Climate of Change

  That, he thought, was just as well. Tula had protected him by staying close, but there was more than a hint that she viewed him somewhat as Rebel viewed Tuho. That attitude, however far-fetched, could get him promptly tortured to death.

  In the morning, after routine activities, Tuho joined them. “Tell us more about King Arthur,” he said.

  “Shall I hold you close so that you won’t be frightened?” Rebel asked.

  “By all means.”

  “Maybe later,” she said with good humor.

  She was definitely warming to him.

  They settled down around the bedroom, with Tula nestling close to Rebel, and Rebel continued the story of King Arthur. Craft, listening to the familiar narrative, fell into a kind of daze or stupor, perhaps a dream. The food and drink were definitely intoxicating. He found himself in the role of King Arthur, taking the shining sword from the hand in the lake, which also seemed to be like glassy stone, and carrying it as his badge of legitimacy to govern his kingdom. Establishing the Table Round and summoning knights from across the land to help defend it from the invading hordes. Marrying a lovely princess for political reason, and falling in love with her. Only to have her attention stray. Finally betrayed by his illegitimate son and severely wounded in battle.

  “You would not do that to me.”

  Craft came out of it with a start. It was Tuho speaking to Rebel. He was reacting to the legend of Arthur too.

  “I would not,” she agreed. “If you were mine, and you thought to stray, I’d kill you before you could sire an illegitimate son.”

  He was unperturbed. “I would not stray. There are similarities to our own legend of bold King Artashes.”

  “And lovely Satenik,” Tula said rapturously. “It’s so romantic!”

  Of course the Armenians had legends too. “Similarities?” Craft asked.

  “Artashes was a real king of Armenia, about fifteen hundred years ago,” Tuho said. “Who became legendary. He did relate in part to the Alani.”

  “The Alani!” Rebel said, surprised.

  “Tell us! Tell us!” Tula exclaimed.

  “My daughter insists,” Tuho said apologetically.

  “Because the legend is like us,” the girl said. “Like you and Rebel.”

  “That’s what you dreamed!” Tuho said.

  She nodded. “The legend foretold it. She is Satenik. Look at her wild fair hair and eyes, her imperious nature.”

  The baron glanced assessingly at Rebel, who stared back defiantly. She was exactly as the girl described. “Perhaps.” Tuho settled back and began the narrative. And Craft soon found himself back in a vision.

  The Alani, as seen in the Armenian legend, were a wild and powerful force, ranging down from the northlands. They brought sword, fire, and terror to the settled peoples they raided. They crossed the Caucasus mountain range and invaded Armenia. But King Artashes, intent on building the fair capital city of Artashat, rallied and defeated them. He drove them back across the river Kura, and in the process captured the Alani chief’s son and heir. This was an impressive setback for the fierce warriors.

  The Alani king sent an emissary with pleas to return his son. But Artashes kept him prisoner, concerned that only such a hostage would prevent the Alani from attacking again. He had beaten them this time, but they were too dangerous to leave to their own devices.

  Then the Alani king’s beautiful daughter Satenik came to plead. She stood at the riverbank and begged for the release of her brother. “O brave Artashes, conqueror of valiant Alani, hear the plea of a princess. Return my brother to the king, his father. ’Tis unworthy of heroes to enslave their prisoners, forever perpetuating the enmity ’twixt Great Armenia and the Alani.”

  She was bold and brave, and fair to behold. In fact she was absolutely beautiful in her person and her animation. She was also making sense. Artashes did not want perpetual hostility with his neighbors. He was, after all, trying to build a fabulous new city.

  The king gazed upon her, hearing her words, pondering their import, and was overcome by passion for her. He made a decision. How better to nullify the thrust of these wild warriors, than to make an alliance by marriage?

  So he rode his spirited steed across the stream, right toward the princess. Like an eagle on the wing he leaped across. He unleashed a rope from his saddle, a royal cord bejeweled with rings that flashed in the sun. He flung it out, and it circled her lithe waist and drew her to him. Her struggles were ineffective. He hauled her up onto his saddle, holding her before him, and bore her to his camp.

