The Ring Of Sheba

by Mel Odom

  “On us?” Nuno shook his head. “There is no telling. We were thinking they were going to take one of us yesterday, then your group showed up and they feasted on your friend.”

  Ngola took a deep breath and made his decision. “Set yourselves and get ready. Light the torches. This will happen fast. Remember, when you attack one of them, stay at it until you or it is dead. Running while they’re still alive will only get you killed.”

  “You’re a fool,” Machado snarled, but he stood and took up the long knife he’d been given.

  Ignoring the man, Ngola walked down the incline with a torch in his hand. The Shadows watched him as they floated in the pool, but none of them approached. Perhaps they waited for him to attempt to escape through the water. Their tails flicked restively.

  Controlling the energy that sang through his blood, breathing deeply to charge his lungs so he would be ready, Ngola approached the bloody remains of Amaral. Only bone and gristle remained, but judging from the broken bones they’d found at the other end of the cave, the creatures would return for the marrow eventually.

  As he had remembered from the previous day, Amaral’s cutlass lay beside the body. Carefully, slowly, Ngola reached down for the weapon. His own blade was still sheathed at his side, but he wanted one more sword if he could get it.

  Once Ngola had his fist wrapped around the hilt of the cutlass, two of the creatures heaved themselves up from the water. Facing them from a distance of only a few feet, Ngola kicked Amaral’s remains into the pool.

  Whether it was primitive instinct or an intellectual response to save food or merely greed, one of the creatures on the ledge slipped back into the water while three others swam toward the corpse as well.

  While the other creature was distracted, Ngola swung the cutlass in an overhand blow as he lunged across the distance separating him from his opponent. The thing shrieked a warning and attempted to dodge, but the cutlass split its skull and sank past the chin. Blood and brains exploded from the violent force of the blow, coating Ngola’s face in gore.

  The creature fell limply into the pool.

  A savage cry tore free of Ngola’s lips, and the exultant cheers of his crew and the Portuguese prisoners filled the cave with a hopeful roar. One of the monstrosities was gone.

  For a moment, Ngola thought he might stand his ground and manage to kill another one, but he had forgotten the frightful speed they moved within the water. In a heartbeat, the six surviving Shadows leaped up onto the stone ledge and came after him, pushing off with their serpent-like tails, catching themselves on their widely splayed palms, then pushing off again.

  Instantly surrounded on three sides, Ngola retreated, sprinting back up the incline just ahead of the creatures. The things shrieked and hooted as they came after him.

  “Ready the spears!” Ngola ordered as he covered the final distance to the shelter.

  “Duck!” Drury commanded as he held one of the spears. As Ngola shot down, colliding with Eyenga and Nuno, the Irishman and Joao lunged forward with their spears and sank the blades into the nearest Shadow.

  The creature’s weight drove Drury and Joao back, each man yelping curses in his native language. Thankfully the spear hafts struck the other end of the fort and halted the thing’s headlong momentum. It stopped, held at bay by the spears piercing its chest.

  Dodging a weak swipe of the creature’s claw, Ngola drew one of his knives from his boots and rammed the point up into his opponent’s chin. The blade ran up into the creature’s brain and the black eyes widened in death as it convulsed.

  “That’s two of the hellspawn!” Ngola roared as the creature was pulled out of the way by the one behind it. He swept the cutlass overhand, skating the blade off rocks behind him, and brought it down onto the monster’s skull, crashing through bone and brain. This time he was unable to retrieve the cutlass and let it go after the Shadow fell back.

  Another creature battered the wall they’d erected and stones started to topple.

  “Mind the wall!” Ngola shouted as he drew his other cutlass and put his shoulder to the unsteady wall to hold it back. “Hold your places, you dogs! Your lives depend on it!”

  Nuno and the other two Portuguese sailors braced the wall, cursing and praying in equal measure with fervor. Some of the rocks fell, but most of them held. Webbed hands appeared at the top of the wall.

  “Torches!” Ngola bellowed.

