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

A
nd she was half a head taller than Princess Annakiya already–an ungainly, graceless foil for her supremely graceful friend, who made looking and behaving as a princess ought to seem so blasted effortless…

Thunder pushed his nose insistently into Shioni’s hand. He sent her a picture of Wasabi warriors slipping away
among the trees.

“So,” she said,
mentally throwing her resentful thoughts out for the hyenas to breakfast on, “you let a few Wasabi escape. Where do you think they went?”

“Aren’t you afraid of the mad giant?”

His whisper hung as a fragile crystal between them. Shioni was acutely aware of the danger of shattering their developing understanding.

“Yes.
A little.” She glanced down at Zi, who had kept silent throughout their conversation, and then back up at Talaku. “But he’s the same man who pulled me up a cliff by my hair and saved my life.” Shioni forced out a soft laugh. “Besides, I carry the claw marks of a wild lion on my shoulder and live to tell the tale. You’re not so scary compared to that.”

Talaku’s snort of amusement
reminded her of a bull elephant, knee-deep in the river, shooting a trunkful of water over his back in play. “Come on, Shioni. Let’s go find where the Wasabi went in such a hurry.”

“H
e’s not so scary?”
Zi squeaked. “Shioni, are you mad? Have you forgotten how the lion tore your shoulder apart? What planet do you live on?”

Shioni glanced up from the trail, distracted by her question.
“Hakim Isoke did give Annakiya a lesson about the planets, but I don’t really remember–”

“No, you silly baboon!
I meant the mad–!”

“
Hush!” Talaku hissed behind them.

The afternoon air slept b
eneath the pungent juniper trees, undisturbed by the chirruping of crickets, the twittering of birds, or even the slightest breath of wind. The heat made her clothes stick to her skin. The juniper forest was strangely still. Shioni wondered what it might be waiting for, or what might have frightened the animals into hiding.

She
focussed again on the faint trail left by the fleeing Wasabi. Talaku was right. The enemy warriors might yet be waiting in ambush, concealed somewhere amidst the thicket, or they might have fled entirely. But to where? Somewhere ahead lay the sheer, thousand-foot-tall basalt cliffs that so spectacularly framed the valley above and below Castle Asmat. The Sheban warriors had scouted the ridges many times to identify any trails that could be used by an enemy–and there were precious few. The castle’s location had been carefully chosen by an unknown, ancient king or chief. It could not be easily flanked or surrounded.

So… a secret trail?
Shioni scanned the ground ahead with care. After fleeing blindly for a few minutes, she deduced from the spoor, the Wasabi must have calmed down and organised themselves. Twice, she identified signs that told her their warriors had carefully concealed the marks of their passage–a leaf not quite returned to its prior position, the stem of a plant which had been bent and bruised, but then bent upright again. Here again, Azurelle pointed out a thread of clothing snagged on a branch. They were headed for the cliffs. For certain.

Kalcha’s oversized pet hyenas…
and now a troop of Wasabi warriors… General Getu was not going to receive this news well. Oh no. And she would be the one to enflame his wrath. At least it wasn’t her fault–for a change!

Young juniper
s had mixed with old to create a shaded, leafy green underworld that they drifted through like leaves floating silently upon a zephyr. The old trees were fifty or more feet tall, and around their feet the younger growth jostled for a share of the sunlight, especially where one of the forest giants had fallen. Such as this one right before her nose. Shioni paused. She raised her hand and heard the giant hesitate behind her. What was this? Something odd… she glanced back over her shoulder.

Talaku signed ‘what’?
Shioni patted the air in the hunters’ speech she had been learning as part of her training: ‘hold on’. Pointed at her nose. She smelled freshly turned earth somewhere nearby. That was what had kindled her danger-sense. The giant nodded. He must smell it too. Shioni wondered suddenly if his senses were developing at the same exceptional rate as his frame. The giant’s reaction speed was already amazing–but then, hadn’t she recently knocked down a speeding arrow destined for Princess Annakiya’s head? How different did that make her from the giant?

Clearly, s
omething weird was happening to her. What if she too started growing madly… or just growing mad?

