by Aidan Harte
A moment passed before he realised he was on his back.
One of the invaders picked up the rock again and was about to brain the groaning savage when the woman said, ‘Zayid, enough.’
No Man had never heard of a female Top Man before, but clearly she was in charge.
Footsteps approached. His death was certain, but he resolved to take the invader’s Top Man with him to the Underworld. He leaped up—
—and found the point of his spear an inch away from his remaining eye.
She spun the stick with a warrior’s deftness and said in a Salernitan dialect, ‘I return what’s yours. We mean you no harm.’
No Man gawped. Was he dreaming, even slain, perhaps? The woman who stood before him, tanned skin grimy with the soot of battle and dressed in Ebionite fashion and with babe on arm, was his idol made flesh.
‘I am Contessa Scaligeri.’
The Contessa, she who had burned Bernoulli’s Molè, she whom the Concordians feared above all, was famous throughout Etruria – the Small People, who always suffered most in times of war, included her in their prayers to the Madonna, asking her to deliver them from evil as she had delivered the Rasenneisi – but on this rock her name was unknown.
‘Contessa,’ he repeated reverently.
‘My friend is wounded. Can you help us?’
*
South of the Messina Strait, a dense web of grappling hooks bound each ship to each other. They slowly turned about, listlessly slapping at each other like lovers in the last dregs of an orgy. The ferocity of the Sicilians had breathed new life into Khoril’s men, and at these close quarters their stilettos were lethal as Sicarii steel. In the teeth of the attack, the Moor’s men shook off the sluggish enchantment of the Serenissima and fought like the savages they were. The Moor was too experienced to imagine he could play the admiral at this hour of the dance and fought alongside his men.
Holes gaped in the bulwark of the Mars and its deck was strewn with bodies half-buried in knee-deep splinters. As a dozen more Sicilians swung aboard, the Moor and his men grudgingly gave ground. Amongst them was a tall scarecrow of a man with a floral-patterned green kerchief wrapped about his long neck.
‘I declare! It’s the condottiere who thinks he’s a Crusader,’ the Moor bellowed. ‘Podesta Levi, wherever least wanted, you invariably appear. I don’t know if I’d call it a talent, but it certainly is remarkable. General Spinther said the League was broke – what did you pay the Sicilians to join you? I’m almost offended that you didn’t bribe me.’
‘So imagine how offended you’ll feel when I kill you.’
‘I’m glad you’re game, but we both know that’s unlikely. Have at it!’
Levi’s broadsword clashed against the Moor’s scimitar. Levi had always been a better talker than a fighter, but his spell manning the oars had given him an iron strength that took his foe aback. But the dance of the Moor’s curved steel was too subtle and Levi had to duck and roll under a cannon to escape what would have been a beheading stroke. The swaying deck forced him into the railings. The Moor leaped on top of the cannon, laughing, and in desperation Levi slashed one of the binding ropes. Almost at once the cannon began to roll like a thing alive. The Moor fell and twisted out of its passage, but Levi hacked the second rope. It was loose, a thing of terrible volition, heading straight for its master. The Moor swung himself behind the mainmast. The great cedar trunk took the full force of the blow and blocks and ropes were shaken loose to fall about him harmlessly and drape the cannon in netting. As the swell tilted the deck up, the cannon began to roll back towards Levi, who dived headfirst down the hatch towards the rowers’ benches. The cannon rolled down the deck, catching three unlucky ship’s hands in its nets. It crashed through the railing and plunged into the turbulent waves of the strait, dragging the hapless sailors to their doom.
The Moor peeked down the hatch and saw Levi groaning and rubbing his back. He had landed awkwardly in the aisle between the rowers. As the admiral climbed down the ladder, he remarked, ‘You’ve worked enough mischief for one day, Levi – we really must use that energy more productively. I’m sure we can find an empty seat down here.’
‘Thank you, no,’ said Levi. ‘I tried my hand at being a slave. It didn’t agree.’ He scrambled onto the timber storage grid over the rowers’ heads.
The Moor followed, and as the low roof forced them to fight each other crouching low they were soon panting and dripping sweat on the slaves chained below.