  “Now you are mine, you comely creature!” he exclaimed jubilantly as his horse slowed.

  “Am I?” she asked. She turned, caught hold of his head, and kissed him. Then the sun’s motion stopped in the heavens, and all else faded away; there was only the divine contact of her precious lips. And in that moment he knew he was lost.

  And so it was that they married, and fair Satenik governed Artashes’s heart and his household, and peace was made with the Alani.

  “She set a trap for him!” Rebel exclaimed. “She could have escaped him had she wanted to. Ineffective struggles indeed! She knew what she had to do.”

  “She dressed to be sure everything showed,” Tula agreed. “Especially when he was looking down at her from his high horse. Big girls have things to be seen.”

  “Of course,” Rebel agreed.

  “She looked just like you.”

  Rebel smiled. “Well, I am Alani.” She glanced sidelong at Tuho. “I did come to save my brother.”

  “You are playing the game she did,” Tuho said. “With similar effect. I admit it.” He took a breath. “Come with me now.”

  Rebel did not pretend to misunderstand. “Remember, I am barren.”

  “I already have a child.”

  “You will let my brother go.”

  “I will.”

  “There will be no ransom.”

  “No ransom.”

  She rose. “This won’t take long.”

  “It’s about time,” Tula said.

  “Time,” Tuho agreed wryly.

  Rebel left with Tuho. “She’s already bound him,” Tula said with satisfaction. “He is so desperate to clasp her willing he’ll agree to anything she demands.”

  So it seemed. Big girls did have their ways. Rebel had succeeded in rescuing Craft, her way. Probably it was for the best.

  Tula turned to Craft. “Did she really not know our legend?”

  Craft laughed. “Dare I answer that?”

  Now she laughed. They understood each other.

  The legend of the captured princess is authentic; the Armenians have a collection of poems known as the Songs of Koghten describing it in detail. There does seem to have been a battle and a capture, and certainly there was King Artashes. That Alan princess may have been the grandmother of the foremost early Armenian king, Tigran the Great, who ruled from 95 to 55 BC.

  The Arthurian legend’s origin, in contrast, is shrouded. It has been thought to be based on a historical King Arthur, circa 410 AD when the Romans left Britain and the barbarians invaded, but there are no references at that time. Indeed, nothing stopped the invasions for long, and Britain was in time overrun by the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes. There seems to have been no hero to halt the process. Only more than a century later does the name start appearing, and it was several hundred years before the full flowering of the legend.

  The indication is that there may have been a historic Arthur, but not in Britain. It was a legend of the Alani of Asia. How did it get to England? In the second century AD the Romans sent a garrison of 3,000 Sarmatian troops to Britain to help defend it, and they brought their legend with them. The Alani were Sarmatians. Some may have intermarried with natives and remained in Britain after the Romans withdrew. Their children learned the stories, and taught them to their children, and gradually it spread and amplified, becoming one of the major legends of Britain, Europe, and the world. Its true origin was lost, and assumed to be Brit
ish. It seems that only the Alani know the truth.

  But historical records are indicative. The Sarmatians worshiped a sword stuck in a stone. They fought under a wind sock–style banner shaped like a dragon and known as the Draco. It was said to roar when they rode into battle. They truly impressed the natives. They were commanded in England by a Roman officer named Lucius Artorius Castus. Legendary King Arthur was also known as Artorius. Even his weapon, the magic sword Excalibur, was first called Caliburn, meaning “white steel,” deriving from the words chalybus (steel) and eburnus (white). There was a tribe of Sarmatian smiths known as the Kalybes, and such a sword could have been named for them.

  The Alani may not have conquered the world physically, but perhaps they fared better mythologically.

