Black Leopard, Red Wolf (Dark Star Trilogy)

by Marlon James

  I rolled him over again. Two glyphs on his chest matched the note. A crescent moon with a coiled serpent, the skeleton of a leaf on its side, and a star. Then his chest rumbled, but it was not the rattle of the dead. Something hitting against each bone of his ribs, pumping up his chest and his heart, making his eyes pop open. Then his mouth, but not like he was opening it, but as if someone was pulling his jaws apart, wider and wider until the corners of his lip began to tear. The rumble shook him all the way to his legs, which hammered into the floor. I jumped back and stood up. Ripples rose from his thighs, moved up to his belly, rolled under his chest, and then escaped through his mouth as a black cloud that stank of flesh much longer dead than the man. It swirled like a dust devil, getting wider and wider, so wide that it knocked over some of Ekoiye’s statues. The spinner closed in tight on itself and turned to the window. In the spin of cloud and dust it formed and then broke apart back into dust, the bones of two black wings. It might have been a trick of poor light, or the sign of a witch. The spinning cloud left through the window. Back on the ground the man’s skin turned gray, withering like a tree trunk. I stooped. He still had no scent. I touched his chest with one finger and it caved in, then his belly, legs, and head crumbled into dust.

  Here is truth. In all the worlds I have never seen such craft or science. Whoever sent the assassin would certainly be coming now. The man, or spirit, or creature, or god behind such a thing would not be stopped by two daggers, or two hatchets.

  His name, Basu Fumanguru, walked into my thoughts right then. Not only did they kill him, but they that did so wanted him to remain dead. I had questions, and Bunshi would be the one to answer them. She left the child with an enemy of the King, but many men challenge the King in great halls and in notices and writs, and they are not killed for it. And if the child was marked for death, why not kill him before? I have heard nothing that would push anyone to get rid of Fumanguru that would not have done so before, certainly no King. As a man he was no more than a chafe on the inside of the leg. Then the thought you knew you would be left with, but denied because one would never wish to be left with such a thought, announced itself. This Bunshi said the Omoluzu came to kill Fumanguru and she saved his child as his dying wish. But it was not his child. Somebody told Ekoiye to send word as soon as someone came asking of Fumanguru, because somebody knew one day a man would come to ask. Somebody has been waiting for this, for me, for someone like me all along. They were not after Fumanguru.

  They were after the child.

  TWELVE

  Flying outside my window was the flag of the black sparrow hawk. My return to Kongor disturbed no one, my waking earlier than the sun caught nobody, so I went outside. The flag flew two hundred, maybe three hundred paces away, at the top of a tower in the center of the Nyembe quarter, flapping wild, as if the wind was furious with it. Black sparrow hawk. Seven Wings. The sun was hiding behind clouds fat with rain. It was near the season. So I went outside.

  In the courtyard, pulling up the few shrubs from the dirt, stood a buffalo. Male, brown-black, body longer than one and a half of me lying flat, his horns already fused into a crown and dipping downward to curve back upward like a grand hairstyle. Except I have seen a buffalo kill three hunters and rip a lion in two. So I gave this buffalo wide space as I walked to the archway. He looked up and moved right into my way. I remembered again I needed new hatchets, not that either hatchet or knife could win against him. I did not smell urine; I was not stepping into his boundary. The buffalo did not snort and did not kick his hooves in the dirt, but he stared at me, from my feet all the way up to my neck, then down, then up, then down, then up and slowly annoying me. Buffalos cannot laugh but I would swear to the gods that he did. Then he shook his head. More than a nod, a rough swing left then right, then right and left again. I stepped aside and walked but he stepped right in my way. I moved to the other side and so did he. He looked up and down again and again and I would again swear to the gods, demons, and river spirits that he laughed. He came in closer, and stepped back once. If he wanted to kill me I would have been walking with the ancestors already. He came closer, hooked his horn in the curtain I wore, and pulled it off, making me spin and fall. I cursed the buffalo, but did not grab the curtain. Besides, it was early morning—who would see me? And if anyone did see me, I could claim that I was robbed by bandits as I bathed in the river. Ten paces past the arch I looked back and saw that the buffalo followed me.

