The Enterprise of Death Read online

  Awa drew away as her mistress shook with a barely contained sob, then gingerly returned her fingers to Omorose’s shoulder. The wind ran down the gap between the girls, a growing chill spreading from Omorose’s back toward her feet and neck. Disgust again trumped by need, Omorose snaked her own bound hands up through her layers of wet cloth and took Awa’s shuddering fingers, wiggling herself backwards to again press against her slave. Awa found herself smiling in the dark as she squeezed Omorose’s fingers and her mistress squeezed back, and after enjoying the clammy feel of the girl’s silk-soft palms, she pushed her fingers down and set to working at the leather straps tying Omorose’s wrists together. She would rescue her lady, just as Halim had rescued them from the sinking boat.

  “We’ll get loose, and then we’ll run,” Awa whispered in the seashell that was Omorose’s ear. “The rain will hide our footprints if we get out of the cave.”

  “What?” The thought of escape had not crossed Omorose’s mind after Halim was beaten into submission upon initially resisting the bandits.

  “They have a guard, but only one, I think. The rest are behind us, out of the rain.” The clumsy knots at Omorose’s wrists confirmed for Awa the bandits’ inexperience in the ways of transporting slaves.

  “But if there’s a guard—”

  “Shhh,” said Awa. “I untie you, you untie me, I untie Halim—”

  “Who?”

  “The eunuch. Who saved us?”

  “Oh.”

  “I untie him, and then we three run.” Awa lowered her voice even more. “He’s biggest so they’ll likely grab him before you or me, and he’ll fight for you if you’re the one they catch.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’ve done this before,” said Awa, trying to keep her nervous fear in its own cave as she got the last knot loose. “Once we’re free we’ll have to avoid being caught again, but let’s worry about that rain when next we’re dry, alright?”

  “Alright.”

  “Now we must be very quiet so they think we’re sleeping,” said Awa. “Don’t pull on my knots, find the root of the twist and work it backward.”

  Her skin free of the biting leather, Omorose enjoyed the sensation for a time before choosing to acknowledge the slave’s still-bound hands pressing urgently into her shoulder. Omorose remembered what her old handmaid had said about Awa’s scars meaning she had run and been captured several times, and remembered how they had laughed at the idea of the plump wretch running anywhere on her short legs. She set to freeing Awa’s wrists, pausing as her slave had done when she heard the faint scraping and squelching of their captors moving about in the dark, and although it took her much longer she eventually got them loose.

  The storm died down only to periodically flare up like the white coals of a long-burning fire. Dozing in his cramped squat, Halim felt a creature crawl across his foot and almost stomped it when fingers tightened around his ankle and tapped just above where the strap dug into his skin, the length between his feet having been shortened to a hand’s width after they had stopped moving for the day. Halim let her work at his ankles, praying that the lightning kept at bay a little longer. It did, and he lowered his wrists, which she made short work of. Flexing his fingers, he winced as the joints cracked loudly in the dark.

  Feeling around, Halim soon found a jagged piece of stone and tightened his fist, intent on giving his life if it meant the escape of Omorose. Then the cave lit up as the lightning returned, and three sets of eyes widened. The back of the cave was empty.

  As the thunder pealed across the peaks, Awa slowly rose to a crouch and helped her mistress up, the slave’s numb, slick skin starting to remind its owner of its presence as pain and cold began jumping all over her body. Another flash, much closer, and again they saw only the black and empty cavern, the dozen bandits vanished without a trace. The thunder came again and Awa wondered if the mountain had eaten the men who hid in his mouth, and now laughed along with his ally in the sky who had driven the prey to seek such shelter. They had to leave before he swallowed again.

  “Now we run,” Awa said, finding Omorose’s hand in the dark. “You must follow me, mistress, no matter what. When we run we cannot stop.”

  “Where are they?” Omorose tried to stand but her overworked legs fought against her, cramps forcing her to lean against the wall of the cave. “What if it’s a trap?”

