Black Leopard, Red Wolf (Dark Star Trilogy)

TWENTY-FOUR

You are the last of your kind, Nyka. One the Ipundulu chose to change rather than kill. Such honor he saves for those he enslaves and those he has fucked, so which are you?”

“Ipundulu can only be a man, no woman can be Ipundulu.”

“And only a body possessed by his lightning blood can be Ipundulu.”

“I told you. Ipundulu can only be a man. No woman can be Ipundulu.”

“That is not the part I asked you.”

“The last man he bit but did not kill, that man becomes the next Ipundulu, unless crossed by a mother witch, and he has no mother.”

“That part I know. Your dodge is neither skillful nor artful, Nyka.”

“He would rape and kill my woman. He had her by the neck, his claw already in her chest. I told him to take me instead. I told him to take me.”

He looked away.

“The Nyka I know would have fed him bits of his own woman himself,” I said.

“That Nyka you know. I don’t know this Nyka. And I do not know you.”

“I am—”

“Tracker. Yes, I know your name. Even witchmen and devils know it. They even whisper, Watch the Tracker. He has turned from red to black. Do you know what they mean? There is trouble all around you. I look at you and see a man darker than me.”

“All men are darker than you.”

“I see death as well.”

“What a deep thinker you have become, Nyka, now that you eat women’s hearts.”

He laughed, looking at me as if just seeing me. Then he laughed again, the cackle of the mad, or the cackle of one who had seen all the madness of the world.

“And yet I’m the one in this room with a heart,” he said.

His words did not upset me, but I thought right then of the me that it would have once struck. I asked him how he came to be this way, and this is what he told me.

That he and Nsaka Ne Vampi set off, not because of me, for he would have dealt with me, for such violent hate could exist only where there was still violent love beneath it. He and she set off, for he did not trust the fish woman and despised the Moon Witch, who was the one who made her sisters drive Nsaka Ne Vampi from the King sister guard.

“Have you ever seen a compass, Tracker?” Nyka asked. “Men from the eastern light carry them, some as large as a stool, some so small they disappear in the pocket. She would run, the lightning woman, run to the end of the rope and get pulled back so hard that her neck would soon break. So Nsaka shot her with a poison arrow, which did not kill her, only made her slow. These are the things that happened to us. The lightning woman kept running northwest, so we went northwest. We came upon a hut. Is this not how all stories of fright go, that we come upon a house where no one lives? Being who I am, I ran up and kicked down the door. First thing I saw, the child. Second thing I saw, a bolt of lightning ramming me in the chest and burning through every hole in my skin, and knocking me right out of the hut. Nsaka, she jumped over me and fired two arrows into the hut, one hitting a red one with grass for hair. Another came at her from the side and grabbed her bow, but she kicked him in the balls and he dropped to the ground and wailed. But the bug one, he is all flies, this bug one, he became a cloud of flies, and he surrounded her and stung all over her back through her tunic, and I could see it, the flies burrowing into her back as if they were coming home, and how my Nsaka did scream and fall to the ground on her back, to get them out for they bit and stung and sucked blood from her, and I rose and the Ipundulu struck lightning again but it hit her, not me, and the blast sent fire through her, but it also sent fire to the bug one, who shrieked and burned and drew all the flies back to his form. The bug one ran into the hut and went after the bird and they fought, knocking each other over, and the little boy watched. And the Ipundulu turned into a full bird. And he swatted the bug man away and threw lightning at him again, and the bug man flew away. I heard others coming and I ran in when the Ipundulu was looking at his bug man, and ran my sword through his back, and ducked when he swung his wing around. He laughed, would you believe this? He pulled out the sword and fought me with it. I pulled Nsaka’s sword quick, in time to block his blow, and swung it up to chop him but he blocked mine. I dropped to a squat and swung for his legs but he jumped and flapped his wings and his head burst through the hut roof. He jumped back down and threw mud chunks at my head and knocked me in the forehead, and I fell to one knee. And upon me, he was, but I grabbed a stool and blocked his blow and thrust from underneath and stabbed him in the side. That made him stagger. I pulled back and charged in straight for the heart but he blocked and kicked me in the chest, and I rolled and landed flat on my face and did not move and he said, You, I expected more game in you. He turned his back to me and I grabbed a knife—do you remember how good I was with knives, Tracker? Was it not I that taught you how to wield them? And the lightning woman, she ran to his side and he caressed her head and truly she purred and hunched herself under his touch like a cat, and then he took both his hands and broke her neck. I was on my knees, and I pulled two knives and this, this I will never forget, Tracker. The boy shouted at him. Not words, but he alerted him. Tell you truth, I remember nothing but lightning.

