Lion's Blood

by Steven Barnes

  Ali nodded slowly.

  "Good. Now then—once they have withdrawn their forces to protect their bitches and whelps, my core force strikes. A frontal assault by the mamluks, followed by a pincer movement left and right by our elite troops. Your royal forces will remain in reserve. Once the spine is broken, we move in and pluck the heart."

  There were general murmurs of approval. Kai continued to study as slaves brought platters of roasted bison and pitchers of water.

  "Thank you," he said absently. Ali and the Zulus were laughing, shaking hands, speculating on the morrow. Alongside their solid confidence, his own bravado seemed a thin, frail thing. His gut boiled with acid. Allah, he pled, do not let the gasses escape, that these brave men know me for a coward!

  Kebwe spoke up. "You are using versions of the same tactic at each location and at each level of engagement? Side feint and forward charge, side feint and forward charge . . .?"

  Shaka nodded. "We will crush them, and the best part is that the mamluks will take the brunt of the casualties. In the entire campaign, we should lose two or three thousand slaves at the most."

  There were murmurs of approval, and Ali shrugged. "The Ulema will reimburse us. . ."

  Kai heard that number, closed his eyes and saw heaps of savaged bodies. Endless rivers of red. He searched the other faces in the tent. Was there anyone else who was as repulsed by the notion as he?

  If there was, no one who was willing to admit it publicly. And heaven help him, neither was he.

  Later that evening, Shaka walked the camp with Kai and Ali. He gestured expansively at the troops. His charisma seemed massive enough to bend sky and stars into a mantle.

  "I anticipate a swift campaign," he said. "These barbarians have no taste for prolonged warfare." The military organization was roughly organized into a hierarchy influenced by inherited and appointed authority: The officers below Shaka were generally referred to as lieutenants, with their relative status decided by time in grade. The officers were all men of good blood and high social standing. The common soldiers were recruited from all free black men of the empire, the highest noncommissioned rank being the ghazi, then the sergeants, and then the common soldiers.

  Shaka's senior ghazi was N'tomi, a man of mixed Zulu and Watusi extraction. Almost seven feet tall, he was abnormally thin, and Kai's first thought was, A fistful of bones in a sack of skin. N'tomi towered among them, his long angular face cast in a perpetual scowl. He rubbed his knobby hands together. "We'll send them back across the river, sir."

  "A river of blood," Shaka said. "I'll stand on a mountain of their heads."

  N'tomi's deep, hollow eyes blazed. "On such a mountain a man might see as far as New Alexandria."

  "Heh. Heh, heh." Shaka's teeth gleamed in the night. "He might indeed."

  Kai watched them laugh, listened to the hounds worrying their bloody bones, and remembered Babatunde's words, fearing for all their souls.

  Kai and Ali slept in one of the officer's tents that night, on narrow cots raised only digits above the ground. When Kai roused himself from bed at dawn, Ali was already gone. He washed with the water in a shallow metal face bowl and then prayed. He could hear the clash and clatter outside his tent, the sounds of steel against wood and steel against steel.

  As he exited his tent seeking breakfast, the morning light revealed the rows of mamluks and common soldiers drilling, marching and practicing weaponcraft, being hammered out of their individual identities, formed into the components of a fighting machine. They practiced with spears and pikes, thrusting against horsemen and other footmen.

  Ali and Shaka were speaking as Kai approached, and he caught the tail end of his elder brother's discourse. "We are teaching thousands of these slaves to kill."

  "And quite efficiently," Shaka replied.

  "Not three months ago we repressed an uprising on Dar Kush. Aren't you concerned that these skills might be turned against us one day?"

  "Ah?" Shaka said. He nodded, and called to the nearest slave, a broad-shouldered, potbellied lad with a ratty mane of long black hair. "You! Your name!"

  "Gunter, sir."

  Shaka grunted. "Attack me!"

  The slave cringed with fear, but did not move.

  "Attack me, Gunter," Shaka roared, "or I will have your life!"

