Imaro: Book I

by Charles R. Saunders

  IMARO

  BOOK ONE

  By Charles R. Saunders

  Cover Art: Mshindo Kuumba

  Design: URAEUS

  Copyright 2014 Charles R. Saunders

  All Rights Reserved

  ISBN: 978-1-312-48466-5

  PART I

  THE ILYASSAI

  ‘I LEAVE A WARRIOR BEHIND’

  Among them will come

  The Child of Wonder

  And they will

  Know him not.

  -- Prophecy

  A warm rain misted down on a small boy standing motionless in the tall, yellow grass. Although he enjoyed the sensation of rain on his skin, the boy’s expression remained solemn – too solemn for a child who had seen only five rains wash through the Tamburure. His height and breadth would have been envied by a boy of seven rains’ passing.

  His mother stood a short distance behind him. She was a tall, slender woman with iron in her backbone and fire in her eyes. She wore a brief garment of tanned antelope hide draped over one shoulder. A large leather sack stuffed with dried journey-food was slung over the other.

  A long spear rested lightly in her hands. It was an arem, the spear of the Ilyassai. Half its length consisted of razor-sharp iron. With such spears, the Ilyassai ruled the vast yellow reaches of the Tamburure plain.

  The woman’s mahogany-brown skin reflected a sheen of beaded raindrops. Her face bore an expression that was as solemn as her son’s. They both knew that before this day was done, they would not see each other again. The woman, who was called Katisa, allowed her mind to drift in memory…

  Once before, Katisa had departed the Tamburure. Darkness had cloaked her passage then, eight long rains ago. Katisa was fleeing a forced marriage to Chitendu, who was her clan’s oibonok – sorcerer and shaman to Ajunge, Spear-God of the Ilyassai. Three rains later, she had returned, bearing a boy-child in her arms. Upon her return, she had exposed Chitendu for what he was: a servant of the Mashataan, the Demon Gods. The Ilyassai had nearly slain the oibonok before he finally fled. Only his sorcerous skills had saved him from death; since his departure, no trace of him had been uncovered in all the Tamburure.

  Katisa’s face clouded as her memories grew darker. The Ilyassai had not hailed her as a heroine for her deed. Far from that – the infant she nursed bore mute witness to Katisa’s violation of the strictest of Ilyassai taboos. She had given birth to a child by a man who was not Ilyassai, a man she consistently refused to name. The Ilyassai were as proud as they were fierce; death was the fate of a woman who yielded to the touch of a man who was not of their tribe. And death to the child as well.

  Katisa had known this well when she returned. But she knew her return was necessary nonetheless, for the evil influence of Chitendu had to be forestalled. She knew her deed could balance her transgression of taboo. That she could still never dwell among her people again, she was well aware. But her son must. Only the Ilyassai could impart the war-skills he would one day need…

  She had offered her clan of the Ilyassai, the Kitoko, an alternative. For the first five years of their lives, Ilyassai boys were cared for by their mothers. In the fifth rain, they were taken from their mothers to begin mafundishu-ya-muran, the arduous training that made Ilyassai warriors feared by man and beast alike across the Tamburure. Katisa proposed to remain with her son for the five rains all Ilyassai mothers were allowed. When the fifth rain came, she would again exile herself from her people – this time, forever.

  In return, she had asked that the Kitoko clan allow her son to undergo mafundishu-ya-muran; and, when he came of age, olmaiyo. Olmaiyo was the final rite of manhood, in which warriors-to-be proved their courage and skill by single-handedly slaying Ngatun the lion.

  The elders of the clan had weighed her request. Her violation of taboo could not be forgotten. Neither could her courage in confronting Chitendu, who had subtly steered them along a path contrary to the Way of Ajunge. The elders decided in favor of Katisa. Not all the clan agreed with that decision…

  The far-off roar of Ngatun brought Katisa’s mind back to the present. She shook her head sadly, reflecting on how swiftly the rains had passed since her return to the Tamburure. She shut off the memories. To pursue them further would be to play the lioness chasing the impala that bounded disdainfully just beyond her claws.

  She looked at her son. Already his body was hard and powerful beyond its years. She had seen to that. She had told him what was to come. He had accepted it with sullen stoicism.