I woke again to see two of the grass-haired devils. They ripped off Nsaka’s robes and spread her legs, and the Ipundulu was hard. I don’t know why he listened to me when I begged him to ravage me instead. Maybe he saw me as more beautiful. I was too weak and they were upon me. How he mounted me, Tracker—no wet, no spit, he rammed into me until I cut and bled and hark, he used my own blood to ease his fuck into me. Then he bit me until he supped blood, and he drank and he drank and the others drank too, and then he kissed the cut right in my neck and lightning left him and went right into my blood rivers. All this made her watch. They didn’t have to make the boy.

“You ever feel fire burn you from the inside out? And then everything was white and blank like highest noon. Tell you truth, I had no memory from then until I woke up as the Ipundulu in Kongor. Some things come, like the eating of rats, and the sound of loose chains. I looked at my hands and saw white, and at my feet I saw a bird and my back itched and itched until I saw I sat on wings. And my Nsaka. Dear gods, my Nsaka. She was in the room with me, maybe she saw me when I was changing. Such is the wicked way of the gods. And how she must have loved me to just … to just … without fight …. Dear wicked gods. When I remembered I was me, I saw her on the floor, her neck broken, and a big bloody hole where used to be her heart. Dear wicked, wicked, gods. I think of her every day, Tracker. I have caused the death of many souls. Many souls. But how deep my heart troubles over this one.”

“Indeed.”

“I have killed my—”

“Only one.”

“How did you—”

“Those words are popular this night.”

“I have no heart for killing,” he said.

He brought his feet up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them. I clapped. I had sat down on the floor while he spoke, but rose and clapped.

“Instead you have others do the killing for you. You forget what led me to you. Save the heart pull for the next sad girl whose own heart you rip out, Ipundulu. You are still a murderer and a coward. And a liar.”

The sour look came back to his handsome face.

“Hmm. Had you come to kill me, that torch you would have thrown already. What is your desire?”

“Was there one with him, with bat wings?”

“Bat wings?”

“Like a bat. His feet the same as his hands, with iron claws. Huge.”

“No, there was no one such. I am telling the truth.”

“I know. If he was among them he would never have let you live.”

“What do you want, old friend? We are old friends, no?”

“The creature with bat wings, people call him Sasabonsam. That boy you speak of, we reunited him with his mother five years ago. Sasabonsam and the child are together again.”

“He stole the boy.”

“That is what his mother says.”

“You do not.”

“No, and you just said why.”

“Indeed. The boy was strange. I thought he would have even tried to run to those who came to save him.”

“Instead he warned those who took him. He is like no boy of this age.”

“That was pompous, Tracker. Not like you.”

“How would you know what I am like if you have forgotten, as you say?”

I went up to his shamble throne and sat down close, facing him.

“Where you could not save him, we did. And even with all of us, we could only hurt Sasabonsam, not stop him. There was something wrong with that boy. His smell would be strong, and then it would fade as if he was running hundreds of days away, and then he would be right in front of me.

“Here is a story. We tracked them to Dolingo. When I found them, I caught the Ipundulu pushing the boy from his chest. The little boy, he was sucking his nipple. Would you believe what I thought? I thought of a boy child and his mother, some boy child who never stopped longing for the mother’s milk. Except this mother had no koo. And then I thought, what kind of wickedness was this, how foul was this that he had been raping the boy so long that he thought this was the natural way of things. And then I saw it for what it was. No rape. Vampire blood. His opium.”

“There are women and boys who come to me as if I am their opium. Some have run from so far, for so long, they have no feet. But none has found me in the Malangika. He will want it more than the embrace of his own mother.”

“Sasabonsam went for him in the Mweru.”

“No man leaves the Mweru. Why would anyone even enter?”