  14

  HUNGER

  Perhaps the most remarkable migration of Africa is that of the Bantu. They started west of the Niger River, apparently learned iron working from the Nok culture across the river, and with that advantage spread forcefully south and west. In the course of about two thousand years Bantu-speaking peoples colonized virtually the whole of Africa south of the Sahara Desert, largely displacing or absorbing the prior populations. In the process they expanded into many subcultures, bringing corn and millet agriculture, cattle herding, and iron working. This was not a conquest so much as a better way. Their successful lifestyle brought population growth, which in turn brought social and political stresses and the need for further emigration.

  Then the land ran out. The tribes could no longer simply expand south to relieve the pressure of overpopulation. Warfare had been relatively minor, almost a pastime to settle incidental disputes. It became more serious business as the struggle for survival intensified. There was a revolution in military tactics, and unified, disciplined armies were formed. In due course these would discover a formidable new opponent: the incursions of the colonizing Europeans.

  The Bantu vanguard became the Xhosa (pronounced KO-sa), finally settling in southeast Africa. But this did not mean that there were not serious issues farther north. The setting is the east coast of Central Africa, circa 1589.

  They crested a ridge and came into sight of the fortified coastal village of Malindi. “Oh, no!” Tourette breathed. “Aren’t those the cannibals?”

  Hero shared his daughter’s concern. It was evident that Malindi was under siege. They would not be able to get in now without risking the wrath of the besiegers. That would be worse than fatal.

  “We need to consider,” Hero said heavily.

  “That is the understatement of the day,” Keeper said.

  “Is there a problem?” Tourette asked. “We don’t have to visit that village, do we?”

  Hero shook his head. “We do have to visit Malindi. But we dare not fall into the hands of the Zimba besiegers.”

  “But surely the Malindi exorcist is no better at casting out demons than any other.”

  Hero exchanged a glance with Keeper.

  “It’s time to tell her,” Crenelle said.

  “Tell me what?” Tourette demanded.

  “There’s a reason we came to this town at this time,” Hero said. “It’s ugly.”

  Tourette was catching on. “This is not about exorcism.”

  “Don’t misunderstand,” Hero said. “We value you above all else. But we don’t believe you are haunted by demons.”

  “But my expressions! Something takes over and I can’t stop it. Isn’t that demons?”

  “It is a problem,” Hero said. “But we think it is something in your body or mind that goes wrong on occasion. It can’t be demons. We don’t really believe that demons exist. They are merely a way to try to explain things folk don’t understand.”

  She considered that. She was a smart girl, and rational. Hero doubted that she had ever really believed in demons either, but she had gone along with it for the sake of harmony. “Then why have we been visiting so many healers?”

  “To cover for our real mission. No one questions our desire to make you become marriageable, so we can travel widely without arousing suspicion.”

  She nodded. Ugly or defective girls were serious problems in the marriage market. She was far from being ugly, but her liability more than nullified her dawning beauty. She was also a realist. “And that mission is?”

  “Goats,” Keeper said.

  Tourette paused, her mental processes threshing. “We have goats.”

  “This is a special breed that the Portuguese are rumored to have imported by sea. Very strong foragers, supremely hardy, especially during dry weather.”

  “They wouldn’t die in the drought!” she exclaimed. “That would be valuable.”

  “Extremely,” Keeper agreed. “But it was just a story. We need to ascertain whether it is true, and if so, we need to buy a breeding pair and take them home.”

  “Where we could breed a herd of them, and survive the next drought much better. But why the secrecy?”

  “All tribes suffer from the drought,” Keeper said. “Do you think we could bring such valuable goats through their territories without them being stolen?”

  “Not if they knew,” she agreed.

  “We regret deceiving you,” Crenelle said. “Don’t. I could have given it away without meaning to. In a fit.” The others nodded. “And you were an excellent cover,” Hero said. “You have done your part.”

  Tourette smiled grimly. “By being what I am: haunted.”

  Crenelle hugged her. “By letting others think you’re haunted.”

