by Marlon James
“You have witchmen hunt them for you. We will not have this argument again.”
“It would please the night if you were both quiet,” the Aesi said.
But Nyka wanted to talk. He was always like this, needing endless chatter. He used chat to mask what he was plotting at the same time.
“I have not killed a man today,” I said.
“You said many times, over many years I have known you, I am a hunter, not a killer.”
“If not Sasabonsam, then I will kill every man here for being so weak and pathetic.”
“Careful, Tracker. You’re in the presence of a vampire and … whatever this Aesi is, and yet you burn with the most ill will. And even if you do joke, you were funnier back then,” Nyka said.
“Which then? Before or after you betrayed me?”
“I have no memory of that.”
“Memory has much of you. You never asked about my eye.”
“Did I too cause that?”
I stared at him, but turned away when seeing him only made me see myself. I told him how I got the wolf eye.
“I thought a man punched you in the eye and left it so,” he said. “But I see I am responsible for that too.”
He looked away. I could think of nothing more to do with Nyka’s remorse than punch him in the face with it. How I wished I had Sadogo’s knuckles to punch his head clean off. Sadogo. I had not thought of him in many long moons. Nyka opened his mouth again, and the Aesi covered it.
“Listen,” he whispered.
The sound cut through the dark, shuffling, jumping, running, falling over the fence, and cracking branches. And coming at us. No flapping of wings. None of the giggle, gurgle, and hiss of a child failing to mask himself. One rammed me in the chest and knocked me over. Then another. His knee in my chest, he looked up, sniffed quick, and turned to see others piling themselves all over Nyka, and the Aesi, screaming, grunting, shrieking, and grabbing. Lightning men and women. More than I could count, some with one hand, some with one leg, some with no feet, some with nothing below the waist. All of them rushing at Nyka. Two larger ones, both men, kicked the Aesi out of the way. Nyka yelled. The lightning women and men search and seek the Ipundulu; he is their only desire and purpose and they yearn for him forever. I have seen them run towards their master, desperate and hungry, but I had never seen what happens when they finally find him.
“They devour me!” Nyka shouted.
He flapped his wings and blasted lightning, which hit several of them, but they sucked it in, fed on it, grew more mad. I pulled both axes. The Aesi kept touching his temple and sweeping his hands over them, but nothing happened. The lightning people were an anthill on Nyka. I backed up, ran, leapt up, landed on the back of one, and rained his back with hacks. Left, right, left, right, left. I kicked one and chopped the side of his head. One wrapped her hand around Nyka’s neck and I chopped at her shoulder until her arm fell off. They would not let go and I would not stop.
A foot coming from nowhere kicked me in the chest. I flew in the air and landed on my belly. Two jumped to charge me. I had one ax and pulled my knife. One jumped at me, I rolled out of his way, and he landed on the ground. Knife in hand, I rolled back to him and plunged it in his chest. The second ran at me but I spun on the ground and chopped her leg. She fell and I hacked half her head off. They were still on Nyka. The Aesi pulled two, throwing them away like they were small rocks. Nyka kept pushing them off but would not attack them. I ran back to the pile, pulled one out by the foot, and stabbed him in the neck. Another I pulled and he punched me in the belly, and I fell to the ground, howling in pain. Now I was mad. The Aesi grabbed another. I pulled myself up with an ax and found another. One that crouched on Nyka’s chest to suck his neck, I chopped straight in the back of the neck. Lightning flashed through all of them, but they would not even turn from him. I rained chops down on his head and kicked off a woman beside him. She rolled off and came running back. I crouched, swung my ax, and hacked her right above the heart when she ran into me, and I swung the other down on her forehead. I chopped them all away, until there was Nyka, covered in bites and bleeding black blood. The last one, a child, jumped on Nyka’s head and gnashed his teeth at me. Lightning lit his eyes. I jammed my knife straight in his throat and he dropped in Nyka’s lap.
“He was a boy.”
“He was nothing,” I said.
“Something here is not right,” the Aesi said.
I jumped right before a woman from the village screamed.