Biting
the inside of her cheek as hard as she could bear, Shioni watched Talaku choose a fallen branch. Holding it in his right hand, he stretched out his long arm and poked the ground ahead of them. Nothing. He stepped forward, repeating the action. Again… and the ground cover moved. Another firm prod and a section easily large enough to swallow her for breakfast, caved in suddenly.

H
e grinned and mimed a set of sharp stakes within a pit. ‘Go around,’ he gestured, indicating a faint path to the right.

Shioni peered into the pit in passing.
Ouch! The bottom bristled with sharpened stakes–anyone who fell in would have a most unpleasant landing. She rubbed the gooseflesh on her neck. What were the Wasabi hiding?

“Stop!” squeaked Azurelle.
Talaku was moving toward the fallen tree.

Too late.
His giant foot snagged a concealed rope. A great log all set with spikes came whooshing through the trees–but the Fiuri’s call had given him enough time to react. Talaku sprang aside in a huge bound no ordinary man could have made, and for his trouble, received but a glancing blow upon his shoulder as the log crashed down into the bushes.

The giant
grunted something curt and probably rather rude beneath his beard.

Moving with
even greater caution now, Talaku and Shioni skirted the fallen tree. They could make out the dark, sheer cliff face through the thinning foliage. They stepped clear of the treeline and looked warily about.

Shioni’s attention immediately fixed on a bridge, not a stone’s throw to her right hand, which spanned
a deep gully. The gully’s sides appeared to have been carved smooth–in places, weathered chisel marks were picked out by the angle of the lowering afternoon sun. The bridge pointed straight at a jagged black hole in the cliff; clearly the mouth of a cave or a tunnel leading somewhere beneath the ridge. Her eyes flicked back to the bridge. It was in excellent condition, blocks of dressed stone seamlessly fitted together by master builders… remarkable, and so bizarrely out of place that she did not trust it for an instant.

Talaku
found his voice first. “Right through the mountain,” he said, laying one huge paw upon his axe as though to assure himself it was still sheathed upon his back. “This goes right through or I’m a monkey’s uncle.”

“They
’ve gone in, haven’t they?”

“Yes, Zi.”

“Look,” Azurelle pointed, her voice rising with excitement. “Isn’t that similar to the stele you found, Shioni–the one by the Mesheha River?”

Following the
Fiuri’s quivering finger to its target, Shioni saw that at the entrance of the cave, a three-sided stone column had been carved out of the living rock. The fourth side was the mountain itself. Zi was right. Apparently identical to the stele they had discovered alongside the Mesheha, it was covered in lettering, and about fifteen feet above ground level she noticed the imprint of a hand so gigantic that not even Talaku’s paw could have filled it. Yet? She should keep that thought private… but what a discovery! Annakiya would be agog. She would be down here faster than a sparrowhawk. Did this mean the Wasabi had their own tunnel through the mountains? Had they just averted a surprise attack on Castle Asmat? Or were those warriors just a scouting party?

And the
Sheban scouts had missed this–how? Getu would not be angry. He would be livid. She could just picture his face darkening, his throat swelling with words to scorch and blister even a seasoned warrior…

She should not be so frightened of him. ‘
Trembling like a leaf,’ she muttered to herself. ‘Brave warrior of Sheba
you
are.’

“Move closer, Shioni.
I want to read that inscription.” As she stepped forward, the Fiuri added, “But not onto the bridge. That’s too obvious a place for a trap. Hmm… I see. It says, ‘Key to the Caves’. Why would you chisel that in stone?”

“Maybe because it’s not that obvious,” grunted Talaku.
“Go on, titch, why don’t you walk over the bridge and see what you can find out? You’re not going to set anything off.”

“Titch?”

Her indignant squawk made the giant chuckle knowingly, as if he were a father indulging a small child. “Fine. Pretty titch, will you pretty please move your pretty self–”

“Ha!
You overstuffed, unschooled barbarian! All muscle and no brains. Just you come down here and say that to my face!”

“Couldn’t if I tried.”

But Talaku was addressing the wings on Azurelle’s back as she flounced off towards the bridge. Coming from someone only four inches tall, her exit was a masterpiece of stomping exasperation–but Shioni thought it made her look cute. She smothered a chuckle. No point in provoking the Fiuri any more than necessary!

S
ooner than she had expected, Zi’s voice floated back to them. “It’s complete gibberish, my fine friends,” she called. “I’ll bet the nectar of a thousand flowers it’s a code.”

