The Mad Giant (Shioni of Sheba Book 3) (6 page)

L
ater the same afternoon
after Shioni’s unexpected encounter with General Getu, Princess Annakiya decided to go swimming in the river. Shioni was delighted. She had rarely needed a wash so badly. And Annakiya was gracious enough to tell her exactly that. And to supply soap!

Shioni scowled. The soap and the teasing
were no bother. The messenger boy who had just arrived to disturb them was. What now? Could they not have a moment’s peace?

Princess Annakiya paddled across the
brimming rock pool to the near side. “What is it?”

“A message, lady,” lisped the
messenger boy, who looked overawed, shy, and excited all at once. “General Getu needs to speak to you.”

Annakiya turned to Shioni.
“You carry on. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

What she meant, Shioni thought, was to give Azurelle an opportunity to bathe too.
It was becoming increasingly difficult to hide the Fiuri’s presence in the busy castle. They were all afraid she would be discovered soon. But what else could they do?

“At least take
an escort with you,” Shioni worried. “General Getu would never forgive me–”

“From here to the castle?
” She rolled her eyes. “I
think
I can manage.”

“Okay…”
And whose head would it be on? Not the Princess’, stubborn as she was! Shioni sighed, letting her overarm strokes thrash the water into foam.

Following the recent rains, the river was
running higher than usual. Her favourite flat rocks, where she loved to catch the warm sunshine, were half covered in fast-running water. Today, the waterfall where Zi usually bathed churned up the oftentimes calm waters in a roaring torrent. She caught a flash of royal blue as a kingfisher darted about busily above the next pool upstream, searching for a fish to spear for its breakfast. Higher still, the other slaves would be bathing, and the elephants might already have departed for work after their noontime drink and splash in the river.

But this place was secluded from the bustle and hubbub.
A small bend in the river and a wooded bank were enough to make it perfect for relaxing, so much so that she and Annakiya had taken to calling it ‘their’ pool.

Shioni reminded herself not to swim too close to the lower end.
There, the river forced its way between a jumble of huge, flat boulders. They were barrier enough to create the pool in the first place. But now the water was jetting with real force through the cracks. Enough to shift them? No way! Pulling herself up and out of the pool, Shioni padded lightly over the tops of the boulders, leaping a couple of places where needed. Here was a nice flat spot already warming with the sun. She could lie down and close her eyes…

Ooh, the sun was lovely. Now this was the way to relax! Despite her better intentions, Shioni felt her eyelids grow suddenly heavy.

“Now isn’t this
nice?
The ferengi has her own private pool!”

Shioni jumped. Had she fallen asleep? For how long?

“Aw,” agreed Yeshi, smiling nastily down at Shioni. “Too good to use the same water as the rest of us, ferengi? Afraid we’d dirty your precious white flesh?”

Shioni’s heart
was an earthworm trying to burrow back underground with a robin’s beak tugging at its tail. Three faces loomed over her–Yeshi, her arch-tormentor, and her two cronies: Almaz, a large, strong girl with a flat, unfriendly face, and a wiry girl nicknamed ‘Tiny’ by everyone, who had a reputation for fighting. She was always chewing something and her normal expression suggested that whatever it was she had in her mouth, it tasted horrid.

The
trio pounced! In a trice, they wrenched Shioni’s arms behind her back and she felt a leather cord bite into her wrists. She fought back, furious with herself at having been caught napping in the sunshine, but the three older girls were bigger and stronger than her.

“Aw,” said Yeshi again.
She was rarely imaginative, except when it came to nastiness. “Gave you a fright?” She raised her foot and shoved Shioni backward into the pool!

The water was only about waist
deep in that place, but Shioni was so shocked that when she was unable to use her hands to catch herself, she sank with a startled ‘glub!’ She swallowed rather more of the river than she would have wanted before she was able to draw her legs under herself and push her head up, coughing and spluttering.