  Here is truth: The Buffalo was the greatest of companions. In Kongor even old women slept late, so the only souls on the street were those who never slept. Palm wine drunkards and masuku beer fools, falling down more than they got up. My eye jumped over to their side each time we passed one of them, looking at them looking at a near-naked man walking alongside a buffalo not the way some walked with dogs, but how men walked with men. A man flat on his back in the road turned, saw us, jumped up, and ran right into a wall.

  The river had flooded the banks four nights before we came, and Kongor was an island again for four moons. I marked my chest and legs with river clay, and the buffalo, lying in the grass and grazing, nodded up and down. I painted around my left eye, up to my hair and down to the cheekbone.

  “Where are you from, good buffalo?”

  He turned his head west and pointed with his horns up and down.

  “West? By the Buki River?”

  He shook his head.

  “Beyond? In the savannah? Is there good water to be had there, buffalo?”

  He shook his head.

  “Is that why you roam? Or is there another reason?”

  He nodded yes.

  “Were you called upon by that fucking witch?”

  He shook his head.

  “Were you called upon by Sogolon?”

  He nodded yes.

  “When we were dead—”

  He looked up and snorted.

  “By dead I mean not dead, I mean when Sogolon was of a mind we were dead. She must have found others. Are you one of her others?”

  He nodded yes.

  “And already you have sharp thoughts about how I dress. I must say you are a particular buffalo.”

  He went off in the bush, his tail whipping flies. I heard a man’s heavy footsteps through the grass fifty paces away and sat by the banks, my feet in the river. He moved closer; I pulled my dagger but did not turn around. The cold iron of a blade touched my right shoulder.

  “Nasty boy, how you deh manage the things?” he asked.

  “Deh managing them fine,” I said, mocking his tongue.

  “You lost? You look like is so.”

  “That be how me look?”

  “Well, partner, you trotting round here, no robes on your person, like you mad or you a boy-lover, or a father-fucker or what?”

  “I just washing my foot in the river.”

  “So you looking for the boy-lovers quarter.”

  “Just washing my foot in the river.”

  “For the boy-lovers quarter, that be, it be where now? Hold that bridle. We has no boy-lovers quarter round here.”

  “Eh? You sure you talking true? ’Cause last time me in the boy-lovers quarter, my eyes peep your father, and your grandfather.”

  He slapped the side of my head with his club. “Get up,” he said. At least he wasn’t about to slay me without a fight. On his back he strapped two axes.

  Shorter than me by almost a head, but in the white bottom and black top of a Seven Wing. My first thought was to ignore his anger and ask why the Seven Wings assemble, since not even the wise Sogolon knows. He then said something to me in a thicker voice than before.

  “Dats what we going do with men laka you?” this wing said.

  “What?”

  “Who you want me to send your head to, boy-fucker?”

  “You wrong.”

  “How me wrong?”

  “About me being the boy-fucker. Most time is the boys who fuck me. Hark, but there was this one, best in many a moon, so tight believe you me I h
as to stuff a corncob up to ease the hole. Then I ate the corn.”

  “Me chop off your bolo first, and then your head, then throw the rest of you in the river. How you liking that? And when you parts flow down de river, people going say luku laka pon the boy-fucker shoga rolling down in the river, don’t drink from the river lest you become boy-fucker too.”

  “Chop me with those axes? I have been looking for iron as fine as such. Forged by a Wakadishu blacksmith or did you steal them from a butcher’s wife?”

  “Drop the knife.”

  I looked at this man, not much taller than a boy, confusing stout with muscular and dashing shit on my quiet morning. I dropped the dagger in my hand and the one strapped to my leg.

