The Legend of Sheba: Rise of a Queen (8 page)

“Do you not think I knew the danger when I agreed to return? That I might have been killed the moment we set foot onshore, or any moment since? I am my mother’s daughter and I will not hide!” I said, my voice rising in volume. I ripped off my veil. “I am the daughter of the king, the anointed of Almaqah!” And then I was turning, shouting back to those around me. “I am the granddaughter of the great Agabos, the unifier of Saba! Whose
markab
do you think that is? It was his. It is mine. It is ours!”

Cries from behind me, swords raised to the air. Ahead of me, Khalkharib and the others had turned back to stare. It did not matter that it was not the lost
markab
of my grandfather. It would be now. I rose up in the saddle.

“Can men defeat the chosen of the gods?
We
are the children of Almaqah, who has promised prosperity in measures unseen to come! Saba! And Almaqah! Over all!”

The shouts rose to a roar.

Beside me, Maqar’s face was stark. His mouth was moving, his whisper inaudible, but somehow I heard the words that fell from his lips.

Who are you?

A horn sounded. The lines of north men had begun to advance, closing half the distance between us. Ahead of us, Nabat was studying them intensely, seeming to murmur to himself. Khalkharib, beside him, leaned forward in the saddle and then said something swiftly to Nabat.

Nabat shouted back to us through the din. “They are too few! We have the advantage!”

“We have every advantage,” Niman said with a dark grin. “Saba and Almaqah!”

In the split moment before the men surged forward, the field fell away. There was only Maqar, looking at me with that same unreadable expression of one who knows and does not recognize another, at once.

And then the ranks rushed forward, carrying everything and everyone with it like the monsoon raging down the highland ravines.

We surged across the northern oasis. A thousand men on camels seemed to flow past me. Three thousand on foot closed in their wake—tribesmen urbanized by city and village returned in an instant to fierce nomadic roots like the tamed animal turned feral at the first scent of blood.

Perhaps it was the lingering effect of the datura, but even though I knew I had never ridden so hard in my life—and not even as fast as those tribesmen streaming past me with beautiful ferocity, their
colors and those of their camels streaming behind them in violent mosaic—for a moment I thought I floated, the she-camel beneath me so much like the rolling of waves and not the jarring walk I had lived with for weeks . . .

Yafush closed in tight against me, grabbing for my reins, Maqar against my other side, sword drawn. I, armored in linen and silk, and armed with only my dagger.

Ahead, the first line of north men seemed to falter and break to one side. At a sharp double blast of the horn, my archers—kneeling in the saddle—sent a volley straight for them. Far ahead, men fell at random, like gaps in a line of teeth.

But there—they were wheeling, the line not breaking so much as sliding like earth from a hill, toward the left flank. Nabat was bellowing at Khalkharib, who seemed not to hear as confusion spread like a gust through our number.

I was slowing, the sheer loss of speed like pain, as ahead of me the same men who had fondled their camels like beloved pets around the fires shouted their names now as war cry.

Something was wrong. I looked back at the great gap opening in our company—not the forward separation between those mounted and on foot, but between the right flank and middle. There was a long moment of confusion . . . and then the sudden clash of blades and lightning of iron where there should not have been.

Maqar shouted toward the clamor.

I squeezed shut my eyes and opened them, willing them to see truly. I stared as the right flank shrunk in on itself, collapsing against the men of Qataban. What had happened?

And then I knew.

The men of Aman had betrayed us.

Ahead, the mounted charge had reeled left toward the onslaught of north men. In moments, we would be flanked.

“Princess!” The voice of Yafush, who might go days without speaking, startled me. Never had I heard it raised in alarm. He grabbed for me and I knew he meant to spirit me from the field before the north men reached the causeway and my escape became impossible. I jerked on the rein, too late. The large Nubian had grabbed a handful of my tunic even as my camel darted ahead.

I swung, airborne, crashed hard against the side of his mount. We fell back and Maqar’s head swiveled toward us. With a last look at me, he abruptly broke right with his father’s men.

Yafush hauled me over the neck of his camel, bent low as the volley came at last. Men staggered to the earth around us, arrows protruding from chest, thigh, and throat.

I craned to see the widening gap in our number as Nabat and the men of Saba crashed into the oncoming north men and the Qatabans fell back against the traitor tribe of Aman.

I took all of this in, vaguely aware that I couldn’t breathe, jarred by every footfall of the loping camel.

Yafush veered from the field toward the narrow causeway as a clot of north men rushed to intercept us.

Maqar.
Where was Maqar? In the breach I saw the fallen, camels nosing at their unmoving masters or milling among the wounded. There—the robed figure of Asm, clutching at his leg.

And then I saw it. Aimless, head lashing to the side: the white bull camel carrying the
markab
.

With a violent twist that rent my gown from my shoulders, I tumbled free. No airborne moment this time—the earth tilted and slammed the breath from my body. I groped in the mud, gaping for air with lungs that refused to expand. Pain shot through the iron case of my ribs. For a moment I thought I had been struck with an archer’s arrow.

Somewhere, the cry:
Saba and Almaqah!

The rain was in my eyes, stars where there should be none in a twilight that did not exist.

I spotted Yafush surrounded by north men, the clash of their swords a distant thing in a world slowly losing sound. I thought:
I die
. Better here, like this, than before Hagarlat’s court. Mud against my cheek.

