"This is war!" Shaka thundered.
"There are black men out there!"
"There are soldiers out there," said Shaka, "and I will brook no interference in my orders!"
Ali wheeled and struck Wusa to the ground, seized his bugle, turned and drew breath to blow the signal.
In a single, eye-baffling thrust, Shaka speared Ali under the rib cage. So swift and savage was the assault that Kai barely saw it happen, and his brother had no slightest hope of defense. Ali buckled to one knee and clasped his hand to the wound. Blood gushed between his fingers, and he collapsed.
Stunned, Kai dropped to his brother's side. The wound was mortal.
"How dare you!" Shaka roared. He glared at the others, face distorted with rage, spear red-tipped and ready. "I knew you Muslim whelps would go jelly-bellied once the killing began. Even your uncle, who was once my brother, no longer has the fire in him. This is my war, and it will be fought my way, and if any of you would challenge me, make it now!"
Even though there were three of them and one of Shaka, Kai's companions could not move. Shaka's trumpeter raised himself on unsteady legs, eyes wide as he stared at Ali convulsing on the ground.
Ali groped up at Kai with warm, wet fingers. "Kai . . . it hurts," Ali whispered. "Who would think it hurt so much to die?"
"Ali," Kai said numbly. "What am I to do?"
"Be strong," Ali whispered, wheezing through ruptured lungs. "Survive, little brother. Your life is in a madman's hands. He will try to take you to hell with him."
"One coward comforts another," Shaka said behind him. "See how they cry like little girls."
Kai unbuckled his sword belt and let it clatter to the ground. "I am done with this war," he said, turning.
Shaka looked at him incredulously, and then began to laugh, roaring from deep in his stomach, head thrown back, overwhelmed by cruel mirth.
And was still laughing as Kai pulled Nasab Asad from Ali's scabbard. With a single, fluid motion he sliced the tendons in Shaka's right wrist, then spun the blade so that he held it backhanded and plunged it into the Zulu's belly.
Shaka's face widened in shock as Kai drove the knife deep. His spear dropped from his nerveless hand, and his mouth opened. No sound emerged, only a flood of crimson as he dropped to the earth.
Wusa's rheumy old eyes went wide, and he raised the trumpet to his lips to call the alarm. Before he could draw breath, Fodjour had struck him down, so that the two Zulus lay side by side, their blood mingling, only five seconds after Kai struck the first blow.
Kai gazed down at his victim, watching as Shaka quivered and then was still.
He turned to his brother, who looked at him with wonderment. "Who would. . ."
"Ali," Kai said. "Don't speak."
"Who would have thought," Ali said, and his eyes closed.
The nobles gaped. "What have we done?" gasped Fodjour.
"With hope, saved our souls," Kai said. He bent and kissed his brother's unlined forehead. No more troubles. Then Kai stood and squared his shoulders. "Up!" he cried. "Would you have glory at the cost of good men's lives? This is our fight! Our God! Shame upon any of you too proud to spill your blood in His service."
He drew his sword. "Allah huakbarl" God is Greater! he cried, leapt upon Djinna, and rode down the hill. Win or die. Win and die. It mattered not which.
He glanced back over his shoulder and was heartened to see that the others were following his lead. Father. Brother. Watch over me. The nobles charged down and out, into the blaze, through the few gaps in the fire. They joined in combat with the Aztecs amid the blazing grass. The remaining Zulu reinforcements, perhaps convinced that Shaka had ordered the charge, joined the battle.
Suddenly, the conflict was even.
Kai slashed and hacked at his feathered enemy, one of whom ducked down and had time to set the butt of his spear into the ground. Before Kai could react, Djinna impaled herself on it, rearing back and snorting in mortal agony.
Kai went down hard, spinning. He rose to his feet and managed to keep sufficient presence of mind to draw his sword, but was acting on pure reflex, grief and pain and rage melding until he was beyond his ordinary mind, locking in a web of flesh and steel.
