by Marc Secchia
Talaku looked as though he could walk right off the back of his horse, he was that tall. The poor animal was sweating and blowing, foam-flecked at the mouth, from the effort of carrying such a huge man up into the mountains. Behind him came a brace of donkeys carrying his armour and weapons, and then the main body of warriors tramped in, their lion’s-mane headdresses bobbing in perfect step.
“The Elites,” Isoke instructed Annakiya. “Sheba’s finest, chosen and trained from birth for the warrior life. None can stand against such as these!”
Shioni thought the Elites looked terribly impressive. But then her thoughts returned unbidden to the size of Kalcha’s busy encampment; to the engines of war and the monstrous hyenas. And so few in comparison. She shivered. Perhaps there were worse fates than a brutal whipping to be feared.
After the warriors came the supply carts and train, chock-full of weapons and equipment, and the people who kept an army on its feet–cooks and healers, armourers, blacksmiths and farriers, fletchers and tailors and more.
The King raised his hand. “Sheba!”
“SHEBA!” roared every throat in the place, making the castle shake. “WE LIVE, WE FIGHT, WE CONQUER, O KING!”
The King’s boots kicked up dust as he dismounted. “General, who brought us this report?”
This was the moment Shioni had been dreading. Hundreds of eyes turned to where she knelt just behind Princess Annakiya. She wished she could melt away into the flagstones.
Getu’s salute was as sharp as his sword, and his posture like a flagpole. “Her, my Lord. The ferengi slave-girl. The scouts confirmed her report this morning. The Wasabi army marches here.”
The King knew her. It was he who had purchased her. She had learned that it was his intention that she train with the warriors, becoming both bodyguard and companion to the Princess. Now, more than ever, her life was in his hands. She had chosen to spite a King.
But the King’s tone was as scathing as his response was unexpected: “Since when do we send children and slaves to do our scouting, General?”
“The patrol was captured by the Wasabi, my Lord,” barked the General. “Their absence was not noted by the Captain of the Guard. The slave tricked the watch. She is being punished with hard labour.”
The King paused and, deliberately not looking at him, said, “I am surprised, General. It seems an elephant could enter these gates unannounced. Shall I take her report myself?”
General Getu’s shoulders stiffened until he resembled a petrified tree. “That will not be necessary, my King!”
In front of her, Annakiya stifled a gasp. Shioni bit the inside of her cheek so hard that tears started in her eyes. This was terrible! The General was being blamed for everything she had done. As if anyone in that courtyard could possibly have missed it, the King had hammered the point home by not delivering his rebuke directly to the General. As the two men moved off, talking now in lower voices, General Getu threw her a scowl that would have done a snarling lion proud.
“Huh!” said Isoke, slapping dust off her long robes. “I told you that slave was trouble, Princess! Never was a talent of silver so scorned. Now, let’s return to our lessons.”
Annakiya nodded, and with a quick, sympathetic glance at her slave-girl, followed her tutor with the air of a chastened puppy.
The courtyard descended into a happy chaos of arrival–one warrior being presented with his boy-child, another swinging his girlfriend up into his arms, others breaking for the barracks and a well-earned rest after the night-and-a-day march up from Takazze.
As Shioni set off on the lonely walk back to her duties, a warrior seized her arm. “Talaku would have words with you, slave-girl,” he said. “Come.”
Talaku–whose name appropriately meant ‘the biggest one’, Shioni thought with an inward smile–dwarfed his three-legged stool in the meagre shade of the baobab tree. He was whetting one huge blade of his double-bladed war-axe with studied care. The haft of the weapon alone was taller than Shioni.
His hard-muscled, heavily-tattooed arm lifted and pointed at her, and a voice like the deep groan of an elephant said: “Do not bow to Talaku, slave. Sit and take the shade. Tell me of this witch, this Kalcha. Leave no stone unturned or I will sharpen Siltam here on your belly.” He patted the axe fondly.
Shioni gulped. As she knelt in the shade, a further fifteen or twenty warriors gathered about–the Champion’s Train, they were called, Talaku’s trusted inner circle.