Her hands were well and truly
trussed. How had they managed that so fast? She wrenched her wrists this way and that, but only succeeded in hurting herself.

“It’s time for your lessons, ferengi,” said Almaz, jumping into the
pool and wading towards her. Shioni backed away. How had she not heard them sneaking up on her? “Come here!”

“A
tiny lesson in obedience.” Tiny tittered at her own joke.

Shioni backed away faster, trying to decide if she should scream for help.
But even though the waterfall had only ten feet or so to drop, it was loud and constant enough that she doubted her screams would be heard.

Yeshi
grabbed her arm and jerked her around. “Bow to me!”

Cruel fingers dug into her cheeks,
making her face up to Yeshi’s cold smile. Her fellow slave’s free hand came to rest atop her head. “You know what comes next, don’t you?”

Shioni felt her knees buckle and
managed to snatch half a breath before the water rose over her mouth and tried to invade her nose. She was kept under for a while, and then let up. “My turn!” laughed Almaz, and dunked her with a heavy hand.

Twisting her body like a speared fish, Shioni broke away
from the older girls. She kicked out with her feet as she had been taught. But she felt so awkward without the use of her hands! And her breath was short! In a moment, she had to surface and the older girls immediately started wading toward her.

“Naughty, naughty Shioni,” Yeshi ticked her off.
“People like you don’t have parents. They’re spawned by slimy worms underneath a rock somewhere.”

These girls were not going to let up.
Maybe they wanted to drown her? Or just half-drown her, Shioni thought. If she knew Yeshi, humiliation would be uppermost in her mind. The water was getting shallower. If she could just keep them at bay for a moment… but then her foot caught on a rock and she sat down with a splash.

Almaz was quick
est to capitalise. She leaped forward, driving her knees into Shioni’s chest with all of her sizeable weight. The breath burst out of her in one huge kafuffle of bubbles. Shioni swallowed, choked, and thrashed about desperately. Then suddenly she was up again, then down, being slapped and pushed about and repeatedly dunked by the three. Was this real? Was this happening to her? Shioni felt herself drift away. Perhaps it was someone else’s body being pummelled like a sack of grain and spitting up water and drifting hazily beneath the surface.

Suddenly she became aware they had stopped.
Rising from the water Shioni turned around slowly, feeling as though she was a frog that had just been tumbled in a waterfall. Were they bored by her lack of response? She blinked. No, they were looking across to the far side of the pool, where a solitary rider had appeared between where the tall riverside reeds gave way to a stand of flat-topped acacia trees.

Captain Dabir.

He raised his hand and waved, calling, “Make sure the ferengi gets nice and clean, girls.” And he rode on without a backward glance.

It crystallised in Shioni’s mind then.
Tiny’s mouth was moving, but she did not hear what she was saying. Their attack was organised. Efficient. The messenger boy sent to lure the Princess away. The cord ready to bind her wrists. The pool, hidden from sight… it all
stank
of Dabir’s handiwork. She had crossed Dabir before. Now she would pay.

Azurelle would be watching
, but what could she do?

Anger
boiled up inside her as superheated lava rises up a volcanic pipe. Abruptly, she head-butted the face in front of her. Blood exploded out of Almaz’s nose. Next, as she had trained countless times with the warriors, she leaned forward and executed a powerful back-kick with her heel. Suddenly it was Yeshi stumbling backward, clutching her split lip.

The girl looked at her fingers stupidly, as if she could not believe she was seeing her own blood.
“You little
worm!
”

R
eal fear speared into her, marrow-deep. Before, Yeshi had been fooling about, showing off her power, arrogantly abusive. But now she had been shamed. Shioni could read the emotions straight off her face. This was going to be bad.

Tiny was
a small dog nipping at her, but it was Yeshi who grabbed a fistful of Shioni’s long blonde hair and began to pull her across the pool, yanking her along as though she were a stubborn donkey, from the shallows into deeper water. The other two pushed from behind. Shioni was helpless to resist their combined strength. Water was soon lapping up to her chin. Yeshi and Almaz, both a head taller than her, had no trouble keeping their footing.

