The Enterprise of Death (4 page)

Crouching beside the young women, Halim had decided that the flashes of lightning were infrequent enough that he could throttle Omorose and her slave to death before being discovered. Whether he would, or should, Halim was not so certain, even with Boabdil’s orders that Omorose be granted a quick and royal death rather than fall into the hands of lowly men should piratry or banditry occur. When the lightning lit them up the bandit chief saw that the eunuch had broken his blind stare and looked instead at the sleeping women beside him. Then the cave went dark again, only the rioting storm giving indication of where the cavern’s exit was located in the blackness. He would not, Halim
decided, not admitting that upon seeing Omorose’s beatific sleeping face he could not.

Omorose awoke to feel someone holding her down but was too terrified to scream. The wet cloth against her cheek and the quaking of the naked slave pressed against her back cheated the noble girl of any hopes that she had been suffering a nightmare. She realized the girl was not pinning her down but hugging her gently, and while a few days before the indignity of having the slave touching her might have sent Omorose into hysterics, there in the freezing darkness the warmth Awa provided was palpable and calming. Confident neither the wretched creature on her back nor the men could see, Omorose let her tears join the growing pools on the cavern floor.

Awa drew away as her mistress shook with a barely contained sob, then gingerly returned her fingers to Omorose’s shoulder. The wind ran down the gap between the girls, a growing chill spreading from Omorose’s back toward her feet and neck. Disgust again trumped by need, Omorose snaked her own bound hands up through her layers of wet cloth and took Awa’s shuddering fingers, wiggling herself backwards to again press against her slave. Awa found herself smiling in the dark as she squeezed Omorose’s fingers and her mistress squeezed back, and after enjoying the clammy feel of the girl’s silk-soft palms, she pushed her fingers down and set to working at the leather straps tying Omorose’s wrists together. She would rescue her lady, just as Halim had rescued them from the sinking boat.

“We’ll get loose, and then we’ll run,” Awa whispered in the seashell that was Omorose’s ear. “The rain will hide our footprints if we get out of the cave.”

“What?” The thought of escape had not crossed Omorose’s mind after Halim was beaten into submission upon initially resisting the bandits.

“They have a guard, but only one, I think. The rest are behind
us, out of the rain.” The clumsy knots at Omorose’s wrists confirmed for Awa the bandits’ inexperience in the ways of transporting slaves.

“But if there’s a guard—”

“Shhh,” said Awa. “I untie you, you untie me, I untie Halim—”

“Who?”

“The eunuch. Who saved us?”

“Oh.”

“I untie him, and then we three run.” Awa lowered her voice even more. “He’s biggest so they’ll likely grab him before you or me, and he’ll fight for you if you’re the one they catch.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’ve done this before,” said Awa, trying to keep her nervous fear in its own cave as she got the last knot loose. “Once we’re free we’ll have to avoid being caught again, but let’s worry about that rain when next we’re dry, alright?”

“Alright.”

“Now we must be very quiet so they think we’re sleeping,” said Awa. “Don’t pull on my knots, find the root of the twist and work it backward.”

Her skin free of the biting leather, Omorose enjoyed the sensation for a time before choosing to acknowledge the slave’s still-bound hands pressing urgently into her shoulder. Omorose remembered what her old handmaid had said about Awa’s scars meaning she had run and been captured several times, and remembered how they had laughed at the idea of the plump wretch running anywhere on her short legs. She set to freeing Awa’s wrists, pausing as her slave had done when she heard the faint scraping and squelching of their captors moving about in the dark, and although it took her much longer she eventually got them loose.

The storm died down only to periodically flare up like the
white coals of a long-burning fire. Dozing in his cramped squat, Halim felt a creature crawl across his foot and almost stomped it when fingers tightened around his ankle and tapped just above where the strap dug into his skin, the length between his feet having been shortened to a hand’s width after they had stopped moving for the day. Halim let her work at his ankles, praying that the lightning kept at bay a little longer. It did, and he lowered his wrists, which she made short work of. Flexing his fingers, he winced as the joints cracked loudly in the dark.

Feeling around, Halim soon found a jagged piece of stone and tightened his fist, intent on giving his life if it meant the escape of Omorose. Then the cave lit up as the lightning returned, and three sets of eyes widened. The back of the cave was empty.

As the thunder pealed across the peaks, Awa slowly rose to a crouch and helped her mistress up, the slave’s numb, slick skin starting to remind its owner of its presence as pain and cold began jumping all over her body. Another flash, much closer, and again they saw only the black and empty cavern, the dozen bandits vanished without a trace. The thunder came again and Awa wondered if the mountain had eaten the men who hid in his mouth, and now laughed along with his ally in the sky who had driven the prey to seek such shelter. They had to leave before he swallowed again.

“Now we run,” Awa said, finding Omorose’s hand in the dark. “You must follow me, mistress, no matter what. When we run we cannot stop.”

“Where are they?” Omorose tried to stand but her overworked legs fought against her, cramps forcing her to lean against the wall of the cave. “What if it’s a trap?”

“Then it’s not a good trap since we were already caught. Please, mistress, before we find out what happened to them.”

“But.” Omorose bit her lip in the dark. “I’m too … I can’t run, I can’t, I—”

“You can.” Awa squeezed her mistress’s quivering hand. “You can, Omorose.”