  The man quivered, and then attacked wildly. Shaka drew his spear, parried and stabbed just under the left armpit, piercing his heart.

  The officers applauded, while Kai lost his appetite for breakfast. Even Ali looked aghast as the unfortunate slave collapsed to the dust, blood gushing from his side.

  Shaka merely shrugged. "If he had obeyed my first order, he might have lived."

  "I see," Kai said. Disbelief and fear warred within him, and he struggled to keep them out of his face or voice. Ali's eyes were narrowed with disgust. "And you were demonstrating that. . . what?"

  "They are training only to cope with straight-line attacks, without lateral motion. They are two-dimensional. Any gentleman could kill five of them in his sleep." Shaka stretched and yawned as he said that. Contempt for the slaves? Or for any "gentleman" who would worry about them? "They are fit only for mass attack, with side support."

  He flickered his head at one of his fawning lieutenants. "Remove this meat."

  Two slaves hauled away the corpse as Shaka swaggered off. Kai watched silently until the Zulus were out of earshot. "The Caliph has entrusted this mission to a monster, Ali," he said, voice low and controlled.

  "The Zulus have the greatest strength in New Djibouti. Without their strength, troops would have to be recruited from New Alexandria. Such an action would offend the Zulus, and harmony is vital in these dangerous times."

  "You will be the Wakil," Kai said. "Politics is your world, not mine."

  Ali rested his broad hand on his younger brother's shoulder. "I cannot do it alone, Kai. If ever I said a word implying I could, discount it."

  Kai was warmed by the words, felt closer to his brother than he had in months. Years, perhaps. And the smile they shared was that of two warriors passing through a dark valley, only their sword arms and honor armoring them against the night.

  When not sleeping or eating, Aidan and his men drilled without rest. But as Aidan did, he thought of the words he had overheard Shaka speak after slaying the German Gunter. As nauseating as that spectacle had been, he forced the fear and anger from his mind, and struggled to puzzle the words out, to understand what two-dimensional meant.

  He remembered attacking Kai in the barn, and how easily his former friend had defeated him. Was that it? He thought perhaps he had the answer, but that particular beating might well represent nothing but one man’s superiority over another. Then he thought of Gunter attacking Shaka, the Zulu's hideously efficient riposte and counter, and he remembered something he had heard Malik saying about angles . . . depth . . . dimension . . . what had it been? He cursed himself for ever allowing his mind to drift during Kai's lessons.

  He looked again at the way the men around him were being trained, and something slipped across his consciousness like a fish in a river. He tried not to grasp for it, and suddenly he had it, saw it. The masters are deliberately leaving a vulnerability, for fear that their servants will rise against them.

  Of course. Dar Rush's had been but a small uprising. There had been a few larger ones, smashed so viciously that slaves were afraid even to dream of freedom for years to come. But in their hearts, the masters knew that men were men. Aidan looked at the white men about him, and the angles they were being trained to protect, and was aghast.

  Kai had spoken the truth in the barn. In his way, his old friend had tried to protect him.

  Even now. Even after all that had happened.

  "What's on your mind, boy?" asked a red-haired giant training next to him.

  Aidan grunted. "Just thinking." The man was almost a head taller than Aidan, with a gentle round face with strong laugh lines. They must have been about the same age. Judging by what Aidan had seen
so far, the giant was incredibly strong, but rather clumsy.

  "What's your name?" Aidan asked. The giant was studying him carefully.

  "Gobe," he said, and laughed. "Means 'tomorrah' in Hausa. That's 'cause my masta always be tellin' me to do things, an' I always be puttin' it off 'til tomorrah."

  Aidan laughed. "Good name, then. What was your original name?"

  The giant blinked, as if struggling to remember. "Donough," he finally said.

  "I once had a friend named Donough," Aidan said, and then looked more carefully into his companion's face, searching. "Have you ever heard of O'Dere?"

  Donough's eyes widened in shock and delight. "Aidan? Is that you?"

  Stunned beyond words, Aidan grabbed Donough around the waist and began to pummel him about the back and sides, laughing until he felt tears rolling down his face. "Mother Mary! How you've grown, boyo!"

