The Sword & Sorcery Anthology (28 page)

The
daju
nodded vigorously. At a word from Dossouye, Gbo backed
away from the prone man. Without further speech, the
daju
scrambled
to his feet and fled, not looking back. Swiftly he disappeared in a
copse of mist-clad trees.

Gbo strained against Dossouye’s command as though it were a
tether immobilizing him. Dossouye trailed her hand along his neck
and ears, gentling him. She could not have explained why she spared
the
daju
. In the Abomean army, she had slain on command, as well-
trained as Gbo. Now, she killed only to protect herself. She felt no
compunctions at having dispatched the
daju
named Mahadu from
behind. Yet she had just allowed an equally dangerous foe to live.
Perhaps she had grown weary of dealing death.

Impatiently she shook aside her mood. Again she recalled the
fleeting reflection she had seen only moments ago. A
moso
, the
daju
had said. Valuable....

It was then that she heard four sharp, clear musical notes sound
behind her.

As one, Dossouye and Gbo spun to confront the latest intruder. A
lone man stood near the bodies of Mahadu and his horse. But this
one did not look like a
daju
. Indeed, never before had Dossouye
encountered anyone quite like him. He was a composition in brown:
skin the rich hue of tobacco; trousers and open robe a lighter, almost
russet shade; eyes the deep color of fresh-turned loam. His hair was
plaited into numerous braids of shoulder length, each one sectioned
with beads strung in colorful patterns. Beneath the braids, his oval
face appeared open, friendly, dominated by warm eyes and a quick,
sincere smile. A black mustache grew on his upper lip; wisps of beard
clung to his chin and cheeks. His was a young face; he could not
have been much older than Dossouye’s twenty rains. He was as lean
in build as Dossouye, though not quite as tall.

In his hand, the stranger bore the instrument that had sounded
the four notes. It was a
kalimba
, a hollow wooden soundbox fitted
with eight keys that resonated against a raised metal rim. Held in
both hands, the small instrument’s music was made by the flicking of
the player’s thumbs across the keys.

No weapons were evident to Dossouye’s practiced gaze. More than
one blade, however, could lie hidden in the folds of the stranger’s
robe. As if divining that thought, the stranger smiled gently.

“I did not mean to alarm you,
ahosi
,” he said in a smooth, soft voice.
His Abomean was heavily accented, but his speech was like music.

“I heard the sounds of fighting as I passed by,” he continued. His
thumb flicked one of the middle keys of the
kalimba
. A deep note
arrowed across the riverbank—
blood, death.

Gbo bellowed and shook his blood-washed horns. Dossouye’s
hand tightened on the hilt of her carmined sword.

“Now I see the battle is over. And you certainly have nothing to
fear from me.”

He touched another key. A high, lilting note floated skyward like
a bird—
peace, joy.
Gbo lowed softly as a steer in a pasture. Dossouye
smiled and lowered her blade. Rains had passed since she had last
known the serenity embodied in that single note.

But she had been deceived before.

“Who are you?” she demanded.

“I am Gimmile, a
bela
—a song-teller,” he replied, still smiling. “You
can put down your sword and get dressed, you know. I will not harm
you. Even if I wanted to, I don’t think I could. One Abomean
ahosi
, it
seems, is worth at least two
daju
—and I am certainly no
daju
.”

Dossouye felt his eyes appraising her unclad form. She knew she
was bony, awkward...but that was not what Gimmile saw. He had
watched her move, lithe and deadly as a great cat. He noted the strong
planes of her face, the troubled depths of her eyes.

Dossouye did not trust Gimmile. Still, he had spoken truth when
he said he could not harm her. Not while she had a sword in her hand
and Gbo at her side.

“Watch him,” she told the war-bull.

As Dossouye walked to her pile of armor, Gbo confronted the
bela
.
Gimmile did not flinch at the size and ferocity of Dossouye’s mount.
Instead, he reached out and touched the snout of the war-bull.

Seeing the
bela
’s danger, Dossouye opened her mouth to shout the
command that would spare Gimmile from the goring he unwittingly
courted. But Gbo did nothing more than snort softly and allow
Gimmile to stroke him.

Never in Dossouye’s memory had a war-bull commanded to guard
allowed itself to be touched by a stranger. She closed her mouth and
began to don her armor.

“Were you about to cross the Kambi when the
daju
attacked,
ahosi
?” Gimmile asked, his hands pulling gently at Gbo’s ears.

“The name is Dossouye. And the answer is ‘Yes.’”

“Well, Dossouye, it seems I owe you a debt. I think those
daju
might have been a danger to me had you not come along.”

“Why a danger?” Dossouye asked, looking sharply at him while
she laced her leather cuirass.

“A
bela
’s songs can be...valuable,” Gimmile replied enigmatically.
“Indirectly, you may have saved my life. My dwelling is not far from
here. I would like to share my songs with you. I also have food. I—I
have been alone for a long time.”

He plucked another key on his
kalimba
...a haunting, lonely sound.
And Dossouye knew then that her feeling echoed Gimmile’s. Her
avoidance of human contact since she had left Abomey had worn a
cavity of loneliness deep within her. Her soul was silent, empty.

