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.”
Itaweret moved her final pawn off the last square on the senet board. She straightened on her stool and crossed her arms with a triumphant smirk, victory assured in the game of passing.
“By all the gods, not again!” Bek slammed his hands on the ebony table, which knocked his two remaining pawns off the gameboard. “There must be some mistake!”
Itaweret laughed. “What mistake? That you’ve been losing the past few times? I keep telling you, Brother, you take these games much too seriously. You act as if the fate of all Per-Pehu depended on it.”
Bek narrowed his eyes as his lips curled into a snarl. “I might not be wrong, then. If I am to govern this colony, I must hone my strategic skills. How can I do that when I keep losing to a—a priestess?”
Itaweret didn’t take one grain of offense. If anything, his righteous anger amused her even more. “Remember what Father says. You do not need to succeed to learn.”
Bek opened his mouth for another retort but stopped, stood from his stool beside the table, and took a deep breath. His mahogany-skinned brow sparkled with sweat from the afternoon sunlight that descended upon the back courtyard. He stormed across the courtyard to an alabaster bench beneath one of the olive trees and plopped down to sulk in its shade.
As entertaining as her brother’s tantrums were at the end of every senet game, any pleasure Itaweret felt evaporated when she saw him wipe a tear off his cheek. Not since they were children had she seen Bek show such emotion unless he thought nobody was looking.
There were no torches burning inside the tunnel beneath the temple of Mut. Only the brazier Bek carried behind her drove back the blackness, and it was dimming with every passing second. Itaweret occasionally paused to search the floor for branches that she could toss into the brazier but found nothing but cold and damp stone.
Finally, they reached a rectangular outline of light at the tunnel’s end. By the mercy of fate, the pair had not stumbled into any booby-traps, nor run into any dead ends branching off from the main passage. While dark, the journey was not as perilous as Itaweret had feared…
Hopefully, it would stay that way.
“How do you know this doesn’t lead to a trap?” Bek asked.
“Think about it. Why would Mut lead us into a trap? Don’t you trust her enough, brother?”
“Assuming that was Mut speaking to us. What if it was that Achaean demon she talked about, that Athena?”
Itaweret fought hard within herself to ignore him, and the possibility he raised. It was a valid point, if she were honest with herself, but it seemed unlikely that an Achaean deity like Athena could penetrate the sanctum of Mut. At least she hoped so. And hope was all they had left.
Itaweret walked up to the rectangle of light and pressed her shoulder against the surface, feeling the same cool stone texture as the tunnel’s walls. She pushed all her strength onto the door, groaning from exertion and the exhausting day, until it fell forward with a hard thud and crumbled outside.
A flood of daylight blinded her. Once her eyes readjusted from the subterranean darkness, she found herself on the summit of a grassy hill that sloped into a gravelly beach beside the sea. The setting sun gilded the crests of the waves, but the colors of the sky graded ominously, from dark red to black. Itaweret wrinkled her nose from the smell of smoke and burnt flesh.
Behind the hill, the city in which she had lived her entire life bloomed into a colossal inferno of flame. The fires that roared on rooftops, together with thick black rivers of smoke, obscured any sight of the carnage that, she realized, must have clogged and already begun to rot over the streets. Still, she could make out a stream of people being herded out through the city gate, prodded along by Mycenaeans in their bronze suits.
They were her fellow citizens of Per-Pehu. Her people, friends and neighbors, reduced to human livestock in one evening.
“How dare they!” Bek shook his fist while watching what she watched, quaking with rage. “We’ve got to do something!”
“We will, brother. We wouldn’t be out here if we weren’t going to do something about it. But we cannot fight now. Come on!”
She took his hand. They descended the hill to a dirt path that meandered northeastward. The cover of the olive and cypress trees alongside it, together with shadows that grew darker with each passing minute, would conceal them from any prowling Mycenaeans.
At least she hoped so.
Less than two hours later, the scarlet heavens faded into blackness almost as pure as that within the tunnel. Now their only light was the half-moon and dusting of tiny stars around it, giving off a faint white glow reflected upon the vegetation and stones. Itaweret huddled close to Bek as they hiked up the path through the foothills, pausing only to pick up sticks to feed the fire in the brazier. If there was one thing to praise the wilderness for, it was an abundance of cheap firewood.