That was when something inside Kai splintered into fragments. The Aztecs were no longer human. Shaka was no longer human. The men around him were not men. They were all demons and damned, and he was in hell with the rest of them, acting with reflexes honed for almost twenty years, motivated by instincts older than time.
Aidan hacked his way to Kai's side. It took an instant for Kai to recognize the blurry white face, just identify it as not brown, not one of the faces that he was prepared to cleave without hesitation.
Aidan's face was slashed, soiled with dirt and grime, but their eyes locked for a moment, just a moment, long enough to call Kai back from the hell to which he had consigned himself.
He heard a sob break from his throat. His father was dead. His brother was dead. Perhaps even his honor was dead. But Aidan seemed a window to an earlier, more innocent Kai, one who had not come so far down a crimson highway, marching on the backs of the slaughtered.
Aidan still recognized him. And as long as one human being did, then perhaps Kai was not lost forever. Perhaps.
Aidan glimpsed Kai, had looked for him since seeing the disemboweled corpse of poor Djinna. In his heart, he feared that he would stumble over the torn and lifeless corpse of his friend, and was happy that they had shared space on this battlefield, even if just for a moment before the surging tides carried them away from each other.
He broke from the press and charged toward the mosque itself, where black soldiers and mamluks were hammering the Aztecs into splinters. They hurled ropes and grappling irons up to the windows, swarming as swiftly as spiders as soon as one of them lodged into place.
Within the mosque the now outnumbered Aztecs were fighting back, slicing ropes as fast as the whites could fasten grappling hooks in the windows. Black snipers, protected from the Aztec ground troops by fierce swordsmen, fired up at the windows relentlessly, driving the defenders back in a shattering hail of lead and steel.
More Zulus were joining the fight now, and Aidan's heart lifted: Shaka's strategy had drawn much of the mosque's defenses away, divided them again and again, and now he seemed to be subjecting the defenders to an overwhelming assault.
Aidan didn't see how it happened, but the front door of the mosque was suddenly forced open. The mamluks charged in, more and more of them rushing into the interior to kill and die.
Now the Bilalian forces clustered at the walls, protected the gates, and had taken the upper windows. The remaining Aztecs were disorganized now, many of them breaking away and running for the distant forests as arrows and rifle fire poured down on them.
A bugle was sounding—from within the mosque! And the Bilalian troops left the battlefield, surviving horses and horsemen, slaves and soldiers, all pulling in as the remaining Aztecs were slaughtered from the walls.
Then he watched as the gates were closed, and barred, and Aidan stood, stunned and silent to find himself alive and safe in the middle of a crowd of cheering, wildly exultant, blood-smeared warriors who screamed victory to the heavens.
Too numbed and tired to speak or move, Aidan sank to his knees and gave thanks.
Chapter Sixty-seven
Kai stood atop the mosque's flat tile roof, in the shadow of the golden dome, marveling at the success of their attack. Everything had worked perfectly: the Aztecs had been distracted and split, and had underestimated Bilalistan's resolve and resources. Shaka had also been brutally shrewd: the Aztecs hadn't anticipated that a commander might deliberately kill his own troops.
But then these troops had only been slaves.
Heaven help us, Kai thought. If one must think this way to win wars, perhaps it is better to lose them.
Fodjour reported to Kai with, a salute. "As the Wakil's surviving son you are now the ranking officer, Captain. Your orders?"
/> "Bar the gates!" said Kai. "We now have only to wait for our reinforcements. After the raid on the settlements, the men will circle back to buttress our position."
"Who will arrive first?"
Kai shook his head. "Don't know. It depends on the amount of resistance they've encountered. They have to disengage and circle back. But certainly it can be no more than twelve hours before the first support arrives."
Standing at the edge of the roof, N'tomi called out: "The Zulus come! I must tell Shaka." He grinned, the unaccustomed expression lighting up his skeletal face. Kai dashed away across the courtyard as N'tomi called behind him: "Where is he?"
Allah preserve me. What do I tell the Zulus? It had been no more than two hours since the Zulu prince's death, barely minutes since the fall of the mosque. The soldiers had been so happy to find themselves alive that they hadn't had time to reorient themselves, or ask where their leader was. Kai climbed up a rickety ladder to the parapet, which was lined with lookouts.
