Zulu Heart

by Steven Barnes

  Kai stood, eyes narrowed. “That was no cannon shell,” he said.

  The attendants hustled to assist with the evacuation, beginning of course with the aristocrats in the lower seats. Several of them clustered around the cordoned-off section holding the Governor and his wife. “This way, sir!”

  Governor Pili offered no argument, seemed almost pitifully grateful that someone had come for him. He and his party were hustled out through a side corridor.

  Kai watched them leave, then observed several of the wiry attendants following behind. His stomach clenched.

  To Nandi and Lamiya, Kai said, “Something is wrong. The attendants are normally young men, or old men. These are young enough to be strong, but old enough to be veterans—I can see it in their eyes, in their body shape, and in their carriage.”

  “Additional bodyguards?” asked Kebwe. “Governor Pili is not the bravest of men.”

  “They were here before the Governor arrived,” Kai said.

  “I believe one carried a concealed knife or pistol,” Babatunde said. “And their hands were tempered for combat.”

  “Not ushers,” Kai said. “And they went after the Governor. Babatunde, Makur, Lamiya, Nandi—get the children out of here.”

  “To where, my husband?” asked Nandi.

  “The trading house. They won’t fire upon it. You may be captured, but not killed.”

  “And you, my love?” said his First.

  “I’m going after the Governor. Kebwe? Fodjour?”

  “Hai!”

  “Follow me.”

  Kebwe saluted, fist to heart. “Our steel is yours.”

  In private corridors beneath the choral house, attendants hustled the Governor toward supposed safety. Without warning, they sprouted knives, transforming from sheep to wolves in one coordinated instant.

  Blades flashed in the tunnels. The thick-chested bodyguards never had a chance to draw their blades. First their sword hands were pinned, then, a dreadful moment later, honed edges slid between ribs or beneath jaws. In seven seconds of lethal bloodshed the Governor and his wife stood alone but for the slayers.

  “What is this?” Pili whispered.

  “Your death,” snarled the Hashassin, “if you do not follow my every command.”

  Pili glanced from the gashed bodies of the bodyguards to his wife, and then back again. “And if I do?”

  “No harm will come to you or your lady,” said the false attendant.

  Omar and his men were moved to the stream of fleeing Djiboutans. Another shell struck, this one close enough to spill tiles from the adjacent building’s roof. The ground beneath them shook so violently that they were thrown from their feet.

  “Fools!” said Omar, rising to one knee and dusting off his robes. “In their eagerness to crush Djibouti, they’ll kill us all.”

  They hurried on, eager to make rendezvous with their men.

  Kai, Kebwe, and Fodjour worked their way through the panicked crowd, into the tunnel behind the governor. Progress was halted by an iron gate sealed with a massive, rusty bolt.

  “Locked!” said Kebwe. He tried tugging at the lock. When that failed, he put his shoulder to the gate. Again, nothing.

  Where to go? What to do? Kai was lost and without a plan; then a forgotten memory sparked.

  “I know this tunnel,” Kai said. “My father funded it, and I played here as a boy. It comes out in the trading house, but there is another door in the storm drain. Hurry!”

  A new and even more ferocious detonation shook tiles from the ceiling. The sparkling candelabra above their heads creaked, swayed, spat screws, and then fell, crushing several screaming audience members beneath its jeweled weight.

  At the tremor of impact, the orphans dissolved into hysterics. Like shepherds managing a frightened flock, Nandi, Lamiya, and Babatunde used gestures more than words to guide the children. Goggle-eyed with terror, their young charges followed them like pups, skittish, sobbing and shivering, but obedient nonetheless.

  In Djibouti Harbor, the outnumbered, outgunned ships fought back against the blockading navy. The southern ships had fewer guns, and smaller guns, but they had courage, and the assistance of the men ashore manning the gun placements. The air churned with smoke, fire, lightning, and the smell of burned blood. Men screamed and dove into alligator-infested waters to escape the burning ships.

  If, as some said, Jahannum’s lost souls swam in an ocean of burning blood, it must have resembled Djibouti Harbor on that night.

