AK

by Peter Dickinson

“Listen to me, everyone. This is a free market. We don’t pay anyone for water. We pay one license for each stall to the market council, and not a gura more to anyone. Perhaps you are saying to yourself, ‘I don’t want any trouble. I don’t mind paying a few gurai for water, provided they leave me alone in my stall.’ I tell you they won’t leave you alone. They’ll come and ask for money from you—protection money, they’ll call it, because they’ll say they are protecting your stall from thugs who want to break it up. But if you don’t pay it, who do you think will do the breaking up? Don’t be fooled. There’s only one way we can fight people like this, and that’s if we all stick together. As soon as a Deathsinger shows his face at your neighbour’s stall, you go and stand by him, or her. And soon as you hear the coppersmiths’ gong, you stop what you’re doing and find yourself a weapon to fight with and go and find where the trouble is. Be brave, everyone. Be strong. This is the free market of Dangoum, and we’re going to keep it that way.”

  There were cheers and shouts of agreement as she stopped.

  “I tell you, she’s a really strong woman,” said Jilli.

  Paul turned. He hadn’t noticed her come back. She had a split lip and the sleeve of her shirt was torn almost clean off, but she had that look of exultation he remembered on the faces of the commando after a successful action.

  “It’s not our fight,” he said. “It’s got nothing to do with getting Michael out.”

  “Maybe it’s all the same thing.”

  “Maybe it isn’t.”

  She plucked at her torn sleeve and looked at him slyly.

  “Good thing I got myself a spare shirt, Paul.”

  When they told Efoni what had happened she said nothing but frowned and started to restack her baskets with the best ones out of sight at the back. Jilli helped her, chattering, exhilarated—Paul could remember feeling like that after his first action. He cradled the gun basket at his side, but when he slid his fingers under the cotton the touch of the familiar metal didn’t seem to fill him with the old comfort and reassurance. The AK didn’t belong here, in this muddled, crowded community. Its home was among the clean simplicities of the bush, where you could wait, and choose your target, and aim at that and nothing else .

  That evening, when the market was in full swing, they heard through its clatter and clamour a different sort of uproar, yells and crashes and a wailing chant, then a burst of rapid gunfire…no, not gunfire, but very like. The coppersmiths’ gong began to beat.

  “Ai!” said Efoni. “Didn’t I know it? Deathsingers are back—that’s them, making their song.”

  The wail was louder now, rising and falling, like the chant around a corpse at a Shidi funeral. The gunfire noise came several times. Madam Ga was shouting, women were screaming, the gong beat louder, there were crashes—pots being smashed, stalls overturned. A woman ran past sobbing, her hands over her face and blood seeping between her fingers. Lights flared and wavered as the butane lamps went over. Something caught fire. Efoni was out in the alley between the stalls, with several of the other Fulu women, shouting, “This is a free market! Get out! Get out!” The noise of fighting rushed suddenly nearer.

  “What are you doing, Paul?” said Jilli. “Why aren’t you fighting them? Where’s your gun?”

  Paul sighed, reached down into the basket, and pulled out the AK and unfolded the butt, then clipped the magazine in. Holding the gun out of sight, he took up a position between two stacks of baskets. The mêlée to his right was a vague mass, struggling bodies, mostly in shadow. Orange flames rose beyond. There was no target there, nothing you could use a gun for without killing your friends.

  The scrimmage burst, and several stall holders came staggering down the alley with their arms raised behind them to protect their heads from the lashing truncheons of the Deathsingers, three of them, beating down in time to their song. They had used the music, and perhaps drugs, to work themselves into some kind of staring-eyed trance. They made the gunfire noise as well as the wail.

  Efoni had backed clear and spread her arms helplessly in front of her stall. Now one of the wreckers swung toward her, truncheon raised, mouthing his chant. She seemed caught in the same trance, but Paul ducked under her arm and raised the AK and cocked it. The sharp double metallic click was nothing in the uproar but it seemed to break the man’s trance. He stopped, mouth still open to chant, truncheon still raised, staring at the black muzzle of the gun. He was alone. The two men who’d been chasing the stall holders with him were yards on, while the rest were still busy smashing the stalls to the right.

