Lion's Blood

by Steven Barnes

  Aidan demonstrated Kai's holds as best he could, and Brian worked with him to find ways to counter, or slip out of them before they were tightly set. "Fancy crap," Brian said. "Trust in your courage and strength, not a bunch of dancing fit for girls."

  So he said, and more than once. But Aidan knew that part of that was just Brian keeping his courage up against the forces arrayed against him, a most difficult thing given their current circumstances.

  Aidan was afraid he was demonstrating Kai's holds incorrectly, that as a consequence he would never learn anything useful. On one glorious day, however, he learned differently. Kai had been tossing him about on the tall grass behind the barn. For the twentieth time Aidan thumped ignominiously to the ground, the victim of some kind of twisting hip throw. For a moment Aidan's vision clouded, and he rose to hands and knees, feeling some of his carefully suppressed rage boiling to the surface. The next time Kai pulled him close and shifted his hip in for a throw, Aidan crouched, grabbed Kai around the waist, hoisted him into the air, and threw himself backwards so suddenly that Kai wasn't able to counter or adjust.

  Kai landed heavily on his shoulders, spreading his arms to absorb the shock of the fall, eyes wide and mouth pursed in an "o" of surprise.

  For a moment the young noble just lay there, blinking. Aidan held his breath, cursing at his temper. Why had he done such a thing? The young master had the power to have him beaten, to have his mother cast into the fields—or worse. Oh God, Mother Mary, what have I done . . .

  Then Kai looked up at Aidan with genuine curiosity and pleasure and said: "That was good."

  "Yes," Aidan grinned, relieved beyond words. It was, wasn't it.

  The two boys laughed, and began again.

  Kai was greatly amused by Aidan's lucky throw, and it tickled him to keep the boy by his side more often, even allowing him to sit quietly in the corner and listen to his lessons with the all-knowing Babatunde. Delightfully, as Aidan's Arabic continued to improve, he even seemed to understand a bit of the little man's history lessons.

  One stormy spring day, the windows of Babatunde's chamber misted and streaked with rain. El Sursur lectured Kai on the man usually referred to simply as the Pharaoh, with the kind of emphasis that implied an almost mythical status.

  "And what was the Greek name for Pharaoh Haaibre Setepenamen?" Babatunde asked. The rain had stopped and started all day long. Just an hour ago the sun had shone brilliantly through the east window, and Kai found himself hoping that it might again. If the lesson ended soon, he and Aidan might enjoy a game of kites or even a bout of grappling.

  Kai was seated on a tall stool next to a wall map of the world. At first Aidan had seemed astounded to see just how much world existed. When he asked Kai to show him the location of Eire, his face fell to see just how insignificant his homeland was in comparison to the rest of the map. Too bad, Kai thought, but such realities were the way of the world.

  "Alexander," Kai answered.

  Babatunde nodded and opened a book to a page framing a picture of an impossibly noble-looking black man with hawklike eyes and a strong chin. "Is this a picture of Alexander?" he said.

  Kai nodded. Then, detecting an odd inflection in Babatunde's voice, asked: "Isn't it?"

  Babatunde shrugged. "So some say. But his father was the king of Macedonia, and at the time, Macedonians were more similar to the light-skinned peoples of the Mediterranean."

  With a conspiratorial air, Babatunde withdrew a scroll from a drawer in his desk. It looked cracked and stained—older than the others, and as he unspooled it, the lettering looked like little pictures. Etched on the scroll was the picture of . . . a white man. He had curly hair, an aquiline nose, and a strong, uplifted chin. Kai's interest was pricked, but Aidan seemed riveted. Could this be true? Could the Great Pharaoh actually be closer in blood to Aidan than Kai? Absurd.

  "Why," said Kai, "would you think this could be Haaibre Setepenamen? All of his descendants are of Kushi blood." He said this challengingly, but already there was doubt in his eyes.

  "The Pharaoh conquered half the world during his roaming days, when he was known as Alexander. When he returned to Egypt and took the throne, it was years after his first wife died that he took a second, a Kushi princess named Mesgana, and she gave him twin sons. He sat one on the throne at Alexandria, and the other in Abyssinia, also known as Kush, Sheba, or Ethiop." Babatunde liked to walk when he talked, and the spectacle of the little man pacing back and forth through the endless stacks of books was always amusing.