“He is not a man. It does not matter. I think the boy went of his own will.”

“Maybe he was offering something more than toys or breasts.” Nyka laughed. “Tracker, I remember you. You still lie by only saying half the truth. So a stupid boy that you found was stolen again by a demon with wings like a bat. Nobody tasked you to find him. No one is paying you. And the sun is the sun and the moon is the moon whether you find him or not.”

“You just said you did not know me.”

“He is nothing to you, and neither is the bat man.”

“He took something from me.”

“Who? And will you take something from him?”

“No. I will kill him. And all like him. And all who help him. And all who have helped him. And all who stand in the way between me and him. Even this boy.”

“Still smells like a game. You want me to help you find him.”

“No I want to help him find you.”

So I went back for the child and the three of us left the Malangika. We went above, following a tunnel at the end of the road of blind jackals. Aboveground was no more at war than before I went under. The Ipundulu took nothing, just wrapped his wings tight around his body so that he looked like a strange lord, a lower god wearing a thick agbada. By then the sun had dropped and flamed the sky orange, but everything else was dark.

“Would you like me to take the child who you carry with you?” he asked.

“Touch him and I will throw this torch in your face.”

“Helpful is all I am trying to be.”

“Your eyes will pop out of your skull from the effort.”

The tunnel led out to a small town, where I left the child with a goat skin full of milk at the door of a known midwife. Just outside the town, north of the Blood Swamp, were wildlands. I started walking, but Nyka stood still.

“Once out of the Malangika, the boy will sense you and come running,” I said.

“So will every lightning woman and blood slave,” he said.

He wished he was the man who loved such devotion, but they were not devoted to him. “They are devoted to the taste of my blood,” he said.

“To tell truth, I thought more of you would be waiting above. The giant, I expected. The Moon Witch, perhaps. Most certainly the Leopard. Where is he?”

“I am no keeper of the Leopard,” I said.

“But where is he? You have great love for that cat. Wouldn’t you know where he is?”

“No.”

“You two do not speak?”

“My mother or my grandmother, which are you?”

“No question was ever simpler.”

“You wish to know about the Leopard, go and ask the Leopard.”

“Will your heart not grow fond when you see him next?”

“When I see him next, I shall kill him.”

“Fuck the gods, Tracker. Do you plan to kill everybody?”

“I will murder the world.”

“That is a big task. Bigger than killing the elephant or the buffalo.”

“Do you miss being a man?”

“Do I miss warm blood running through me, and skin not the colour of all wickedness? No, good Tracker. I love waking up thanking gods I’m a demon now. If I could ever sleep.”

“Now that I see you, I think for a man like you, this was the only future for your form. What do you think the boy has been feeding on all these years, if not your blood?”

“The blood is his opium or his physic, not his food.”

“Now that you are aboveground, he will seek you.”

“What if he is a year away?”

“He has wings.”

“Why do you not smell him?”

We kept walking alongside dying sunrays, which meant north. Night would come down before we got to the Blood Swamp.

“Why do you not smell him?”

“We head north. Unlike the Ipundulu … you … the former you. Sasabonsam hates cities, and towns, and would never rest in one. He could never hide his form like the Ipun … like you. He would much rather hide where travelers pass and pick them off one by one. Him and his brother. Before I killed the brother. The Leopard killed the brother. The Leopard killed the brother, but he smelled my scent on him, so he thinks it was me.”

“How did the Leopard kill him?”

“Saving me.”

“Then why do you blame the Leopard?”

“This is not what I blame him for.”

“Then what—”

“Quiet, Nyka.”

“Your words—”

“Fuck your thoughts on my words. This is what you do, what you always do. Ask, and ask, so that you will know and know. And when you finally know all there is to know of someone, you use that knowledge to betray them. Help yourself, you cannot, for it is your nature, as eating her young is crocodile’s nature.”

“Where is the giant?”

“Dead. And he was not a giant, he was an Ogo.”

We came to the edge of the Blood Swamp. I have heard of monstrous things in these wet lands, insects as big as crows, snakes wider than the trunks of trees, and plants hungry for flesh, blood, and bone. Even the heat took shape, like a mad nymph out to poison. But no beast came near us, sensing two creatures worse. Not even when swamp water reached us at our waists. We walked until the water fell to our knees, then our ankles, until we stepped on mud and rough grass. All around us, thick vines and thin trunks twisted and bent and wrapped into each other, making a wall as dense as a Gangatom hut.

