Zulu Heart

by Steven Barnes

  “But he loves you now.”

  “Yes, and that was my gift to him. My gift to you is this: be your own woman, Nandi. You will always be my daughter. Now it is time to be a wife. The future is yours.” She held her daughter at arm’s length. “You have never disappointed me. Always, you were my favorite.”

  “You say that to all your daughters.”

  “Yes,” her mother replied. “And mean it with every one.” And with those words Munji left her. By nightfall their tents were packed and stowed, and Munji’s retinue began their journey home, leaving Nandi with IziLomo, her old nurse Baleka, and four retainers, the massive Zulu women who had pledged their lives to her safety. Officially they were but chambermaids, but in actuality they were of stock comparable to Bitta’s, as capable of violence as any man—and every one of them considered Nandi to be their only child. To say that they would die for her would be a dangerous understatement.

  Far more importantly, they would kill for her.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  From the beginning, Kai had enlisted his orphans to help cheer Aidan on, running with him, fetching and carrying for him, and sometimes driving him on by their youthfully energetic example. Although he was white, they accepted the Wakil’s friend as an admirable oddity, a veteran of the war that had claimed their fathers. He had slain Aztecs and could, at night, regale them with tales of battle and honor, and for that they admired him.

  At the moment, they had been pushing Aidan in relays, giving him just enough time to rest before forcing him to run or lift or tumble or strike again … and again.

  When meal break came, they brought him only a little fruit, and a bit of meat. He looked at the paltry victuals in his bowl, and glared at Kai. “If I’m going to work as hard as you say, I need more food than this!”

  “No,” said Kai. “You don’t. Today we deepen your discipline. What I ask you to do is not comfortable, but it is natural, and your ancestors understood it.”

  Aidan clutched his growling belly. “Help my stomach understand. Please.”

  Kai laughed. “You will eat as warriors eat, when on the march. In the old days, they would march and fight all day, and feast at night.”

  “I’ll die.”

  “Hardly,” Kai chuckled, “although you may well think you will. But at night, you will eat all you wish.”

  Aidan rolled on his back, staring at the ceiling. “Why are you doing this to me?”

  “A hungry man is an uncivilized man.” Kai considered. “Well, not that an excess of civilization was ever your problem.”

  “Fock ye.”

  “Such language. We need to tap into something below all of your conditioning, all language and manner. We must find the wolf within you.”

  That, finally, caught Aidan’s attention. “The wolf?”

  Kai nodded. “Any man captured as a slave is a sheep. The wolves all die. Any few wolves that sneak through are killed. It is one reason most of my people have no respect for you—they know that they would never be slaves.”

  Aidan eyelids slid half way down. “I hope you never learn how wrong you are.”

  Kai shrugged. “Whatever difference of opinion we may have about this, you can see how your men have been turned into something less than warriors.”

  “How could you let them be otherwise and control them?” Aidan countered.

  “How could they be otherwise and be controlled?”

  Aidan bit back his thoughts. Love Kai he might, but there were some subjects on which they would never agree. “So eating in this way awakens this thing, this wolf within me?”

  Kai nodded. “It is one of the things we will do. Some of these things I will tell you about. Others will happen but won’t be well explained to you. Conscious understanding can be a liability.”

  Kai stood, and faced Aidan. The floor beneath them was thickly matted. The children sat in a circle around them, watching eagerly. Aidan looked at their black, shining faces, and some small part of him was transported back to an earlier, simpler day, when he and Kai had played together without lives and families and empires in the balance.

  Kai seemed to be reading his mind. “Now,” he said, “as we used to in the old days: attack me.”

  “Now, Kai—I’ve learned a thing or two—” In midsentence, Aidan lunged at Kai with a right punch. Although the attack was swift enough to ensnare a bird in flight, Kai leaned easily out of the way. With an eye-baffling motion, he spun his back into Aidan, hips low, throwing him without using hands or arms at all.

  Aidan tumbled across Kai’s back and fell like a sack of meal, facefirst onto the mat. “Woof!” The children laughed, but Aidan felt no embarrassment, only a deep gratitude for the thickness of woven straw.

