Black Leopard, Red Wolf

At the doorway, he threw away the torch and pulled both axes. In the hallway, tall as five men standing on shoulders, but wide as one man with his arms spread, orbs floated free, blue, yellow, and green and burning light like fireflies. Two men, blue like the Dolingon, came at him from both sides, saying, How can we help you, friend? At the same time, both drawing their swords slow. He leapt and swung both hands down on the left guard, hacking him again and again in the face. Then he chopped him once in the neck. The right guard charged, and he jumped out of the way of his first strike, spun on the ground, and hacked him in the knee. The guard dropped on that same knee and howled and the man chopped him in the temple, the neck, the left eye, then kicked him over. He kept walking, then running. More men came, and he jumped, leapt, dropped, chopped, hacked, cutting them all down. He dodged out of one sword and elbowed the swordsman in the face, grabbed his neck, and slammed him into the wall twice. He kept running. A guard in no armour but with a sword screamed and ran straight for him. He blocked the sword with one ax, dropped to his knees, and chopped the guard’s shin. The guard dropped the sword, which he grabbed and stabbed him with.

An arrow shot past his head. He grabbed the near-headless guard and swung him around to catch the second arrow. As he ran, he felt each arrow pierce the guard until he was close enough to throw the first ax, which hit the bowman right between the nose and the forehead. He took the bowman’s sword and belt. He ran until he came out of the corridor into a great hall, with nothing but orbs of light. A giant came at him and he thought of an Ogo, who was his great friend, who was a man, not a giant, a man of always present sorrow, and he howled in rage, and ran and jumped on the giant’s back and hacked and hacked at his head and neck until there was no head and neck, and the giant fell.

“King sister!”

No sound in the room but his echo, bouncing mad on the walls and ceiling, then disappearing.

“Will you kill everyone?” she said.

“I will kill the world,” he said.

“The giant was a dancer and nurse of children. He had never done any in this world a bad thing.”

“He was in this world. That is enough. Where is he?”

“Where is who?”

He grabbed a spear and threw it where he thought the voice was coming from. It struck wood. The orbs shone brighter. She sat on a black throne ringed with cowries, and several hands above it lodged the spear. Two guards, women, stood by her side with swords, two beside them crouched with spears. Two elephant tusks at her feet and carved columns tall as trees behind her. Her headdress, thick cloth wrapped around and around to look like a flaming flower. Flowing robes from chest to feet, gold breastplate on her chest, as if she was one of the warrior queens.

“How hard it is, exile to this place of no life,” he said.

She stared at him, then laughed, which made him furious. He was not speaking wit.

“I remember you being so red, even in the dark. Red ochre, like a river woman,” she said.

“Where is your son?”

“And how skillful you were with an ax. And a Leopard who traveled with you.”

“Where is your boy?”

“Bunshi, she was the one who said, They will find your boy, especially the one called Tracker. It has been said he has a nose.”

“It’s been said you have a cunt. Where is your fucking boy?”

“What is my boy to you?”

“I have business with your son.”

“My son has no business with men I don’t know.”

He smelled him coming in the dark, trying to move in the shadow, to move quiet. Coming from the right. The man did not even turn, just threw his ax and it hit the guard in the dark. He yelped and fell.

“Call them. Send for every guard. I will build a mountain of corpses right here.”

“What do you want with my boy?”

“Call them. Call your guards, call your assassins, call your great men, call your best women, call your beasts. Watch me build a lake of blood right before your throne.”

“What do you wish with my boy?”

“I will have justice.”

“You will have revenge.”

“I will have whatever I choose to name it.”

He stepped towards the throne and two women guards swung down at him from ropes. The first, carrying a sword, missed him, but the second, with a club, knocked him over. He fell and slid on the smooth ground. He ran to the dead guard’s sword and grabbed it right before the second guard swung her club at him again. She swung hard but could not stop his swing quick enough. He kicked her in the back and she fell. He charged but she swung the club up and struck him in the chest. He fell on his back and she jumped up. He tried to swing his sword but she stomped on his hand. He kicked her in the koo, and she fell hard on her knees into his chest, which knocked his air out. The guard, her knuckles hard leather, punched him in the face, and punched him and punched him again and knocked him out.

Hear this. He woke in a cell like a cage hanging off the floor. It was a cage. The room, dark and red, not the throne room.