The Ring Of Sheba Read online

  He reached into the pack he carried and took out the collapsible spyglass he carried there. He extended the barrels and peered through the eyepiece, surveying the area again. Moving slowly, he searched for moment, for shadows, for any sign of humans.

  He found none.

  “Do you think they’ve gone?” Drury asked.

  “And left all their gear behind?” Ngola shook his head. “Some of those packs have food and water. Would you have left them?”

  “No.” Drury frowned. “I don’t like this.”

  “Neither do I, but we need to go down there.”

  “Well, I like that even less.”

  Ngola looked at his crewmen and picked out two sailors. “Stay behind and keep your rifles ready. In the event the Portuguese slavers show up, kill them. When you fire, that will be warning enough for us.”

  “Aye, Captain.” They unlimbered their rifles and took up positions on their stomachs, edging forward to peer over the cliff.

  Turning to Yalua, Ngola said, “You stay with them.”

  The girl hesitated, clearly not happy with the situation, but evidently the idea of descending into the lake area proper was even more frightening. She nodded and took out the knife Ngola had given her.

  Readying his own weapons, Ngola told Joao to find a way down. The young man peered at the cliff side and cautiously chose a path, pushing forward slowly through the thick brush. The Ketland pistol in hand, Ngola followed and remained alert.

  *

  “Somebody died here.”

  Staring at the rust-colored grass and shrubbery at the side of the lake, taking in the fact that the stain spread over nearly ten feet, Ngola silently agreed with Joao’s assessment of what they were looking at. None of the creatures he knew lived in the jungle were large enough to spill that much blood. Except for maybe a hippopotamus.

  That left only a man-sized victim.

  Hackles stood up at the back of his neck and a chill ghosted across his shoulders even though the opening above the lake allowed the sun to shine through unfettered.

  “All right,” Drury whispered as he gazed around at the surrounding jungle, “if somebody died here, and hopefully it was one of Machado’s crew, then where is the body?”

  “The crew probably buried it,” Joao said. Like Drury, he was on full alert, ever watchful.

  “I don’t see any fresh graves, and that would be something we would see in the amount of time Machado and his crew has been here.”

  Ngola turned from the jungle back to the lake. A wooden vessel under an overhanging tree caught his attention. He took his spyglass out again, then picked out the shape of the longboat under the branches. He handed the spyglass to Drury.

  The Irishman took the spyglass and followed the line of Ngola’s pointing finger. “The boat?”

  “Aye,” Ngola replied. “Is it moored?”

  “Not that I can see.”

  “Nor could I.”

  Drury returned the spyglass and licked his lips. “Doesn’t make sense. Nobody’s here. Someone lost a lot of blood here if he wasn’t outright killed. And Machado had a boat carried out all this way just to leave it floating wherever the wind takes it.” He spun slowly, looking around again. “I think we should go. I think something happened to Machado and his crew, and I’m sure we don’t want the same thing happening to us.”

  Senses crawling, Ngola stared out at the lake in time to see water jump up in two spots across the mirror-bright surface. Then the crack! of two gunshots reached his ears.

  Stepping back, Ngola shaded his eyes and peered up at the cliff where he’d stationed the two sailors. Both of the men were reloading their rifles.

  A voice, spread thin over the distance, carried over the lake.

  “There’s something in the water, Captain!”

  Turning back to the lake, Ngola raised his pistol as a scaly body lunged up from the shallows.

  9.

  The Sharp-Toothed Shadows

  The sun’s reflection on the water prevented Ngola from seeing his attacker’s initial approach, and now it served to cause partial blindness as the creature stood up on its finned tail and reached for him with two human-like arms.

  Other than the inhuman nature of the nightmarish thing, Ngola’s first impression was also that the creature was feminine. It had a woman’s curves and full breasts, but the lower half of the body was a finned, serpentine monstrosity that evidently was strong enough to support it enough to rise above him a foot or more. Water dripped off the arms that reached out for him. Hooked talons protruded from the fingers.

