by Marc Secchia
The following morning saw the Sheban warriors thundering along the Sacred Lake’s shore at a rollicking pace. The grassland was as excellent for riding as General Getu’s patience was thin. They leaped rivers and scattered battalions of pelicans to the winds. Shioni had never travelled so far, so fast. In the mountains this speed was impossible. They would have tumbled into a dry gully, broken a horse’s leg on loose stones, or charged straight off a cliff. But here, all they needed to do was dodge the odd tree or ride around a reed bed, somewhere in the space between the low bluffs to their left hand and the lake to their right.
Further south, the water-loving trees grew in greater profusion, and the Gondari scouts began to scan the terrain ahead. “There’s a village nearby,” they said. “The Gumara River is near too.”
‘Nearby’ apparently meant a ride of a further hour through the ever-thickening brush, which closed in on the empty spaces as if intent on choking any travellers. Insects buzzed angrily as they pushed through the bushes. Suddenly they broke out into the open and saw ahead, a headland jutting out into the lake, and a large village of perhaps fifty huts.
“The Gumara’s beyond the headland,” said a scout. “If we can, we should take boats from here.”
“Where are the villagers?”
The General glanced at Shioni. “My thoughts exactly. Warriors! Be alert.”
Immediately, shields tilted and spears bristled. The warriors drew into a more compact formation, ensuring that Princess Annakiya and Abba Petros were safely in their midst.
Shioni put two arrows to her bowstring. “I sense trouble, General.”
“Look, it’s that man … Haile!” squeaked Annakiya, pointing across the reeds.
True enough, Haile’s hulking form dwarfed the reed boat he was paddling away around the headland. He was already well out of bowshot.
“They’re burning the boats!” yelled one of the scouts.
“Charge!”
Smoke rose from the narrow waterways between the reeds. Armed men appeared as if by magic from behind bushes, in the reed beds, and the village huts. They straggled across the route the Shebans meant to take, trying to cut off access to the boats, where Haile’s warriors ran along with burning torches lighting them one by one. There had to be a hundred men, outnumbering the Shebans four to one.
“For Sheba!” roared Getu, drawing his sword. “For the King!”
Haile’s men sprinted across the open grass in front of the village. Intercept, Shioni thought. She stood in her stirrups and tried to sight over Captain Yirgu, but he was too tall.
She kicked her feet free.
Annakiya glanced at her, bow in hand. “Shioni …”
Shioni leaped onto the saddle, crouching to gain her balance before pushing upright. Thankfully her horse was well trained, needing no steady hand to keep him running with the others. She drew her bow right past her ear. Two arrows. Put the recurve bow’s power to the test. Twang. She drew smoothly again. Twang. Balance, breathe, aim. Twang. Yirgu’s whirling sword deflected one of her shots. Haile’s men dropped; at least three slain, two wounded. Shioni drew one more time, although the range was close. Her arrows hissed spitefully across the short space between the warriors and the Sheban Elite posse. Two men fell. She dropped into her saddle.
“Take the gap!” yelled Getu. “Great shooting!”
An arrow whistled past her ear, dived into the gap between two Sheban warriors, and sliced into a man who had been aiming his axe low, trying to maim the horses.
Annakiya grinned wildly. “See, Shioni? That’s how to shoot.”
Two arrows to the string. Shioni tilted her bow sideways. She put a split shot either side of Captain Yirgu. He whooped as his two foes dropped, and spurred his horse on.
“How’s that, Anni?”
“Reasonable.”
The Sheban force sliced through the ragged mob like a honed scythe harvesting tef grain.
Getu shouted his commands. “Yirgu, clear these bandits. We’ll secure the boats.”
Annakiya, scanning the reeds, cried, “I see one! But he’s too far.”
Smoke rose from the man’s burning brand. He was torching the reed boats with careful efficiency.
“I’ve got this one.” Shioni aimed past her friend. “Keep searching, Anni. There’ll be more.”
Her shot darted between the reeds like a speeding dragonfly. The man cried out and his torch sizzled briefly in the water.
“Warriors,” said Getu. “Help Shioni and the Princess. You two–guard the Princess.”