“Don’t scare the girl, Talaku!”
“Her? She don’t scare easy,” said another. Shioni saw that this was the sub-Captain from the patrol, Tariku. So he was an Elite? She ought to have known. “Trains with the warriors.”
“Right, Tariku.” This man popped his knuckles. “Same lot who let a girl find the Wasabi for them, says I.”
But Tariku shrugged off the insult with a laugh. “Even a lion-cub will bite off your finger if you’re not careful.”
“Enough!” growled Talaku. “Speak, cub.”
Shioni wavered, thinking upon Anbessa, and how the King had forbidden any talk about magic or witchcraft. Yes, it could be done without mentioning those things. And so she began to weave her story.
The warriors interrogated her until even hauling rocks began to seem attractive.
Chapter 25: The Curse on the Castle
That evening was full moon–the time Kalcha had promised.
On the slopes above the castle, the hyenas were gathering in greater numbers than ever before. In the full moonlight their hunchbacked, mincing steps could clearly be seen, but they could not cross the dry, half-completed moat.
The first Wasabi scouts had arrived just before sunset. Their numbers had quickly swelled as the moon rose over the mountains. Now a dark mass of warriors stretching the width of the valley raised their spears and began to chant war cries and blow rams horns and trumpets. A huge, booming kebero drum kept the musicians company.
Near Shioni’s position on the low keep wall, General Getu and the King were measuring the invading force with experienced eyes.
“Five times our number of fighting men,” the General said. “We should take account of the hyenas too, my Lord. I mistrust their presence.”
The King turned to glare at Shioni. “Rumours of witchcraft are for scaring infants, not Generals experienced in war. This Kalcha is a woman like any other. Perhaps she leads that stinking rabble well. We shall discover.”
Shioni found herself wishing she had told Getu or Talaku the whole truth. But it was too late now.
“Take a hundred Elites and test their strength, General. Two hundred if you’re afraid of those mangy curs down there.”
“My King!”
The General whirled on his heel.
Shioni had been freed of her manacles–for the time being. Doubtless if she made a move toward the gate she’d find her way barred by a spear. Her job was to run along the wall, supplying the warriors with javelins and arrows. It meant she had a perfect view of the battlefield. Most of the other women and children were locked safely in the armoury. She would not have traded places with them for anything in the world.
The main gate, as yet unfinished, had been blockaded with rubble, stones and timbers roughly set by the masons and carpenters. General Getu, Talaku, and two hundred of the Elite warriors therefore descended by rope-ladders hung from the walls behind the castle. These were quickly rolled up again.
Despite the King’s attempt to shame him, the General was taking no chances. Shioni knew that the King’s sharp eyes had noted this fact. The Shebans rapidly organised themselves into neat ranks, bristling with spears and the tall shields held upright in readiness. To a man they were lean and muscular; all dark, leonine grace. Shioni could not help being impressed by their discipline as they came jogging in tight formation around the outer defensive wall.
At the sight of the Shebans, the Wasabi on the hillside raised a roar to assault the heavens. The drum began to throb more urgently and the whole mass of men surged fo
rward, spilling down the hillside like a dark wave rushing to the shore. But this was no disorganised rabble. As they drew closer to the Shebans, scattering hyenas to all sides, the drum sounded a different note and the Wasabi halted again. They parted in the middle.
Kalcha burst through this corridor on her black chariot, pulled by the eight giant hyenas Shioni had seen before, their jaws belling and champing and frothing madly as she lashed them with a long, six-stranded whip. Her midnight robes streamed out behind her, and her eyes blazed like hot coals. Like thunder over the gravelly ground her chariot bore down on the Sheban advance party, who drew together at once and locked shields.
If she had hoped to scare the warriors of West Sheba with her impressive entrance, Kalcha must have been disappointed. These men were veterans. But there was a hush now in the Wasabi ranks and amongst the Shebans watching from the castle; the sudden sense that something great and terrible was about to happen. The warriors braced themselves.
