Bos taurus

Bos Taurus - Slaying the Royal Bull -

Locked in a stupor, Ben Aziz dreamt of the will to wake. Like echoes from a losing battle, the chants of the priest reverberated in his addled memory. “His Majesty, the Nagash of the line of David, abides deeply with Death.”

The liturgy honoring the life of the late king, staggered on like a disjointed spider. “From the day of vengeance; from the day of doom, how shall the soul of one escape? When the mother cannot save her child, and earth surrenders all her prisoners, how shall the vacuous soul escape? When the assembly shall accuse us with terrors; when our deeds shall be opened and spill forth before all, and all deeds done shall be read aloud to the congregation, how shall a soul escape? When our Lord, Rab al-Kun, is seated on the highest mountain, on the day of the seventh, and all the faithful stand beside him, how then shall any soul escape?”

As crown prince, it had been Ben Aziz's duty to lead the funerary procession and subsequently slaughter the royal bull. It fell to him to eviscerate the carcass and pull forth the still-warm, still-beating heart, taking the first bite of its raw flesh. It was for him to anoint his own forehead, right ear, right arm and right leg from the blood of the slain bull. He then disrobed as the high priest rubbed his body down with the visceral fat of the sacrifice. Glistening and bloodied, the Oracle pierced his earlobes through with spikes of gold before being re-robed in a green raiment embroidered with gold discs, stars, and bull emblems. Only then could Ben Aziz be hailed as the new king with the proclamation, “The Divine son of David, King of Kings, abides with Death. His living lineage, Ben Aziz, Nagash of Nagashi reigns.”

And then came feasting and drinking.

It had to have been the brew. For Ben Aziz, the now-former King of Axumin, sounds, strident and distant, rang hollow in his head. His vision swirled in dizzying rainbows amid flashes of purple light. With each heartbeat, his ears pulsated, throbbing like thunder. Slowly, sensation in his body returned and he vaguely understood, he was bound, bent over nearly in two by an electro-pole secured with electro-wire strictures that cut into the flesh at his hips and neck. His hands remained secured above his head, tied to two loops atop the electro-pole as it lay vertically along his spine. “How came I here?” he slurred.

Amar, his younger half-brother, grinned near to Ben Aziz’s bloodied and bruised visage. “Have you anything further to say on your account?” Amar’s voice sang derisive and crass. He held the electro-pole toggle loosely in his hand.

Ben Aziz, straightening himself to answer, “You . . .” Amar clicked the switch sending another debilitating jolt of plasma-pulse through Ben Aziz’s body. Struggling again to approximate an erect posture, Ben Aziz stared down his adversary. “You do not . . . stand worthy . . . to be addressed,” he spat in slurred rage, a morass of his sweat, blood, and saliva quietly dripping to the travertine pavers of the palace’s expansive open-air courtyard. Sunlight ripped through a smattering of clouds, flashing off one of the pools, momentarily blinding Ben Aziz. He winced.

Drawing courage from this failed gesture, Amar smirked. “I could do this all day. Oh, no . . . I can’t. I have a kingdom to rectify,” he sneered, his eyes enraged.

One of Amar’s men, etched with the tribal scars of the high warrior class, noting Amar’s expression, crunched a boot into Ben Aziz’s side bellowing, “Know you not, this is your Lord and Master. You will show due respect.” Registering Amar’s approval, he proceeded to spit in Ben Aziz’s face.

“I would rather . . . die.” Ben Aziz looked sideways at his half-brother, cursing in Conjurer’s tongue as he lay groveling on the ground.

Buttressed by his band of warriors, Amar gave a wicked grin. “That also can be arranged.” The vultureous clan nervously laughed as Amar continued. “Such brevity? Shame. You were always so . . . erudite, expressive.” He gestured, pacing like a jackal. “Which is why you were your Queen-mother’s favorite.” He glanced down the open colonnaded portico, past the series of fountains and tall, sculpted trees. Their father’s newly sealed mausoleum glittered bluish-white in the setting sun. “And father’s,” he added with a grin. “Pity.” Amar threw the electro-pole toggle to one of his men. “Remove this cur from my presence. Take him to the Maqzan. Dispatch of him courteously. After all, he was our sovereign . . . for half a day,” Amar scoffed. “And bring to me his sister, A’liatah, I need a respite from my sullied labor.” He licked his lips and walking off, laughed derisively as Ben Aziz, led away, cursed with escalating vehemence.

