the Rose & the Crane

by Clint Dohmen

  Simon fidgeted and shifted in his seat while Kojiro sat patiently, not saying a word. Neno, not sure he trusted their host at all, watched the doors nervously. At the end of their wide-ranging conversation, Aldo stood. “Ismail will check the quality of our woolen goods, glassware, and Italian armor, and will trade cloves for them if they meet his standards. He says that nutmeg grows on a different group of islands, so he has none to offer us.” Aldo was disappointed by the last piece of information but knew he could still make a great deal of money from the cloves.

  Neno stood up quickly, happy that they would soon be leaving the building where they could be so easily trapped. Before he reached the door, an unmistakable sound shook the house. Boom!

  They all heard the single cannon’s report coming from the direction of the Tigre. Simon looked at Ismail’s face for any reactions that would indicate treachery, but the man was clearly as alarmed by the cannon’s report as they were. Neno was already out the door and staring down the cart path as Aldo spoke hastily to Ismail. Simon waited to hear what Ismail had to say while Kojiro took up a defensive position at the door.

  Aldo translated his conversation for them. “It could either be Turks or indigenous tribes from another island, but the Turks aren’t due to collect taxes for another month. This region is host to several tribes that survive partly through piracy and theft. As an added bonus, most of them are headhunters, and some of them are cannibals.”

  “You know, that’s funny because you didn’t say anything about headhunting cannibals when you showed me that seed you were so proud of,” Simon said.

  “You didn’t ask.”

  “Why is this funny?” Kojiro asked seriously. “It does not seem funny that Aldo would not tell you such an important detail.”

  “It’s not funny, Kojiro, that is the ‘sarcasm’ I have been teaching you about. You say something that is the opposite of what you mean.”

  “Why do you do that again?” Kojiro asked.

  “To antagonize the people I know.”

  “Antagonize?”

  Aldo translated for Kojiro. “Ijime suru.”

  “Okay, I understand what you do, but still not why.”

  “Because he’s a giant asshole,” Aldo explained.

  “Okay, now I understand why,” Kojiro said.

  Simon nodded in agreement with Aldo, then redirected the conversation. “Is there anything else I should know?”

  “Well, getting caught by them isn’t pleasant,” Aldo said as he nervously played with his fingers. “Unlike the European peasants of the Great Famine of 1315 who ate human flesh to survive, these tribes eat human flesh for pleasure. Ismail tells me that it is part of their culture to hang the victims’ heads over wood fires and slowly smoke them. The flesh of the chin and cheeks are apparently considered a delicacy.”

  “Well, how does Ismail normally protect himself from these flesh eaters?” Simon asked.

  Aldo spoke with Ismail again then translated. “There is a contingent of Arab cavalry normally stationed here, but they left three days ago to put down an uprising on another island. He and the other traders on this island are knights, so the headhunting tribes usually give them a wide berth. It’s unusual for them to strike at anything other than unarmed merchant vessels or weaker Melanesian tribes.”

  Kojiro spoke. “If this man’s warriors are on another island, perhaps they were tricked into leaving for an attack here?”

  Aldo received a short response from Ismail. “He says it’s possible. The martial technology of the islanders is inferior, but they are clever in war.”

  “Okay, well, I’m not hearing any more cannon fire, so I’m guessing the Tigre is not tangling with an Ottoman galley. That means it was a warning shot. How do these headhunters usually travel, and is there anything else we should know?”

  Aldo spoke with Ismail again. “They travel from island to island by canoe. They’re fleet-footed, use crude bows and arrows, sometimes poisoned, and prefer to hack their opponents to death with thick-bladed, three-foot-long knives. They wear no armor and in fact, fight half naked, but they’re nearly fearless.”

  After the last exchange with Aldo, Ismail said something briefly and disappeared into the house. Simon looked quizzically at Aldo.

  “He’s going to prepare,” Aldo said.

  “To leave?” Simon wondered.

  “I don’t know,” Aldo admitted.

  Simon, Aldo, and Kojiro walked outside where they met up with Neno. What they saw and heard were not encouraging. The workers from the fields streamed past them with looks of terror in their eyes. Bloodcurdling screams filled the air from those not lucky enough to escape whatever terror was chasing them.

