“True.”
“I assume that the Pharaoh, in turn, lent you to the Caliph.”
“True, again.”
“The Caliph’s concern is the subjugation of the south, and therefore our interests are not his.”
“You are a secessionist?”
“Do I speak to you as an agent of the Caliph, or as a cousin?”
Omar considered as carefully as she. “It does no dishonor to my master to say that you may speak to me openly, protected by the Queen’s blood we share, however distantly.”
“Good. I feel nothing but love for my mother’s land, and would do whatever I could to further her aims. But I cannot stand against southern Bilalistan without risking all I have spent a lifetime in building. My husband will die soon, and my son will inherit. At that point, my conduct present and past must be beyond reproach. I cannot supply you with information: the nature and character of any observation invariably hints at the observer’s identity. A thousand pardons, but I cannot do this thing.”
She lowered her eyes. Omar watched her with care. Finally he nodded. “Very well. It is in both of our interests to keep this conversation, and the nature of our connection, secret.”
“Indeed,” she said, and looked up as Omar started to rise. “Hold.”
His pale bearded face was expressionless. “Yes?”
“I cannot do the service for you, but I can profit you still, and in a manner that does nothing to compromise your mission.”
He sat back down. “I am interested.”
“I wish you to destroy the Wakil.”
“You wish him dead?”
She shook his head. “No. No need for that. I have watched this boy since childhood, and in truth, have a certain affection for him. If he had been my son instead of Fodjour …” She paused, and then shook her head. “A pointless speculation. At any rate, it is sufficient that his power and credibility be destroyed.”
Omar considered. “And if it is, you believe your son would be chosen?”
“Yes. I have sufficient power and influence to guarantee this.”
“This idea … does not conflict with my mission. In fact, in effect if not intent, it might well satisfy the Caliph. I will consider it.” He paused. “Have you a plan in mind?”
“No,” she said. “Not yet. Major changes develop in Kai’s life. I have little doubt that an intelligent observer will, during the next weeks or months, find a path to our common goal.”
Omar nodded. “Let us speak more of this,” he said, and sat once again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
9 Shawwal A.H. 1294
(Wednesday, October 17, 1877)
For the past two weeks, Salima had boiled with resentment, fueled by arguments in the back rooms and frequent beatings of the hapless slaves unfortunate enough to live in town.
Constable Oba had kept his word, tried to keep emotions and actions within a peaceful limit. The lack of a corroborating witness made the widow Nunz’s accusations impossible to prove or disprove, and legally, Aidan O’Dere was a veteran and a free man, and even a landed black woman’s solitary word was not enough to convict.
Legally.
But in the hashish den, and in the back rooms where wine was served in defiance of the Prophet’s edicts, day-by-day resentment grew, until it became an unreasoning thing, needing no greater reason than hatred, having no greater purpose than death.
On most days, Sophia O’Dere awoke before dawn, rising to stir her family’s breakfast porridge. Mornings she taught, and early afternoon was generally occupied by cleaning. In mid-afternoon she administrated work crews patching the fences or weeding in the fields. As the afternoon heat began to wane, kneaded dough entered the communal ovens, emerging just in time for dinner.
The teff loaves had just begun to brown when Donough called from the wall: “Visitors!”
She didn’t see her husband, and thought that he might even be out on the lake. Well, then, best she see to this. Sophia climbed up to the top of the barricade, shifting the awkward pregnancy weight carefully as she rose.
From the top she could peer down on the land bridge connecting the crannog to their little farm.
A dozen black men stood below her, bristling with rifles and pistols, in postures of anger and confrontation. Their leader was a man known to her as a corrupt, ambitious fop: Hamed was his name, and it was their bad fortune that he was Salima’s assistant constable.
“Who goes there?” she called down.
Hamed’s hair and thin beard looked as if they were oiled and combed on the hour. “Send out the yellow-hair you call ‘Aidan,’” he called up.
Sophia bit back a harsh answer. She could not allow fear to motivate her to rash words or action. “What do you want with my husband?”
