The King who was but a chief said, Take her to the square of the city so all may learn from her death, that the woman shall never make a fool of the man. The Queen, before she sat in the execution chair, touched Sadogo on the elbow, the softest touch, like fatty cream touching his lips, and said, In me there is no malice to you. My neck is beautiful, unsmeared, untouched. She took off her gold necklace and wrapped it around his machete hand, a machete made for an Ogo, wider at its widest point than a man’s chest. By the mercy of the gods make it quick, she said.
Three bamboo stalks stuck out of the dirt. The guards pushed her to the ground, forced her to sit up, and tied her to stalks stuck in the ground. She lifted her chin, but tears ran down her cheek. Sadogo took a branch stripped of leaves and pulled it down till it bent tight like a bow. The branch is angry, it wishes to be straight again not bound, but bind it he did, bind it to grass rope, then he tied it around the head of the wife. She flinched, tried to brace against the branch’s hard pull. The branch squeezed around her neck and she cried in pain, and all he could do was look at her and hope his look said, I shall make this quick. His ngulu was sharp, so sharp that even looking at it would make one’s eyes bleed. His blade caught light and flashed like lightning. Now the wife bawled. Now the wife wailed. Now the wife screamed. Now she called for ancestors. Now she begged. They all beg, did you know? Every day they talk of how they will rejoice the day of meeting the ancestors but nobody has joy, only crying and pissing and shitting.
He swung back his arm with the sword, then yelled, and swung, and chopped straight into the neck, but the head did not chop off. The city and the people, they watch an execution for a quick cut that makes them laugh. But the blade lodged in the middle of her neck and her eyes popped open and her mouth spat blood and she make a groan like ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhahhhhuck, and the people screamed, the people looked away, the people smelled disgust at people looking at killing, and the guard yelled make it quick. Before he could swing the blade again the impatient branch tore the rest of her head off her neck and flung it away.
Here are some true words. Every road an Ogo takes lands him in Kalindar. The Kalindar that stands between the Red Lake and the sea, and which the King of the North and the King of the South both claim as theirs, is only half of the territory. The rest of the land snakes in forgotten grounds outside the citadel’s walls, and in those grounds, men make bets on dark arts and blood sports. There comes a time when the Ogo thinks, If killing is all I do, then killing is all I shall do. And he will hear on warm winds and on secret drums of where there shall be sport, for those who want to play and those who want to watch, in the arena’s underground, where the walls are splashed with blood and guts are swept up and fed to dogs. They called it the Entertainments.
Soon Sadogo found himself in this city. Two guards who sat out by Kalindar’s gates saw him and said, Walk one hundred man paces, turn left, walk enough paces until you pass a blind man on a red stool, then go south until you come upon a hole in the ground with steps that take you down.
You look ready to die, the Entertainments master said when he saw Sadogo. The man let him into a vast underground courtyard and pointed to a cell.
“You fight two nights hence. And there you shall sleep. You shall not sleep well, all the better you wake with a temper,” he said.
But Sadogo was not ill-tempered, but weighed by melancholy. During training the Entertainments master had him whipped with sticks, but all the sticks broke and all the men fell from exhaustion before Sadogo even rose from the floor.
As for Ogos, know this. Most will never feel joy, or melancholy. The Ogos have little understanding and tempers that swing from cold to hot in a blink. Two Ogos who will say, If you kill him you kill my brother, will still smash the head of that brother right down to the stump. Nobody trains an Ogo. Nobody needs to. One only makes him mad, or hungry. And Sadogo is friends with no Ogo, and none are friends with him, and one is taller than trees and built bigger than elephants, and one is short but wide and thick like a rock, and one has muscles in his back and shoulders that rise above his head and people say that one is an ape. And one who paints himself blue, and one who will eat meat raw.
And the master says, Look, I have no chains on you. I am no master of men. You come when you come, you go when you go, and whatever I bet for you, you get half and whatever I bet against you, you get a third and if you win, those who come to watch will shower you with cowrie and coin, of which I only keep a fifth. Ko kare da ranar sa. What do you wish for money to do, my melancholy Ogo?
