back onto its paws. Drazhan charged with his saber drawn.
Something flashed before his eyes and pried it out of his hands.
The Mambokadzi had caught the Ruthenian’s saber between the blades of her stiletto. With one flick of her wrist, she threw the sword past her bed.
The leopard lowered itself to the ground, tail lashing, glaring at Drazhan. When the woman patted its head, the beast relaxed into a resting posture like an obedient housecat.
“Restrain yourself now, Chatunga,” the Mambokadzi said. “You may eat later. First, I must know who our inopportune visitor is.”
She pointed her dagger at the Ruthenian, the middle of its three blades digging into his throat. “You heard me. Who are you and who sent you?”
He grinned with the desperation of a boy caught in misbehavior. “Call me Drazhan of Ruthenia. And it was the Sultan of Kilwa who sent me to, uh…”
The Mambokadzi’s facial muscles crinkled with disgust. “Oh, him? I know what that Swahili jackal wants. I even figured he’d go to any lengths to get it, after all the offers I’ve turned down from him. Though I’d have never expected him to send a pale European like you…”
“If you must know, Your Highness, I didn’t come all the way to these parts by choice. I was…brought here, against my will, through many changing hands. The Sultan promised that if I could deliver you to him, he’d give me back the freedom I’ve been robbed of for so long.”
Drazhan pulled up one of his sleeves to expose a dark red welt on his shoulder, one of many his body had collected ever since those Cuman raiders from the steppes had dragged him away from his village as a youth.
The Mambokadzi’s features softened, a twinkle of sympathy in her eyes. She withdrew her stiletto. “You poor soul. Nobody on Mwari Almighty’s earth should have to endure such abuse at the hands of men.”
“So, would you know of another way I could earn my freedom back?” Drazhan asked. “It isn’t like I can return to Kilwa and buy it from him without you. To a man like him, O Mambokadzi, you would be the ultimate trophy—as would your kingdom once you are joined.”
“Ugh, if only you could just put that greedy little lecher out of his misery. After all, a dead man can’t own a living one, can he?”
“But then one of his family would take his place as Sultan. And whomever they might be, they would never forgive me even if I were freed.”
“Oh, really? And how do you think my people would feel if you carried me off to your Sultan? Do you believe that they would let their Mambokadzi languish in a harem as his ‘trophy’ while he pilfers our wealth? And would you want them all to suffer just so you can be free?”
Drazhan opened his mouth, but no words could come out. No kingdom or people could be worth his freedom as one man. Nor should any woman, queen or not, be forced into a man’s possession. If so, he would be trading his own freedom for hers. Yet taking his master’s life didn’t seem like a better solution, especially if it led to that man’s grieving family seeking vengeance against his slayer.
The Mambokadzi’s full lips stretched into a sly smile. “If you can’t think of an answer to your dilemma, I might have one. You wouldn’t mind staying here a little longer, would you, Drazhan?”
He furrowed his brow. “What do you mean?”
“Let’s just say that I may know of a way to, ahem, ‘coax’ your Sultan into freeing you. It might not please him at first, and he might even fight it at first. But while he and I are negotiating our terms, you and I can get to know each other better. How does that sound, handsome one?”
She extended an arm to stroke the yellow hair flowing down from Drazhan’s fur-capped head, her eyelashes fluttering. Warmth swelled both in his cheeks and crotch. He chuckled. “If you say so, O Mambokadzi of Zimbabwe.”
“Call me Ruvarashe, or Ruva for short. Oh, and this would be my little cub, Chatunga. I’m sure you two will get along… won’t you?”
She gave her leopard an affectionate rub on its head, but the big cat’s luminous eyes were still drawn arrows aimed at their Ruthenian guest. He could swear he had heard the beast hiss through its fangs.
Drazhan shrugged. “I’m sure he and I will be able to cope with one another, eventually.”
“I must say, though, you could stand to sharpen your fighting skills while you’re staying with me,” Ruva said. “A big, strong warrior like you shouldn’t be so easy to disarm.”
“C’mon, you only caught me off guard. I could cleave any man’s skull past the chin if I wanted to, mark my words!”
Ruva cocked an eyebrow. “Sure, you could. We’ll see how you fare in practice against my soldiers over the coming weeks.”
Chapter Two
Many mtepe plied the azure waters east of Kilwa’s coast, driven by the breezes that pushed woven palm-frond sails. The shark-finned junks moored to the harbor within view of the Sultan’s palace dwarfed these native boats like whales amongst a vast school of herring. Shimmering steel rivers of armored soldiers poured from the wooden leviathans’ decks down wide gangplanks, flooding onto the piers and following the strutting, silk-robed officials.
