Black Leopard, Red Wolf

“You wish to know about the Leopard, go and ask the Leopard.”

“Will your heart not grow fond when you see him next?”

“When I see him next, I shall kill him.”

“Fuck the gods, Tracker. Do you plan to kill everybody?”

“I will murder the world.”

“That is a big task. Bigger than killing the elephant or the buffalo.”

“Do you miss being a man?”

“Do I miss warm blood running through me, and skin not the colour of all wickedness? No, good Tracker. I love waking up thanking gods I’m a demon now. If I could ever sleep.”

“Now that I see you, I think for a man like you, this was the only future for your form. What do you think the boy has been feeding on all these years, if not your blood?”

“The blood is his opium or his physic, not his food.”

“Now that you are aboveground, he will seek you.”

“What if he is a year away?”

“He has wings.”

“Why do you not smell him?”

We kept walking alongside dying sunrays, which meant north. Night would come down before we got to the Blood Swamp.

“Why do you not smell him?”

“We head north. Unlike the Ipundulu … you … the former you. Sasabonsam hates cities, and towns, and would never rest in one. He could never hide his form like the Ipun … like you. He would much rather hide where travelers pass and pick them off one by one. Him and his brother. Before I killed the brother. The Leopard killed the brother. The Leopard killed the brother, but he smelled my scent on him, so he thinks it was me.”

“How did the Leopard kill him?”

“Saving me.”

“Then why do you blame the Leopard?”

“This is not what I blame him for.”

“Then what—”

“Quiet, Nyka.”

“Your words—”

“Fuck your thoughts on my words. This is what you do, what you always do. Ask, and ask, so that you will know and know. And when you finally know all there is to know of someone, you use that knowledge to betray them. Help yourself, you cannot, for it is your nature, as eating her young is crocodile’s nature.”

“Where is the giant?”

“Dead. And he was not a giant, he was an Ogo.”

We came to the edge of the Blood Swamp. I have heard of monstrous things in these wet lands, insects as big as crows, snakes wider than the trunks of trees, and plants hungry for flesh, blood, and bone. Even the heat took shape, like a mad nymph out to poison. But no beast came near us, sensing two creatures worse. Not even when swamp water reached us at our waists. We walked until the water fell to our knees, then our ankles, until we stepped on mud and rough grass. All around us, thick vines and thin trunks twisted and bent and wrapped into each other, making a wall as dense as a Gangatom hut.

The smell came to me before we came to it. An open savannah, with few trees, little grass, but reeking of death stink. Old death stink; whatever rotted started rotting seven days ago. I stepped on it before I saw it, and it gave way under my foot. An arm. Two paces from it a helmet with a head still in it. Ten or so paces away, vultures flapped their wings, pulling entrails out, while above a flock of the same, fat with food, flew away. A battlefield. All that was left of war. I looked up and the birds went as far as I could see, circling bodies, landing for more, picking meat off men, men baking in metal armour, men so bloated they bubbled, heads of men looking like they were buried up to their necks in the ground, their eyes pecked away by the birds. There were too many to smell any one. I kept walking, looking for North or South colours. Ahead of us, spear shafts and swords were the only things that stood. Nyka followed me, also looking.

“You think a soldier willed himself to live for eight days so you could pluck his heart?” I asked.

Nyka said nothing. We kept walking until the savannah ran out of bodies, and parts of bodies, and the birds were behind us. Soon we ran out of trees and were standing at the edge of the Ikosha, the salt plains, two and half days’ ride across, and nothing but dirt cracked like dried mud and silver like the moon. He walked towards us as if he just appeared from nothing and started walking. Nyka’s wings opened but he saw that I did nothing and closed them.

“Tracker. I remind you this is your idea to take me with you.”

“It’s not my idea.”

“I am indeed the owner of this idea,” he said as he approached.

That is what he said, in the very way I knew he would say it. We had been hunting for two moons and nine days. He looked at us with arms akimbo, like a mother about to scold us.

The Aesi.

Nyka struck some dry branches with lightning. Fire woke up quick, and he jumped back. I came back from deeper in the swamp with a young warthog. The body I cut open to stick on a spit, the heart I cut out and threw to Nyka. He would not have shame this hour. He would not eat it with both me and the Aesi looking, but neither of us would turn away. He hissed, sat on the ground, and bit into it. Blood exploded over his mouth and nose.