Black Leopard, Red Wolf

I looked for the Ogo to look at me and the prefect with different eyes, but saw nothing. If anything, the Ogo talked more than he had in almost a moon, on everything from the agreeable sky to this most agreeable buffalo, that I almost told him that a chatter-loving Ogo would bring attention to us. I wondered if Mossi thought the same and that was why he kept behind us, until I caught his eye sweeping up and down and behind and beside, past each crossroad, his hand never leaving his sword. I pulled back, walking beside him.

“Chieftain army?”

“Down a merchant’s street? They paid us well to never come to these parts.”

“Then who?”

“Anyone.”

“Which enemy is expecting us, Mossi?”

“Not enemies on the ground. It’s pigeons in the sky that worry me.”

“I know. And I have no friends here. I—”

I had to stop right there, right on that road as we walked. I clutched my nose and backed against the wall. So many at once that an older me would have gone a little mad, but now they slapped my mind around, pushing me forward, and back, and all around at once; my nose making me dizzy.

“Tracker?”

I can walk in a land of a hundred smells I do not know. I can walk into a place with many smells I know if I know this is the place where they will be, and decide what scent my mind will follow. But six or even four ambushing me unawares and I go almost mad. So many years have gone since this has happened to me. I remembered the boy who trained me to cluster on one, the boy I had to kill. There, all of them came at me, all I remember, not all I remember being in Kongor.

“You smell the boy,” Mossi said, grabbing my arm.

“I’m not going to fall.”

“But you smell the boy.”

“More than this boy.”

“Is that good or not so?”

“Only the gods know. This nose is a curse, it is no blessing. Much afoot in this city, more than when I was last here.”

“Speak plain, Tracker.”

“Fuck the gods, do I sound mad?”

“Peace. Peace.”

“That’s what that fucking cat used to say.”

He grabbed me and pulled me into his face.

“Your temper is making it worse,” he said.

The Ogo and buffalo had walked on, not noticing we had stopped. He touched my cheek and I flinched.

“No one sees us,” he said. “Besides, it gives you something else to worry about.” He smiled.

“I think someone tracks us. How far are the Nyembe streets?” I asked.

“Not far, north and west of here. But there’s no masking these two,” he said, pointing at the buffalo and the Ogo.

“We should stay along the coast. Do we go to the boy?” Mossi asked.

“It’s only three of them now, and the Ipundulu is wounded. No witch-mother to quicken his healing.”

“You say wait?”

“No.”

“Then what are you saying?”

“Mossi.”

“Tracker.”

“Quiet. I say while we hunt people, people hunt us. The Aesi might still be in Kongor. And I have this feeling he watches us, just waiting for us to fall into his lap. And others, others who track us.”

“My sword is ready when they find us.”

“No. We shall find them.”

Dusk came before we snuck through deserted alleys to get west. We passed a lane narrow enough for only one to pass through that Mossi dashed in and came back with blood on his sword. He did not say, I did not ask. We continued north and east, lane to lane, until we reached the Nyembe quarter and that snake street that led to the old lord’s house.

“Last I was on this street it was infested with Seven Wings,” I said.

He pointed to the flag of the black sparrow hawk, still flying from that tower three hundred paces away. “That still flies, though. And the Fasisi King’s mark is everywhere.”

We came to the doorway, suspiciously open.

“There’s a mark right here on this wall that I know,” I said.

“I thought you would give word about the piss first.”

Mossi jumped, but I did not move, though I wished I had an ax. He came from somewhere deep in this house, running down the narrow hallway leading outside, and leapt straight at me, knocking me down flat on the ground. The buffalo snorted, the Ogo ran to my side, and Mossi drew his two swords.

“No,” I said. “He’s a—”

The Leopard licked my forehead. He rubbed his head against my right cheek, dipped under my chin, and rubbed against the left. He rubbed his nose against my nose and rested his forehead on mine. He hummed and purred as I sat up. Then he shifted shape.

“Picked that up from lions, you poor excuse of a leopard,” I said.

“Shall we go into the foul things you’ve picked up, wolf? Because foul they are. Soon I shall hear that you kiss with tongue.”

The snort came from me, not the buffalo.

“You, with your eye of a dog, me with my eyes of a cat. We are quite the pair, are we not, Tracker?”

Leopard jumped to his feet and pulled me up. Mossi still had both swords drawn, but the Ogo went right up to the Leopard and picked him up.

“I like you more than most cats,” he said.

“How many cats do you know, Sadogo?”

“Only one.”

Leopard touched his face.

“Ay, buffalo, even now you have been no man’s meal?”

The buffalo stomped in the dirt and the Leopard laughed. Sadogo put him down.

“Who is this, with swords drawn? A foe?”