‘Whoever takes this bastard down is a free man,’ cried the Moor, and turned and kicked Levi in the chest.
Levi fell back onto the backs and shoulders and grasping hands of the rowers. His ripped shirt was pulled from his torso, but he fought like a lunatic to regain his feet.
He finally succeeded when a voice behind him called out, ‘Look! He’s one of us!’ The Moor’s opponent was branded, like them: his back was a web of whip-scars. And now those clutching fingers constrained the Moor’s movements, pulling on his boots and breeches, then entwining around his belt, until he sank into a morass of slaves, cursing them roundly. ‘Release me – I am your master,’ he croaked even as a forearm tightened around his neck.
‘And I am their brother,’ said Levi, pointing his sword down at him. ‘I didn’t pay the Sicilians to join me: those ships are sailed by the men who were formerly slaves upon them.’
‘Levi the revolutionary,’ the Moor sneered. ‘When did you become so principled?’
Levi heard rapid steps climbing down into the rowing deck, and then Khoril’s voice, asking, ‘What are you waiting for?’
The Moor could not move so much as a finger. ‘Speaking of masters,’ he said, ‘I once made a bet with yours.’
‘John Acuto is dead.’
‘Aye, and we are yet alive! The day can be yours without one more drop of blood. The Concordians have used me ill, and I would have done altogether with the vexatious races of Etruria. Spin your dagger. If I win, I’ll strike my colours and set sail for Barbary with every ship I have this side of the strait.’
‘And if you get the sharp end?’
‘I get the sharp end, and my captains will fight to their deaths, or yours.’
‘You can’t trust him, Levi,’ Khoril said furiously. ‘Cut his throat now. Better yet let me.’
‘No.’ Levi placed his dagger in the aisle between the decks. ‘When it comes to gambling, Admiral Azizi is as honest as a mendicant.’ He spun.
*
No Man said his mother was a healer. Crooning delightedly, he led them back to Neo-Sybaris, taking a treacherous path along the coast. Making contact with strangers was bad enough; leading them to the village was the ultimate taboo – but he wasn’t worried because the others would see what he had seen: Befana’s prophecies made flesh. He had to admit that the Madonna’s companions were certainly odd: strange knights who hid their faces, Ebionites with slings and daggers, some of them dark as Moors. But that too was part of the prophecy – She came for all men, the shadowed and sunlit, the named and the nameless.
Zayid and Fulk carried Bakhbukh on a stretcher. Sofia thought he was concussed, but what else was wrong, she couldn’t be sure. He’d been injured when they’d boarded the Bernoulli and found complete chaos, guns blown to pieces, shattered spars everywhere, water gushing from her scuppers, tangled ropes, the mainmast barely standing … but it was only when they saw the lantern’s commander boarding a skiff and fleeing that they realised the Bernoulli was actually sinking. Sofia had had no idea who’d won on the other side of the strait; the smoke obscured everything. With the maelstrom gobbling down the wreckage of the battle, there’d been no sense in waiting to find out, so they’d set off in another skiff, initially in pursuit of the fleeing captain, but they’d soon lost him – and themselves – in the haze of gun-smoke that turned gradually to coastal mist. That’s when they’d come to shore, only to be attacked by a one-eyed native.
Now they followed the muddy track to a storm-tossed bay shaped like a tw
isted horseshoe. There was no harbour as such, just some rotted piles and a few warped planks, but that was all that was needed: the Sybarites took to their crude canoes for a few summer weeks only, and even then they never ventured out of the bay.
No Man expressed surprise when he saw a strange boat tied up at the moorings, but Sofia recognised it as the skiff in which the Bernoulli’s captain had escaped. Their fears took shape as they walked up the path to Neo-Sybaris. It was lined by rows of flaming beacons and the sour yellow light and the smell of burning pitch drew them on. As they drew closer, they saw what was burning: Concordian heads, freshly harvested.
‘You sure about this, Contessa?’ said Fulk. This welcome to the land of his forefathers left much to be desired.
‘Don’t see that we have much choice,’ she murmured.