  It is time, she decided.

  “Imaro. Come,” she said.

  Slowly Imaro turned. He tilted his head upward to meet his mother’s gaze. As always, Katisa interposed a barrier of lovelessness like a shield between herself and the son she had always known she must leave. Thus, there was no warmth in Katisa’s eyes when she looked at him…

  Then something changed in her gaze – a sudden flicker of emotion swift as the beat of a bird’s wing against the sky.

  She held out her hand to her son.

  Imaro hesitated. Gestures like this had been all too rare, for his mother had deliberately withheld her affection to prepare him – and herself – for this day. Still, young though he was, Imaro understood why Katisa reached out to him now. Stepping forward, he placed his small hand in hers.

  She held his hand tightly, but did not look at him while she led him from the site of the manyatta they shared. As the dome-shaped leather dwelling dwindled slowly in the rain-misted distance, Katisa reflected bitterly on how far the elders had demanded she live from the clustered manyattas of the rest of the Ilyassai. She seldom took part in the activities of the tribe. Even rarer were the times she brought Imaro among them. This would be the last time she would see any of them. Her only regret at that inevitable turn of events was walking beside her.

  The whisper of the rain subsided as they came within sight of the manyattas, gray-brown domes rising like the backs of elephants resting in the grass. Even through the warm, rain-damp air, the smell of ngombe – cattle – reached their nostrils in a pungent caress. The woman and boy could see the great herds of ngombe, the meaning of the lives of the Ilyassai, grazing placidly in their endless yellow forage, safe from all predators.

  Coming closer, they heard the sounds of the manyattas: the metallic rasp of spear-points being sharpened by warriors; the crackling hiss of cooking fires newly started now that the rain had passed; the shrill sound of children’s laughter; the subdued murmur of men and women in close conversation…

  Katisa knew why the people were keeping their voices low. They were talking about her and Imaro. She released her son’s hand. His face became a set mask, as did hers.

  Together they strode past the outlying manyattas toward the open space of stamped-down grass at the center of the ragged, concentric circles of leather dwellings. Tall, whip-lean men and women of red-brown hue watched mother and son go by. The faces and bodies of the men were daubed in crimson ocher, and their hair hung in thick plaits plastered with orange clay. The heads of the women were shaved bald.

  Katisa’s thatch of wooly black hair set her apart from the others as little else could. The women turned their faces from her in open disdain.

  Standing alone in the center of the open space, a warrior of middle years awaited the two outcasts. He held his lean, corded arms folded forbiddingly across his chest. A shingona, the tall headgear formed from the mane of the lion he had slain long ago on his olmaiyo complemented a face set in a stern, stony expression. This was Mubaku, ol-arem, or First Spear, of the Kitoko clan.

  Tall enough to overbear Katisa, Mubaku gave her a fierce glare. Calmly, she met the scorn that was naked in the ol-arem’s eyes. Not looking up, Imaro stood impassively at his mother’s side. The rest of the clan
began to gather in the open area: warriors and women, children and elders. The tension that gathered with them was as palpable as the rainbeads gleaming on their skin.

  “You know why I’ve come,” Katisa said, clear-voiced.

  Mubaku nodded curtly, saying nothing.

  “You will keep your word? My son will undergo mafundishu-ya-muran and be given the same opportunity to reach olmaiyo as any Ilyassai boy-child?”

  “We will keep our word,” the ol-arem replied. “Now, keep yours. Go.”

  The rebuke stung. Katisa displayed no reaction. Ignoring the silent onlookers, she turned to Imaro. She gazed at him long and intently, striving to convey a message beyond words; beyond touching; an expression of love held painfully in abeyance.

  Finally, at the very moment Imaro feared he would lose control and fling himself tearfully into his mother’s arms, she spoke, as much to the gathered Kitoko clan as to him.

  “I go… but I leave a warrior behind.”

  Then she turned and strode stiff-backed from the central area; walking away from the manyattas and the ngombes and the arems and the uncompromising obstinacy of her people; walking away from her son. Imaro watched her tall, straight form dwindle in the distance …

  A vicious blow cracked solidly against his back. Crying out at the abrupt pain, Imaro sailed headlong through the air. Even as he hurtled toward the ground, the long hours of lessons he had absorbed from Katisa came to the fore. He rolled on impact with the ground and sprang quickly to his feet.

