The Mad Giant (Shioni of Sheba Book 3) (12 page)

T
he Fiuri’s ability to
see in the dark, together with a steady stream of instructions, kept Thunder’s hooves on the trail. Their biggest scare was when they skirted a boulder only to find it was actually a sleeping hippopotamus, who was vocally unimpressed at having been disturbed.

“And to think that only last week, you accused me of waddling like a hippopotamus,” sniffed Thunder,
flipping his mane proudly.

“Was that only last week?
Two weeks, or…?”

Her memory of recent events was as jumbled as though a whirlwind had whistled through her brain–finding the
secret Wasabi route through the mountains, Desta’s trial, an attempt on her life, being attacked twice by the giant–she exhaled gustily. He had a thing or two to answer for! Not least, splitting open her lip and robbing Castle Hiwot of its Princess. Never mind, she had stuck her dagger right through Talaku’s arm as a form of repayment.

Friends were like that.

Shioni eased her throbbing right foot. The infection was showing no signs of clearing up; rather, her foot was starting to resemble a rancid slab of meat. Red lines were spreading up her leg. She had no need of the daylight to confirm it. Her knee was swollen like one of those tasty melons they used to enjoy in Takazze. And just when she needed Mama Nomuula’s healing knowledge most urgently, here she was on a mission trying to deliver the Elite warriors of West Sheba from their own folly. How would she even fight? The mere bushing of grass blades upon her foot was torment.

And now she
intended to bait a mad giant in his lair. She had to be crazy.

“Do I hear a waterfall ahead?” asked Zi.

As they rounded a bend in the trail, which squeezed them between the river and the mountain’s flank, they saw that the Fiuri was right. Here the full flow of the Mesheha River surged over a rocky ledge a hundred feet or more wide, crashing down into a pool before swirling away into the night. The moon was just peeking over the far ridge, bathing the scene in an ethereal glow. But Shioni had eyes only for the waterfall.

“Talaku’s in there,” she said, pointing across the pool. “I can sense him.”

“Your magic is growing, Shioni.”

She laughed curtly. “I don’t know about that, my friend. He’s just very… loud.” When she glanced down, Azurelle was gazing at her with such
an unfathomable depth of regard that Shioni coughed and added, “What? It’s nothing, right? Come on, there must be a way around the edge.”

Shioni walked Thunder as far as she could before dismounting and continuing on foot. Never mind the cat-feet her warrior instructors always insisted upon–an elephant could have charged up to Talaku’s hideout without being heard over the
low thunder of the waterfall. Leaving her bow and their meagre set of equipment with Thunder, she hefted Siltam over her left shoulder and kept her dagger handy in her right hand. No telling what mood might take Talaku of an evening.

Pause. Spy out the terrain, as she had been taught. Shioni noticed
the shadows of bats flitting across the moonlight, hunting. Further along the river, an owl ghosted out of the scrub on pinions as silent as a moth. The night was so clear, she could make out a dozen or so marabou storks roosting atop an acacia tree across the river, making her imagine they were a group of stoop-shouldered, black-robed men gathered for a meeting of village elders. They were easily as tall as she was. Shioni shivered, imagining a group of storks attacking her, pecking away with their foot-long beaks… ugh! She limped to the water’s edge.

“Your leg is worse.”

“Do you miss your magic, Zi?”

The
Fiuri caught her breath. “More than you can imagine. It… it
is
who I am. I can’t even feed myself without climbing to a flower like some unfortunate worm. But I have a friend who once told me she would help me steal my powers back from the witch Kalcha.”

Shioni
began to squirm and stammer. Azurelle stopped her with a soft squeeze of her thumb. “No, please don’t misunderstand. Don’t feel accused. That promise is not broken. It is merely… delayed. I’m indebted to you, Shioni–please don’t feel indebted on my account.”

“I’m angry at Kalcha,”
she growled back, stopping at the edge of the waterfall. “We haven’t done enough to help you. So little is known of you Fiuri–”

“If you squeeze along the rocks, it becomes hollow back there,” said Zi, indicating the way. “There’s room.”