The Sybaris of legend was a place of vaunting fountains, lofty marble temples, of spacious agoras. Neo-Sybaris was a dismal, sparsely populated hamlet. Its grey stone huts formed a circle, and in the centre of this rude piazza was a perpetually burning fire. Beside it, Sofia could see a squinting old man perched upon a broken column. He gripped a corroded trident coated by browning flakes. His protruding navel was circled with red paint so that his belly was one great unblinking eye. Tufts of grey hair, an ancient loincloth and a ratty blanket covered his pink nakedness. His pale arms were wound tightly with strings lined with white seashells. This, patently, was the all-powerful Hellebore.
As the people made a circle round the strangers, No Man’s mother came to his side. After a quick exchange she indicated that the stretcher-bearers should put Bakhbukh down.
‘I think,’ Fulk whispered to Sofia, ‘that their wounds are self-inflicted.’
‘I was just thinking it was some coincidence …’
Hellebore heard the commotion of his people, and asked, ‘What do you see, my Son?’ He was old, and increasingly relied on his son’s strength and the Whisperer’s wit to rule the Sybarites.
Femus glowered. He was a brute swaddled in muscle – as the Top Man’s son he’d always had the pick of the catch from childhood and now towered over the rest of the tribe. ‘A parade of foreign mongrels,’ he rumbled, ‘and led here by the nameless one.’
‘What? Saw their heads off!’
‘Peace, my lord,’ said the tall man at his left ear. ‘There’s some strangeness here. Let us first see what’s what.’
‘No Man, you clot!’ The Top Man tapped his trident against his column throne. ‘Have you forgotten the Law, or do you intentionally flout it by bringing an invader to the Umbikee Urbee of our empire?’
‘This is no invader, Far Seeing One. This is She.’
‘It is She. It is She,’ the villagers repeated in tones of hushed awe.
‘We must show her to Befana,’ said No Man.
‘Must is not a word you use to Top Man,’ said the Whisperer.
‘But Befana will tell us if she is She—’
‘Who doubts my vision?’ the old man croaked.
Hellebore took the tribe’s silence for affirmation, but they were silent for another reason: this exotic maiden held a child whose smile was like spring dawn in the heart of these half-blind barbarians. They looked from one to another, marvelling, waiting for Hellebore’s judgement.
Sofia could barely follow the discussion, but it was clear that her life was in the balance. The boy was good-hearted, she could see that, but hardly an advocate for them. She wished Bakhbukh was fit to move. Fulk was getting ready to fight, not a good sign.
No Man too was nervous. Hellebore had plucked out his remaining eye when he became Top Man, as custom demanded. He was blessed with absolute blindness so that the snares of the material world could not beguile him. But it meant that he could not see what was so obvious to his subjects. He tugged on the roots of his beard as the Whisperer described the scene. The Whisperer was no friend to No Man, but he was attendant to the Law – surely he must recognise the truth? Hellebore’s son stood behind them, still glowering at the excited crowd, who were being untypically vocal.
Hellebore threw the blanket from his knees and, with Femus’ aid, stood up. He thudded his trident against the pillar and called for silence.
‘Children, the Sea has cast up this siren to tempt us. The Great Eye wants to see if you are steadfast or not. Redemption is at hand, but today is not the day. We must cleave to our traditions like limpets to rocks.’
The crowd murmured. He might be blind, but Hellebore could see this was unpopular. ‘Who are you going to believe,’ he bellowed, ‘your eyes, or me?’
Femus stared down the crowd on his father’s behalf while the Whisperer whispered some more.
No Man’s mother was shaking stones over Bakhbukh. He was awake, though his breathing was shallow. Sofia knelt beside. ‘I’m glad,’ he whispered in Ebionite, ‘that I got to touch Etrurian soil, Mistress, but I do not think it agrees with me.’
‘Don’t be melodramatic. You’re coming with me, all the way to Rasenna. I’m going to show you Tower Scaligeri and that’s all there is to it. Stay awake,’ she said as she gave him a parting kiss.
‘Yes, my Nasi.’
Fulk looked at her. ‘Say the word.’
