“Imagine,” shouted the King as he addressed his army with me standing next to his horse, “That this Moor proves his belief in the true faith every day in battle, though it means that he must slaughter his own brethren! And slaughter them he does, by the dozens! By the hundreds! It is a testament to the power of God and the proof of our faith. If only we had one hundred more like him. Let it be known that because of your bravery Alade Akeju, today’s victory cost Salah-adDin much. What reward can we bestow upon you?”
I looked up at the king and at the soldiers staring at me, most with smiles on their face for today I had saved many lives, and for the first time I saw genuine camaraderie developing. But in others, slyly hidden from mortal eyes, I could see the jealousy and envy that raged through their hearts, that I, a foreigner, a Moor at that should be so honored by their king. I knew it would not be long before these envious people noticed my abilities and in time the accusation of sorcery would be leveled at me, a charge that if they tested me they would undoubtedly find to be true. I had to begin to plan for my eventual flight. If I could hold this position for just a little longer than perhaps at least I could take advantage of the king’s largess and help myself to become stronger in this world. For I needed more wars, and more battles for in war my abilities were not questioned they were desired. In war, the strength of my arms could build me the sanctuary I needed to weather years until I figured out how to be human enough to live. I considered my reply to the king carefully and looking up into his eyes I said to him, “Your Majesty, I am a humble man; a simple warrior. I no longer have any family; I have no lands and no people once I took up the cross. I live for battle and the passion it raises in my breast. But you ask me what reward can you bestow upon me and I say the greatest reward you may give me is war; bring me more battles, blood and mayhem so that I may spill the blood of your enemies. There is one more thing Your Majesty. I ask that you give me the means to forge a mighty sword, one that will remain my only trusted companion throughout the long years of my life.”
“A sword, Alade? That is all you desire? Listen to this man! His king offers him the world and all he wants is a sword! Then we shall give you all the gold you need to obtain the finest blade in Christendom or elsewhere.”
“Sire I do not wish to buy a blade; I wish to forge one myself. To do that I will need your permission to leave for a time and travel into the desert to accomplish this.”
“Go into the desert, Alade? Whatever for? There are many sword makers in Acre. Come we will pick one for you ourselves.”
“Your Majesty you asked me what reward I desire and I have told you. I must forge this sword with my own hands.”
“You are serious. You have the skills to accomplish this?”
“Yes, Your Majesty.” “Hmm. How long will you be, Alade? I will need you back in the ranks as soon as possible. We do not expect another campaign this season, so that would give you two months before I would need you back here with me. Will that suffice?”
“It will more than suffice, Your Majesty.” “Good. Then go see Jean-Michel, he will see to it that you are adequately outfitted for your journey. Remember, two months, Alade. Don’t make me come looking for you.”
With that said he turned to his other lieutenants and sergeants who he would honor for their own accomplishments today and I snuck away from the main camp and went to find the king’s chamberlain, Jean-Michel. I found him in the king’s tent and quickly outlined what I needed. A war-time chamberlain such as Jean-Michel must be efficient and he was very efficient indeed so before an hour had passed I was equipped and ready to break camp. I felt certain sadness because despite my words to the king I knew I would not be returning and in fact he would soon be in no shape to come looking for anyone. The strength of their foolish religious convictions would not be enough to overcome Salah-ad-Din, and they would lose the war. I had eaten my fill of the Crusades, the faith of the crusaders no longer amused me and anyway it was time for me to move on. The glamour which made me age as a human was growing weaker, as I depleted more and more of my remaining ase. I needed to get away from here to a place where creatures such as myself could walk if not openly, then at least without fear of harassment and in some places with awe and reverence. A place where blood and battle were a way of life and death was a cherished friend. I would go east, crossing the great expanse of arid territories until I reached the Carpathian Mountains and the wild Romani and Magyar who thrived there as and boyars and princes. But first I would forge a weapon to accompany me on this journey. A living, breathing piece of steel quenched in the blood of a thousand deaths that would answer to me alone and would serve as both my blade and my shield; as my servant and my master. A companion fitting for a bloody exile as myself, a weapon that one day would rescue me from the darkness. Within a year of our great victory at the Battle of Arsuf in 1191, Richard Coeur de Lion was defeated by Salah-ad-Din and as he fled the holy land he was captured and held prisoner by first, Leopold V, Duke of Austria, and then he was subsequently handed over to the Holy Roman Emperor, Henry VI for three miserable years, until his kingdom paid his ransom. As I had predicted he had been in no position to come searching for me.
