The Warriors

The warriors crept back to Udune surreptitiously.

There were no drum rolls and no canon booms to celebrate another victory. For a community that had never lost a battle before, the cost of winning this one had been steep. Ozoro, acclaimed hunter and commander of the forces of the five clans, had been lost in the mêlée–shot through the chest by an arrow.

Death was not a unique thing, people died. But he had only recently married Ula, after wresting her from another suitor when he downed a leopard and presented its hide to her father. Ordinarily he should have stayed home but he had refused claiming that he would not abdicate his responsibility as long as he was alive and well. Now the poor girl had become a widow–in less than eight market days.

Obinka the wrestler, who had lost out in the connubial conundrum that involved he and Ozoro, led the column of warriors. Each of them wore the crestfallen look of a man whose wife is being ravished before his eyes but is powerless to do anything.

No one spoke to anyone. The line kept thinning, each man branching off when he got to his compound, until finally there was a handful left. They marched on to the compound of the oldest man in Udune, a titled man from the smallest clan. They laid the body there.

Not long after, the communal gong began to toll mournfully for the fallen hero.

When Obinka got to his hut, he slowly swept the environment with a hawk-like gaze. Satisfied, he opened the door and entered. A shadow detached from the prevalent gloom, and approached him.
“How did it go?” Her voice affirmed her scent: Ula.
A smile slowly spread across his face; “Brilliantly. You are mine now.”


© John Chidi 2015
All rights reserved

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