  “Then it’s not a good trap since we were already caught. Please, mistress, before we find out what happened to them.”

  “But.” Omorose bit her lip in the dark. “I’m too … I can’t run, I can’t, I—”

  “You can.” Awa squeezed her mistress’s quivering hand. “You can, Omorose.”

  The cheek of Awa using her name momentarily made Omorose forget her fear of the dark, empty cave. “Don’t you—”

  “Quiet. Now.” Halim had seen something more than an empty cave and he scuttled away from the whispering girls. Patting around in the dark, he asked for light from above and was granted his request as three bolts crashed down just outside the cave, the wind screaming and the rain biting as he scooped up two discarded swords, the hilt of one sticky and wet. Then he noticed that the puddle in which he stood felt comfortably warm on his bare, blistered feet, and over the thunder rattling his senses he heard Omorose scream.

  The attacker smashed into Halim and he felt both swords fly away as fists pummeled his sides. He slid down the wall of the cave, the assailant’s bony fingers cutting into the eunuch’s ribs with each blow. Omorose’s scream broke off and Halim lost his breath as a cudgel bruised his stomach, and then the man pinned his arms behind his back and hoisted him up, the eunuch’s back scraping on the man’s rough armor as he was carried out into the storm. Lightning blasted the earth just above the cave and Halim saw their new captors, and his own scream drowned out both Omorose and the crackling thunder.

  Awa had smelled them even before the first flash of lightning had made Omorose scream, and now that the sky-fire showed her their faces she understood why her mother had never answered her questions about how she would know if the spirits visiting her were those of the dead and not some more common, natural thing, like the water spirits that misted her face by the waterfall or the storm spirits that filled her nose with their hot odor before the rains. Now she knew, for these spirits rode their old bones, and some still wore their carrion flesh in the same loose fashion her mistress wore the dangling wet rags of her servants.

  The bonemen hoisted them up before they could move. As they were held aloft by the strongest arms Awa had ever felt, lightning illuminated the skull appraising her and she screamed for the first time since she had been taken from her village by the slavers, when she had vowed that no matter what fear she felt she would not give any spirit or man that power over her. Yet as the sky revealed the undead things carrying her and the first person she had cared about since childhood up the mountain into death she screamed and screamed, the spirits passing their three victims among them as though the youths weighed no more than satchels of limes.

  Halim lost himself in his terror, gibbering along with the clicking jawbones of the monstrosities carrying them high into the mountains, but Omorose had recovered enough to realize what had happened and why the bandits had disappeared from the cave. Their captors had murdered the three of them in the cavern and now she was on her way to Hell, the lightning flashes Allah seeking in vain for her soul amidst the vast nightscape of the damned. She cursed Him then, cursed Him as weak and unfair to those who had praised Him even if they could not understand Him in the way He was explained to mortals such as she, and as she was juggled from skeletal fingers to rotting, soft arms she vomited into the swirling rain, the stink of her sick and fear mingling with the fell stench of the demons.

  A tiny light appeared high above them in the darkness, the lightning left far below as they climbed higher and higher, the skeletal members of the host casting themselves against cliff faces, their bones scattering up the sheer surfaces to become an
imate ladders for their riper compatriots to scale with their prisoners held high. Several times they came to vast chasms and the skeletons climbed atop one another and formed bridges over the gulfs, the farthest-flung amongst them snatching the ankle of the one before him and in this fashion retracting themselves to the opposite side once their sharp spines had been crossed by the fleet-footed, capering dead. Racing up a gully, they emerged onto a plateau and here they were blinded by the light shining from an open door in the darkness, a glowing passage to another world, and before any of the three youths could recover from their journey they were shoved wailing through the doorway.

  III

  The Crucible of Madness

  The animated corpses stayed outside. Omorose, Halim, and Awa collapsed in a pile on the floor of the hut. A small oil lamp sealed their eyes into leaking slits with its brilliance, and as a shadow passed over the huddled youths Halim squealed and Omorose groaned. Then the door was closed behind them, and with the devils shut outside all three wept with relief and gratitude.