There is no mercy in the desert and nor should one hope for it because if one chooses to take its challenge then mercy can only weaken the individual. I trekked through the desert in the Sinai Peninsula searching for a myth, hoping against hope to find the magic which I sought to forge my blade. A sword needs heat for it to be forged but it was neither the heat of the sun nor the anvil of the desert sands which I was searching for, but the fire of an age long past which somewhere in this wasteland still burnt with its magical flames. It was a testament to the majesty of a God and the faith of the individual which had ignited it and given it life and sentience. As I searched for Moses’ Burning Bush, I felt the oppressive silence which must have shaken him and sensed the presence of its power like a bee seeks out a flower. It stood in front of me now on the rocky ridge, beckoning to me and for a moment I hesitated. But this was a power owned by no God, it was a phenomenon on its own and that was the reason why the Interloper chose to manifest his will in its presence. It was impressive; approximately five and a half feet high and three and a half feet wide, and it glowed with an internal incandescent light while sliver flames danced around its branches and stems, without consuming even a single leaf. Yet I could feel the heat of the flames and as I approached it the flames flared up in acknowledgement of my intention and then cooled somewhat an indication that I should begin to assemble my portable forge. This action was predestined and the Bush had waited a long time for my arrival, for this ancient power understood much more than I myself did at the time that the cosmos was changing and because of this it too must be transformed in preparation for what was to come. I meditated first before starting so I could not only clear my mind but to also focus my dwindling powers. I needed to capture all the death and mayhem that my twin swords had dealt for King Richard and channel it into that celestial heat so that in a moment of dark baptism that energy and my swords would become fused into one blade, a blade possessing power and a different form of consciousness. I felt the anticipation of the Burning Bush, for it too felt knew that an age had passed and it was time for a transformation, and transmutation of its power and form. Together we would create something like this world had never known. I knew I had much work to do so I sat down and began to breathe and slowly and surely, I slipped into a trance.
Creative visualization is the ability to mentally picture our desires as if they were a reality in order to create a psychic framework onto which one’s will can be bent and shaped into the very thing which we desire. In my trance state, I visualized my mighty blade, picturing it as I built it from the broken pieces of steel from my twin swords and the remaining ase that I had at my command. I stacked the steel carefully and wrapped them in the blood and mayhem which I had collected from battle, and thrust the strange package into the Burning Bush instantly feeling it react and flare up t
o the brutal fuel that it was being fed. There was a purpose in this reaction and in my trance, I now understood. I opened my eyes and immediately stood up and began to prepare for the task at hand. First, I broke my twin swords, shattering them into small pieces and using my waning power to bind them in a matrix. Next, I fed the battle energies I had absorbed from the many humans I had slaughtered into this matrix and watched it begin to warp and change as the lives of the many men I had slain contributed their own energies to the process. Finally, I lifted the package with my own bare hands, and bowing to the sentient Bush, I thrust it deep into its flames and watched as the package and the Burning Bush both disappeared, absorbed into the matrix. The Bush was gone now as was the package and so I reached into the dark void that was all that remained of where the Burning Bush had sat rooted for so many millennia and grasped the smooth hilt that I felt there and in one smooth motion I pulled out a mighty black blade with no ornamentation whatsoever. This was a sword for battle; a sword for killing. As I tested out its weight with a few thrusts and slashes in the desert air, I could hear a voice in my head speaking softly to me, whispering to me about the joys of killing and the beauty of slaughter. I looked at my sword and smiled, understanding the profound thing which had been achieved. It was not really a sword, only one in physical form and even that, I would later learn in the centuries of battle which followed, was mutable. It was in fact a sentient being as aware, conscious, and as powerful as me. Its name was Akharu and through the bloody centuries it would be my only friend, my left and right hands. The sacrifice of the Burning Bush, the gift of my steel, the last of my ase and my will had created a being unlike anything else in creation. I sheathed Akharu on my back and looked down the mountain, breathing clearly and joyfully for the first time since my arrival, for now I had almost no ase left and my connection to Ile-Ife was almost completely severed. I would rely on my battle skills, my strength, my native intelligence, and my wits from now onwards if I was to excel in this world and find my own place. Akharu was whispering hungrily in my mind as we slowly walked down the mountain and back into the desert, talking of the possibilities that our union presented. As we left the mountainside, I could not help but wonder how the locals would explain to their priests the disappearance of the Burning Bush.
It took me the better part of the Thirteenth Century to battle my way across the Middle East and through Asia Minor to finally reach my goal, though through the years Akharu and I drank the blood of many nations in our quest to mimic humanity. It is ironic that the thing that made humans accept me most was the very thing which made me monstrous and inhuman. The shifting frontiers and constant wars between Christendom and the Islamic Caliphate made battle plentiful and we drank our fill often. It is for this reason that I took my time in travelling further East; I was having too much fun. But time once again was my enemy and after forty years of waging war in Asia Minor at the same intensity and same skill level as forty years previously and doing this without seeming to get older, I began to make people nervous and I could sense it. Oh, I tried to disguise my age with cosmetics but those things are superficial; they cannot disguise the definition of my muscles or the speed of my sword thrust. I left Asia Minor and moved on, pushing east towards my destination, the Carpathian Mountains where I hoped that I could settle down at least for a few centuries. For I had heard rumors of other supernatural creatures which existed there without fear of persecution or reprisals, and if they could do it, these creatures who flaunted their supernatural origins, then I, who only wanted to play at being human should be able to get along just fine.