  “Sure wish I had my armor,” Simon said. “I don’t much care for the sound of poisoned arrows.”

  “I wish I had my halberd,” Neno said.

  “And I wish I were sitting in a trattoria in Venice right now, but I’m not,” Aldo said. “Sorry I recommended arming ourselves lightly, it was the trader in me. That appears to have been a mistake on my part.”

  “Well, we all make mistakes,” Simon said. “No sense dwelling on it now.”

  Although Aldo appreciated Simon’s insouciant attitude, he was pretty sure that ‘not dwelling on it now’ meant there would be ample time spent dwelling on it in the future. If we live to do so, that is.

  “Fukusui bon ni kaerazu,” Kojiro said with his eyes fixed in the direction of the screaming.

  “I’m sorry, what was that?” Simon asked.

  “Once the water spills from a bowl, it does not go back in.”

  “Huh, we have a similar expression about milk, though God knows why it’s milk and not whisky. I’ve yet to see a single soul cry over spilled milk, but I’ve seen some pretty hard blokes cry over spilled whisky.”

  They didn’t have to wait long to see it was not Turks. The dark forms moved through the clove trees like a wave, driving their prey in front of them. As they gave chase, they roared an angry, high-pitched battle cry that mingled with the shrieks of the farmers they caught, whose skin they stripped alive.

  “Quite an impressive show of terror, I’d say,” Simon remarked, eyes wide. “It’s driving all the farm workers headlong towards the other side of the plantation. So these are the herders, where are the catchers?”

  “Soukana,” Kojiro said his thoughts out loud. Simon is right, they are driving the farm workers into a trap.

  And then the enemy was upon them.

  The attacking tribesmen were indeed headhunters, as could be evidenced by the sacks tied to the loincloths at their waists, some of which already contained the severed, bloody heads of farm workers. The skin of the attackers was dark brown, almost black, and they had wild, curly black hair. The only clothing on their body was the loincloth, and they were barefoot. The three headhunters who emerged from the trees nearby were wearing necklaces of teeth that appeared to be of human origin.

  Upon seeing that the four companions were not running like everybody else, they began to howl and scream in a lupine manner. This was only a subtle change from their previous vocal emanations, but it attracted other headhunters into the clearing around the house. When the headhunters did scream, their open mouths revealed teeth that had been sharpened into canine points.

  “You could eat human flesh with those teeth,” Aldo remarked.

  Kojiro did not know if these savage-looking men really ate other humans, as the olive-skinned man had suggested, but if they did, he would make sure he was dead before they got a chance to sink their teeth into him. And if he were destined to die on this fragrant island of spice, he would not die alone.

  Kojiro drew both the katana and wakizashi from his belt simultaneously, twirled them 360 degrees around his sides to feel their balance, and thrust them both forward. The katana in his right hand drove cleanly through the skin, ribs, heart, and muscle and out the back of a headhunter rushing forward on his right. The wakizashi in his left drove through the tattooed stomach of a squ
at, potbellied tribesman on his left.

  The man on Kojiro’s right died instantly, and as Kojiro withdrew the bloody Arai blade, the headhunter simply slumped to the ground. The man on the left did not die instantly, so Kojiro stepped into the man until the cloth of his blue yukata touched the skin of the man’s potbelly. Once there, he drove the blade downwards, clean through the man’s groin causing his intestines and bowels to spill out between his legs. Without a pause, or even a look, Kojiro thrust his katana at head level and put the blade through the mouth of another wolf-toothed attacker who had raced at them from the trees before any of the Europeans had even seen him.

  The whole episode had taken a matter of seconds. To Simon’s eye, it looked more like a gracefully choreographed ballet than a gruesome life-and-death struggle. “Do you twirl the swords just to show off? It all seems a tad flashy.”

  “Nihon-jin do not ‘show off,’” Kojiro replied.

  “Really? Because that sure did look an awful lot like showing off to me.”

  “Checking balance.”