They ascended higher into the hills, climbing until the open, scrubby landscape of the low plains gave way to oak and pine forests that girdled the mountains. They climbed over fallen logs and boulders strewn about with increasing density. If walking uphill had not already worn away at the strength in their legs, maneuvering around these obstacles in the terrain taxed their muscles to aching even more.
Underneath the soft fragrance of the pines, Itaweret’s nostrils flared, capturing another odor, more rancid and unpleasant. She traced the scent to the gleaming, red-spattered bones of a lamb, flies buzzing around the few scraps of meat that clung to it. She had seen cattle and goats sacrificed to the gods in the temple complex at Per-Pehu, but never witnessed their gory remains in a state like this. The sight almost shoved her last meal from her stomach into her throat.
“How could this have died?” she asked.
Bek crouched over the bones and ran his finger over one of five parallel scars raked across the ribcage. He pointed to a weathered impression in the nearby earth, broader than a human hand, with claw marks sticking out before each of its five toes.
“I would have guessed a lion, but cats in general don’t leave prints like this,” Bek said. “Normally they retract their claws, so they wouldn’t show like they do here.”
“Could it be a dog?” Itaweret asked. “Or a jackal? Or one of those gray monsters the Achaeans call wolves?”
Bek shook his head. “Much, much too big for any of those. Truth be told, I have no idea. It must be a kind of monster we’ve never seen in our lives.”
Back home, everyone inside Per-Pehu’s walls had heard travelers’ stories of the beasts that roamed the wilds beyond the colony. Some spoke of cannibalistic men with singular eyes or the heads of bulls, giant swamp-dwelling serpents, or fire-breathing creatures that were part goat, part lion, and part snake. Itaweret had always considered the descriptions too ridiculous to be real. More frightening were the accounts of hulking beasts with dog-like faces and claws like knives, giant cats with dagger-long fangs, and ill-tempered elephants covered in shaggy hair. Those stories sounded almost truthful.
Itaweret wrung her hands around Mut’s scepter, shivering with a dread colder than the nocturnal air itself. “Do you know whether it could be nearby?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Bek said. “The tracks are a little worn. It could have left here hours or even a day ago.”
Two glowing specks of yellow blinked behind a nearby patch of bushes. Leaves rustled and branches snapped as the specks drifted towards them. The furry outline of a thick, stocky body gleamed from the brazier’s firelight. The creature’s snout was long like a dog’s, but its ears were smaller and more rounded. As it panted and grunted, it exuded the same stink of decayed flesh as the sheep carcass.
Itaweret took a step back from the lumbering animal. “What do they call things like that?”
“A bear, I believe,” Bek whispered. “Stand your ground. That could scare him off.”
Itaweret forced herself to stay put and waved the scepter of Mut like a warrior’s staff as Bek shook the brazier back and forth at the beast. Rearing ten feet into the air on its hind feet, the bear curled its lips back, exposing pointed canines. It uncorked a menacing roar while brandishing clawed forepaws.
With a single swat, the bear knocked Itaweret’s scepter out of her hands. She jumped to grab it, but the bear seized the scepter in its mouth and tossed it into the darkness. It swiped at her bosom, raking through her linen cloth and skin with its claws. Sudden pain swept through her chest as she collapsed to the ground.
Bek thrust his brazier again, the heated ash landing on the bear’s backside. Now aggravated, the the bear turned away from Itaweret, roared, and charged him. The bear’s attack on Bek gave her enough time to crawl over and retrieve her scepter. Just as the bear was about to punch the brazier out of Bek’s grasp, she chucked the scepter into its shoulder.
Her blow distracted the beast for another second. Then it swung around and barreled towards her again. She had no another weapon to beat it aside.
Another roar followed.
All the children of Kemet could recognize that deep feline roar. Along with it appeared a pair of yellow eyes, set in a bright tawny form. The feline sprang from the blackness and landed on the bear. The two creatures rolled in the dirt in a chaotic melee of biting and slashing.
The battle ended with the bear’s growling breaking up into gagging, as if it were being choked. It fell limp, with a viscous river of blood gushing from its neck and more spilling from the cuts that had been slashed all over its body. The bear’s slayer stood over it and roared with a savage exultation.