“Ha!” said Talaku.
“Did you check all three sides?”

“What kind of an idiot do you take me for?”
screeched the Fiuri. “Of course I did!”

Talaku waggled
a bushy eyebrow at Shioni. “Of course.”

“There’s two levers here!
What do you think they do?”

“They probably set
or disarm a couple of traps,” hazarded the giant. “Hmm–I suppose I could jump that ravine. What do you think?”

“I think we should get Annakiya and Shuba here
to take a look,” said Shioni. “Maybe they could figure out what’s on that stele. And the chief engineer–don’t step on the bridge! Talaku! Are you asking for trouble?”

Talaku tapped the stones with
the sole of his leather sandal. “What do you think’s going to happen?” A second later, the giant had his answer. “Ouch...”

Shioni folded her arms and tapped
her
foot. Pointedly.

“Okay, that didn’t do much to prove that being big doesn’t equal being thick between the ears, did it?”
And he beamed at her, which was amazing given a flying spear had just pierced right through the calf muscle of his left leg. “Are you okay? You weren’t hit?”

“Oh, I’m fine, no thanks to you!”

Talaku was examining the spear. “At least they didn’t poison these.”

Shioni
let her breath out in a sigh and stepped over another spear, which had narrowly missed her ribs. “First your stupid race, now you go setting off traps deliberately? We’re lucky to be alive.”

Azurelle had come rushing over the bridge at the sound of twanging and the swish of a dozen or so large spears hurtling through the air.
She told Talaku more succinctly and a lot more rudely than Shioni, exactly what she thought of his behaviour.

The giant had the grace to look chastised. But only a little.

“Fine,” he muttered. “I’ll guard the cave, if you go tell General Getu.”

“Tell him which bit of this hyena’s breakfast, exactly?” shrilled Azurelle. “Your stupidity, or–”

“Zi!” Shioni cut in. “Come on. We’ve baited old lions before.”

F
rom a distance, Castle
Asmat resembled a blocky red ant heap. Its ruddy stone walls were covered in wooden scaffolding and swarming with hundreds of male slaves labouring to complete the thick outer defensive wall. Within, Mama Nomuula’s gardens sprouted right up against the four towers of the inner keep. Above them even, Shioni saw the crown of the massive baobab tree beneath which she had fought Kalcha’s python and rescued Zi. Then, the potbellied tree had seemed bare and dead. Now it was replete with creamy, sweet-smelling blossoms and attracted birds from miles around to a great feast.

Thunder cantered eagerly up the
well-worn trail to the castle. He snorted as Shioni waved to the elephants, working hard at hauling lumber and stones for the building works.

“The Chief Elephant is a terrible bore,” he said.
“If you ever have trouble sleeping, just ask him to tell you a story.”

Shioni giggled.
“He does like his stories, doesn’t he?”

“Ferengi!
Ferengi!”

“Shall I bite that little brat,” said Thunder, curling his lip at a wide-eyed little boy
running alongside the trail, “or do you want first pickings?”

“Oh, leave him be, Thunder.
It doesn’t bother me.”

He flicked his ears.
“I’ll believe that the day Captain Dabir dresses in a monkey suit and parades around the castle scratching the fleas in his armpits.”

Shioni smacked his
withers with her hand–which didn’t hurt him a bit–as she burst into laughter. “He isn’t my favourite Captain, Thunder, but that’s too much!”

But as
they clattered up the short strip of cobblestones into the castle keep itself, Shioni rubbed the back of her head where Captain Dabir had once smeared his dung-encrusted boots all over her hair. Oh, the slave’s life! Maybe Thunder was right. Some things could be perfectly beastly. And Captain Dabir was nothing if not a beast.

“If I can’t bite any more, can I at least kick
that bully Yeshi? Please?” asked the horse, spying the sly older girl carrying several gourds into the kitchens. “She reminds me of a walking hyena.”

Shioni swung down from
the saddle and handed the rope to a fearful stable boy. “Now just you behave yourself.”

“Killjoy. Can’t a horse have any fun…?”