The battlefield below him was strewn with black, white, and Aztec corpses. "Keefah and Darbul are here!" Kai called.
Shaka's nephews had led a feint to the south, branching off from the main force the morning of the previous day. In all probability they had avoided contact with the enemy, and would be fresh and ready to fight. The Zulu troops rode toward the mosque, proud and erect, two lines of fifty horsemen supplemented by two hundred foot soldiers, approaching in silence.
"Where is Shaka?" N'tomi insisted, more strident this time.
Kai felt sickened. "Open the gates!"
The great wooden doors swung open. The Zulu horsemen approached. . . and then stopped.
Keefah stared up at Kai, naked loathing in his eyes. Darbul threw Shaka's bloodied tunic to the ground. His face as grim as death, he called out in Zulu, speaking for thirty seconds.
N'tomi stared down at Shaka's nephews, then turned and looked at Kai as if he were a rabid dog, fear and loathing commingled. N'tomi threw his head back and barked commands in Zulu. Then he spit on the roof of the mosque, picked up his spear, and left.
Merciful Allah. They'd found Shaka, Wusa, and Ali. Could they determine that Ali had been killed by an umkhonto, and Shaka by a jambaya, and thereby intuit what had happened?
What manner of men were these?
As N'tomi passed the other Zulus, to a man they turned and left their posts.
Stunned beyond the power of speech, Kai followed them down a flight of narrow stone stairs and watched as they collected at the gate, a hundred of the remaining two hundred fifty fighting men.
He was honest with himself: the best hundred. N'tomi turned and locked eyes with Kai. There was no doubt in Kai's mind: N'tomi wanted to kill him, and was held back only by lack of indisputable proof. That, perhaps, and a reticence to start a second war while in the midst of the first.
Kai could not hold his gaze. "Let them go," he said.
Heads high, the Zulus filed out and were gone.
Fodjour watched the exit, his hands curled tightly into fists. "Need I ask what Darbul said to them?"
"No," Kai replied. "You don't."
The interior of the Mosque of the Fathers was divided into a large public meeting and prayer room, some private rooms and cubicles to either side, an underground storeroom, and an upper-level sleeping quarters for pilgrims. The actual place of burial was called a maqam, a place of great spiritual power surrounded by a low brick wall. Two coffins were arrayed within it, with oversized turbans atop each demarking the status of the dead.
Although the caretakers had doubtless long since been slaughtered by the Aztecs, and the mosque forced to house both troops and Aztec horses, there was no evidence of deliberate vandalism. Within limits, the invaders had been surprisingly respectful.
The Muslims' surviving horses were brought into the mosque and roped into a corner of the room while the Muslims lay down cloaks and blankets beneath them, murmuring estafghuar Allah again and again.
Allah forgive.
A clay-walled communal dining room was packed with young officers, free lowborn blacks, even a few slaves. A hundred or so very tired, discouraged, frightened men.
There was but one question on every tongue: Why did the Zulus leave?
Kai held his hands in the air to catch their attention, and raised his voice. "Shaka is dead. They hold us responsible." The slaves and blacks immediately broke into a nervous clamor. Kebwe and Makur might have been wearing masks, so little did their expressions change.
Kebwe unrolled a map. "There is a contingent of soldiers to the north, here," he pointed, "at the Drift."
Kai nodded. There was indeed a fort a day's ride away, and it would be manned by New Djiboutan regulars. "If they can be reached, they may be able to offer assistance."
"A day there, a day back. Forty-eight hours before help can arrive," said Makur.
Kai nodded. "If we can hold out."
Kebwe pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingers, and looked pained. "Don't say 'if.' Please."
"When we can communicate with them," Kai corrected himself, "they will send reinforcements. Their commander is Colonel Wakil Abu Kwame. A good man."
The room was filled with long faces and heavy moods.
"Fodjour," Kai said. "You are the best horseman here."
"Pity it took this to make you admit it."