“A squeeze for a giant. Not for me.”

The rocky shelf was hollowed out like a wave, leaving a half-tunnel
twice Shioni’s height beneath the thundering flow. Although the rocks were slicked by the constant spray, Shioni and Zi did not even need to brave the rushing water.

“Hobble, hobble,” muttered Shioni, hoping her foot would not give way.

A goodly stone’s throw beneath the waterfall, they came upon a crack in the basal rock. From it issued a curl of smoke and a smell that made Shioni nearly faint with hunger. After a whispered consultation, they slipped inside. The path wiggled and twisted like an angry cobra as it burrowed deeper beneath the river. But they were drawn forward by the lucence of lamplight emanating from within the crevice, which soon opened out into a comfortable chamber–Talaku’s lair.

The cave was roughly furnished with a wooden bed made from what Shioni
assumed was burned roof beams, lined with the hides of many goats; with a stool carved from the hacked-off stump of a tree; with a neat fireplace upon which a goat was roasting on a spit fashioned of a Wasabi spear; and the weapons and helmets of dozens of men had been tossed into one corner.

The giant looked up from the
haunch of goat he was bolting down, startled but clearly trying not to show it.

Shioni greeted him thus
, “I could have killed you five times over by now.”

Tala
ku stared at her long and hard–so long, that she was on the verge of losing her nerve, when suddenly his eyes lit up and, throwing back his huge, shaggy head, the giant’s belly-laugh bellowed forth. “You!” he kept saying, before bursting into laughter again. “You! I
like
you, girl! You’ve got guts. You’ve more guts than that entire castle of lily-livered backstabbers.” He slapped his knee, tears of mirth streaking his cheeks. “But you cheated in our race. Oh yes you did.”

Shioni held her tongue.

“Sit down!” he chortled. “Goat, anyone? Share life with me. Hello, pretty Fiuri. Be welcome.”

“Thank you,” trilled Azurelle.

Talaku engulfed the sizzling spit-roast with one hand and hacked off a generous portion for Shioni with his knife. “See that?” he said. “I don’t feel fire any more. Other sorts of pain, yes, like here where you stabbed my arm. But not fire.”

Shioni sat with alacrity on the stump he vacated for her. “Thanks!”

“You look as hungry as a starving wolf cub,” said Talaku. “Eat. How did you know I was here?”

Between hasty mouthfuls, not even bothering to mop up the meat juices running down her chin
–which forced Zi to vacate her pocket for a ‘less carnivorous seat’–Shioni told him about the bearded vulture’s message from Anbessa, about decoding the stele by the cave, and how she had stolen the scroll from Princess Annakiya.

Talaku interrupted, waving
his leg-bone at her, “Girl, as I told you, you’ve got real courage. So they suspect you? That you’re colluding with Kalcha?”

She nodded.
“Exactly.”

The giant snarled a curse she did not
quite catch and smashed his fist down on a nearby stone, pulverising it. He flung the remains of the bone across the cave as hard as he could.

Azurelle was
making urgent signs toward the axe. “I–I brought you a gift,” said Shioni.

Talaku’s anger vanished as though
it were a candle she had snuffed out.

“Siltam!”
He cradled the weapon fondly, twirled it between his fingertips as though it were a reed rather than a mighty chunk of metal, and tested the sharpness of the blade with his thumb. “I missed you, my darling. With you on my back, I could have killed many more of those Wasabi dogs by now.”

“You
love that axe far too much.”

Talaku
made a noise like rocks grinding together in the back of his throat. “You speak your mind far too much. Who else dares offend the mighty Talaku?”

“And, I did not cheat.”

“Shioni, let it go.”

“No, Zi, there’s a principle here.”

“So–you came to ask my help? You want me to help Captain Dabir... the same man who humiliated you? And wiped dung in your hair?” The giant’s voice had become flat, deadly calm, making Shioni acutely aware that she was sharing a confined space with a madman. “Even if we save his useless hide, he’ll want to try me for murder and you for theft and disobedience to the General’s direct orders.”

