Black Leopard, Red Wolf

We were all tired, even the buffalo and the Ogo. We were all sore, and the first night the Ogo’s fingers were so stiff he swatted three mugs of beer away trying to pick them up. I couldn’t remember what hit me in my back for it to smart so, and when I dipped in the river, every wound, scratch, and sore screamed. Mossi was sore as well and he tried to hide his limp, but winced when he stepped with his left foot. The night before, the cut above his forehead opened again, and blood streaked down the middle of his face. I cut another piece of his tunic, pounded wild bush into a paste, and rubbed it in his wound. He grabbed my hand and cursed at the sting, then eased his grip and dropped his hands to my waist. I wrapped his forehead.

“Then you know why it would dock here, on the outskirts of Dolingo.”

“Mossi, Dolingo buys slaves, not sells them.”

“What does that mean, that the ship is empty? Not after what’s coming to pass in the citadel.”

I turned to him, looking over at the buffalo, who snorted at the sight of the river.

“Look how it floats above the water. It’s empty.”

“I don’t trust slavers. We could turn from guest to cargo in the course of one night.”

“And how would a slaver do that with the likes of us? We need passage to Kongor, and this ship is going to either Kongor or Mitu, which is still closer than where we are now.”

I hailed the captain, a fat slaver with a bald head he painted blue, and asked if he minded some fellow travelers. They all stood from the port, looking down on us, ragged and covered in bruises and dust, but with all the weapons we took from the Dolingons. Mossi was right, the captain looked us over, and so did his thirty-man crew. But Sadogo never took off his gloves, and one look from him made the captain charge us nothing. But you take that cow to the shed with the rest of the dumb beasts, he said, and the Ogo had to grab the buffalo’s horn to stop him from charging. The buffalo took an empty stall beside two pigs who should have been fatter.

The second level had windows, and the Ogo took that one, and frowned when it looked like we would join him. He has nightmares and wishes that nobody knows, I said to Mossi when he complained. The captain said to me that he sold his cargo that night to a thin blue noble who pointed with his chin the whole time, only two nights before the god of anarchy let loose in Dolingo.

The ship would dock in Kongor. None of the crew slept below. One, whose face I didn’t see, said something about slave ghosts, furious about dying on the ship for they were still chained to it and could not enter the underworld. Ghosts, masters of malice and longing, spent all their days and nights thinking of the men who wronged them, and sharpening those thoughts into a knife. So they would have no quarrel with us. And if they wanted ears to hear of their injustice, I have heard worse from the dead.