The cheek of Awa using her name momentarily made Omorose forget her fear of the dark, empty cave. “Don’t you—”

“Quiet. Now.” Halim had seen something more than an empty cave and he scuttled away from the whispering girls. Patting around in the dark, he asked for light from above and was granted his request as three bolts crashed down just outside the cave, the wind screaming and the rain biting as he scooped up two discarded swords, the hilt of one sticky and wet. Then he noticed that the puddle in which he stood felt comfortably warm on his bare, blistered feet, and over the thunder rattling his senses he heard Omorose scream.

The attacker smashed into Halim and he felt both swords fly away as fists pummeled his sides. He slid down the wall of the cave, the assailant’s bony fingers cutting into the eunuch’s ribs with each blow. Omorose’s scream broke off and Halim lost his breath as a cudgel bruised his stomach, and then the man pinned his arms behind his back and hoisted him up, the eunuch’s back scraping on the man’s rough armor as he was carried out into the storm. Lightning blasted the earth just above the cave and Halim saw their new captors, and his own scream drowned out both Omorose and the crackling thunder.

Awa had smelled them even before the first flash of lightning had made Omorose scream, and now that the sky-fire showed her their faces she understood why her mother had never answered her questions about how she would know if the spirits visiting her were those of the dead and not some more common, natural thing, like the water spirits that misted her face by the waterfall or the storm spirits that filled her nose with their hot odor before the rains. Now she knew, for these spirits rode their old bones, and some still wore their carrion flesh in the same loose fashion her mistress wore the dangling wet rags of her servants.

The bonemen hoisted them up before they could move. As they were held aloft by the strongest arms Awa had ever felt, lightning illuminated the skull appraising her and she screamed for the first time since she had been taken from her village by the slavers, when she had vowed that no matter what fear she felt she would not give any spirit or man that power over her. Yet as the sky revealed the undead things carrying her and the first person she had cared about since childhood up the mountain into death she screamed and screamed, the spirits passing their three victims among them as though the youths weighed no more than satchels of limes.

Halim lost himself in his terror, gibbering along with the clicking jawbones of the monstrosities carrying them high into the mountains, but Omorose had recovered enough to realize what had happened and why the bandits had disappeared from the cave. Their captors had murdered the three of them in the cavern and now she was on her way to Hell, the lightning flashes Allah seeking in vain for her soul amidst the vast nightscape of the damned. She cursed Him then, cursed Him as weak and unfair to those who had praised Him even if they could not understand Him in the way He was explained to mortals such as she, and as she was juggled from skeletal fingers to rotting, soft arms she vomited into the swirling rain, the stink of her sick and fear mingling with the fell stench of the demons.

A tiny light appeared high above them in the darkness, the lightning left far below as they climbed higher and higher, the skeletal members of the host casting themselves against cliff faces, their bones scattering up the sheer surfaces to become animate ladders for their riper compatriots to scale with their prisoners held high. Several times they came to vast chasms and the skeletons climbed atop one another and formed bridges over the gulfs, the farthest-flung amongst them snatching the ankle of the one before him and in this fashion retracting themselves
to the opposite side once their sharp spines had been crossed by the fleet-footed, capering dead. Racing up a gully, they emerged onto a plateau and here they were blinded by the light shining from an open door in the darkness, a glowing passage to another world, and before any of the three youths could recover from their journey they were shoved wailing through the doorway.

The animated corpses stayed outside. Omorose, Halim, and Awa collapsed in a pile on the floor of the hut. A small oil lamp sealed their eyes into leaking slits with its brilliance, and as a shadow passed over the huddled youths Halim squealed and Omorose groaned. Then the door was closed behind them, and with the devils shut outside all three wept with relief and gratitude.

None of them ever fully recovered from that night, their minds hammered into strange new shapes by white-hot fear, but after no small time of babbling and begging and praying and moaning the three Africans returned to their senses. Being so close to Heaven, dawn came early on the mountaintop, and as the only window slowly ate up the shadows in the hut, first Awa, then Omorose, and finally Halim sat up and took notice of their surroundings and their savior, who had sat watching them the entire time.

The room was cluttered but clean, the stone floor rubbed smooth and the adobe walls free of cracks. A granite table dominated the chamber, a crude wooden chair pulled back on the other side of it, and set in the rear wall above this was the window, through which one of the animate skeletons watched them. Noticing this brought on another fit in Halim, but Omorose and
Awa were already paralyzed by the sight of a monster hulking on its hind legs beside the window, a furry behemoth that Boabdil’s second cousin would have recognized all too well. Eventually they realized it must be dead or a statue, although Awa suspected that given the walking corpses outside the bear’s seemingly inanimate nature in no way rendered it harmless. Every wall was striped with shelves that bowed under the weight of clay jars and bowls and less identifiable objects, and a cauldron hung inside a small fireplace to their right.

Their host was less mundane. He was human enough, but his cold jade eyes were set deep in the tight skin of his face and he appeared far too aged to even sit up in a bed and chew solid food, yet he now darted around the room with an easy alacrity, his withered limbs piling the table with bowls and a jug. Then he opened the door and Halim buried his head between his legs, Omorose grabbing Awa’s hand as three of the skeletons marched into the room and squatted down beside the table. With a muttered word from their host the skeletons fell apart on the floor, only to have their loose bones crawl over one another and snap together in new formations, and in less time than it takes to cleanse oneself before prayer three stools were waiting at the table. This bothered the young women quite a bit, Awa convinced that he was a sorcerer and Omorose that he was a devil.