  “Drop your stick,” said Paul.

  He let his index tighten on the trigger. The AK had a heavy pull and he knew how far he could go. The man didn’t. The truncheon fell and the man backed off the way he’d come, both hands half raised. Paul gave a quick glance to his left and saw the other two in the thick of a fresh scrimmage, unaware what had happened behind them. Jilli was at his elbow.

  “You watch these two,” he said, and moved out into the alley. The man continued to back away. His silence, his fear, reached through to the men beyond him. One of them turned, saw what was happening, and shouted a warning. The song and the truncheons faltered. The men moved into the alley to see better, and as they did so Paul took a step toward them. He felt totally in command, doubt gone. These men weren’t Warriors, trained or skilled. They were punks, bullies, beaters of women. Hearing a shout, like that a real Warrior would have whipped into cover, checked what was up, and at once begun to work his way around to Paul’s flank, knowing that one of his friends was doing the same on the other side. Then Paul wouldn’t have had a hope, but as it was he had all six of them covered.

  The main fight around the coppersmiths’ stalls was still raging on, but this little group was Paul’s business. A Deathsinger broke for a moment from his stillness, nerving himself for a rush, but froze again as he saw the AK aimed at his stomach. Paul stepped forward another pace.

  “Drop your sticks,” he said.

  The clubs fell. Behind him a man yelled with pain and the Deathsong stopped.

  “They’re coming back,” said Jilli. “Yeh! They’re angry, these women!”

  There was a rush of feet from behind. He dodged back between the baskets. The gun had already lost its hold as the Deathsingers had looked beyond him, seen what was coming and turned to run. The two, men came racing past followed by about twenty stall holders, mostly women, armed with tools or sticks. Even Efoni picked up the hatchet she used for trimming her reeds to length and rushed to join them. The blue shirts vanished in the mass of bodies.

  “Yeh!” said Jilli. “They’re really angry, all these people!”

  Paul slid the safety up and uncocked the gun. Now he could hear that the fight was on a larger scale than he’d realized, and that he’d been involved in only a skirmish at its edge. And the sounds had changed. The wail of the Deathsong could no longer be heard, the deliberate smashings and splinterings had ended, and all other noises were submerged in a single throaty roaring, rhythmless and shapeless, the clamour of a furious crowd. Market people were still hurrying in, carrying whatever weapons they could find, the carpet weavers with their big shears, wood carvers with shaping axes, rope winders with spikes. Two Deathsingers staggered into a patch of light in the alley beyond and were met by a rush of newcomers, yelling their anger. When the scuffle was over Paul could see the legs of a fallen man protruding beyond a stack of grass mats. They didn’t move.

  Efoni came back. She had lost her hatchet and stood by her stall with her chest heaving in and out and her cheek muscles bunched. Spasms shook her body.

  “What happened?” said Paul.

  “Don’t know. Don’t know. All I know is there’s going to be bad trouble now. Deathsingers aren’t going to take this lying down.”

  Slowly the roaring died but the crowd didn’t disperse. Paul tucked the AK back into its basket and hid that among the
others, then made his way up toward the coppersmiths’ area. People were milling around laughing and boasting among the smashed stalls, while the traders sorted through their ruined stock for anything they could rescue. One stall which had sold rush stools was a heap of hot ash. The bodies of five Death-singers had been laid out beside it. None of the market people seemed to have been killed, but several were hurt, and their friends were clustered around them arguing about the best way to look after them. Paul heard wild guesses about how many Deathsingers had come to teach the coppersmiths and Madam Ga a lesson and got more than they’d bargained for.

  He found Madam Ga herself in the middle of a ring of traders, discussing what was going to happen next. Paul recognized two coppersmiths, sons of the blind priest, and a fat woman with huge silver earrings who sold breadsticks and was important among the bakers, and one of Efoni’s Fulu friends.