  “And there we will begin,” said Kai. “With falling.”

  “What? What about fighting?”

  “Throwing blows and opponents is only half of the circle,” Kai said, speaking as much to the children as to his old friend. “There is more—you must learn to receive without injury. Throw me.”

  Aidan grabbed Kai around the waist, bent his knees, and heaved him through the air. Kai seemed boneless as an old rag, collapsing, rolling, and bounding back up again. “Loose. Loose,” said Kai. “Come.”

  Their youthful audience watched in awe as the two friends practiced. Again and again Aidan hurled Kai over ankle, hip, and shoulder. For his part, Kai flowed effortlessly from fall to fall. When he stood, Aidan was blowing hard, and Kai was still fresh.

  “I can run for hours,” Aidan complained. “Why is this so damned hard?”

  “Because you have never done it. And never having done it, your body fears it. Fear creates tension, and tension constricts your breathing, disintegrates your body’s harmony. Lacking air, your fire dies. Come. Let us try this.”

  Kai swept his leg back along an imaginary line, miming a foot sweep.

  “Can I see that again?” Aidan asked.

  “Oh, yes.” Kai seized Aidan and let him see that throw from extremely close range. Aidan fell just as clumsily as he had the first time.

  “Oof!”

  “Up!” said Kai. “And now you do it to me.”

  “With pleasure,” Aidan growled.

  He heaved Kai from the ground. Kai bounced up, seized Aidan, and threw him. This time, Aidan managed to land with a hair more grace. He rose and tossed Kai in return, and so it went back and forth, the two exchanging throws in like manner from one end of the room to the other, the children scrambling out of the way with delighted cries.

  By the time they’d traversed the room four times, Aidan’s shirt was dripping with sweat, and he gasped for breath like a beached sailor. Kai, on the other hand, had only dark half-moons of perspiration beneath his arms to show for his efforts.

  Aidan growled something thoroughly obscene and climbed back up to wage mock battle once again.

  Often at night Aidan was so sore and tired that he stopped wanting to walk the three hundred steps to his room in Ghost Town. Instead, he curled onto a mat in a corner of the exercise room, bruised and dappled with sweat. His rest was more akin to passing out than falling asleep.

  The next days passed in a blur. They began just before sunrise, and every one of them was remarkably, monotonously, the same. The orphan Conair arrived to awaken him, bringing a pitcher of water and a bowl of fruit. Aidan ate some of the fruit, allowing its sweet juice to awaken his senses and wash some of the sour sleep taste from his mouth. Then he performed basic ablutions, and a series of whirling and stretching exercises prescribed by Babatunde. Then he ate the rest of his fruit, and guzzled water until he thought he would burst.

  Then, exercise. Running, lifting, throwing, tumbling, until exhaustion. Then a nap, followed by another few pieces of fruit, and perhaps a palm-sized chunk of chicken, lamb, or beef. In the afternoons Kai might teach him holds and blows.

  The evening meal was more extensive, and here Kai had spoken truly: after a day of near-fasting, Aidan was allowed to eat until all hunger wa
s sated. He bolted great heaps of salad greens in sour wine dressing, then feasted on beef or fish, and finished with rice or teff-meal cakes. Despite his rumbling stomachs daily fears, Aidan never went to bed hungry.

  In the evening, there was quiet time with Kai, or Babatunde would teach him to still his mind, to synchronize body and will with the thread of breath.

  “Three things you must control for mind and body to unify,” Babatunde said. “Those three are breath, motion, and posture. Lung, muscle, and spine.”

  “Why breath? I know how to breathe.”

  “So you believe.” Babatunde smiled. “Breath is the only physical process that is both automatic and conscious. It is the doorway to the deep mind. Have you ever noticed that, unlike my masochistic student, I never exercise formally, and yet my body is firm, my energy as a child’s?”

  “Yes…,” said Aidan. It was true. Most men Babatunde’s age were beginning to slow down, to complain of aches and pains. But the little Sufi enjoyed nothing better than a twenty-mile walk or a morning cutting wood. “How do you do that?”

