Black Leopard, Red Wolf Read online

  “Not fresh kill,” I said.

  “But it will do. Now finally. Why I came to see you.”

  “Something about a fly?”

  “That was me being clever.”

  “Why did you ask if I was happy?”

  “This road I am asking you to come on. Oh, Tracker, the things it will take from you. Best if you have nothing in the first place.”

  “You just said it was better if I have something to lose.”

  “I said I’ve been disappointed by men who have nothing. Some. But the Tracker I know has nothing and cultivates nothing. Has that changed?”

  “And if it had?”

  “I would ask different questions.”

  “How do you know I . . .”

  Leopard swung around, trying to see what took my words.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Thought I noticed . . . thought it went and came back. . . . It . . .”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. A thought loose. Nothing. Come now, cat, I’m losing patience.”

  The Leopard got off the chair and stretched his legs. He sat back down and faced me.

  “He calls him little fly. I find it strange that he does so, especially in that voice of his that sounds like an old woman more than a man, but I think the fly is dear to him.”

  “Once more. This time with sense.”

  “I can only tell you what the man told me. He was very clear—Leave instructions to me, he said. Fuck the gods, you men who are not direct. Fucks for you too—I saw that look. Friend, this is what I know. There is a child that went missing. The magistrates said he most likely got swept off in a river, or mayhaps the crocodiles got him, or river folk, since you will eat anything if hungry.”

  “Thousand fucks for your mother.”

  “A thousand and one if we’re speaking of my mother,” he said, and laughed. “This is what I know. The magistrates think this child either drowned or was killed and eaten by a beast. But this man, Amadu Kasawura is the name he goes by, he is a man of wealth and taste. He is convinced that his child, his little fly, is alive, mayhaps, and moving west. There is compelling stuff there, Tracker, in his home, evidence so that you believe his story. Besides, he is a rich man, a very rich man given that none of us come cheap.”

  “Us?”

  “He has commissioned nine, Tracker. Five men, three women, and hopefully you.”

  “So his purse must be the fattest thing about him. And the child—his own?”

  “He says neither yes nor no. He is a slaver, selling black and red slaves to the ships that come from people who follow the eastern light.”

  “Slavers have nothing but enemies. Maybe somebody killed the child.”

  “Mayhaps, but he is set in his desire, Tracker. He knows that we might find bones. But then he would at least know, and knowing for certain is better than years of torment. But I skip too much and make the mission—”

  “Mission, is it? We’re to be priests now?”

  “I’m a cat, Tracker. How many fucking words do you think I know?”

  This time I laughed.

  “I told you what I know. A slaver is paying nine to either find this child alive, or proof of his death, and he does not care what we do to find him. He may be two villages away, he may be in the South Kingdom, he might be bones buried in the Mweru. You have a nose, Tracker. You could find him in days.”

  “If the hunt is so swift, why does he need nine?”

  “Clever Tracker, is it not clear to you? The child didn’t leave. He was taken.”

  “By who?”

  “Better if it comes from him. If I explain you might not come.”

  I stared at him.

  “I know that look,” he said.

  “What look?”

  “That look. You are more than interested. You’re glutting on the very idea of it.”

  “You read too much in my face.”

  “It’s not just your face. At the very least come because something will intrigue you and it won’t be the coin. Now speaking of desires . . .”

  I looked at the man, who not long before the sun left convinced an innkeeper to give him raw meat soaking in its own blood for dinner. Then I smelled something, the same as before, on Leopard yet not on him. When we stepped outside the inn, the smell was stronger, but then it went weak. Strong again, stronger, then weaker. The smell got weaker every time the Leopard turned around.

  “Who is he, the boy following us?” I asked.

  I spoke loud enough for the boy to hear. He shifted from dark to dark, from the black shadow cast by post to the red light cast by a torch. He slipped into the doorway of a shut house, less than twenty paces from us.

  “What I would like to know, Leopard, is would you let me throw a hatchet and split his head in two before you tell me he is yours?”

