He paused.
“Fail, and you will be forever banished from Kitwana.”
Mzikala could not repress a grin of triumph at the words of Al-Imamu. This was a mission of death for Majnun. If there were a real nunda ravaging the province, it would probably kill his brother. If there were not, then the conspirators in the hoax would slay him equally well.
But the king had not finished his pronouncement.
“And, to make certain you carry out the deed instead of slipping into a neighboring kingdom, Mzikala will accompany you on your mission. You will both leave Mlongo tonight.”
Majnun laughed aloud at the consternation with which his brother reacted to Al-Imamu’s additional instructions. The king said nothing more, and the two princes bowed respectfully before exiting the throne-chamber.
Watching them leave, Al-Imamu muttered, “Three at one time! That Majnun is, indeed, my son.”
Then he put his energies to work weighing alternatives for a course of action to repair the damage Majnun had done to Kitwana’s diplomatic and trade relations with Mpemba.
THE ATTACK CAME WITH sudden, fierce swiftness even as Majnun and his escort were within sight of the chief-village of Kantaro. From the scrub-forest beneath the jagged crags of the Rock Lands, a horde of painted fighting-men appeared. Without fear, they charged into the spears of the picked troops guarding the two princes.
With a characteristic display of valor, Mzikala retreated to the center of a knot of mail-clad soldiers. But Majnun, as always disdaining such protection, whipped out his sword and leaped to the forefront of the battle. The valley in the shadow of the Rock Lands became the scene of a whirlwind of blood and clashing weapons, and the hot Nyumbani sun flashed blindingly on polished steel.
Though the squat, stocky attackers were half-naked and armed with crudely worked weapons of iron and stone, their numbers and sheer ferocity nearly breached the wall of spears formed by the soldiers. The attackers were black in color, like the defenders. But their faces and bodies were garishly painted. Eyes glaring madly, the wild men hacked at the oblong shields and long spears of their foes. Heavily muscled arms dealt numbing blows that penetrated fine East Coast chain-mail.
As one, the horde of attackers shouted their battle cry: “Nunda! Nunda! Nunda!”
Slashing furiously, Majnun cut his way through a trio of barbarians and dispatched one whose gnarled hands were locked around the throat of a soldier. The prince’s blade was crimson to the hilt, and his chain-mail was cut through in several places. Still, Majnun laughed as he fought, spurring his men to greater efforts with his daring and recklessness.
But the contingent from Mlongo was greatly outnumbered, and despite the growing pile of squat, hairy bodies before the soldiers, they were slowly being driven back. Just as the attackers’ seemed about to overwhelm the beleaguered soldiers’ defenses, a great shout arose in the distance.
Roaring like angry lions, a large body of armed men was charging rapidly from the chief-village. So close were the combatants that the sounds of battle had aroused the men of Kantaro, and now they were descending in a mass of steel and rage.
Despite the nearly mindless savagery of their attack, the men from the Rock Lands were neither blind nor fools. Seeing plainly that they could not stand against the rapidly approaching reinforcements, they hurled a final defiant shout of their peculiar battle-cry and hastily retreated toward the forbidding hills that were their homeland.
Using the scrub-forest for cover, they soon disappeared, leaving their dead and wounded behind. Sweating heavily beneath their mailed armor, the soldiers did not pursue their retreating foes.
As the headman of Kantaro approached, Majnun was studying some of the hill-dweller dead. Glazed eyes stared sightlessly beneath heavy brow ridges, and blood congealed on thick, matted hair and smashed skulls. Knotted masses of muscle bulged beneath dark skin covered only by crude garments of goat-hide.
“They are demons, these mkali,” the headman muttered, using a pejorative term for the hill-dwellers. “Every day, they grow bolder.”
Majnun smiled briefly the superstition of the headman, who was tall and lean, and had a care-worn face. From his wide reading of scholarly works, he knew that the hill-dwellers were not demons at all. They were the last remnants of an elder race, now reduced to herding goats on the harsh slopes of the Rock Lands.
But, diplomatically, he only said: “They have never attacked this close to the village before?”
“No, O Prince,” the headman replied. “They usually attack only those foolish enough to stray too near to their country. But that was before the ... nunda.”
“What has the nunda to do with these hill-dwellers?” Mzikala broke in.
He had survived the battle, and now approached with his personal retinue of guardsmen. The headman noted contemptuously that Mzikala’s sword was unblooded, and his armor unscratched.
“The mkali seem to think that because the nunda attacks only us, the creature must be their god,” the headman explained. “They feel that the nunda will help them to regain the lands we took from them centuries ago.”
“Between the nunda and the hill dwellers, you must be having more than your share of troubles,” Majnun observed.
“You are so right, O Prince,” the headman said, flashing Majnun a smile of gratitude.
Then, as the Kantarans and the contingent from Mlongo proceeded to march to the chief-village, the headman – whose name was Mbiyu – told a long tale of stolen infants, hideously mangled corpses, slaughtered cattle and bold hunters who went out to slay the nunda, but never returned ...
“There are a few who claim to have seen the nunda and lived,” Mbiyu said. “They all tell the same tale: a huge cat, bigger than a lion, with a spotted hide and huge fangs hanging like swords beneath
