Nyumbani Tales

by Charles R. Saunders

  Then she heard a sudden squeal of pain. And the thundering footfalls turned away from her. Zuriye stopped running, turned – and gasped in consternation when she saw Mgaru tormenting the behemoth.

  Mgaru was using his spear as a prod, jabbing it into the piobo’s flanks and dancing out of danger as the beast sought to trample him. His thrusts were far from lethal ... but they did serve to distract the piobo. Ducking under a sweep of the piobo’s trunk, Mgaru shouted: “Run for the trees, Zuriye! I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up!”

  Zuriye knew he was right, and she shivered at the thought of the sacrifice the young Bagara was making. Mgaru could not elude the piobo forever. Before long, he would tire ... and when he did, the maddened behemoth would crush him into smear of blood.

  Quickly, Zuriye scanned the littered ground. She spotted a pointed pole that could serve as a spear. She picked it up, then advanced slowly on the ill-matched battlers.

  Mgaru saw her coming, and grimaced. Then he leaped onto the piobo’s flank, holding on by a handful of lank brown hair. Tightly gripping his spear in one hand, he scaled the beast’s side as though it were a living mountain. The piobo swung its trunk, but Mgaru was already out of reach of the blow as he climbed onto the monster’s back. Stomping about in wide circles, the piobo bellowed in frustration as it attempted to shake Mgaru loose.

  Zuriye could only stand back, out of the piobo’s reach. The behemoth was moving so quickly that she would be risking Mgaru’s life as well as her own if she attempted to wound the beast with her makeshift weapon. Wide-eyed with admiration and dread, Zuriye watched as Mgaru crawled along the piobo’s back. Again, the thick trunk lashed at him. He shifted his body to avoid the blind groping.

  Finally, Mgaru reached his objective: the massive head of the piobo. Grasping the beast’s flapping ear, he leaned at a perilous angle, drew back his spear-arm, and plunged half the length of the weapon through the piobo’s eye.

  The piobo squalled in mindless agony as Mgaru pushed his spear even deeper into the blood-gushing socket. The beast’s cries went unheeded by its fellows, for the rest of the herd had long since forded the Zaikumbe and crashed into the forest on the other side, pursuing a manic journey to a destination not known even by them.

  Brain pierced by Mgaru’s weapon, the piobo uttered a final shriek before it stiffened and began to fall. Mgaru moved to spring clear of the body as it toppled. But as he leaped free, his foot caught on the end of the spear-shaft protruding from the piobo’s eye.

  Arms flailing in desperation, Mgaru hit the ground. The immense body of the piobo followed. The fear Mgaru had so successfully held at bay was etched sharply on his face as he tried to escape the shadow of the falling piobo. Before he could get away, the full weight of the piobo struck, obliterating him from view. He didn’t have the time even to utter a single death-cry.

  Zuriye’s own cry of anguish ripped the air as she rushed toward the looming, inert bulk of the piobo. Of Mgaru, she saw nothing save for a rill of blood seeping from beneath the gigantic carcass. As Zuriye sank to her knees and wept bitterly, the rill swiftly became a stream.

  SLOWLY, THE SURVIVING Bagara trickled back to the ruins of their town. They picked their way through wrecked dwellings; searching for spouses, children, friends. The central area was littered with the corpses of Bagara who had been too slow to avoid the feet of the piobo. The docks and the mtumbwis were now nothing but shattered sticks of wood. The bodies of the kibokos and their riders had long since floated down the river.

  As the numbness of shock subsided, the survivors began to recognize the faces of the dead. A dolorous chorus of mourning began to drift upward toward the sun. Loudest of all was the lamentation for Mweyzo, who had died in a vain attempt to rescue a relative.

  Other dazed Bagara wandered toward the shambas. The crops were destroyed, mashed flat against the earth. There would not be time for another planting before the dry season began.

  Slowly, a crowd began to gather around the carcass of the piobo. They saw the blood staining the ground. Those who had most quickly recovered their wits realized who it was that had slain the behemoth. Some had even witnessed Mgaru’s deed. Staring at the kneeling, silver-turbaned figure of Zuriye, they also began to guess why it was that Mgaru had died ...