  Donough thrust him to arm's length. "And your mother, Aidan?"

  "Dead," he said, voice flat. "Years ago."

  "Aye, that's the way of it." The great bland face brightened. "But we're alive!"

  "And together again." A flood of memories dizzied Aidan. Fishing in the Lady, hunting in the forests. Dancing at festival. Stealing hot bread with poor dead Kyle and Nessa. Crab races at dockside. All is not lost. A thousand debens of stone seemed to lift from Aidan's heart. O'Dere crannoch lives! "Those Aztecs had better watch their arses now!"

  Another bout of laughing, this one continuing until they were both weak and coughing.

  "Aidan O'Dere," Donough roared again. "I knew you looked familiar."

  Talk finally gave way to more practice, and then after a while aching muscles were rested while kitchen slaves ladled supper from the stew kettle.

  Aidan sat with Donough and a new friend, Devlin, another Irishman, chewing and telling them what he had discerned earlier. "I'm telling you," he said, "the bastards are deliberately teachin' us just enough to get us killed."

  Donough grunted belief. "Sounds like the shites."

  Devlin hunched in closer. "What do we do, Aidan?"

  "Pass the word. Don't let the masters know we know. When they're not watching, practice protecting the flanks."

  He watched Shaka, who was on the other side of camp feeding his monster hounds.

  Donough spit. "I reckon our time will come."

  "It will come," he said. "Every dog has its day."

  The next day the troops rolled west. Most of the slaves marched barefoot. Aidan felt slightly self-conscious of his own sandaled feet, but knew that he hadn't the lifelong calluses necessary to march these rutted roads without protection.

  Commoners walked as well, or rode on the supply wagons. The nobles were mounted on their strutting warhorses.

  Each day, they encountered another string of soldiers and volunteers, and their ranks swelled.

  Their numbers fluctuated as the officers conferred, plans were finalized, groups were trained and then split off on flanking, decoy, and harrying missions.

  Each night, a vast tent city of interlinking kraal circles sprang into existence. Guards patrolled the edges of the camp, lest a nervous slave take the opportunity to slip away into the night and attempt to join the Commanche or Apache.

  Scents of roasting meat and boiling coffee filled the air, along with low nervous talk and laughter. As the evening wore on, the fires died down and the men bundled themselves up and tried to sleep.

  There were occasional muttered prayers, crying, moaning. Bushes rustled as one man or another urinated or vomited cheap beer from a jittery stomach.

  Slaves who could not sleep passed jugs of wine or hemp cigarettes. They huddled in circles, eyeing the guards, eyeing one another. Tomorrow was the day.

  Aidan got up and wandered toward the northern edge of the camp, seeking to stretch his legs. Lost in his own thoughts, he wandered until he spotted a familiar profile: Kai, walking between tents with his hands clasped behind his back.

  With a mild, ironic smile, Aidan saluted him, right fist to heart. "Hail," he said.

  "Aidan." Kai inclined his head.

  "How many of us will die tomorrow?" Aidan asked.

  "Are you still glad you came?"

  "How many of us will die?"

  Kai seemed to consider carefully. "Hold yourself as one already dead. Then, if you find yourself alive tomorrow night, thank Allah. Or Isu, if you prefer."

  Aidan longed to tell Kai that he knew truth had been spoken in that barn, that he knew Kai had not acted cruelly or capriciously. But he could not. He wouldn't open himself, risk being rebuffed. It was at that moment that he realized fully how much his friendship to Kai meant to him, how much he hated a world that had let them grow close only to rip them apart.

  As if he had already said too much, Kai held up his hand for silence, and walked away. Aidan drank the rest of his wine, then poured a little on the ground in honor of the dead. He hung his head, staring out beyond the rope marking the edge of the compound. Whites who passed that line could be shot on sight.

  If he half closed his eyes, he imagined that he could see Sophia's face in the ridges and lines of the moon. She held Mahon safe in her arms. Aidan was breathing hard, fast enough to make him dizzy. In his imagination, Malik entered the room behind her, and clasped his hands on her shoulders.

