Lion's Blood

by Steven Barnes

  Aidan marked time by the lowering of the slop buckets: two of water, one of fish gruel. The salt water that cleansed them also caked upon their skin, itching and chafing where their flesh pressed against boards or chains.

  Nessa had sickened by the third day, could keep little down, and burned with fever by the fourth. He could not see her face, but her hot, wet hand clutched at him in the darkness.

  "Aidan?" she whispered. "We're going to die, aren't we?"

  He heard a rustling, and his mother's hand reached across to them in the darkness, joined with their own. "No," Deirdre said, managing to find sufficient vitality to lend certainty to her words. "We will survive."

  Something seemed to flow out of Deirdre, and Aidan felt it, like a river of heat or light, their mother pouring desperate strength into her failing daughter. He felt her hand grow limp, and for a moment was certain she had died, then her fingers found him again, and the three of them were quiet.

  Then, quietly at first, Nessa began to sing in the darkness. She sang a song loved by his father, and by the Druids, one he had heard crooned in the forest beyond the crannog with blended voices that stirred the night sky.

  "There is a distant isle.

  Around which sea horses glisten

  A fair course against the white-swelled surge,

  Four feet uphold it . . ."

  The darkness stirred around them as her wounded voice struggled against the weight of mortal fear. Another voice, this one Manannan the brewer, a thin, reedy tone heard often at drunken revels, now weaved its way through the stink and the murk like a sun-starved vine, twining with his sister's own.

  "Feet of white bronze beneath it,

  Glittering through beautiful ages

  Lovely land throughout the world's age

  On which the many blossoms fall . . ."

  And one at a time the other voices joined in, beautiful in their tumbled harmony, a shared cry for a land forever lost.

  "An ancient tree there is with blossoms

  On which birds call to the precious hours

  'Tis in harmony, it is their wont

  To call together every hour.

  To call together every hour . . ."

  And though there were tears, Aidan was unspeakably proud of his sister, who for a few short moments had shouldered all their burdens, lifting the night so that they might glimpse, if only with their hearts, a glimmer of O'Dere crannog's gilded dawn.

  Chapter Five

  Four endless days later, the ship made harbor. The planks echoed with clanks and groans, creaking wood, scraping iron and thumping feet, the bark of voices shouting tasks and curses in languages he did not comprehend.

  Once again, the upper door opened, and three Northmen descended, two with whips, one bearing an axe. The lash fell among them, its bite etching lines of fire into their skin. Insult followed injury as buckets of brine sluiced the filth from their bodies once again. They bucked and sputtered and writhed, and begged their captors for relief, to no avail.

  As they cowered, salt water streaming from their hair into their mouths and noses, the second whip man unlocked their chains. One at a time, they were herded stumbling and shaking up the ladder to the deck above. The sun blazed high and hot above them as Aidan emerged into the light. Pig-Eyes watched him as he climbed onto the deck and was herded along. Even if Pig-Eyes had thought of him as a prisoner, the Northman had responded to him with some measure of simple humanity. Aidan would have to face whatever came next bereft of even that meager protection.

  Whip in hand, a burly Northman pushed and jabbed at them as they staggered along the deck, half blind and dizzy. "Come!" he growled. "Move! Move, damn you!" More seawater was sloshed over them, washing the remaining stink and caked salt onto the planks beneath their feet.

  Wet and miserable, Aidan wobbled down the gangplank, supporting Nessa as he went. As his eyes adjusted to the light, he caught his first glimpse of the city. It spread behind the harbor like a crystal forest of gleaming spires and towers. His mouth fell open and he stared, certain at first that he was dead and in the heaven his mother’s Christ promised him. Then he caught the smells of wood smoke and food, the ocean's clean brine scent, and knew that however impossible the vista, this was a physical place, a place in this world, not the realm of faeries or angels.

  Wooden crates were piled high, the few open ones he saw filled with fish and salt. Strange animals—like horses, only with long necks and humped backs—carried loads of boxes and rolled bolts of fabric. The air was filled with smells of sweat and smoke, of blood and fresh-cut flowers.