“I know. But Talaku, those Sheban warriors out there, many are your friends–”

“Are they? They were quick enough to sell me down the river.”

Azurelle chimed in, “They were warriors following orders, just as they are now.”

Talaku’s unshaven jowls dimpled into a huge grin. “You know what? You two are a pair of mosquitos buzzing around a man’s head in the dead of night, and no matter how much he thrashes his arms, he cannot swat the dratted pests.”

Shioni was about to laugh off the insult, when Zi shrilled, “I am not
an insect, you overgrown warthog! I am a person, just like you!”

A shadow crossed the giant’s eyes then, a troubling of the waters of his soul. “
You say: like me, the freak of a giant? Or you, little butterfly-person? Or her, the lady who hears animals, who can make her horse fly as the wind?”

“I did
not
…” Shioni’s voice trailed off. Lightning had struck, blinding her. Thoughts galloped about inside her head:

We’re racing Talaku across the broad meadow. The wind whistles in my ears. Thunder is overhauling the bounding giant, but not quickly enough. I think of the picture of the winged
horse, the legend from Greece–what was his name? Pegasus? I send it to Thunder… and suddenly we are racing up behind the giant. I look down, wondering if I can still hear his hooves beat upon the earth…

“What?” squeaked Zi.

Thunder staring accusingly across the volcanic pipe, ‘I felt that! Praying does not push a horse’s backside!’ I say, ‘Thunder has a wild idea I pushed him up that slope with a wish and a prayer’. I willed him to find his grip, that’s all…

And he had. Just as he had beaten
Talaku in their race to the juniper tree. Just as, when she was drowning in the pool, she had been able to summon all manner of beasts to her aid. Dusky could have been killed. And she might have more success trying to bridle a runaway rhinoceros than control her powers. Suddenly, Shioni found she had lost her appetite.

Talaku
waved the hunk of meat at her again. “Perhaps you didn’t
mean
to cheat?”

“Oh, vulture-droppings to that!” Shioni sprang to her feet
, unwilling to give her fears any more reign than they already enjoyed. “Are you with us or not?”

Azurelle’s tongue–her tubular proboscis, for sucking nectar out of flowers, Shuba had informed them in her unsmiling way–had half-unrolled from her mouth in amazement. Even as she watched, it
flipped back into place like a tiny spring. Shioni tore her gaze away from the Fiuri and fixed the most ferocious glower she could summon upon the giant.

Talaku rose deliberately, a man-mountain in motion. He had grown much bulkier, Shioni saw, shrinking within herself as he towered
above her. He had the shoulders of a bull and the girth of a fully grown ox. He had to be a head taller than when he had abducted the Princess. He could pulverise her like he had pulverised that stone. He could snap her like a twig or tear her limb from limb, she thought, as he raised his arm above her.

His hand descended upon her shoulder, nearly pounding her to her knees.

“For you, I would do this,” he rumbled. “For Sheba and for my friends. But if Captain Dabir dares cross me–or you–I will personally trim his beard with my little shaver here.”

And, smiling a lion’s smile, he patted Siltam. Shioni smiled back. “Thank you, Talaku.”

“Now, a gift of my own.” He stepped across the room in three earth-shaking strides and bent to pick up a small gourd. Talaku had to grasp it gingerly between thumb and forefinger, but the gourd filled the palm of Shioni’s hand. “Mama Nomuula’s best. You need it more than I–for I heal fast. Look, even the scratch you gave me is already whole.” And he showed her his arm, which indeed, had only a finger-long white scar to prove where Shioni had pierced him with her dagger.

“A sip only, three times a day,” he instructed.

Shioni twisted the cork out the gourd’s mouth and sniffed the contents cautiously. Her head jerked backward automatically as the smell assaulted her nostrils. Oh yes, that was Mama’s brew alright. Medicinal, acrid, it could probably be used for scouring rust off armour. It would turn her insides inside out. Pinching her nose shut with her free hand, she glugged a healthy dose.