“At the back!”
The Aesi ran off first, and I chased after him, jumping over these bodies, some of which still sparked lightning. We ran past huts hiding in the dark. Nyka tried to fly but could only hop. We got to the outer boundary to see Sasabonsam, his foot claws around a woman and flying away. The woman still screamed. I hurled an ax and hit his wing but it cut shallow. He did not turn.
“Nyka!” I said.
Nyka flapped his wings and thunder shook and lightning burst from him, but it shot west and south of him, not straight at the beast. Sasabonsam flapped and flew away, the woman still fighting. She struggled, until he kicked her in the head with his other foot. But there was no thicket to hide him in this savannah. My ax glinted in the dirt.
“He is flying north,” the Aesi said.
A flock of birds that I did not see far off changed course and flew straight to Sasabonsam. They charged him two and three at a time and he tried to swat them away with his hand and wings. I could not see all, but one flew in his face, and it looked like he bit into it. More came after him. The Aesi’s eyes were closed. The birds dived for Sasabonsam’s face and arms, and he started to swing his arms wildly. He dropped the woman, but from so high that when she hit the ground she did not move. Sasabonsam swatted away so many birds that they shot through the sky. The Aesi opened his eyes and the remaining birds flew away.
“We will never catch him,” Nyka said.
“But we know where he is going,” said the Aesi.
I kept running, jumping over shrubs and chopping through bush, following him in the sky, and when I couldn’t see him, I followed the smell. This was when I wondered why this all-powerful Aesi did not supply us horses. He wasn’t even running. I could turn my fury at him but that would be a waste. I kept running. The river came upon me. Sasabonsam flew over it to the other side. It was fifty paces, sixty paces wide, I could not guess, and the moonlight danced wild on it, meaning rough and perhaps deep. This part of the river was unknown to me. Sasabonsam was flying away. He had not even seen me, not even heard me.
“Sasabonsam!”
He did not even turn. I gripped both axes as if it was them that I hated. He made me think dark thoughts, that he held no joy for what he did, or even pride, but nothing. Nothing at all. That my enemy did not even know that I sought him, and even in the presence of my smell and my face I was no different from any other fool throwing an ax. Nothing, nothing at all. I shouted at him. I sheathed my axes and ran right into the river. My toe hit a sharp rock but I did not care. I tripped on stones but did not care. Then the ground fell from under my feet and I sank, inhaled water, and coughed. I pushed my head out of the water but my feet could not find ground. And then something like a spirit pulled me, but it was the water, cold and pulling me hard to the middle of the river, and then drawing me under, mocking my strength to swim, spinning me head over foot, yanking me beyond where the moon could shine, and the more I fought the more it pulled, and I did not think to stop fighting, and I did not think, I’m tired, and I did not think the water was colder and blacker. And I stretched my hand out and thought it would reach into air, but I was so far down and sinking, sinking, sinking.
And then a hand grabbed mine and pulled me up. Nyka, trying to fly and stumbling, bouncing, then falling into the water. Then he tried to fly again while drawing me out, but could only pull me up to my shoulder and fight the current. In this way he dragged me to the riverbank, where the Aesi waited.
“The river nearly had
you,” the Aesi said.
“The monster flees,” I said, gasping for air.
“Maybe it was offended by your sourness.”
“The monster flees,” I said.
I caught my breath, pulled my axes, and started walking.
“No gratitude for the Ip—”
“He is getting away.”
I ran off.
The river had washed off all the ash and my skin was black as sky. The land was still savannah, still dry with shrubs and whistling thorn that sat close together, but I did not know this place. Sasabonsam flapped his wings twice and it sounded far away, as if it wasn’t the flutter but the echo. Tall trees rose, three hundred paces ahead. Nyka shouted something I did not hear. A flutter again; it sounded like it came from the trees, so there is where I ran. I hit a stone, tripped, and fell, but rage fought pain and I got up and kept running. The ground went wet. I ran through a drying pond, through grass scratching my knee, past thorny shrubs scattered like warts on skin that I jumped over and stepped in. No sound of flutter came but my ears were on him; I would hear him closer soon. I did not even need my nose. The trees did what trees do, stood in the way. No valley path, only giant thorns and wild bush, and as I went around I ran right into them.