  Bilal’s noble statue gazed down on all of it, the great man’s expression unchanging, his iron thoughts unknowable.

  Kai, Kebwe, and Fodjour exited into an ally, only to be forced back by a tide of screaming, desperate people seeking the precious illusion of safety. Kai looked out to the harbor. “We’re outnumbered two to one.” He swore explosively. “Damn that whoreson of a governor! Paper never stopped steel.”

  “What of the Tortoise?” asked Kebwe.

  Kai looked north, peering as if he might actually see Dar Kush. He knew that, harbored in Lake A’zam, there was a boat, a metal boat that might make a difference on this terrible night.

  What would Chifi do? As incredible as it seemed, Kai thought he knew.

  At the lake, the men were scrambling aboard even as the Tortoise pulled away from the dock, gathering momentum. To the south, rumblings and flashes lit up the sky.

  “Come back to me, Aidan,” Nessa said.

  He kissed her forehead, wishing that there was more he could do to comfort her. “There’s no night dark enough to keep me from finding you.”

  She stopped, thought, and then took off the tiny golden tree around her neck. “I know that you don’t believe,” she said. “But please—take this, Aidan. Know that my heart is with you.”

  “But if something does happen to me, I want you to go to the crannog,” he said. “You tell my son how his father died, do you hear me?”

  “Aidan—”

  “Shh. This is just the way of the work, lass. I don’t feel much like dying today. This isn’t my night.” He kissed her fondly.

  “Aidan!” called Chifi. The Tortoise steamed south along the dock. It glided slowly at first, gaining momentum as it did. Aidan took a running leap, and landed in a crouching balance on the iron deck. It felt more solid than anything he had ever felt floating on water, but still it rolled with ripples on the lake’s surface. Already his body was searching for the elusive connection of balance, that magical, fluid thing that made mariner and boat like one.

  A thing that he had learned long ago, at O’Dere Crannog, at his father’s side.

  The Tortoise rolled beneath his feet, and he rode it, found a balance of hips and thighs that made this feel comforting and familiar.

  I’m not a farmer, he thought.

  Kai, Kebwe, and Fodjour had walked and crawled through muck for a quarter hour, following Kai’s childhood memory of the sewer schematic. The storm drain and sewer were separate systems beneath Djibouti Bay, but still waste of all kinds found its way down here. A greasy thin light filtered its way down into the darkness, casting everything in tones of gray and yellow before the companions lit their torches. Darkness fled before the flames, making their shadows twist and caper on the walls like animated cave paintings.

  Kai kept his breathing steady: he didn’t want to admit it, but this was becoming oppressive. Ever since the assault on the mosque he had disliked confined spaces. During his escape, a tunnel had collapsed upon him, and if Aidan had not dragged him out, he probably would have died. The memory of those airless moments still brought a cold sweat to his brow. Those seconds had triggered something unthinkingly lethal within him, something that still resisted his efforts to control it.

  Before now he had largely been able to avoid such situations, and therefore he never been forced to deal with it, but now it was beginning to sap him, slow him, trigger more internal friction than he was prepared to deal with at this crucial moment.

  At last, they reached a metal door
set in a concrete rim. It opened to the turn of an iron wheel. “We should be ahead of them here,” Kai said, hoping against hope that he was right. Action will soothe your nerves, said a familiar voice within him. And with every passing moment Kai found that voice more intoxicating and impossible to resist.

  As carefully as they could under the circumstances, the Hashassin hustled the Governor along through the tunnel. The leader paused as he heard a groan up ahead—a heavy, metallic sound, echoing in the dank, wet, narrow corridors.

  “Wait. What was that?” the first said.

  A shell burst on the street above their heads. The entire tunnel rang with thunder. “Fools! They will kill us all.”

  “Isn’t that your intent?” asked Pili.

  The Hashassin grunted. “You are far more valuable alive. Every moneyed family in the south is connected to you—by blood, marriage, or gold. You will encourage them to a peaceful solution. The Pharaoh will reward you.”

