Blood Colony (21 page)

“I am truly sorry, gentlemen,” he said. “Very sorry. In fact…” Sgt. Hayes slipped his hand into his own back pocket for his wallet. He pulled out a twenty-dollar bill and laid it on the table. “That’s all I’ve got on me. It may not cover the whole meal, but I hope this helps take the bad taste out of the interruption. Enjoy your stay in Buckeye.” And he raised his hat.

His eyes still closed, Teferi smiled.

The younger deputies flocked to Sgt. Hayes with questions, but he shrugged them off. The deputies went outside and consulted while Dawit watched them through the window. After a lively discussion, both police cars drove off.

Once the cars were safely gone, Teferi breathed. He leaned down to retrieve his gun.

Mahmoud laughed. “Money from his pocket?” he said, tucking the bill into his own wallet. He slipped a cigarette between his lips. “Teferi, I’m shocked by your sudden usefulness.”

Dawit patted Teferi’s shoulder. “You must teach me that.”

“You can only teach yourself,” Teferi said. “All I did was whisper in his ear. He thought the voice he heard was his own.”

“You are skilled enough to find Fana,” Dawit said. “I will not doubt you again.”

The waitress was back, her lips wrenched tight. “Sir, there’s no smoking in here,” she said as she dropped the bill in front of Mahmoud. She whirled away, not waiting for his response.

Mahmoud glared after her with a flick of his match. “How have you avoided prison, Dawit? I could not live here, bossed about by chattering monkeys.”

“Life presents its challenges daily,” Dawit said.

LET US GO, BEFORE THE POLICE RETURN,
Teferi insisted.
THEY WON’T IGNORE THEIR BETTER JUDGMENT TWICE.

Dawit stood. “Come, Mahmoud. You must share what you’ve learned with Teka.”

Mahmoud sighed. “Only if your esteemed prophet can refrain from his proselytizing.”

Teferi drove Mahmoud’s car behind them while Mahmoud sat in the passenger seat of Dawit’s Orbit and repeated his story to Teka on the satellite phone. Dawit was careful to make sure his headlights were on, driving the exact speed limit although his mind and heart raced.

How could he tell Jessica something so awful when she was already reeling?

“I’m sorry, Jessica,” Dawit whispered, navigating the dark road. With more than a century between him and his last meeting with the fanatical sect, he’d never imagined he would have to explain Sanctus Cruor and the heritage of her new Blood.

Outside of Adwa
Ethiopia
December, 1896

C
louds of angry, well-fed smoke fanned across the rocky mountainside, and Dawit knew what they would find at the village.

In the lead, Dawit rode at a gallop on his black mare, while Mahmoud and Berhanu thundered closely behind. The sturdy-legged horses kicked up dust on the path already worn in the soil by the caravan of warriors, priests and servants making the unprecedented journey toward Adwa to stand with the emperor and empress against the Italian forces. War was upon them, and war meant that warriors were called from every corner. Emperor Menelik and his commanding Rases had marshaled troops from across the nation. For some, the pilgrimage had taken nearly half a year over difficult terrain. Yet they’d come.

If Ethiopia was victorious, it would be the greatest victory in Africa since the time of Hannibal, an example to the world. But if Emperor Menelik was as low on provisions as the reports claimed, even a fevered nationalism unlike anything Dawit had ever witnessed might not be enough to stave off the Italian forces.

Signs of camps lined the path: fire pits, dung piles left by donkeys and mules, broken walking sticks, and the dried bones of slaughtered livestock. Dawit could make out a line of about fifty stragglers about five kilometers distant, marching east toward Adwa while he and his Brothers rode west, toward the smoke.

Dawit and his Brothers would follow the warriors soon. Even the reclusive Life Brothers, who worshiped no mortal’s flag, were Ethiopians today. Man and horse alike were dressed for battle; Dawit wore a nobleman’s robes and a crown of ostrich feathers, and his bridled horse wore colorful adornments across her mane. Dawit’s sword, spear and guns were ready.

But first, they must heed Khaldun’s vision.

The smell of charred flesh told Dawit that they were close. At least two dozen had died in the village they’d just passed, with no one left to tell the tale. War had reached these remote villagers already. Most of the dead had been slashed to pieces.

THERE.
Berhanu’s voice charged into Dawit’s head, as fluid as his own thoughts.
NESTLED BETWEEN THE HILLS. NOT A HUNDRED METERS.

Craggy rocks reached toward the sky like grasping fingers on the path. Smoke plumed behind tall, umbrella-shaped acacia trees. The trees were nearly hidden in the foggy smoke, but as his horse galloped closer, Dawit saw a human form hanging from the farthermost tree. Upside down. It was a boy, not yet a man. Perhaps twelve years.