Men on horseback, I would guess a hundred. I studied the horses for their mark. A ridge of armour over the head coming down the long face. Body draped in warm cloth, but not long like the Juba horses. Tails kept long. A saddle on top of layers of thick cloth and at the corners of the cloth, northern marks I had not seen in years. Maybe half of the horses black, the rest brown and white. I should have studied the warriors. Thick garments to stop a spear, and spears with two prongs. Men, all of them, except one.
“Announce yourself,” she said when she saw me. I said nothing.
Seven of them surrounded me, lowering their spears. I usually thought nothing of swords or spears but something was different. The air around them and me.
“Announce yourself,” she said again. I did nothing.
In the moonlight they were all plume and shine. Their armour silver in the dark light, the feathers in their headdresses ruffling like a meeting of birds. Their dark arms pointed spears at me. They couldn’t tell who I was in the night. But I could tell who they were.
“Tracker,” I said.
“He does not speak our language,” another warrior said.
“Nothing special about the language of Fasisi,” I said.
“Then what is your name?”
“I am Tracker,” I said.
“I will not ask again.”
“Then don’t. I said my name is Tracker. Is your name Deaf One?”
She stepped to the front, and poked me with her spear. I staggered back. I could not see her face, only her shiny war helmet. She laughed. She poked me again. I gripped my ax. Panic felt a day away, then it was right behind me, then it was in my head, and I squeezed my eyes shut.
“Maybe your name is Deathless, since you seem to have no fear of me killing you.”
“Do what you must. If I take just one of you with me, that is a good death.”
“Nobody here would hate to die, hunter.”
“Do any of you hate to talk?”
“For a man who looks like river folk, you have quite the mouth.”
“Pity I know no rebel Fasisi verse.”
“Rebel?”
“No Fasisi army has made it to the south border of Wakadishu, or you would have been corpses on a battlefield. No women walk in Fasisi ranks. And no Fasisi guard could have ever landed this far south, not with war here. You are Fasisi born but not loyal to Kwash Dara. King sister guards.”
“You know much about us.”
“I know that this is all there is to know.”
The spears moved in closer.
“I am not the one being rude in the face of seventy and one spears,” she said.
She pointed at me.
“Men and their cursed arrogance. You curse, you shit, you wail, you beat women. But all you really do is take up space. As men always do, they cannot help themselves. It’s why they must spread their legs when they sit,” she said.
The men laughed, all who heard whatever kind of joke this was.
“How great your brotherhood of men must be that all they think about is men spreading their legs.”
She scowled, I could see it, even in the dark. The men grumbled.
“Our Queen—”
“She is not a queen. She is the King sister.”
The warrior chief laughed again. She said something about how I must either seek death or think I cannot die.
“Did he teach you that as well, the one who rides with you? You would do good to keep him up front with you, for his kind prefers to kill from behind,” I said.
He rode his horse right up to the front until he was beside the warrior chief. Dressed as they were with the feather helmet taming his wild hair, he seemed not only odd on the horse but that he knew it. The way a dog would look riding a cow.
“How it goes, Tracker?”
“Never seems to go away, Leopard.”
“It’s been said you have a nose.”
“Under your armour, you stink worse than them.”
He gripped the bridle harder than he needed to, and the horse jerked her head. His whiskers, which rarely showed when he was a man, shone in the night. He took his helmet off. Nobody moved their spears. There were things I wanted to ask him. How a man never interested in long-term hire found long-term hire. How they got him to wear such armour, and robes that must drag, and tear, and chafe, and itch. And if part of the bargain was that he never changed to his true nature again. But I asked none of that.
“How different you look,” he said.
I said nothing.
“Hair wilder than mine, like a seer nobody listens to. Thin as witch stick. No Ku marks?”
“They washed in the river. Much has happened to me, Leopard.”
