The Mad Giant (Shioni of Sheba Book 3) (5 page)

“I call upon thee, Almighty God,
before the congregation of your people, to bless and make holy these gates by the cleansing power of this holy water! May the enemy never prevail against them! May your mighty hand rest upon this place! May your angels surround and protect all who tarry or work within these walls, even as you struck down the evil witch sent by the Wasabi! I beseech you, o Lord, to make this a place of life, and health, of peace and perfect rest, not least for our beloved King who sleeps within!”

He made the sign
of the cross. “From this day on, your name shall no longer be Castle Asmat. I declare your new name is Castle Hiwot, the Castle of Life!”

A tremendous cheer from the
assembled crowd rolled up to the sides of the valley and echoed back and forth. To Shioni, it sounded as if a lion were roaring.

K
neeling AT Princess Annakiya’s
right hand in Castle Hiwot’s courtyard, just the day after the ceremony of naming, Shioni struggled not to weep as Selam pleaded for her brother’s life.

The sun was a blistering white point high overhead. The noon heat assaulted the courtyard as though they were all standing inside Mama Nomuula’s largest oven. The Princess alone sat in the shade of a small awning–otherwise Shioni’s arm would have been the one aching. Again! Today the tickle was in the back of her throat rather than
in her nose, and she was sure she could feel her head and shoulders frying beneath the sun’s powerful gaze. She would pay for this later. But it was nothing in comparison to how Desta would pay if he was found guilty. Not a pinch of dust in comparison.

She already knew what was written on
the scroll of judgement, and signed in Princess Annakiya’s neat hand, over which the royal seal of the Lion of West Sheba had been affixed. After signing the scroll, prepared by Hakim Isoke, Annakiya’s eyes had seemed haunted. Shioni had heard her sobbing in the night.

And yet here she was, dressed in
all the finery of a Princess of Sheba. A delicate crown of gold adorned her braided hair, which was lightly held back from her face by a silken
nettela
or headscarf adorned with a chain of rubies and diamonds, with matching star-shaped pendant earrings dangling from her ears, and a necklace about her slender neck from which depended a beautiful Star of David amulet. Shioni’s heart went out to her friend. Beneath that finery beat a gentle heart, one that shrank from delivering such a verdict–but she knew her duty. Shioni knew Princess Annakiya was strong enough to carry it out.

“He rebelled against Sheba
, and has been tried as a rebel,” General Getu said sternly, but raised his hand to forestall his warriors from mistreating the girl. “What new information do you bring that could possibly change our judgement?”

Poor Selam.
She was distraught. Besides the tears tracking down her cheeks, in her distress she had torn her face with her fingernails. But Shioni knew that a display of emotion would not move the General. He was a just man, fiercely so. And Desta had chosen to lead his rebellion against Sheba. When she and Talaku, together with the Elite warrior Tariku, had travelled into the mountains to bring back the King’s horse, Desta had captured the two men and sold them to the Wasabi. Her actions alone had rescued the two warriors from a horrible fate at Kalcha’s hand.

Shioni carefully
masked her feelings. Any slave who dared to show sympathy or dissent would be whipped–Captain Dabir’s orders. This, the day after the blessing of the castle, she thought. How could this be right? Mama said there had to be justice. So why was she feeling as miserable as a soggy rainy season afternoon?

Tariku
stood amongst the Elite warriors massed behind Selam, easily identified by his height. Although he was at ease, his gold-embossed shield planted by his left foot and his spear held loosely in his right hand, his face was shadowed with anger. It was he who had captured Desta and dragged him up to the castle, screaming and thrashing, to throw him in the dungeons and see justice done. Now a mere slip of a girl had forestalled judgement. He looked ready to spit acid.

“Princess!
Mercy, please, I beg of you!”

To Tariku’s right, Captain Dabir
regarded the proceedings with his customary smirk smeared across his face. If Princess Annakiya did relent, he would no doubt be first in line to report her failing to her older brother, Prince Bekele. By all accounts the Prince was too busy enjoying the high life in Takazze to bother with the small matter of a rebellion in the mountains. The King’s misfortune was his gain. And he had thrown himself upon that gain with shocking haste. He and Captain Dabir made quite a pair of thugs, Shioni thought. She loathed them both.

“My judgement,” said Annakiya, her hands white-knuckled upon
the arms of her chair, “is already written.”

“Shioni!
You’ll speak for my brother, won’t you?”

Unfortunately there was no earthquake and the ground did not swallow her up in time
to avoid embarrassment. But Shioni was saved from reply by Hakim Isoke cutting in sharply:

“The slave-girl has already
testified. Though her account shed some small light on his youthful foolishness, it did not change our verdict. This man Desta remains a dangerous rebel and shall be judged accordingly.”