The smell came to me before we came to it. An open savannah, with few trees, little grass, but reeking of death stink. Old death stink; whatever rotted started rotting seven days ago. I stepped on it before I saw it, and it gave way under my foot. An arm. Two paces from it a helmet with a head still in it. Ten or so paces away, vultures flapped their wings, pulling entrails out, while above a flock of the same, fat with food, flew away. A battlefield. All that was left of war. I looked up and the birds went as far as I could see, circling bodies, landing for more, picking meat off men, men baking in metal armour, men so bloated they bubbled, heads of men looking like they were buried up to their necks in the ground, their eyes pecked away by the birds. There were too many to smell any one. I kept walking, looking for North or South colours. Ahead of us, spear shafts and swords were the only things that stood. Nyka followed me, also looking.

“You think a soldier willed himself to live for eight days so you could pluck his heart?” I asked.

Nyka said nothing. We kept walking until the savannah ran out of bodies, and parts of bodies, and the birds were behind us. Soon we ran out of trees and were standing at the edge of the Ikosha, the salt plains, two and half days’ ride across, and nothing but dirt cracked like dried mud and silver like the moon. He walked towards us as if he just appeared from nothing and started walking. Nyka’s wings opened but he saw that I did nothing and closed them.

“Tracker. I remind you this is your idea to take me with you.”

“It’s not my idea.”

“I am indeed the owner of this idea,” he said as he approached.

That is what he said, in the very way I knew he would say it. We had been hunting for two moons and nine days. He looked at us with arms akimbo, like a mother about to scold us.

The Aesi.

Nyka struck some dry branches with lightning. Fire woke up quick, and he jumped back. I came back from deeper in the swamp with a young warthog. The body I cut open to stick on a spit, the heart I cut out and threw to Nyka. He would not have shame this hour. He would not eat it with both me and the Aesi looking, but neither of us would turn away. He hissed, sat on the ground, and bit into it. Blood exploded over his mouth and nose.

I looked at the two of them, both I had once tried to kill, both known to have wings—one white, the other black. The me who once would have pulled axes to kill both of them on sight, I wondered where he went.

“Perilous thing it is, being in the South. Enemy territory in the middle of war—are all your plans this mad?” the Aesi said.

“You did not have to come,” I said.

“What is his plan?” Nyka said, red all around his mouth.

I cut off pieces of the hog and handed some to both. Both shook their heads. Nyka said something about the taste of burned flesh is now foul to him, which made me think of the Leopard and I did not want to think of the Leopard.

“We are seeking the boy and his monster,” the Aesi said.

“He already told me this,” Nyka said.

“I am seeking the boy. He is seeking the monster. The monster attacked a caravan north of here; one man said he ripped a cow in half with his feet, then flew away with both halves. The boy was on his shoulders like a child with his father. They flew off into the rain forest between here and the Red Lake,” the Aesi said.

“Are you not still with the North King? My memory, sometimes she comes and more times she goes, but I remember that once we were supposed to find this boy and save him from you. Now you both search for the boy to kill him?”

“Things change,” I said, before the Aesi opened his mouth and bit into a piece of hog. I glared at him.

“They did save him. Did you not, Tracker?” asked the Aesi. “Saved the boy from his band of undead and led him and his mother to the Mweru. Three years later you … Shall I tell this story?”

“I control no man’s mouth,” I said.

The Aesi laughed. He wrapped his black robe around himself and sat down on a mound made by dead branches and moss.

“Do you remember when you hid from me, Tracker? Hide from me you did, in the dream jungle. I found the Ogo instead. Poor man. Mighty, but simple.”

“Do not ever speak of him.”

The Aesi bowed his head. “Forgive me.” Then, to Nyka, “The Tracker knew to stay awake, for I roamed the dream jungle, looking for him. But many years later—shall we count the years?—he found me one night. The boy, I will give him to you if you help me find him who I seek, he said before even saying peace be with you. And if you help me kill him, he said. What was strange, and I thought so at the time, was that Tracker’s dream was coming from the Mweru.”