  “I would love to greet this sun and bid it good-bye without killing a man,” I said. “There are some people above the sand sea who have a feast every year where they leave a space empty for a ghost, a man who was once alive.”

  He laughed, pointing the club at me with his left hand, and pulling an ax with his right. Then he dropped the club and pulled out the left ax.

  “Maybe me should be doing the killing for you mad tongue, and not you perverse ways.”

  He waved his axes in front of me, swinging and swirling them, but I did not move. The mercenary stepped forward just as a wad of something hit the back of his neck.

  “Aunt of a donkey!”

  He swung around just as the buffalo snorted again, and nose juice hit the warrior in the face. Eye-to-eye with the buffalo, he jumped. Before he could swing an ax, the buffalo scooped up the warrior with his horns and threw him off far into the grass. One ax landed in the field. The other came straight at me but bounced off. I cursed the buffalo. It was some time before the warrior sat up, shook his head, rose to his feet, and staggered off when the buffalo rushed him again.

  “You took your time. I could have made bread.”

  He trotted off and slapped me with his tail as he passed. I laughed and picked up my new axes.

  The house had woken up by the time I got back. The buffalo stooped in the grass and sunk his head on the ground. I said he was as lazy as an old grandmother and he swished his tail at me. In a corner near the center doorway sat Sogolon, and a man I assumed was the lord of the house. Bisabol blew out of him, expensive perfume from lands above the sand sea. A white wrap around his head and under his chin, thin enough that I could see his skin. A white gown with a pattern of the millet plant, and over that a coat, coffee dark.

  “Where is the girl?” I asked.

  “Down some street, annoying some woman, because clothes remain something that fascinates her. Truly, old friend, she never ever seen the like,” Sogolon said.

  The man nodded before I realized she was not speaking to me. He took a puff of his pipe, then handed it to her. The smoke from her mouth I would have taken for a cloud, it was so thick. She had drawn six runes in the dirt with a stick and was scratching a seventh.

  “And how is the Tracker managing Kongor?” he asked, though he still did not look at me. I thought he was speaking to Sogolon in that rude way men who are rich and powerful can speak about you right in front of you. Too early in the day to make men test you, I said to myself.

  “He not one for the Kongori custom to cover his snake,” Sogolon said.

  “Indeed. They whipped a woman … seven days ago? No, eight, it was. They found her leaving the house of a man not her husband without her outer robes.”

  “What did they do with the man?” I said.

  “What?”

  “The man, was he whipped as well?”

  The man looked at me as if I had just spoken in one of the river tongues even I don’t know.

  “When do we go to the house?” I said to Sogolon.

  “You didn’t go last night?”

  “Not to Fumanguru’s.”

  She turned away from me, but I would not be flashed off by these two.

  “This grand peace is walking on a crocodile’s back, Sogolon. Is not just Kongor and is not just Seven Wings. Men who don’t fight since the Prince was just born are getting word that they must reach for armour and weapon, and assemble. Seven Wings assemble in Mitu as well, and other warriors under other names. The Malakal you left, and the Uwomowomowomowo valley, both now gleam from the iron and gold of armour, spear, and sword,” the man said.

  “And ambassadors roam each city. Sweat not from heat but from worry,” she said.

  “This I know. Five days ago four men from Weme Witu come for talks, for all come to Kongor to settle disputes. Nobody see them since.”

  “What they disputing?”

  “What they dispute? Not like you to get deaf ears to the movement of people.”

  She laughed.

  “Here is a true thing. Years before this skinny boy’s mother spread her koo to piss him out, right before they mark the peace on paper and iron, the South retreat back to the South.”

  “Yes, yes, yes. They retreat south, but not full south,” Sogolon said.

  “The old Kwash Netu give them back a bone. Wakadishu after conquering it.”

  “I was just in Kalindar and Wakadishu.”