  “In my youth, of course, I was taught the basic Yoruban martial sciences. But it was among the Sufis that I learned that every breath, every step, every motion or activity can be a prayer, if one understands the true nature of mind and body.”

  “Which is?”

  “The body exists within the mind. The ignorant merely exercise their bodies. The wise strengthen the connection between mind and body. After every prayer, I spend two minutes practicing my breathing. Then when sitting, or walking, or chopping wood, I remember my breathing, integrating it with the task at hand. After a time, my body learned to exercise itself. Motion becomes prayer, prayer motion. Every activity is a different form of the same discipline: the appointment of the appropriate attention to each of life’s tasks. All is all.” He paused, and smiled at Aidan’s confusion. “I will teach you some of this, now.”

  And they breathed together. Aidan learned to tightly tense his stomach muscles on every exhalation, squeezing the air from his body with a hiss or a shout, curling his tailbone under. Then on inhalation he would relax his shoulders backward, and allow his belly to distend. And whether he practiced sitting, standing, walking, or running, always he monitored the integration of these three aspects.

  Breath. Motion. Alignment. Any time you are fearful, or fatigued, or depressed, the unity of these three are broken. Merely begin to breathe properly again and the reintegration process commences.

  Now: breathe.

  Somehow, those conversations and sessions of controlled breathing sealed the day in his heart, so that although his mind could never remember all that it had been taught and shown, every morning found him answering the call with not only renewed vigor, but improved skill and focus.

  Although he seemed to be sore all the time, Aidan’s flexibility increased radically, in directions and arcs previously unimagined.

  Aidan learned to lift the cannonbells above his head, using swinging motions to induce deep fatigue, and odd twist-and-balance postures to develop strength at bizarre and unexpected angles. Much to his surprise, he learned that the secret was less in the body than the mind: learning how to relax this muscle and tighten that one, to create both stability in his belly and side muscles, and liquid motion. And it was during this time that he began to grasp how Kai could be smaller than he, and yet stronger. His life seemed to consist of one revelation after another, until he wondered if he had never known his mind and body at all.

  At least twice a day Kai dropped in on his exertions, explaining, demonstrating, answering questions. “The body follows the mind,” he said. Then to demonstrate he removed his shirt. His body was smooth-muscled, not so corded as Aidan’s. Yet when he slid his feet from his sandals and gripped the ground with his toes, a startling transformation occurred. Over every digit of his torso, muscular ridges leapt into relief, swelling and cording until his arms and legs resembled vine-wrapped tree limbs.

  In one corner of the room was an iron bar transfixing two massive square concrete blocks. Aidan reckoned it had to weigh almost fifty sep, and his best guess was that it was some sort of decoration, an impossible goal toward which one might strive. It would have broken Donough’s back.

  To his surprise, Kai approached it confidently. Aidan’s friend inhaled, tightening every muscle in his body. He crouched, looking straight ahead, and wrapped his fingers around the bar. Then exhaling in a long, hissing stream …

  He straightened his legs slowly, almost as if he were some kind of machine, and not a man at all. One digit at a time, the massive weight levitated from the floor. Kai stood erect for a moment, arms locked straight, eyes rolled up. Then he lowered the weight again. Kai shook himself like a wet dog, inhaled deeply, relaxed, and then grinned.

  “Shyte,” Aidan whispered. “How the hell…?”

  “I cannot tell you,” said Kai. “But you can, and will, learn.”

  Occasionally, at the end of the day Kai would play drums for Aidan and make him dance with the children, urging him to mimic their steps. The rhythms were African and Arabic patterns even more complex than the Irish music he loved so dearly. The dancing was no more exuberant than that of the crannog, but … different. The sense of connectedness with the earth was the same, but the children were looser in the hips, moved in a way he had only seen his own people dance when drunken.

  One day at a time, he learned.

