by Marlon James
“So you approve of the ways of your master,” I said.
“I approve of the coin he gives me to feed my children. From the look of you I know you have none. But yes, I stuff his face because every other work he gives to slaves.”
“Is he who you wish to be? When you are a man?”
“Unlike the bitch boy I am now? Here is more truth. If my master as you call him were any more dumb I would have to prune and water him three times a quartermoon,” Bibi said, and chuckled.
“Then leave.”
“Leave? Just like that. Speak to me of this Leopard. What kind of man, with such ease, walks away as he pleases?”
“One who belongs to no one.”
“Or no one belongs to you.”
“Nobody loves no one,” I said.
“The son of a bitch who taught you that hates you. So, as my master would say, tell me true, tell me plain, tell me quick. Is it you with the boy behind me, or the spotted one?”
“Why does every mis-bred soul ask me about this mis-bred boy?”
“Because the cat isn’t talking. The other servers of the King—they are slaves, mind you—were all casting bets. Who is the rod, who is the staff, and who takes it up the shithole.”
I laughed. “What did you guess?” I asked.
“Well, since you are the one they both hate, they say you are being fucked by both.”
I laughed again. “And you?”
“You don’t walk like someone who gets fucked often up the ass,” he said.
“Maybe you don’t know me.”
“Didn’t say you weren’t fucked in the ass. I said you weren’t fucked often.”
I turned and stared at him. He stared at me. I laughed first. Then we couldn’t stop laughing. Then Fumeli said something about not sticking the horse hard enough and we both nearly fell off our horses.
Except for Sogolon, Bibi looked the oldest among us. Certainly the only one so far to mention children. It made me think of the mingi children of the Sangoma who we left with the Gangatom to raise. The Leopard was to give me word of what has happened to them since, but has not.
“How did you come by that sword?” I asked.
“This?” Bibi withdrew it. “I told you, from a mountain man east who made the mistake of going west.”
“Mountain men never go west. Let us speak true, date feeder.”
He laughed. “How old are you in years? Twenty, seven and one?”
“Twenty and five. Do I look so old?”
“I would guess older but did not want to be rude to so new a friend.” He smiled. “I have been twenty twice. And five more years.”
“Fuck the gods. I have never known men to live that long who were not rich, or powerful, or just fat. That means you were old enough to see the last war.”
“I was old enough to fight in it.”
He glanced past me, at the savannah grass, shorter than before, and the sky, cloudier than before, though we could feel the sun. It was cooler as well. We had long left the valley for lands no man has ever tried to live in.
“I know no man who has seen war that will speak of it,” Bibi said.
“Were you a soldier?”
He laughed short. “Soldiers are fools not paid enough to be fools. I was a mercenary.”
“Tell me about the war.”
“All one hundred years of it? Which war are we speaking?”
“Which one did you fight?”
“The Areri Dulla war. Who knows what those buffalo-fuckers of the South called it, though I heard they called it the War of Northern Belligerence, which is hilarious, given that they threw spears first. You were born three years after the last truce. That was the war that caused it. Such a curious family. With all the inbreeding producing mad kings you would think one day a king would say, Let us find some fresh blood to save the line, but no. So we have war upon war. This truth. I cannot say if Kwash Netu was a rare good king or if the new and mad Massykin King was just madder than the last, but he was brilliant at war. He had an art for it, the way some have an art for pottery or poetry.”
Bibi halted his horse and I did mine. I could tell Fumeli looked up, annoyed. The air was wet with the rain that was not going to come.
“We need to move now,” Fumeli said.
“Rest easy, child. The Leopard will be just as hard when you finally get to sit on him,” Bibi said.
This I turned around for. Fumeli’s face was as horrified as I knew it would be. I turned back to Bibi.
“My father never spoke of the war. He never fought in any,” I said.
“Too old?”
“Maybe. He was also my grandfather. But you were talking of war.”