  "Men create history to suit themselves, Kai. Most scrolls bearing this image were destroyed."

  "Where did you get it?"

  Babatunde merely smiled. "As your people marched out of Africa to conquer the world, they burned old images and created new ones, as men have always done, and the Great Pharaoh became a black man. The evidence is there if you choose to look for it, if you are unafraid to question the common wisdom."

  Kai went quiet and thoughtful for the rest of the lesson. Much of it was review of material he had heard before. But the speculation about the Pharaoh was fascinating.

  He knew the history of Egypt's relationship with Abyssinia, of course: every schoolboy did. Generations after the death of the Pharaoh the thrones of Egypt and Kush, allied with a man called Hannibal, ground Rome, the only power to challenge Africa, into the dust. Egypt then controlled southern Europe as well as eastern empires as far as India.

  Alexander's empire lasted for almost a thousand years, but the Egyptians, wealthy beyond reason, felt less and less need to send their own sons to patrol their borders, to fight and die in wars with the northern barbarians.

  To spare their own blood, they looked again to the kingdoms south of the great desert. For centuries Egypt and Kush had worked together, creating a great trade route along a river called the Nile. Over hundreds of years the Nile and its tributaries had been tamed, and vast networks of canals constructed. By two hundred years prior to the birth of the Prophet boats powered by water and fire routinely plied their currents. These steamscrews traded with kingdoms deep in the central continent, dominating culturally, economically, and militarily.

  Gold and ivory, precious metals and skilled labor were also traded. Schools disseminating the knowledge collected in Alexandria followed the Kushi armies and traders, as most of sub-Saharan Africa fell to the combined empires of Egypt and Abyssinia. Arabic became the great trading tongue, uniting a thousand tribes, a hundred nations.

  When Alexandria's decadent citizenry called for warriors, central Africa's dusky children answered, and throughout southern and eastern Europe there was no sight more common than the legions of blacks who patrolled the empire. Known as fearless, peerless warriors and administrators, they channeled a river of wealth back to the royal houses. For hundreds of years, all seemed peaceful.

  And might have remained so if not for the Prophet. There were no drawings or paintings of this giant, but again, Babatunde seemed to imply that Muhammad looked more like a Turk than a black man. Muhammad's vision and his recitation of the Qur’an changed the face of the world. Ultimately, his teachings challenged the throne at Alexandria. Holy man, charismatic leader, and brilliant warrior, Muhammad was a thorn in the side of the royal house until his death of natural causes in the month of Safar in the eleventh year after his flight from Mecca, the Hegira. Following his death, his followers fought over Muhammad's legacy, his teachings, and his empire. As jealous and petty men too often do, they tore the Prophet's carefully wrought alliances to pieces, and very nearly slew his holy daughter, Fatima, whom they perceived as an obstacle to their power.

  But a fabled warrior and staunch follower of the Prophet, named Bilal, would come to her rescue.

  Bilal ibn Rajah was a former Abyssinian slave, tortured by his owner, Umayyah ibn Khallaf, due to his acceptance of Muhammad as the true Prophet. In fact, Bilal was only the seventh man to embrace Islam, and as such would be celebrated even had his life not been such an exemplary one. Due to his extraor
dinary voice, Bilal was chosen by Muhammad to be the first Muslim muezzin, the first to utter the adhan, calling the faithful to prayer.

  Bilal prayed and fought with the Prophet, distinguishing himself in both battle and piety. After the Prophet's death, Bilal returned to his homeland. He was stirred back to action only by reports of growing instability in the Prophet's empire, and a possible risk to Fatima.

  Rousing his followers, Bilal lead a daring mission of rescue, defying the throne of Alexandria and carrying Fatima south to Abyssinia, where she was sheltered and protected by the Immortal Empress, Mesgana. Mesgana's refusal to bow to the Egyptian throne's demands for Fatima's return and probable execution began the ancient, bitter rift between the thrones.