“No man leaves the Mweru,” Nyka said.

“But a boy can. It is in the prophecies that a boy who will come from those lands will be the dark cloud above the King. But who has time for prophecy?” the Aesi said.

“Who has time for any of this?” I said, and cut off two pieces of hog and wrapped them in leaf. “Sasabonsam attacked a caravan heading north. We too should go north, on the Bakanga trail, and stop telling tall tales by a fucking fire, as if we are boys.”

“Sasabonsam is not a wanderer, Tracker. He heads to the rain forest. He will make home—”

“We travel together, so how is your news always different from mine? He will choose a trail so that he can kill any fool who takes it. The winged one is not like his brother. He doesn’t wait for food to come to him, he seeks it. He will go where he sees men go, and he will go where they are not protected.”

“He is still on his way to the forest.”

“Both of you are fools,” Nyka said. “You are saying two parts of the same thing. He will head to the rain forest with the boy. But he will feed and gather bodies along the way.”

“The Aesi is forgetting to tell you that we are not the only ones looking for the boy,” I said. “Nobody here is lacking rest, so we leave.”

“Where is North, Tracker?”

“It’s on the other side of my shit-filled ass,” I said.

“The night has had enough of you,” the Aesi said.

“I wish the night would try and—”

“Enough.”

Monsoon is the real enemy when it comes to war,” the Aesi said.

The sun bounced through the knotty branches and hurt my eyes. I closed them and rubbed until they itched.

“Our King wants this war to end before the rains. Rain season comes with flood, comes with disease. He needs victory and he needs it soon.”

“He’s not my king,” Nyka said.

I sat up and heard the rush of the river. They must have dragged me to the edge of the salt plains, for I rolled over and saw open grasslands. Grass tall and yellow, hungry for the rain season he was talking about. The bobbing and swaying heads of giraffes far off gobbling leaves from tall trees. Rustling through the bush, guinea fowl, cat, and fox. Above, a flock of sand grouse calling family to water. I smelled lion and cattle and gazelle shit. My calf rubbed against something hard that would cut it.

“Obsidian. There is no obsidian in these lands,” I said.

“A man before you must have left it there. Or maybe you think you were first.”

“What did you do to me?”

Aesi turned to me. “Your brain was all fire. You would burn yourself out.”

“Do that to me again and I will kill you.”

“You could try. Do you remember many moons ago once in Kongor, when I chased you down that market street? Every mind on the street was mine but yours and the … him … your—”

“I remember.”

“Your mind was closed to me because of the Sangoma. You have felt it, haven’t you? Her enchantment is leaving you. You lost it when you left the Mweru.”

“I can still unlock doors.”

“There are doors and there are doors.”

“I have faced swords since then.”

“Because you are the goat looking for the butcher.”

“Why didn’t you possess Mossi?”

“Sport. But last night you needed to cool yourself before you lose use.”

Truth be told, I felt sore in every muscle, in every joint. I felt no pain the night before, when anger ran through my blood. But now, even kneeling made my legs hurt.

“But you are right, Tracker. We lose time. And I have only seven more days with you, before I have to save this King from himself.”

The Bakanga trail. Not a road or even a path, just a stretch trod by wagon and horse and feet so much that plants stopped growing. On both sides, a forest of whistling thorns giving off ghost music, swaying trunks with branches thinner than my arm. The trail turned to dirt, cracked mud, and rocks, but it reached the horizon and then went beyond it. On both sides, yellow grass with patches of green, and small trees round like the moon, and taller trees where the leaves spread wide and the tops were flat. I heard Nyka say the biggest and the fattest of gods squatted on them too long, which is why the tops sat so flat. I turned and looked behind me, saw him talking to the Aesi and realized that he had said nothing. I was remembering him from another time. This trail was at times full and noisy with animals, but none stirred. None of the giraffes from near the swamp, no zebra, no antelope, no lion hunting the zebra or antelope. No rumble of elephant. Not even the hiss warning of the viper.

“There are no beasts in this place,” I said.

“Something has scared them away,” the Aesi said.

“We agree he is a thing, then.”

We kept walking.

“I have seen him like this before,” Nyka said to the Aesi, speaking only to him but wanting me to hear. “Strangest of things that I remember.”