  “But Wakadishu never liked that arrangement, not at all. They say Kwash Netu betray them, he sell them back to slavery under the southern King. They been bawling for years upon years and this new King—”

  “Kwash Dara looking like he hear,” she said.

  “And all this movement up north making the South rumble. Sogolon, word be that the mad King’s head is again infected with devils.”

  This was annoying me more and more. Both were saying things the other already knew. Not even discussing, or reasoning or arguing or repeating, but finishing each other’s thoughts, like they were talking to each other but still not to me.

  “Earth and sky already hear enough,” Sogolon said.

  “You talk of kings and wars and rumors of war as if anybody cares. You’re just a witch, here to find a boy. As is everybody, except him,” I said, pointing to the lord. “Does he even know why we’re under his roof? See, I too can talk around a man as if he’s not there.”

  “You said he have a nose, not a mouth,” the lord said.

  “We waste time talking about politics,” I said, and walked past them inside.

  “No one speaks to you,” Sogolon said, but I did not turn back.

  Upstairs one floor, the Leopard came towards me. I couldn’t read his face, but this was a long time coming. So let us have it out, with words or fists or knives and claws, and whoever is left let him have at the boy, you to fuck him, me to beat him with a shit stick, and send him right back to whatever thing shat him out. Yes, let us have this. The Leopard ran up, almost knocking over two of the dozen statues and carvings in the hallway, and embraced me.

  “Good Tracker, I feel I have not seen you in days.”

  “It has been days. You couldn’t pull yourself out of sleep.”

  “This is a true word. I feel as if I was sleeping for years. And I wake to such dismal rooms. Come now, what sport is there in this city?”

  “Kongor? In a city pious as this even the mistresses seek marriage.”

  “I already love it. Yet is there not some other reason we are here? We hunt a boy, do we not?”

  “You don’t remember?”

  “I remember and I do not.”

  “You remember the Darklands?”

  “We went through the Darklands?”

  “You were one for harsh words.”

  “Harsh? To whom? Fumeli? You know he likes when we spar. Are you not hungry? I saw a buffalo outside and thought to kill it, or at least bite off the tail, but he seems an ingenious buffalo.”

  “This is very strange, Leopard.”

  “Tell me at the table. What happened these few days since we left the valley?”

  I told him we were gone a moon. He said that was madness and refused to hear any more.

  “I hear the gap in my belly. It growls obscene,” he said.

  This table was in a grea
t hall, with plate after plate of scenes covering all the walls in the room. I got to the tenth plate before I saw that these works of the grand bronze masters all showed scenes of fucking.

  “This is strange,” I said again.

  “I know. I keep looking for one where the cock goes in the mouth hole or the boo hole but I couldn’t find any. But I hear this is a town of no shoga. How could that be tru—”

  “No. It’s strange that you remember nothing. The Ogo remembers everything.”

  The Leopard, being a Leopard, ignored the chairs and jumped up on the table, not making a sound. He grabbed the bird leg from a silver tray, crouched on his heels, and bit into it. I could tell he did not like it. Leopards eat all things, but there was no rush of blood, hot and rich, spilling into his mouth and over his lips as he bit into it, which always made him frown.

  “You are the one strange, Tracker, with your riddles and half meanings. Sit, eat porridge while I eat—what is this, ostrich? I’ve never had ostrich, could never catch one. You said the Ogo is remembering?”

  “Yes.”

  “What does he remember? Being in the enchanted bush? I remember that.”

  “What else?”

  “A great slumber. Traveling but not moving. A long scream. What does the Ogo remember?”

  “Everything, it seems. His whole life came back to him. Do you remember when we set out? You had a problem with me.”

  “We must have solved it, for I do not remember it.”

  “If you heard yourself, you would not have thought so.”

  “You are confusing, Tracker. I sit and eat with you, and there is love between us that until now was the kind we never had to declare. So stop living in a squabble so little that I cannot remember it, even with you prompting me. When do we go to the boy’s house? Shall we go now?”