Black Leopard, Red Wolf

I pulled the spear out of the last one and rolled him over with my foot. Horns large, curved, and pointed to a sharp tip like a rhinoceros’s sprouted all over his head and neck, with smaller horns on his shoulders. They pointed in all directions, these horns, like a beggar with locks thickened by dirt. Horns wide as a child’s head and long as a tusk, horns short and stumpy, horns like a hair, gray and white like his skin. Both brows grew into horns and his eyes had no pupils. Nose wide and flat with hair sticking out of the nostrils like bush. Thick lips as wide as the face and teeth like a dog’s. Scars all over his chest, maybe for all his kills. A belt holding up a loincloth on which hung child skulls.

“What kind of devil is this?” I asked.

Bibi crouched and turned its head. “Zogbanu. Trolls from the Blood Swamp. I saw many during the war. Your last King even used some as berserkers. Each one worse than the one before.”

“This is no swamp.”

“They are roving. The girl is not from here either. Girl, where do they go?”

“I am the glorious offering to the Yeh—”

Sogolon slapped her.

“Bingoyi yi kase nan,” the girl said.

“They eat man flesh,” Sogolon said.

That’s when we all looked at the leg cooking on the spit. Sadogo kicked it over.

“They are traveling?” I asked.

“Yes,” Bibi said.

“But she just said she was a sacrifice so that they would share their land,” I said.

“Not nomads,” the Leopard said.

He walked right up to me, but looked at Bibi. “And they are not traveling, they are hunting. Somebody told them a bounty of flesh would be coming through these woods. Us.”

The girl screamed. No, it was not a scream, there was no fear in it. It was a call.

“Get the horses!” the Leopard shouted at us. “And cover that girl’s mouth!”

You could hear the shuffle through the bushes even as we ran. The rustle coming from all corners and all sides moving ever closer. I slapped Fumeli’s horse and she took off. Sogolon appeared with her horse and galloped away. I followed, kneeing my horse sharp in the ribs. Bibi, riding beside me, said something or laughed, when a Zogbanu leapt out of the dark bush with a club and knocked him off. I did not stop and neither did his horse. I looked back only once to see Zogbanus, many of them, pile on top of him until the pile became a hill. He did not stop shouting until they stopped him. I caught up with Sogolon, but they caught up with us. One leapt for me and missed, his horns slicing the rump of my horse. She leapt up and nearly threw me. Two came out of the bush and started pawing at her. Arrows went into the first one’s back, and more went into the other’s chest and face. The Leopard, now on the same horse as Fumeli, shouted for us to follow him. Behind us more Zogbanus than eyes could count, growling and snarling, sometimes their horns tangling and causing a few to fall. They ran almost as fast as the horses through the thick brush. One came of the brush, his face running right into my hatchet. I wished I had a sword. Sogolon had one, riding and slashing and cutting as if clearing away wild bush. Bibi’s horse fell back without a rider to push him. The Zogbanu jumped him, all as one, the way I see lions do a young buffalo. I kneed my poor horse harder; many still chased us. Then I heard the zip-zip-zip-zip past us. Throwing daggers. The beasts had weapons. One struck Sogolon in her left shoulder. She grunted, but kept slashing with her right hand. Ahead I could see the Leopard and ahead of him a clearing and the glimmer of water. We were coming out when in the quick a Zogbanu jumped my horse right behind me and knocked me off. We rolled in the grass. He grabbed my throat and dug into my neck. They liked their meat fresh, so I knew he was not going to kill me. But he was trying to make me quick-sleep. His breath blew foul and left a white cloud. Smaller horns than the others, a young one out to prove himself. I fumbled for the daggers and plunged one into his right ribs and another into the ribs on his left again, and again, and again, until he fell on me and I could not breathe. The Leopard pulled him off me and shouted for me to run. He changed and growled. I don’t know if that scared them. But by the time I got to the lake, everyone had already boarded a wide raft, including the girl and my horse. I staggered on just as the Leopard jumped past me. Zogbanu swarmed the shore, maybe ten and five, maybe twenty, so close they looked like one wide beast of horns and thorns.

Without anyone pushing it, the raft set off. At the front, sitting as praying in her quiet little chamber, unaware of the world as it fucking burned, was Bunshi.

“Night bitch, you were testing us,” I said.

“She do no such thing,” said Sogolon.

“This was not a question!”

Sogolon said nothing, but sat there as if praying, when I knew she was not.

“We should go back for Bibi.”

“He’s dead,” Bunshi said.

“He is not. They take their victims alive so they can eat the flesh fresh.”

She stood up and turned to face me.