The boy’s feet were lashed with ropes to the tree, his arms bound behind him. He was naked, his throat slit from end to end, his face a mask of dried blood and flies. The dry earth had greedily swallowed his blood, with only a large brown-black stain beneath him. Enshrouded by fog, the boy looked like a wretched memory from Louisiana fifty years ago: Dawit had watched, helpless, as his dear Adele had been hung from a tree. Her death had impelled Dawit to Gettysburg.

Dawit raised his hand, and Berhanu and Mahmoud slowed behind him. Berhanu’s horse whinnied, as impatient as his master.

“Rome’s cowards slay children, too?” Mahmoud said.

“Italy’s army isn’t this far inland,” Dawit said. “These are from Khaldun’s vision.”

I HEAR SURVIVORS. WE WILL LEARN WHERE THEIR ATTACKERS WENT,
Berhanu said, and yanked his horse’s bridle to take the lead on the smoky path to the village of the dead.

The pathway was littered with corpses. Ash floated everywhere, and at least twenty dead lay in the ash, some of them burned beyond gender recognition. Dawit steered his horse around the body of a girl whose belly protruded with an unborn child, now dead like its wide-eyed mother. A bundle of sticks she had been carrying lay crushed and scattered around her. Next lay a white-haired old woman, wrapped in a fetal position in a puddle of blood. The village’s huts were scorched. The cylindrical stone shells still stood, blackened, but the thatch rooftops had all burned away. Belongings inside the huts still smoldered.

Something ominous on the path made Dawit dismount so he could look more closely. From a distance, it might have been a bloated snake.

But no. When he kneeled, he saw that it was a severed arm. A child’s. Charred.

Beside the limb lay a golden medallion with a crimson ribbon. Dawit picked up the medallion—a European-styled cross with a garnet in the center. The inscribed words were in Latin:
Ordo Sanctus Cruor.
Order of the Holy Blood.

Just as Khaldun had prophesied! Khaldun’s visage had appeared to Dawit, floating above Dawit’s bed, and now Khaldun’s warning filled Dawit’s ears anew:
They know that men walk with the Living Blood. They believe themselves to be holy, but their hearts lust only for the power of our Blood. They would destroy a nation, or a world, to hoard it.

With the power of Italy’s forces behind them, this Order could march straight into the heart of the nation, to Lalibela. Already, only two hundred and fifty kilometers separated them.

Dawit heard children’s screams.

Berhanu, still on horseback, uncovered a nest of survivors hidden in the brush beside their burned-out homes. A dozen young children fled, the older children pulling the younger away from the giant of a man on horseback. Mahmoud’s lighter skin terrified them more.

Dawit lay down his sword and raised his hands as the flock of children trembled, trapped between the three of them on the path. “
Selam, selam,
” Dawit greeted the children, wishing them peace. “We will not harm you. We are here to help. Do not fear us.”

To prove his intentions, Dawit reached into his saddlebag and found the provisions he had brought for his journey. Dried beef called
kuwanta
. Dried
injera
chips. Spicy brown
chiko
.

The younger children still wailed, but the eldest, a tall boy who might be ten, snatched the food from Dawit’s hands and passed it to the younger ones. Dawit gave the boy a skein of water, and he took only a sip before offering the skein to the younger children, who quarreled over it.

“What is your name?” Dawit asked the boy.

Warily the boy eyed Dawit, and then Mahmoud, before he answered. “I am Amare.”

“Where are the others in your village?”

Amare’s haunted eyes searched the ruins. “My grandfather…is dead. My grandmother. My cousin. All dead.” Tears watered his face.

Dawit saw two or three mature women among the dead, but most were very young or very old. Dawit knelt to talk to the boy at eye level. “Where is your father, Amare?” he said.

Berhanu’s thoughts blared:
ARE YOU THIS YOUNG MONKEY’S BIOGRAPHER?

“My father has gone to fight,” Amare said. “All of our fathers have gone. Our mothers too. The elders were left here with us.”

“Your
mothers
?” Mahmoud said, skeptical. “Gone to war?”

Amare glared at him, offended. “We have brave mothers! They are like Empress Taitu. If they do not fight, they will cook and nurse the fallen with herbs. Was your mother so brave?”

Dawit smiled. Amare was brave, too, to stand up to Mahmoud. Dawit wondered what it would be like to raise a strong son, to teach a child what he knew instead of leaving him for his mother to care for alone. If he and Adele had raised a child, would he have been as worthy as Amare?

Such pointless thoughts! Khaldun would never permit it, and Adele was long dead. It was the worst folly to love mortals, only to watch them die.

Dawit held Amare’s hand. “Tell me…who has done this to you?”

The children answered in a cacophony, but Amare’s voice was loudest. “They came like you, on horses! They were ghost-men. Their skin was white like the clouds. They shouted at us, saying to tell them about the magic blood.”