Kalcha threw back her helm, loosening her long black hair to join the snapping of her cloak. Now her eyes seemed even more eerie than before, glowing as though she had lamps burning behind them. She sprang up onto the guard-rim of her chariot, an absurd bit of skill, and on that perch bore down wrathfully upon the Elite warriors of Sheba. She raised one arm and made a shooing gesture, as if she were shooing a thieving stray cat out of her kitchen.
The watchers on the castle first saw the warriors fall like wheat under a scythe, and then there came such a concussion that people clapped their hands to their ears in pain. Of the two hundred, only one man rose: Talaku, and he was swaying as though the earth were rolling beneath his feet. He raised his axe.
“No!” Shioni heard the King gasp.
Kalcha swerved the chariot toward Talaku. She grasped a flail in her right hand now, whirling it above her head as she drove the chariot with the left. The axe-head flashed. One of the hyenas screamed and tumbled beneath the chariot. Kalcha let fly with the flail. The metal ball struck Talaku flush upon the forehead of his helm, and the crunch made every watcher wince. He dropped without a sound.
High-pitched laughter bubbled from the witch as she forced the chariot into a tight, fast turn. Turf sprayed up from the hyenas’ claws tearing the ground. Shioni knew at once what she meant to do. But she couldn’t close her eyes. The horror being played out before her was too overwhelming. She winced at every bump as Kalcha drove her chariot right over the bodies of the fallen Shebans.
“Dear God!” said the King in a low, shaky voice.
Having ravaged General Getu’s advance force, the witch now proceeded down to the castle at a more leisurely pace, taunting them in a booming voice:
“Is this your best, you cowards? Do you think your walls of stone can stop Kalcha, rightful ruler of the lands of Abyssinia? You cannot hide from me!”
The warriors stationed on the walls launched a volley of arrows, but they seemed to bother the witch no more than a swarm of annoying mosquitos. She batted them away with a casual wave of her hand. The Wasabi troops were swarming over the fallen Sheban warriors like ants excited by a tasty morsel. Shioni thought at first that the men would be butchered where they lay, but instead, saw that they were being trussed hand and foot like sheep bound for the cooking pot, and dragged down to the castle.
Kalcha made a mock-bow. “How kind of you to provide my first sacrifices, o King. Now, will you open the gates, or must I come in and fetch you out myself?”
He struck his fists upon the parapet. “Never! Sheba will never bow before your kind!”
But beside her booming tones, he sounded feeble.
“My power is already within the castle, you pathetic little man. Look to the baobab to see the mark of my curse upon your house!”
Shioni had seen it before, but to the castle’s occupants, the sight of a huge red-eyed python slithering up the baobab was a fresh shock. So there was a way down though the trunk into the chamber! Several archers loosed their arrows, but those that struck home simply skittered away off the python’s armoured scales. The snake hissed, slithering higher. A peculiar sparkle began to radiate from the python’s body. Bowstrings snapped, feathers drooped off arrows, and many men simply laid down their weapons with groans of dismay.
A terrible heaviness descended upon Shioni. She wanted nothing more than to lie down and sleep forever. What was the use of fighting Kalcha? She was too powerful. Her hands dropped to her sides. All was lost. She had failed all of her friends and all of Sheba too. Tears began to trickle down her cheeks.
Suddenly, far away in the hills, a lion roared…
“Never!” declared the King, but he had to hold the battlement for support. “Sheba will never surrender!”
“Is that your final word?”
“It is my final–”
Obeying a hunch, Shioni had ducked beneath the level of the parapet. The King’s reply was cut off mid-sentence. There was a flash like lightning that lit up the hills around them. BOOM! He, together with all the men flanking him, were blasted backwards off the battlements. They dropped like slain sparrows into the courtyard below.
“I do so hate a long argument!” called Kalcha, with another evil cackle. “I’ll be putting my boot on your neck in just a moment!”
Shioni scrambled to the edge to take a look down into the courtyard. Thankfully, they had been stabling some horses temporarily in that area. But it was still an awful height to fall from. Over a dozen warriors had crashed through the roof of a shed, the King was sprawled on a patch of hay, and two warriors had splashed down in the water trough. A couple of men were groaning, having shattered an empty water barrel. But the King lay unmoving.