Itaweret and Bek looked upon the largest lion they had ever seen, one with a thick dark mane and faint leopard-like spots on its flanks. She had heard stories of giant spotted lions that once roamed the countries north of the Great Green Sea, but according to those same stories, they had all died out centuries ago. Was this the very last of that breed, or did it have a whole pride behind it? If the latter, would they be seeking dinner too?
Itaweret could only hope the bear’s big and meaty carcass would distract them from she and Bek.
Then, a voice, a proud voice: “That’s a good boy, Xiphos!”
A young Achaean man in a sleeveless wool tunic walked toward them, carrying a wooden shepherd’s staff. He stroked the big cat’s mane as if it were a tame dog while it gorged itself on the dead bear. Much to Itaweret’s surprise, the lion tolerated the boy’s touch, rather than fending him off like any truly wild animal.
Itaweret brushed droplets of blood off her clothing and jewelry. “Xiphos? Is he your pet or something?”
“My father brought him in when he was a cub,” the Achaean youth said. “No need to fear him, my lady. He’s as gentle as a puppy unless you provoke him. Are you folks all right? It’s not every day we have black people come to these parts.”
“Why do you call us ‘black’ people?” Bek asked. “Our people are various shades of brown, some of us darker than others. If we are ‘black’, would that make you, what, ‘white’?”
The Achaean chuckled. “No use arguing over what we call each other. Trust me, I’ve heard far nastier names for your kind of people. Name’s Philos. And you two?”
Itaweret did not want to know those “nastier” names. “I am Itaweret, High Priestess of Mut from Per-Pehu. And this is my brother Bek, son of the Great Chief Mahu.”
“Aye, so you’re from the colony over the hills.” Philos looked up and down Itaweret’s body, his eyes following her contours in much the same gazing way as Scylax of Mycenae. “And, by Aphrodite, are you fine to look at, scratches and all! Nice curves, especially.”
Itaweret shook her head and grumbled. Achaean or Kemetian, white or black, men were all the same. Though she had to admit, the muscular young Achaean, with his flowing long black hair, wasn’t a wholly unattractive specimen.
“Anyway, either of you wouldn’t have seen a little ewe around these parts, would you?” Philos asked.
“We saw a sheep’s skeleton,” Bek replied. “We think the bear ate it sometime back.”
“Hades be damned, then! Xiphos and I have been looking for her the past couple of days. At least she was only one ewe. So, what are you two Kemetians doing out here?”
“In case you haven’t heard, Per-Pehu has been brutally sacked by King Scylax of Mycenae,” Itaweret said. “Our goddess Mut has sent us a quest northeast, one that will lead to Scylax’s defeat. We hope it does, anyway. She told us that we would find our answer in the first village over the mountains.”
Philos scratched his hair. “By Zeus, that’s my village! I don’t know why we’d know how to beat the king of Mycenae, out of all people in the world. But, if your goddess says so, I ought to help you the best I can.”
“How far is your village, anyway?”
“A few more hills to the east. But we ought to rest here for the night. Xiphos doesn’t like being dragged away from his meals, and I think we’re all damned tired anyway.”
Bek yawned. “Yeah, tell me about it.”
Itaweret nodded. Almost every muscle burned from straining, even beyond her wounds from the bear’s attack. Her stomach groaned with hunger. Once the lion filled himself, she wouldn’t mind cooking leftovers of the bear over a fire lit by Bek’s brazier. Never had she eaten bear meat, but food was food in uncivilized places.
She looked up at the treeline and caught the flicker of little eyes. They weren’t the yellow eyes of a bear, lion or other predator, but silver-gray eyes…familiar eyes.
It would not be quite accurate to say Elizabeth Blake had been born with a silver spoon in her mouth. A spoon of pure gold, encrusted with diamonds, would do her upbringing more justice. All her life she had luxuriated within her family’s mansion of dazzling white marble out in the countryside, supported by the labor of their cotton plantation’s loyal and industrious workforce. Indeed, the Blakes had amassed so much wealth that finding a suitable husband for their darling princess Elizabeth was like mining for gems in a pigsty.
True, armies of men would flock to the Blake estate to court her, showering her with praise for her ginger locks, fern-green eyes, and cherry-red lips. But a proper belle like Elizabeth cared little for all those smelly, sun-weathered rednecks, and her old father cared for them even less. It was not until after her twenty-fifth birthday had passed when one worthy young gentleman, an enterprising doctor by the name of Thomas Henderson, had moved into her neighborhood from the north.
As they say, a bachelor in possession of a good fortune is highly wanted as a husband by women like Elizabeth Blake. But every time she and Mr. Henderson crossed paths, despite her best efforts to grin and bat her eyelashes at him, the boy would simply smile back and continue with his business. At most Thomas would nod and compliment her dress upon request. This she found most peculiar; how could the one marriageable man she had ever seen not fall for her charms like all those hicks before him?
All her life, every time Elizabeth had asked for something, she would get her way no matter what. She would do anything she could to win this handsome newcomer over, even if it meant venturing deep into the dark overgrown swamp that stretched beyond her estate. For within that wetland lived a young voodoo priestess named Izegbe. Elizabeth would never let herself touch this savage heathen’s sooty hand, but desperate times called for desperate measures.
“O Priestess of Voodoo, do you know how to make a man fall in love with me?” Elizabeth asked. “I love no man other than Thomas Henderson, yet I fear he doesn’t love me.”
The priestess bit her lip at first, but then smiled before fetching a flask of clear liquid from her medicine cabinet. “Take this love potion free of charge, my sweet Miss Blake. Take a few strands of your hair and mix them into it, and then give it to the man you love. One drink will make him fall for you.”
Elizabeth went home to do as the priestess instructed. She opened the flask, wincing from the potion’s awfully pungent odor, and stirred strands of her own hair into it. She cackled with eager glee as she prepared the potion thus.
The next evening, Elizabeth went down to the local bar where Thomas was enjoying his usual drink after a hard day’s work. She handed to him the potion, wrapped with a glittery red ribbon as if it were a Christmas present. “It’s a special gift just for you, Dr. Henderson.”
Dr Henderson scratched his hair with befuddlement, but shrugged and opened the flask. But after he sniffed its contents, he did not take even one sip.
“Why, this is none other than chloral hydrate—a common date rape drug!” he roared. “I know what you’re up to, Miss Blake! Someone call the marshal!”
“No! I didn’t mean to rape you, Thomas,” Elizabeth said. “I was tricked by that sooty whore Izegbe!”
At that very moment Izegbe, who stepped forth from the shadows. “It was for good reason. You wanted a way to manipulate his feelings to benefit yourself. That, Miss Blake, is the textbook definition of date rape, and I had to trap you for it! And besides, Thomas is seeing me.”
As the police marched in to drag Elizabeth Blake away, the last she saw of Thomas Henderson was Izegbe embracing him with ebony arms and kissing him with a lover’s passion.
Cover illustration for my e-novelette “The Sultan of Finback Isle”, showing our heroes Abdullah and Monique Kalua being encircled by a hungry Dimetrodon.
Having broken off from the other continents two hundred and sixty million years ago, the landmass known as Finback Isle has protected a unique ecosystem in the equatorial Pacific older than the dinosaurs themselves. Only a near-extinct nation of Polynesian settlers, together with the crew of Ferdinand Magellan in 1520, have ever set foot on the island within the annals of human history.
And then Ibrahim Fawal, a native of Casablanca turned controversial new Chief of Police in Los Angeles, decided to establish his private winter getaway there.
Enter Abdullah and Monique Kalua, a daring husband-and-wife team of FBI agents sent to investigate the LAPD’s accelerated record of corruption and brutality under Fawal;s leadership, including the shooting of Monique’s own close relations. Their mission is to penetrate Fawal’s secret lair and bring him to justice.
Not only must they brave treacherous jungle littered with Polynesian ruins and teeming with beasts from the late Paleozoic Era, but they must also contend with the armed officers of one of the most vicious men ever to head the police of Los Angeles…the Sultan of Finback Isle!
I wrote and revised this short coming-of-age tale for a creative-writing assignment back in the spring of 2013, during my studies at UCSD. The writing may be rough compared to more recent work I’ve posted here, but I’m still partial to the unique little world I created for it.
Mukondi Djata slipped out of her leather sleeping tent with a spear and machete in hand. A gold sliver of sunlight crept up from behind the eastern plains to stain the twilight sky red and warm the sleeping women’s camp. Despite this heat growing outside, streams of dread colder than spring water coursed within Mukondi’s veins. Her spear’s iron point ran longer than her feet, and she would need every inch of it for the test of womanhood that she would begin this morning.
The rest of the Djata clan’s camp stayed asleep in silence. Not even the most excitable of the little girls scampered between the tents before their older sisters, mothers, and aunts woke up yet. The crimson arrow-shaped head of Sambu the Allosaurus, the Djatas’ symbolic animal, emblazoned each tent. When she noted the emblem’s jagged teeth, Mukondi gulped down a mouthful of air. The last thing she needed now was yet another reminder of the First Hunt which lay just ahead for her.
The throaty and hoarse blare of a hollowed animal horn shattered the silence. “Mukondi? Are you coming?” It was her mother Dyese calling.
Mukondi jogged to the fat baobab tree which towered in the heart of the camp. Two other women, her mother and her elder cousin Azandu, awaited below the tree’s shade. Having reached her own womanhood six rainy seasons ago, Azandu looked exactly as Mukondi and every other Djata girl wished to look: tall and lithe, with firm muscles under skin as dark as a moonless midnight. Rings of fangs and claws from Azandu’s kills hung from her neck, something Mukondi also wished she could earn in years to come. As for Dyese, the hide shawl she draped over her shoulders marked her rank as the Djata clan’s matriarchal chieftain.
Dyese smiled as she patted Mukondi on the shoulder. “You can do it, my precious,” she said. “Oyosi Herself sees to it that you will.” She tilted her wizened face up to the sky where Oyosi Djata, the clan’s great ancestress, rested.
Mukondi pulled her mother’s hand off. “You told Nzinge that very same thing, didn’t you?”
“Don’t mention her again!” Azandu banged her spear’s butt against the ground. “You are smarter and wiser than your big sister ever was, Mukondi. You’ll succeed where she failed, trust me.”
A quivering Mukondi folded her arms together. “How can you feel so sure of that?”
Azandu groaned. “Look, do you want to be dropped off at a men’s village and grow crops in one place for the rest of your life? Or do you want to become a woman?”
“I am no man!” Mukondi pounded a fist onto her breasts.
“Then don’t whine like one. Now, while scouting last night, I spotted Sambu drinking from the river to the south.” Azandu pointed towards the southern horizon. “He might still prowl over there.” She laid her own hand on Mukondi’s shoulder. “When you meet him, you know what to do.”
“Aim for the breast or brain,” Mukondi recited. She sucked in a mouthful of air to swell her chest upward and smiled.
“One more thing before you leave, daughter.” Dyese pulled out from her hide belt the animal horn she had blown earlier and handed it to Mukondi. “It goes back to my mother’s mother. Blow it, and you shall lure Sambu towards you.”
“Isn’t that cheating?” Mukondi asked.
“Not at all, but use it sparingly,” Azandu said. “Blow it too many times together and Sambu will figure out what you’re up to.”
Mukondi slipped the horn under her own belt and bowed her head to Dyese. “I owe you so much for the gift, mother.”
Dyese wrapped her arms around her daughter in a gentle embrace. “You owe nothing at all. Now go forth on your First Hunt, Mukondi. You leave our camp a girl, but you shall come back a woman, with Sambu’s teeth in your hands. May Oyosi bless you.”
Mukondi hugged her mother back with all her strength while more tears dripped from her eyes. This could have been the last time in their whole lives that they would see each other. Mukondi rested her head against Dyese’s breasts while her mother in turn stroked her dreadlocks.
“If I do not come back alive, I shall always remain in your memories, mother,” Mukondi said.
After Dyese withdrew her warm arms from her daughter, the chill returned to sting Mukondi’s blood. Nonetheless she jogged away from the camp, looking back only once.
Philip J. Covington, CEO of Global Petroleum Inc., smirked when he strutted out of his limousine and laid his eyes on the new museum. It amused him how literally his contractors and architects had taken the word “museum” when designing the place. The building’s Romanesque portico of marble columns, gleaming silver from the moonlight, seemed more evocative of a prestigious old museum nested deep in his native London than a solitary edifice erected in the central Texas heartland. They had even gone so far as to decorate the premises with trimmed hedges and topiaries to reinforce the illusion of prestigious aristocracy. Or perhaps those were meant to disguise the distant landscape of prairie and pipeline tracks.
