Half a legend, p.1
HALF A LEGEND, page 1
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
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Identifiers:
ISBN 978-1-7377999-2-4 (ebook)
ISBN 978-1-7377999-3-1 (paperback)
To my grandfather, a library in ashes.
Table of Contents
PROLOGUE
PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
PART TWO
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
PART THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
EPILOGUE
INDEX OF CHARACTERS
BOOK THREE: HALF A GOD
AUTHOR’S NOTE
PROLOGUE
Honor is for fools and old men. The chirping of crickets was deafening as Kunai got closer to the foot of the hill. He looked up the small mound, his mind heavy with what the night promised. Kunai never sought personal riches or succumbed to temptations that would cloud his judgment. At twenty, he had not even pushed to have a wife, every moment dedicated to his chief and the welfare of the tribe. Kunai had led an honorable life, until tonight. In the coming flood of destinies, honor would drown a man where wit could have kept him afloat.
He began the walk up the gentle slope to the Men Sagun, the staff of the shepherd. Indeed, the massive staff was there, a twisting iroko tree that burst out the thatched roof. The tree had been trimmed and crafted in the form of a shepherd’s stick, and a cabin raised around it. The Great Seer had built it himself, the muddy walls marked with the handprints of the men who bled for the dawn of a tribe. However, that tribe had fallen into shame. Kunai did not mind marking the Men Sagun with blood to resurrect that old pride once again.
Four warriors stood guard at the doorway with their spears crossed. The men tensed when they saw him climbing toward them. “Who comes?” one of them called.
“Kunai,” he answered, feeling a sudden weight on his shoulders. This was madness, he told himself, but the line between madness and glory lay in success. Kunai shook off the fear, unsheathed his dagger and handed it to the nearest nchinda. The man took it with a bow, nobody daring to search him for more weapons.
“It is good you came, my prince,” another nchinda said, a balding man with a lump on his forehead. The warrior once bowed in front of a goat while trying to dig out a piece of cowry from the earth. The angry animal mistook the posture for a challenge and rammed its horns into the man’s head. Some tribesmen mockingly claim he began balding that day. “Your brother just left the throne room,” the horned warrior went on.
“And how is the chief?”
The man hesitated then. “Weak,” he said finally.
“I must speak with him. I bring report from the Yonko lands.”
“Is it true, my prince?” the nchinda pressed, unable to smell the urgency in the air. The man stank strongly of palm wine and sour milk, prodding at Kunai’s impatience. “Are the Lions defeated?”
“Stand guard, Kuru,” he said in a harsh tone.
“Sorry, my prince.”
With a glare to the rest of the guards, Kunai pushed aside the overhanging cowhide and strolled into the hot chamber. The space reeked of herbs and urine. He moved around the three fireplaces that lined the center of the room, their embers still aglow. As his eyes adjusted, he made out the heap of straw fibers that lay in front of the towering throne. Kunai followed the sound of snoring to a bed in the corner. The chief was wrapped up in layers of cowhide making him seem twice his size. Yet it was still a pitifully small bundle.
“Father,” Kunai whispered but there was no answer. The snoring grew louder instead. “My chief,” he called.
“Who is there?” the old man asked, his eyes blinking open. He had not seen fifty rains but the man was already shriveled, wrinkles lining every inch of his face, his beard bleached by the strong palm wine never far from his reach. His neck was swollen as if an orange was stuck down his throat, firm and oily. The supposed pain it caused was the excuse to drink himself unconscious every night. He had taken to sleeping in the throne room rather than make the short walk back to his bedchamber. “Who is there?” he asked again. “Is that you, Kheng?”
Kunai bristled and shook his head. “No, your son.”
“My son…Kibli?”
And that hurt even more, the name sliding like a dagger into his heart. It was the same with every meeting and Kunai suspected the chief only pretended at ignorance. “No, not Kibli,” he forced himself to say. “Karashi’s son,” he said, louder. That was the command. Kunai heard the faint grunts of a struggle outside the door and then a soft thump as someone dropped to the floor, no doubt the balding Kuru who had been the only nchinda on duty out of the prince’s gang.
The Mad Bull had not heard the disturbance. “Karashi.” The chief said the name like it was the foulest word to ever touch his tongue.
The old man tried to sit up, but Kunai pressed him down. “You remember her?” he asked, feeling heat crawl up his neck. “You killed my mother and sold her daughter to the Lions. My sister was burned in their village. Did you mourn for your daughter?”
The Mad Bull was silent, shocked and confused. Then he snorted and narrowed his eyes. “Are you mad, boy?”
“The Lions call me the Young Bull, the Yonkos call me the Shepherd’s Son and my people call me the Horn of Menju,” he said forming a fist. “In this room, they have only called one man mad.”
“I should have killed you in the womb,” the chief cursed. He tried to break from Kunai’s grip, wriggling and jerking. “You are dirt, just like your mother, and you will meet her fate. Guard… “
The shout died as a fist slammed against the chief’s jaw, stunning him. For a moment, everything was silent and Kunai thought the blow had killed the old man. Then the Mad Bull shook his head and spat out a broken tooth.