  “He is not mine, and by the gods I’m not his.”

  “And yet I smelled him the whole time we were at the inn.”

  “A nuisance he is,” the Leopard said, watching the boy slip out of the doorway, too timid to look. Not tall, but skinny enough to come across so. Skin as dark as shadow, a red robe tied at his neck that reached his thigh, red bands above his elbow, gold bracelets at his wrists, a striped skirt around his waist. He was carrying the Leopard’s bow and arrows.

  “Saved him from pirates on either the third or fourth voyage. Now he refuses to leave me alone. I swear it’s the wind that keeps blowing him my way.”

  “Truly, Leopard, when I said I keep smelling him, I meant smelling him on you.”

  The Leopard laughed, but a tiny laugh, like a child caught right as he is about to do mischief.

  “He has my bow when I lose arms and always finds me no matter where I go. Who knows but the gods? He might tell great stories of me when I am gone. I pissed on him to mark him as mine.”

  “What?”

  “A joke, Tracker.”

  “A joke doesn’t mean false.”

  “I’m not an animal.”

  “Since when?”

  I stopped myself from asking if this is not the fifth boy or sixth you are leading astray, him waiting without hope for something you will never give him, because that is what you give, is it not, your eyes upon his eyes, your ears for whatever he says, your lips for his lips, all things you can give and take away, and nothing that he wants. Or is he your tenth? Instead I said, “Where is this slaver?”

  The slaver was from the North, trading illegally with Nigiki, but he and his caravans, full with fresh slaves, had set up camp in the Uwomowomowomowo valley, not even a quarter day’s ride from Malakal and quicker by just going down the hill. I asked Leopard if the man had no fear of bandits.

  “A pack of thieves tried to rob him near the Darklands once. They put a knife to his throat, laughed that he had only three guards that they easily killed and how is it that he had no weapon himself, with such cargo? The thieves fled on horseback, but the slaver sent a message by talking drum that reached where the thieves were going before they approached the gate. By the time the slaver reached the gate the three robbers were nailed to it, their belly skin flayed open, their guts hanging out for all to see. Now he only travels with four men to feed the slaves on the journey to the coast.”

  “I have great love for him already,” I said.

  When we reached my lodgings, I tiptoed past the innkeeper, who told me two days ago that I was one moon behind in rent, and while scooping her huge breasts in her hands, said there were other ways to pay. In my room I grabbed a goatskin cape, two waterskins, some nuts in a pouch, and two knives. I left through the window.

  The Leopard and I went by foot. From my inn we would leave through the third city wall, going under the lookout to the fourth and outer wall, which went around the whole mountain and was as thick as a man lying flat. Then from the South fort gate, out to
the rocky hills and right down into the valley. The Leopard would never travel on the back of another animal, and I have never owned a horse, though I have stolen a few. At the gates, I noticed the boy walking behind us, still jumping from tree shadow to tree shadow and the ruined stumps of the old towers that stood long before Malakal was Malakal. I slept here once. The spirits were welcoming, or maybe they did not care. The ruins were from people who discovered the secret of metals and could cut black stone. Walls with no mortar, just brick on top of brick, sometimes curving into a dome. A man from the sand sea who counted ages would have said old Malakal was from six ages ago, maybe more. Surely at a time when men needed a wall as much to keep in as to keep out. Defense, wealth, power. In that one night I could read the old city; rotten wood doorways, steps, alleys, passages, ducts for water foul and fresh, all within walls seventy paces high and twenty paces thick. And then one day, all the people of old Malakal vanished. Died, fled, no griot remembers or knows. Now blocks crumbed to rubble that twisted direction here and there, and around, and back and down what used to be an alley, halted at a dead end with no choice but to go back, but back to where? A maze. The boy held back so far behind us he was at this point lost.

  “Truth, you can rip a man’s head off in one bite and yet he’s more afraid of me. What is his name?”

  The Leopard, as always, walked off ahead. “I never bothered to ask,” he said, and laughed.