Not that Covington truly had a problem with any of it. He
would rather feel at home than be reminded that he was in the rustic middle of
America.
There was one feature he noticed that contradicted the
structure’s predominantly Neoclassical pretensions. Poking up from behind the
museum’s main body was the dazzling summit of a glass dome. Covington did not
remember arranging for anything like that when he first ordered the building’s
construction.
“Mr. Covington! You’re even more on time than I
expected.”
Elias Marshall hurried down the museum’s front steps and
offered his plump hand for a shake. Except for his weathered suntanned
complexion, the Texan local appeared as a figure of glossy white, from his
three-piece suit to his cowboy’s hat and boots of faux snakeskin down to the
holster for his revolver. Even his hair had turned white to match his fashion
sensibilities. It was all in stark contrast to his pale-skinned, dark-haired,
and black-suited superior.
“That would be Sir Covington to you, Mr.
Marshall,” Covington said, placing special emphasis on his English accent
for the American’s hearing pleasure. “But I must say I admire what you’ve
assembled together so far, at least from the outside. A bit incongruous with
its surroundings, but I suppose a place like this could use a bit more, shall we
say, class?”
Marshall chuckled with a slight touch of nervousness.
“Trust me, sir, you haven’t seen what we’ve got in store inside.”
Covington was about to shake Marshall’s hand when a faint,
prolonged moan reverberated from somewhere, followed by the apparent rattle of
window panes. The noise reminded him of a whale’s song, except it eventually
trailed into a rumble more like an elephant’s. At least it was a more pleasant
sound than the country music his limo’s chauffeur had been playing all night.
“What the bloody blazes was that?” Covington said.
“Some sort of machinery?”
“No, that’s from the big greenhouse we have behind the
museum.” Marshall pointed over to the peak of the glass dome. “A
little surprise we planned for you. The kids should love it way more than any
of our other exhibits, for reasons that shall become obvious. May I give you a
sneak peek tonight after our little tour, Sir Covington?”
Covington nodded. “Why not take me there straight away?
I’ll inspect the rest later.”
Together they went through the museum, following corridor
after corridor that lit up automatically with their entrance. The exhibits they
passed ranged from diagrams explaining how fossilized marine organisms became
petroleum over millions of years, models depicting the process of extracting,
refining, and transporting the oil, and then screens and walls of text
explaining how the new pipeline nearby would be far safer and more
environmentally friendly than those silly tree-huggers, social justice
warriors, and restless “Native American” savages would have the public believe.
Of course, the language the displays used was far more politically correct, but
Covington had always wished he could throw far viler terminology at those
troublemakers.
The last hallway he and Marshall went down ended with a
closed doorway twice as high as the rest, framed by blocks of dark stone that
tapered towards the top for an almost Egyptian-looking slant, unlike the
straight Greco-Roman pillars that prevailed elsewhere in the establishment.
Little braziers mounted on the sides flickered holographic flames while the
entablature above had bold red letters impressed into it that read,
“Welcome to the Fossil Age”.
Covington snickered. “What do you have in there,
Godzilla?”
“Not quite, sir. Just wait and see.”
Marshall clapped his hands, and the doors opened with a
grinding sound effect playing alongside a looping track of tribal drumbeats.
Out wafted a gust of humid and balmy air that carried with it the fragrance of
tropical flora together with the mustier odor of decaying leaves.
They passed through the open gate onto a wooden walkway held
up on stilts over the ground, with pairs of tiki torches providing genuine
firelight along the railing. Overhead arced the dome of glass that Covington
had seen earlier, but only upon entering its interior could he appreciate its
vast and towering scale. The space it enclosed would have easily dwarfed the
rest of the museum! Speakers hanging interspersed between the glass panes
played the unending chorus of a primordial wilderness, with bird-like squawks
and screeches punctuating the chirping of nocturnal insects.
And then there returned the echoing moan Covington had heard
earlier, but louder and deeper than before. His flesh trembled all the way down
to the bone.