She looked at the
bela
; watched Gbo nuzzle his palm. Gbo trusted
Gimmile. But suspicion still prowled restlessly in Dossouye’s mind.
Why was Gimmile alone? Would not a song-teller need an audience
in the same way a soldier needed battle? And what could Gimmile
possess that would be of value to thieves? Surely not his songs or his
kalimba
, she told herself.

Suddenly Dossouye wanted very badly to hear Gimmile’s songs,
to talk with him, to touch him. Weeks had passed since she last
met a person who was not a direct threat to her life. Her suspicions
persisted. But she decided to pay them no heed.

“I will come with you,” she decided. “But not for long.”

Gimmile removed his hand from Gbo’s muzzle and played a joyous
chorus on the
kalimba
. He sang while Dossouye cinched the saddle
about the massive girth of the war-bull. She did not understand the
Mossi words of the song, but the sound of his voice soothed her as she
cleaned
daju
blood from her sword and Gbo’s horns.

Then she mounted her war-bull. Looking down at Gimmile, who
had stopped singing, Dossouye experienced a short-lived urge to dig
her heels into Gbo’s flanks and rush across the river....

Gimmile lifted his hand, waiting for Dossouye to help him onto
the war-bull’s back. There was tranquility in his eyes and a promise
of solace in his smile. Taking his hand, Dossouye pulled him upward.
He settled in front of her. So lean were the two of them that there
was room in the saddle for both. His touch, the pressure of his back
against her breast, the way he fit in the circle of her arms as she held
Gbo’s reins—the
bela
’s presence was filling an emptiness of which
Dossouye had forced herself to remain unaware, until now.

“Which way?” she asked.

“Along the bank toward the setting of the sun,” Gimmile directed.

For all the emotions resurging within her, Dossouye remained
aware that the
bela
had indicated a direction opposite the one the
fleeing
daju
had taken. Yet as she urged Gbo onward, her suspicions
waned. And the memory of the flashing thing the beardless
daju
had
dropped faded like morning mist from her mind.

A single pinnacle of stone rose high and incongruous above the
treetops. It was as though the crag had been snatched by a playful
god from the rocky wastes of Axum and randomly deposited in the
midst of the Mossi rain forest. Creepers and lianas festooned the
granite-gray peak with traceries of green.

This was Gimmile’s dwelling.

Dossouye sat in a cloth-padded stone chair in a chamber that had
been hollowed from the center of the pinnacle. Its furnishings were
cut from stone. Intricately woven hangings relieved the grayness of
the walls. Earlier, Dossouye had marveled at the halls and stairwells
honeycombing the rock.

As she finished the meal of boiled plantains Gimmile had prepared,
Dossouye recalled stories she had heard concerning the cliff-cities of
the Dogon. But Dogon was desert country; in a land of trees like
Mossi, a spur of stone such as Gimmile’s tower was anomalous.

Little speech had passed during the meal. Gimmile seemed to
communicate best with his
kalimba
. The melodies that wafted from
the eight keys had allayed her misgivings, which had been aroused
again when the
bela
had insisted Gbo be penned in a stone corral at
the foot of the pinnacle.

“You wouldn’t want him to wander away,” Gimmile had warned.

Dossouye knew it would take an elephant to dislodge Gbo once
she commanded him to remain in one place. But Gimmile had sung
his soothing songs and smiled his open smile, and Dossouye led Gbo
into the enclosure and watched while Gimmile, displaying a wiry
strength not unlike her own, wrestled the stone corral bar into place.

He played and smiled while leading Dossouye up the twisting
stairwells through which thin streams of light poured from small
ventilation holes. He sang to her as he boiled the plantains he had
obtained from a storage pot. When she ate, he plucked the
kalimba
.

Gimmile ate nothing. Dossouye had meant to question him about
that; but she did not, for she was happy and at peace.

Yet...she was still an
ahosi
. When Gimmile took away the wooden
bowl from which she had eaten, Dossouye posed an abrupt question:

“Gimmile, how is it that you, a singer of songs, live in a fortress a
king might envy?” Gimmile’s smile faded. For the first time, Dossouye
saw pain in his eyes. Contrition stabbed at her, but she could not take
back her question.

“I am sorry,” she stammered. “You offer me food and shelter, and I
ask questions that are none of my concern.”

“No,” the
bela
said, waving aside her apology. “You have a right to
ask; you have a right to know.”

“Know what?”

Gimmile sat down near her feet and looked up at her with the eyes
of a child. But the story he told was no child’s tale.

As a young
bela,
new to his craft, Gimmile had come to the court of
Konondo, king of Dedougou, a Mossi city-state. On a whim, the king
had allowed the youthful
bela
to perform for him. So great was Gim
mile’s talent with voice and
kalimba
that the envy of Bankassi, regular
bela
to the court, was aroused. Bankassi whispered poison into the ear
of the king, and Konondo read insult and disrespect into the words
of Gimmile’s songs, though in fact there was none. When Gimmile
asked the king for a
kwabo
, the small gift customarily presented to
bela
s by monarchs, Konondo roared: