The village rested in what would have been considered an idyllic setting to a romantic. Steeped in natural beauty this place should have inspired visions of Eden, the polar opposite to the symbols of death and mortality that so heavily adorned the inhabitants’ bodies, clothing and tools.
However, like all things in nature, there were environmental factors like hunger and competition that had shaped these curious people, and their cryptic culture.
And like all cultures, death played a part in its creation, and daily life, and would of course be there at the end.
How a people viewed death was directly related to how they viewed life, and with the Bakwaniri, these disparate states were justifiably tilted toward extinction, and so, the people in the skull-masks held a gloomy view of the world where life came from death, and so even their festivals were celebrated with the shedding of blood.
Within that skewed framework good and evil could also be seen shifting places, but in the name of survival, the definition of sin was often obscured.
Indeed, these people were guilty of crimes not much different from Omag’s that they had for generations committed upon neighboring tribes, many of which had gone extinct under the onslaught of the Bakwaniri culinary and cultural forms that demanded unwilling participants.
It would be unfair to say that these raids into other territories along the river were undertaken with cannibalism solely in mind since slavery and gold had also motivated the land-bound reavers.
Avarice and greed played in their time of poverty and need, and while forgiveness might exist for such sinners and the culture that formed under this duress, it gave them no right to exercise their demons upon the otherwise peaceful folk that inhabited the jungle that they had invaded.
The troubled origins and history of the Bakwaniri people had begun many, many miles to the west, and had chased them through the valley of death to this living desert and made them into the fearful, savage and sickly lot that they were at the time of Goro’s reign.
Those physical and mental infirmities with which they were afflicted came about in part as an honest reaction to the hostile lands that crowded their settlement, for on all sides the thick and labyrinthine jungle was populated by wild carnivores, poisonous insects, plants and worse.
But the blame lay farther back, so untangle their roots, and find them the descendants of fugitives that ran from the authorities at a time when the gallows answered most legal questions, and so every breathing soul to join them since that initial escape: each man, woman and child had been damned by the sins of their fathers.
The first fathers of the Bakwaniri people started out as the crew of a pirate ship that had wrecked more than 150 years before the Gypsy Horvat built his yurt. The vessel took its name to the bottom after running onto the same rocks that later dragged the Westerner so spectacularly beneath the waves.
The cutthroats had been chased there after a desperate sail from their Cuban stronghold with the Royal Navy a day or two behind them, and North African sanctuary on the forefront of their minds. When their Barbary corsair cousins sought to enslave them, these refugee rovers headed south and into oblivion on the savage shore.
Knowing that they faced the hangman’s noose should they be rescued, those buccaneers who survived the wreck opted for the semblance of death, and so they left their ship to be discovered half-sunk near the shore and stuffed with the bones of drowned crew while those 30 men who could still walk...ran inland.
The fugitives, seamen all, had little or no knowledge of Africa other than some familiarity with emancipating its treasures from the locked holds of honest merchant vessels; and so to a man, they were failures at hunting the frequently murderous fauna while knowing nothing of which flora they could safely consume.
These sailors found themselves in a hazardous setting that offered no civilized refuge. The first few months saw wild beasts, starvation and poisoning cull their numbers until desperation turned them upon each other and then to cannibalism.
At first, this dreaded ritual was only practiced upon the dead, very weak or sick among their own crew, but as those survivors grew stronger on such grisly fare they turned their hungry eyes to the relatively peaceful tribes of native Africans that they discovered eking out tenuous lives in the jungle.
Those groups of natives were often already much depleted in number and morale, having suffered for generations under both the African and foreign slave trades. These faded cultures were outfought by the buccaneers’ European technology and so the Africans to survive the exchange were forcibly brought into the ranks.
Any that were not eaten outright were kept as wives or slaves, only to be eaten if they became more useful as food.
The original pirate crew had been a mixed bag of mongrels to begin with, being of European, Asian, Arabic and East Indian descent. Most had been career seamen without families and still others had been pressed aboard.
As their process of survival by absorption continued for many decades, a motley collection of humans was the result as the surviving pirates and their offspring interbred with their slaves to form a hybrid group of caramel-skinned, mixed-race buccaneer and indigenous peoples who were better prepared for surviving in the jungle, but who were by that time ingrained physically and culturally with a grisly craving for human flesh.
The invaders became notorious—rumored and whispered about—and always feared. But so terrible was their reputation that few who had not seen their gruesome work believed it possible—and so in the early days their bloody raids shocked the indigenous tribes they overran. The few survivors could never relay the true horror they had witnessed.
So most tribes in that tangled corner of jungle were decimated and enslaved before heroes could be chosen; and any chieftain who attempted appeasement or collusion was the first upon the fire.
Bawkee, Bokanu, and Bakweena! They were called by those who are no more.
Those peoples they dominated met them with screams of terror, and word of their invasion passed between tribes and languages, and so finally their initial appellation of “buccaneers” was shaped by manifold dialects into the referent “Bakwaniri” as the news spread from mouth to ear.