By the year 1431, I was well established in Wallachia, with my own household and servants to take care of me as was my right as the leader of my own band of warriors. We were sought out by all the regional Voevods or princes, to fight for them in the ongoing war against the encroachment of the Ottoman Empire. Over the years I have made a few friends, mostly because they were as bloodthirsty as me and Akharu, but also because of the opportunities afforded by forming an extremely skilled group of mercenaries in a region that is fighting a losing war. I fought now under the banner of the Order of the Dragon, the banner of the prince who ruled these lands. He was a vicious and brutal warrior, whose terror tactics and cruelty had bought his nation some time, but Vlad Dracul III was not what he seemed to be and my immortal eyes saw him for the creature of darkness that he was. In time, his exhibitionism and bloodlust would cause his fall, and the mob would stake his heart and take his head. I have said that there were other supernaturals here, and there were, I could sense them all around me for this was a land steeped in blood and it drew us like iron to a magnet, for in such a place one truly understands what it is to be human. Death defines humanity and their short lifespans and because of this they lack the patience of other more long-lived races, though personally I had always been rather impatient myself. The prince had inhabited the same castle for centuries by seeming to die and returning as his own heir. None of the locals knew what went on the castle or how many people lived there, or indeed the line of succession of their nobles. What mattered was that the prince protected them from their enemies and they in turn venerated him. I would have liked to have met him personally and privately but unfortunately his long life was soon cut short. In 1634, I left Wallachia and travelled alone to Moldova, to pledge my sword to another Voevod called Vasile Lupu, a lupine shape-shifter raised with Byzantine values and a complete and utter fool. After less than a decade in his service I knew it was time for me to move on, and since I knew that Europeans had ‘discovered’ the New World (which to me was not new at all) it was to there that I would go, with its painted natives whose warlike savagery intrigued me. But having been in the East for so long, I did not know that the world had become a very different place since my arrival, and now in Western Europe those of my skin color were no longer venerated and valued, but instead subjugated and sold as slaves. In 1702, while I took a well-earned break from war and was enjoying the wine, the women and the songs of the port city of Lisbon in Portugal, a most notorious city in a nation of slave traders, it was not long before my infernal curiosity had thrust me back into bondage, but for the record at least it earned me a free ride to America. For within weeks of my arrival in Lisbon, I was taken unawares while I was drunk on their magnificent fortified wine, knocked out cold, captured, bound hand and foot in chains, and sold as a slave destined for the auction blocks of the American colonies.
When I awoke to find myself, stark naked and bound in chains to a dozen other terrified looking Africans, I quickly surmised what had happened. The slave trade in Europe was booming because they needed free labor to terraform, build and maintain the rapid expansion of the various European Empires and since the Western world seemed to believe now in the inferiority of the Black race, enslaving anyone one who was Black was acceptable, never mind their origins, never mind the law, because if you could get yourself a healthy Black specimen or two, particularly a breeding pair, well the average person in those days would never have seen so much profit, for very little work. So now all Black people were fair game. It was my own sense of superiority as a member of a ‘higher’ race that had caused my present circumstances, for I did not even consider the possibility that I was being watched by greedy eyes who had no idea what I truly was, only that I was Black and a very good specimen at that. They only cared that I had Black skin and my great strength made me more valuable. I was in some sort of holding cell, I assumed to await transportation to the slave auctions, and I looked around my surroundings and began to consider how I would escape. My strength, like others of my race was prodigious, and these chains were not built to hold one of my kind. It would take but a small effort to break them and the door to the cell holding me and the others captive, and after that with little more than a thought I could call Akharu to me from wherever it was it went when we were not in battle, so we could begin the slaughter of these insolent fools. Akharu is bound to me and I am bound to it so it is always within reach for me, b
ut being as unique as it is, it has its own secrets. I do not know where it goes when I have not called it, but we can still communicate and it comes to my hand with but a thought. I conferred with Akharu, and thanks to its logic (born of bloodlust) we agreed to hold off on escape and see what they had planned for us. Perhaps, if the rumors were correct we were destined for the New World, where battle and savagery still abounded and Akharu and I could drink our fill until we were satiated with the human condition and we would find peace. I closed my eyes and saved my strength; judging from the fear and anger in the eyes of my fellow prisoners, I could expect brutal and inhumane treatment. I found it ironic that I, the most inhumane of creatures, who was trying to learn how to be human, was to be subjected to the most monstrous of all things by the very humans I was trying to emulate. No wonder their race turned out as messed up as it did.
Alade (Irunmole Saga) Page 19