  Ngola swore as he fired his pistol point-blank into the creature, aware that more such things already crawled from the lake and attacked his crew. His shot hit the thing a couple inches below its left breast and tore away a patch of blue-green scales to reveal pale white flesh. Pink blood dribbled down from the wound, but it was obvious the creature wasn’t deeply wounded. He wasn’t even sure the ball had penetrated the creature’s body or had simply bounced off.

  A high-pitched shriek rattled Ngola’s eardrums like castanets. Blinking through the painful onslaught, he dropped his spent pistol, reached for the cutlass, and peered at his attacker’s head as it yanked him from his feet like a ragdoll in its claws.

  Slimy tendrils that looked like snakes covered the thing’s head and hung to the scale-covered shoulders. The features were vaguely human, but only if the face had been stretched tight over an ax blade. There was no nose, the teeth were razor-edged needles—hundreds of them, and the wide, round eyes measured at least three inches across and sat on either side of the head.

  Unable to get his cutlass free, Ngola hit the ground hard and almost blacked out. Before he could recover, shots ringing around him, the thing swept him up in its arms, pinning his arms to his sides, and fell back into the lake.

  Ngola barely had time to draw in a breath before the chill, emerald green water closed over him. Sound went away then, except for the rapid beat of his heart drumming in his ears. He struggled to get free, but the creature was too strong.

  Effortlessly, the thing flicked its serpentine tail and propelled them through the water. Ngola’s face pressed into its cold bosom and the similarity between that foul embrace and the warmth of a true woman was obscene. He tried to find purchase with his boots to plant himself and force his captor to break its hold, but the scales proved too slick and the thing wriggled constantly as it swam.

  As he fought, he twisted enough to see that Drury, Joao, and the other two sailors had been captured as well. The fact that they’d been taken alive was suddenly more horrifying than not being killed outright because Ngola didn’t know why the things would do that. He had no expectations. All he could think of was those needle-pointed fangs.

  Sharp-Toothed Shadows. The name fit.

  Streamers from rifle shots sliced through the emerald water and looked white for a moment. The water got darker as the creatures went deeper. The rush of the waterfall obscured sight and sound for a moment. Ngola’s lungs burned for air.

  Just before he was sure he was going to black out or drown, the creature arrowed up and broke the surface. Ngola sucked in a lungful of breath and gazed around. They’d come up in a moon-shaped pool in a dimly lit cave. Natural light filtered in from somewhere up above, rendering the inky blackness into the murky gloom of a moonless night.

  The creature tossed Ngola onto the hard shelf of rock surrounding the pool. Still out of breath, he fought to his feet, standing there on water-filled boots. Heaving itself out of the water, the creature backhanded him in the face before he could get out of the way and knocked him against a rock wall behind him.

  Dazed, Ngola stood and wiped blood from his mouth. Before he could move, the creature seized him by the shoulders and ducked its head forward. A forked tongue shot out and slithered across his lips, lapping up the blood, sliding into his mouth for just a moment.

  He was so stunned that he froze, then tried to clamp his teeth down on the offending organ. He
was only a second too late, though, because the creature reeled its tongue back into that dreadful orifice that looked like it had been carved there with a razor.

  In short order, Drury and Joao were deposited on the shelf as well. They lay gasping as the other two crewmen were tossed into the cave. The closest man, Eyenga, one of the younger sailors, coughed and spluttered as he rolled weakly. Amaral, an older crewman, didn’t move at all.

  The creature that had captured Amaral slapped the sailor a few times, trying to elicit some response. Curling down on that serpentine body, it stuck its face next to the crewman’s and twisted its head a few times. After a moment, it pulled back, then sank long claws into Amaral’s stomach and ripped him apart like a melon.

  Bloody entrails sprang out, opening like a savage feast.