  Fatima continued her father's teachings, with Bilal as her loyal guardian. She was an impassioned leader, considered by some of secondary importance only to Muhammad himself. Fatimite Islam, a doctrine of complete surrender to the will of the one true God swept through Africa like a desert wind, consuming totemism and polytheisms like a divine wind. It was this unified force that spelled the doom of Egypt's royal house.

  How exactly the fall of Alexandria was engineered was debated to this day. But it was agreed that a legend, told by a dozen river tribes, of black barges cruising north on the Nile, seemed to have some substance to it. It spoke of a killing spirit brought from the depths of central Africa.

  Somehow this spirit death entered the palace at Alexandria. Some said it was a judgment by Allah for the thousand years of rule the Egyptians had enforced upon the righteous.

  "Was it magic?" Kai asked Babatunde.

  The teacher paused before he answered. "No one knows for sure," he said, "but I think that it was a disease. The royal houses died first, but that year a plague swept the city, and then passed around the lesser sea to Jordan, to Greece, to Rome. Whites died more readily than blacks—said to be a sign of divine grace, but it may have been something else. Do you remember your biology? The djinn theory of disease?"

  "Tiny spirits which drain the life from the unfortunate?"

  Babatunde nodded. "The truth is that there are insects too small for our eyes to see, which are to ants as ants are to elephants. It is these insects that we once thought were djinn. I believe that the 'black barges' brought exotic animals infected with these tiny insects. The royal houses thought them fashionably attractive, and adopted them as royal pets. And somehow became infected, perhaps by contact, perhaps when royal servants smeared animal blood or feces in the food. And the disease spread."

  Kai looked over at Aidan, his pink mouth open in wonderment. He looked like Kai felt: overwhelmed by these fearsome stories of an older, more savage time.

  "They say this thing, be it djinn or disease, swept Europe in waves that left corpses piled so high that there weren't enough of the living to bury the dead. Survivors were driven into the country, and the entire economy collapsed. . ."

  The tale went on, growing more horrific with every new revelation. In combination with raiders from the east, Europe was a ruined land, torn by conquerors, wars, and disease for hundreds of years.

  Abyssinia took the throne of Egypt, splitting control between the children of Kush's royal family. Alexandria, with access to greater trade routes, once again became the dominant power. The only difference: this time full-blooded black Africans sat upon both thrones. The bloodlines of Greece and Egypt only gradually reinsinuated themselves over the passing centuries.

  Bilal lived an extraordinarily long life, long enough to see (and perhaps engineer) the fall of Alexander's bloodline. It was said that he was the last of the Prophet's companions left alive, and therefore much revered. He saw the way politics and religion had intertwined, and the chaos that unholy union engendered. He feared that Africa and Egypt were tainted already, and with a heavy heart realized that he had not the power or strength to halt the deterioration.

  On his deathbed he had a dream, in which the angel Gabriel came to him and told him that there was another land, a land to begin anew, where the sins of the old world would not follow. And with his last breaths he told those with ears to hear that a continent beyond the ocean would be the promised land, and that the faithful should find it, and populate it, and claim it in the name of Allah.

  It was African Muslim explorers plying the oceans in their great steam vessels who first landed in the New World, trading with the natives for gold and strange fruits. It was Muslim pilgrims who founded the first cities on the new continent, New Djibouti and New Alexandria. They pushed further and further into the wasteland, leading group after group of the faithful. And when the last of those original pilgrims died, their burial site became the foundation of the Shrine of the Fathers, far to the west at the very edge of the empire men called Bilalistan.

  Bilalistan had existed formally for just over a hundred years. By treaty, the entire New World was under the rule of Egypt, but its population tended to come from southern rather than northern Africa, and even from the very beginning, the New World sought greater independence.

  Kai's father had said that Bilalistan would be free one day, free to chart its own destiny. "You and your brother will be a part of it," he had said. "There will be blood and fire, and at the end, you will stand free."

  Blood and fire. He felt a little sick, a bit alarmed . . . and on some even deeper level, excited. His father and grandfather had made history. And mightn't the day come when a boy like him would sit before a teacher like Babatunde, hearing of a hero named Kai? Someone whose strong arm wreaked havoc among the unbelievers, whose keen mind wrote impassioned legal documents to be argued before the Senate by the Wakil of lower New Djibouti, his elder brother?