  None of them ever fully recovered from that night, their minds hammered into strange new shapes by white-hot fear, but after no small time of babbling and begging and praying and moaning the three Africans returned to their senses. Being so close to Heaven, dawn came early on the mountaintop, and as the only window slowly ate up the shadows in the hut, first Awa, then Omorose, and finally Halim sat up and took notice of their surroundings and their savior, who had sat watching them the entire time.

  The room was cluttered but clean, the stone floor rubbed smooth and the adobe walls free of cracks. A granite table dominated the chamber, a crude wooden chair pulled back on the other side of it, and set in the rear wall above this was the window, through which one of the animate skeletons watched them. Noticing this brought on another fit in Halim, but Omorose and Awa were already paralyzed by the sight of a monster hulking on its hind legs beside the window, a furry behemoth that Boabdil’s second cousin would have recognized all too well. Eventually they realized it must be dead or a statue, although Awa suspected that given the walking corpses outside the bear’s seemingly inanimate nature in no way rendered it harmless. Every wall was striped with shelves that bowed under the weight of clay jars and bowls and less identifiable objects, and a cauldron hung inside a small fireplace to their right.

  Their host was less mundane. He was human enough, but his cold jade eyes were set deep in the tight skin of his face and he appeared far too aged to even sit up in a bed and chew solid food, yet he now darted around the room with an easy alacrity, his withered limbs piling the table with bowls and a jug. Then he opened the door and Halim buried his head between his legs, Omorose grabbing Awa’s hand as three of the skeletons marched into the room and squatted down beside the table. With a muttered word from their host the skeletons fell apart on the floor, only to have their loose bones crawl over one another and snap together in new formations, and in less time than it takes to cleanse oneself before prayer three stools were waiting at the table. This bothered the young women quite a bit, Awa convinced that he was a sorcerer and Omorose that he was a devil.

  “Please, sit and eat,” the man said, his Arabic crisp despite his pale skin. “Now.”

  Even Halim acquiesced, none of them eager to see what might happen should they disobey. They all balked at the stools, but the rib seats scooped their bottoms comfortably and were not as sharp as they appeared. Halim and Omorose stared doubtfully at the gray chunks floating in the stew that he ladled out, but Awa’s mouth flooded as the familiar goat spirits rushed into her nose and rubbed their musky backs on her tongue, and she forgot her fear.

  Seeing Awa slurp up the food, Omorose set her dignity aside to sate her hunger, but Halim only drank water from the jug out of his smaller bowl. His knotted, burning stomach advised against attempting anything solid, and only with great effort was he able to keep himself from checking the window to see if the skeleton still watched him. He wondered if it all were punishment for not following his master’s order to throttle Omorose rather than risk her defilement, and he cursed his own cowardice.

  “Now then,” the man said, reclining in the chair across the table from them. “Welcome, welcome. My apologies for any discomfort experienced but I assure you the mercies of those men who had you bound would have proven no gentler. As a matter of fact, I don’t think it would be any exaggeration at all to say that you children owe me your lives.”

  Omorose did not say anything. Awa did not say anything. Halim swallowed, and picked up his bowl of stew.

  “I am, as you see, a simple hermit.” The man leaned forward and leered at them, exposing a set of uneven yellow teeth. “A lonely goatherd, I lack enough stock to feed every beggar who crosses my border, and so you will have to earn your keep by doing as I say. I live a sparse life, as you see, and have little room under my roof. I therefore suggest you work together to build a shelter before the next storm. Winter comes quickly up here, and you don’t want to be caught without something substantial when the snow falls.”

  Unaware if her companions’ silence meant lack of manners or a surfeit of terror, Omorose shakily stood and managed a quavering “Thank you.”

  “It’s nothing, nothing.” The man waved his hand dismissively. “I always need more hands, more backs.”