‘No – I didn’t cross the sea to slaughter Etrurians,’ she said crossly. ‘You’re going to stay here and make sure everyone behaves.’
‘And you?’
‘The Old Man told me that one of his kindred would seek me out. He said her name was Befana.’
No Man turned to her, eagerly nodding. ‘Yes, Befana!’ he repeated.
Hellebore slapped his belly for attention and said, ‘Very well. Hellebore is fair and far-seeing. Let her go to Befana’s cave, if she can find it, but let no man help her. If she is She, the Great Eye will guide and protect her. If she is a siren, the rocks will break her.’
‘That is just,’ the Whisperer bellowed, and the villagers, who had forgotten how to argue, said nothing and looked at the stranger.
‘I accept,’ Sofia said.
No Man walked over to Sofia. ‘Come, I will show you the way. My mother will mind your boy.’
‘What’s this?’ cried Femus indignantly.
‘Where are you going?’ shouted the Whisperer.
‘Top man said no man may help her. I am No Man.’
The people murmured happily at this unexpected turn of events.
‘Indeed you are,’ said Hellebore, trapped by his own words. ‘You are that, and your father’s son. Go then and be careful, lest like your father you stumble.’
CHAPTER 58
The Peoples of the Black Hand: A Bestiary
The pirates of Barbary had raided the Black Hand since antiquity, but one dreadful day they decided to stay. The memory of the occupation, which lasted several centuries,17 remains traumatic for the primitive coastal peoples: the devil is represented in Sybarite village totems as a Moor and their greatest fear is that of polluted blood.18
The Sybaritic religion is a strange hybrid too.19 Much as the Marianism of Oltremare was infected by its proximity to the Ebionite heresy, so the Marianism of Sybaris bears few similarities to that creed practised in the North.20 Perversely, the Sybarites worship a Black Madonna.21 They hold, like the Ebionites, that the Virgin was occluded and await Her return, confident that She and Her luminous child will restore Sybaris’ fortune.
Sybaritic self-segregation may suit their neighbours, but it has left the colony deformed by interbreeding. The men mutilate themselves further with a ritual cruel even by Black Hand standards. When a warrior comes of age, he brings a lamb or a goat to the cave of the Sybil. The animal buys an audience with the crone, but to win a new name he must make a more lasting sacrifice: an eye. In return, she reveals his name. If the initiate lives, he returns to the tribe a man.22
CHAPTER 59
The peaks afforded views of the wide sea. To the south, the storm over the strait was dispersing, though Sofia could still see nothing of the two fleets. She turned back to the flat stones interspersed with
aromatic juniper and cistus scrub, which were giving way to a steep, sparse scape of jagged rocks. She quickly understood that by sending her to seek Befana alone, Hellebore had intended to kill her.
No Man crouched on a rock, staring vacantly, his nose occasionally twitching. ‘We’re being followed,’ he announced.
She turned and looked the way they had come, but she could see nothing but cloud shadow rippling over boulders.
‘Come on,’ he said, and scurried up a crag, as surefooted as the ibex of the Sands.
Sofia had expected to find the cave at the peak, but instead No Man brought her to the edge of the great pit.
He pointed and said, ‘Her grotto is within.’
All she could see at the bottom of the pit was a small green lake. Just as she noticed how sluggishly the gulls were circling the pit, a deftly cast stone struck one’s breast and it dropped without a squawk into the water.
No Man told Sofia to stay close as he climbed down. The scree made it hard at first, but the ivy thickened the further down they got. When she reached the bottom, she saw the bones of birds and other small creatures scattered all around the edge of the lake. It was much warmer here, and smelled of sulphur. Scarcely a chink of water showed through the tiny round lotus leaves which covered the lake; it shuddered like the skin of some great sleeping lizard when a noxious bubble rose from its depths or when winds whistled through the porous rock. No Man spotted the slain bird and manoeuvred it with his spear until it was close enough to grab it. He lifted it out and gave it to Sofia, then walked up to the ivy wall, stuck his hand in up to his shoulder and then pulled it back out. Sofia stood blinking in amazement until she saw the hanging ivy subtly swaying with the wind’s respiration.