Selam flung herself prostrate before Princess Annakiya.
Again, General Getu raised his hand to restrain the warriors. Shioni saw that a dozen Elite warriors on the castle walls had arrows nocked to their bowstrings, and every arrow amongst that thicket was trained on Selam. Getu was taking no chances. Nor was she. Her own hand rested upon her long dagger. Her muscles trembled in readiness. As the Princess’ bodyguard she was ready at the first sniff of trouble to throw her own body in the way–even if that trouble came in the form of someone she regarded as a friend.

“Rebels must die,” said Hakim Isoke.
“That is the law.”

“It is not our law!” screamed Selam.
“We never wanted your law!”

Her scream raised the hairs on Shioni’s neck.
It also made a flock of carmine bee-eaters, which had been enjoying the rich pickings of insects attracted to the flowering baobab, dart away over the wall as though a falcon had lunged into their midst.

The Hakim leaned forward.
“Our law also states you can offer something in exchange for your brother’s life. Do you bring such an offering?”

On the one hand, Shioni thought,
Isoke was being almost kind. But she must also have known that Selam had nothing to offer… or? Her eyes narrowed. There was something peculiar, a kind of fey deceitfulness, in what she sensed coming from Selam. What was the expression that had tugged the corners of her mouth upward, like a cat that had succeeded in stealing a tasty morsel from the kitchen? But as quickly as the expression had surfaced, it vanished again.

Rising to a kneeling position, Selam essayed a quick look at the Hakim.
“He… he can lead you to the Wasabi camp.”

There, that little catch in her voice did not ring true!

“We already know where the Wasabi are,” Getu said.

Selam twisted her hands in her lap, keeping her eyes downcast.
In a small voice, she added, “Desta knows a secret way into Chiro Leba.”

Against the background of a rising
murmuring amongst the Sheban Elite warriors, Shioni stared at Selam with doubt and confusion churning in her gut. Where was the sweet girl she had helped and met? This girl had just straightened a half-smile off her lips–a smile nobody but a slave kneeling at the same level as her could have seen in that courtyard. What game was she playing? Had someone put her up to this? She wasn’t working for the rebels, was she? Or was this all part of the pleading for her brother’s life… sisterly concern, no more?

“Say that again?” said General Getu.
Princess Annakiya had risen from her chair.

“Desta knows a secret path into Chiro Leba.
He can lead you there.”

“
Why can’t he describe the way for us?”

Selam turned an innocent, wide-eyed look
on Hakim Isoke. “Such tricky mountain paths cannot be told, honoured Hakim. I offer you knowledge.”

Captain Dabir cried, “We could strike a blow right to their craven hearts!”

Shioni wanted to shout, ‘Can’t you see she’s playing you for fools?’ But she had to imprison her tongue behind clenched teeth.

The Sheban warriors were all shouting at once.
Had General Getu issued the order, they would have stormed out of Castle Hiwot without a moment’s delay, intent on sinking their spears into Wasabi flesh.

Princess Annakiya rose to her feet.
Ceremoniously, she lifted the scroll of judgement above her head, and then slipped it into her tunic pocket. Her voice rang clearly into the sudden hush, “Judgement will be stayed upon the successful completion of this charge: to lead our warriors forth by a secret way to the Wasabi camp, that they might strike the wicked Wasabi a blow like unto the righteous wrath of Almighty God. The assembly of judgement is dismissed!”

Hundreds of voices clamoured their approval.

Shioni felt sick.

J
USt after dawn, Shioni had
reported to the Master of Swords. Usually she trained with the Elite warriors, but twice a week, General Getu had arranged for her to have the honour a special lesson with the Master himself.

Her daily bread, the General had called it. It was more like a daily beating, Shioni thought–a friendly beating, but a beating nevertheless. An hour’s opportunity to collect bruises.

Right now, he was battering her with blow after blow using a simple overhand stroke. “More angle on the wrist,” he instructed. “Absorb the force. Don’t act like a wall. You’re a reed. Supple on the–” He stopped suddenly and stepped back. The Master of Swords lowered his weapon, giving Shioni a moment to wipe the sweat from her brow. “General Getu!” he said.

Where had
the General sprung from? Shioni made to kneel, but the veteran General stopped her with a headshake and a flat gesture of his hand. He said, “On the training field we are warriors of Sheba, girl. We bow to no-one.”

“My Lord.”

Getu stalked around her until he was almost directly facing her, his boots crunching slightly upon the dry, tan grass. His gait reminded her of nothing more than the lions prowling in their cages in the King’s menagerie in Takazze. And his eyes measured her all the while, narrowly.

“Your judgement, Master Mesfin?”

The Master of Swords pursed his lips. “She makes reasonable progress, my Lord. Still a touch heavy on the feet, but we have beaten a sound basic technique into her at last. Exceptional reactions. With greater strength and reach–”

“Reactions, eh? Speed?”