  “Huh, okay, if you say so,” Simon said insincerely. He then had to sidestep a blow from something that looked like a gigantic, ornamented butcher knife. Simon drew his sword, thought about attempting to twirl it in a circle, then decided this wasn’t the most opportune time to try something new.

  The headhunter stumbled forward after Simon’s sidestep gave his knife nothing but air, and Simon sliced off the arm that had been holding the knife. The beautiful Arai sword cut through the man’s muscle and sinew like butter. Simon paused to marvel at the blade before he thrust it through the man’s torso just below the rib cage. The sword’s sharpness was almost surreal.

  Neno, meanwhile, turned his back to the other three and faced off against two headhunters who had initially passed them on the right, but had come back when they heard their companions’ wild howls of anger turn into piercing screams of pain. The light Italian long sword practically flew as he put his monstrous strength behind it. The two men quickly went down, shredded to ribbons.

  “I thought he needed a poled weapon to fight,” Simon remarked.

  “Oh no, he’s quite handy with a sword as well,” Aldo informed Simon unnecessarily.

  Then the drumbeats started. Thonk, pat, pat. Thonk, pat, pat. Thonk, pat, pat.

  The sounds were coming from the opposite side of the island from whence the initial headhunters had come. The effect was definitely unnerving, especially when it came shortly after the appearance of the wild-looking, canine-toothed, wolf-howling tribesmen.

  “I guess that’s the second part of the trap,” said Simon as he disemboweled a very large headhunter who had come screaming out of the trees.

  “Yes, so it would seem,” said Aldo as he ducked, dodged, and cut a man’s leg off at the knee. Simon finished the man by slicing his throat as he lay on the ground.

  The four companions had formed a rough circle about fifty feet from the house and were fighting off random attacks from all sides. The headhunters came screeching like banshees from out of the trees in ones and twos, but never gathered together to form a coordinated assault.

  “I wonder what’s become of that nice Arab merchant,” Simon mused.

  “Either headless or hiding, I suspect,” said Aldo.

  The drums got closer. Then they stopped altogether, and the second wave came into view. There were at least two hundred cannibals, and they looked terrifying. They had been marching abreast, spread out across the plantation, just like the first group had been, but from the opposite direction. Their bags were bulging with the heads of the farm workers who had fallen into their trap. When one of them noticed Simon, Kojiro, Aldo, and Neno surrounded by their dead compatriots, he gave out the highest-pitched, loudest, longest scream they had heard yet. The call echoed up and down their line ending in a crescendo, at which point all the headhunters started running towards their little group.

  “Huh, I’m thinking run,” said Simon. “We’ll swim for the boat.”

  “I’m not sure I disagree,” said Aldo.

  “Go,” said Neno. “I can’t outrun them.”

  “Yes, the terror momentarily made me forget about our sizeable friend here,” said Simon, worriedly chewing his lip.

  The natives were forty yards away and closing quickly.

  “I stay,” said Kojiro.

  The tribesmen were thirty yards away.

  “Then again, there are few activities in this world that I despise more than running,” said Simon. Simon glanced briefly at Kojiro who returned his look. Why do I get the odd feeling this fellow is judging me? he thought.

  “Well, if the cowardly English don’t run, how on earth could a respected man of Venice do so?” Aldo remarked.

  “I don’t know. Have you seen one we could ask?” inquired Simon.

  The headhunters drew to within twenty yards and showed no sign of slowing down. Simon, Kojiro, Aldo, and Neno braced for the impact, but with no shields or armor, they would not last long. The mass of humanity would just overwhelm them.

  Then, from behind the plantation house, a blindingly bright form emerged astride a brilliantly armored gray Arabian charger. It was Ismail ibn Umar. A painstakingly polished coat of mail started underneath his conical helmet and hung like a dress below his knees. Underneath his mail he wore thickly padded leather armor. Brightly polished steel greaves and plate armor boots emerged from below the hem of the mail. Equally polished gauntlets with spiked knuckles held the reins of the horse in one hand and an impressive looking fifteen-foot lance in the other. His helmet had hinged earpieces, an arrow-shaped nosepiece, and a five-inch spike crested the helmet.

