“What does he want?”
“What he wants does not matter, only what you say.”
“That was not the question. What does he want?”
“He hungers for battle like any Omee. He hates you for shielding him from the different quests that makes an Omee recognized.”
The chief sighed and the man’s age showed on his face.
“He does not have to go anywhere. We will make him guard the Haku and let him know the seriousness of that position.”
“You and I both know that is the position of coward. When I was younger than he was, I had seen death pass me a hundred times. My son…my only son is not a coward and if he chooses to fight in battle alongside his father, then let it be. But, my friend, this is what you will do for me: I want you to be with him every step he takes during war.”
“That I cannot do. Every man will notice that I am with him and not you, making him a greater coward.”
“Okay, then tell the general to do it. Get out of here. I want to be alone.”
The Tikpapa left, leaving the father to worry about his son.
*
Ahoda’s envoy had climbed over the trench separating the two provinces, but the area was unusually empty. Even though it was late in the day, they had to put people around the vicinity. When he left there were some Omees on guard, so he disguised himself. He was positive they did not recognize him. He did not care anymore; all he wanted to do was just leave this area. He tied his horse far from the trench so there wouldn’t be any connection between him and the trench. As he got to where he kept the horse, it wasn’t there. He then walked farther wondering if he forgot where he left the horse. He walked farther and the dark was making him very nervous. Then they appeared. What scared him was not his recent actions, but the normal fear that he got just seeing one of them, not to mention both bloodthirsty radicals.
Tunde talked with a grin on his handsome face.
“Envoy, I have to admit, if that is a disguise then I ought to look like the King.”
“I was just surveying the area to see if there was anything abnormal going on. I used the disguise so nobody will recognize me.”
“The guards recognized you a thousand paces before you reached the trench,” Ikenna said. “They pretended not to recognize you.”
“Someone even followed you until you met your escort at Alloida,” Tunde added as he was breaking a nut. “By the way, Ihua will be here any minute now.”
The envoy knelt down crying and begging.
“Forgive me. I went see a friend of mine at the…I mean in Alloida, he is extremely sick.”
“Do we look stupid to you?” Tunde asked.
“No, I didn’t say that.”
“Look at you oozing fear in your every word. And you expect us to let you go with those lies.”
“They are preparing to attack as we speak.”
“You are still lying, but anyway my comrade here and I are both men with certain issues to settle, so you have the count of ten to run before we fire,” Ikenna said.
“What do you mean fire?” the envoy asked.
“One…two…three…”
The envoy started running with all his might, deep into the bushes so he could have deflectors.
“Four…five…six…seven…”
The spy ran faster than he ever imagined he could.
“Eight…nine…ten…”
The men fired; both of their arrows hit the envoy at the same spot on his back and the man died. Both men walked toward their prey and admired their work.
“If you look properly you can see my arrow penetrating deeper, but don’t get me wrong, you fired a good shot.”
“Tunde, I think you are mistaken; that arrow you think is yours is mine.”
“I was not referring to that cheap arrow.”
“The only thing cheap here is you.”
“Why don’t we just settle this problem once and for all?” Tunde said, drawing his sword.
Ikenna was just as quick with his sword.
“All right, let’s do this, you son of a thief.”
Tunde and Ikenna faced each other with their swords, going round in a circle.
“See who is calling me a thief. You and the generations before you were all born criminals.”
“What is happening here?” Ihua asked.
Both men stood at ease, swords by their sides.
“We were checking who is faster at drawing the sword,” Tunde replied.
Ihua was disgusted by the lie and he was now positive that one of them was going to kill the other if they were left alone.
“So what information did you get from the envoy before you killed him?” Ihua asked, surveying the body.
The two Omees looked at each other as though they were communicating with their eyes. “He told us everything as you said it,” Ikenna replied.
“So how did I say it?”
“He said they are attacking immediately,” Tunde said.
“Perfect, get the troops ready.”
Ihua walked in another direction in the bushes. When Ihua had gone, Tunde whispered to Ikenna with Omees all over the bushes, “Do you realize the problem we are in if Alloida does not attack us now?”
Ikenna whispered back, “We will claim they gave the envoy false information. By the way, this is all your fault. You were the one boasting you were better than me with the arrow.”
“It was not as though I did it alone. You joined me.”
“What are two of you doing over there? Come here!” the chief screamed.
*
Vacoura and his men approached the trench and were all amazed at how large it was. They saw there was no way into Ahoda except to pass through the trench, which was deeper than they expected. They had to leave their horses behind and go down on foot. Descending into the trench, they did not encounter anything other than the silence of the night. When climbing out of the trench into Ahoda, it all began. Attacks deluged them from every corner. The Omees from Ahoda attacked Vacoura’s men, who had climbed up the trench; the others shot arrows of death at the Omees below. The Omees from Alloida were dying in plentitude. It was a massacre.
Vacoura expected his general to tell the Omees to fall back, but the man was probably trying to be stupidly brave, so he called for his men to withdraw. The Omees ran back, climbing through the trench. Even at that, death met most of them at their backs as they tried to flee. The Ahoda Omees did not follow, knowing it would put them in a disadvantageous position.