  All seven creatures around the pool shrieked and slithered over to join their sister. All of them ducked their faces into Amaral’s belly and came away with bloody features as they chewed the primitive repast they found within. The chewing and sucking cacophony filled the cave.

  “Come on,” Ngola urged the others, struggling against the fear and nausea that tried to hold him in thrall. “While they’re occupied, we’ll escape.” He headed for the pool.

  “If you enter the water, they’ll kill one of you to show you they won’t allow that,” a frightened voice said in Portuguese. “It’s what they did to us. When you lose one person that way, you understand quickly not to attempt to escape.”

  Halting, throwing out a hand to stay the others, Ngola peered through the shadows and spotted a Portuguese sailor sitting on a shelf of rock overhead. He was young and his face was a map of bruises.

  “Who are you?” Ngola asked in the same language.

  “I am Nuno Porto, a crewmen aboard the Pessego Perfumado.”

  Ngola translated the Portuguese immediately into Fragrant Peach. That was Machado’s ship, so misnamed because it was a slavery vessel and stank worse than death itself.

  “Where’s Machado?” Ngola demanded.

  “Here,” a gruff voice answered from farther up the incline.

  10.

  Consorts of Monsters

  Peering into the darkness, Ngola spotted Captain Bartolomeu Machado Jorge sitting higher up on the rocks. Large and muscular, the Portuguese captain didn’t look beaten down like his crewman. His eyes remained wary and sharp. His black hair hung down past his shoulders and one of his eyebrows was split and crooked from an old scar. His beard was unkempt and his cheeks showed new growth. A bruised eye was already turning yellow with age.

  Machado studied Ngola. “Who are you?”

  “A sailor.”

  “From what ship?”

  “The Falcon.” There were plenty of ships named that, and it would be hard to place. For the moment, Ngola didn’t want his true identity there and his purpose to compromise the delicate situation.

  “Where do you hail from?” Machado challenged.

  “Lisbon originally. Many ports since then.”

  “How is it you came upon this wretched place?”

  “I followed a greedy captain who believed in fairy tales.” That was true enough.

  Machado continued to stare at him.

  “You have ill fortune,” Nuno said glumly. “The monsters killed most of us when they attacked us three days ago. They captured six of us and brought us here.”

  Ngola peered up into the rocks and counted only four men.

  “Two of us have later died at the hands of those things. One tried to escape. The other they simply chose to…devour.”

  “They’re holding us in here like cattle,” Machado said. “They feed us fish and clams to keep us alive. Fattening us up for their next meal.”

  “It’s more than that,” Nuno said. His eyes were wide with horror. “They…breed with us.”

  “Not bloody likely,” Drury said. “There’s no way I could be persuaded to do that.”

  “You don’t have a choice,” the young crewman said shamefully. “They…inject us with some kind of narcotic. Our bodies are no longer our own and they do with us what they will.”

  “God in Heaven,” Eyenga whispered.

  Ngola stared at the seven creatures who still fed on Amaral. “That makes no sense. They’re fish.”

  “Don’t be so certain of that,” Machado replied. “They look like women.”

  Drury snorted at that. “Even drunk as I’d ever been, I’d never take leave of my senses enough to make a mistake like that.”

  “Your time will come soon enough,” the Portuguese captain said. “You will see.”

  “There are only the seven of them?” Ngola asked.

  “Aye.”

  “There are eight of us.”

  Machado shook his head. “You’ve seen how strong those things are. We don’t stand a chance against them.”

  “So it’s better to be their unwilling consorts before they eat you?” Drury cursed. “That’s just waiting on a coward’s death.”

  “We aren’t going to wait,” Ngola growled as he scanned the cave’s rocky slope. “We won’t be any stronger later than we are now, so now is the time to make a stand.”

  Machado stood. “What do you think you’re about to do? I will not let you get the rest of us killed.”

  “Fool!” Drury snapped. “You’re already waiting for death.” He looked at Ngola. “What do you have in mind?”