  Nuno hunkered down and grabbed one of the torches in the campfire that now blazed. Eyenga grabbed two of the torches. Together, they held the flames against the hands of their foes.

  The Shadows shrieked and hooted, and the hands withdrew as the smell of burned fish filled the air.

  Setting himself, Ngola dodged back as another creature filled the opening. He pressed himself against the wall and held the cutlass, waiting. He glanced at Drury and Joao.

  “Let the next one through, but hold it short of you.”

  The two men nodded and took a step back just as the next Shadow charged. Their spears held it back, though the knife tied to Joao’s spear tore free.

  Ngola swung at the thing’s neck with all his might and the gruesome head leaped free of the broad shoulders. A cheer swelled from the men barricaded in the fort.

  Another Shadow swept aside the beheaded one almost at once and tried to force its way inside. The torch in Ngola’s left hand blazed, heat licking at his fingers and almost too painful for him to hold on. He lifted the torch as the creature batted Drury’s spear aside. Putting his weight and muscle behind the effort, Ngola shoved the burning torch in through the gill slits along the creature’s neck.

  Flames lit up inside the thing’s head, somehow catching fire due to the presence of oils and the influx of oxygen. Fire and smoke trailed from its mouth as it slapped at its head in a frenzy. It stumbled back and the doorway was momentarily clear except for the two dead bodies.

  “The wall!” Ngola commanded. “Push hard, you dogs! Only three of them remain! We have them now! Push and fill your hands with steel!”

  Together, they shoved, and the wall of rocks toppled over onto the monster there trying to find a way in. Overcome by the weight of the rocks and the men charging over to fight for their lives, the creature went down, shrieking fearfully now. Before it could get to its feet, the Portuguese sailors and Eyenga shoved knives into it, killing it.

  Drury ran forward and rammed his spear into the creature whose head was still aflame, slamming into it and driving it from its feet.

  Trusting the Irishman to finish the kill, Ngola pursued the two remaining creatures. Both of them bobbed up and down as they scrambled back toward the moon pool. Reaching behind his back, Ngola seized his mambele, cocked his arm, and threw.

  The spinning weapon sailed true and caught the thing in the back of the head, knocking it forward. Before it could get its hands under itself, Ngola slid astride it, wrapping his legs around the scaly flesh, and holding on tight. Then he brought the cutlass down.

  Beside him, Joao caught the last creature by its serpent-like tail, set himself, and yanked. The creature fell forward, but was unable to catch itself before its wedge-shaped face met the hard rock floor. Dazed, it flailed, striving to get up, but Joao—his face a mask of dark joy—grabbed his knives and shoved both blades into the sides of its head.

  Shrieking a final time, the creature shuddered and went down.

  Breathing deeply, Ngola got to his feet and yanked his mambele from the back of his vanquished foe’s head. Looking back, he spotted Drury getting up from the creature he’d finished off. The thing’s head blazed merrily, and now the rest of its body was catching fire as well. The bodies must have consisted of a high quantity of oil.

  “That’s far enough, Ngola,” Machado ordered. He stood only a few feet away and held a small pistol cocked and steady, aiming directly at Ngola.

  12.

  The Witch’s Vengeance

  “You didn’t think I recognized you, but I did. Your arrival here has precipitated our
deliverance, so I will not begrudge you your life even if it means we cross swords at a later date. I can be just as victorious then as I am now.”

  Ngola stopped with his hands out to his sides. “You had a pistol? And you let yourself and your men be used by these things?”

  “I had to wait for my powder to dry. I assure you, this weapon is quite ready now.” Machado’s eyes flickered as anger ignited. “So speak carefully and I will give you a chance to live through this thing.”

  “You only have the one shot,” Ngola pointed out. “Or do you fancy yourself a swordsman after you’ve expended that shot? Kill me and my men will kill you.”

  “Maybe they will, and maybe they won’t.” Machado grinned. “Myself, I don’t think they’ll do anything because they don’t want to see you die, and I promise you, I am a good shot. Men could testify to that, but you’d have to go to Hell to speak to them.”