The Aesi said nothing, and Nyka always took silence as a sign to continue. He told him that Tracker cares about nothing and loves no one, but when he has been wronged deeply, his whole self, and the self beyond the self, seek only destruction. “I have seen him this way once. And not even seen but heard. His need for vengeance was like life fire.”

“Who was the man that made him seek revenge?” the Aesi asked.

I know Nyka. I know he stopped and turned to face him, eye-to-eye, when he said, Me. He sounded almost proud. But then even the most wretched things Nyka ever said or did were always followed by a voice that sounded like he would kiss you many times and softly.

“He will kill this Sasabonsam, is that how you call it? He will kill him on just malcontent alone. What did this beast do?”

I waited for the Aesi to answer, but he said nothing. Sunlight left us, but it was still day, at least near evening.

Clouds gathered in the sky, gray and thick, even though rain season was a moon away. Before deep dusk, we came upon a village, a tribe none of us knew. A fence on both sides of the trail made of tree branches thatched together that ran for three hundred paces. Ten and eight huts, then two more that I did not see at first glance. Most on the left of the trail, only five on the right, but no different. Huts built of mud and branches with one window to look out, some with two. Thick thatch roof held down by vine. Three were twice the size of the others, but most were the same. The tribe gathered their huts in clusters of five or six. Outside some of the huts lay scattered gourds, and fresh footsteps, and the thin smoke of fire put out in a rush.

“Where are the people?” Nyka said.

“Maybe they saw your wings,” the Aesi said.

“Or your hair,” Nyka said.

“Would you like a pause in the bush to fuck each other?” I asked. The Aesi made some remark about me forgetting my place in this meet, and that as the adviser of kings and lords, he could leave me and resume his real business, and not to forget, ungrateful wolf, that it was I that saved you from the Mweru, since no man who enters the Mweru ever leaves.

“They are here,” I said.

“Who?” Nyka said.

“The people. No man flees a village without his cow.”

In the center of one cluster, cows lay lazy and goats hopped on tree stumps and loose wood. I went to the first hut on my left and pushed in the door. Dark inside and nothing moved. I went to the next, which was empty as well. Inside the third was nothing but rugs and dried grass on the ground, clay jars with water, and fresh cow dung on the east wall, not yet dry. Outside Nyka was about to speak when I raised my hand and stepped back in. I grabbed the large rug and yanked it away. The little girls screamed into a slap on the mouth from their mother. On the floor, her children curling into her like not-born babies. One girl crying, the mother her eyes wet but not weeping, and the other daughter frowning straight at me, angry. So little and already the brave one ready to fight. Do not fear us, I said in eight tongues until the mother heard enough words to sit up. Her daughter broke from her, ran straight up to me, and kicked my shin. Another me would have held her back and laughed, and played in her hair, but this me let her kick my shin and calf until I grabbed her hair and pushed her back. She staggered into her mother.

I go outside, I said, but the mother followed me.

The Aesi gave Nyka his cloak. This village must have heard of Ipundulu, or he guessed they would have terror for any man with wings. More men and women came out from their huts. An old man said something I barely understood, something about he that comes at night. But they heard strange men were coming down the road, including a man white like kaolin, so they hid. They had been hiding for a long time now. Terror, the old ones say, used to come at noon, but now it comes at night, the old man said. He looked like an elder, almost like the Aesi, but taller, and much thinner, wearing earrings made of beads, and a clay skull plate at the back of his head. A brave man with many killings who now lived in fear. His eyes, two cuts in a face full of wrinkles.

He approached us three, and sat down on a stool by a hut. The rest of the village stepped to us slow and afraid, as if at the slightest move, they would scream. They all came out of their huts now. Some men, more women, more children, the men bare in chest and wearing short cloths around the waist, the women wearing leather-skin covered in beads from neck to knee, with their nipples popping out from both sides, and the children wearing beads around the waist, or nothing. You saw it on the women and children most, eyes staring blank, exhausted from fear, except that angry little girl from the hut who still looked at me like she would kill me if she could.

More and more came out of their huts, still looking around, still slow, still eyeing us from head to foot, but not looking at Nyka as any different from the rest of us. The Aesi spoke to the old man, then spoke to us.

