Not yet ....
Mofo feinted, then jabbed his tirss at Bujiji’s face. Bujiji swung in return and struck off one of the tirss’s spikes, which pinged against a wall on the side of the street. The Uloan laughed when he heard the sound. He anticipated hearing it again.
Bujiji pressed forward. Mofo retreated, staying out of the bigger man’s range, jabbing with his tirss to keep his foe at a distance.
“Why you run, blankskin?” Bujiji taunted. “I and I catch you soon enough.”
Mofo did not reply. He kept moving.
Suddenly, Bujiji leaped forward and slashed at the tsotsi’s head in an effort to open the tsotsi’s defenses. But it was Mofo who saw the chance for which he had been waiting as he reached out with his tirss to parry the blow. The spikes of his weapon caught the Uloan’s sword in mid-swing. With a practiced twist of his arms, Mofo yanked the trapped sword out of Bujiji’s hand. The blade clattered to the street. And Bujiji stood defenseless.
Mofo did not pause to savor his triumph. The moment the Uloan’s sword fell away from the tirss, Mofo swung with all his remaining strength. The spikes of the tirss bit deep into the side of Bujiji’s head. Their tips punctured the Uloan’s skull and lacerated his brain. Bujiji died instantly, a stare of astonishment frozen on his face. He was dead before any outcry could escape his throat
Still holding the shaft of his tirss, Mofo refused to allow Bujiji to fall. He glared at the other Uloans and called out, mockingly, “Retribution time!”
Then he released his hold on his weapon. Bujiji’s corpse crumpled to the street. And the rest of the tsotsis, Ashaki and Hafar alike, descended on the suddenly demoralized Uloans with redoubled fury, their bone-weariness forgotten.
When the slaughter ceased, all the Uloans were dead; none of them had fled even though their leader had fallen and the tide had quickly turned against them. Most of the tsotsis were dead as well. Of the handful who survived, some were Hafar, a few more Ashaki. The difference didn’t seem to mean much of anything anymore. The Ashakis’ triumph over the Hafars and Uloans was hollow; only continued existence mattered to the victors.
The fires were still approaching, the flames so close now that the hyenas had ceased their scavenging and slunk back into the shadows. By the flames’ increasingly lurid light, Mofo searched again for the Fidi, Athir. But the Ship’s Rat was nowhere in sight.
Neither were the bags of loot over which the Ashaki and Hafar had been fighting before the Uloans intervened.
5
In a place that was a safe distance from the fires, Athir emerged from the sewer in which he had hidden the tsotsis’ booty. He took a deep breath of night air, and coughed as a whiff of smoke entered his lungs. The last of the sacks was safely concealed; he had no need to endure the dank, fetid floor of the sewer beneath his feet any longer. Even the smoke smelled better than the waste-tunnel.
While the combat between the tsotsis and Uloans raged, Athir had found it a simple matter to remove the booty while avoiding fighters on both sides. No one had noticed him, and he hadn’t been forced to kill anyone while he stole the loot behind their backs.
Although Jass Mofo had forced him into becoming an Ashaki, Athir didn’t much care which side won the fight. The entire city seemed to be locked in a mad death-struggle that would end in great destruction. But Athir had survived many battles – even long wars. He knew that sooner or later the fighting would end, and life would continue, and people like him would always be around to take advantage of the aftermath of destruction.
He scraped as much of the sewer-offal as he could from his skin and clothes. He would wash the rest of it away later. For now, he needed to find a place to wait out the tide of devastation that was rapidly engulfing Khambawe. Whoever won in the end, the Ship’s Rat would be there to seek new advantages in the aftermath.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Spiderwebs
1
The Gebbi Senafa was enveloped in an illumination that had not been caused by the fires that were ravaging so many other parts of Khambawe. Light from inside the building blazed from its windows and transformed the jewels embedded in its front door into constellations of multicolored stars. Ranks of soldiers patrolled the walls. The troops were positioned in a way that suggested greater numbers than were actually present, for Jass Eshana had ordered his men to give the impression that the Palace was to be defended at all costs to ensure the safety of the Emperor.
But, as planned, the Emperor was already elsewhere.
The Uloans had, indeed, attacked the Gebbi Senafa. However, the force that attempted to scale the walls and break down the bejeweled gates was smaller than the defenders had expected. And loud as their cries of “Retribution Time” had echoed, and intense as the efforts of the jhumbis had been to batter their way through the doors had been, the islanders’ attack had been less furious than an attempt to slay an Emperor would have warranted.
But the defenders had no time to ponder the nature of the Uloans’ attack. They were far too occupied with shooting volleys of arrows into the ranks of their foes and extinguishing the fires the Uloans attempted to set. The defenders were satisfied that they were diverting their foes from the Emperor’s true location. Never did it occur to the Matile that they, in turn, were being distracted from the Uloans’ true intentions, which took some of the intruders away from the Gebbi Senafa.
Even as fire and slaughter threatened to engulf the whole of Khambawe, a