  Eyes wide, heart racing in his chest, Kai hung on every word his teacher spoke, as Babatunde made dead days live again, so that even a boy eager for sunshine might, for a time, forget the rain.

  Chapter Seventeen

  5 Dhu 'l-Hijjah 1280

  (May 11, 1864)

  There is not friendship either, since there is not justice; e.g. between craftsman and tool, soul and body, master and slave, the latter in each case is benefited by that which uses it, but there is no vengeance nor justice towards lifeless things. But neither is there friendship towards a horse or an ox, nor to a slave qua slave. For there is nothing common to the two parties; the slave is a living tool, and the tool a lifeless slave.

  Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

  Aidan's long day had begun at dawn, scrubbing the kitchen floors and walls. He never prepared food: those who worked in the stables never did, even after multiple bathings. These blacks were insane about their cleanliness! After long hours with scrub brush and soap pot, he was sent to the stables for shit-shoveling and grooming, smelly work that lasted until midafternoon. Sometimes he assisted Topper with shoeing.

  A caftaned Kai wandered in and found him at work but said nothing.

  Aidan smiled to himself: he knew Kai by now. In all probability he had sought audience with his father and been rebuffed, tried to engage brother Ali in a game and been sent away. Quiet. Quiet. He will come to you.

  Aidan and Kai were almost the same height, but frequently Kai seemed smaller, even less mature. Aidan couldn't completely explain it. Certainly, Kai had suffered far less in his life. Aidan wondered how Kai would have coped with the horrors he himself had endured, and allowed himself a cold smile at the thought of the bookish Kai chained in a screwship's dark hold, squirming in his own shit.

  Sure enough, in about a quarter hour Kai returned.

  "Aidan," he said, "come with me for practice."

  "Three more horses to groom, sir," Aidan said automatically, but knew what Kai's answer would be.

  "I've already cleared it. Come, now."

  Aidan "reluctantly" agreed, dropped his brush, and followed Kai out to the matted area in the courtyard behind the great house, between the canopied back porch and the lake. Aidan knew that Kai's father could observe them from his study, and supposed that that was a major motivation for
the exercise.

  For the next two hours Kai practiced throws, using Aidan as a dummy. When Aidan grew tired of it, he tried one of the throws that Brian had taught him. This time it didn't work. Kai countered his counter, and Aidan thudded to the ground. Even before the breath whistled out of him, Aidan eeled around, his feet whipping Kai's legs from beneath him, and the two boys ended up tussling about on the ground.

  Out of the corner of his eye Aidan saw a dark shape at the Wakil's study window. Abu Ali himself had seen that last exchange. They were too far from the house to see the Wakil's expression, but Aidan bet that he had been smiling.

  At any rate, he certainly hoped so.

  Smiling or not, Wakil Abu Ali drew his curtains closed as Kai and Aidan wrestled and laughed. And whatever Aidan's secret thoughts might have been, for those moments his smiles and joy were genuine. His sweat and bruises were his own. Sometimes he won, usually he lost. But here, in these moments with Kai, they were just two boys, and Aidan managed almost to forget that Kai could have him killed and suffer no punishment at all.

  Night fell before Kai and Aidan were exhausted, and Kai tottered off to wash and dress for his dinner. They had taken one break, while Kai said his fourth set of prayers for the day. These Muslims seemed to do nothing but pray. Five times a day, by Aidan's count. He could only figure that their Allah was deaf to need so many prayers.

  Aidan returned to the village, thinking of hot stew and a soft bed. He was whistling to himself, making up a tune joining two of his favorite songs into a single unified whole. He seemed to have a talent for it and thought that he might ask Brian to make him an instrument of some kind, a flute perhaps. Brian was a master whittler and seemed expert at making anything out of nothing.

  But he was just thinking of this, and other things, when strong arms gripped him from behind, binding arms and legs. Before he could scream a rough sack was yanked over his head, blinding him. Pure panic surged through him, grotesque and mind-crippling memories of his capture in the crannog, echoes of his old helplessness as light and breath were constricted. "Wait!" he cried, voice muffled even to himself. "What do you want. . .?"