When Gods Bleed (22 page)

“All right, let’s do this, you son of a thief.”

Tunde and Ikenna faced each other with their swords, going round in a circle.

“See who is calling me a thief. You and the generations before you were all born criminals.”

“What is happening here?” Ihua asked.

Both men stood at ease, swords by their sides.

“We were checking who is faster at drawing the sword,” Tunde replied.

Ihua was disgusted by the lie and he was now positive that one of them was going to kill the other if they were left alone.

“So what information did you get from the envoy before you killed him?” Ihua asked, surveying the body.

The two Omees looked at each other as though they were communicating with their eyes. “He told us everything as you said it,” Ikenna replied.

“So how did I say it?”

“He said they are attacking immediately,” Tunde said.

“Perfect, get the troops ready.”

Ihua walked in another direction in the bushes. When Ihua had gone, Tunde whispered to Ikenna with Omees all over the bushes, “Do you realize the problem we are in if Alloida does not attack us now?”

Ikenna whispered back, “We will claim they gave the envoy false information. By the way, this is all your fault. You were the one boasting you were better than me with the arrow.”

“It was not as though I did it alone. You joined me.”

“What are two of you doing over there? Come here!”  the chief screamed.

*

Vacoura and his men approached the trench and were all amazed at how large it was. They saw there was no way into Ahoda except to pass through the trench, which was deeper than they expected. They had to leave their horses behind and go down on foot. Descending into the trench, they did not encounter anything other than the silence of the night. When climbing out of the trench into Ahoda, it all began. Attacks deluged them from every corner. The Omees from Ahoda attacked Vacoura’s men, who had climbed up the trench; the others shot arrows of death at the Omees below. The Omees from Alloida were dying in plentitude. It was a massacre.

Vacoura expected his general to tell the Omees to fall back, but the man was probably trying to be stupidly brave, so he called for his men to withdraw. The Omees ran back, climbing through the trench. Even at that, death met most of them at their backs as they tried to flee. The Ahoda Omees did not follow, knowing it would put them in a disadvantageous position.

Vacoura lead his men back into Alloida with his head down. Walking alongside him was his dwarfish Tikpapa, whose sorrow was deep in his facial expression. Vacoura looked behind him to see less than a quarter of his Omees returning. He talked with his Tikpapa as they walked to their province.

“Ihua’s envoy betrayed us.”

The Tikpapa did not reply.

“Ihua knows we are handicapped now. He might attack us soon, so we should allocate men at the edge of the trench and use it to our advantage until we are strong again.”

The Tikpapa said nothing. The chief was still talking in order to encourage himself.

“The only problem we might have will be the issue of the salt. You don’t have to be so gloomy, we haven’t completely lost the battle.”

The Tikpapa was still silent.

The chief stopped and all the men behind followed his footsteps.

“Where is the general?”             

The Tikpapa finally spoke.

“He is dead.”

Without looking back the chief asked, “Where is Bugadashi?”

The Tikpapa tried to say something, but the words were stuck. All he could do was use his hands to tell the Omees carrying the chief’s son to bring him forward.

The chief watched them drop his dead son on the ground. Vacoura froze. The wickedness of disbelief hit him and he began shaking, then clenched his hands together, looked into the sky, and yelled out in sorrow.

“He looks good in an Omee’s outfit. Handsome man, like his father,” Vacoura said, using his shirt to clean the blood on his son’s face. “I always knew he had the blood of a warrior…Real men die in battle.”

Pointing at his son for all the men to see he said, “Look at his hands. He still holds onto the sword. I remember when I told him to trade, he said, ‘No Father, I am born to die in battle.’ I can’t believe I wanted to limit your destiny, my son.  I wanted to tell you so many things, but now I have to get to where you are to tell you.”

He squatted down, holding his son’s hand. “Tikpapa, you won’t believe this…but I have never known your name, I only know you as Tikpapa.”

“It is Osas, my Liege.”

“Osas, how insane do you think it will be, to go back now?”

“Insanity is in the mind. The people of Ahoda will believe only an insane group of people would come back after such massacre, so they celebrate their victory because they are at war with a sane group of people.”

“Great Omees of Alloida we fought an honorable battle and lost. I really do not care what anybody believes, but I have been proud to have you men by my side. Our people say, ‘The man who sees fire and touches it knows the pain he wants to feel.’ My people, I am entering that fire with my eyes open and I am not inviting any man to come with me, but if you hunger for that pain you may follow.”