  “That was the most they could get together at short notice,” a coppersmith said. “They wanted to hit back at once for what happened at the stand-pipe.”

  “You don’t know,” said someone.

  “Got it out of one of them we captured,” said the coppersmith.

  “Showed him the colour of hot iron,” said his brother.

  “They’ll come again,” said Madam Ga. “Every Deathsinger in Dangoum. Tomorrow, or the day after. We must be ready.”

  “Couple of hundred—three hundred, maybe—that’s what I heard,” said someone.

  “We’ll still see them off,” said one of the coppersmiths.

  “No,” said Madam Ga. “How many came tonight? Fewer than fifty. And that was almost too much for us. Next time, we’ve got to have help. We must go to the gangs and say to them, ‘This is your chance to break the Deathsingers. That is what we all want. Join together and join us, and we will get rid of them.’“

  “You’ll never get the Jackals and the Soccer Boys joining together,” said someone.

  “Or the Scorpions joining anyone,” said someone else.

  Clamour broke out, everyone arguing about the gangs, until Madam Ga held up her hands.

  “All right,” she said. “What you say is true, but we must try. Now, who knows anyone from the gangs, any of the leaders?”

  “My sister’s husband’s cousin is second-in-command of the Oni-oni,” said the Fulu woman. “I’ll speak to him.”

  “My nephew’s in the Soccer Boys…” began someone.

  “We don’t want the Soccer Boys,” shouted someone else. “They’re crazy.”

  “Who knows a Scorpion?” said Madam Ga. Silence.

  “Well, we will send to them all the same,” said Madam Ga. “They are the strongest of the gangs.”

  “They won’t listen to you unless you talk Baroba,” said someone.

  “I tell you,” said Madam Ga, “everything must be tried. Who will go to the Jackals?”

  The argument rambled on and Paul drifted away.

  That night the market was weirdly quiet, because the liquor-stalls had closed down. They’d be the first to get looted in a riot. Paul lay in the silence and thought. If Madam Ga did manage to persuade any of the gangs to join her that would be a chance for him to make contact with them. He’d put off trying to get in touch with the Scorpions because he’d known from the first there wasn’t much hope. The Baroba had always been fighters, and the men who’d manned the stand-pipe on that first day when he and Jilli had reached Dangoum had seemed a lot more formidable than the other gang members he’d met, but Baroba didn’t talk to other people. There were almost none of them trading in the market, for instance. At least now he’d have something to offer them—Madam Ga’s argument that this was a good chance to smash the Deathsingers—he’d picked up a bit of Baroba from Kashka. That might help.

  He left early, before Efoni and Jilli had arrived, and made his way back through the shanties to the stand-pipe where he’d first bought water from the Scorpions.

  The three men controlling the tap looked tense and wary—Paul had heard there’d been at least one attempt by the Deathsingers in the past few nights to win it back—but there was no point in talking to them. From his study of the Naga gangs Paul guessed the form. Someone more important would be doing the rounds soon, checking that everything was in order.

  After half an hour a light truck came nosing between the huts and stopped. The driver stayed in his seat while the two passengers got out and strolled toward the stand-pipe. Both wore battle fatigues, with berets, and had the savage Baroba knives hanging at their belts. The scarlet scorpion was painted on their foreheads. The men at the pipe saluted and a discussion began. Paul moved across till he was between the stand-pipe and the truck and waited for the men to come back. When they did so he stepped in front of them and gave them the formal Baroba greeting to a chief.

  “I see the black lion.”

  The larger of the two men laughed and said something to the other, too quick for Paul to follow, then added, “You’re not Baroba, boy.”

  “My friend Kashka Anka taught me to say this,” said Paul. “I ran with him from Tsheba.”

  The men had begun to move toward the truck again, but they stopped.

  “What happened at Tsheba?” said the large man.

  Paul had to drop into Naga to answer. At the change of language the men’s faces froze, but they listened till he’d finished and then strode on without a word. Paul trotted beside them.