“What? You … Yes, the war. I was ten and seven years and staying in Luala Luala with my mother and father. The mad Massykin King invaded Kalindar, a moon and a half’s march to Malakal, but still too close. Too close to Kwash Netu. My mother said, One day men will come to our house and say we have chosen you for war. I said, Maybe if I fight in war it will finally bring back the glory to our house that Father squandered with wine and women. With what will you bring glory, for you have no honor, she said. She was right, of course. I was between killings, and people have less need for private battles when all are caught up in war. And just as she said, great warriors came to the house and said, You, you are young and strong, at least you look it. Time to send that Omororo Bitch King back to his barrenlands with his tail between his legs. And what should I fight for? I asked, and they were offended. You should fight for the glorious Kwash Netu and for the empire. I spat and opened my robe to show him my necklace. I am of the Seven Wings, I said. Warriors of the coin.”
“Who are the Seven Wings?”
“Mercenaries, kidnapped from drunkard fathers with debts they cannot pay. Skilled in weapons and masters of iron. We travel quick and vanish like an afterthought. Our masters test us with scorpions so we know no fear,” Bibi said.
“How?”
“They sting us to see who lives. In battle, we make the formation of the bull. We are the horns, the most ferocious; we attack first. And we cost more than most kings can pay. But our Kwash Netu was quite wise in the art of war. I heard this from the mad King: One ruler cannot be in two places at once or three, for he is only one. He sits in Fasisi, so let us attack Mitu. So the Massykin attacked Mitu, and Mitu was his. He thought it was victory, and it is not an unwise thought that since the King cannot be in two places at once, he let us attack a place he cannot be. This was his mistake, Tracker. Hear this, that was no weakness. The southern armies played into the very greatness of Kwash Netu, being in many places at once.”
“Witchcraft?”
“Not everything comes from the womb of witches, Tracker. Your King’s father knew how to move armies faster than any king before or since. Movements that would take even the Kongori seven days, his army could cross in two. He chose wise where to fight, and where he could not, he bought the best, and most brutally taxed his people to do it. The best were the Seven Wings. Take this as truth as well. The mad King was a flighty fool who screamed at the sight of blood, and did not know the name of his own generals—while Kwash Netu had his own men to lead in the territories, strong men, who could run a city, or a state when he was gone to war in another. Did you hear of the war of women?”
“No. Tell me.”
“After his generals said to the mad King, Most Divine, we must retreat from Kalindar, our four sisters are in jeopardy, the King agreed. But then that night at the camp, for he demanded to be with his men in war, he heard two cats fucking and thought it was a night devil calling him a coward for retreating. So he demanded they advance again into Kalindar, only to be beaten by women and children hurling rocks and shit from their mud-brick towers. Meanwhile, Kwash Netu took Wakadishu. The final stand at Malakal was not even much of a stand. It was the dregs of an army fleeing stone-throwing women. The war was already won.”
“Hmm. That is not what they teach in Malakal.”
�
��I have heard the songs and read leaves of paper bound in leather-skin, how Malakal was the last stand between the light of Kwash Netu Empire and the darkness of the Massykin. Songs of fools. Only those who have not fought in war fail to see they were both dark. Alas, a mercenary without a war is a mercenary without work.”
“You know much about war, generals, and court. How ended you here, stuffing a fat pig dates for a living?”
“Work is work, Tracker.”
“And horseshit is horseshit.”
“Sooner than later the darkness of war shades every man who fought it. My needs are simple. Feeding my children as they too become men is one. Pride is not.”
“I don’t believe you. And after all you just said, I believe you even less. There is craft in your ways. Do you plan to kill him? I know, a rival hired you to get closer to him than a lover.”
“If I wanted to kill him I could have four years ago. He knows what I can do. I think it pleases him that people think I’m a silly girl-boy who likes to play with his mouth. He thinks it means I can sift through his enemies and deal with them.”
“So you are his spy. To spy on us?”