  Aidan gripped the rope until his fingers hurt. A hulking half-breed guard approached, grunting, and waved him back into the camp.

  Kai entered his tent. Within, Ali knelt in prayer. Ali looked up at his younger brother, face strained.

  "I pray, Brother," he said. "It is best you do the same. Tomorrow is the test."

  Kai nodded without speaking and unfurled his own prayer rug. When he had finished his formal prayer, he began one of the exercises that Babatunde had given him, the Sufic ritual called the Allah-Hu. With every inhalation, he drew into himself the million complexities of existence. But as he exhaled, he poured forth only the pure essence of Allah, the one true God. On inhalation, he thought, "The infinite forms of Allah." On exhalation, the "Hu," his mind focused on the essence of the divine.

  The minutes passed into hours as each, in his own way, prepared for a sleepless night, and a morning in which one or both of them might give up his soul to his immortal God.

  Chapter Sixty-five

  The clutch

  flaming in the smoking wreckage

  crushed limbs

  and fractured plates

  and broken breasts and shattered bones:

  bones, and limbs, and plates

  and the same, after-all

  cartilages and sockets

  disjoint at the joint

  even before the attack of harmation

  Look!

  At your blood ablaze in the shred of blades

  Pol Ndu, Nigerian poet

  27 Rajab 1290

  (September 19, 1873)

  A single Aztec camp stood between Shaka's army and the mosque. It was a makeshift fortress, the kind of structure thrown up in thirty-six hours by a few hundred industrious soldiers without an engineer in the lot. The log walls were twice as tall as a man and in a roughly triangular formation, with small gates in each side. The front gate was open.

  It was set in the middle of a plain below the crest of a clear-cut hill. For about sixty cubits from its gates the underbrush had been chopped down to the dirt, but beyond that grass grew thick and shaggy.

  A thousand of Shaka's troops had gathered for this attack. Other divisions had split off to attack Aztec encampments to the south and southwest. Before dawn Kai and his brother had crept up to the top of the hill, peering down through powerful spyglasses, evaluating and preparing. Kai knew that the two main divisions of Aztec warriors were known as "Jaguars" and "Eagles." The Jaguars were mobile scouts and fast-attack squadrons, the Eagles shock troops. Judging by their garb he guessed that those now exiting from the front gate were Eagles. They wore plaited armor, feathered headdresses, and moccasins, and carried feathered shields and flat swords with r
ows of metal teeth on either side. They were stocky and a bit shorter than the average Bilalian, light-skinned but not pale, and tended to move in pairs.

  Their armor was unsophisticated in comparison to his own, but as a pair of horses exited the gate for morning patrol, Kai instantly admired the discipline and evident training of what seemed to be Kenyan grays, probably descended from the original horses traded to east coast natives hundreds of years before.

  Kai motioned several of the other men forward, and they took up positions.

  He could see from his vantage point that the tall grass before the Aztec camp was alive with mamluk warriors, working their way in close. Shaka's plan, again: a buffalo tactic, the head and the horns. The mamluks would draw first blood, engaging the enemy while the "horns" of his cavalry moved in from the sides.

  Since awakening this morning, Kai had felt in a bit of a daze, outwardly calm, but inwardly raging with adrenaline. The closer he came to the moment of truth, the deeper the divide within him.

  This was the time, the moment for which he had prepared all his life. By the end of the day he might be alive or he might be dead, but he would certainly have killed men.

  He had fought, he had crippled robbers on the road. But killing! Ending the life of another human being! Driving his sword into the living body of another child of Allah, no matter how misguided . . . such an action had to change a man, forever. Whoever might live at the end of the day, it would be someone and something other than the Kai who had existed until this point.

  No matter if his body lived, Kai was doomed.

  He wanted to crawl away and cry for his lost life, but there was nothing in him that could allow such indulgence. There were eyes upon him: his brother's, his friends'. The eyes of his father, in Paradise.