Even when watching this arrival from the security of his balcony, in the balmy morning air, Sultan Hussein ibn Suleiman shivered with anger and dread like it was a far northern winter. They had promised to be more patient with him, to give him one more chance. They had no business coming here so soon, before he was ready. Nonetheless, he could not refuse them. He may have been the son of one of the greatest conquering Sultans in Swahili history, but they had the mightiest empire in the known world. It was no contest.
If the Sultan had anyone to blame for the terrible situation in which he found himself, it was his damned Ruthenian bodyguard. What was taking that pale-skinned slave so long? He should have come back with the Mambokadzi at least half a month ago.
There was no more time to waste fretting. The Sultan’s visitors would be banging on his door any moment. Already, he could hear the chinking of their henchmen’s lamellar armor as they advanced along the palm-lined shore, parallel to the palace’s southeastern wall.
One of his younger servants dashed out onto the balcony with a papyrus scroll. “It’s from the Mambokadzi of Zimbabwe, Your Majesty.”
Underneath his umber skin, the blood drained from the Sultan’s face, chilling the air around him even more. “Can it wait? I have important business to attend to.”
After dismissing the boy, he hurried through the arched coral-stone hallways to the royal kitchen. “Fix up the most lavish breakfast you can! You have two hours!” he barked. While his cooks went to work, the other servants laid down a long carpet on one side of the audience courtyard for the dishes to be placed. The Sultan took his seat at one end. Sweat streamed down his brow as his crossed legs continued to tremble.
Before long, servers were scurrying out with platters of fruit, fish, and fried mandazi pastries as his guests strode into the sunlight with their armed retinue. Foremost among them was a tall, clean-shaven man, the embroidered image of a gold-scaled, serpentine monster twisting over his blood-red hanfu. A proud sneer crossed his light yellow-brown face, as if sculpted that way by Allah Himself.
The Sultan spread his arms apart and bowed his head. “Salam aleikum to you, Minister Wong Dongxiang. You arrived on time for breakfast.”
He raised a porcelain cup for a serving girl, who began to pour a steaming hot cup of coveted Ethiopian coffee. In her haste, she sent half the scalding liquid cascading onto his knee. He winced and groaned, his anger quickly triggered amidst the other tension gripping him, but he compelled himself not to chastise her in front of the imperial minister.
Wong Dongxiang looked at the growing spread of food, a sneer crossing his face. “It appears you were quick to prepare this ‘feast’.”
“In my defense, you did return sooner than I anticipated,” the Sultan said. “I daresay you ambushed me before I was ready.”
“Before you were ready?” Wong folded his arms and began chuckling. “I take it you still haven’t had luck courting that Mambokadzi of Zimbabwe.”
“No, I am afraid she still hasn’t been receptive to my offers. Therefore, I’ve had to send one of my slaves to go fetch her for me. Normally I wouldn’t resort to such methods, mind you, but as you know, I am a desperate man.”
“Which explains all your delays, O Sultan of Kilwa. I speak for both myself and my Emperor when I say we’re on the sharpest edge of our patience with you. If one more year goes by without the repayment we’re owed, your little Sultanate will be blasted into dust.”
The Sultan’s messenger barged in again, still with the scroll in his hand. “Since you mentioned the Mambokadzi, that brings me to what she sent us today,” he said, looking up from the scroll. “She says she has Drazhan the Ruthenian captive, Your Majesty.”
The drinking cup plummeted from the Sultan’s hand, shattering into pieces while spilling coffee onto the rug. “Allah, damn it all!” he cried. “No wonder he hasn’t come back.”
“She says she’ll return your slave to you only if you surrender your pursuit of her once and for all,” the messenger said.
Wong Dongxiang snickered behind his thin lips. “Sounds like a scenario you should have accounted for. So much for your hopes of paying out from her treasury! Where will you find the spare coin for us now, O Sultan?”
Ever since he was a boy, the future Sultan, Hussein, had dreamed of and worked toward continuing his father Suleiman’s legacy as a conquering uniter of Swahili cities. Instead, so far, he had squandered his adulthood fighting his brothers over the throne. They were like hyenas over a carcass, to say nothing of how their squabbling had drained the Sultanate’s coffers. Had the Chinese not lent him coin and other aid, Hussein would have never secured his place as the next Sultan. Now he realized that by making those deals, he had taken himself—and his people—out of one series of relatively petty wars into the looming shadow of a far greater and permanent danger … annihilation. His efforts to bring the wealth of Zimbabwe under his power, with its beautiful young matriarch by his side, had backfired.