“Enough money to sail on a dhow that can hold me.”
“Sail to where?”
“It does not matter. I sail from, not to.”
The night of the first fight, seven Ogos and Sadogo marched to the killing ground. It was nothing but a hole deep in the ground, the remains of a well that went down perhaps two hundred arm lengths, maybe more. With rocks pushing out of ragged dirt, and ledges at uneven heights all the way around where men, nobles and chiefs, stood, along with a few women. They had cast their bets for each fight, four for the night. At the bottom of the well, a dry mound rose out of water.
The master put Sadogo in the second bout, saying, This one, he new, he fresh, we call him Sadface. Sadogo came down wearing a red macawii around his waist, and stood before the master. May gods of thunder and food give him strength, because look, here be coming another, the master said, and dashed off into the water, where he pulled himself up on a ledge. The men shouted, cheered, and fussed. A woman in a bucket was lowered to collect all the bets. The master said, Oho, what now, here he come, the backbreaker, and men on the lowest ledge scrambled to higher ground.
Backbreaker was the nastiest, for he ate flesh raw from the beast he killed. Tusks grew out of his mouth. Somebody painted his huge body in red ochre. The master said, Make your bets, dignified gentlemen. But before he finished, Backbreaker swung a punch and knocked Sadogo into the water. The girl screamed, Pull up the bucket! For the red Ogo eyed it as soon as he came in. Backbreaker faced the crowd and bellowed. Sadogo rose from the water and knocked him down, and grabbed a rock to bash in his head, but his grip was wet and Backbreaker slipped out, rolled over, and punched him straight in the chin. Sadogo spat blood. The red Ogo grabbed his club with spikes and swung it at Sadogo’s feet. Sadogo dodged and jumped up to a lower ledge. Backbreaker swung his club but Sadogo ducked and kicked him in the balls. The red Ogo dropped to his knees and his own spiked club slammed into his left eye. Sadogo took the club to Backbreaker’s head and smashed and smashed. And then he lifted the headless body and threw it at the men on the lowest ledge.
Six took him on, six he killed with that club.
And so his fame spread throughout Kalindar, and so more and more men came to see, and bet. And since the well was small and could never hold all, they placed more wood beams across the top so more men could see, and the master charged three times, four times, five times, then battle by battle even if they paid before, for the chance to see and bet on the sorrowful Ogo.
“Look upon him, look how his face never changes,” they would say.
He faced them all, he killed them all, and soon the lands were running out of Ogos. But the girl in the bucket who collected the bets, she was a slave with eyes sad as his. She brought food though many Ogos tried to rape her. One grabbed her one night and said, Watch how it grows, and pushed her down, and as he climbed on top, Sadogo’s hand grabbed his ankle, yanked him out of his cell, swung him like a club, and slammed him into the ground over and over and over until there was no sound from this Ogo. Through all this the girl said nothing, but the master said, “Curse you to the gods, sad one, surely that giant was worth more than that foolish little girl.”
Sadogo turned to him. “Do not call us giants,” he said.
The girl would come and sit by his cell. She sang verse but not to him. That last one is from lands north, then east, she said.
“We should go there,” she said.
No man is bound to me and I am bound to no man,” the master said when Sadogo said he would soon leave. “Killing has made you rich. But where shall you go? Where is there home for the Ogo? And if there is a home, good Ogo, do you not think someone here would have left for it?”
That evening she came to him and said, I have spoken my fill of verses. Give me new words. He walked to the bars that were not locked and said:
Bring words to voice and
Meat to this verse
Coal and ash
Flicker a flame
Brilliant
She stared at him through the bars.
“What I tell you is a true word, Ogo, you have an awful voice, and that is terrible verse. The griots do get their gifts from the gods.” Then she laughed. “Give me this word. What they call you?”
“I am called nothing.”
“What does your father call you?”
“A curse from the demons who fucked my whore of a wife and killed her.”
She laughed again.
“I laugh, but it makes me very sad,” she said. “I come here because you are not like the rest.”
“I am worse. Three times as many I have killed, compared to the bravest fighter.”