  The laughter of the onlookers burned his ears; tears stung at the corners of his eyes. He carefully composed his face, then looked up.

  Masadu, the warrior who had struck him with the butt of an arem, stood scowling beside Mubaku. The fearsomeness of Masadu’s appearance was heightened by the hideous row of scars the disfigured the left side of his face – a legacy left by Ngatun during Masadu’s olmaiyo. He had slain Ngatun, but the lion had exacted a price. It was Masadu who guided the clan’s youths along the demanding course of mafundishu-ya-muran.

  “We’ll soon learn what kind of ‘warrior’ that woman left behind,” Masadu sneered. “Follow me, son-of-no-father.”

  Imaro’s young eyes turned hard. His face showed nothing of his struggle to master the pain knifing through his back. Holding his body stiffly erect – like Katisa – the boy hurried after the scarred warrior. But his thoughts followed his mother.

  Why, why, why couldn’t you take me with you – this was his unheard cry, echoing silent sobs.

  The weapon was in the crucible...

  TURKHANA KNIVES

  The language of the Ilyassai

  Is the speech of the spear.

  -- Tamburure saying

  Imaro scowled at the tall, lean figure approaching him through the yellow grass. He glanced quickly toward Kulu, the ngombe that had been entrusted to his care. The large, long-horned cow did not look up from the sun-scorched fodder upon which she grazed.

  Far across the golden sweep of the Tamburure, the herd-boys of the Kitoko clan tended scattered clusters of ngombe. The size of the youths’ sub-herds varied according to their ages and their progress in mafundishu-ya-muran. A few, close to readiness for olmaiyo, had twenty or more ngombe in their charge. The youngest, thin brown sticks of boy-children who had just begun warrior-training, were entrusted with no more than one of the precious cows.

  Imaro, now well beyond his fourteenth rain, still tended only Kulu. Kanoko, the youth who was approaching him, was of an age with Imaro, yet he had eleven ngombe in his care. He seldom allowed Imaro to forget that, or any other indication of Imaro’s low status among the Kitoko.

  Kanoko strode insolently across the unseen boundary that marked the range past which only an Ilyassai could approach. From the beginning of mafundishu-ya-muran, Ilyassai youths were taught that anyone, or anything else – warrior, beast, or demon – that came within a spear-cast of a ngombe must be slain.

  Unconsciously, Imaro curled his fingers around the hilt of his simi, the short, iron sword sheathed at his side. He reluctantly uncurled his fingers and raised the tip of his arem skyward in a gesture of acknowledgement. Often were the times he wished Kanoko were not Ilyassi…

  The two youths glared at each other in long-established mutual enmity. Already, Kanoko was approaching the height of a full-grown warrior. Wiry, cat-like thews danced along his lean frame as he walked. Red-brown skin, bare except for a single leather garment knotted over one shoulder and dropping to mid-thigh, gleamed slickly in the light of Jua the sun. His hair, braided and plastered with red clay, clung like a barbaric helmet to his narrow skull.

  Yet tall as Kanoko was, Imaro was half a head taller. His physique boasted a brawn that was still only a promise of what were bound to be massive adult proportions. His sheer physical impact overshadowed the tattered state of his antelope-hide garment and the sullen expression on his face. The dark, earth-colored undertone of his complexion and the broadness of his nose, cheekbones, and mouth suggested a parentage different from that of Kanoko and the rest of the Ilyassai – a parentage for which Imaro had been made to suffer more times than he could count.

  “Kulu looks hungry, Imaro,” Kanoko observed. “That is strange. She has so much grass to herself here.”

  There was no mistaking the condescending curve of the youth’s lips or the derision glinting in his eyes. Imaro did not reply to the gibe. He had long since learned not to allow himself to be goaded by Kanoko’s sharp tongue.