Vacoura lead his men back into Alloida with his head down. Walking alongside him was his dwarfish Tikpapa, whose sorrow was deep in his facial expression. Vacoura looked behind him to see less than a quarter of his Omees returning. He talked with his Tikpapa as they walked to their province.
“Ihua’s envoy betrayed us.”
The Tikpapa did not reply.
“Ihua knows we are handicapped now. He might attack us soon, so we should allocate men at the edge of the trench and use it to our advantage until we are strong again.”
The Tikpapa said nothing. The chief was still talking in order to encourage himself.
“The only problem we might have will be the issue of the salt. You don’t have to be so gloomy, we haven’t completely lost the battle.”
The Tikpapa was still silent.
The chief stopped and all the men behind followed his footsteps.
“Where is the general?”
The Tikpapa finally spoke.
“He is dead.”
Without looking back the chief asked, “Where is Bugadashi?”
The Tikpapa tried to say something, but the words were stuck. All he could do was use his hands to tell the Omees carrying the chief’s son to bring him forward.
The chief watched them drop his dead son on the ground. Vacoura froze. The wickedness of disbelief hit him and he began shaking, then clenched his hands together, looked into the sky, and yelled out in sorrow.
“He looks good in an Omee’s outfit. Ha
ndsome man, like his father,” Vacoura said, using his shirt to clean the blood on his son’s face. “I always knew he had the blood of a warrior…Real men die in battle.”
Pointing at his son for all the men to see he said, “Look at his hands. He still holds onto the sword. I remember when I told him to trade, he said, ‘No Father, I am born to die in battle.’ I can’t believe I wanted to limit your destiny, my son. I wanted to tell you so many things, but now I have to get to where you are to tell you.”
He squatted down, holding his son’s hand. “Tikpapa, you won’t believe this…but I have never known your name, I only know you as Tikpapa.”
“It is Osas, my Liege.”
“Osas, how insane do you think it will be, to go back now?”
“Insanity is in the mind. The people of Ahoda will believe only an insane group of people would come back after such massacre, so they celebrate their victory because they are at war with a sane group of people.”
“Great Omees of Alloida we fought an honorable battle and lost. I really do not care what anybody believes, but I have been proud to have you men by my side. Our people say, ‘The man who sees fire and touches it knows the pain he wants to feel.’ My people, I am entering that fire with my eyes open and I am not inviting any man to come with me, but if you hunger for that pain you may follow.”
The chief headed back to Ahoda. The first to follow him was the Tikpapa and then the other Omees all followed, with a few remaining behind.
The people of Ahoda were dancing and merry. Palm wine flowed through the gullets of the Omees in the province, the men gyrated to the beat of the drummer, coquettes swung their hips, and women threw praises at the chief. In the heat of the celebration, men started dropping silently and rapidly.
This continued until a drunkard screamed, “Sabotage!”
The Alloida Omees attacked fully in open. Commoners ran back into their homes with their children and the Omees of Ahoda found it hard to organize their troops in the mayhem. The infiltrators were equalizing the deaths of their comrades in the trench. Tunde and Ikenna appeared from different directions and fought like hungry beasts. There was a wickedness that both commanding Omees displayed in battle. Vacoura knew that their chance of victory was very slim, but his priority was having vengeance for his son. The Ahoda Omees were too much and it was impossible to detect who in particular killed his son, but the perfect man to take the blame was the chief.
Ihua was weighed down by the age of time and could not engage in the battle, while Vacoura fought with a passion. Any man who gave him a tough time, the Tikpapa was there to deal with the obstruction. The more he fought, the closer he got to Ihua’s Haku.
Ihua stood in front of his Haku watching the mayhem, watching the splotches of his men’s blood stick to Vacoura’s skin as he got closer.
As Vacoura was getting to where Ihua was standing, an Omee from Ahoda attacked him with a double-edged spear. The chief did a maneuver around the Omee and stabbed him with his sword, but before he died the Omee spat something into Vacoura’s eyes. The chief could not see. He rubbed his eyes and moved in the direction he last saw Ihua with the intention of killing the man, with or without his sight. The Omees guarding Ihua wanted to make a quick kill on the blind chief, but the Tikpapa threw something on the floor and a fire surrounded his chief as he moved. The Tikpapa fought the battle in front of Vacoura as the chief advanced.
Ihua saw death coming toward him, so the old chief fell back.
The Tikpapa was Vacoura’s eyes as he advanced fiercely, swinging his sword at anything.
The older chief began running back to find himself trapped in the enclosed passageway. From what Ihua saw of the battle they had almost won, but what he did not understand was why he had to run. He grabbed his sword, but it burnt him so he dropped it. He watched Vacoura’s Tikpapa kill everyone who attempted to protect him, using diabolic methods.
Vacoura was following the feeling from the fire that burnt in front of him and did not know what was happening, but he knew his Tikpapa was ahead of him. When Ihua was trapped, the Tikpapa said to his chief, “His life is yours for the feud on your son.”