He should have predicted as much. If he could not trust any of his slaves or servants to take the Mambokadzi for him, the Sultan would have to do it himself. Now he knew who could help him best.
“All may not be lost, O Minister,” he said. “I see you’ve brought quite a formidable force with you, equipped with the deadliest weapons in the world. Or so it seems to me.”
“That is a fair assessment,” Wong said with a forced grin.
“Suppose you and I were to march on Zimbabwe together,” the Sultan said. “All its wealth will become yours as my repayment to you, and the Mambokadzi will be mine at last. What do you say?”
Wong Dongxiang pressed his fingertips together, his smile spreading even wider. “Assuming all goes according to your plan, I don’t see why that would be a poor investment on our part. You have a deal.”
The Sultan looked up to the heavens, with the sun scintillating near its zenith. “Then may Allah bless us both on our campaign.”
At some point during this year, you might have encountered the abbreviated term “NFT” on the Internet. Most often, this is in reference to the sale of digital artwork or other images being sold and purchased online for what can be colossal amounts of money. For example, an entire series of NFTs known as the “Lazy Lions” — all of them simple cartoon depictions of lions with assorted expressions and articles of fashion — has sold for 1.93 million US dollars in total, with the statistically average price for a Lazy Lion NFT approximating $5.6 grand. Over the course of 2021, the NFT market has ballooned, with websites such as Crypto.com and OpenSea being dedicated to the selling and auctioning of these images.
On the plains of Pleistocene Africa, an early Homo sapiens woman must fend off a pride of hungry lions!
As a professional digital artist myself, it wouldn’t be honest of me if I said that I wasn’t tempted by this trend at first. Full-time artists like myself commonly struggle with earning enough income to get through life as independent citizens, in no small part because customers willing to pay for commissions or printed copies of our work can be few and far between for most of us. If people are willing to pay several grand for simple cartoon portraits of lions (or, alternatively, apes) in NFT form, then one can be forgiven for thinking that selling our works on the burgeoning NFT scene might be lucrative for themselves.
However, I have since changed my mind. I no longer think NFTs are worth it for artists like me and can in fact have undesirable consequences not only for ourselves but also all of humanity.
But first, I must explain what an NFT is.
The term “NFT” is short for “non-fungible token”. Each NFT is a unique and non-interchangeable unit of data that is recorded in a sort of digital ledger known as a blockchain. Previously, blockchains have been used as a basis for special “virtual currencies” (or cryptocurrencies) like Bitcoin, which have proven particularly popular with right-wing “libertarians” as well as criminals since they operate independently of any national government. Just as people would record transactions paid with cryptocurrencies in their blockchains, now they use the same technology to record NFTs they have obtained.
How does this apply to art? Herein lies the catch. When someone buys an NFT based on a piece of digital artwork, what they are buying is not the artwork itself, but a unique digital receipt saying they own that artwork which goes into their blockchain ledger. Nothing is printed and shipped to their home, nor is any new artwork created for their use as in a commission. All they have purchased is a little note that says, “I own this.”
If you think about it, it is not only the work an artist has produced themselves that can become NFTs. One could theoretically download any image from the Internet and use it to sell NFTs, and indeed many unscrupulous individuals have profited off making NFTs out of artwork they have stolen from others. We artists already have enough of a problem with thieves using our work to sell products without permission or compensation, and yet the rise of NFTs appears to have aggravated this ill even further.
This, by itself, might not deter an artist from making NFTs of their own work, any more than earlier forms of art theft have discouraged us from sharing and selling our work. Personally, I have decided that I am more honored by people buying a physical print of my work to exhibit at home or in public, or paying me to make new artwork, than I am by someone buying a mere digital receipt for their blockchain that claims they own a work I created. But, as I said earlier, I can see why other artists might want to take advantage of the NFT market.
Sahelanthropus, the earliest-known hominin?
There is still a fundamental problem with NFTs, and anything based on blockchain technology in general, and that is that the entire process of recording transactions on blockchains consumes a shockingly high amount of electric energy due to its computational complexity. One simple transaction on a blockchain platform like Ethereum (which is one popular with NFT vendors) can consume over 180 kilowatts of energy, exceeding six days’ worth of electric consumption for the average American household. The average NFT transaction can be even higher than that, reaching up to 340 kilowatts on some websites, equating to a typical resident of the European Union’s consumption of electricity over one month. One shudders to think of the collective footprint of all the NFTs that have been sold to blockchains all over the world.