  “Fuck the gods, if you are not the worst of the cats,” I said.

  I held back a few paces, until I too lost myself in shadow. I saw the boy trying to go from stump to stump, ruin to ruin, crumbling wall to crumbling wall. Truth, I could have watched him for as long as it was dark. He fell deep in the ruins that were not that deep, and tried to walk himself out of them. As he began to run, his smell changed a little—it always does when fear or ecstasy takes over. He tripped over my foot and landed in the dirt. Perhaps my foot was waiting for him.

  “What is your name?” I asked.

  “No business it be for you to know,” he said, and stood up. He puffed his chest up and looked past me. He looked older than before, one of those who might be ten and five years, but were still ten in the mind. I looked at him, wondered what would be left when the Leopard no longer had use for him.

  “I could leave you in these ruins and you will be lost until daylight. And where will your precious Leopard be then, tell me?”

  “Is just brick and shit nobody want.”

  “Careful. The ancestors will hear you, and then you will never leave.”

  “All him friends fool as you?”

  The first one I saw, I picked up and threw at him. He caught it in the quick. Good. But he dropped it as soon as he saw it was a skull.

  “He don’t need you.”

  I turned away, back to where I knew the gate would be.

  “Where you going?”

  “Back to drink some good soup from a bad woman. Tell your, whatever you call him, that you said he didn’t need me, so I left. That is if you can find your way out of the ruins.”

  “Wait!”

  I turned around.

  “How I get out of this place?”

  I walked past him, not waiting on him to follow. I stepped in cold ash, the fire long gone out. Sticking out of the dirt were pieces of white cloth, candlewax, rotten fruit, and green beads that might have been a necklace. Someone tried to reach an ancestor or the gods more than a moon ago. We made it out of the ruins and the last of the trees to the edge of the valley. Another night with no moon.

  “What do they call you?” I asked.

  “Fumeli,” he said to the ground.

  “Guard your heart, Fumeli.”

  “What that mean?”

  I sat down on the rock. Foolishness it would be to try to go down to the valley in this dark, though I could smell the Leopard was halfway down already.

  “We sleep till first light.”

  “But he—”

  “Will be right down there fast asleep until we wake him tomorrow.”

  Two thoughts while I slept that night.

  The Leopard says too many things that slip off him like water does oil, but sticks to me like a stain. Truth, there are times I feel like I should wash him out. I am always happy to see him, but never sad when he is gone. He asked me if I was happy and I still didn’t understand either the question or what knowledge he would get from an answer. Nobody smiles more than the Leopard but he speaks the same in happiness and sadness. I think both are faces he puts on before matters that strike deep, first in the heart. Happiness? Who needs happy when there is masuku beer? And spicy meat, good coin, and warm bodies to lie with? Besides, to be a man in my family is to let go of happiness, which depends on too many things one cannot control.

  Something to fight for, or nothing to lose, which makes you a finer warrior? I have no answer.

  I thought of the children more than I believed I would. Soon it was something I felt like a slight pound in the head, or a quickening of the heart, that even when I told myself it was gone, there was no worry, and I have done good by those children, or at least the best I could do, the feeling came that I had not. A dark evening becomes darker. I wondered if it was yet another one of the things the Sangoma left as a stain on me, or maybe it was a mild madness.

  I woke up to the boy bent over me.

  “Your other eye shine in the dark, like a dog,” he said. I would slap him but a new cut above his right eye glimmered with blood.

  “How slippery the rocks are in the morning. Especially if you don’t know the way.”

  The boy hissed. He picked up the Leopard’s bow and quiver. I wondered if any person ever made me shiver like the Leopard did this boy.

  “And I do not snore,” I said, but he was already running down into the valley, until he stopped.

  He walked, he sat on a rock and pondered, he waited until I was just paces behind him, and set off again. But not very far, for he didn’t know where to go.

  “Rub his belly,” I said. “It pleases him. Great pleasure.”

  “How do you know that? You must rub all sorts of men.”