  Ismail rounded the corner of the house and headed straight towards the mass of headhunters at a full gallop. The sun’s rays reflecting off the Arab knight’s armor caused the entire column of headhunters to pause and stare. Kojiro did not hesitate. He charged forward, katana and wakizashi flashing, and decapitated the two men who seemed to be leading the headhunters’ column. Then, Kojiro pushed into the massed column, swords ablaze.

  “Shall we?” asked Simon.

  “Si,” replied Aldo. Neno had already joined Kojiro.

  Ismail charged straight into the middle of the column at a full gallop. His lance impaled one of the headhunters, and with the impaled man in tow, Ismail galloped straight through the column, knocking men over, while his horse trampled the ones unlucky enough to fall underfoot. When he emerged on the far side, he pulled his lance from the torso of the dead headhunter, galloped thirty yards further, wheeled his horse, and drove straight back into the crowd, lance leveled.

  Neno pushed, kicked, cut, stabbed, and sliced his way forward, throwing the fearsome-looking but much smaller attackers about like they were nothing more than small children.

  The headhunters were not used to their plans falling apart. They were also not used to fighting warriors with a lifetime of martial training, as they usually took great care in their advanced planning stages to avoid them at all cost. In this case, their ruse had failed them. There was supposed to be a lone Arab knight left on the island, but for some reason four more trained fighters were on hand. They had no back-up plan, so all the fighters could do was resort to the tactics they had employed for decades: man to man, brute force combat. Although the numerical odds still favored the headhunters, this style of combat decidedly did not.

  Kojiro stabbed, spun, and struck again. He parried a blow from one of the native knives with his katana and stabbed the man through the heart with his wakizashi.

  Simon was greatly enjoying his new sword. He would cut left and open a man’s bowels, cut right and sever a man’s arm, then stab forward and puncture a man’s chest cavity. He had truly found a tool that he was growing fond of. The blacksmith who had forged his sword had folded, quenched, tempered, and sharpened the sword to faultlessness. The sword was perfect in every way.

  This sword is worthy of a name, Simon thought. He knew a Hampshire knight who harped on endlessly about his m
arvelous sword: The Brainbiter. At the time, Simon had laughed at the absurdity of naming an inanimate object, and he had ridiculed the Hampshire knight just shy of causing a duel. But now, this sword made him wonder if he had been wrong.

  The headhunters were communicating their strikes through exaggerated body movements, and Aldo was having no difficulty dodging or parrying their chopping attacks and making the untrained warriors pay with their lives, but there were so many of them pressing in on him.

  Ismail’s charging cavalry attacks had had the desired effect of stopping the column’s forward momentum, but eventually he had been surrounded and was now hacking downwards with his curved scimitar. The natives had been caught off guard, but they were brave and ruthless, and not used to losing.

  Then the crew of the Tigre arrived.

  Skilled Venetian sailors, adapting to warfare throughout their sprawling trade routes, had learned to use both the recurve bow and the crossbow. On this occasion, the crew of the Tigre had brought both. First, they fired the crossbows, whose powerful bolts flew clear through some of the half-naked headhunters, then, they switched to the rapidly reloadable recurve bows and unleashed Armageddon.

  An hour earlier, Giacomo Aversa had spotted the dugout canoes from his usual perch in the crow’s nest. He could see the light reflecting off of metal blades and had advised Luca Magnani, who had been placed in charge of the ship with the captain and first mate gone. Luca ordered the crew to fire a cannon in warning to the shore party. It would have been useless to try to hit the small, fast, maneuverable canoes. Gambling that the ship would be too intimidating to attack, he left only two crewmen to watch it and headed ashore with the remainder. Upon approaching the sound of clashing blades he didn’t need to give any orders, the men knew their business, but he did anyway. “Shoot the baldracche, and if you hit the capitano, I will skin you alive!” Magnani shouted.

  The arrows, being directly fired from cover, proved to be too much for the headhunters. Thanks to the skill of the Venetians, every arrow seemed to find its mark. They came at a rate of fifteen per minute. Like a wave breaking, the headhunters scattered into the trees and fled towards their canoes.