“No! No biting, kicking, stamping, prancing, squashing, nipping–”

“–or any other kind of equine misbehaviour. I know the lecture by heart, thank you very much.” But as the stable boy led him away, as docile as a sleepy donkey, Thunder surprised her by nickering over his shoulder, “And
thank you
, Shioni… for all this. I appreciate my new life more than you might realise.”

Well! Shioni stared after the King’s horse.
Just when she thought he was in a frisky, feisty temper, he had reached out with a few sincere words and turned her heart into mush. Rascally horse. What a change from the walking rack of ribs he had been when she first met him! Now there was a job worth doing and well done, she told herself, thinking back to how she had travelled deep into the Simien Mountains to rescue Thunder. But without her friend Tensi, the daughter of one of the warriors, and her healing touch… she clenched her jaw. Thunder might have been reduced to a bag of bones. Just like poor Star.

Shaking off her pensive thoughts,
Shioni quickly asked after General Getu and learned he was in his room. She knocked politely on the doorpost, slipped within, and dropped easily into the customary kneeling position just inside the door to await his attention. The General was sharing a large, round plate of
injera
bread topped with several fiery sauces, including Mama’s signature spicy chicken sauce–judging by the rich, aromatic smell of
berbere
that made her stomach announce itself grandly to every person present–with Mama Nomuula, Princess Annakiya, and several of the Captains.

Cheeks burning, she dropped her gaze.

Shioni hoped she would not have to wipe drool off her lips–that would be almost as embarrassing as the ridiculous antics of her stomach. Mama’s berbere spice blend was widely praised as the best in Sheba, and the reasons for that praise kept tantalising her nostrils. But a slave’s lot was to be hungry, wasn’t it? Constantly. She pressed the hollow of her stomach discreetly with her hands to still the pangs, and had to fight off a fierce urge to behave like a lion licking his chops over a juicy haunch of bushbuck. ‘Oh, Mama!’ she groaned inwardly. ‘A smell so sweet it’s sheer torture…’

After
a few moments, Getu rested his elbow on his knee, carefully keeping the red, sauce-smeared fingers of his right hand away from his uniform. He raised an eyebrow in her direction. “I trust this is important? Make your report.”

She swallowed. Now to
beard the grizzled old lion!

In
terse sentences, Shioni related how she had found the spoor of Kalcha’s overgrown hyenas by the river, followed by surprising the Wasabi patrol with Talaku, and the traps leading up to the tunnel the Wasabi had vanished into. By the time she finished, all the Captains had stopped eating and were looking to General Getu. His expression turned harder than a block of granite. Briskly, he ordered thirty warriors to rush down to the juniper thicket, clear it of traps, and support Talaku; a troop of scouts to check the spoor by the river; other scouts to be interrogated as to why they had missed a secret tunnel so close to the castle; patrols to be sent in all directions on high alert; the castle to be secured and the guard doubled… in less time than it had taken her to relate the story, Castle Asmat came to resemble a termite mound stirred by a stick.

When his C
aptains had rushed to their duties, the one-armed General rounded on Shioni. He narrowed his eye–his good eye. The left half of his face had once been terribly burned. It made him look angry even when he was not. The warriors all said he was the best General they had ever served under. As tough as old elephant hide, but also fair and upright.

He said,
“Why weren’t you paying attention when you ran into that Wasabi patrol?”

The General
was too sharp to miss the inconsistencies in her tale–as expected, Shioni thought, and quietly told him about Talaku’s strange behaviour and their race which ended amongst the Wasabi patrol. “We probably came upon them too fast for them to hide, my Lord.”

Mama Nomuula checked for the fifth time, “But you’s fine, my pet?”

“Hardly a scratch, Mama.”

“You looks all shook up.
Have a bite from our plate. Them Captains is missing my best!”

“Because you and the Princess aren’t going anywhere until I’m
satisfied that Wasabi patrol really has vanished into the mountain,” growled Getu, with much of an angry hound about his tone. “Eat! Eat first! Then you will accompany the Princess and Shuba to examine the stele. And you will return Princess Annakiya here before sundown without losing so much as one hair upon her head, or I will personally arrange your intestines on a platter for the vultures to pick over. Are we clear?”

“Clear, my Lord.”

