They were after the child.
TWELVE
Flying outside my window was the flag of the black sparrow hawk. My return to Kongor disturbed no one, my waking earlier than the sun caught nobody, so I went outside. The flag flew two hundred, maybe three hundred paces away, at the top of a tower in the center of the Nyembe quarter, flapping wild, as if the wind was furious with it. Black sparrow hawk. Seven Wings. The sun was hiding behind clouds fat with rain. It was near the season. So I went outside.
In the courtyard, pulling up the few shrubs from the dirt, stood a buffalo. Male, brown-black, body longer than one and a half of me lying flat, his horns already fused into a crown and dipping downward to curve back upward like a grand hairstyle. Except I have seen a buffalo kill three hunters and rip a lion in two. So I gave this buffalo wide space as I walked to the archway. He looked up and moved right into my way. I remembered again I needed new hatchets, not that either hatchet or knife could win against him. I did not smell urine; I was not stepping into his boundary. The buffalo did not snort and did not kick his hooves in the dirt, but he stared at me, from my feet all the way up to my neck, then down, then up, then down, then up and slowly annoying me. Buffalos cannot laugh but I would swear to the gods that he did. Then he shook his head. More than a nod, a rough swing left then right, then right and left again. I stepped aside and walked but he stepped right in my way. I moved to the other side and so did he. He looked up and down again and again and I would again swear to the gods, demons, and river spirits that he laughed. He came in closer, and stepped back once. If he wanted to kill me I would have been walking with the ancestors already. He came closer, hooked his horn in the curtain I wore, and pulled it off, making me spin and fall. I cursed the buffalo, but did not grab the curtain. Besides, it was early morning—who would see me? And if anyone did see me, I could claim that I was robbed by bandits as I bathed in the river. Ten paces past the arch I looked back and saw that the buffalo followed me.
Here is truth: The Buffalo was the greatest of companions. In Kongor even old women slept late, so the only souls on the street were those who never slept. Palm wine drunkards and masuku beer fools, falling down more than they got up. My eye jumped over to their side each time we passed one of them, looking at them looking at a near-naked man walking alongside a buffalo not the way some walked with dogs, but how men walked with men. A man flat on his back in the road turned, saw us, jumped up, and ran right into a wall.
The river had flooded the banks four nights before we came, and Kongor was an island again for four moons. I marked my chest and legs with river clay, and the buffalo, lying in the grass and grazing, nodded up and down. I painted around my left eye, up to my hair and down to the cheekbone.
“Where are you from, good buffalo?”
He turned his head west and pointed with his horns up and down.
“West? By the Buki River?”
He shook his head.
“Beyond? In the savannah? Is there good water to be had there, buffalo?”
He shook his head.
“Is that why you roam? Or is there another reason?”
He nodded yes.
“Were you called upon by that fucking witch?”
He shook his head.
“Were you called upon by Sogolon?”
He nodded yes.
“When we were dead—”
He looked up and snorted.
“By dead I mean not dead, I mean when Sogolon was of a mind we were dead. She must have found others. Are you one of her others?”
He nodded yes.
“And already you have sharp thoughts about how I dress. I must say you are a particular buffalo.”
He went off in the bush, his tail whipping flies. I heard a man’s heavy footsteps through the grass fifty paces away and sat by the banks, my feet in the river. He moved closer; I pulled my dagger but did not turn around. The cold iron of a blade touched my right shoulder.
“Nasty boy, how you deh manage the things?” he asked.
“Deh managing them fine,” I said, mocking his tongue.
“You lost? You look like is so.”
“That be how me look?”
“Well, partner, you trotting round here, no robes on your person, like you mad or you a boy-lover, or a father-fucker or what?”
“I just washing my foot in the river.”
“So you looking for the boy-lovers quarter.”
“Just washing my foot in the river.”
“For the boy-lovers quarter, that be, it be where now? Hold that bridle. We has no boy-lovers quarter round here.”
“Eh? You sure you talking true? ’Cause last time me in the boy-lovers quarter, my eyes peep your father, and your grandfather.”
He slapped the side of my head with his club. “Get up,” he said. At least he wasn’t about to slay me without a fight. On his back he strapped two axes.
Shorter than me by almost a head, but in the white bottom and black top of a Seven Wing. My first thought was to ignore his anger and ask why the Seven Wings assemble, since not even the wise Sogolon knows. He then said something to me in a thicker voice than before.
“Dats what we going do with men laka you?” this wing said.
“What?”
“Who you want me to send your head to, boy-fucker?”
“You wrong.”
“How me wrong?”
“About me being the boy-fucker. Most time is the boys who fuck me. Hark, but there was this one, best in many a moon, so tight believe you me I has to stuff a corncob up to ease the hole. Then I ate the corn.”
“Me chop off your bolo first, and then your head, then throw the rest of you in the river. How you liking that? And when you parts flow down de river, people going say luku laka pon the boy-fucker shoga rolling down in the river, don’t drink from the river lest you become boy-fucker too.”
“Chop me with those axes? I have been looking for iron as fine as such. Forged by a Wakadishu blacksmith or did you steal them from a butcher’s wife?”
“Drop the knife.”
I looked at this man, not much taller than a boy, confusing stout with muscular and dashing shit on my quiet morning. I dropped the dagger in my hand and the one strapped to my leg.
“I would love to greet this sun and bid it good-bye without killing a man,” I said. “There are some people above the sand sea who have a feast every year where they leave a space empty for a ghost, a man who was once alive.”
He laughed, pointing the club at me with his left hand, and pulling an ax with his right. Then he dropped the club and pulled out the left ax.
“Maybe me should be doing the killing for you mad tongue, and not you perverse ways.”
He waved his axes in front of me, swinging and swirling them, but I did not move. The mercenary stepped forward just as a wad of something hit the back of his neck.
“Aunt of a donkey!”
He swung around just as the buffalo snorted again, and nose juice hit the warrior in the face. Eye-to-eye with the buffalo, he jumped. Before he could swing an ax, the buffalo scooped up the warrior with his horns and threw him off far into the grass. One ax landed in the field. The other came straight at me but bounced off. I cursed the buffalo. It was some time before the warrior sat up, shook his head, rose to his feet, and staggered off when the buffalo rushed him again.