  “No.” Omorose closed her eyes, swallowed, then opened them again. “Thank you, but no. We … we have to go. Now. We have—”

  “Pressing business?” The man widened his grin. “Loving parents? No no, I don’t think so. You’re mine now, just like my other little helpers. You will help me, won’t you? You’ll do what I ask, without my having to order?”

  “I—” Omorose could not stop shaking, even when Awa’s fingers found her hand. “I—”

  “Run!” Halim hurled his stew in the man’s face and leaped on top of the table, his heart pounding harder than his feet as he took one, two, three steps across the granite and fell upon the hermit. Awa and Omorose were both knocked to the ground by their stools as the skeletons shook themselves back into their old shapes and followed Halim over the table.

  The eunuch landed atop the old man and brought them both to the floor. Halim punched in the hermit’s long nose, blood splashing hot against his cheeks, but to the eunuch’s horror the ancient man howled with laughter instead of pain, putting his hands to his hollow cheeks and hooting as the boy’s fist fell again. Halim’s second punch made a wet slapping noise and he felt the man’s jaw shift in his face, but then bone fingers were tightening around both of the youth’s wrists and his neck and his legs and Halim was yanked off of the old man by the three skeletons, who held him aloft as the hermit shakily got to his feet, his face a giggling red smear.

  Awa threw open the door and was confronted by another walking corpse, this one carrying a bundle over its shoulder. She darted past it into the night but stumbled as she heard Omorose scream behind her. The girl had frozen in the doorway, and before Awa decided whether to run or go back another boneman came around the side of the hut and seized her by the shoulders.

  “Hold them still and make them watch,” the hermit commanded, and as Awa was dragged back inside she saw that Omorose had her arms pinned behind her back by the new arrival, a shriveled husk of a corpse that had deposited its bundle on the table. The bundle moved, and as her skeletal captor hoisted her up Awa saw it was the bandit chief who had originally captured them, jagged splinters of bone jutting out of his broken arms and legs. Only Halim tried to avert his gaze, but the skeletons holding him got their fingers under his eyelids and made sure he saw through his tears, the sensation of gritty bone pressing against exposed eyeballs arresting his struggles. The eunuch knew he would never escape if they blinded him.

  “Have a look, children,” the hermit said, blood bubbling in the center of his swollen, mashed face as he drew a dagger from under his cloak. “Look close, now!”

  The blade cut into the bandit chief’s face and he began to scream. Omorose and Halim joined him, but Aw
a managed to keep her jaw set even when the man’s nose came off, the hermit popping the glistening lump into his mouth and chewing it with a serene expression on his desiccated face. The screams grew louder as the old man swallowed and wiped his bloody face on the front of his cloak. Looking back up at them, the hermit’s caved-in nose was again straight and jutting out of his face like an accusatory finger.

  Then the old man began screaming along with the broken bandit and Halim and Omorose, dancing around the hut and shrieking in their faces, rubbing imaginary tears from his cheeks and skipping about like the happiest of spoiled children. When he noticed Awa was not screaming along with the rest he paused for only a moment, giving her a saucy wink as he snatched up a clump of dried stalks studded with silver-trimmed green leaves from a basket by the hearth and ignited them on the fire. Puffing his cheeks and blowing out the flaming wormwood, the hermit inhaled the thick smoke billowing off of the plants and howled even louder, prancing back toward them and shaking the smoking clump in their terror-taut faces.

  Omorose began to squirm and kick as her tormentor returned but it was too late, and as the licorice-sweet fumes filled her nose she calmed and then quieted, her legs dangling and her eyes crossing. Halim had nearly screamed himself unconscious before the smoke even reached him and so went almost at once, but Awa held her breath even when her eyes burned and her lungs boiled, and then she finally coughed and hacked and faded on the cloying smoke, the last thing she remembered the old man putting his hand on the dying bandit chief’s shoulder and whispering,