“You mean to kill me, Kunai?” the chief asked and then belched, filling the air with the bitter stench of herbs. “Will you kill your own father?”
“When have you ever treated me as a son?”
“When I gave you the chance to live,” the old man replied sharply. “When that Yonko dog climbed your mother, the blood of her children came into doubt. They all laughed at me, even Kheng. He never said it, but I saw it in his eyes. The pity. Still, you grew up a Bull, strong and true. I gave you a future in this tribe and even command of my warriors. How many men can give that to the son of an enemy?”
“Now you claim to see me as a son, great chief. A father would not force his son to watch as his mother is given to bamboo shoots, to hear her screams as they move into her skin, piercing and cutting, deeper and deeper. My sister begged for our mother, and I begged not to watch. But you dragged me into the farm. This is the fate of traitors, you whispered to me. Then the worst moment came. The silence.”
Kunai paused, trembling.
“She insulted me, she betrayed me, she slept with the enemy,” the Mad Bull snarled, spittle frothing on the sides of his mouth.
Kunai lifted the old man from the bed and slammed him into the hard-packed earthen floor. “The Yonkos are not the enemy, my chief, not anymore,” he said, towering over him.
“What have you done, boy?” the chief asked before succumbing to a violent coughing fit. When he recovered, his breath was ragged. “You mean to kill your chief?” he whimpered. “I curse you. May your spirit never see the light. This is a taboo.”
I am not afraid of the dark, Kunai wanted to say. “You should not talk of taboos, my chief, you might bite off your tongue,” he said as he took a knee beside the old man. “There was no sorrow in your eyes when I told you of Kertima’s death. No drums were played, no songs were made for your daughter. You claimed she died a Lion. I caught you that same night with a forger’s daughter, here in this room as the spirit of the Great Seer looked on. And you talk of taboos?” Kunai’s fingers closed around the old man’s neck, just below the swelling.
The chief tried to pull away. “You are…no son of…mine,” he said, his legs kicking wildly.
“You are wrong, Father,” Kunai said as a tear ran down his cheek. The old man’s hands had grabbed his, the strength in them so fierce Kunai thought his bones might crack. “I am your son like Kibli will never be,” he growled. “But you are a weak chief, you were a bad commander, and you betrayed your
Kunai squeezed until he felt something shift beneath his fingers. The kicking stopped and the wrinkled hands fell away. For a long time, he watched as the light dimmed behind those gray eyes. Kunai was unsure of how much time passed before he heard someone scratch at the door flap.
“My prince?” came a whisper.
Kunai wiped his eyes with one of the fur blankets and gathered his composure. “It is done,” he said without looking around. “Go ahead.”
“As you command,” the voice replied, “my chief.”
“Do not worry, Father,” Kunai whispered. “Your wives and their children will join you soon. I know how much you love them.”
Honor is for fools, old men, and the dead.
PART ONE
May the poison of your enemies turn to water in your blood.
-CHAPTER ONE-
MEMORIES OF FIRE
The clans had fashioned death into a shrine, and how proudly they displayed it. Stony steps spiraled around the side of a giant pile of skeletons, the structure shifting in and out of sight as the fog swirled like a snake coiling around its kill. Another hill of skulls, Sakhan thought, as the small group of nervous Abun strolled stealthily through the underbrush expecting an attack. But this was not truly a hill, neither was it made of just skulls. The mass of bleached bones looked ghostly in the faint moonlight with dozens of skulls heaped onto its narrow peak. These were the remains of unwelcomed visitors.
The grove was cold and dark, smelling of pines and rot. Huge trees jutted from the black earth with branches lost in the mist. Sakhan bit hard on his teeth to keep them from chattering. The cowards always came at this time, he knew, clenching and unclenching his left hand. On the night past the first Hill of Skulls, his scouts were ambushed and two of them left dead for the dawn. Nobody had seen the assailants.
“Do you hear them?” his half-brother asked in the darkness. Haikachi was twenty-two, six rains Sakhan’s elder. But he looked much older, dreadlocks held at his back to reveal beads of nervous sweat on his forehead. His lips were pale and cracked from the cold, but there was a fire in his eyes.
“I hear nothing,” he answered. Sakhan could see or hear nothing, truly. Yet nothing was known to kill. Even the owls and crickets were quiet. And that chaffed at him. He hated the silence, the waiting.
“Are you afraid?” Haikachi whispered.
Sakhan bristled. He was a chief and the warriors looked up to him. He could not be accused of being weak. Out of habit, he tapped on the talisman around his neck and smoldered his anger.
“I am,” Haikachi went on. “Father used to say to be afraid is like being sick. We hear and see things that are not there. They are cousins, and if the skyfather makes us sick, he will not shame us for being afraid.”
Sakhan looked around at him, unconvinced. His brother was willful and proud, and would never admit fear so readily.