“He says they leave the cows open and he take a cow, sometimes a goat. Sometimes he eat them there and leave the rest for the vulture. One time a boy, he never listen to his mother. This boy who think he is man because he soon go into the bush, he run outside, why only the gods know. Sasabonsam take the boy but he leave the boy left foot. But two nights ago …”

“Two nights ago, what?” I asked. The Aesi spoke to him again. I could understand some of what the old man spoke, enough before the Aesi looked at me and said, “That is the night he knocked down the wall of that house over there on the other side, and he go in and he take the two boys of a woman who scream, I do nothing but miscarry. Them is the only boys the gods give me, and he try to take the boys away, and the men, who weak before, find some power in their arms and legs and they rush out and throw stones and rocks at him, and hit him in the head, and he try to bat away the rocks, and dirt, and shit with his wings, and still fly and still carry two boys, and could not, so he let go of one.”

“Ask if any of these men fought off the beast.”

The Aesi regarded me for a few blinks, not liking how strange it is, a man telling him what to do.

Two men came forward, one with beads around his head, the other with a clay skull plate painted yellow.

“He stunk like a corpse,” the beaded one said. “Like the thick stink of rotten meat.”

“Black hair, like the ape but he not the ape. Black wings, like the bat, but he not the bat. And ears like a horse.”

“And he feet like he hands, and they grab like hands, but big like his head, and he come from sky and try to go back to it.”

“There are many flying beasts on this trail,” I said.

“Maybe they fly over the White Lake from the Darklands,” Nyka whispered to me.

I wanted to tell him that one would have to go to a dark street where men fuck holes in walls and call them sister to find a remark less stupid.

“Sun queen just gone back home,” said the one with the skull cap. “Sun queen just gone when he first come, ten nights ago. He fly down, we hear the wing first, and then a shadow that block out the last light. Somebody look up and she scream and he try to grab her and she drop to the ground, and everybody running and yelling, and bawling, and we run to we huts, but an old man, he was too slow and his hunchback hurt, and the beast grab him with leg hands and bite his face off, but then spit him out, like the blood was poison, and he chase after a woman who was the last to reach her hut, I see it myself in the bush I hide myself, he catch her foot before she run in her hut, and he fly off with her, and we don’t see her no more. And since then he come every two night.”

“Some of we, we try to leave, but the cows slow, and we slow, and he find we on the trail and kill everybody and drink out the blood. Every man and woman and beast rip in two. Sometimes he eat the head.”

“Ask him when he came around last,” I said.

“Two night ago,” the old man says.

“We need to locate the boy,” the Aesi said.

“We’ve found the boy. I was waiting for him to find Nyka. But we have found him.”

“No one here mentioned anything of a boy,” the Aesi said.

“Good men speak of me as if I am not here. You wish to leave me out in the open so that your boy will find me?” Nyka asked.

“We will not have to. When Sasabonsam comes tonight, he will bring the boy. The boy will demand it until there is no quieting him,” I said.

“I do not like this plan,” the Aesi said.

“There is no plan,” I said.

“That is what I do not like.”

“It took six of us to beat him last time and we still could not kill him. Ask what weapons they have.”

“I say we let what happen, happen and follow him to where he hides,” the Aesi said.

“Where he hides could be two days’ walk.”

“He is too smart to risk the boy.”

“I will kill this thing tonight or fuck the gods.”

“Shall I say something?” Nyka said.

“No,” we both said.

“Ask them what weapons they have.”

Four axes, ten torches, two knives, one whip, five spears, and a pile of stones. I tell truth, these people, who left the hunt for the field, were foolish to forget that this was still a land full with wicked beasts. The men brought the weapons, threw them at our feet, then scrambled to their huts like mad ants. This did not surprise me—all men are cowards, and men together only added fear to fear to fear. Darkness snatched the sky, and the crocodile had eaten half of the moon. We hid by the fence near the north of the village. The Aesi crouched low, holding a stick I did not see him with before, his eyes closed.

“Do you think he calls on spirits?” Nyka said.

“Speak louder, vampire. I do not think he heard you.”

“Vampire? How harsh, your words. I am not like who we hunt.”

“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 and 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.