As it seemed the General had spoken his piece, Shioni stretched out her right hand, tore off a piece of injera, used it to scoop up a portion of sauce, and popped the bundle into her mouth. Bliss! Oh, Mama’s chicken
wot
was the tastiest food in the whole world…

“I will prepare my scrolls and ink,” said Shuba,
the Kwegu Ascetic, appearing suddenly from a shadowy corner. Her gaunt, hollow-cheeked face, heavily scarred with tribal markings, caught the lamplight for a moment as she gave Shioni a dark, unreadable stare. Then she turned and swept out of the door with her robes swirling about her legs like black-edged wings.

Shioni shivered.
She hated it when Shuba popped out of nowhere. It gave her the shivers every time. However, it did not prevent her from taking another hurried bite. The General might become offended if she disobeyed his order to eat. And she was famished.

But a pair of huge arms enveloped her and crushed her into a hug.
“I swear you treats my girl like one of your men, Getu!” Mama accused him. “It in’t right!”

“She’s
here to serve Sheba.”

“She’s a girl!”

When she became angry, Mama sometimes forgot how strong she was. She was in all dimensions a huge woman, born somewhere down the southern coast, brought to the land of Abyssinia by the slave ships. Her formidable cookery and healing skills had landed her a position in the royal household. She had tree trunks for arms, and a heart as big as her frame. Shioni wished Mama were her real mother–even when she was bending her ribs like kindling for a fire!

“Well, unlike
some of the others, this one has heart, and even demonstrates a remarkably functional brain from time to time,” Getu drawled, openly enjoying the way his words made Mama’s jaw drop in surprise. “But she’s also my troublemaker-in-chief. Whenever there’s trouble in this castle–”

“You think
!” cried Mama. “She’s just a-looking after your backside and mine.” But at least her arms let up. Shioni could breathe again.

“It’d take five of her to look after
your
backside.”

Mama seemed
to find his rudeness amusing. A beaming smile lit up her round face like the sun leaping above the hills of Abyssinia in the morning. “Better a plump, well-padded rump, than the rear end of a skinny goat like you, eh?”

It was only when no-one else was present that Mama and the General dropped their guard, Shioni thought.
They could be so funny! It was almost embarrassing to listen to them sometimes, as though she were overhearing a private conversation. But in a sense she was invited. They didn’t mind her being there.

Being curled up against Mama Nomuula
made a perfect storm of feelings boil up within her. Mama smelled of herbs, bread dough and sweat, and the lavender oil she loved to lavish on her dark curls; a smell that Shioni thought all mothers must have. How she longed… how she dreamed... no, she must not even think it. It was too painful. And, catching Annakiya’s unguarded gaze from within the circle of Mama’s arms, she realised how much her friend must miss her mother too. The Queen of Sheba had died a year before she came to court. Shioni had been purchased as a present, a pretty plaything, for the Princess. A diversion from her grief.

A toy-child, some people
had called her, unable to believe she was even a real person.

Shioni
closed her eyes. Mama Nomuula was in many ways mother to them both.

“You should
go saddle my horse, Shioni,” said the Princess, coolly. “I will want to ride out as soon as the General receives word the trail is safe.”

She was jealous
! Just because the Princess was cosseted and protected, by none more than Shioni herself… and preferred reading scrolls to having adventures… of course accidents such as running into Wasabi patrols never happened to her! Spoiled brat! But a calmer voice in her head added: she carried many burdens these days, with her father the King lying in a coma, and the impending judgement she had to pass on the rebel villager, Desta. With her brother Prince Bekele away in the Sheban capital of Takazze, Princess Annakiya effectively ruled Castle Asmat and all the warriors and support staff stationed there. That must be like carrying around a sack full of boulders all the time, Shioni thought, regarding her friend loyally. But who better to carry those burdens? Not grasping, selfish Prince Bekele!

Four
mouthfuls of food was enough only to tease her stomach into wakefulness. Could she risk more? The set of Annakiya’s lips suggested she had best not delay.

Shioni
ironed the pangs of hurt out of her voice with the ease of long practice. “At once, my Lady.”

Princess Annakiya nodded
stiffly. Was that regret flickering in her eyes? Lowering her head to hide her feelings and chewing the inside of her cheek once more, Shioni left the room. Until her slave’s necklet was removed, Annakiya would always be her owner first, and her friend second.

And nothing could change that, could it?