  “Drury,” Ngola said.

  “No,” the Irishman said. “If he’s going to let you live, I’ll not do anything to bollix that up.”

  “Good,” Machado said. “We have an understanding. It’s always better that way. And with you dead, we outnumber your men four to three. I think we’ll do all right.”

  Silently, Ngola cursed the man. He was willing to take his chances, but if he did, if Machado killed him, then Drury, Joao, and Eyenga would be on their own against the slavers.

  “I assume we have an agreement then?” Machado asked.

  Ngola still said nothing, but he took note of the creature’s quivering corpse only a few feet behind the Portuguese captain. The thing’s head was gone, it couldn’t be alive. But it moved slightly, twitching as if something inside it was trying to get out.

  “Good,” Machado said. “There is one thing I would like to know.”

  Tight-lipped, weighing his chances, Ngola watched the Portuguese captain’s body, waiting for an opening. The mambele felt as certain as an old and familiar lover in his hand.

  “What would you like to know?” Drury asked.

  “How you found this place?” Machado asked.

  “The witch told us.”

  Machado frowned in confusion. “The witch?”

  “Delfina. The old woman that lives in the hut near where you hid your boats.”

  Machado shook his head. “That’s impossible.”

  Before he could elaborate, the creature’s body behind him suddenly exploded and hurled gore in all directions. From within the thing’s body, a dozen small creatures with mouths full of needle-like teeth scurried out, tracking their mother’s blood as they closed in on Machado. Each of them was as long as Ngola’s forearm from elbow to fingertip.

  The creatures clamped onto the pirate’s ragged pants and pulled themselves up with incredibly strong arms, yanking to climb him swiftly. Screaming in horror, Machado stepped back and tried to brush the things from his body with his free hand. He managed a second step, then a third while his men looked on, and even Ngola stood frozen at the macabre sight.

  Then one of the creatures reached Machado’s throat and bit. Blood blossomed and ran down the slaver captain’s neck as he fired his pistol into the air and fell backward. In seconds, the demonic offspring ripped into him, burrowing into him and following the blood.

  “Let’s go!” Ngola ordered, waving his crew into movement. Once they were running, he joined them, running and diving into the moon pool. He swam deep and followed the light to the underwater entrance.

  *

  “Captain! Thank the gods you yet live!”

  As Ngola pushed himself to his feet at the bank of the lake, he glanced up and spotted the two crewmen atop the cliff where he’d left them. He’d thought maybe they might have gone back, not that he would have blamed them, but he would have understood.

  Drury, Joao, and Eyenga pulled themselves from the emerald water too, all of them looking worse for the wear but hale and hearty all the same.

  Yalua even looked glad to see him.

  *

  “So now we know why Machado seemed surprised to learn the witch had told us where he was.” Drury stood in the doorway to the old woman’s hut.

  Inside, Delfina lay on her back amid the remains of a violent fight. She stared emptily up at the hut’s roof. Dried blood, infested by blowflies and maggots, lay in a thick chain around her slashed throat.

  “Dead a week if she’s been dead a day,” Drury commented. He glanced up at Ngola. “That means the other night when we were here, we were talking to her ghost.”

  Ngola shook his head but didn’t want to argue with his friend. Struggling to think about the Sharp-Toothed Shadows was difficult enough. He didn’t need to add ghosts to the mix. He could not fathom how the old woman had communicated with them days after she had been murdered.

  “Have you ever talked to a ghost before?” Drury asked.

  Ngola ignored the question and waved to Joao to lead them back to the boats.

  “You know,” Drury said as he gazed back toward the lake, “if we did talk to a ghost, since those things are dead, there’s a chance that the Queen of Sheba’s ring is somewhere at the bottom of that lake. We could take a few days—”

  “No,” Ngola said. “I’ve had my fill of monsters and ghosts and magic. I want to get back to a town that serves ale and get a tankard or two, or as many as it takes to forget all of this. Then I want to go home to my wife and son for a time.” He started walking.

