So we did steal into the meadow, which was moist and bordered by thick-columned plants of a bluish hue in stem and leaf. Before us lay the royal birds, flying up and down the trees, and spreading their tremendous tails and making wild shrieking sounds. The place seemed to be unguarded, which was strange to me, these birds being so precious to the king. But Kinguri said there were guards hidden about, and charged me to stand watch for them.
From his pouch he drew a strip of leather with two round stones attached to its ends. Most warily he walked toward the peacocks, meaning to cast this thing at them and entangle the legs of one. On his first two casts he failed, the birds being faster-moving than they appeared; but on the third he did snare one, that set up a vast squawking and rioting as the leather wrapped itself by the deftness of Kinguri’s throw about its body. “Come!” he cried, and we rushed forward, and with our knives we cut the beautiful bird’s throat, that gleamed with many colors.
Then he caught me by the upper arm, and did make a deep but narrow slit in my flesh, very swiftly, before I could pull back, and the same to himself. And took the throat of the peacock and let its blood run over his wound, and put his arm against mine, rubbing it so that our three bloods did mix, his and mine and the bird’s, and as he did this he glared into my eyes with wild savage glee, behind which I saw his subtle intelligence burning brightly.
“We are brothers now, you and I, Andubatil Jaqqa!” he said in a hoarse thick voice.
“Brothers of the blood, is it?”
“Yea. And if we had done this earlier, Machimba-lombo would have feared to touch you, knowing your mokisso and mine were joined. But this will guard you now against other such enemies, for I think you do have some yet, Andubatil.”
“And who do those be?” I asked, staring in wonder at the bleeding place on my arm.
“Ah, we can talk of that another time. Come, now.”
In haste we did gather tail-feathers of the peacock, and thrust them into the bands of beads we wore, and cast aside the carcass of the bird and made ready to go. Just then the sentry of the place, making his early rounds, came upon us, and stood in surprise, his mouth opening and closing like that of a fish on land, at the sight of a white man and a Jaqqa looting together one of the holy peacocks. He was a short blackamoor, past middle years, in a brocaded green robe and a high turreted hat, and he pointed at us and made a little choking sound without voice to it, so great was his amaze. At once Kinguri sprang toward him, knife in hand.
The guard took a heavy breath, as though at last preparing himself to utter a great outcry: and the Jaqqa slipped his blade very easily into the man’s throat, so that all he let forth was a tiny bubbling sound, and went to his knees, gushing blood like a fountain. And had he walked first to the other side of the meadow that morning, he would on this day yet be alive, I think.
“We must hurry, brother,” said Kinguri.
Through the dawn mists we fled that place, clutching our brave peacock feathers in both our hands, and my arm did throb and tingle where the alien bloods had entered it.
On the return journey to the Jaqqa camp Kinguri was most animated and alive. He walked with such bounds that I could scarce keep pace with his long-legged stride, and he overflowed with new questions for me, asking, What is the color of the sky over England, and, How big is the Queen’s palace at London, and, Does God ever visit the kings of Europe, and more like that. And he demanded also to know who it was that decided how much grain a piece of gold would buy, and why it was that God had let His only Son be slain by men, and was it true that English were born black and turned white upon exposure to the cold air of our land, and such. I could hardly finish the answer to one question when he was upon me with the next, or two or three others, like a man in fever of knowledge: and this the man who had grown furious when I made objection to the killing of babies, and told me I was a fool for not seeing the obvious wisdom of the custom, this who now interrogated me like a hungry scholar. Only as we reached the camp did he grow more quiet; and at the end he turned to me and looked me close in the eye and said, “This is no small thing, what you and I have done. A Jaqqa takes a brother but once or twice in his life, and not without much considering of it first. And almost always it happens on the field of battle.”
“Why did you choose me, then, Kinguri?”
“Your blood has wisdom in it, Andubatil. And now we are sealed to one another, and the wisdom of the whites streams in my flesh. I tell you, I could not abide not having it within me!”
And therefore the ferocity of the Jaqqas now streamed in my own flesh, I thought, but did not say. I took their food in my gut and their blood in my veins, and step by step was my life flowing in the river of their life, and mingling indistinguishable.
I grinned at him and said, “I hope I am worthy of the choice, brother!”
“So will you prove to be,” said he. “Of that I am sure.”
We entered the camp together, bearing our dazzling feathers held high; and some boys of the Imbe-Jaqqa’s court saw us, each with our bloody slices on our arms. Within an hour every Jaqqa knew what had passed between Kinguri and me in the meadow under the city of Dongo. All that day long was there whispering, and furtive glances at me. Kulachinga herself, although my wife and a former wife of the Imbe-Jaqqa, looked upon me from afar, as if I had attained some sublime new ennoblement beyond what I already had, that made me awesome to her.
For this was one of the highest customs among the Jaqqas, that two men who respected and loved one another should go off in the night on some long journey that had an aspect of peril to it, and perform some unusual deed such as the stealing of King Ngola’s peacock, and celebrate the rite by a mixing of blood. And thenceforth were those two sealed to one another in a way that transcended the ordinary kind of kinship, since that in a tribe that got its members by stealing them, kinship of the ordinary kind meant very little, there being no descent from known mothers or sharing of a common father. I was bonded now to the second man of the realm, who was natural brother to Imbe Calandola himself, which made me in a way a member of the royal family.
Like all such honors this carried a heavy price; for it plunged me even deeper into the rivalries of the court, which already I knew to be strong and severe.
These Jaqqas, like the Turks or Tartars or anyone else, like even us English with our wars of York and Lancaster, are jealous of high rank, and do intrigue and maneuver mightily among themselves to surpass one another. That I perceived only slowly, for at first they were all alike to me, and all seemed united in a war against mankind that joined them into a single being. That was but an illusion, which the falling of Machimba-lombo’s sword upon my sleeping-mat had dispelled in me forever. United they might be, yet they had rivalries among themselves, and factions, like any other nation.
So my elevation to blood-brotherhood with Kinguri won me the safety of his own greatness, that extended over me like a glow, but it ran me the risk of gaining other foes such as my late enemy had been. When I pressed Kinguri to name those I must be wary of, he slipped away from the theme like quicksilver, and said there was no one special. But yet he urged me to keep my eyes sharp for signs of resentment. I watched; and I saw that among the high Jaqqas, the three who were most loyal to Kinguri, that is, Kulambo and Ngonga and Kilombo, seemed to hold the same love for me. And those three who ever basked in the close favor of the Imbe-Jaqqa, that were Kasanje and Kaimba and Bangala, now gave me glances, and scowls, and sidewise glares, that made me uneasy. But though I thought often of it, I did not again ever awaken to find an assassin raising his sword above me.