“We will never catch him,” Nyka said.
“But we know where he is going,” said the Aesi.
I kept running, jumping over shrubs and chopping through bush, following him in the sky, and when I couldn’t see him, I followed the smell. This was when I wondered why this all-powerful Aesi did not supply us horses. He wasn’t even running. I could turn my fury at him but that would be a waste. I kept running. The river came upon me. Sasabonsam flew over it to the other side. It was fifty paces, sixty paces wide, I could not guess, and the moonlight danced wild on it, meaning rough and perhaps deep. This part of the river was unknown to me. Sasabonsam was flying away. He had not even seen me, not even heard me.
“Sasabonsam!”
He did not even turn. I gripped both axes as if it was them that I hated. He made me think dark thoughts, that he held no joy for what he did, or even pride, but nothing. Nothing at all. That my enemy did not even know that I sought him, and even in the presence of my smell and my face I was no different from any other fool throwing an ax. Nothing, nothing at all. I shouted at him. I sheathed my axes and ran right into the river. My toe hit a sharp rock but I did not care. I tripped on stones but did not care. Then the ground fell from under my feet and I sank, inhaled water, and coughed. I pushed my head out of the water but my feet could not find ground. And then something like a spirit pulled me, but it was the water, cold and pulling me hard to the middle of the river, and then drawing me under, mocking my strength to swim, spinning me head over foot, yanking me beyond where the moon could shine, and the more I fought the more it pulled, and I did not think to stop fighting, and I did not think, I’m tired, and I did not think the water was colder and blacker. And I stretched my hand out and thought it would reach into air, but I was so far down and sinking, sinking, sinking.
And then a hand grabbed mine and pulled me up. Nyka, trying to fly and stumbling, bouncing, then falling into the water. Then he tried to fly again while drawing me out, but could only pull me up to my shoulder and fight the current. In this way he dragged me to the riverbank, where the Aesi waited.
“The river nearly had you,” the Aesi said.
“The monster flees,” I said, gasping for air.
“Maybe it was offended by your sourness.”
“The monster flees,” I said.
I caught my breath, pulled my axes, and started walking.
“No gratitude for the Ip—”
“He is getting away.”
I ran off.
The river had washed off all the ash and my skin was black as sky. The land was still savannah, still dry with shrubs and whistling thorn that sat close together, but I did not know this place. Sasabonsam flapped his wings twice and it sounded far away, as if it wasn’t the flutter but the echo. Tall trees rose, three hundred paces ahead. Nyka shouted something I did not hear. A flutter again; it sounded like it came from the trees, so there is where I ran. I hit a stone, tripped, and fell, but rage fought pain and I got up and kept running. The ground went wet. I ran through a drying pond, through grass scratching my knee, past thorny shrubs scattered like warts on skin that I jumped over and stepped in. No sound of flutter came but my ears were on him; I would hear him closer soon. I did not even need my nose. The trees did what trees do, stood in the way. No valley path, only giant thorns and wild bush, and as I went around I ran right into them.
Men on horseback, I would guess a hundred. I studied the horses for their mark. A ridge of armour over the head coming down the long face. Body draped in warm cloth, but not long like the Juba horses. Tails kept long. A saddle on top of layers of thick cloth and at the corners of the cloth, northern marks I had not seen in years. Maybe half of the horses black, the rest brown and white. I should have studied the warriors. Thick garments to stop a spear, and spears with two prongs. Men, all of them, except one.
“Announce yourself,” she said when she saw me. I said nothing.
Seven of them surrounded me, lowering their spears. I usually thought nothing of swords or spears but something was different. The air around them and me.
“Announce yourself,” she said again. I did nothing.
In the moonlight they were all plume and shine. Their armour silver in the dark light, the feathers in their headdresses ruffling like a meeting of birds. Their dark arms pointed spears at me. They couldn’t tell who I was in the night. But I could tell who they were.
“Tracker,” I said.
“He does not speak our language,” another warrior said.
“Nothing special about the language of Fasisi,” I said.
“Then what is your name?”
“I am Tracker,” I said.
“I will not ask again.”
“Then don’t. I said my name is Tracker. Is your name Deaf One?”
She stepped to the front, and poked me with her spear. I staggered back. I could not see her face, only her shiny war helmet. She laughed. She poked me again. I gripped my ax. Panic felt a day away, then it was right behind me, then it was in my head, and I squeezed my eyes shut.
“Maybe your name is Deathless, since you seem to have no fear of me killing you.”
“Do what you must. If I take just one of you with me, that is a good death.”
“Nobody here would hate to die, hunter.”
“Do any of you hate to talk?”
“For a man who looks like river folk, you have quite the mouth.”
“Pity I know no rebel Fasisi verse.”
“Rebel?”
“No Fasisi army has made it to the south border of Wakadishu, or you would have been corpses on a battlefield. No women walk in Fasisi ranks. And no Fasisi guard could have ever landed this far south, not with war here. You are Fasisi born but not loyal to Kwash Dara. King sister guards.”
“You know much about us.”
“I know that this is all there is to know.”
The spears moved in closer.
“I am not the one being rude in the face of seventy and one spears,” she said.
She pointed at me.
“Men and their cursed arrogance. You curse, you shit, you wail, you beat women. But all you really do is take up space. As men always do, they cannot help themselves. It’s why they must spread their legs when they sit,” she said.
The men laughed, all who heard whatever kind of joke this was.
“How great your brotherhood of men must be that all they think about is men spreading their legs.”
She scowled, I could see it, even in the dark. The men grumbled.
“Our Queen—”
“She is not a queen. She is the King sister.”
The warrior chief laughed again. She said something about how I must either seek death or think I cannot die.
“Did he teach you that as well, the one who rides with you? You would do good to keep him up front with you, for his kind prefers to kill from behind,” I said.
He rode his horse right up to the front until he was beside the warrior chief. Dressed as they were with the feather helmet taming his wild hair, he seemed not only odd on the horse but that he knew it. The way a dog would look riding a cow.
“How it goes, Tracker?”
“Never seems to go away, Leopard.”
“It’s been said you have a nose.”
“Under your armour, you stink worse than them.”
He gripped the bridle harder than he needed to, and the horse jerked her head. His whiskers, which rarely showed when he was a man, shone in the night. He took his helmet off. Nobody moved their spears. There were things I wanted to ask him. How a man never interested in long-term hire found long-term hire. How they got him to wear such armour, and robes that must drag, and tear, and chafe, and itch. And if part of the bargain was that he never changed to his true nature again. But I asked none of that.