“Didn’t say you weren’t fucked in the ass. I said you weren’t fucked often.”
I turned and stared at him. He stared at me. I laughed first. Then we couldn’t stop laughing. Then Fumeli said something about not sticking the horse hard enough and we both nearly fell off our horses.
Except for Sogolon, Bibi looked the oldest among us. Certainly the only one so far to mention children. It made me think of the mingi children of the Sangoma who we left with the Gangatom to raise. The Leopard was to give me word of what has happened to them since, but has not.
“How did you come by that sword?” I asked.
“This?” Bibi withdrew it. “I told you, from a mountain man east who made the mistake of going west.”
“Mountain men never go west. Let us speak true, date feeder.”
He laughed. “How old are you in years? Twenty, seven and one?”
“Twenty and five. Do I look so old?”
“I would guess older but did not want to be rude to so new a friend.” He smiled. “I have been twenty twice. And five more years.”
“Fuck the gods. I have never known men to live that long who were not rich, or powerful, or just fat. That means you were old enough to see the last war.”
“I was old enough to fight in it.”
He glanced past me, at the savannah grass, shorter than before, and the sky, cloudier than before, though we could feel the sun. It was cooler as well. We had long left the valley for lands no man has ever tried to live in.
“I know no man who has seen war that will speak of it,” Bibi said.
“Were you a soldier?”
He laughed short. “Soldiers are fools not paid enough to be fools. I was a mercenary.”
“Tell me about the war.”
“All one hundred years of it? Which war are we speaking?”
“Which one did you fight?”
“The Areri Dulla war. Who knows what those buffalo-fuckers of the South called it, though I heard they called it the War of Northern Belligerence, which is hilarious, given that they threw spears first. You were born three years after the last truce. That was the war that caused it. Such a curious family. With all the inbreeding producing mad kings you would think one day a king would say, Let us find some fresh blood to save the line, but no. So we have war upon war. This truth. I cannot say if Kwash Netu was a rare good king or if the new and mad Massykin King was just madder than the last, but he was brilliant at war. He had an art for it, the way some have an art for pottery or poetry.”
Bibi halted his horse and I did mine. I could tell Fumeli looked up, annoyed. The air was wet with the rain that was not going to come.
“We need to move now,” Fumeli said.
“Rest easy, child. The Leopard will be just as hard when you finally get to sit on him,” Bibi said.
This I turned around for. Fumeli’s face was as horrified as I knew it would be. I turned back to Bibi.
“My father never spoke of the war. He never fought in any,” I said.
“Too old?”
“Maybe. He was also my grandfather. But you were talking of war.”
“What? You … Yes, the war. I was ten and seven years and staying in Luala Luala with my mother and father. The mad Massykin King invaded Kalindar, a moon and a half’s march to Malakal, but still too close. Too close to Kwash Netu. My mother said, One day men will come to our house and say we have chosen you for war. I said, Maybe if I fight in war it will finally bring back the glory to our house that Father squandered with wine and women. With what will you bring glory, for you have no honor, she said. She was right, of course. I was between killings, and people have less need for private battles when all are caught up in war. And just as she said, great warriors came to the house and said, You, you are young and strong, at least you look it. Time to send that Omororo Bitch King back to his barrenlands with his tail between his legs. And what should I fight for? I asked, and they were offended. You should fight for the glorious Kwash Netu and for the empire. I spat and opened my robe to show him my necklace. I am of the Seven Wings, I said. Warriors of the coin.”
“Who are the Seven Wings?”
“Mercenaries, kidnapped from drunkard fathers with debts they cannot pay. Skilled in weapons and masters of iron. We travel quick and vanish like an afterthought. Our masters test us with scorpions so we know no fear,” Bibi said.
“How?”
