Suddenly, he recalled the strange warning of Kuya Adowa ...
Then the sight that met his eyes when they reached the field swept aside all the conflicting thoughts that roiled through Babakar’s mind.
The field was ruined. All the burgeoning wassa-sprouts were gone, bitten off to jagged, pitiful stumps that barely protruded above the line of the soil. Amid the destruction lay the mocking signatures of its perpetrators: scores of small, cloven hoofprints scattered among the rows of ravaged plants.
Goats? thought Babakar. No, that could not be. There were no goat herds this far south of the Gwaridi-Milima Mountains.
When he knelt to look more closely at the damage, he realized that the prints had come in a long, disorderly line from the west, then departed in the direction of neighboring fields after they had eaten their fill of his wassa. There were other, fresher tracks that told him that the animals had later returned the way they had come. That way led them to the Tassili. Babakar knew there were no wild goats in the Tassili. There was not enough forage in the wasteland to support their voracious appetites.
But there were ... gazelles.
The mystery deepened. Babakar’s brow furrowed in confusion. Never before had the elusive, graceful antelopes of the desert ventured this far from their wasteland environs. Never, at least, in the generations of time the griots could recall, and those seemed to stretch back forever.
Yet what tradition said could never happen, had. The evidence lay grazed to the ground at his feet.
Shaking his head in despair, Babakar stood up and turned to Amma. She stared downward with a wooden, unseeing expression.
Gods, thought Babakar. She’s even more affected by this than I am ...
Recalling her frightened reaction of the previous morning, he gingerly placed his arm around her shoulders.
“Amma,” he began haltingly. “I don’t understand how this happened, but somehow we must overcome it. The land is useless to us now; there is not time to plant another crop. We can go to Gau, or some other city, and hire our services to some Merchant Lord. It’s only a step above slavery, but it’s better than starving ...”
“So, Babakar, they got you, too,” a voice behind them interrupted.
Babakar turned to face two of his fellow farmers – Mwiya iri Fenuka and Atuye iri Sisi, whose fields lay closer to Gadou than his.
“The gazelles destroyed your crops, too?” Babakar returned. “Did they get everybody’s?”
“Mine, not his,” Atuye said sourly.
Like Babakar, Atuye was an ex-soldier, hard-muscled and battle-scarred. Mwiya, a stocky man of middle age, seemed even more agitated than Atuye, even though it was Mwiya’s crop that had been spared.
“It’s like that throughout this whole area,” Mwiya said. “The creatures struck haphazardly. You know Atuye, here, and I are neighbors, our fields side-by-side. Yet mine still stands as it did yesterday, and Atuye’s looks like yours.”
“We thought you might have seen something, since yours is the last field in the direction the gazelles came from,” Atuye said.
Babakar shook his head.
“I slept through it all, curse the luck,” he said.
“What about you?” Atuye growled, turning to Amma.
Amma started, her shoulders tensing beneath Babakar’s arm.
“Nothing,” she replied quickly. “I know nothing.”
“Are you certain?” pressed Atuye.
“What in Motoni’s name is wrong with you, man?” Babakar exploded, taking a step forward. “Amma couldn’t have seen anything. She was with me all night.”
Atuye stood his ground, though he couldn’t fail to notice the clenching of Babakar’s fist, or his willingness to use it.
“All I know is that when we went to old Kuya Adowa this morning to ask if she could help us, she told us to seek the answers to our questions from your new woman,” Atuye said.
Something close to fear held Babakar in a cold grasp as he again recalled the tynbibi’s visit, and her warning ... angrily, he shook the feeling off.
“You would take the word of a half-mad old woman over mine?” he challenged.
Atuye and Mwiya stood in silence. They knew, of course, what had happened to Babakar’s family during the war, and Atuye had witnessed the man’s ferocity in battle. It was unlikely to the point of absurdity that the Babakar iri Sounkalo he and Mwiya knew could be involved in the mysterious destruction of the fields.
But the woman ... was her obvious nervousness due to fear ... or guilt?
The tension between Babakar and Atuye was threatening to erupt at any moment into physical conflict. Wisely, Mwiya averted it.
“Calm down, Babakar,” he said. “Of course we believe you. But you and Atuye are not the only ones to have suffered because of these marauding gazelles. We’ve got serious questions here, and somehow we must find the answers to them.”
“You can depend on that,” Atuye added.
“We fought side-by-side against the Sussu, Atuye,” Babakar said quietly. “But anyone who seeks to harm Amma is as much my enemy as they were.”
Atuye’s heated reply was quickly cut off by Mwiya.
“I understand, Babakar,” he said. “We must talk of this later, though. Tonight, the Council of Elders meets in Gadou. Will you come?”
“To Motoni with the Elders!” Babakar snarled. “Will they save us from the gazelles the way they saved us from the Sussu?”
“I am sorry you take that attitude,” said Mwiya. “You may well regret it before this matter’s done.”
When Babakar did not respond, the visitors returned to the road that led to Gadou. Babakar turned to Amma, who had said nothing since her reply to Atuye.
“We will leave tonight,” he told her. “There is nothing for us here now.”
“No!” Amma said vehemently. “If we go tonight, the old woman’s suspicions will be proven correct – at least to people like Atuye. We must wait a day, maybe two, before departing. By then, they’ll have other things to think about.”
“What other things?”
“Perhaps the gazelles.”
Babakar dug his fingers into her arm.
“What do you know of the gazelles?” he demanded.
“Nothing,” Amma said, glaring