  After a moment, Drury—as always—fell into step beside him.

  There would be other ventures, Ngola felt certain. And as long as he fought slavers along the west coast of Africa, there would be monsters and demons and lost treasures as well.

  Afterword

  I was a young man when Ace Books reprinted the Conan the Barbarian books in the late 1960s and 1970s, and for a period thereafter. Ace picked up the torch after Lancer books went out of print. I still found some of those old Lancer books in the swap shops I frequented as I sought out novels in series I collected. Amazon makes such collecting so much easier these days, but I miss going out on the hunt, traipsing through old stores, shifting through tons of paperbacks to get the ones I was looking for—or new treasures I discovered, and reading through those books over a greasy cheeseburger at a hole-in-the-wall diner.

  Though they probably weren’t the Good Old Days, they were good days. I miss them.

  Those twelve Ace Conan books, and scattered editions published by Lancer, occupied a special space on my book shelves. I liked how they lined up, how they looked so uniform. Trade dress (the way covers in a book or series was designed) was a term I didn’t know anything about at the time.

  Ace published those books in a loose chronological order, as I recall. There were only two novels among the books, one by Robert E. Howard (Hour of the Dragon was renamed Conan the Conqueror so Ace could have Conan’s name as part of the title in every book) and one by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter (Conan of the Isles). The other ten books all contained poems, short stories, and novellas.

  I liked being able to pick up a book and wander through more than one story about the hero, and even jump to different time periods in Conan’s life as well as different locations he lived. The stories always felt different, and the tapestry was loose enough to encompass a long, vibrant life.

  Fritz Leiber’s stories about Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser were written and gathered much in the same fashion. Leiber skipped around while chronicling their tales and never did write a novel about the two heroes.

  People have already, successfully, done what I hope to do with these stories.

  However, there was no publisher or magazine interested in novellas like this. I wasn’t even certain there was a readership. I guess I’m still not.

  But I’m prepared to find out.

  After the ebook market manifested and boomed, I wanted to write about a fantasy hero whose stories could be as varied as those Conan stories before later publishers decided everything had to be novels, then even longer novels. I enjoy
ed being able to put myself in a chair and finish a story in a sitting.

  Ngola had been rattling around in the back of my head for a few years. I’d done some research on a mystery novel based on a video game for Harlequin and decided to dig into Britain’s history for material. One of the first things I discovered during that search was the West Africa Squadron to fought the Portuguese slavers back in the day.

  Before I knew it, I realized that the Singh Brotherhood that Lee Falk’s Phantom character fought against was (probably) part of the same Portuguese pirate empire the West Africa Squadron fought. The tie was just too strong for me and I couldn’t resist. I knew I would write about Ngola.

  Another character in the back of my mind was African-American author Charles Saunders’s Imaro, a sword and sorcery hero. The first book of a proposed series contained six tales of Imaro that were first published in a fanzine, Dark Fantasy. That book was, unfortunately, alluded to as a “Black Tarzan” and was the subject of a lawsuit by the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate. Two other volumes were later released, but the sales never provided enough impetus for Saunders to continue his books.

  Captain Ngola Kilunaji came to life in Pro Se Books’ anthology, Black Pulp, under editor Tommy Hancock. I was asked to write a story for the collection and I told Tommy the story was going to be long. He green lit me and away I went.

  Ngola came to life before my eyes, summoned from that dark well writers keep nebulous plots and ideas constantly churning in. I knew I wanted a Robert E. Howard flavor, a two-fisted hero with ties to history battling supernatural creatures. When Ngola came out of the sea to take Salazar’s ship, Colin Drury and Joao came with him before I knew they would be there. Not only that, I discovered Ngola was married and had a son who had been kidnapped by those very slavers he was hunting.

  I’m usually better about plotting everything out. But that’s when I’m writing 90k novels. I work with a thinner outline when writing shorter fiction, and often I surprise myself with thing I know that I didn’t know when I first started writing.