But Maqar was on that field. Asm. Yafush, and thousands of men in a bargain I had struck with Almaqah himself.

Get up.

Breath, when it came, was an excruciating wisp, my rebellious lungs incessant at last.

The clamor of the field came roaring back.

I rolled and pain shot down my arms, sent my heart hammering into my ears. I shoved up from the ground, heavy and weightless at once, the earth spinning beneath me. Before me in the oasis, bodies sprawled like bloodied runes.

One object towered over them all: a golden ark atop a flash of white, reins trailing in the muck. I staggered . . . and then ran, nightmare slow, for the
markab
.

I grabbed for the bridle, missed as the snarling bull swung away, and then dove for the reins. I jerked his head around and down with all my weight. An eternity passed as my foot found purchase on his neck—I could not afford to couch and mount him—and then I was lifted up. I grabbed hold of the acacia frame, clawed my way into it, the reins wound around my hand.

“Daughter of Almaqah!” It was one of the tribesmen. I had no chance to see his scabbard—only that he was visibly in pain but holding up his riding stick to me.

I grabbed it and, clasping the acacia frame, urged the bull into a run.

Chaos. I made for the broken flank, heart thundering. I screamed
for Maqar and, when I could not find him, for every god whose name I knew. A rallying shout—ahead of me, the renewed cry.

Almaqah!

I did not see the line of north men falter. Barely registered the blast of my kinsmen’s horns. With all my strength, I got to my feet in the
markab
.

One sight—one face—mattered to me now.

Only at the last moment did I catch sight of Maqar, hair matted to his gore-smattered face, going down just as the tribe of Aman buckled.

T
hey say that I called down the power of Almaqah from the crescent-horned cradle of the
markab
as though it were a throne. That I ripped my gown, like the war-virgins of old, shouting encouragement to my warriors until the north men fell.

The truth is that Yafush reached me as I collapsed from the camel. That even after they bore me into the city and proclaimed me queen, I lay in bed with broken ribs for weeks, unwilling to wake.

My lover was dead. The crown was mine.

Hagarlat, my half-brother, Dhamar, and their influential nobles were strangled at the order of Wahabil, my new chief minister. I gave permission to Niman and our tribe-kin to raid Nashshan, Aman, and their allies in retribution. They surrounded their wells, claimed thousands of camels, and took as many slaves to be sold as far as Damascus with the first traders’ caravans.

My kinsmen returned exultant but I felt no triumph. I had gained a kingdom poisoned with regret.

I drifted between consciousness and the merciful sleep of the physician’s draught. I spoke often with Maqar in those hours until he became not a man but an ibex, his blood in a golden bowl.

At last, I woke and dashed the bottle of draught to the floor.

When Asm presided over the sacrifice of five hundred bulls and three hundred ibex at the temple in celebration, I sent a young virgin in my stead to gaze into the morbid cauldron. Asm, I knew, was puzzled that I would not divine it again and I never told him the truth: the day in the clearing I had called for incense, knowing myself close to fainting.

But as I gazed into the bowl, I had seen nothing.

FIVE

M
arib, jewel of Saba, sat at the crossroads of the world. Her caravan route stretched from the highlands of southern Hadramawt north to Damascus, her sea routes from Ophir to the eastern Indus River. Anyone dealing in passage of spices, slaves, gold, ivory, incense, textiles, jewels, or exotic animals had dealings with Saba’s roads and ports. Which meant they now had dealings with me.

In my first months as queen, I sent colonists from Saba north to the great Jawf Valley, where I bestowed on them the choice fields of the traitor tribes of Nashshan and Aman. They, in turn, provided labor for the building of garrisons and new temples at the oases. The trade route—that all-important artery through the heart of Saba’s unified kingdom—was secure.

I took into my service men from the tribes and kin-tribes of those who had fought for me and a handful of Desert Wolves. I summoned the most powerful nobles of the tribal kingdoms to ritual feast within the temple complex to make pacts of federation within its auspices.

The rains had come in abundance; the fields were green with sorghum and millet. At desert’s edge, the tamarisk and mimosa were in pink bloom, the sands awash with blue heliotrope.

I funded a corps of engineers to repair the canals and stave off the ever-present silt. I consulted with Wahabil on the appointment of new ministers and vice-ministers of trade and treasury, and councilmen to the colony of Punt across the sea.

I dedicated a bronze figure of Maqar to the temple and had it installed opposite those of my mother and father—and had those of Hagarlat and my half brother ritually relieved of their curses and removed. But unlike the statue of my father, which listed his many services to the cult of Almaqah, and my mother’s, which eulogized the glory of the gods in her beauty, Maqar’s bore only the word “heart” in reminder of what Almaqah had taken from me.

I did not allow myself to think of Maqar by day. But at night, Shara, my childhood friend, held me as the tears broke like an earthen dam. I clasped the alabaster jar with the dust of his grave to my chest. It was meant to be drunk with wine for the soothing of grief, but I could not bring myself to do it, the wine in any cup too like the blood in the bowl.

It did not help that the aged eyes of Maqar stared out at me from the thin eyelids of his father, Salban, each time my council convened so that I could barely meet his gaze anytime he spoke. Nor when my councilors began to debate the merits of my latest marriage proposal and the question of an heir.