  “If we go in the water, they can easily kill us. That is their domain.” Ngola grinned grimly. “They are not so good on dry land.”

  “They are better than you think,” Nuno said. “Those tails don’t slow them down much. They haul themselves around on their fists.”

  “We can do this.” Ngola pointed to a cluster of boulders that formed a U-shape he judged large enough to hold all of them. “Up there is a natural bottleneck. We can fortify it and limit their attack.”

  “Like the three hundred Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae,” Drury said.

  Ngola looked at him. “What?”

  “It’s a famous battle,” Drury said. “Remind me to tell you about it sometime. I think you’ll like it.”

  “The Spartans were the heroes?”

  “Aye.”

  “How did it turn out?”

  “They all died.”

  Ngola shook his head. “This will not be like that battle. This will be like the time we got into a fight with the crew of the Rotting Angel in the Flaming Pelican Tavern in Port Kowie last year.”

  “Ah,” Drury said. “That one turned out much better. No one died except some of those bloody Sikh pirates who tried to steal our ship.”

  *

  The Shadows, Ngola had no other name for them, watched their prisoners from the moon pool fifty yards down the slope with disinterest. Five of the creatures slept in the water, possibly because of the big meal they’d just had, while two others kept watch from the stone bank.

  Ngola got his crew moving and made changes to the U-shaped boulders. They closed off more of the opening, narrowing any approach the Shadows might make, and plugged up holes with smaller rocks they gathered from the slope.

  The creatures still evidenced no interest and Ngola got the feeling the things regarded them simply as ants, not truly understanding the arrangements and preparations.

  Or maybe they were simply sure of themselves and their prey’s efforts were thought to be merely amusing.

  While scavenging rocks for the makeshift fort, they also found several skeletons from past victims and assorted weapons to add to those few they had not lost during their capture. Chief among them were three spears whose tips had rusted away. Boot laces and knives served as new spearheads.

  “They’re flimsy,” Drury groused as he held one of the remade weapons.

  “Aye,” Ngola said, “but they give us some reach that we didn’t before have.” He piled another rock in the opening that served as a doorway to the fort. “I’ll settle for that.”

  “Agreed.”

  In additio
n to the spears, there were also wooden hafts of other weapons. Ngola ordered those added to the cache as well. Under his orders, the men sacrificed their shirts and pants, ripping them to shreds and wrapping them around the wooden hafts to make torches. Other hafts were sacrificed to make a small fire within the “fort.”

  The fire caught the Shadows’ attention for a few moments, and Ngola feared the creatures might decide to do something then. But the sun was setting outside and darkness filled the cave—except for the small campfire they had started within the fort—as the sun’s reflected light drowned in the pool.

  The close quarters stank of sour hygiene and fear, and Ngola was certain it would be there as long as the men stayed there. He hunkered down in front of the opening, trusting Drury to watch his back, and faced all those men.

  Machado took up space on the opposite side of the campfire and looked angry. Whether it was because he felt all of their necks would be put on the chopping block or because he had not thought of the fort first, Ngola didn’t know and didn’t care. That was a battle to be fought another time. Preferably after the Shadows were dealt with.

  “There are seven of them,” Ngola said. “They will come for us tomorrow—”

  “How can you know this?” Machado demanded.

  “Because if they don’t, I will force them to come after us,” Ngola said. “When they do, we will fight them here. We will use the knives and spears that we have, and we will use torches.” He paused, looking at them. “Tomorrow, we will be free men.”

  “Or dead,” Machado said.

  “When you’re a slave,” Ngola told him, remembering the lessons he had learned in Haiti on the sugar plantations, “death is just another kind of freedom.”

  11.

  Battle of Shadows

  “How often do they feed?” Ngola stood at the narrow opening to the fort and watched the creatures in the moon pool. Although the sun had been up for at least an hour and the dim light once more made the cave’s interior somewhat visible, the monsters remained in the water. They dove and swam, content for the moment to feed on fish, oysters, shrimp, and other small prey.