Hamed declined a direct answer. “He will be given justice.”
Sophia’s answering laugh was shrill and derisive. “Justice? Like last year, over in the Dell? That boy was nailed to a tree two hours after they gave him up. Is that justice?”
White teeth gleamed in a black face. “What know you of law? Left to your own device, your kind gnaw each other’s bones and rut with each other’s children. Best send him out, qahba-t.”
“Where is Constable Oba?” she asked.
That triggered a wave of grumbling among the assembled. “An old man needs his nap,” Hamed said. “No need to wake him for this. You send Aidan out now, and I swear he’ll be treated fairly.”
Fairly. Even if intended as truth, who could say what Hamed meant by that? “What say we wait until the constable arrives?”
“Do not test my patience,” Hamed answered. “I give you half an hour to decide.”
Shaken, Sophia climbed back down from the wall. To her relief, Aidan had arrived. His feet were wet. She reckoned she was right in supposing that he had been upon the lake.
“What do they want?” he asked.
“You, but if it was legal, Oba would be here,” she said to Aidan. “I know in my heart that they aim to crucify you.”
Aidan clenched his fists. She knew her man, knew that he was considering the welfare of the entire crannog, not merely his own precious hide. “I can’t put all of you at risk,” he finally said.
Before she could reply, Donough snarled, “Shyte upon that! Ain’t for you, there’d be no fockin’ village.”
Another freedman gripped a hoe as if it were a club. “This ain’t your concern alone, Sidi. This is all of us. If they can take you, they can take any man here … or any woman. Ain’t there no law a black man has to obey?”
“They is the law,” someone muttered.
“That’s the fact of it,” said Donough.
Sophia scanned her people. Every citizen of Aidan’s crannog was there. Hard men, proud women, and small, fierce children, they were his in heart and hand.
She knew that he would die before placing the crannog at risk, but something had happened here. Aidan was not merely the man who had planned and laid the foundations of their village, he was its very core. Turning Aidan over to Salina’s vigilantes would destroy the crannog more certainly than a thousand torches.
She watched his face change as he came to realize the truth of that. “Then that’s the way it is,” Aidan said.
Despite the danger, this was a moment worth savoring. This was no mere collection of refugees. They were a people, united not by blood but history. These were Aidan’s people, as surely as if they had drawn sustenance from the rivers and streams of his youth. They were not a rabble: they were a village.
Aidan climbed to the top of the ramparts and addressed the posse. Sophia watched through a spy hole on the lower level.
“We’ve decided,” her husband called from above. “I’ll surrender myself to Oba.”
Hamed twisted his beard and clucked. “Allah has dimmed your hearing as well as your wit. I said that Oba is napping. You wouldn’t risk an old man’s health, would you? Come on now …”
He suddenly, savagely grinned. Sophia tense
d, knowing that things were about to get uncomfortably honest. “Or we’ll burn you out,” Hamed concluded.
Her belly knotted.
“You have no legal right,” Aidan called down, in a voice too obviously weakened by distress.
Hamed’s answering laughter was ugly. “I need no doghair quoting laws and rights. When you’ve learned to read, perhaps we’ll talk. Ghosts! Best obey your betters.”
“What guarantees do I have?”
“Guarantees?” Hamed’s men chuckled. “The promise given to all men: only what Allah wills can occur.” His expression lost any semblance of good humor. “Unless you would rain fire upon every man and child in your filthy mud hole, open your fucking gate.”
Sophia saw the same identical intent in every black face, every brown eye. “No,” her husband said.
Strangely, Hamed seemed satisfied, as if he had secretly hoped for that answer. “Then—let it be upon your own heads. Fire it is.”
One of the townsmen pulled his arm back, threw a torch. It tumbled, raining sparks, then bounced off the wooden walls.
“Fair warnin’,” Aidan called. “The next man throws a torch gets shot.”
Shot? Sophia thought. Oh, Aidan, if we kill one of them, we’re lost.
But if we don’t fight, were lost as well.
