Yet none spoke of elections for there was booty to show for their years of hunting the demon. The Bakwaniri slave ranks had grown to bursting as bellies swelled with the flesh they’d taken from small black tribes discovered hiding in the deep verge and pillaged for meat, slaves and gold as the hunters combed the dense jungle to the north, south and west.
Young female slaves were always needed to give healthy babies to Bakwaniri hunters and to grow the population of the ship; while slaves of any gender were worked until they were needed in the kitchen.
But such plunder would never be enough for Capan Seetree, robbed as he’d been and bereaved, for he knew his daughter’s spirit could only rest when the River Demon’s head was hung from the mainmast.
They simply had to find the beast.
Generations spent roasting slaves and stalking the hoofed animals of the upper terrace had not prepared the Bakwaniri for hunting jungle creatures. The dangers were numerous, and it seemed they were not unopposed.
The recurring disappearances of Bakwaniri Johnnies on the hunt, and the mutilation of their corpses suggested that there might be something other than the River Demon to whom a debt was owed.
Seetree’s plans might have changed, but the fire of conquest within him still burned brightly, fuelled by his need for vengeance and the disease that ate at his brain.
However, it seemed that he was not the only keeper of a flame.
For hundreds of years raiders and slavers, foreign and native-born, had pillaged the lands of the West African coast destroying and making extinct civilizations and peoples too numerous to count, while leaving too few to conceive of their loss.
A holocaust blazed where one group of people after another were made slaves or killed, their treasures and land taken, before all trace of them was destroyed.
There were many such peoples, and their survivors clung to life in the shadows of the dense jungle that had birthed them and concealed their existence.
For generations, one tribe of warriors had been whittled down to nothing. Their numbers were reduced until they had not enough people to grow or revisit days of glory—nor to carry the traditions of their past.
The dwindling few who remained had spent the days surviving, avoiding raiders and slavers and putting off the inevitable end. An end that came quite recently for this small group that had lived in a pocket of dense jungle in the northeast of Goro’s land. These warriors with their children had moved there no more than two years past.
A small group of Bakwaniri hunters tasked with finding the River Demon had stumbled upon their hiding place, and returned in force to raze it. The men and children were made slaves or killed in the process, and the women of breeding years were taken as wives.
Save one.
She was called Harkon, a great hunter of animals that in the intervening years had come to be the hunter of men, and seeker of revenge.
Whether her captured people had met the butcher block, or were now slaves of Bakwaniri masters, none could say; but Harkon had devoted her life to finding out and rescuing any she could, while bringing death to those who’d pushed her people from the very earth.
The Bakwaniri had to die for crimes they’d committed against her. Recent years had shown the diseased and masked warriors moving out past their former range, reaving and slaving as they went, and in the end they had attacked a place where her people had lay hidden.
Harkon’s race was all that was left of one of many lost African tribes and kingdoms. Wars, famine, slave raiders and the Bakwaniri hunters had all but annihilated a people who had once boasted golden halls with ivory thrones.
A joyous people had been made to weep, and all that remained of hers was a small group of some few hunters, old men and women and a handful of children. There had been little left when the Bakwaniri had come and there would be no future unless Harkon acted.
And if there was no future, then she would see to it that the criminals similarly disappeared, or that she would die pushing them to the brink.
Harkon’s tribe had been forced in its defense to take up a nomadic existence, leaving little trace as they passed, creating temporary huts within a palisade of sticks and bushes whenever required. The tribe moved constantly and at a moment’s notice.
At any indication of an enemy, the old men and women would lead the children to prearranged hiding places, while the warriors remained behind to fight a rearguard action.
However, the last attack by the Bakwaniri had come by stealth after they had stumbled upon the little tribe. When their reinforcements had arrived, the masked men had fallen on Harkon’s people without warning, slaying and capturing what warriors remained, and taking the old men and women, and children before they had a chance to hide.
Harkon had been out of the camp at that time. As the greatest hunter it was her task to procure meat for her people. There were so few left, they could not spare any more than one of their protectors at a time for obtaining meat.
When Harkon returned home she found herself alone. Even the dead had been collected and carried away. Man, woman and child, even Harkon’s husband was nowhere to be seen, though his favorite string of beads she found in a sticky pool of blood.
Favorite, for it had been made for him by their son, Anim—a boy of four years who was missing with the other children.
Young he was but quick to learn the chores around his mother’s camp. She found herself hoping Anim would be useful to his captors—if he yet lived.
Harkon knew that the Bakwaniri made slaves of those captives they did not eat, and she vowed to
