The Sao heard ... but their confusion and fear remained overwhelming. The soldiers of Kotoko were like herdsmen, gathering the blinded army and retrieving the Saos’ forgotten weapons. The plain outside Kotoko echoed the sound of thousands of shuffling feet as the Sao departed for their homeland.
AS THE SUN SANK IN clouds of orange, there was no celebration in Kotoko of their bloodless victory. The city was somber and quiet as the people awaited the return of the soldiers who had escorted the Sao to the boundary of their land. Others would continue into Sao to help the blinded soldiers adjust to their condition.
Musonkino was one of those who returned from escort duty. He rode immediately to the house of Otunji. He wished only to see Kiemba. He was certain he could reclaim her love, for Sundiata was forever lost to her now.
He dismounted and entered the house of the drum-maker. He found Otunji and his wife sitting disconsolately beside Kiemba’s empty bed.
“Where is Kiemba?” the soldier demanded.
“She is gone,” her father replied sadly.
“‘Gone?’ Gone where?”
“She has gone to Sundiata,” Sahia said.
Musonkino turned and rushed out of a house of lost love and shattered dreams. He leaped on his horse and thundered out of the city. He followed the route Kiemba had said she had taken to the Cavern of Sundiata. He was certain that was where he would find her.
Although he was riding and she was undoubtedly on foot, Musonkino did not catch up with her during days and nights of hard riding. Little heed did he pay to the people he passed who were beginning to rebuild their ruined homes and lives.
Finally, on a moon-washed night, Musonkino reached the narrow hill-trail that led to the cavern. Abandoning his spent mount, the soldier climbed the steep, rocky path. He saw the red splotches that marked Kiemba’s earlier passage along the trail, and he cursed the ghosts of the Sao rapists.
When he entered the gold-lit chamber in the cavern, Musonkino guessed what he might see there. Still, he entered.
Two figures rested on the stone dais. Even the gray stone of their substance could not disguise the tenderness in their carved eyes. Slowly, Musonkino trudged to the dais. He leaned his head against the shaft of the spear he carried. Then he began to weep.
His tears ran down the shaft of his spear. The wet trail almost touched the stone heel of Kiemba’s foot ... then it rolled down to the cavern floor.
TWO ROGUES
THIS STORY WAS WRITTEN during the year the Imaro story, “Mji-ya-Wazimu (City of Madness),” was published in Dark Fantasy magazine in 1974. That was Imaro’s first appearance in print. I wasn’t writing only Imaro stories that year, though. I was in the process of developing my alternate-Africa setting, Nyumbani, and I had ideas for stories other than the ones about Imaro. The Imaro stories were pure “sword-and-soul,” i.e., sword-and-sorcery from an African perspective. During the course of my research, I read many African folktales, and some of them inspired me to write folklore-type stories. Although those stories qualify as fantasy, they don’t focus on the relentless action that characterizes sword-and-sorcery – and sword-and-soul.
“Two Rogues” is the story of a hustle that turns out to be little too smooth for its own good. Although it was written in 1974, “Two Rogues” wasn’t published until 1977, in Weirdbook magazine.
Upon the Road of Peace, many strange meetings have occurred. This was not unusual, for the Road wandered like a river of stone through the multifarious kingdoms and city-states of the West Coast of Nyumbani. Though the Road of Peace was intended as a trade corridor through the ceaselessly warring western kingdoms, traffic upon it was not immune to the activities of brigands and cutthroats. Despite the severe punishments that awaited them if caught, these rogues persisted in their crimes.
Two such scoundrels met one hot day on the part of the road that went through the rolling meadows of the kingdom of Kebbi. Neither design nor chance precipitated the encounter; it was to work of Ogokun, the God of Chance, and Kwaku Anansi, the Trickster. Of course, at the time of their meeting, neither of the two was aware that the other was a rogue.
The one who came from the north was a young man, above average in height, with a lean, muscular body naked except for the white kakun-cloth that girded his lean loins. Sweat glistened on his jet-black skin as he hefted the large bale of blue cloth he was carrying on his back. A flared, conical straw hat covered his short, closely kinked black hair and shaded his face from the fierce sun of the dry season.
He had a tough, competent-looking face with narrow brown eyes, a flat, flaring nose and a wide, fully everted mouth, with the characteristic western “v” in the upper lip. The three vertical scars incised precisely on each broad cheekbone identified the wayfarer as a citizen of Kanou, a prosperous northern kingdom. The only indication of that prosperity on this one’s person, however, was the finely wrought iron sword that rustled against the intricate folds of his kakun as he walked.
From the south came one who was markedly different in appearance. Short and stocky, he looked to be in late middle age – though he bore his years well. He was elaborately garbed in a multicolored, vividly patterned dansiki, and thin trousers of the same pattern. Upon his gray-shot kinky hair sat a round skullcap of red velvet. His skin was as black as a panther’s, and his broad, expansive features were dominated by shrewd black eyes.
The single horizontal bars carved halfway between his ears and the corners of his mouth indicated that this one was a man of Ifeti,