With successive generations the Bakwaniri became more African and their language more of a polyglot, yet vestiges of their roving lives remained at the core of their culture.
The “crew” called their chief the “capan” who was supported by a secondary chief the “fust” and “sir-jon,” the Bakwaniri wizard, witch doctor and priest.
Singly each crewman could be referred to as a “Johnnie,” and the women “Hearties,” though the names like the genders were interchangeable in time of need or grog.
Such quaint anachronisms were most evident in regard to the extraordinary village in which the Bakwaniri crew lived.
“The ship,” as they called it, was not any simple thatched and walled jungle homestead, but was originally intended as a monument to the brave and foolhardy men who as first fathers had crossed the seas and then the jungle; in fact, it was the early framers of this outpost who had tried to capture their own spirits in the very lines and layout of the town.
It was also safe to say that all involved with its building were better acquainted with the construction and layout of sailing vessels than they were the living habits and abodes of landlubbers.
And so seen from a distance, the village resembled a three-masted sailing ship afloat in a jade ocean of jungle. Its “hull” was a palisade of stout, sharpened posts set upright tight together and sweeping upward in height fore and aft to make a fortified structure that framed the space within.
The long, narrow oval formed by these poles was marked in three places by tall rounded timbers called “fore,” “aft” and “main” masts that had been raised in a line where the keel would lie in an actual vessel.
From each of these hung a spider web of rope rigging used by the crew to access the heights, and for applying patchwork leather coverings to deflect the rains. The
greatest of these devices was stowed to the port side of the “bow” and could be swung into place in foul weather.
The smaller masts fore and aft were used by the crew as a center brace or fulcrum for building projects or any chore, like skinning game animals, that required the elevation of a weight; while the center mainmast had to hold the “crow’s nest” high over the jungle green, just shy of the canopy that variably by season could close the forest in over the ship.
The ship’s location had been chosen for its access to the fresh water that ran close to the starboard side, but also for its proximity to ancient stone basements or foundations built and left there long ago by Roman explorers far from home.
These subterranean block structures ran the length of the ship, forming small stone rooms that came off to the left or right of a center hall and were used by the Bakwaniri for food storage and to house what treasures they had. In times of necessity they were also used as prison cells or as defensible retreats.
The first fathers had used these as refuge from the unseen jungle terrors that pressed them on all sides, shelters in which they lived while they planned and built their ship on land and from where they launched their many raids upon neighboring tribes.
In time a double row of small thatched-roofed wooden huts was built atop these stone rooms and ran in a line from fore to aft. Parts of the ancient Roman arches and walls protruded from the ground and were used to shore up the huts that butted up against them pacing north and south before stopping aft to leave room for the capan’s stout hut that stood on stilts overlooking the ship.
These huts also left room by the forward part of the palisade that formed an open, lancet-shaped area in which the Bakwaniri held their communal festivals and where the sir-jon performed his dark arts. There was a great fire pit ringed with stones there by three tall blood-stained posts thrust into the discolored ground.
So the village was ship-shaped—though none of the Bakwaniri was seagoing at that time. They lived far inland now, and their old legends spoke of the ocean and the west as a place from which doom would always follow, so they were pleased to live far away from it.
Generations of breeding with and bastardizing the local inhabitants they could master left them more comfortable on land, though their harrowing years in the wild had made homebodies of them all.
And so, the oddly crafted palisade might have been intended to memorialize their dimly remembered nautical origins, but it still kept out the more savage jungle denizens and even presented a challenge to the mighty Magnuh and his kind.
The Bakwaniri knew of the giants for herds of them still crossed the river to the south and ranged the forests on the western side of their home. In earlier times when their store of gunpowder still held, the first fathers had hunted the elephants for the ivory that still decorated the encampment’s sometimes squalid trimmings, with the skull of one great tusker proudly adorning the ship’s prow. Few beasts that still lived could have wielded those arching ivory weapons, and it was a testament to a bygone age to see them so displayed.
The Bakwaniri territory was surrounded by natural impediments, and guarded by savage beasts, and so they enjoyed the protection of a lethal wilderland that the first fathers had barely survived crossing when they ran from the sea.
Neither civilized man nor savage would dare to travel those forbidden lands, and any fool who did would not be seen again.
So the Bakwaniri hunted along the edge of Goro’s territory, or turned east to the rolling lands that led to the upland plateau. There the groups of hunters tried to time their visits to avoid the lions, dogs and hyenas with which they’d have to compete for gazelle, impala, antelope and many other game animals.
This sort of hunting was adopted from the native cultures they had consumed, but was not widely embraced for it required greater skill and physical prowess than the Bakwaniri had, so rather than replacing their gruesome main course they used the local game and flora to supplement it as seasons or chance permitted.
It was more efficient to eat the flesh of their slaves than it was to chase after herds.