Kai laughed grimly in reply. It felt good to laugh. It was quite possible that the laughter remaining in his life was finite indeed. "It will have to be you. The rest of us stay to prepare the mosque for assault. What will you need?"
"Two men, six horses, and a devil's luck. We reach Abu Kwame, or we die."
"We will race again one day."
Fodjour turned, then turned back. "Kai—just in case we don't. It was you, that day. The chess game?"
"It wasn't me. It was, however, my pepper." The two old rivals laughed and clasped hands.
Fodjour lowered his voice. "Shaka was mad," he said, close to Kai's ear. "You did what any of us would have done, had we the heart."
The words were like a glimpse of sun through a storm cloud. "May the wind be at your back," Kai said.
Kai watched his old friend leave through the front gate. Immediately, the small group broke into a gallop. With luck, reinforcements might arrive by the next evening. Without it, well . . . his father and brother awaited him in Paradise.
For a moment he remembered his brother's mutilated body, then shut that picture out of his mind. There was no time for grief, not if there was to be any chance of survival at all.
With a five-man detail, Kai descended a narrow file of stone steps leading to the cellar. The Aztecs had converted the cool, dry space into an armory. The walls hung with spears and rifles, the floor was crowded with barrels marked in strange Aztec glyphs. "So," he said. "What do we have?"
Makur answered. "The Aztecs kept their powder here—enough for an army."
"If only we had one."
"Hundreds of rifles."
"Of whose manufacture?"
"Ours. All Bilalian or Egyptian design, gained in trade and raids. I see no evidence that they have much manufacturing capacity, although they do seem to make their own gunpowder."
"What the merchants sell, the army has to fight. Food and water?"
"Not enough."
"They must have been expecting a shipment," Kai said. "Well, what there is, work out a system to divide it equally."
"Excellent. And for the slaves?"
Kai glared. "I said: equally. They need to keep up their strength as well."
"The nobles will complain."
"They know where to find me," Kai said, turned sharply, and left.
At the very back of the main meeting room was a smaller boxlike structure, like a house set inside a house. This khalwat had been the private meditation room of the caretakers, and the soldiers had taken it over as a hospital.
It was Kai's intent to inspect the facilities, and perhaps talk to some of the men, but when he entered he f
ound Kebwe and some of the other men administering to the wounded. Kebwe was halfway through his physician’s training, and if he survived the wars would probably travel to Alexandria to complete his education. He had apparently found a supply of bandages, astringent, and opium extract in a cupboard.
Men lay on cots in corners and across the floor, slashed and dying, some with their entrails pressing against makeshift bandages. They groaned for help, and Kebwe was doing his best to stretch the limited resources.
Kai watched, flinching, as Kebwe guided one of the mamluks to apply fire against the stump of an arm. The smell of sizzling flesh filled the air. Kai wanted to gag, but managed to maintain a calm front.
He crouched near as soon as the stump was bandaged. "How are we doing?"
"I need more medicine, and some genuine medical care," Kebwe said, wiping perspiration from his generous brow. He lowered his voice. "We're going to lose maybe ten of them regardless. But we'll lose more if we don't get help."
"God," groaned the stump-armed mamluk. His hair was as red as his blood and hung in limp, wet strands across his fevered forehead. "Why did I come?"
"What is your name?" Kai asked.
"Ndukwana," answered the redhead, mangling a mouthful of glottal clicks in the attempt. Kai almost laughed, and felt a pang of sorrow for the slave who could not pronounce his own name.
"What did your mother name you?''
Red-hair looked at Kai as if no black man had ever asked him that question before. "Caleb," he said, gritting his teeth. His pupils were dilated: the opium was doing its work.
"Let's call you Caleb, then," Kai said. "And I'll tell you why you came, Caleb. To be free."
"And what if I die?" His voice had descended into a slur.
All soldiers deal with fear of death. That was where Malik's offer had not gone far enough. It was not enough to win freedom if you live. To create a warrior, one must see even death itself as a triumph. "Do you have a son?" Kai asked.
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