The chief headed back to Ahoda. The first to follow him was the Tikpapa and then the other Omees all followed, with a few remaining behind.

The people of Ahoda were dancing and merry. Palm wine flowed through the gullets of the Omees in the province, the men gyrated to the beat of the drummer, coquettes swung their hips, and women threw praises at the chief. In the heat of the celebration, men started dropping silently and rapidly.

This continued until a drunkard screamed, “Sabotage!”

The Alloida Omees attacked fully in open. Commoners ran back into their homes with their children and the Omees of Ahoda found it hard to organize their troops in the mayhem. The infiltrators were equalizing the deaths of their comrades in the trench. Tunde and Ikenna appeared from different directions and fought like hungry beasts. There was a wickedness that both commanding Omees displayed in battle. Vacoura knew that their chance of victory was very slim, but his priority was having vengeance for his son. The Ahoda Omees were too much and it was impossible to detect who in particular killed his son, but the perfect man to take the blame was the chief.

Ihua was weighed down by the age of time and could not engage in the battle, while Vacoura fought with a passion. Any man who gave him a tough time, the Tikpapa was there to deal with the obstruction. The more he fought, the closer he got to Ihua’s Haku.

Ihua stood in front of his Haku watching the mayhem, watching the splotches of his men’s blood stick to Vacoura’s skin as he got closer.

As Vacoura was getting to where Ihua was standing, an Omee from Ahoda attacked him with a double-edged spear. The chief did a maneuver around the Omee and stabbed him with his sword, but before he died the Omee spat something into Vacoura’s eyes. The chief could not see. He rubbed his eyes and moved in the direction he last saw Ihua with the intention of killing the man, with or without his sight. The Omees guarding Ihua wanted to make a quick kill on the blind chief, but the Tikpapa threw something on the floor and a fire surrounded his chief as he moved. The Tikpapa fought the battle in front of Vacoura as the chief advanced.

Ihua saw death coming toward him, so the old chief fell back.

The Tikpapa was Vacoura’s eyes as he advanced fiercely, swinging his sword at anything.

The older chief began running back to find himself trapped in the enclosed passageway. From what Ihua saw of the battle they had almost won, but what he did not understand was why he had to run. He grabbed his sword, but it burnt him so he dropped it. He watched Vacoura’s Tikpapa kill everyone who attempted to protect him, using diabolic methods.

Vacoura was following the feeling from the fire that burnt in front of him and did not know what was happening, but he knew his Tikpapa was ahead of him. When Ihua was trapped, the Tikpapa said to his chief, “His life is yours for the feud on your son.” 

Vacoura could not see Ihua, but he felt his presence. Ihua at this time was angry they had to kill his own Tikpapa. He wished they had killed his wife and children instead. What got him angrier was that his two Omees were not anywhere near.

Two arrows passed through the heart of the Tikpapa at the same time from two different directions. The Tikpapa didn’t understand how the arrows pierced him. He touched the blood on the metals and realized it was his. He chose to die silently so his chief would complete his task and not be disturbed.

Vacoura could not see now, but he knew something was wrong and he quickly pounced on Ihua, bringing him to the ground, pulling out his knife to feed it with his enemy’s blood. The older chief was not strong enough to hold the blind chief. Vacoura struck at Ihua, but Ihua shifted away and Vacoura raised his hands to try again before two arrows were fired at his back from a distance by the same commanding Omees who killed the Tikpapa—Tunde and Ikenna.

Vacoura was adamant despite the two arrows deeply buried in his back. He struck at Ihua again, but the older chief used his hands to grab the knife of the dying man. The blind chief kept pushing the knife into Ihua’s heart. With time, the call of death was stronger than Vacoura’s vendetta; he died on top of Ihua. The Omees came in time to push Vacoura away from their chief.

“My Liege, I have to admit, you truly are in good shape,” Ikenna said, helping the chief up.

“The way you ran was youth at its height,” Tunde added.

On a normal day, he would have punished them for the mockery, but with the color of victory in his hands, he had no choice but to laugh.

Chapter 26

Pokzee went to the spot where his informant told him to wait with his complete army. There was something about the location that made him feel he should change his attitude toward this particular situation. Since the death of his wife and the reaction of these people that were now under him, he realized that his most trusted companion was himself. He had a Tikpapa and envoy just for the sake of protocol. The people he listened to were the elders, and they hardly ever made him do anything he did not want to. He looked at his army and shame gripped him at the thought of the kind of cheap victory they were all prepared for. He did not tell anyone what the informant had said. He just told them how they were entering into battle. If he had his way, the elders would never know about the situation, but as of now it was allowed.