Shioni heard herself bawling
for help and despised the note of misery in her voice.

Yeshi’s hand
s forced her head beneath the surface. Now there was no respite. Lungs burning, head pounding, a dull roaring filling her ears. This was it. She meant to kill her. She had a second to hear Yeshi screaming in her ear and to snatch a precious breath before the water closed over her head again. Shioni tried to kick herself off a boulder on the bottom, but the cruel hand only gripped her hair as tightly as an eagle’s talons grip a lamb to wing it off into the sky.

Her world was
a brownish-blue haze. Disconnected, her limbs seemed to want to float away. She saw two tilapia fish staring at her from a few feet away. A freshwater crab pinched her foot gently with its oversized claw, as if to ask her what the matter was. Confused, Shioni could only stare back mutely. Suddenly the tilapia flashed by her face and away. A current curled around her body, tugging at her legs and feet.

Up again.
Her cheeks stung from several slaps. Yeshi and Almaz seemed to be up on a boulder, handling her as if she were a bobbing cork. Yeshi’s face was blotchy with anger. Almaz wore a glazed, vicious expression, as though she hardly knew or cared what she was doing. Her nose was turning purple… was it broken?

Wriggle, struggle, buck, battle.
Shioni’s whole world was reduced to the now. The hands were shoving her down again… down toward the pool’s pebbly bottom… and she felt her legs being towed sideways. Seized by the current, they slipped toward a narrow crack between the boulders. It was similar to her dreams of the witch Kalcha: she could watch, but was powerless to stop what was happening. Her feet were swept forcefully into the gap. Her right foot lodged there.

Even in her dream-
state it happened too fast for her to credit. The person above her pulled so hard it felt as if a chunk of hair had been torn loose from her scalp. But her foot would not budge. The pull came again, perhaps a little panicked. Pain shot through her ankle.

Shioni
had enough air left in her lungs to perfectly appreciate her predicament. She fought and kicked with all of her strength, using her free leg to try to brace herself against the boulders; but her foot was wedged too tightly in the crack. She fought the rope binding her wrists. If only she could loosen that… and in her mind she was screaming:
Help! Help me! They’re killing me!
Every time she tried to drag herself downward, the direction she instinctively knew her foot should come loose, she bobbed up again. She was simply too buoyant.

Terror and distress consumed her.
Her battle was strangely silent, gently muted in that underwater world, a nightmare dawdling to its inescapable conclusion. Every movement was slowed by the water. Her mind was playing tricks on her. Her vision began to turn yellow, and then black at the edges, closing in as though wings of night were coming to spirit her away.

As her strength faded, Shioni delved deeper than ever before and screamed
inaudibly to the world:
Help me! Please…!

Here came the crab. A
concussion struck her limp body… and… a trunk writhing toward her like an underwater snake? How…?

The world faded
into silence.

A
hand pounded her
back as though she were a lump of bread dough being shaped on Mama Nomuula’s kitchen table.

Shioni
coughed–but the cough turned into a convulsion that caused her to vomit up river water until she felt her stomach would spill out to join the mess on the ground next to her face. Tender fingers drew back her hair; a voice murmured something she barely understood, but which comforted her nevertheless.

Her mind
drifted back from a place beyond sleep.

Next
she felt a puff of odd-smelling air waft against her cheek. Her eyes slowly focussed in on the soft tip of an elephant’s trunk exploring her face. Was she dreaming? Here was the elephant again. Had the elephant been underwater with her? Now she was definitely going crazy…

“Tell the elephant you’re fine, honey,” said a familiar voice.
“She won’t let you alone.”

Shioni groaned loudly and
flopped over. She instantly regretted moving. Her head was throbbing intensely, as though an unseen drummer were pounding its insides without care or mercy. Foetid water surged out of her mouth. Each cough was accompanied by a blinding stab of pain. But after clearing her stomach, she immediately began to feel better.