  Then a loud, demented shriek jolted the Bagara from their dark musings. They shuddered, for atop all the other catastrophes of this day, Ajoola the Witch Smeller was among them again.

  Ajoola seemed to have undergone a transformation. No longer did he grimace and bound and caper. But his face was still repellently grotesque as the skin around his cut-away nose quivered like that of a sniffing dog. In his hand, he held the staff of the diop. As he spoke, his voice boomed through the silence that had greeted his arrival.

  “Who warned you that your doom was upon you?” he demanded.

  “Ajoola,” a few voices responded half-heartedly.

  “Who told you what you must do to prevent the doom from falling?”

  “Ajoola.” More voices spoke this time.

  “Who should you have listened to, when others led you down the pathway to death?”

  “Ajoola!” Many more voices spoke this time, as the Bagara who had taken the Witch Smeller’s side in the dispute over Zuriye joined the chorus.

  “Who, then, should be the diop of Bagara now that Mweyzo and Mgaru are dead?”

  A strained moment of silence followed those words. Even now, with their town and fields demolished and more than half their people dead, no one cared to be first to shout the name of Ajoola. Even his staunchest supporters considered him mad, and therefore dangerous despite his holy status.

  Then a hoarse, almost inhuman voice roared a response.

  “Ajoola! Let Ajoola be diop! Ajoola!”

  Later, no Bagara would admit to having been the one who had uttered those fateful words. Now, though, they one-by-one joined the chant until it became a deafening crescendo. Some were Ajoola’s supporters. Others, in their current state of disorientation, were responding to an unconscious need for a strong voice to follow, or something to divert their thoughts from the full magnitude of the disaster that had befallen them. It was as though there was power in the very syllables of the Witch Smeller’s name ...

  “Ajoola! Ajoola! Ajoola!”

  Then a new, strident voice knifed through the din.

  “Stop this madness! Are you all fools, to be swayed by the ravings of a madman?”

  Almost as one, the Bagara turned their attention to the new speaker: Mkimba the rootman, who had survived the stampede despite his aged limbs.

  “Is this who you truly want to be diop?” Mkimba said scornfully. “Look at him ... a dweller among beasts who claims to speak with the voice of Ngai. How do we know he did not have something to do with the stampede of the piobo?”

  With his peculiar cunning, Ajoola knew Mkimba was the only one who could sway the Bagara from his own influence ... and open their eyes to the truth. He knew what he had to do.

  “People of Bagara!” he cried. “You have said with words that I, Ajoola, am diop. Now, show it with a deed. Kill the unbeliever!”

  Before a single voice could rise, Mkimba went down as daggers from a dozen hands pierced his body. Ajoola’s followers stood grimly over the fallen rootman. As his blood flowed out of him, Mkimba gazed in disbelief at the faces of his murderers. He had cured their sicknesses and healed their wounds. Now, they stared impassively down at him, their blades dripping blood. Eyes misting in sorrow, the rootman died.

  Ajoola was not yet done. He turned to Zuriye, who had remained at the side of the piobo during the coming of Ajoola and the slaying of Mkimba. She had retreated into an insensate void of shock, and did not resist when strong hands seized her and pulled her to her feet.

  Another hand grasped her chin and jerked her head upright. The glaze of tears in her eyes cleared, and she found herself looking directly into the face of Ajoola. His words beat like hammers on the anvil of her numbed mind. As
her awareness sharpened, fear quivered in her limbs and constricted her throat.

  “Let the flames of Ngai devour the mganga,” Ajoola intoned, his jaws champing in unholy glee. “It was the mganga who brought the piobo among us. We must burn her, so that Ngai will no longer be angry at us for having allowed her to live. Burn her, as well as this carcass of the piobo. Burn them both, and let Ngai smell their flesh, and be once again pleased with the Bagara!”

  Shouting approval of Ajoola’s edict, the same men who had stabbed Mkimba set about pounding a huge stake into the body of the piobo. Others – men, women and children alike – gathered handfuls of timber and thatch from their ruined homes and piled the flammable debris onto the carcass until it was covered completely.

  They could do nothing to restore the hundreds of their dead to life, or rebuild their ruined town, or replant their ravaged fields. But they could burn the witch their new diop blamed for the death and destruction ...