  Twice more he heard the word Tarifa used by Northmen, who pointed toward the towers, and he began to believe that that was the city's name, and called it so in his mind.

  Colorful banners flew from glistening ivory peaks that he finally identified as some sort of dwellings, built higher than mountains, places where men ate and slept. There were cylindrical objects floating in the air, things as large as the dragon ships. At first he thought them some manner of enormous bird, then realized that they had sharp edges, like boats. Boats, floating in the air, moving as slowly as leaves drifting on the lake.

  That sight drained the strength from his legs. Flying boats. Tarifa was not inhabited by men, then. Not men at all.

  As he watched, one of the air-boats glided to the lip of a staggeringly tall tower. He swore he saw human shapes grabbing lines, and a gangplank of some kind fell forward. His mind reeled.

  For those moments, Aidan completely forgot the bonds on his wrists, forgot everything but the impossible sights before him. The dock alone was larger than O'Dere crannog, and densely peopled. And what people! If the Northmen had seemed alien, the inhabitants of the strange, impossible town of Tarifa were stranger still.

  "Is this heaven?" Nessa asked. "Are we dead?"

  The weight of dread and awe in his mother's voice made it almost lifeless. "Not heaven, child. No."

  No. Hell, then, and these were demons.

  Tarifa's streets were filled with male and female demons that looked like human beings smeared with soot or mud. Most of their heads were wrapped in cloth, but bare heads were crowned with what looked more like black lamb's wool than real hair. They were dressed far more elaborately than either the Northmen or Aidan's own people. Their lips were thick, noses wide and blunt. They babbled in a language Aidan had never heard, more melodic than that of Pig-Eye's people. He could not understand a word.

  They spoke. Did demons speak? Were they men after all? He remembered stories now, dread tales flooding into his mind, whispered around dying campfires. In a far land (so the stories went) lived a race of black warlocks. They were man-eaters and ravagers, with swords that cleft ordinary steel as an axe carves wood. The Druids spoke of their cities, irresistible armies, and vast knowledge. Traveling traders spoke in low voices of their wealth and cruelty.

  Better he had died on the river, in the Lady's arms.

  A hugely fat soot-man sat on a canopied chair at the dock, surrounded by alert, muscular black-skinned guards. At his feet knelt four white men, men like Aidan's father, only their eyes were cast down, as if they dared not meet their grotesque master's gaze.

  Aidan stared: never had he seen so corpulent a human being. Rolls of dark meat cascaded on his face and neck. What he might look like beneath those robes Aidan could not even imagine. What kind of people had so much food they could afford to let one of their own gorge to such uselessness? Could this thing swim? Balance itself in a coracle? Hunt? Or even walk? He imagined that the guards were forced to lift this monster on their groaning backs whenever he needed to look behind him. With a dismissive flap of sausage fingers, he waved the captives into groups, while another dark man of normal human dimensions made tally marks on a slate.

  The Northmen seemed proud and strong, but oddly deferential to the soot-men. As the last captive was dragged off the dragon ship, several soot-men wheeled over a box of the deadly fire-sticks. Aidan took the opportunity to glimpse one more cl
osely: a thick metal rod joined to a carved wooden plank similar to the blade of an oar. Did these things catch lightning from the sky to spit it out again on command?

  The Northmen handled the fire-sticks as if they were spun gold, and Aidan understood at once that this was their reward for the destruction of his village. The fire-sticks were fearful things, but the boy swore that one day he would learn their secrets. One day he would kill the killers.

  As his fellows hauled the sticks aboard, Pig-Eye gripped Aidan's shoulder with one vast hand. In broken Gaelic he said. "Enjoy trip, little maggot." Whatever softness might once have lived in his face vanished as his northern brothers laughed.

  Immediately Aidan and his family were surrounded by black-skinned men, creatures so strange they made the Northmen seem like cousins. And at this range, he could clearly see that they were men, though with dark eyes, thick lips, and blunt noses. They did not smell like men, but of flowers and fruit, as if they did not sweat, or perhaps exuded nectar. They smelled like husband-seeking girls at Festival.