“Exceptional, my Lord General,” he repeated gruffly, appearing to enjoy the quarrelsome scowl his comments had provoked upon the General’s brow. “As you know, experienced warriors learn to anticipate. This one lacks years, but makes up for that with her natural reactions.”

“
Hmm. Give me your sword.” The Master passed his blunted training sword over to Getu, who, after shrugging off his woollen warrior’s robe, which served to keep a warrior warm when he was sleeping rough at night, twirled the weapon about his head several times to loosen up his upper body and shoulders. “It’s unlike you, Master Mesfin, to be so lavish with your praise.”

Shioni tried to
conceal her astonishment. This was lavish praise? The Master of Swords was a tough trainer and a hard taskmaster, to be sure–she had more bruises from him than she dared count–but at least he did not treat her as a lowly slave.

“Guard yourself, warrior of Sheba!”

It took two clashes of their swords for Shioni to revise her opinion of General Getu’s apparent age, downward. He was fast, smooth, and economical in his movements. He absorbed her counterattack with ease, and a moment later, hooked her foot from beneath her with the cunning of a fox. Shioni found herself flat on her back with his sword at her throat.

“Eyes!” he growled as she scrambled to her feet. “
Always watch the eyes, or you’re dead. Again!”

Their blades scraped and clashed with the peculiarly dull sound of blunted training weapons. General Getu was testing her technique, Shioni
recognised, varying the pace and angles of his attack. He was so quick! High and low, left and right; a sudden dart at her throat! She parried with a supple wrist and drove in hard on the riposte, but the General scurried inside the blow, thumped her shoulder with the stump of his bad arm, and while she was off-balance, brought his blade about but turned it flat at the last second to deal her yet another bruise on her ribcage.

He moved back, giving her an instant to recover. “
You’re no use to me dead! Learn to assess your enemy. Even his weaknesses can be used against you. Again!”

Weaknesses? Shioni wanted to laugh, but instead had to duck as his
blade whistled past her head. Hers flickered out in return, but he appeared to have read her movement and sidestepped. A flurry of blows drove her backward, pressing her defences harder and harder until his greater strength and guile forced a mistake. Shioni stumbled over a tuft of bristly grass; he pounced with leonine quickness, but she turned her stumble into a roll and somehow managed to deflect his overhead blow at the same time. From her kneeling position, Shioni reversed direction abruptly and crashed headfirst into his shins.

A startled oath popped out of the General’s mouth as he
parried her flailing stroke with an ungainly twist of his arm. His wrist broke position. The blade popped out of his fingers.

Shioni, dizzily, aimed a weak blow at his thigh, but General Getu stopped her with his knee and instead, offered
his hand to help her rise.

“
So, Master Mesfin–which technique, exactly, was that?”

The Master of Swords bowed
deeply. A smile touched his lips. “My Lord, I believe that was the ‘hippo-in-a-river-roll’ followed by a surprise disarming skill.”

Shioni’s cheeks flushed rosily.
She dusted her clothes with self-conscious slaps, raising a cloud of reddish dust that caused her to cough.

“Hmm,” said Getu, levelling one of his looks at her.
“Accident or design?” Shioni could not tell if he was annoyed or impressed–or both. “When last did I lose my sword in battle, I wonder? Walk with me, Shioni. Water?”

“Thank you, my Lord.”

Shioni grasped the gourd by its neck and drank deeply. Even two hours after sunrise, the morning felt sticky and warm. Runnels of sweat streaked her cheeks, and when she wiped her neck with her hand, it was to rub off a film of red, mixed with bits of dry grass and grit. Nothing a quick dip in the river would not mend! If the General did not find other duties for her first… but why was he here, she wondered? What would bring a General of West Sheba’s armies to the practice field, and more specifically, to the training of a slave-girl? Even if she was the Princess’ bodyguard?

Getu found a rock in the shade of a small acacia tree and took his ease upon it. Shioni knelt
an arm’s length from his left knee–a slave’s habit. Never be elevated to the same level as one’s master or mistress.

“The Master of Swords was right, you are
quick,” he said. “I am glad, my daughter, that I made the decision to have you trained properly–that you may better serve West Sheba, and your mistress the Princess. That is good.”

Shioni glanced up, surprised at his use of the familiar ‘my daughter’.
The General gazed out over a field full of Sheban warriors engaged in blades and staves training. His good eye followed the panicked dash of a fat grey dove for the trees as a hawk soared overhead. After a long pause, he said, “Mama Nomuula advises me you speak with animals. When did that start?”