Disgust erupted through him when he watched his Omees so relaxed about the battle they were about face. He looked above him to see the darkness laughing at him. Real men went into battle when the eye of the sun was wide open, when honor was not contaminated. His situation was getting unbearable as he squatted, awaiting his adversaries under the shade of deciduous trees.

The only reason he agreed to engage in such a degrading form of war was that it was in response to Oludu’s sly concept of war. Pokzee knew there was something about the decision he made. He tried to find a reason why his information would deceive him, but nothing came to his head. This was his chance to prove to everyone that he was a master planner and not just a warrior who depended on brute force. He looked at the area they were going to stay in for about two to three days, depending on when Oludu and his men decided to pass through, and he knew this was going to be easier than opening a virgin. From the way things were, he would have preferred meeting him face to face, but there was also a problem with who he was going make chief of Ndemili. If only his son was of age, he wouldn’t have to put in a stupid Omee who could change with the weather.

Pokzee’s general divided the Ogwashi Omees in batches and allocated them to different points. The Omees all took food given to them by their wives and mothers, acknowledging the length of stay they had in the forests. The night crawled and the day feared to appear. Then one of the Omees fell into a very deep hole. From both the ground and the skies, all kinds of weapons flew, all kinds of traps consumed them—holes covered with rafia palms, firm branches held back with darts, trees held up by ropes.

The Ndemili Omees came from everywhere. Some were camouflaged like the bark of trees, some attacked from the top of trees. These Omees vigorously applied pressure on the Ogwashi Omees. Their men were confused when they kept seeing their comrades die but could not locate their adversaries. Pokzee was going crazy, he wanted to badly grab his enemies and crush them with his bare hands. The chief could not maintain stability amongst his men and they were dying with the more time they wasted. Their enemies were attacking them like ghosts.

When his Omees finally gained access to these men attacking them from strategic areas, the full Ndemili battalion attacked. Although at this time they were roughly the same in number, the Omees from Ogwashi were highly disorganized and the Omees from Ndemili exhibited an obvious contrast.

The attack on the Ogwashi battalions was merciless; men died like animals killed for a feast. Pokzee fought like a beast; the stroke of his sword was too much weight for any of his enemies to handle. He slaughtered his adversaries as they came his way. Now the light of day wanted to register its presence. The chief kept fighting without noticing anything in his environment; all he wanted was to kill every one of his enemies. At a point all his adversaries refused to confront him, he faced them with his sword and they all moved back without cowardice in their eyes and stood watching him.

“Face me, you bunch of liverless toads. Are you realizing what it takes to fight a real man? Come and design your blood on my sword.”

Pokzee could not take it anymore and took his sword and hit an Omee’s chest, screaming, “Fight me you coward!”

The Omee looked at the chief and said in a very calm voice, “I suggest you look around you.”

Pokzee saw most of his men on the ground dead and the others on their knees pleading for mercy. He watched Chief Oludu come toward him with his assumed informant.

The informant noticed the man he betrayed ready to go into death and take him with him and he screamed to the Omees, ‘Hold him down!”

The chief jumped with his sword to stab Oludu’s general, but a dozen Omees held him down, pushing his big head to the shrubs. Oludu looked at Pokzee and seemed to be amazed that so many men were finding it hard to hold one man down. All through this extremely large man’s struggle, his eyes were locked to Oludu’s general.

“What burns your soul? Is it that you have lost the war, or that my general was never the spy you thought you owned?”

“Let them free me and you will find out.”

“Free him.” All the Omees were puzzled, even Pokzee, but they still did not completely loose their grip.

“My Liege, I do not think it is a safe decision under the circumstances,” the general quickly said.

The chief ignored him and the man went to a safer distance. The Omees reluctantly freed Pokzee with his sword still in his hand. Pokzee got up, dusted himself off, then sat down with his elbows to the ground. When he was relaxed with his enemies standing around him he spoke.

“What burns my soul is of no relevance to you. I tasted the food of the gods and it has now consumed me. I have no hatred for your general, in fact I respect him now more than I ever believed I would. When he came to me, the lust for easy victory overcame me. I thought his goal was to become chief of your province, not knowing his eyes were on my province.”

Oludu squatted to Pokzee’s level and said, “I would let you go and from this day onward you would be an Ikaza.”

Pokzee got up with revitalized energy that flowed in his voice.

“How dare you look at me up and down and think I would stoop so low to be an Ikaza. I am Chief of Ogwashi and I will die Chief of Ogwashi like these Omees lying here.”