“Fool, he has Sogolon for that. I am here for whatever surprises the gods have in store for you.”
“I would hear more about what these great wars have done to you.”
“And I would say no more about it. War is war. Think of the worst that you have seen. Now think of seeing that every three steps for one quartermoon’s walk.”
We were now in deep grassland, greener and wetter than the brown bush of the valley, with the horses’ hooves sinking deeper in the dirt. Ahead, maybe another half a day’s ride, trees stood up and spread. Mountains hung back all around us. On the side, going west from Malakal, the mountains and the forest both looked blue. Along the grass and the wetness, bamboo giants of the grass sprouted, one, then two, then a clump, then a forest of them that blocked the late-afternoon sun. Other trees reached tall into the sky and ferns hid the dirt. I smelled a fresh brook before I heard or saw it. Ferns and bulbs sprouted out of fallen trees. We followed what looked like a track until I smelled that both the Leopard and Sogolon had gone that way. On my right hand, through the tall leaves, a waterfall rushed down rocks.
“Where they gone?” Fumeli asked.
“Fuck the gods, boy,” I said. “Your cat is but a—”
“Not him. Where are the beasts? No pangolin, no mandrill, not even a butterfly. Can your nose only smell what is here, and not what is gone?”
I did not want to talk to Fumeli. I would punch whatever rudeness came from his mouth.
“I will call him Red Wolf now—that is what he told me,” Bibi said.
“Who?”
“Nyka.”
“He mocks the red ochre I used to rub on my skin, saying only Ku women wear red,” I said.
“Truth for your ears? I have never seen a man in that colour,” Bibi said.
Bibi stopped, his brow furrowed, and looked at me as if trying to catch something he missed, then shook it out.
“And wolf?” he asked.
“You have not seen my eye?”
I knew his look. It said, There is a little that you are not telling me, but I care not enough to press it.
“What is that smell on the witch? I cannot place it,” I said.
He shrugged.
“Tell me something else, Sadogo,” I said to the Ogo.
This is true: The Ogo did not stop talking until evening caught us. And then he talked about the night catching us. I forgot about Fumeli until he hissed, and paid no attention until he hissed a third time. We came to a fork in the trail, a path left and a path right.
“We go left,” I said.
“Why left? This is the trail Kwesi take?”
“This is the trail I take,” I said. “Go your own way if you wish, just untie your horse from Bibi.” I heard the dull clump of hooves on mud and branches cracking.
I did not wait for him to say anything. The trail was narrow but there was a path and the sun was almost gone.
“No bat, no owl, no chirping beast,” Fumeli said.
“What twig is up your asshole now?”
“The boy is right, Tracker. No living thing moves through this forest,” Bibi said. One hand on the bridle, the other gripped his sword.
“Where is your great nose now?” Fumeli said.
I set it down in my mind right there. Never again would this boy be correct on anything. But both of them were right. I knew many of the animal smells of the montane grasslands, and none passed by my nose. And the scents of the forest that I did smell—gorilla, kingfisher, viper-skin—were too far away. No living thing but trees conspiring in circles and river water rushing down rocks. The Ogo was still talking.
“Sadogo, quiet.”
“Huh?”
“Hush. Movement in the bush.”
“Who?”
“None. That is what I say, there is no movement in the bush.”
“I was the one to say it first,” said Fumeli.
Was he worth me turning around so he could see my scowl? No.
“Many people say you have a nose, not I. What does your precious nose smell now?”
A neck as thin as his, thin as a girl’s, I could snap with no effort. Or I could let the Ogo break him in many pieces. But when I took in a deep breath, smells did come at me. Two that I knew, one I had not come across in many years.
“Grab your bow and draw an arrow, boy,” Bibi said.
“Why?”
“Do it now,” he said, trying to whisper harshly. “And dismount.”
We left the horses by a brook. The Ogo dipped into his bag and pulled out two shiny gauntlets, which I have only seen on the King’s knights. His fingers were now shiny black scales and his knuckles, five spikes. Bibi pulled his sword.