  Once, several rains past, he had responded to the other youth’s taunts. In the ensuing battle, he had come close to beating the life out of his tormentor. Kanoko had told Masadu that Imaro had started the fight, and the dour warrior-trainer had taken Kanoko’s words for truth. It was Imaro who had endured the ensuing beating with a stick thick as a spear shaft. He had borne the punishment in silence – the day Katisa departed was the last time he had cried out in the presence of an Ilyassai – and thereafter, he had fought hard to suppress the anger Kanoko all too often succeeded in provoking.

  In mock seriousness, Kanoko said, “Silence in the presence of a gift, Imaro?”

  “I see no gift,” Imaro replied shortly.

  Kanoko reached inside his garment and produced a bundle of sweet grass wrapped in a leaf of the plant called elephant’s-ear. It was a kutendea, a gift Ilyassai herders presented to the cattle of their friends. Imaro’s eyes narrowed in suspicion, for in no way was Kanoko a friend of his.

  “Why do you do this?” he demanded. His bluntness concealed the sudden hope that the low regard in which his clan held him had suddenly changed.

  For reply, Kanoko thrust the kutendea into the snout of Imaro’s ngombe. Kulu’s teeth tore eagerly into the green bundle; to a ngombe, elephant’s-ear was a rare delight. Kulu chewed – then bellowed in pain as scores of red six-legged dots burst from their leafy prison and swarmed into her nose, eyes, and mouth. Whipping her horned head from side to side, Kulu spat the false gift onto the ground and bolted. She dashed past the startled ngombe of the other herd-boys and stampeded beyond the grazing-range the Ilyassai had wrested from the beasts that roamed the Tamburure.

  Flame ants, Imaro realized the moment he saw them. Flame ants – insects with a bite that burned like fire! Somehow, Kanoko had contrived to capture enough of them to drive any beast mad with pain. Furiously, he turned on Kanoko.

  “Why did you do that to Kulu?” Imaro demanded. “Why?”

  “Why?” Kanoko mocked. “You know why! You are the son-of-no-father. Your mother was driven from the clan before she brought you back from her wanderings. You have no father, and your mother’s kin won’t even let you know who they are. You are not fit to be an Ilyassai! Wait till Masadu finds out you lost your miserable ngombe! You do know what happens when you lose your ngombe, don’t you, you – ”

  Kanoko said no more. Swift as lightning, Imaro’s balled fist hammered into Kanoko’s sneering face. The other youth’s reflexes were cat-quick, but he could not pull his jaw away in time to avo
id the full force of Imaro’s blow. The impact lifted him off his feet and left him sprawled semi-conscious in the grass.

  Murderous rage glinting in his eyes, Imaro stood over Kanoko, arem upraised in his hand. Then, realizing that Kulu was fleeing farther into the wild part of the Tamburure, he turned and raced through the grass after his stricken charge.

  Ignoring the pain spreading through his jaw, Kanoko threw back his head and laughed as only a malicious boy on the brink of manhood can. Of all the youths undergoing mafundishu-ya-muran, only Imaro surpassed him in the skills of hunting and war. Now – Imaro was finished. When the time came to pen the ngombe herd in its thornbush boma for the night, Imaro and Kulu would not be there. For that, Masadu would surely kill the son-of-no-father, if the beasts of the Tamburure did not do so. And Kanoko’s prowess would stand alone among the warriors-to-be…

  Kanoko laughed louder, sending a scornful echo racing in pursuit of Imaro’s dwindling form.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Freedom. The concept held little meaning for Imaro, except during times such as this, when he ran alone in the Tamburure, dry grass swishing against his bare legs. It was then that he felt that he truly belonged in the savanna, at one with the vast herds of impala, zebra, kudu, gazelle, and countless other hoofed creatures that, along with Tembo, the mighty elephant, roamed wherever their will guided them. Even more did the youth identify with the Tamburure’s deadliest predators: Ngatun the lion, Chui the leopard, Matisho the hunting-hyena. These creatures hunted the grass-eaters as it pleased them, without regard to the strictures imposed by clan or tribe. If he were Ngatun or Chui or Matisho, Imaro sometimes supposed, he might then be free.

  But now there was no time for such musings. The longer it took to reach Kulu, Imaro knew, the less chance he would have to return his ngombe to the boma before nightfall. He applied himself to the chase, running at a steady, loping pace. He strove to remain at least within earshot of Kulu, whose bellowing cries of torment stabbed at his heart.