Vacoura could not see Ihua, but he felt his presence. Ihua at this time was angry they had to kill his own Tikpapa. He wished they had killed his wife and children instead. What got him angrier was that his two Omees were not anywhere near.
Two arrows passed through the heart of the Tikpapa at the same time from two different directions. The Tikpapa didn’t understand how the arrows pierced him. He touched the blood on the metals and realized it was his. He chose to die silently so his chief would complete his task and not be disturbed.
Vacoura could not see now, but he knew something was wrong and he quickly pounced on Ihua, bringing him to the ground, pulling out his knife to feed it with his enemy’s blood. The older chief was not strong enough to hold the blind chief. Vacoura struck at Ihua, but Ihua shifted away and Vacoura raised his hands to try again before two arrows were fired at his back from a distance by the same commanding Omees who killed the Tikpapa—Tunde and Ikenna.
Vacoura was adamant despite the two arrows deeply buried in his back. He struck at Ihua again, but the older chief used his hands to grab the knife of the dying man. The blind chief kept pushing the knife into Ihua’s heart. With time, the call of death was stronger than Vacoura’s vendetta; he died on top of Ihua. The Omees came in time to push Vacoura away from their chief.
“My Liege, I have to admit, you truly are in good shape,” Ikenna said, helping the chief up.
“The way you ran was youth at its height,” Tunde added.
On a normal day, he would have punished them for the mockery, but with the color of victory in his hands, he had no choice but to laugh.
Chapter 26
Pokzee went to the spot where his informant told him to wait with his complete army. There was something about the location that made him feel he should change his attitude toward this particular situation. Since the death of his wife and the reaction of these people that were now under him, he realized that his most trusted companion was himself. He had a Tikpapa and envoy just for the sake of protocol. The people he listened to were the elders, and they hardly ever made him do anything he did not want to. He looked at his army and shame gripped him at the thought of the kind of cheap victory they were all prepared for. He did not tell anyone what the informant had said. He just told them how they were entering into battle. If he had his way, the elders would never know about the situation, but as of now it was allowed.
Disgust erupted through him when he watched his Omees so relaxed about the battle they were about face. He looked above him to see the darkness laughing at him. Real men went into battle when the eye of the sun was wide open, when honor was not contaminated. His situation was getting unbearable as he squatted, awaiting his adversaries under the shade of deciduous trees.
The only reason he agreed to engage in such a degrading form of war was that it was in response to Oludu’s sly concept of war. Pokzee knew there was something about the decision he made. He tried to find a reason why his information would deceive him, but nothing came to his head. This was his chance to prove to everyone that he was a master planner and not just a warrior who depended on brute force. He looked at the area they were going to stay in for about two to three days, depending on when Oludu and his men decided to pass through, and he knew this was going to be easier than opening a virgin. From the way things were, he would have preferred meeting him face to face, but there was also a problem with who he was going make chief of Ndemili. If only his son was of age, he wouldn’t have to put in a stupid Omee who could change with the weather.
Pokzee’s general divided the Ogwashi Omees in batches and allocated them to different points. The Omees all took food given to them by their wives and mothers, acknowledging the length of stay they had in the forests. The night crawled and the day feared to appear. Then one of the Omees fell into a very deep hole. From both the ground and the skies,
all kinds of weapons flew, all kinds of traps consumed them—holes covered with rafia palms, firm branches held back with darts, trees held up by ropes.
The Ndemili Omees came from everywhere. Some were camouflaged like the bark of trees, some attacked from the top of trees. These Omees vigorously applied pressure on the Ogwashi Omees. Their men were confused when they kept seeing their comrades die but could not locate their adversaries. Pokzee was going crazy, he wanted to badly grab his enemies and crush them with his bare hands. The chief could not maintain stability amongst his men and they were dying with the more time they wasted. Their enemies were attacking them like ghosts.
When his Omees finally gained access to these men attacking them from strategic areas, the full Ndemili battalion attacked. Although at this time they were roughly the same in number, the Omees from Ogwashi were highly disorganized and the Omees from Ndemili exhibited an obvious contrast.
The attack on the Ogwashi battalions was merciless; men died like animals killed for a feast. Pokzee fought like a beast; the stroke of his sword was too much weight for any of his enemies to handle. He slaughtered his adversaries as they came his way. Now the light of day wanted to register its presence. The chief kept fighting without noticing anything in his environment; all he wanted was to kill every one of his enemies. At a point all his adversaries refused to confront him, he faced them with his sword and they all moved back without cowardice in their eyes and stood watching him.
“Face me, you bunch of liverless toads. Are you realizing what it takes to fight a real man? Come and design your blood on my sword.”
Pokzee could not take it anymore and took his sword and hit an Omee’s chest, screaming, “Fight me you coward!”
The Omee looked at the chief and said in a very calm voice, “I suggest you look around you.”
Pokzee saw most of his men on the ground dead and the others on their knees pleading for mercy. He watched Chief Oludu come toward him with his assumed informant.
The informant noticed the man he betrayed ready to go into death and take him with him and he screamed to the Omees, ‘Hold him down!”
When Gods Bleed Page 20