These huts also left room by the forward part of the palisade that formed an open, lancet-shaped area in which the Bakwaniri held their communal festivals and where the sir-jon performed his dark arts. There was a great fire pit ringed with stones there by three tall blood-stained posts thrust into the discolored ground.
So the village was ship-shaped—though none of the Bakwaniri was seagoing at that time. They lived far inland now, and their old legends spoke of the ocean and the west as a place from which doom would always follow, so they were pleased to live far away from it.
Generations of breeding with and bastardizing the local inhabitants they could master left them more comfortable on land, though their harrowing years in the wild had made homebodies of them all.
And so, the oddly crafted palisade might have been intended to memorialize their dimly remembered nautical origins, but it still kept out the more savage jungle denizens and even presented a challenge to the mighty Magnuh and his kind.
The Bakwaniri knew of the giants for herds of them still crossed the river to the south and ranged the forests on the western side of their home. In earlier times when their store of gunpowder still held, the first fathers had hunted the elephants for the ivory that still decorated the encampment’s sometimes squalid trimmings, with the skull of one great tusker proudly adorning the ship’s prow. Few beasts that still lived could have wielded those arching ivory weapons, and it was a testament to a bygone age to see them so displayed.
The Bakwaniri territory was surrounded by natural impediments, and guarded by savage beasts, and so they enjoyed the protection of a lethal wilderland that the first fathers had barely survived crossing when they ran from the sea.
Neither civilized man nor savage would dare to travel those forbidden lands, and any fool who did would not be seen again.
So the Bakwaniri hunted along the edge of Goro’s territory, or turned east to the rolling lands that led to the upland plateau. There the groups of hunters tried to time their visits to avoid the lions, dogs and hyenas with which they’d have to compete for gazelle, impala, antelope and many other game animals.
This sort of hunting was adopted from the native cultures they had consumed, but was not widely embraced for it required greater skill and physical prowess than the Bakwaniri had, so rather than replacing their gruesome main course they used the local game and flora to supplement it as seasons or chance permitted.
It was more efficient to eat the flesh of their slaves than it was to chase after herds.
Again, this Bakwaniri behavior was reinforced most honestly, for it seemed that many of the first fathers had been plagued with illnesses of various origins and climes, and so their first contact with the local people spread sicknesses to which pirates were prone: venereal diseases, Black Death and deadly flu. Some among them also brought the curse of leprosy and of course the African scourge of Noma was waiting there for them beneath the canopy.
From this interchange of bloodlines came new diseases and conditions that have since been lost to time and death and never categorized or studied as a result. There were diseases that plagued the minds of many Bakwaniri, and even gnawed at the present capan’s clan, but there was one physical ailment that settled in most and displayed in various horrific ways.
In fact, the Bakwaniri wore their decorated masks to terrify their enemies, but they were also much depended upon as time progressed to hide their true appearance.
CHAPTER 22 – Demons, Curses and Crimes
The crew carried within its ranks a debilitating and disfiguring disease they misnamed “scurv” that impacted the bones and soft tissues, and ate away at the flesh. Its progress was slow however, and varied man to man, but because it did not kill quickly, it became endemic to the people and any with which they bred.
There was no cure, but for generations the Bakwaniri sir-jons had prescribed the ingesting of “clean” human flesh as an effective ward against the scurv that ravaged them all, with powers to mitigate and lessen the impact of its infections and outbreaks.
This scurv disease then, also kept the Bakwaniri closer to home as they grew older, for its progression produced physical disabilities to undermine a hunter’s heart and lungs, or twist his spine, or left him with legs too bowed and bent for walking the distances required while on the hunt.
And so scurv was another reason that the mysteries of Goro’s lands had been left largely unexplored.
“History” to the Bakwaniri consisted of oral tradition and myth, a mix of pirate tales, European folk stories and African legend that was maintained by the sir-jon and his apprentices to be passed down from one generation to the next.
So, the story of the first fathers’ arrival in the jungle was colored by misinterpretation, distortion and fantasy for few of the founders had been well-versed in letters, and none of the peoples that were forced into the tribe had brought a written language. The result was the Bakwaniri were a superstitious folk who were slow to learn from their errors.
But, among the sir-jon’s tales were truths of a sort, and it was told that the first fathers of this bastard people had struggled out of the sea and traveled inland, only to spend many months surviving the wilds in full retreat from persecution.
And it was in that time that they came against the Forest Demons. Starving and lost, the first fathers were attacked by these hellish things that were men in shape, but monstrous in guise, bearing the weight and muscle many times a man, and being covered in coarse hair or quills.
And these