  Zuriye struggled frantically as two Baraga men dragged her toward the gigantic pyre. Then a heavy hand crashed against her skull, knocking her nearly unconscious. She hung limply while they climbed the woodpile and tied her to the thick stake. They tore the shuka from her body and the turban from her head, leaving her naked to face the flames. Grass ropes cut cruelly into her flesh.

  Head aching, she recovered her senses and began to struggle again. Then, abruptly, she stopped; realizing that life meant nothing to her now. Never again would she see her people, and the man she loved lay lifeless beneath the carcass of a beast that was now to be her death-pyre.

  “Bring fire!” Ajoola commanded.

  A mad-eyed youth appeared with a fire-making device of flint and iron. The Witch Smeller smiled balefully as the youth struck flame to a large number of improvised torches. Taking the first brand, Ajoola lifted it aloft and compared the color of the flame to the crimson of Zuriye’s hair. Soon, all of Zuriye would be that color ... the thought gave much pleasure to the Witch Smeller.

  Ajoola waved his torch in circles as the other Bagara clamored for the fire-maker to light even more brands. Then the Witch Smeller stood statue-still, his flame held high above his head. His sores, grime and rags rendered him a figure from some demonic nightmare.

  “Death to the mganga!” Ajoola cried triumphantly as he drew back his arm to hurl the first flame onto the pyre.

  The torch never left his hand. With a choking scream, Ajoola pitched forward onto his face. From his back, a slim arrow protruded, buried almost to its feathered nock. Like the madman’s life, the torch guttered and died as if fell just short of the tinder. The fallen staff of the diop lay at Ajoola’s side.

  Other silent messengers of death sped through the stunned ranks of the Bagara. Each arrow plunged unerringly into the body of a flame-bearer. In the space of an instant, no Bagara bearing a torch remained alive.

  A new invasion of the town began then – one that was, in its own way, more terrible than the stampede of the piobo. So involved were the Bagara in the imminent execution of Zuriye that they had no awareness of the small army of warriors that now surrounded them.

  Though they fired no more arrows, the intruders advanced in disciplined ranks: several hundred fighting men, clad in war-gear unknown to the Bagara. Conical iron helmets protected the warriors’ heads. Wide, iron-studded bands of leather crossed their chests. Their legs were swathed in loose white trousers. Along with their bows, they carried spears, curved swords and large oval shields. Their faces were as expressionless as masks carved from jet.

  Some of the Bagara snatched up weapons and attempted to engage the strangers in battle, only to be quickly overcome, for their spears and daggers could not penetrate the thick shields of their adversaries. The resisters were not slain; only disarmed and prodded back to the press of their people.

  From the mass of frightened Bagara survivors and the warriors who surrounded them, two distinctive figures emerged. One was a tiny, squeaking chevrotain with a jewelled collar encircling its neck. The other was a middle-aged man clad like his companions, save for a single crane-plume bobbing from his helmet. Both hurried toward the pile of kindling above which Zuriye was bound.

  When Zuriye first recognized the arrows of the Komeh, her resignation and despair disappeared. She had resolved to meet death without allowing the Bagara the satisfaction of hearing outcries. Now, she cried out in happiness as Siki scurried up the woodpile and licked her feet and ankles.

  The plumed warrior also made his way up the pyre. When he reached its top, he carefully cut through Zuriye’s bonds with his sword.

  “You came, Bambullah,” she whispered as the ropes fell away. “I knew Siki would lead you to me ...”

  “Well, not exactly,” Bambullah said. “Even Siki’s nose is not that keen. But Siki had more faith in my ability to find you than I did. I was afraid you were lost forever, but we were determined to search every inch of this land until we found you. But, Zuriye, why have these people bound you like this? Why were they about to burn you to death?”

  In terse sentences, loud enough for all to hear, Zuriye told her father of the events that had befallen her since the day she had wandered from the Komeh encampment and was bitten by a jaculi. As he listened, Bambullah’s face hardened and his lips curled in fury and contempt.

  “Then they all must die!” the Komeh leader roared when Zuriye was done. He spoke in Riverspeech ... and the Bagara moaned in terror when they heard and understood what he said.