* * *

Ben Aziz was never one to be dictated to. This held both incumbent blessing, and its corresponding curse. That curse now manifested itself the dominant. Bent by random jolts from the electro-pole, Ben Aziz could only glance to the sides as he was led deeper toward the Maqzan, to what he knew would be a cruel, tortured death, despite what Amar had predicated.

It had to have been the priests, those conjurers of superstitions, those mongers of myth and fear, who had instigated this rebellion. Yes, Amar was cruel, for that he was notorious. He was deceitful, of such there was no question. But his defining attributes, his ability to manipulate others, and his simmering, fixated anger, were the qualities for which the priests were also most renowned.

Long had Axumini tradition, safeguarded by the clerics, prohibited Assud nobility from partaking in any artisanal crafts or, equally, to be discipled in the hard sciences, given such were the provenience of Abeth slaves.

Ben Aziz erred. The intricately illuminated velum palimpsest that had etched his father’s thirty-five-year reign served merely to further ornament and hide nearly a century’s accretion of societal decay. He could visualize now, with each step, how deep the rot had spread.

Ben Aziz miscalculated. Bespoken whispers purled of his having mentored under a master-smith. Indeed, it was his own-forged blade which bled out the bull. And how much blood had now been spilt.

Ben Aziz had grown self-conceited. He could read and write, and had thus been surreptitiously accused of being Buda, one who might summon spirits, one who could effect a transformation into a mythical, carnivorous beast.

The clergy had plotted.

Amar had been preened.

Ben Aziz had played the fool.

He loathed himself now for allowing Amar a retinue of private bodyguards. How could not I have foreseen the signs? Everywhere, even through his stupor and pain, he recognized the now-too-late indices of his half-brother’s ambitions and avarice. The retched stench of slaughter, mingled with the sight of mangled corpses, both Assud nobility and Abeth slaves, staining the palace’s polished stone corridors, goaded him in his defeat. But it was the growing awareness of the consequences of his lethal naïveté which further eroded his will to live. Death indeed appeared a fitting outcome for this mounting litany of personal failures.

The deeper he was driven into the recesses of the arched palace compound, however, the more littered became the ground with the corpses of the innocent and the young, subjects under his protection. Overhead, a woman’s scream startled him. “A’liatah?” he groaned. A spark of realization, hidden in ash-laden embers, ignited. If I am to be cruelly executed, I must go fighting? His drugged mind raced to cultivate a plan, if not for his own sake, then for the sake of A’liatah, for so many others who had been extinguished through no other motive than they had faithfully fulfilled their duty to the royal family.

Ben Aziz plotted.

From his early days, play-acting assassins in the lowest levels of the palace compound, he recalled, on his left, at the end of the corridor, they would have to stop while the key-slave unlocked the main door to the underground storage vaults. Ben Aziz would have to make the most of the three seconds required.

The two advance warriors turned at the junction. Ben Aziz, feigning a stumble, bent to his right. Using his shoulders and neck as the fulcrum, he leveraged the electro-pole downward. The electro-wires snapped as they sliced deeply into his right shoulder and sides. His hands remained chained to the loops atop the electro-pole. Grabbing the pole, Ben Aziz spun, and lunged toward the two rear guard who, failing to slow, were now within range. Using the electro-pole as a lance, Ben Aziz slammed the end of the pole into the first warrior’s throat before spinning a complete 360, and, with the gained momentum, hammered the second warrior’s skull. An echoing crack dropped him to the ground, dead.

Ben Aziz, screaming in pain and rage, ran forward, where, as he anticipated, the two other warriors reemerged. Relying on his half-brother’s neurotic need for order, he surmised they would be aligned rather than standing side by side. With his dwindling strength, he drove the end of the pole three finger-widths below the solar plexus of the first, impaling both to the opposite wall. The mortally wounded warriors finally, spasmodically slumped to the floor. Ben Aziz’s agony screamed through his lacerated body.

Out of the corner of his eye, Ben Aziz visualized the Abeth key-slave cowering behind the door jamb to the Maqzan. Totally spent, Ben Aziz crawled toward the door. Blood gushed from his wounds. He bellowed, “Stanch this royal blood, and stop this war. If you abandon me, you abandon all hope.” In the enveloping cold, darkening of his mind, his slipping awareness registered multiple hands upon his person. Whether friend or foe, he had not time enough to ascertain.