Black Leopard, Red Wolf

He went off in the bush, his tail whipping flies. I heard a man’s heavy footsteps through the grass fifty paces away and sat by the banks, my feet in the river. He moved closer; I pulled my dagger but did not turn around. The cold iron of a blade touched my right shoulder.

“Nasty boy, how you deh manage the things?” he asked.

“Deh managing them fine,” I said, mocking his tongue.

“You lost? You look like is so.”

“That be how me look?”

“Well, partner, you trotting round here, no robes on your person, like you mad or you a boy-lover, or a father-fucker or what?”

“I just washing my foot in the river.”

“So you looking for the boy-lovers quarter.”

“Just washing my foot in the river.”

“For the boy-lovers quarter, that be, it be where now? Hold that bridle. We has no boy-lovers quarter round here.”

“Eh? You sure you talking true? ’Cause last time me in the boy-lovers quarter, my eyes peep your father, and your grandfather.”

He slapped the side of my head with his club. “Get up,” he said. At least he wasn’t about to slay me without a fight. On his back he strapped two axes.

Shorter than me by almost a head, but in the white bottom and black top of a Seven Wing. My first thought was to ignore his anger and ask why the Seven Wings assemble, since not even the wise Sogolon knows. He then said something to me in a thicker voice than before.

“Dats what we going do with men laka you?” this wing said.

“What?”

“Who you want me to send your head to, boy-fucker?”

“You wrong.”

“How me wrong?”

“About me being the boy-fucker. Most time is the boys who fuck me. Hark, but there was this one, best in many a moon, so tight believe you me I has to stuff a corncob up to ease the hole. Then I ate the corn.”

“Me chop off your bolo first, and then your head, then throw the rest of you in the river. How you liking that? And when you parts flow down de river, people going say luku laka pon the boy-fucker shoga rolling down in the river, don’t drink from the river lest you become boy-fucker too.”

“Chop me with those axes? I have been looking for iron as fine as such. Forged by a Wakadishu blacksmith or did you steal them from a butcher’s wife?”

“Drop the knife.”

I looked at this man, not much taller than a boy, confusing stout with muscular and dashing shit on my quiet morning. I dropped the dagger in my hand and the one strapped to my leg.

“I would love to greet this sun and bid it good-bye without killing a man,” I said. “There are some people above the sand sea who have a feast every year where they leave a space empty for a ghost, a man who was once alive.”

He laughed, pointing the club at me with his left hand, and pulling an ax with his right. Then he dropped the club and pulled out the left ax.

“Maybe me should be doing the killing for you mad tongue, and not you perverse ways.”

He waved his axes in front of me, swinging and swirling them, but I did not move. The mercenary stepped forward just as a wad of something hit the back of his neck.

“Aunt of a donkey!”

He swung around just as the buffalo snorted again, and nose juice hit the warrior in the face. Eye-to-eye with the buffalo, he jumped. Before he could swing an ax, the buffalo scooped up the warrior with his horns and threw him off far into the grass. One ax landed in the field. The other came straight at me but bounced off. I cursed the buffalo. It was some time before the warrior sat up, shook his head, rose to his feet, and staggered off when the buffalo rushed him again.

“You took your time. I could have made bread.”

He trotted off and slapped me with his tail as he passed. I laughed and picked up my new axes.

The house had woken up by the time I got back. The buffalo stooped in the grass and sunk his head on the ground. I said he was as lazy as an old grandmother and he swished his tail at me. In a corner near the center doorway sat Sogolon, and a man I assumed was the lord of the house. Bisabol blew out of him, expensive perfume from lands above the sand sea. A white wrap around his head and under his chin, thin enough that I could see his skin. A white gown with a pattern of the millet plant, and over that a coat, coffee dark.

“Where is the girl?” I asked.

“Down some street, annoying some woman, because clothes remain something that fascinates her. Truly, old friend, she never ever seen the like,” Sogolon said.

The man nodded before I realized she was not speaking to me. He took a puff of his pipe, then handed it to her. The smoke from her mouth I would have taken for a cloud, it was so thick. She had drawn six runes in the dirt with a stick and was scratching a seventh.

“And how is the Tracker managing Kongor?” he asked, though he still did not look at me. I thought he was speaking to Sogolon in that rude way men who are rich and powerful can speak about you right in front of you. Too early in the day to make men test you, I said to myself.

“He not one for the Kongori custom to cover his snake,” Sogolon said.