Suddenly, General Getu leaped sideways into the reeds. A moment later, he was back, wiping his sword briefly on a tuft of grass.
Captain Yirgu and his men roared past, scattering Haile’s bandits as though they were a flock of finches. But greater numbers gathered up near the village, Shioni saw, drawing together to help bolster their courage. When they saw how they outnumbered the Shebans … she puffed air into her cheeks.
Nearby, Abba Petros faced three warriors. Even as Shioni turned smoothly, readying her last arrow, Abba Petros kicked one of them in the gut and then slammed the pommel of his sword into the back of the man’s neck. “Bless you, brother,” she heard him say. His left hand made the sign of a cross. “May our Lord keep you.” He whirled into the attack.
Shioni shook her head. Her arrow pinged off an enemy warrior’s shield and plugged his friend directly in the rear. He made a comical dance, holding his backside.
“Can I have some arrows, Anni?” she asked, raiding the quiver slung on her friend’s back.
“Because you waste two at a time?”
“Thanks, Anni.”
“Help yourself, you rebellious slave-girl.”
Shioni and Annakiya examined the remaining boats. The rebels had burned at least twenty. They salvaged three. Would that be enough? The villagers might have hidden more boats elsewhere, but Shioni could not spot any.
“Report,” Getu snapped, suddenly beside them.
“Three boats, my Lord,” Annakiya said.
Getu said something sharp and rude. “Right, we need a plan. Three men to a boat. That’s nine. Abba Petros, me, you two, a scout, and five warriors. Captain Yirgu!” Putting his fingers into his mouth, he gave a piercing whistle. “Find us paddles, Shioni.”
“We’re ten, General,” Annakiya pointed out.
His glare could have started a fire. “You and Shioni count as one.”
Shioni peeked inside her tunic pocket. Make that eleven. Zi was sound asleep. Well–she watched until she was certain she had seen the tiny chest rise and fall. Then she let out the breath she had been holding. She hated feeling so helpless. She would not stand idly by and watch the Fiuri fade away a little more each day.
What if that old man in the village had been right? Would magic consume her as it seemed to be consuming the Fiuri?
With Captain Yirgu and his troops protecting the shore, the Shebans quickly arranged themselves on the reed boats. They launched them onto the lake. A narrow waterway snaked through the reed beds. Getu, glancing over his shoulder, called, “Shields!”
A light rain of arrows fell around them. One stuck in the boat near Shioni’s knee. She added it to her quiver.
The warriors paddled strongly. Soon, they broke out onto the main body of the lake.
“Around that headland,” said the Gondari scout.
As soon as the reed boats moved out of range, Captain Yirgu and his small force retreated, taking all of the spare horses with them. On horseback they were much faster than the men on foot. Still, Shioni saw two Shebans fall in a brief, fierce encounter.
“You look unhappy,” said Annakiya.
The Princess, kneeling right behind her in the shallow bottom of the reed boat, paddled steadily in concert with the warriors fore and aft. “So many dead men,” Shioni said. “You wonder why they followed Haile–for glory? Power? Were many of them truly evil, as he is?”
“Don’t drive yourself crazy,” Abba Petros commented, across the
couple of paces separating their boats. “I used to sweat and cry over those questions every night.”
“You tried not to kill your opponents, Father.”
He laughed curtly. “Who am I to judge the living and the dead, Shioni? I see too much suffering on this earth already. And when a man like Haile multiplies the pain and the dying, it’s hard not to hate him, right? Yet we should hate the evil, and not the man. God sees good even in him.”
Hate the evil in Haile but not the man? He’d been prepared to condemn King Meles’ family to a slow, horrible death in his dungeon. Shioni mulled over the priest’s reply as the warriors bent their backs to the paddling, taking them up to and around the headland. When Annakiya became tired, Shioni took her turn at paddling. Even with the cool lake breeze, which brought a smell of wet, rotting vegetation to her nostrils, it was hard, sweaty work. She tried not to think of how far ahead Haile might be. She dug the paddle deep. She stretched her back and arm muscles. They must catch up before Tana Qirqos.