“I smell an open fire, wood, and fat,” I said. Bibi covered his mouth, pointed at us, then pointed at his mouth.
I said nothing else, now that I knew what we would find, judging from the smell. The sour stink of hair, the saltiness of the flesh. Soon we could see the fire and the light slipping through the forest. There it was, stuck on a spit, cooking above the fire while the fat dripped into the flames and burst. A boy’s leg. Farther off, hanging from a tree, was the boy looking at his leg, a rope tied around the stump. They had cut off his right leg all the way to the thigh and his left leg to the knee. His left arm was cut off at the shoulder. They hung him in the tree by rope. They also hung a girl, who seemed to have all four limbs. Three of them sat a good distance from the fire, a fourth off in the bush, but not far, crouched to shit.
We rushed them before we could see them, before they could see us. Hatchets out, I aimed for the first one’s head, but it bounced off. Fumeli shot four arrows; three bounced off, one struck the second one’s cheek. The Ogo punched the third straight into the tree. Then he punched a hole through his chest and the tree. Bibi swung his sword and struck the third in the neck but it lodged there. He pushed him off the blade with his foot, then stabbed him in the belly. The first one charged straight at me, holding nothing in his hands. I dipped out of his reach and something knocked him over. On the ground I jumped on him and hacked straight into the soft flesh of the face. The nose. I chopped again and again until his flesh splashed on me. The thing that knocked him over growled before changing back to a man.
“Kwesi!” Fumeli shouted, and ran to him, then stopped. Fumeli touched him on the shoulder. I wanted to say, Go behind the tree and fuck if you wish. None of us remembered the last of them shitting in the bush until the girl tied up in the tree screamed. He came at us waving his arms, his claws shining in the firelight. He roared louder than a lion, but something cut the roar. Even he was confused that his own mouth closed up on him, until he looked down to his chest and saw a spear bursting right through it. He whimpered his last and fell facedown.
Sogolon stepped over his body and approached us. I lit a dry stick and waved it over the beast nearest the fire.
A snap. Ogo had broken the one-limb boy’s neck. It was for the best that he died quick, and nobody said different. The girl, as soon as we lowered her down, started screaming and screaming until Sogolon slapped her twice. She was covered in white streaks but I knew all the marks of the river tribes and these were none of them.
“We are offerings. You should not have come,” she said.
“You are what?” the Leopard said.
I was very happy to see him as a man again and not sure why. It still irritated me to talk to him.
“We are the glorious offerings to the Zogbanu. They leave alone our villages that are on their lands and let us plant crops. I was raised for this—”
“No woman is raised for man to use,” said Sogolon.
I pulled the spear out of the last one and rolled him over with my foot. Horns large, curved, and pointed to a sharp tip like a rhinoceros’s sprouted all over his head and neck, with smaller horns on his shoulders. They pointed in all directions, these horns, like a beggar with locks thickened by dirt. Horns wide as a child’s head and long as a tusk, horns short and stumpy, horns like a hair, gray and white like his skin. Both brows grew into horns and his eyes had no pupils. Nose wide and flat with hair sticking out of the nostrils like bush. Thick lips as wide as the face and teeth like a dog’s. Scars all over his chest, maybe for all his kills. A belt holding up a loincloth on which hung child skulls.
“What kind of devil is this?” I asked.
Bibi crouched and turned its head. “Zogbanu. Trolls from the Blood Swamp. I saw many during the war. Your last King even used some as berserkers. Each one worse than the one before.”
“This is no swamp.”
“They are roving. The girl is not from here either. Girl, where do they go?”
“I am the glorious offering to the Yeh—”
Sogolon slapped her.
“Bingoyi yi kase nan,” the girl said.
“They eat man flesh,” Sogolon said.
That’s when we all looked at the leg cooking on the spit. Sadogo kicked it over.