“I know, Tracker.”
“You look the same. Perhaps because nothing ever happens to you. Not even what you cause.”
“Where do you head, Tracker?”
“We go where you come from. Where we come from you go.”
The Leopard stared at me. He would have known who I searched for. Or he was a fool. Or he thought me to be one.
“Tell them that you are headed home, Tracker, for your sake.”
“I have a home? Tell me where, Leopard. Point me where to go.”
Leopard stared at me. The warrior chief cleared her throat.
“Let me state it clear that I tried to help you,” he said.
“‘Let me state it clear’? From where did you get this tongue? Your help is worse than a curse,” I said.
“Enough. You two fight like people who have fucked. You came upon us, traveler. Be on with you and … Who are those two?”
Behind me Nyka and the Aesi were at least a hundred paces away. The Aesi covered his hair with a hood. Nyka wrapped his wings tight around himself.
She continued, “You and your kind go. You already delay us.”
She reined her horse.
“No,” the Leopard said. “I know him. You cannot let him go.”
“He is not the one we look for.”
“But if the Tracker is here then he’s already found him.”
“This man. He is just some man you know. You seem to know many,” she said.
I hoped she smiled in the dark. I really hope she did.
“Fool, how do you not know who this is? Even after he said his name. He is the one who insulted your Queen. The one who came to kill her son, but he was already gone. The one who—”
“I know who he is.” Then, to me, “You, Tracker, you come with us.”
“I go nowhere with any of you.”
“You’re the second man to think I am offering choices. Take him.”
Three warriors dismounted and stepped towards me. I held both axes in hand and gripped them tight. I had just cut a child’s throat a
nd split a woman’s head in two, so I would kill anyone here. But I looked straight at the Leopard when I thought it. The three stepped to me and stopped. They lowered their spears and approached. Before, I could not smell it anymore, the fear metals had for me. I could stand tall like the person in the storm who never got hit by hail. Now I looked left and right, thinking who I should dodge first. I looked up and saw Leopard watching me.
“Tracker?” he said.
“Have all my men gone deaf in the night? Take him!”
The warriors would not move. They shook and strained, forcing their lips to speak, their hips to turn, to say that they wanted to do as she wished, but could not.
Nyka and the Aesi came up behind me.
“And who are these two?”
“I am sure they have mouths. Ask them,” I said.
Every man holding spears lifted them away. The chief looked around in shock, and spooked her horse. She rubbed his cheek hard, trying to calm him.
“Who is …” Leopard said, but his words vanished.
The Aesi came to stand by me. With both hands he pulled back his hood.
“Kill him! Kill him!” Leopard shouted.
The warrior chief yelled, “Who is he?” The Aesi’s eyes went white. Every single horse jumped and kicked, throwing themselves up in the air, throwing off the riders, and kicking whoever they could strike. A warrior got struck in the head. Those who held on to their horses yelled in fright as the horses ran into each other and attacked those on foot. Three horses ran, trampling two men underfoot.
“This is his will! This is his will!” Leopard shouted to the chief.
She grabbed Leopard by his arm and both fell off their horses. Most of the horses ran away. Some of the men ran after them but stopped, then turned around, pulled their swords, and attacked each other. Soon everyone fought someone. One killed another by driving a sword into his chest. A warrior fell from a sword in his back. Leopard punched the chief and knocked her out. He rose and snarled at the Aesi. The Aesi stared at him as he approached. He touched his temple. He tried to work his mind on the cat, but Leopard changed into beast and charged. He leapt at the Aesi but horses ran straight into him, cutting him off and knocking him down. Nyka spread his wings, walked through the fighting men, and stopped at one on the ground bleeding from a mortal wound. I know he told him that he was sorrowful. And that he was quick. He punched straight into the man’s chest and pulled out his heart. He did it to two more wounded soldiers before all the men, alive and near-dead, fell asleep. All except the chief, who had a stab wound in the shoulder. The Aesi stooped down beside her. She flinched, tried to hit him, but her hand stood up in the air.
