As for Ogos, know this. Most will never feel joy, or melancholy. The Ogos have little understanding and tempers that swing from cold to hot in a blink. Two Ogos who will say, If you kill him you kill my brother, will still smash the head of that brother right down to the stump. Nobody trains an Ogo. Nobody needs to. One only makes him mad, or hungry. And Sadogo is friends with no Ogo, and none are friends with him, and one is taller than trees and built bigger than elephants, and one is short but wide and thick like a rock, and one has muscles in his back and shoulders that rise above his head and people say that one is an ape. And one who paints himself blue, and one who will eat meat raw.
And the master says, Look, I have no chains on you. I am no master of men. You come when you come, you go when you go, and whatever I bet for you, you get half and whatever I bet against you, you get a third and if you win, those who come to watch will shower you with cowrie and coin, of which I only keep a fifth. Ko kare da ranar sa. What do you wish for money to do, my melancholy Ogo?
“Enough money to sail on a dhow that can hold me.”
“Sail to where?”
“It does not matter. I sail from, not to.”
The night of the first fight, seven Ogos and Sadogo marched to the killing ground. It was nothing but a hole deep in the ground, the remains of a well that went down perhaps two hundred arm lengths, maybe more. With rocks pushing out of ragged dirt, and ledges at uneven heights all the way around where men, nobles and chiefs, stood, along with a few women. They had cast their bets for each fight, four for the night. At the bottom of the well, a dry mound rose out of water.
The master put Sadogo in the second bout, saying, This one, he new, he fresh, we call him Sadface. Sadogo came down wearing a red macawii around his waist, and stood before the master. May gods of thunder and food give him strength, because look, here be coming another, the master said, and dashed off into the water, where he pulled himself up on a ledge. The men shouted, cheered, and fussed. A woman in a bucket was lowered to collect all the bets. The master said, Oho, what now, here he come, the backbreaker, and men on the lowest ledge scrambled to higher ground.
Backbreaker was the nastiest, for he ate flesh raw from the beast he killed. Tusks grew out of his mouth. Somebody painted his huge body in red ochre. The master said, Make your bets, dignified gentlemen. But before he finished, Backbreaker swung a punch and knocked Sadogo into the water. The girl screamed, Pull up the bucket! For the red Ogo eyed it as soon as he came in. Backbreaker faced the crowd and bellowed. Sadogo rose from the water and knocked him down, and grabbed a rock to bash in his head, but his grip was wet and Backbreaker slipped out, rolled over, and punched him straight in the chin. Sadogo spat blood. The red Ogo grabbed his club with spikes and swung it at Sadogo’s feet. Sadogo dodged and jumped up to a lower ledge. Backbreaker swung his club but Sadogo ducked and kicked him in the balls. The red Ogo dropped to his knees and his own spiked club slammed into his left eye. Sadogo took the club to Backbreaker’s head and smashed and smashed. And then he lifted the headless body and threw it at the men on the lowest ledge.
Six took him on, six he killed with that club.
And so his fame spread throughout Kalindar, and so more and more men came to see, and bet. And since the well was small and could never hold all, they placed more wood beams across the top so more men could see, and the master charged three times, four times, five times, then battle by battle even if they paid before, for the chance to see and bet on the sorrowful Ogo.
“Look upon him, look how his face never changes,” they would say.
He faced them all, he killed them all, and soon the lands were running out of Ogos. But the girl in the bucket who collected the bets, she was a slave with eyes sad as his. She brought food though many Ogos tried to rape her. One grabbed her one night and said, Watch how it grows, and pushed her down, and as he climbed on top, Sadogo’s hand grabbed his ankle, yanked him out of his cell, swung him like a club, and slammed him into the ground over and over and over until there was no sound from this Ogo. Through all this the girl said nothing, but the master said, “Curse you to the gods, sad one, surely that giant was worth more than that foolish little girl.”
Sadogo turned to him. “Do not call us giants,” he said.
The girl would come and sit by his cell. She sang verse but not to him. That last one is from lands north, then east, she said.
“We should go there,” she said.
No man is bound to me and I am bound to no man,” the master said when Sadogo said he would soon leave. “Killing has made you rich. But where shall you go? Where is there home for the Ogo? And if there is a home, good Ogo, do you not think someone here would have left for it?”
That evening she came to him and said, I have spoken my fill of verses. Give me new words. He walked to the bars that were not locked and said:
Bring words to voice and
Meat to this verse
Coal and ash
Flicker a flame
Brilliant
She stared at him through the bars.
“What I tell you is a true word, Ogo, you have an awful voice, and that is terrible verse. The griots do get their gifts from the gods.” Then she laughed. “Give me this word. What they call you?”
“I am called nothing.”
“What does your father call you?”
“A curse from the demons who fucked my whore of a wife and killed her.”
She laughed again.
“I laugh, but it makes me very sad,” she said. “I come here because you are not like the rest.”
“I am worse. Three times as many I have killed, compared to the bravest fighter.”
“Yes, but you are the only one who does not look at me like I am next.”
He walked right up to the bar and pushed at it, opened it a little. She shifted a little, tried not to look as if she jumped.
“Truly, I will kill anything. Cut past my skin to find my heart and it will be white. White like nothingness.”
She looked at him. He was almost three times her height.
“If you were for true heartless, you would not have known it. Lala is my name.”
When he told the master that he wished to leave, he did not tell him that he wanted to go north, then east, for whoever speaks such verses that the girl recites will not care that he towers over the biggest of men. He did not ask to buy Lala, but he did plan to take her. But the master learned that this new thinking was the doing of his bet collector. For sure they are not lovers, for not even the hugest of women can take an Ogo, and she is small as a child and frail as a stick. This Ogo was growing close to her head and speaking like her.
The next morning Sadogo woke up to see the blue Ogo, in the middle of the courtyard, pull himself out of her body, leaving her smashed, ripped, and wrecked in a full moon of her own blood. Sadogo did not run to her, he did not cry, he did not leave his cell, he did not speak of it to the master.
“I will pit you against him finally so you can avenge her,” he said.
Later that night, another slave girl came to his cell and said, Look at me, I am now the wagers maid. They will lower me in the bucket.
“Tell the old men it would be foolish to bet against me.”
“They have already betted.”
“What?”
“They have already cast bets, most for you, some against you.”
“What do you mean?”
“The word was you were the smart Ogo.”
“Speak plain and true, slave.”
“The Master of Entertainments, he send bets, by slave, by messenger, and by pigeon, from seven days before, saying you will be pit against the blue one in a fight to the death.”