  Twice, Fodjour and Mada joined him. The boy Mada was a demon on the drums, but Fodjour was better. Moving to Fodjour’s rhythms was like discovering a body he’d never known he had. But twice when Fodjour had entranced him, Kai’s neighbor took the lead in the drumming, increasing the tempo, varying it so that Aidan was caught in the rhythm, turning this way and that with a ferocity that was almost painful.

  And Aidan looked at the drummers, and while Kai and Mada were lost in the percussion, off in their own worlds, Fodjour was staring at him. And there was an expression on his face that was strained and focused and almost hateful. Then in the next moment the expression vanished, and Aidan was convinced that he had imagined it.

  Except … that Fodjour never came back to the training sessions, and when Aidan encountered him in Kai’s company, the Irishman had that same sensation, and was never quite able to convince himself he was mistaken.

  Days were endless rounds of exertion and fatigue, the nights deep wells of rest in which he gratefully submerged his aching body.

  During sleep, Aidan’s dreams were filled with fighting and dancing. He was back in the Ouachita crannog. Again and again, each and every night, the dragon ships emerged from the Jog and disgorged Northmen.

  Alone, Aidan fought them, vanquishing all with rifle and knife and empty hand. He broke limbs and cleft skulls, roaring triumph as he protected Sophia and Mahon, who watched him with shining, admiring eyes.

  Babatunde observed as Aidan twitched in sleep. The Irishman’s arms and legs traced anxious arcs beneath his thin blanket. He heard a footfall behind him, and turned, unsurprised. Kai’s orphans were curious and intelligent, and it seemed impossible to discourage them from following him about whenever possible. In truth, he did not care to try.

  What did surprise him was the identity of the child: Tata. To Babatunde’s pleasure, she had swiftly proven herself an excellent acquisition, working twice as hard as any other slave, always looking for ways to make herself useful, not hiding after her appointed work was done, as was the habit of most other servants. He suspected that, despite all they had said and promised, she imagined that if her new owners were displeased with the quantity or quality of her work, she would find herself returned to a Radaman whorehouse. Or worse.

  “What’s he dreamin’?” she asked in her little-girl’s voice.

  “Of fighting,” said Babatunde.

  “Why does he smile?” asked Tata, uncomprehending.

  “He has found a way to enjoy it.”

  The little Yoruba felt both satisfied and saddened at the observation
, and wondered why as he left.

  As the sun first rose above the eastern horizon, Aidan performed his morning cleansing. Behind him, Kai entered the exercise room, already impeccably dressed and appointed. “Allah has given us another precious day.”

  “I am sore everywhere,” Aidan moaned.

  “Good. You will grow strong.”

  Aidan finished his ablutions and turned to glare. “I dreamed about combat again last night. When I walk, I feel like I’m sliding. When I look at people, I’m automatically measuring their reach and weight, guessing at their speed, reckoning whether they’re trained or untrained.” He paused. “You’re changing my head, aren’t you?”

  “A great ugly rogue like you should be glad of that.”

  Aidan tapped his temple. “Hah. Hah-hah. No, I mean that you are changing my mind. Opening doors in here.”

  “And what do you feel?”

  “That you are showing me a world I never dreamed of. Is this what Malik taught you?”

  “No. It is what Babatunde taught me.” Kai paused. “He has little martial skill, but he knows things about the body and mind that few men could dream of. He helps me to better use what I already have, and to free my mind to flow beyond Malik’s teaching.”

  Aidan ground his fists against his temples. “I thought that fighting was being strong, fast. Skilled.”

  “Yes,” Kai said. “And more. If you are righteous, you fight only for love of Allah. Then there is peace within you, no matter how violent the action. You are like the hub of a wheel. The rim can speed, but the hub stays still. A warrior must find this within himself.”

  Aidan remembered occasions when he had seriously tested Kai’s abilities. Twice they had fought: once for love of Sophia, in which Aidan had claimed victory. The second occasion had been only a year later, when Aidan had begged permission to fight in the Aztec Wars. In that latter conflict, he had been vanquished with ease. “So…,” he said slowly. “This stillness you speak of is the difference between the two times we fought?”