The lion roared again. A lion roaring in the night… Anbessa? What… oh!
Shioni leaped to her feet with renewed strength. She bounded down from the battlements two steps at a time and dashed across the courtyard, ignoring the din of the witch blasting her way through the blockaded entryway. She ran into the Princess’ room and reached into the space behind the headboard of the bed. Here, the Fiuri lay in a tiny box, carefully wrapped in cloths to keep warm. She looked utterly lifeless.
“So why did Anbessa send me to you?” she asked in dismay.
Chapter 26: The Power is in the Eyes
Outside, there was a detonation that made the walls judder and dust leap about on the stone floor. The strident tones of Kalcha were whipping her warriors, whooping and baying their eagerness to conquer the Shebans, into the castle. There were shouts, the clash of sword upon shield, whinnying horses, the screams of men struck by arrows, contrary orders being bellowed by various leaders. The Wasabi would be looting within minutes.
All of the hope that had carried her across a courtyard littered with wounded, groaning warriors, came crashing down as Shioni stared at the unmoving body with its outlandish antennae and curlicue patterning. But… Anbessa couldn’t be wrong! He just couldn’t! He was Lord of… whatever he had said! All the horrors she had seen, the sudden green shoots of hope, crushed–it was just too much to bear. Her hands cupped the Fiuri tenderly, and pressed her to her cheek.
Oh, the poor little creature! To be knocking on death’s door, like everyone now…
Tears of bitter frustration welled from her eyes. They splashed between her fingers and coursed over the Fiuri’s tiny body. Why had the disa’s nectar not worked? How long had she suffered in that bottle, trapped by Kalcha’s curse? Had the witch stolen her powers, and finally her life too? It was so unfair she wanted to scream, cry and groan, or rush out there and swing a blade at someone!
Tiny rosebud lips kissed her cheek. There was a stirring within her fingers, a polite little cough. A piping cry: “I’m alive!”
Shioni gulped. For an endless moment she stood, frozen with disbelief, until the voice added, with a more than a drop of impatience, “One tear is enough to work the magic, don’t you know? You’ve half-drowned me.”
A giggle bubbled up beneath her tears. “Er… Fiuri?”
“I do hav
e a name. And a very pretty name it is too.” The Fiuri was kneeling on the palm of her hand, holding her thumb for support. She peered up at Shioni, blinking her huge, luminous jade eyes as though she had woken from a long sleep–which, in a sense, she had. Her wings lifted behind her, uncrumpling before Shioni’s wide-eyed scrutiny.
“Oh dear. Are you my rescuer? You’re disappointingly human. I was rather hoping for a handsome boy-Fiuri.”
“I am,” she said, telling herself to stop staring at the Fiuri’s exotic eyes and her bobbing antennae, which quite ruined her first impression that this creature was somehow related to humans. Was she dreaming? “My name is Shioni.”
“Humph.” The tiny arms made a resigned gesture. “I suppose you’ll have to do.”
Insult or none, Shioni thought, it wouldn’t matter a goat’s breakfast once the Wasabi overran the castle. “We’re in terrible danger–”
“Azurelle is my name. Zi for short.” Her ears pricked up, and they were very sharp, pointy little ears indeed. “I hear the witch! And hyenas!”
“If you’d just stop and listen,” said Shioni, banishing her wayward thoughts in a rush, “I’m trying to explain! Kalcha–well, I rescued you from the bottle in the cave with the python–Annakiya helped–and I went to get the disa to save you but found the Wasabi army instead and they came to attack the castle and the python climbed the baobab and now we’re in big trouble!”
“Slow down, peregrine!” said the Fiuri, but there wasn’t a trace of a smile on her face now. “Kalcha is here?”
“Yes! How do we stop her?”
“She stole my magic! She… she bottled me! For years!”
The Fiuri was trembling so violently that Shioni felt obliged to comfort her. But how could she comfort such a tiny creature without stroking her head like a pet bird? She was no larger than a finch. Shioni settled for pinching her hand between thumb and forefinger. “There there, Zi, you’re out now. I won’t let Kalcha trap you again.”