“I am not afraid,” Sakhan lied, unsheathing his sword and marching forward, a move that saved his life as a spear came hurtling past his ear to splinter the bark of a nearby tree. Sakhan dropped to a knee and sized up the threat even as darkness pressed against his eyes. The bush was quiet, too quiet.
“Attack!” he bellowed and pointed in the direction the spear had come from.
Fifteen Abun warriors charged, springing into the bushes to meet the attack. With the path chocked off by thick and thorny underbrush, his men had not brought their mounts. It was a big gamble. The rush of blood drummed in his ears as Sakhan ran with the rest, listening for the war cries of the enemy that did not come. Their death was delivered on silent feet and the agonizing screams of the Abun echoed around him.
Sakhan tightened the grip on his sword when he saw a white figure gliding toward an unaware Abun, silent as the wind. Sakhan was on him before the apparition could strike, whipping down in a deadly arc. The white warrior was surprisingly fast, spinning out of his own attack just in time to deflect the blow. Sakhan’s blade bounced off wood and the mist swallowed the other man.
Just then Sakhan heard a groan behind him and looked over his shoulder to see the Abun he had just rescued stumble onto a knee with an arrowhead sticking out the man’s back. A white form stood on the other side, reaching for another arrow. Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed somebody draw back on a bowstring just as Sakhan moved on the first archer meaning to catch him between shots. Sakhan changed direction, leaping behind a tree and heard an arrow splinter off the bark. Two white warriors had him cornered.
All around him were dying Abun, their screams cut short. It looked a massacre. The Abun had obviously lost their calm, unable to fight an enemy they could not see. Where were his riders? Surely, they had heard the attack. For a heartbeat, Sakhan knew despair as he remembered an old betrayal. That was when he heard a soft crunch to his left. Without hesitation, he dashed right to see a white warrior in his path as expected. His appearance took the man by surprise and his blade flew forward, digging into flesh. The white warrior stumbled back and Sakhan moved away as blood spurted. When he glanced around, the other pale figure was almost on him with a short spear. But before his attacker came into striking distance, a thrown ax hammered into the man’s chest and stole him off his feet. Sakhan looked back and saw wildebeests charging into the grove. All through the night, the riders had been tightening ranks and encircling the bait. Now, their arrival squeezed the enemy into the center of the woods.
It was not long before only a handful of the white warriors remained. They had lost all their discipline. Some of the Abun riders dismounted and unsheathed their axes for the close killing, a nasty affair. Surely even white apparitions knew fear. Sakhan raised his sword and moved up to the nearest white warrior. The man was already exhausted from fending off two Abun at the same time.
The fog began lifting then, driven away by the first sparks of sunlight. By the time the killing was over, the grass underneath their feet was wet and sleek, broken corpses strewn around the bushes, the smell of slaughter carried into tired lungs by the cool morning air. Nonetheless, the skill and composure of the white warriors facing certain death reminded Sakhan of his father’s people, the spine of a formidable force. As he looked at the dead and dying, he knew he had come to the right place.
Sakhan walked between the bodies to where a white warrior twitched on the ground. The man was coated in a white paste, though sweat and blood now exposed the dark skin underneath. The warrior had an arrow in his belly and a long gash across his thigh. When he felt a presence beside him, the figure lifted his bloody hands, murmuring under his breath. The man was past living as surely as the leaves on which he lay. The cold came for him, Sakhan knew. In one fluid movement, the tip of his blade found the white chest and plunged through the heart, silencing the whispers forever.
That was when Sakhan noticed a bowl-shaped wicker-frame covered in hide beside the white warrior. He picked it up, holding the massive bowl by the slender stick that ran through the middle. The flat bowl was almost weightless, though he had no doubt it could stop a sword strike. Whatever it was, the thing had saved one of the white warriors from his own blow. He wondered how it might fare against an arrow. Sakhan shrugged. When he looked around, the surviving Abun were looting the corpses of both friends and foe, picking up anything valuable for the journey ahead. He allowed them their moment. The dead had no use of materials anymore.
At the far end of the clearing, he saw two men waiting underneath a tree. One of them had a pale look to his skin, unpainted. The man had his head low, his brownish dreadlocks scattered over his face as he sat cross-legged on a pile of leaves. The other Abun was a huge fellow, blood still dripping from the axe in his hand. Sakhan threw away the wooden frame and strolled over to them.
“My chief,” the large warrior said, momentarily dipping his head, his eyebrows heavy with sweat.
“You were late, commander,” Sakhan accused. He did not pose it as a question and risk the reply of a sullen silence. In a strange land and among stranger foes, his authority and good sense were always under scrutiny. He still had to impose his right to lead the Abun army. “The trap was your idea and too many men died.”
“The plan worked, my chief,” Gemaab said in guarded defiance. A part of the man’s head was a mass of charred flesh and a chunk of his ear was missing. With long dark scars and a permanent scowl, he always looked menacing. “Tell him, Handler.”