  “Something else,” he said. “The Deathsingers came last night to the market to punish some of the people for not letting them take over the stand-pipes. We drove them off, but they’ll be coming back …”

  The men climbed into the truck.

  “Nothing to do with us,” said the large man. “You Naga and Fulu and Issi can look after the market.” The driver started the engine.

  “I’m not Naga,” shouted Paul. “I’m Nagala. And so are you!”

  As the driver put the truck into gear the large man laid his hand on the lever and nudged it back into neutral.

  “Who taught you to say that?” he asked.

  “My father, Michael Kagomi. It’s true.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard him say it. He hasn’t got a wife.”

  “I was in his commando and he made me his son. But you know him? You know where he is?”

  The man shook his head.

  “The DDA have got him somewhere, along with my cousin and the others. But I’m afraid that doesn’t mean the market’s anything to do with us.”

  “If my father was here he’d tell you it’s your best chance to break the Deathsingers. They’ll be bringing everybody they’ve got, but the market people are ready to fight, and they’re getting the Jackals and the Oni-oni to help …”

  “Slower. Go back to the beginning. What happened?”

  Paul explained. The man gave no sign of what he thought but grunted when Paul had finished and swung around and spoke to the man in the rear of the truck. There was a brief discussion and the second man got out and went back to the stand-pipe.

  “Get in, boy,” said the large man.

  While the truck wriggled and bounced toward the market he took off his jacket and with its sleeve wiped the scorpion symbol from his forehead, then laid his knife, beret, and belt on the floor and covered them with the jacket. When the truck stopped at the edge of the market he climbed out and walked with a loping slouch beside Paul, looking like anyone else in his undershirt and fatigue trousers. They found Madam Ga and her council sitting in a circle under a canopy by one of the coppersmiths’ forges. She was clearly the leader, but there were two newcomers, a pale-skinned Fulu man in a peculiar wide-brimmed hat and a Naga in a grey T-shirt. The big Baroba straightened from his slouch and became a presence, a leader like Madam Ga. The council stopped their talk and turned.

  “Good morning,” he said. “I am Major Dasu. Perhaps you have heard of me. I believe you’re having troubl
e with the Deathsingers.”

  The two strangers rose to their feet, wary as hunters. Major Dasu shook hands with them, unsmiling, and then with the rest.

  “May I join your talk?” he said.

  “We were told the Scorpions wouldn’t help,” said Madam Ga.

  “Didn’t come from me,” said Major Dasu. “I knew there’d been fighting, then this boy came and told me what it was about. Now I’m prepared to discuss with you whether it is to our advantage to cooperate.”

  A few of the others glanced at Paul for a moment with a look of puzzlement, but it obviously didn’t matter to them how Major Dasu had got there, now that he’d come. Indeed, while the major was settling into the circle one of them gestured to Paul to leave, so he made his way back to Efoni’s stall. The market was still quiet, with a feeling of waiting and tension. Some of the stalls were empty, and the stall holders absent. The ones who had come were displaying far less stock than usual.

  Jilli wasn’t there, but he’d hardly checked that his gun was where he’d left it when he saw her staggering up the alley with Efoni’s pitcher and their own flask both brimful.

  “I think there’s trouble coming,” she said. “I’ve bought plenty of food, okay?”

  He was still eating when a shadow fell across him. It was Major Dasu.

  “You’ve got a gun, boy,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Give it to me. Guns are not for children.”

  Paul stayed where he was, sitting cross-legged in the dust.

  “I’m not a child,” he said calmly. “I’m a Warrior. Michael Kagomi is my father. I was with him three years in the bush, at Kumin Bridge, and when we took Tala, and the ambush at Fos. Now he is in prison in Dangoum and I’ve come to get him out. My gun is for that.

  “How many rounds have you got?”

  “Eighteen.”

  “Basso-Iskani has a battalion of his own guard at the palace, and regiments in other barracks, and tanks and airplanes. What will you do with eighteen rounds?”

  “It will be enough.”