Again, this Bakwaniri behavior was reinforced most honestly, for it seemed that many of the first fathers had been plagued with illnesses of various origins and climes, and so their first contact with the local people spread sicknesses to which pirates were prone: venereal diseases, Black Death and deadly flu. Some among them also brought the curse of leprosy and of course the African scourge of Noma was waiting there for them beneath the canopy.
From this interchange of bloodlines came new diseases and conditions that have since been lost to time and death and never categorized or studied as a result. There were diseases that plagued the minds of many Bakwaniri, and even gnawed at the present capan’s clan, but there was one physical ailment that settled in most and displayed in various horrific ways.
In fact, the Bakwaniri wore their decorated masks to terrify their enemies, but they were also much depended upon as time progressed to hide their true appearance.
CHAPTER 22 – Demons, Curses and Crimes
The crew carried within its ranks a debilitating and disfiguring disease they misnamed “scurv” that impacted the bones and soft tissues, and ate away at the flesh. Its progress was slow however, and varied man to man, but because it did not kill quickly, it became endemic to the people and any with which they bred.
There was no cure, but for generations the Bakwaniri sir-jons had prescribed the ingesting of “clean” human flesh as an effective ward against the scurv that ravaged them all, with powers to mitigate and lessen the impact of its infections and outbreaks.
This scurv disease then, also kept the Bakwaniri closer to home as they grew older, for its progression produced physical disabilities to undermine a hunter’s heart and lungs, or twist his spine, or left him with legs too bowed and bent for walking the distances required while on the hunt.
And so scurv was another reason that the mysteries of Goro’s lands had been left largely unexplored.
“History” to the Bakwaniri consisted of oral tradition and myth, a mix of pirate tales, European folk stories and African legend that was maintained by the sir-jon and his apprentices to be passed down from one generation to the next.
So, the story of the first fathers’ arrival in the jungle was colored by misinterpretation, distortion and fantasy for few of the founders had been well-versed in letters, and none of the peoples that were forced into the tribe had brought a written language. The result was the Bakwaniri were a superstitious folk who were slow to learn from their errors.
But, among the sir-jon’s tales were truths of a sort, and it was told that the first fathers of this bastard people had struggled out of the sea and traveled inland, only to spend many months surviving the wilds in full retreat from persecution.
And it was in that time that they came against the Forest Demons. Starving and lost, the first fathers were attacked by these hellish things that were men in shape, but monstrous in guise, bearing the weight and muscle many times a man, and being covered in coarse hair or quills.
And these wily black beasts came upon them in large numbers, each as cunning as a man, but more daunting in power. To their aggressions did many first fathers fall, and by them finally were the survivors chased across the river.
Powerful Forest Demons though they were, said the tales, they came no farther. And so it was that from the start the Bakwaniri had ample reasons to stay east of that running water.
When the River Demon had started coming 25 years past, there was great terror and accusation in the ship, for the sir-jon had said that the beast must have come as punishment for some slight against the gods, or in response to an unknown Bakwaniri incursion into the forbidden lands; while still others thought it was a curse from one of those they had recently enslaved, and that this spell had opened a door to the demon.
So many slaves were put to the fire as sacrifice and their flesh consumed, and throughout the Bakwaniri ship did neighbor accuse neigh
bor, while still others were driven mad and killed themselves from fear.
Worse might have come to the Bakwaniri people had not their sir-jon gone to counsel with the capan, and between them the two divined a truth.
Since there seemed to be but one hungry demon to collect the debt against a transgression that only it perceived; then, the sir-jon felt that such a thing might be readily appeased.
To calm the ship, Capan Sparsall pardoned all tribesmen for crimes against his brothers, launched no reprisals across the river and accepted the lost women as an unfortunate sacrifice.
Gathering his people by the great fire, the capan had given his judgment. The crew knew the old tales and had no wish to relive them, so they accepted the River Demon’s bargain, fearing to bring a greater curse upon their heads.
As the years passed after the deal was struck, the Bakwaniri counted the loss of three or six daughters a year to be a fair investment for their peace of mind. They lived in the jungle, and all were used to the loss of life.
Most hated it, but none dared to haggle a better price.
So decades after the first payment, the daughter of a young hunter called Seetree fell to the demon, and the poor man himself found her bloody corpse upon the riverbank.
This outrage pushed Seetree past his point of tolerable patience, and he confronted the capan, fust and sir-jon about the terrible loss, volunteering himself to lead the hunters into the forbidden lands to slay the demon and bring back its head.
Yet still old Sparsall counseled acceptance, and both fust and sir-jon agreed.
But, the vengeful Seetree had no acceptance in him and would abide no more delay.
As a boy he had glimpsed the River Demon, as had other men who grew up to know the forest hunting craft, and each among them had in their travels north and south come upon hairy gorillas and chimpanzees and returned with its man-like flesh to eat.
And they knew that despite the River Demon’s monstrous appearance and size, it did in shape and movement resemble those other creatures, and from this Seetree reasoned that even bull elephants could be killed if enough hunters tried to kill it.
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