Beyond both sides of the walkway grew a verdant savanna of
ferns with scattered cycad, tree-fern, and monkey-puzzle trees. Dragonflies
fluttered around little ponds fenced with horsetail reeds while flies buzzed
over balls of wet rock mottled with white fluid and shreds of leaves. At least
Covington hoped those were only rocks. They had more than an uncanny
resemblance to bird droppings and exuded a much more potent, pungent odor.
“You sure spared no expense on the scenic authenticity,
Mr. Marshall,” he muttered. “I could’ve sworn those were real dung.”
“Oh, those are real, all right.” Marshall pointed
up ahead, where the path ended in a circular plaza like a cul-de-sac. “Look
over there.”
Covington squinted past the railing on the walkway’s end
until he caught a glimpse of a broad and scaly surface rearing up from the
other side, shimmering like a wall of pebbles from the torches’ light. As he
traced the contours of the form before him with his eyes, he could hear the
crackling of soil beneath heavy footsteps and the rustle of leaves attached to
creaking trees.
His pace slowed to a stagger until he gave into the
paralysis of incredulous shock. The only muscles Covington could move were his
blinking eyelids.
He could confuse the hulking behemoth for nothing else. The
long and tubular neck with a tiny head, the rotund torso supported by four legs
like pillars, and the even longer tail that hovered over the ground with the
tip twirling like a lasso. All in all, the beast must have surpassed all but
the very largest whales in mass.
Covington would have taken it for an animatronic like one
would find in countless museums and theme parks around the world. But then,
with a smooth fluidity too flawless for any machine, the animal craned its neck
up to browse from one of the monkey-puzzle trees.
“What the bloody hell is…that?” Covington forced
himself to say at last. “Is that real?”
“Every bit of flesh, blood, and bone in him is real, I
tell you,” Marshall replied. “Like you said, we spared no expense.
Not even when it was more expensive than the museum itself.”
“I can easily imagine why…but why? Why would you bring
a bloody dinosaur, of all things, into this?”
“Why not? We deal in fossil fuels after all. Of course, as you know, most oil comes from
tiny sea critters rather than dinosaurs. But if you’re going to win hearts and
minds over to your new pipeline, you might as well win them over with the kind
of fossil they love. Most of all the kids.”
The dinosaur turned away from its meal and lowered its head
right down to where Covington and Marshall stood, examining them with little
coppery eyes while sniffing them like a curious dog. Covington froze still
again when the creature’s snout brushed against his suit.
“At least it’s the plant-eating kind,” he said.
“What do you call them, Apatosaurus?”
“Actually, mate, this one’s a Brontosaurus excelsus. Closely related, but the paleontologists now
consider them different genera again.”
It was a woman who had addressed Covington. Her khaki shorts
and top hugged her tall and slender, dark brown figure while wavy black hair
streamed beside her face underneath her slouch hat. She marched down the
walkway up to the Brontosaurus and gave the cracked scales on its muzzle a
gentle stroke of her hand as if it were a horse, murmuring soft words into its
earhole.
“Sir Covington, I’d like you to meet Charlotte Elanora,
a tough Aboriginal gal from down under,” Marshall said. “She led the
team to capture our big attraction back in the Jurassic, and now she’s its
primary caretaker.”
“His primary
caretaker,” Elanora corrected him. “I named him Big Ben, after my old
man. Ain’t he a handsome bloke?”
“A Brontosaurus named Big Ben…it’s alliterative, at
least,” Covington said. “How can you tell his gender though?”
“Easy. You can’t see it so well in this lighting, but
the males tend to have brighter purple stripes than the females.” Elanora
tapped the nape of the dinosaur’s neck behind its head. “Though if we’re
going to keep him penned up here, I think we ought to get him a mate soon.
Wouldn’t you want that, Big Ben? A nice and pretty sheila to keep you
company?”
Benny rumbled and then let out another of his moaning
bellows. The volume of the call almost burst through Covington’s eardrums now
that had had gotten so close to the dinosaur.
“Truth be told, I think he’s homesick,” Elanora
went on. “Though I suppose he’ll be safer in captivity. You can’t see it
from this side, but on his left thigh he has some scratches from an Allosaurus
attack. Allosaurus, by the way, is one of the big meat-eating dinosaurs, though
they’re a bit smaller and nimbler than the Cretaceous T. rex.”