Hamed seemed almost to have read her mind. “For every dead man of mine, I’ll see five of your men, women, or children nailed to the tree.”
The second man pulled his arm back. Aidan aimed carefully, and shot him in the shoulder. The black man howled and clutched at the wound, the torch tumbling from his grip
Donough peered out, and then clapped Aidan’s shoulder. “Good shot—you only wounded him.”
“‘Good shot’ my arse,” Aidan spat. “I was aimin’ dead center.”
Shots rang out from the woods, rattling like a string of firecrackers. The villagers hunkered down behind the fence.
“Make every shot count!” Aidan called. Then more softly to the man beside him, “Pass the word. If you can, don’t shoot for the head. The fewer dead, the better off we are.”
“We ain’t got no chance,” one of the villagers moaned.
“More than you think,” said Aidan. “If this was righteous, they’d have brought Oba with them. If we can hold them off—”
The villager looked at him incredulously. “You’re hopin’ for help from a black man?”
“It wouldn’t be the first time,” he muttered.
It would have been bad enough if the attack had been constant. Oddly, it was the pauses between attacks that were the hardest to endure. Evening had fallen fully before the next wave began.
“Here they come!” Donough screamed.
The villagers snapped back as the townsfolk crept up to the bushes and fired a volley. Donough picked his shot carefully, and fired. A black man reeled back, limping.
“Ali’s wounds!” one of the townsmen screamed. “Damn ’bellies, I’m hit!”
An answering volley, and more garbled curses. Sophia covered her ears with her hands, too hypnotized to pull away from the sight. Then there was silence. Then:
“Ghosts!” the assistant constable called. “You hear me?”
There was no answer from above her.
“The only hope you have is to send your Aidan out. Send him out, and we’ll leave you alone.”
“He’s lyin’,” Donough said without a trace of resentment. “They jest want the gate open.”
Donough scanned every man and woman near him, his flat, square face utterly bland and serious. “They’ll kill every one of us.”
“You hear me?” Hamed called. “I’ll wait an hour for your answer.”
He motioned to his men, and a third of them disappeared into the shadows.
“What they doing out there?” Donough asked.
Aidan grunted. This was far from over. “If he’s got half a brain, he’ll keep our attention to the front, while he flanks us.”
Donough scratched his head. “Like Shaka?”
“Just like Shaka.” Aidan motioned to several of his men. Watch the perimeter.
“Look at the sides. Expect someone to try to come in from the lakeside.”
“Aye, Sayyid!” said a freedman. Several of the women stood guard along the wall as well. A shot gouged a chunk of wood right next to Donough’s tiny, sharp-faced wife, Mary. She flinched back, cursing, scrubbing at one sunburnt cheek.
Almost immediately, a derisive voice sounded from the forest. “How can you hide behind your women in such a fashion? What manner of cowards are you?”
One of the other blacks laughed. “Yellow bellies to match the yellow hair. Not a drop of true blood in the lot.”
“We’ll see their blood, soon enough. The gruagach are on their way.” The voice grew louder. “Hear me, slaves? The gruagach are coming! They smell your flesh, and grow hungry, and thirsty.”
Aidan felt his bile rise, longed to smash their faces, and knew that their talk was calculated to elicit a rash, ill-considered response. The men beside him muttered and cursed. “Don’t answer them,” Aidan said. “Don’t feed it. They talk to distract, to make themselves brave … and to buy time.”
“Time? Why do they need time?” asked a freedman.
“To get into position,” Aidan explained. To get reinforcements.”
The slave bowed. “Sayyid! You are wise indeed. Where did you learn such things?”
“On the killing ground—watch out!”
Two flaming torches arced over the balustrades and struck a hut. Sparks flew.
“Buckets!” Sophia screamed below him. “Bring water now!” He was comforted to hear her voice, but simultaneously wanted to tell her to retreat to safety. And could not. Every calm voice helped to hold his people together.