  “But you’ll still have trouble making me marriageable.”

  “We’ll find a man who understands,” Crenelle assured her. “We wouldn’t want any other kind.” For marriage was a family matter.

  Tourette returned to business. “So the goats are there, and if the Zimba capture that town, they’ll eat them along with the people. So it’s our problem.”

  “It’s our problem,” Hero agreed.

  They retired to a secluded glade to hold a family conference. This time Tourette was allowed to participate. She was clearly thrilled with the recognition as a near adult, but also somewhat awed and nervous. The problem was serious.

  “Here is the situation,” Keeper said, filling in the rest of it for the girl. “We are not sure the goats are as great as rumored, but have to verify it in case they are, because of the great potential benefit to the Xhosa people. To keep the mission secret, it is limited to a single family unit, with a pretext to travel widely.” He glanced at Tourette, who smiled.

  Hero realized something he had somehow missed before: his younger brother liked his daughter, and she liked him. They were family, yes, but there was something almost flirtatious about their exchange of glances. That could become awkward.

  “So we traveled,” Keeper continued. “As rapidly as we could without overextending ourselves or revealing our true mission. We knew we had to reach Malindi before the Zimba did. But in the months we have been walking, the Zimba got to the town before we did. Now we have a difficult choice: give up our mission and go home, or find a way to get safely into that town. And out with the goats. I fear our journey has been wasted.”

  “May I?” Tourette asked thoughtfully.

  “Speak,” Hero said, curious as to what was on her mind.

  “The Zimba. Weren’t they peaceful farmers, until about ten years ago? When they suddenly turned cannibal and ate a whole village?”

  “They were farmers and herders,” Keeper agreed. He knew all about all things agricultural and pastoral. “But they were also experienced cannibals who did not hesitate to consume enemies killed in battle, or criminals. Cattle rustlers learned to respect their herds.”

  “The hard way,” Tourette said, and they laughed together.

  Hero glanced at Crenelle, but neither spoke.

  “So when a bad drought came, depleting their herds,” Keeper continued, “first they ate the dead cattle. Then they went after the town of Sena. It was a trading post doing business with the Portuguese, so th
ey didn’t like it anyway. They overwhelmed it and settled down to a huge feast. They consumed every man, woman, child, and animal in it, sparing only those who joined them as tribe members.”

  “That’s what I heard,” Tourette said, shuddering.

  “When they had digested Sena, they went on to Tete, up the coast. They besieged it, and soon broke down its defenses and captured it. Then they systematically ate everything in it, as before. The surrounding tribes were horrified, but helpless to stop it. All they could do was flee.”

  “I can understand why,” Tourette said.

  “When we learned that this was happening, we knew we had to get those goats before the Zimba did,” Keeper concluded. “But they moved faster than we expected. We thought they were still assimilating Kilwa, but it seems they finished with it. I dislike saying it, but I think our mission is already lost. There’s no sense throwing our lives away at this point.”

  “They are going north?” Tourette asked.

  “Town by town,” Keeper agreed. “It takes them a while to finish a town, a year or two, but inevitably they march again, north.”

  “And who lives to the north?”

  “The Segeju,” Hero said. “They are fierce, but it is doubtful whether they could defeat the Zimba in open battle, and they seem reluctant to try.”

  “But if they’re next to be eaten?”

  “I suspect they prefer to believe that the threat is not immediate,” Hero said.

  “But if they found a way to defeat the Zimba, would they do it?”

  “They might,” Hero said. “But that doesn’t matter, because I doubt there’s a way. The Zimba are too strong.”

  Tourette was intent. “Suppose they came upon the Zimba by surprise? When they weren’t ready?”

  Hero shrugged. “Then they might. It would make long-term military sense.”

  “Such as when the Zimba are occupied attacking Malindi.”

  Hero considered. “As they are now. Maybe they would.”

  “Suppose we go to them and suggest it? That might save the town—and the goats.”