“When your brothers awake in the morning, they will see what was done here. They will know that brother raised sword against brother in madness, and killed many,” the Aesi said.

“You are the living evil. I have heard of you. You set yourself against women and men. The wicked half of the Spider King.”

“Do you not know, brave warrior? Both halves are wicked. Sleep now.”

“I will kill—”

“Sleep.”

She fell back on the ground.

“And have a sweet voyage to the dream jungle. It will be the last pleasant dream you shall ever have.”

He stood up. Behold, I call three horses, he said to me.

There was a door in the Blood Swamp, but it would have taken us to Luala Luala, too far north. At first I thought the Aesi knew nothing of the ten and nine doors, but he only chose not to use them. This is what I suspected: that going through a door weakened him, just as it weakened the Moon Witch. The massive number of wronged spirits and devils that waited for him in the doorway of each door, snatching him at the one point when he was just like them, all spirit and no body, and could be grabbed, or taken, or fought, or even killed. This is what I thought: that there were things we could not see, many hands perhaps, grabbing for any part of him, vengeance lust coursing through them where blood used to run.

“Tracker! Are you lost? I called you three times,” Nyka said.

He had already mounted his horse. It looked like it was fidgeting, disturbed by the unnatural thing on its back. It reared, trying to throw him off, but Nyka grabbed its neck. The Aesi turned to the horse and it calmed.

We rode off in the dark, on what would be a night’s journey north, then west, along grasslands, until we got to the rain forest. It had no name, this forest, and I did not remember it from the map. The Aesi rode in front, at a quick gallop several paces ahead of us, and I don’t know why I thought so, but it looked as if he was trying to get away. Or get to them first. When he came for me in the Mweru I told him that he could have the boy, do as he pleased, take a circumcision knife and slice his whole body in two for all I cared, just help me kill the winged devil. But I would kill this boy. Or I would kill the world. People passing me keep saying we are at war. We are in war. Then let there be killing and let there be death. Let us all go down to the underworld and let the gods of death talk about true justice. The gold grass turned silver in the night.

Their hooves hitting the ground, the horses struck up a thunder. Deeper dark lay ahead of us, dense dark like mountains. We could see it across the flat land, but it would still be dawn before we reached it. Riding through the black, and thinking wickedness, and smelling him without thinking about him, I didn’t see the Leopard until he was a length away and pushing his horse hard, trying to catch me. I leaned into my horse harder, pushing him to a full gallop. Now that my nose remembered his smell, I could sense him getting closer and closer. He snarled at his horse, frightening her, until we were riding tail-to-head, head-to-trunk, neck-to-neck. He jumped from his horse right onto me and knocked me off. I spun around in the fall so I landed on top of him. We still hit the grass hard and rolled, and rolled, and rolled several paces, him grabbing on to me. A dead anthill finally stopped us, and he flew off me. The Leopard landed on his back and jumped up, right into my knife pressed at his throat. He jerked backward and I pressed deeper into his neck. He raised his hand and I pressed and drew blood. His face was bright in the moon dark, his eyes wide open; in shock yes, in regret perhaps, blinking very little, as if begging me to do something. Or none of those things, which made me mad. I had not seen him in moons, for my mind burned with what I would do to him should we again cross paths. Should I be on top in him, should I overpower him, should I have an ax or a knife. Like the knife at his throat. No god could count how many times I had thought of this. I could have cut my hate out of him, as deep and as wide as my knife would go.

Say something, Leopard, I thought. Say, Tracker, is this how we will now find sport, you and me—so I would cut you and shut you up. But he just stared at me.

“Do it,” said Nyka the Ipundulu. “Do it, dark wolf. Do it. Whatever peace you seek you will never find. And it will never find you, so do it. Forget peace. Seek vengeance. Tear a hole a hundred years wide. Do it, Tracker. Do it. Is he not the reason you suffer?”

Leopard looked at me, his eyes wet. He tried to say something but it came out as just sounds, like a whimper, though he was too brave to whimper. I wanted to cut a hole in something so badly. And then a rumble rose under him in the quick. The dirt broke up into dust and pulled him under the earth. I jumped back and shouted his name. He forced his hand through the ground and kicked and kicked, but the ground swallowed him. I looked up as the Aesi draped his hood over his head.