  “No, Bambullah,” Zuriye demurred. “Remember who we are. It would be an unforgivable waste to kill all of them. They will bring us a great price at the market 0f Fezan.”

  “You are right, daughter,” Bambullah agreed after a short silence. “They still deserve killing ... but you are right.”

  He called to one of his warriors, who came bearing a large pot of yellow pigment and a stiff-haired brush. In the meantime, Bambullah helped his daughter down from the pyre, and wrapped her in a makeshift garment. Then he glared at the Bagara.

  “We will not need the sleep-spell for such as these,” Bambullah said. “Usually, we take only the finest to the slave-markets, leaving the rest to awaken in fear. This time, Zuriye, we will take all of those you mark with this pigment. Those left unmarked will be slain – in the same manner in which they intended to slay you.”

  Zuriye nodded. Then she asked some of the Komeh to push aside the kindling that covered the carcass of the piobo.

  “A brave man lies there,” she explained to her father. “Three times, he saved my life. I want to speak to him.”

  Bambullah and the others withdrew from Zuriye. She gazed sadly at the congealed blood spread on the ground.

  “You would have been appalled once you learned who my people are, Mgaru,” she said softly. “But my father would have made you one of us. We do not believe in witches. Those who are called witches are among our slaves.

  “And unlike your people, we do not fear the Silent Ghosts ... for the Silent Ghosts are us ...”

  She rose, and took the pot and brush from the warrior who held them. Then she went to the trembling Bagara. The first forehead Zuriye daubed in yellow was that of Nyimbi. By the time she was done, not a single living Bagara was left unmarked. Soon, they were bound and marched into the forest along the trail the Komeh had blazed on their way to the town. The Bagara people were now the property of the Silent Ghosts – the most rapacious slavers in all of Nyumbani.

  ULTIMATELY, THE JABALI regretted their rude treatment of the Bagara traders. Weeks passed without further contact from the downriver town. Finally, the diop of Jabali sent a mtumbwi downstream to renew the profitable association the two towns had enjoyed for many rains.

  When the paddlers of the mtumbwi reached Bagara, they saw no kibokos coming to tow them to the dock. Indeed, the dock itself was gone. The current in the bend forced them a mile downstream. The Jabali beat their way through the forest at the town’s flank. When they reached the town, they whispered prayers to their gods as they star
ed at a scene of utter desolation.

  The houses were demolished. The lanes of the once bustling town were strewn with bones. Scavengers had come and gone, devouring even the fallen piobo, whose titanic bones lay stark in the sunlight. Fearfully, the Jabali crept through the ruins. They had difficulty believing the extent of the devastation – yet they were unable to discount the evidence before their eyes.

  There was no sane explanation for the broken houses, the flattened shambas, the vanished people – for the number of skeletons the Jabali saw did not account for the town’s entire population. The only culprit the Jabali could conjecture was the Silent Ghosts ...

  At that thought, the Jabali fled back to their mtumbwi and paddled furiously upriver. Before long, the tale of the fate of Bagara spread like fever up and down the Zaikumbe.

  As the moons passed, the rain forest recaptured the shunned site of Bagara. Leopards prowled through spaces once occupied by dwellings. Among the people of the river, it was said that the Bagara had offended the Silent Ghosts, and the Silent Ghosts had therefore obliterated them. Many towns and villages they would be the next victims of the Silent Ghosts’ wrath, and they migrated from the river into the interior of the forest.

  But never again did the Silent Ghosts come to the Zaikumbe – Zuriye’s final gift to Mgaru.

  Publishing History

  KATISA ... Cascade #2, 1983.

  The Blacksmith and the Bambuti ... Escape #1, 1977

  Pomphis and the Poor Man (originally, The Pygmy and the Poor Man) ... Anthos, 1980.

  The Nunda ... The Diversifier #16, 1976.

  Death-Cattle of Djenne ... Black Lite #2, 1976; Maplecade #1, 1984.

  The Return of Sundiata ... Cascade #1, 1982.

  Two Rogues ... Weirdbook #11, 1977.

  Okosene Alakun and the Magic Guinea Fowl ... Weirdbook #13, 1978

  Amma ... Beyond the Fields We Know, 1978; The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series VII, DAW Books, 1979; Mothership, Rosarium Publishing, 2013.