“Good thing we don’t have one of those in here,
then,” Covington said. “Now this is all lovely and magnificent, but
don’t you think it might be, well, a bit of a challenge to keep him in this
place? We’ve all seen those movies, if you know what I mean. Not to mention,
the sheer cost of maintaining a beast that big…”
Marshall wrapped an arm around Covington’s shoulder and laughed. “Like I said, it’ll be the biggest draw we can throw at them. The admission tickets alone should pay for everything. And besides, the Brontosaurus is a gentle plant-eater. What could go wrong with his kind?”
The gong rang and reverberated, and the gates to the arena ground open. In rode Huan Xi, Imperial Prince of Zhongguo, on his elephant Longwei. Both he and his mount glimmered with platelets of polished leather armor under the afternoon sun, with bronze blades glinting on the elephant’s tusks. Spreading a proud smile across his pale yellow-brown face, Huan Xi waved with lance in hand to the audience that filled the terraced seating to his right.
Everyone on that side of the arena waved back with cheering and hooting of his name. These men and women were all Zhongguans, Huan Xi’s subjects, come to see him joust for the prize he desired more than anything else. From the lowermost seating there watched the Empress herself, his mother, with a bright pink robe of silk and cherry blossoms in her bun of graying hair. Her eyes twinkled with both Imperial pride and maternal love, but Huan Xi noticed her wringing her hands together with nervous anticipation.
He would make her so proud. This he swore by Zhongdi, Lord of all the Heavens.
Another gong rang from atop the arena’s far end. Afterward there thundered exotic drums as an opposite pair of gates began to part. The right side of the arena fell silent, but the spectators seated along the left erupted into cheering and chanting in a very different language. These other people, dark brown-skinned with brief garments of white linen, hailed from the ancient kingdom of Khamit far to the southwest of Zhongguo. On their lowest seating was their old Pharaoh Kahotep, with his blue- and gold-striped crown and braided goatee. He flashed a smirk in Huan Xi’s direction.
The Prince of Zhongguo searched the Khamitans’ ranks for a glimpse of Berenib, the Pharaoh’s lovely young daughter. It was over her hand that the joust had been arranged, yet Huan Xi could not make her out anywhere. He could not even find her next to her father or any of his officials. From what he knew of her character, she did not seem like the type of woman who would avoid the sight of blood in the arena, but he was at a loss to explain her curious absence otherwise.
Maybe Kahotep had meant to present her only after the event, for whatever reason. Regardless, as long as Huan Xi had the memory of Berenib’s exquisite beauty in memory, he did not need to be reminded of why he fought.
Longwei the elephant raised his trunk with an anxious rumble. Huan Xi patted his brow while whispering the most soothing words he could muster. In spite of their size, elephants could be skittish animals, but the Prince had to wonder what had intimidated his steed all of a sudden.
Nyarai crept through the tall grass with her hunting bow in hand and an iron ax by her hip. Her tawny halter-top and skirt, both banded with wavy brown stripes, further hid her within the yellowed savanna. Perspiration dripped from her brow, chilling her dark umber skin in spite of the baking afternoon sun.
The other Vavhimi had chosen her too young. No way in Mwari’s name could Nyarai do this and survive.
Ahead of her, the stegosaurs ambled in the field amidst scattered aloe and cycad trees. Any single one of the lumbering giants could feed all her neighbors back in the city, with the pebbled hide providing shields for the Mambo’s royal guard. The pentagonal plates that shimmered like copper on their backs would bring in a fortune from merchants in all directions. So would the ebony spikes glinting at the tips of their tails…if they did not impale Nyarai first.
No, she could not let her fears drown her hope. She was a Muvhimi, a hunter of the Vazhona nation, and she could not let her peers down.
Nyarai slipped an arrow from her quiver and laid it atop the bow, aligning its head with one of the stegosaurs’ rumps. On the far side of the field, the savanna gave way to a woodland of mopane trees where the other Vavhimi awaited. They had sent her not to kill any of the stegosaurs, but to drive the herd into their trap.
It was a simple, classic strategy when described out loud. Nyarai could only plea to Mwari the Creator, and to the spirits of her foremothers, that it would be as simple to carry out.
She drew her bowstring with tender care, not letting it creak. The bow still wavered in her clammy grip. The stegosaurs lowed and grazed, and she prayed in murmurs that they would not smell her.