  “For betraying his people?” Madame Pili asked scornfully.

  “For serving a higher purpose.” Only his lips moved. As stolid as a statue, the Hashassin listened. “Come. Let us—”

  There was only a brief warning splash. Then a sword flashed in the darkness as Kai and his two friends took the battle to the enemy.

  Kai went at the first man with every intent of sparing his life. If it was possible to interrogate one of these rogues, many important questions could be answered.

  But capture can be riskier than simple killing. The opportunity to take a lethal thrust might not happen twice. Hesitation can give the merciful warrior a serious disadvantage against a ruthless foe.

  To effect a capture there must be a differential in the skill level, such that one or the other has enough of an advantage to merely wound or restrain.

  In the first few moments, Kai knew that this wouldn’t be possible. Not because he wasn’t a more capable swordsman than his opponent. No, the difference was that his opponent would see capture as much less desirable than death.

  In his fourth clash Kai sustained a thin gash on his left side. He gave a brief, vicious curse, beat the man’s sword to the left, and made a back-handed riposte to the throat.

  As his adversary fell gagging into the soupy muck, Kai turned in time to help his companion. Without a moment’s compunction he stabbed one Hashassin in the spine, and as the other man turned, attention split, Fodjour beheaded him.

  Men grunted and screamed, and slid into the filth trying to stanch gaping wounds with bloody fingers. Then it was over, and only Kai’s men and Governor and Madame Pili still stood. They stared at Kai and his panting men first with open horror, and then gratitude.

  “Wakil!” said the Governor. “I have never been happier to see you.”

  “You’ve never been happy to see me at all.”

  “Not true! I—”

  “Polite lies later, Governor. If you value life and freedom, you must move, and now.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE

  Fleeing a westerly wind, dark, swollen clouds crawled across the sky. They flickered with faint lightnings. Under Captain Kokossa’s command, the Tortoise passed into the canal leading from Lake A’zam and headed south at eight miles an hour. The distant reverberations of cannon echoed like thunder.

  Within an hour the wind shifted to the south-southwest and increased to a gale. Aidan was assigned to the lee wheel, and made a good showing there, so that Chifi allowed him to keep his post.

  All about them rain and fire vied within the shattered walls. The Alexandrian ships’ cannon seemed to pour an endless stream of ball into the city, undeterred by the Djiboutan ships’ frantic defensive maneuvering.

  For Babatunde, leading a flock of children through rain-swept streets during this hellish night of bombardment tested even his long-cultivated patience. The children cringed and cried, as could only be expected, but had sufficient survival instinct to stay near the Sufi, huddling together like ducklings following their mother.

  Although most of the shells were exchanged between the harbor ships, from time to time one of the enemy vessels seemed to take deliberate aim at the city itself, as if delighting in the opportunity to wreak havoc.

  Flame wreathed several venerable old buildings, and the men and women of Djibouti Harbor were fighting fires and trying to pull the trapped and injured from damaged structures.

  After long minutes of dangerous flight, Makur pounded at the iron door of the Lion’s Blood holding company.

  “What do you want? It is dangerous! Go home!” said old Rashid, answering their knock.

  “My husband, the Wakil, told us to come here,” said Lamiya.

  “My ears hurt!” an orphan wailed.

  “Here, fill them with this,” Nandi said, and tore a bit from the edge of her dress.

  “It is too dangerous,” said the old man. “If they land, soldiers will try to take Lion’s Blood.”

  “Our husband told us to meet him here,” said Nandi. “We but follow his instructions, as you will if you acknowledge his authority.”

  Rashid momentarily seemed as if he would attempt to challenge her command, but the look in her eyes said she was not to be trifled with, and he backed down.

  “Of course, of course, but …” His white eyebrows furrowed, more with frustration than fear. “Oh, well—hurry.”

  Not fifty cubits away, an adobe house disintegrated into a cloud of smoke, flame, and shattered masonry. Babatunde ducked a spray of flying fragments, turned, and looked out at the harbor, where the ships were firing with terrifying force and growing accuracy. One triple-master listed in the bay, deck aflame. Despite the drizzling rain, several buildings gouted smoke.