In a world where we got all our electricity from nuclear or renewable sources, this might not seem so bad. In the real world, on the other hand, we are still predominantly dependent on fossil fuels like coal, natural gas, and petroleum to produce our electricity (among other technologies). This continues to flood our atmosphere with an excess of greenhouse gases at a rate unprecedented over hundreds of millennia, with disastrous effects on our global climate that kill more than 150,000 human beings every year. Mind you, most of these greenhouse gas emissions (about 71%) are coming from the activities of only a hundred major corporations rather than all the NFTs combined so far. But, considering that NFTs amount to nothing more than glorified receipts in online ledgers, they are not worth the additional wounds they inflict upon our planet.
Every artist wants to profit from their work, but nobody wants to live in an overcooked world. So, while we are still dependent on destructive fossil fuels for our electrical needs, I would not recommend bothering with NFTs at all.
Oshun, the Yoruba orisha of love and beauty, takes a bath in the Nigerian river that bears her name.
Once you begin a career in the visual arts — whether your chosen path is drawing, painting, sculpting, 3D modeling, or anything else — one of the questions that may be on your mind is, “How can I develop my own art style?”
Mind you, not every artist out there sets out with the goal of developing a unique style for themselves. Some are perfectly comfortable emulating other art styles that they admire. A lot of Japanese animation and comic books, for example, look similar enough in their visual style that we can speak of a distinctive “anime” style with everyone understanding what we mean. For that matter, many artistic traditions around the world and throughout time have artists producing works with shared stylistic traits to the degree that we can recognize which culture produced what artform. We all know what ancient Egyptian art generally looks like, for example, even though their vast corpus of work was produced by generations of different artisans over the course of multiple centuries.
Nonetheless, I believe there is a certain honor to be found in developing an individual style that viewers can recognize as the artist’s own. In democratic societies like ours that place value on personal autonomy and freedom, it’s a commonplace sentiment to want to stand out from the crowd in one way or another, and having your own style is one way of accomplishing that. Furthermore, a recognizable style can go a long way in “building your own brand” if you want to profit from your work, as well as cultivating a loyal following of fans and patrons.
So just how do you get your own art style, anyway?
I cannot speak for all artists who have developed a style, but I can speak for myself. So, what I will tell you is the story of how my own style evolved.
I’ve been drawing since my kindergarten years, but it was in my high school years when I got more serious about it and set out to improve. The way I went about this, in the beginning, was to consult various art instruction books for guidance on drawing techniques as well as references for human and animal anatomy, poses, clothing, and weaponry, among many others. Particularly important was a series of books published by Watson-Guptill, with authors and artists such as Steve Miller and Bryan Baugh, that showed you how to draw subject matter such as dinosaurs and other creatures, martial artists, fantasy characters, and soldiers and military equipment. But I had many others as well, including works by Tom Nguyen, Christopher Hart, and even Marvel giants such as Stan Lee and John Buscema.
Antony and Cleopatra embrace along the shoreline of Alexandria, Egypt in 40 BC.
A lot of these instructional books had a comic-book theme, in that they said they would teach you how to draw Western-style comics, and the artists whose works were featured in them often had a background in comics, cartooning, or animation. So it is likely that I picked up a certain comic-book aesthetic from these artists. It wasn’t that I set out to draw my own comics specifically, but rather that I learned my way of drawing from comic-book artists.
However, these artists would not have been my only influence. Another would have been the animated movies I grew up watching, such as those produced by Disney and Dreamworks during the 1990s to 2000s. Probably the most important for me was Disney’s Tarzan, which I maintain is the most beautiful hand-drawn animated movie they have ever done, but I think there is a little bit of The Prince of Egypt bleeding into my depictions of ancient Egyptian people and culture as well. If my style seems cartoony to some viewers, those influences from Western animation are probably why.
As much as I may have been influenced by the media I consumed in my youth, I believe that, for the most part, my personal art style was something I developed not immediately but over time as I kept drawing. By far the most crucial ingredients in my artistic growth over the years have been regular practice, studying from life and references, and taking into account constructive feedback I have received from others. Without those, I would have never gotten to the level I am at today. The style I currently draw in is the result of an arduous journey that has lasted over thirteen years as of this writing.
I would advise any beginning artists to take the same route that I did if they want to develop their own style. Keep practicing your craft, with the aid of accurate references and feedback, and your style will develop on its own. In the beginning, your approach will be influenced by the media you take in, as happens to all artists. But, over time, the style of your work will become its own thing which you can call your own. Styles are not invented, they are grown.
Tyrannosaurus rex is smelling the air for breakfast on a foggy Late Cretaceous morning.