Like mice scurrying from a cat’s questing claws, the freedmen rushed about to well and shed, filling buckets. They slopped water against the smoldering wood until the fire was extinguished.
More hours crept by, until they had reached and passed midnight. Waiting was agony, and then …
Thickly cloaked in early-morning shadow, two black men waded through the lake’s cold, drear water, until they drew within striking distance of the crannog walls. Invisible as spirits of the dead, they held unlit torches over their heads.
The shorter of them held his torch steady, while the other squeezed a twist of fire paste onto its wadded bark and moss. In a few seconds it sputtered, then smoked and popped into flame.
The taller snarled, “They take the best fishing, best hunting … we’ll show them!”
“Burn them out,” his companion whispered. “I’ll bet we can find a runaway in the bunch. Cancel their papers, put them all back into chains where they belong.…”
“And send a few to Jahannum!”
The torch finally flared into life. “Good!” the first townsman yelled. He used the first torch’s fire to ignite the second, and then hurled. The brand twirled end over end through the blackness, shedding sparks as it tumbled. It arced up and landed on the far side of the barricade. They taller man wound up to throw the second—
A single shot rang out from the crannog’s ramparts.
The taller torch-man reeled back, clutching his belly. His scream was horrific but cut short as he flopped back into the water. His companion struggled to keep him above the surface.
“Akim is dying!” the shorter man screamed.
“You all heard!” Hamed called. “It’s murder now!”
“Murder my arse!” Donough growled. “Even a ’belly ’as the right to defend ’is home.”
“This won’t do,” Aidan worried. “There’s no one to help us. No reinforcements or cavalry like at the mosque. The longer this takes, the worse we are. If we sit here, they’ll just take their time and burn us out.”
Several of the freedmen hunkered around, looking at him worshipfully. “Aidan. What do we do?”
He peered carefully out of the fence. Their sheds aland were in flames. Thei
r little teff and carrot gardens were being rooted up by hooting townsfolk.
In the darkness beyond the edge of the light, metal clanked.
“Remember these?” crooned a voice without a body, rattling chains. “They remember you. Come out, come out, and wear them once again. Sleeping on straw is better than sleeping in the dirt.”
Behind Aidan, a young freedman stood, ready to leap down from the balustrade and die killing his enemies. “I can’t stand it!” he called.
Aidan yanked the boy back out of harm’s way. “That’s what they want,” he said softly. “Just wait.”
Out in the woods, the townsfolk had begun to grumble. “They’re keeping their wits about them. Strange for slaves,” one said. “I’d have thought they’d beg for mercy by now.” He paused. “That’s been the way of it, until tonight.”
The assistant constable spat. “That Aidan’s the one holding their guts in.”
Another townsman shifted uneasily. “What is so special about this dog?”
“He shed blood in the Aztec campaign,” the assistant constable said. “Thinks he’s some kind of soldier.”
Despite his obvious disdain for the besieged, the townsman seemed impressed. “He fought with Shaka?” The man straightened his legs, as if wanting another view of the besieged compound. When he did another shot rang out, and he jerked backward, blood spraying from a shattered shoulder.
“Damn! Ah, damn!” the injured man screamed, rolling on the ground. “Those devils!”
Hamed pulled at the others. “Get down! Down, damn you.”
“What do we do?” another townsman asked. “You said that we’d have the infidel nailed up by dawn. You know Oba will put an end to this!”
The assistant constable seemed baffled. “I thought they’d hand him over.” He scratched at his oiled, thinning hair.
That thought seemed to shake him out of his lethargy. Filled with new determination, he crawled to safety back behind a tree and then stood. “All right, then, if that is the way of it—they can put out one or two fires, but we’ll build a barricade, get close enough to give them a proper taste of hell.” He pointed to a pair of tool huts not yet burning. “Tear those doors off. Lash them together. We’ll get close enough to slather that wall with pitch. Then we’ll roast their bones.” He pointed to the shadows north and south of the crannog. “We’ll position some riflemen to pin them down. If they try to escape in boats, we’ll pick them off in the water.”
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