“What magic blood?” Berhanu said.

Amare shook his head. “They asked us about men who could not be killed, like the stories my grandfather tells the little ones. Everyone came from great distances to hear my grandfather’s stories of flying lions and men who live a thousand years with magic blood, who cannot die by spear nor sword. They were only stories, but these ghost-men thought they were true. They hung my cousin from a tree to make my grandfather tell. They cut off Hakim’s arm with a sword to try to make us say where the magic blood was. But how could we? It was a story!” For the first time, Amare sobbed. “Now where are my grandfather’s stories?”

Dawit sighed. An old storyteller’s fertile imagination had brought a plague to his village. If the villagers of Lalibela were subjected to the same tortures, they might speculate about the priests among them who never seemed to age. Some of his Brothers’ faces were known.

“How many of these ghost-men came?” Dawit said.

“They were like a swarm of bees,” the boy said. “Too many to count.”

I SEE HIS MEMORIES,
Berhanu said.
I COUNT THEM AT FIFTY.

Fifty was a formidable number against three, even with advanced weapons. More of his Brothers should have been dispatched, Dawit realized. They had misjudged the threat.

Amare suddenly squeezed Dawit’s hand tightly. “Come help me,” the boy said. “I need to cut down my grandfather. And my cousin. The ghost-men left them and said they would return to see if the dead would wake. But priests say the dead must be laid to rest.”

FORGO THESE SENTIMENTALITIES,
Berhanu complained.
I SEE IN HIS MEMORIES THAT THE ATTACKERS TRAVELED EAST. THEY ARE WEARING WHITE.

“And we will follow them…soon,” Dawit said to Berhanu aloud. Then he turned back to Amare’s waiting eyes. “Hurry, boy. Take us to your grandfather.”

The old man was strung to a rock face outside the village. He hung upside down several meters above the ground, his legs splayed open, each ankle tied to the trunk of a sapling. Like the boy on the acacia tree, his throat had been cut, and his blood painted the rock’s surface in a drying stream to the soil. Someone had used the dead man’s blood to write a crudely drawn message on the rock, in Italian:
AND BLOOD TOUCHETH BLOOD
.

Old Testament scripture, King James’s Book of Hosea. Khaldun’s vision was true!

Dawit had witnessed horrors as a boy, and he grieved for these children. No violation could match being stripped of one’s childhood by violence. Amare had lost more than his family.

Dawit picked up a crying girl who looked like she was about three. He passed her up to Mahmoud on his saddle. Mahmoud took the child, holding her tiny waist in his outstretched arms like a sack of teff.

“Let the young ones feed sugar to your horse,” Dawit told him. “Keep them back while we cut this old man down. Their eyes have seen too much already.”

Mahmoud and Berhanu looked at him grimly but nodded.

TEN MINUTES,
Berhanu said.
NOT A MINUTE MORE, OR WE RIDE WITHOUT YOU.
Amare waited below while Dawit and Berhanu climbed the rocks to cut his grandfather’s broken body down. He remained at Dawit’s side to receive the corpse while Berhanu held the ropes to lower the old man to the ground. Amare also helped them at the acacia tree, when it was time to cut down the hanging boy. Tears streamed down Amare’s face, but he never sobbed. Dawit glanced skyward, then at his pocket watch. It was 6 p.m. They must go, or the sect would target another helpless village. Dawit collected enough provisions from his Brothers to last the children a week. A nearby stream was almost dry, but it was enough for them to drink. There was no time to help these children bury their dead.

AT LAST!
Berhanu’s voice boomed in his head.
NO MORE DELAYS.

Dawit took one last look at the severed arm on the path to the village. He would carry the memory of the butchered child to their attackers’ trail, and then on to Adwa.

The younger children wailed when they realized Dawit was mounting his horse to leave. “No!” they cried. “Stay with us! The ghost-men will come back!”

Dawit met young Amare’s eyes and handed the boy his sword. The weapon was almost too big for Amare’s hand, but he clutched it like a seasoned warrior. The blade was one of Dawit’s favorites, forged in Spain, but the gratitude in Amare’s eyes dulled the sting of the loss.

“Your grandfather told the truth,” Dawit told Amare. “There
is
magic in this world—in that very sword. As long as you keep it, no more harm shall come to you. We will ride after the ghost-men who came to your village, and they shall answer for what they have done. We will send word of what has happened here, and your mothers and fathers will return to you.”

Amare shook his head. His pain-reddened eyes didn’t blink. “
No,
” he said. “Tell our parents to stay and fight. Tell them they must not return until Ethiopia is free.”

His arm trembling with weight he could barely lift, Amare raised Dawit’s sword above his head. Miraculously, the children began to sing, their voices thinned by tears:
“Send the invaders away! / The flying lion will rise up and lead us to victory! / Our warriors are too mighty to die!”