She dared to
prise her eyes open again.

Beside her
she saw Mama Nomuula and Dusky, the oldest of the female elephants. Here too was Princess Annakiya, as red-eyed as though she had been crying rivers. Her eyes wandered further. General Getu, sitting on a stool as though it were a sharp rock he would rather not have sat upon. A slave held an umbrella over him. His face told a grim tale. Yeshi, Almaz and Tiny were kneeling in the dust near him. Their faces were scratched raw, as though they had been dragged repeatedly through a patch of thorn bushes. A group of Elite warriors in full lion-headdress regalia stood guard over the unhappy trio. Almaz had two black circles beneath her eyes, as if each had been punched separately. Definitely a broken nose, Shioni decided. As she deserved.

The trunk prodded her stomach
insistently.

“Dusky
… I’m fine.”

P
ictures swarmed into her mind like a cloud of mosquitoes rising from a still river. Shioni’s screams for help. Dusky running downriver… launching herself from above the waterfall… diving… pulling a flaccid body away from the rocks to the shore. Birds, a dark cloud of birds, swarming over Yeshi, Almaz and Tiny. Diving, screaming, scratching, clawing… what on earth? Crabs hanging off Tiny’s legs and fish trying to bite her flesh?

S
he was so confused! The only thing she could think was how grateful she was to Dusky for pulling her out. A wave of thanks poured out of her. But how had Dusky known, she wondered? The pictures kept whizzing around in her head as though they were a group of hostile wasps protecting their nest. She could not make sense of it all. What in heaven’s name had she managed to set off this time?

Now
–at last, judging by relieved expressions all round–Dusky ambled off with her handler. As she departed, she was rumbling deep down in her chest, telling the other elephants the news.

Mama was saying,
“Fine now? I’s got medicine in my kitchen for you. You swallowed half the river. The dirty half at that. Them girls–”

“What was the elephant
doing, Mama?” asked Shioni, struggling to sit up.

“You should have seen her!” laughed Annakiya.
“We all did!” Then her face fell. “When I found Getu and he said he’d sent no such message, I knew… I just
knew
something was wrong. I ran back here with all these warriors and Mama on my tail–and next thing–”

Mama
waved her hands, crying, “That elephant she come charging down the river trumpeting like there’s fire in the halls–”

“And the birds, Mama!
Tell her about the birds!”

“There’s birds,
these buzzards, all diving about and screeching and attacking them girls. The she-elephant jumps off the rocks and splashes down in that pool like you dropped a mountain in a puddle, and she just reaches down and pulls you up clean as pie…”

“You should have seen Mama run, Shioni!”

“I’s never run so fast in my life, girl!”

“Dusky didn’t hurt herself?”
Shioni started to laugh at the thought of Mama thundering down to the river like a she-elephant amongst all those lean, swift warriors, but succeeded only in coughing more water out of her lungs.

“A bit,” admitted Mama
, patting Shioni’s back again. “She were heaving and wheezing like furnace-bellows for a bit there. But she wouldn’t leave you. She wouldn’t let nobody near you except me.”

Her foot was ablaze in pain now.
A meaty wash-rag of skin was flapping off it. The elephant must have wrenched her from between those rocks. Brave, wonderful Dusky! Jumping off the waterfall! Guilt shot through her heart. Surely an elephant–especially an elderly elephant like Dusky–shouldn’t be jumping into rock pools? Flying elephants… what if she’d broken a leg? Or worse?

And the birds?
The fish and crabs? She must have called them all to her aid! Including the elephant! A violent, malarial shivering accompanied the shock of her new realisation. This would throw dry tinder on the fires of the rumours accusing her of being a witch!

Gentle hands drew
a blanket around her shoulders. “You cold, honey?”

“
So!” General Getu’s voice rasped forth. “Now that you’re back with the living, Shioni, let’s talk about why these three tried to kill you.”