“They sting us to see who lives. In battle, we make the formation of the bull. We are the horns, the most ferocious; we attack first. And we cost more than most kings can pay. But our Kwash Netu was quite wise in the art of war. I heard this from the mad King: One ruler cannot be in two places at once or three, for he is only one. He sits in Fasisi, so let us attack Mitu. So the Massykin attacked Mitu, and Mitu was his. He thought it was victory, and it is not an unwise thought that since the King cannot be in two places at once, he let us attack a place he cannot be. This was his mistake, Tracker. Hear this, that was no weakness. The southern armies played into the very greatness of Kwash Netu, being in many places at once.”
“Witchcraft?”
“Not everything comes from the womb of witches, Tracker. Your King’s father knew how to move armies faster than any king before or since. Movements that would take even the Kongori seven days, his army could cross in two. He chose wise where to fight, and where he could not, he bought the best, and most brutally taxed his people to do it. The best were the Seven Wings. Take this as truth as well. The mad King was a flighty fool who screamed at the sight of blood, and did not know the name of his own generals—while Kwash Netu had his own men to lead in the territories, strong men, who could run a city, or a state when he was gone to war in another. Did you hear of the war of women?”
“No. Tell me.”
“After his generals said to the mad King, Most Divine, we must retreat from Kalindar, our four sisters are in jeopardy, the King agreed. But then that night at the camp, for he demanded to be with his men in war, he heard two cats fucking and thought it was a night devil calling him a coward for retreating. So he demanded they advance again into Kalindar, only to be beaten by women and children hurling rocks and shit from their mud-brick towers. Meanwhile, Kwash Netu took Wakadishu. The final stand at Malakal was not even much of a stand. It was the dregs of an army fleeing stone-throwing women. The war was already won.”
“Hmm. That is not what they teach in Malakal.”
“I have heard the songs and read leaves of paper bound in leather-skin, how Malakal was the last stand between the light of Kwash Netu Empire and the darkness of the Massykin. Songs of fools. Only those who have not fought in war fail to see they were both dark. Alas, a mercenary without a war is a mercenary without work.”
“You know much about war, generals, and court. How ended you here, stuffing a fat pig dates for a living?”
“Work is work, Tracker.”
“And horseshit is horseshit.”
“Sooner than later the darkness of war shades every man who fought it. My needs are simple. Feeding my children as they too become men is one. Pride is not.”
“I don’t believe you. And after all you just said, I believe you even less. There is craft in your ways. Do you plan to kill him? I know, a rival hired you to get closer to him than a lover.”
“If I wanted to kill him I could have four years ago. He knows what I can do. I think it pleases him that people think I’m a silly girl-boy who likes to play with his mouth. He thinks it means I can sift through his enemies and deal with them.”
“So you are his spy. To spy on us?”
“Fool, he has Sogolon for that. I am here for whatever surprises the gods have in store for you.”
“I would hear more about what these great wars have done to you.”
“And I would say no more about it. War is war. Think of the worst that you have seen. Now think of seeing that every three steps for one quartermoon’s walk.”
We were now in deep grassland, greener and wetter than the brown bush of the valley, with the horses’ hooves sinking deeper in the dirt. Ahead, maybe another half a day’s ride, trees stood up and spread. Mountains hung back all around us. On the side, going west from Malakal, the mountains and the forest both looked blue. Along the grass and the wetness, bamboo giants of the grass sprouted, one, then two, then a clump, then a forest of them that blocked the late-afternoon sun. Other trees reached tall into the sky and ferns hid the dirt. I smelled a fresh brook before I heard or saw it. Ferns and bulbs sprouted out of fallen trees. We followed what looked like a track until I smelled that both the Leopard and Sogolon had gone that way. On my right hand, through the tall leaves, a waterfall rushed down rocks.
“Where they gone?” Fumeli asked.
“Fuck the gods, boy,” I said. “Your cat is but a—”
“Not him. Where are the beasts? No pangolin, no mandrill, not even a butterfly. Can your nose only smell what is here, and not what is gone?”