  Such skin! Dark as a starless, moonless night. And such clothing! So rich and variegated, robes that sparkled even in the light, as if threads of gold and silver were woven into their mesh. Never had he seen such wealth. The dark people shouted at them, poked, prodded, and forced the captives to form a line at a four-legged metal table.

  One of the fat man's lackeys sat and regarded them. This man was primped and oiled, lips rouged, his black, woolly hair braided like a woman's, his lashes longer than those of Aidan's mother.

  But when he spoke, his words were clearer and cleaner than any of the Northmen's had been, and Aidan didn't know whether to relax or contract with horror to hear familiar speech emerge so easily from the blunt, painted black lips.

  "I am Fekesh!" he said. "Write your names!"

  A guard thrust a quill pen into the blacksmith's meaty, stained hand. After shaking for a moment, he scrawled Riley. Fekesh glanced at it and nodded approvingly. He pushed the man toward a line of captives facing away from the docks. The soot-men supervising this line sat astride horses the likes of which Aidan had never seen. Some of the crannog's farmers had horses, of course, but they were plodding, slow-witted creatures that pulled plows or carts all day without rest. These were different: sleeker, more muscular, prouder—purer somehow.

  The man who called himself Fekesh (and what kind of name was that?) turned to the next woman in line, Brigit, who made the best bread in the crannog, always somehow lighter and tastier, and it stayed warm in the belly for hours. Brigit was a thin, handsome woman who was now as dazed and haggard as the rest.

  "Write! Name!"

  Brigit shuddered. Her face was slack, pale, and she seemed on the very edge of collapse. "I . . . I never learned. I don't know how . . ."

  Fekesh pursed his mouth and didn't even bother to meet her eyes. "Zawariq," he said. And two men grabbed her arms and hauled her back toward the dock. She screamed as she went. Aidan watched as if experiencing a dream, momentarily beyond emotion.

  Deirdre was next. She swallowed hard, tried to stand strong. There, for a moment, was the woman Aidan knew, the ghost of her customary grace and dignity held around her like a ragged cloak. "Where are they going?" she asked.

  One of the huge dark guards spoke in that garbled, choppy tongue, then took her face in one huge hand. Fekesh glared at her. "Those smart ones go to good masters," he said in their own tongue. "Alexandria. Athens. Addis Ababa. Not so good, work the fields in Bilalistan."

  Deirdre's eyes narrowed in confusion. "Where?" She sounded desperate to understand what was happening.

  "Across ocean. Write," Fekesh said. "Name."

  With a shaking hand, Deirdre signed her name, and she was placed in the line of cleaner-looking captives. Although Aidan didn't completely understand what had happened, he had a deep sense that this was a good thing, that there was a real difference between the fates of those who could write and those who could not.

  His mother turned to them. "It's all right now," she said, face glazed with a terrible, drunken smile. "You'll be with me."

  Aidan started after her, but a rough hand seized his shoulders, yanked him back to the table, and thrust a pen at him. "Write," Fekesh said. "Name."

  Aidan trembled now. For a moment the scene was frozen in his mind. He and his sister had always taken after their father, and Mahon was a fisherman. Aidan had loved the river more than he loved the world of books, and had brushed aside his mother’s attempts to teach him the way of runes. Nessa, with her clever hands and feet, was little better. Why learn runes when there was a new stitch, a new recipe, a new dance step to learn? Why oh why had they not listened to their mother?

  "No," Deirdre said, her voice a trembling singsong. She set her jaw tight, her eyes held unblinking on the man before her. "They're with me."

  Fekesh glared at her with something so far beneath contempt that she might not have been human at all. He flicked his hand at a guard. The lash sliced her shoulders with a sound like a fire-stick calling lightning from the clouds.

  Aidan's mother fell to her knees, red hair dangling limply around her face. When she looked up, the fear she had worked so hard to conceal burned in her eyes and mouth like the marks of a wasting disease.

  Painfully slowly, Aidan struggled to make an X on the paper. The guard grunted impatiently and pulled him toward the other line of captives heading onto another, larger ship that looked to Aidan like the very ferryboat to hell. All of the sailors were soot-men.