She found the reed boat surprisingly stable on the water. The bottom was flat, bundles tied and woven together, with a small lip on the edges, and a prow that rose out of the water. They rode low because of the weight, but moved quickly with the efforts of the strong warriors. Even Getu paddled one-handed.
“Haile,” he said, pointing. “Which one’s Tana Qirqos?”
“Across the water,” said the scout. “That peninsula ahead looks like an island but it’s false. See that mound of vegetation? That’s Tana Qirqos.”
“So why didn’t we ride further south?”
The scout smiled. “Look, there’s the Gumara River mouth. Lots of hippos, General. And a strong flow. The villagers don’t even swim it.”
Russet mud spread from the Gumara’s mouth like a huge fan, Shioni saw. The river was fifty paces or more wide. Thinking about hippopotami in the river, she frowned. The scout was wrong. She sensed hippos ahead of them. A few breaths later, she saw little round ears pricking out of the water. Large numbers of them. And to either side … Shioni caught her breath. A huge yawn showcased a hippo’s chunky teeth. Grey-pink backs began to break out of the water all around.
Anger and irritation showed in their manner. These hippopotami were huge, and their canines were the length of a man’s arm to his elbow. More mouths gaped ahead of them. Shioni sensed their aggression like a red mist drifting over the lake water.
“General …” she called a warning.
This had to be Haile’s doing. Hippopotami would not usually lie in wait for boats. And not in these numbers.
“Hippo ambush!” shouted the General. “Paddle for your lives, men!”
Chapter 26: Tana Qirqos
HIppopotamus attack! Shioni swallowed her fright. She tried to send a wave of peace and calm over to the animals to assure them that the Shebans were no threat. A few mothers and calves seemed to respond. They sank into the water. But the larger males were riled beyond reason. They pressed around the speeding boats. The warrior at the prow of Shioni and Annakiya’s vessel jerked back as a hippo bit the paddle right out of his hand.
“Quiet,” she called. “Everyone, quiet.”
She threw a barrage of images at the hippos–water, waves, fish, other hippopotami. Confused, they floundered this way and that, biting the water or running into each other.
A huge hippo threw himself at the lead vessel. His mouth gaped, but he had no need to bite down. His bulk was enough to swamp the fragile reed craft. Screaming, the three warriors tumbled into the water. One bobbed up at once and swam to over to General Getu’s boat. The other two never surfaced, perhaps savaged or drowned by the hippos.
“Come here,” Annakiya ordered. “We’ll take him.”
Shioni helped drag the man, panting and trembling, on board. “Steer more to the right,” she said in a low voice.
Her images muddled the hippos enough. They eventually nosed into clear water, literally paddling over the back of one final hippo. He turned and snapped at nothing.
“I’ve never been so grateful that you talk to animals,” said the Princess.
Shioni mopped her brow. “Haile had done something … they wouldn’t have listened. I had to overwhelm them with images.”
“Whatever you did–good work, my daughter,” said Getu. “You too, Princess. I saw you getting stuck into the battle back there on the shore. I’m proud of you.”
“My father probably wouldn’t let a Princess fight.”
The General appraised her with his eyes. “You’d only be following the tradition of many Sheban warrior Queens, my Lady. I knew your great-grandmother. She taught me weapons-craft when I was a boy. Remind me to tell you that story another time. Right now, let’s catch that murdering false King before he reaches the island.”
The Sheban paddlers dug deep. They were catching Haile across the open stretch of water to Tana Qirqos now, Shioni reckoned. It would be a race between him reaching the island first, and getting into bow-range. Haile appeared to be tiring, but the Shebans were more heavily loaded. Could she boost an arrow with the help of her magic?
She craned her neck as they neared the island. It was tall and narrow, a dense fountain of vegetation tumbling down to the brownish lake waters. Atop the crown of the island, amidst a stand of tall trees, she could make out the roof of a small building. A golden cross winked in the sunlight. Haile would reach it first.
Shioni selected an arrow from her quiver. “Fly true,” she told it.
A full, full draw of the bow, back past her ear. Shioni took a deliberately deep breath. Narrow the focus, aim at Haile’s broad back.