  “I pray Allah will protect him,” Babatunde said.

  “Protect us all,” said Makur fervently.

  In the tunnels below the harbor, Kai, Kebwe, Fodjour, and Governor Pili and his wife made their way carefully through the muck. The Governor’s wife’s gown was a muddied disaster, and she seemed balanced on the edge of shock.

  Kai took the lead position, holding one of the torches out to provide light. He stopped.

  “What is it?” said Kebwe.

  “Quiet,” he whispered. “There are others who understand ambush.”

  “What—?” Pili began.

  Kai held his finger to his lips. Silence. Then he flicked his head to the side as something came zipping past. “Down!” He pulled Fodjour down. Kebwe snapped his head back as if someone had backhanded him. He grunted and slapped the side of his neck.

  “Kai…?” Kebwe’s eyes rolled up, and he flopped facefirst into the water. Kai was there within a moment, and on his knees. He tried to roll his friend up, and it was at that terrible moment that the attack came.

  The battle was faster than conscious thought, and all the more frustrating because of his need to keep his sergeant’s face out of the water.

  With Kebwe half-conscious, trying to keep himself erect, Kai pushed him back against the wall of the storm drain, using his own weight to keep his friend from drowning.

  This limited his ability to move, of course, and made him more of a target.

  “Get his face out of the water, damn you!” Kai screamed at Pili, voice echoing in the tunnel. The Governor helped, but he was trembling so badly he could barely manage. His wife emerged from her own torpor first, pillowing Kebwe’s head against her stomach, pulling at his waist with both arms, her gaze locked disdainfully upon her husband.

  “Help me,” she whispered to her husband. Kebwe slid down again, struggling feebly as his nose slid beneath the filthy water.

  Kai cursed, spinning to strike the shoulder of a Hashassin, then, hoping that he had bought himself a moment, turning again to help his friend.

  At that critical moment, Kai’s attention was split, and he felt the slash before he even sensed the swordsman’s presence. Pain exploded in his right arm. He switched hands. Still deadly with his left, Kai split his assailant’s skull.

  Kai and Fodjour managed to win
their way free. From the corner of his eye he caught a bit of Fodjour’s swordplay, and if there was more energy than inspiration about it, still it was lethal and courageous, and he was glad to have his childhood friend at his back.

  “Kai!” Fodjour said, alarmed. “You are wounded.”

  “Just a touch,” he said, pressing fingers against the wound. Damn! Pain erupted like a flash of acid. This would require stitches and salves. If this muck got into the wound, and it was not promptly treated … well, he had seen battlefield amputations before. “Unless there is poison on the blade, there is little to fear.”

  “Let me see—Kebwe!”

  Kebwe’s head lolled back, pink foam drooling from his lips.

  “We must get him to Babatunde,” said Kai.

  “Where?”

  “The holding company. It should be … a left turn.” He searched desperately for a landmark, peering up through one of the grates at the smoldering city. He recognized a statue of Bilal on horseback at the battle of Medina, sword raised on high as two Arabs attempted to drag him from his saddle. At once, he knew their location. “Here!”

  They splashed through the muck, Governor and Madame Pili supporting the wounded man.

  Nandi watched through the windows of the depository as the ships fired volley after volley, until their barrels threatened to melt. Clearly, the seven Djiboutan fighting ships were outmatched. Several of them sagged smoking in the water.

  Just at the edge of her sight the land-based cannon fired until the barrels smoked and one exploded with a murderous roar. She flinched back from the glass as the pane exploded, showering the room with fragments. The children howled in fear and pain.

  Trembling, she peered through the windows again, nodding as Lamiya joined her. The two women exchanged a single horrified look before they distantly heard: “Fire, dammit!” and another cannon roared.

  The first cannon was a smoking, twisted ruin, its crew strewn about like poisoned ants. Still, the others fought on.

  She watched as fire rained down on the crew of one of the Egyptian ships, and clasped her hands over her ears, trying to drown out the sound of screams.