  Nessa twisted piteously and helplessly, shoulders gripped by black hands as large as her head. Her frail strength had been almost extinguished by the dozen steps down the ladder. "Aidan!"

  He was yanked away and dragged back toward the harbor. He stared back over his shoulder, eyes wide. "Mother . . . ?" he pled, beyond terror now. A hideous war raged behind Deirdre's beautiful eyes. Her frantic gaze lit upon the enormously large man on the canopied seat. The monstrosity was fanned by two small sunburned boys who might have been from Aidan's own village.

  Deirdre broke away from the line and ran to the big man's chair, throwing herself onto her knees. The guard grabbed her feet and began to haul her away, her fingernails splintering against the dock. "Mercy!" she begged. "Please. Let me stay with my babies. I'll cook, clean, anything you want. Just don't take them away. Merciful Mary, please."

  The guard tugged at her. With strength beyond reason, she clawed her way forward, and clung to the head man's swollen feet.

  "Please!"

  The big man gazed at her balefully, nothing but irritation in his fleshy face, then considered Aidan and Nessa. He spoke a few words to Fekesh, who walked over and presented the big man with the piece of paper on which Deirdre had scrawled. His small bright eyes glanced from the paper to her face, and back again. Then something happened that surprised Aidan. Abruptly, the hard lines around the man's mouth softened just a bit, as if he was remembering something, or thinking of something that was of pleasure to him. Incredible as it seemed, perhaps this creature had once known a mother's love.

  Deirdre sobbed at his feet. The man's face gentled further, and his cheeks pouched in the barest smile. With a flourish, he ripped the paper in half, then in quarters, and scattered the pieces. "May Allah protect you," he said, and gestured sharply to the guards.

  Allah? What was an "Allah"?

  The enormous man spoke again in the unknown tongue. The guards replied curtly, and then Aidan, his mother, and his sister were all dragged back to the harbor. The indignity was utterly eclipsed by his overwhelming sense of relief that he would not be separated from his mother and sister.

  For a brief moment Deirdre was able to embrace her children, and he squeezed tight, eyes closed, smelling her salty skin, pretending that they were home, and safe . . .

  Then they were prodded up the gangplank and onto a triple-masted vessel with smoke rising from a central chimney. The back of the ship had something like a gigantic carpenter's screw trailing down into the water. It
was thicker than he was tall, and turned very slowly. As it turned, water pulsed from its ridges. As Aidan's feet touched the ship's deck he felt it vibrate beneath him, chuffing in some odd way, as if within its bowels lurked one of the dragons that had exhaled fire onto their boats.

  They were taken belowdecks, where the guards packed them in with the other captives. He saw the Boru boys, and Brigit the bread maker, and a half dozen completely strange faces. Hollow, frightened, resigned faces. Obviously O'Dere crannog had not been the only village raided.

  Daylight receded behind them, and they seemed to enter another world. The black men hurried them along like cattle. "Move! Move!" one said, and forced them in tight, chaining them on horizontal shelves against the walls. They were crushed in like salted fish in a barrel, barely room to breathe or move, and the screams and moans were almost as bad as the lack of room.

  He was startled to find himself on the shelf below Morgan. He had not seen her curled there in the dark, clothing soiled and torn. She seemed so small and frail, entirely shorn of her customary confidence. As more bodies were packed in the hold, she could restrain herself no longer. "Please!" she sobbed as the lash rained down upon her. "Have pity!" she screamed, writhing in its caress.

  Finally she lay shivering, silent save for the rustle of her body convulsing on the pallet. Aidan's chain was locked into place.

  "Uskut!" the guard commanded. "Silence!"

  She flinched as he brandished the whip again. From across the aisle Kyle Boru cursed and kicked at the whip man, his leg chains somehow longer and less restraining than the others. "Bastards! You killed me Da—"

  The kick thumped against the sailor's buttocks to little effect. The whip man turned, snarling, and brought the whip down again and again, cursing in that unknown language.

  "No, Kyle, they'll kill ye!" his brother, Donough, screamed from somewhere down in the darkness.