Tzoing! The arrow sped on its way.
Haile leaped out of his boat before it reached the shore. The arrow plugged in the reeds right over his shoulder. “Hyenas take it!” she fumed, watching the big man dive into the undergrowth like a warthog fearing the scent of a lion.
“Just missed puncturing that overblown wineskin,” said Annakiya.
“When we get up there, Shioni,” said General Getu, “I want you to focus on defeating his magic. My warriors and I will attack him with our weapons. Princess, you give him a few arrows to think about. Abba Petros, I need you to find the priest and find out where he keeps the teshal–before Haile gets to him.”
“I fear it may be too late already,” said Petros.
Grimly strapping his shield to the stump of his arm, Getu growled, “Then we’ll make him pay.”
The warriors leaped over the edge of the boats and took a small trail at a dead run. Shioni and Abba Petros pulled the boats onto a pebbly shore, and then ducked into the vegetation after Princess Annakiya. The path, in reality no more than a goat-track, twisted and turned up a steep rocky slope between ancient, tangled tree roots. The air smelled humid and slightly fishy. They passed several cave entrances on the way up. There was no telling how deep they went. But somehow they knew they would find Haile at the summit.
At the top, Shioni was second-last through an archway in a crumbing stone wall. She saw a round stone church, roofed with rushes. A stone bell hung off two ropes from a tree. The courtyard was neatly swept and tended, the walls swamped in climbing rose. The heady scent filled the space beneath the towering trees shading the little church, but Shioni’s attention was wholly consumed with two things: a sense of something strange, a thing impossibly primal and powerful, and Haile appearing in the church doorway, the snake staff locked at the throat of a tiny, blind priest.
“Abba Methi!” cried Father Petros. “Let him go, Haile. He’s done you no harm.”
“Petros? Little Petros? Is that you?” quavered the old priest.
“I’ll let him go when I’m good and ready,” said Haile. General Getu and the warriors, swords drawn, fanned out across the open space. “Stay back. I’m warning you. Now, Abba Methi, tell me where I find your great treasure–the Ark of the Covenant. I feel it here. Somewhere beneath my feet.”
“That secret is too holy for you.”
“Father,” said Haile, “I w
ill simply steal this secret from your mind. There’s another here who will grant me the power. And then I’ll have everything I want–the most terrible weapon in history, and the power to wield it as I wish.”
“He never wanted the teshal,” Annakiya whispered to Shioni.
“You were stupid to think so,” Haile jeered, apparently hearing her easily. “I want that girl, and the Ark. Two simple things. And if I have to demolish this pile of rubble to find it, I will. Stone by stone.”
What would surprise him? Shioni racked her brain. Annakiya laid an arrow to her bowstring. Getu edged closer to Haile, his fingers flexing on his sword hilt.
Clasped in his fist, the one-eyed snake staff glowed. “I don’t need you any more, you old bag of bones.”
“No!” Shioni cried out, sprinting forward.
The tip of Haile’s sword appeared through the old priest’s stomach. The false king shoved him hard, right into Shioni’s arms. He grinned. “Let’s even the odds, shall we? Who’s next?”
Snarling, “Murderer!” General Getu sprang into action, and his warriors with him.
Shioni, tangled with Abba Methi, fell backward. “Oh, Father …”
“Petros?” he moaned. “Where are you, my son?” His hands clutched Shioni’s tunic. “I’m coming, Lord … one thing …” he gasped, then rallied to whisper, “Psalm … twenty-three. Remember. It’s the way.”
“Psalm twenty-three?”
His agony held her more surely than his weak old hands. Shioni heard swords clashing, men shouting, the thud of a body falling, but she found herself unable to look away from the priest.
Suddenly Abba Petros was there, stroking the old man’s head. “Abba Methi. I’m here. I’m sorry, Abba …”
“You came … little Petros. My boy … after all this … time …”
“Abba!” sobbed Father Petros. “No!”
The priest’s lips worked. “Will take … my … staff?”
And he slumped against Shioni’s chest. His heart beat no more. She met Abba Petros’ despairing eyes. “Of course I will,” he muttered. And then he leaped to his feet with a terrible scream.