She had been meaning to tell him
first! Shioni gulped down the hard lump of guilt in her throat and said, awkwardly, “When we first arrived in the mountains, my Lord. Do you remember the lion spoor? When I was outside its den I felt… well, I pictured… a picture came to my mind, my Lord. A picture of how the lion was wounded. And it was right! Later, at Castle Hiwot, there was a cat outside the kitchens which talked to me.”

“And you went back to the lion.”

“Anbessa, my Lord. He’s–before that, the elephants were involved.” Getu quirked an eyebrow in her direction. “The Chief Elephant did something in my mind, well, I can’t explain it awfully well. He said something like, ‘I only unlocked what was already inside of you’.”

General Getu was giving her quite the most peculiar look. Shioni shifted
uneasily. Whatever could he be thinking? But all he said was, “Didn’t the lion attack you, though?”

She took a deep breath, about to swim the muddy waters of a fast-flowing stream.
“You once told me, my Lord, that the dragons took your hand as a kind of punishment.” Shioni touched her shoulder. “This seems similar. Anbessa told me to wear the mark with pride. And I am–strangely, I suppose–proud of my scar. He called himself the Lord of all Lions, and ruler of the Simien Mountains. And he gave me a name in Lion.”

“Which is?”

“Graceful Strength of the Dawn.”

“
Now there’s a name to grow into,” said the General, wryly. He barked out a short laugh. “I’m not sure I’m so proud of my missing limb, though.”

Shioni cried, passionately, “My father! You faced the
dragons
and survived! Excuse me… I mean, my Lord.”

“And here I chided myself many times for telling you my story, Shioni
,” Getu chuckled, more of a dry cough than a laugh. “I tell you the truth: I sense strange and mighty powers at work in your life. Mama has told me much and explained much. What might this portend, I wonder? Why did God bring you to West Sheba? Why are your new skills emerging now? My men say you caught an arrow mid-flight, saving the Princess. There’s your rapport with the King’s horse. Today I learn you even speak with lions. It’s enough to make an old man’s head spin. I want to meet this Anbessa who named you.”

He wanted to speak to Anbessa? She was aware that her jaw was catching flies, as Mama Nomuula would have put it. But before she could reflect on this, another burning question popped out in its stead
, “How old
are
you, my Lord?”

“Why do you ask?”

Shioni paused to consider her answer. She forced herself to gaze at his ruined, half-burned face, and to see the man beneath rather than the terrible scars most people never saw beyond, or averted their eyes from. “You’re so fast with a blade! And strong! My Lord, would the dragon’s bite–”

“Yes
,” he cut in. “My daughter, at the Easter feast I will be a mere seventy-eight years young.” She allowed her mouth to form an exaggerated ‘O’ of surprise, drawing a snort from the General. “Now listen. Aside from the obvious value of your skills to Sheba, which I must meditate upon, there is something I want you to understand. Mama tells me you think you have witch powers. I challenge that idea.”

He raised a finger
and wagged it at her as though he would rather be beating her with a stave. “What matters, in my view, is what you
do
with these skills. Not so much where they might come from–from your parents, or from elsewhere. We may not see eye to eye on all matters, Shioni, but thus far, I am proud of you. I only wish all my warriors conducted themselves as wisely.”

She nodded
to accept his praise. If only her heart could sing now, it would have sung more loudly than all the birds of the riverine dawn chorus! If only she felt as wise as he thought she was…

“Equally, I must warn you. Power can damage; it can turn a good person to evil. The greater
the power, the greater the danger. Do you remember the lesson I taught Prince Bekele and Captain Dabir over coffee? What was that lesson?”

“The abuse of power, my Lord,” she replied promptly.

“And other lessons besides,” said he. “That’s a good answer from a slave. But slaves who have magical powers… they need to learn to think more broadly. They need to tread in the spoor of other people; to learn how they walk and talk and think.”

“I…
think… I understand, my Lord.”

Getu’s cheeks wrinkled furiously as his
famously sly grin made its appearance. “If you do understand, please, explain this lesson to me.”

Shioni wanted to grimace. She wished she had not answered so glibly! “It was about…
how the Prince should treat those beneath him, my Lord. I mean, that it’s not enough just to know
about
being a Prince of Sheba. Actions matter. I think you wanted him to understand that he was… well, using his position as Sheba’s Prince merely to please himself and to make him feel important–inside. To puff himself up at my expense.”

“And,” she added in a rush, “that one’s station in life does not guarantee wisdom. That if we lack wisdom, we should lean on the wisdom of others. I think, my Lord, that he is fortunate to have you as his advisor in matters of war and… less wise in his other choices.”

General Getu inclined his head. “Good, my daughter. Now, imagine how you might act if
you
held that same power over
him
. Knowing how you feel; not forgetting how he treated you.”

“That’s…” She
wrung her hands. “That’s very hard, my Lord.”

Getu rose. “Go now and think upon this
lesson, Shioni.”