Oludu stood directly in his face.

“Pocket your pride and look around you,” Oludu said, pointing at his Omees all ready for any wrong move Pokzee made. “You are a dead man already. Ikazas are men of respect.”

“Correct yourself, Oludu, they were men who had pride.” Pokzee’s tone was still forceful. He started walking around the tiny circle the Omees did not occupy. “Did they ever tell you how chiefs used to go to war in the old days? When I say old days, I mean way back before the time of King Burobee.”

Everyone paid attention to what the chief with a short time to live said.

“In fact, let me be a bit more specific. There was a chief who had a problem with another chief. Generally, they were to go to war with the consent of the King, but the problem was, one of the provinces was five times larger than the other. Now the chief knew that there was no honor in going against a province so small and his admiration for his adversary was optimum because the chief showed no fear in going against a province as large as his in those days, I might add.”

The general fiercely interrupted.

“My Liege, can you see what he is trying to do? He is looking for a way to get into a physical battle. He thinks everything is by brute force because his brains hide behind his genitals.”

“Shut up!” Oludu yelled at his general. “You may continue, Pokzee.”

“So the chief who had the larger province said the two chiefs should battle individually to settle their disputes. Anyway, that was in the old days. I can never become an Ikaza, so I prefer to die right here and now.”

Oludu knew this was one of the cheapest tricks in the war code. If he decided to kill Pokzee now, his Omees’ respect for him would slide back and he could not let him go because the chief refused to be an Ikaza. It was a clear challenge of a masculine stand. Oludu knew that even if Pokzee eventually killed him in a man-to-man combat, Boodunko, his general, would not waste a second before he ordered the Omees to kill Pokzee.

“All right, Pokzee, if it is a challenge you want, then it’s yours but I advise you to leave here an Ikaza.”

The Omees started spreading and created a larger circle. An Omee threw a sword to Pokzee, who immediately started winding it in circles above his head.

Oludu faced all his men and men spoke out loud, “If the chief kills me in our confrontation, then he goes back to Ogwashi as their chief.”

Boodunko walked to his chief and handed the man his sword.

“He lives as chief as long as you live,” he whispered in Oludu’s ear. “If I have to kill, I want you to know that it will be the first time I have ever disobeyed you.”

“Let us begin,” Oludu said.

Immediately, Pokzee attacked him with powerful thrusts of his sword, but his opponent deflected his attacks, as though the weight on Pokzee’s sword was as light as a feather. Pokzee tried different kinds of techniques, but the chief maintained his composure. The spectators followed every powerful swing and movement during the metal collision.

The two chiefs clashed swords, then there was a halt as their swords jarred together and it seemed like a power struggle.

“Walk away an Ikaza.”

This seemed to set Pokzee’s blood on fire. He pushed Oludu with a super-human strength that sent Oludu flying back with his feet not touching the ground. Oludu hit a rock and immediately his men wanted to fire, but the general used his hands to tell them to halt. Everyone was surprised that Oludu had lasted this long with this man who was the size of a bear. Pokzee rushed Oludu as he was on the floor, but the chief returned to his feet still deflecting his attacks in the same relaxed manner. Pokzee fought again till the level where their swords met and this time he took out the knife at his side and stabbed Oludu in his shoulder. Blood gush all over his body.

Pokzee was impressed with his actions and, encouraged, he rushed at Oludu, but the chief seemed to disappear. Pokzee looked around, wondering where Oludu was and then he appeared in four places at the same time, twisting his sword without an expression on his face. Pokzee was confused, but determined. He started attacking all the images one by one. The spectators felt Pokzee had gone mad because they saw Oludu in one position, twisting his sword, while Pokzee was making powerful attacks at the air. As Pokzee attacked the images, they seemed to multiply and, everywhere he looked, Oludu was there, twisting his sword. He did not want to take chances. He started swinging his sword in any direction. At a point he got tired and stopped.

Oludu gripped him from behind and put his sword to the chief’s neck.

“I also heard the story about the chiefs way back then, but you forgot to mention that the chief with the smaller province killed his opponent in their confrontation.”

As Oludu finished his speech, he slit the chief’s neck, dropped him, and walked away. All the Omees were hailing their chief when Pokzee rose with his sliced neck, dying but not dead. He used his last ounce of strength and advanced toward Oludu with his bare hands.

Oludu did not notice the event behind him. Pokzee received more than a hundred stabs from the Ndemili Omees behind their chief.