  “He is a cat. A cat loves that you rub his belly. Just like a dog. Is there nothing up in that head of yours?”

  The ground turned red and damp, and green shrubs popped up like bumps. The farther down we walked, the larger the valley looked. It went straight to the end of the sky and beyond that. The wise ones said that the valley was once just a little river, a goddess that had forgotten she was a god. That little river snaked through the valley, washed away ground, dirt after dirt, stone after stone, deeper and deeper until by the time of this age of man, she had left valleys that dug so deep that man started to see the opposite, that it was not land lying so low, but mountain reaching so high. Looking up as we went down, and looking across the sky and the mist, we saw mountains pressed beside mountains, each one bigger than cities. So high that they took the colour of sky, not bush. It was enough to keep your eye to the sky and not the ground. The dirt as it reddened, the shrubs as they gave way to trees, the river clear like glass, and in it, fat nymphs, with broad heads and wide mouths, not hiding in the day, and knowing that they were not the prey this caravan hunts for.

  The boy, whose name I already forgot, dashed after the Leopard as soon as we came down the mountain. Truth, I knew he was not his Leopard, and I knew the boy would make this cat very angry. He grabbed the Leopard’s tail, and he swung around and roared, crouched, and leapt at the boy. Another roar came from near the first caravan and the Leopard, pinning the boy, trotted away. The boy jumped up, brushed himself off before anyone noticed, and ran after his Leopard, sitting as a man on the grass, looking out to the river. He turned to me and smiled, but said nothing to the boy.

  “Your bow and quiver. I bring it,” the boy said.

  The Leopard nodded, looked at me, and said, “Shall we
meet the slaver?”

  The slaver had a tent at the front of his caravan. And the caravan, as long as a street in Malakal. Four wagons that I have seen only along the border of kingdoms north of the sand sea, among people who wander and never sow root. Horses pulled the first two, oxen pulled the last two. Purple and pink and green and blue, as if the most childish of goddesses painted them all. Behind the wagons, carts open and slatted together from wood. On the carts, women, thick to thin, some red from ochre, some shiny from shea butter and fat. Some wore only trinkets, some wore necklaces and goatskins in yellow and red, some in full robes, but most were naked. All captured and sold, or kidnapped from the river lands. None with the scars of the Ku or the Gangatom. Or the shaved teeth. Men from the East did not find those things beautiful. Behind these carts, men and boys, tall and thin like messengers, with no fat under the chin, just skin and muscle, long in arms, long in legs, many beautiful, and darker than the noon of the dead. Fit like warriors, for most were warriors who had lost in small wars, and would now do what soldiers who lose wars do. All wore irons locked around the neck and the feet, each man chained to the man in front of and behind him. There were fewer men with weapons than I thought I’d see. Seven, maybe eight men with swords and knives, only two carrying a bow, and four women with cutlasses and axes.

  “In time. He’s holding court and judging the wicked,” the Leopard said with a smile that made me think it was a joke.

  But past the caravans and in front of a large white tent with a dome top and flowing cloths sat the slaver. To his right a man knelt on the ground, holding a slender smoking pipe, with a folded rug in his lap. To his right, another man, shirtless like the kneeling man, with a gold bowl in his hand and a rag, as if he was about to wash the slaver’s face. Right behind him stood another, black in the shadow of the parasol he was holding to keep his master in shade. Another had a bowl of dates, ready to feed him. He did not look at us. But I looked at him sitting there, like the prince he probably was. Kalindar was famous for them, but princes with no kingdoms infested Malakal as well, it was said, because the Kwash Dara was stingy with his favors. His men had draped a long robe over his left shoulder with the right shoulder bare, as is the custom with princes. A white robe, the inner one to hide his royal orb and stick, peeked out underneath. Gold bracelets wrapped around his arms like two snakes in a killing curl. Leather sandals on dirty feet, a woven cap with silk tongues covering his ears over a broad face, and cheeks so fat they hid his eyes when he laughed. He did not look at us.