By Dima Adam Dima
Part 1
They way of the kings
Life is not fair because if it were then it wouldn’t be fulfilling. I have always enjoyed this truth.
I was given life once 30 harvests ago and I assume it was no glorious birth even though it was the that of a king.
Even despite the stories
Everything was handed to me. Everything I wanted or needed, was granted because of my station. But that sort of life hardly makes for an interesting one, yes?
I must begin by mentioning my flaw at the onset. Its is significant seeing as it scared the ones that came to know me. I thoroughly enjoyed killing people and animals. But mostly people.
In my defense,it started purely as an accident one day. Ofcourse, it then blossomed into a curiosity over time but that is expected.
In the hot old country of our forefathers, royalty was given a comprehensive education. This included combat training from a very early age. Even an orphan like me had to abide by this tradition and the elders simply insisted upon it. It was certainly very important for Midega, my trainer and my late fathers most trusted general. Though he had retired a long time ago, he took me under his wing and purposed to turn me into the warrior king my father once was.
He was a large sinewy man with massive hands. His complexion was fair as the red earth we build our huts with. His ears seemed too small for his head and his lips much too full for his face. His chest was as wide as the back of a bull. With that came a menacing calmness about him. As though he might shake the world around if he approached too briskly.
At the age of 12, he assumed I was at least equally matched to his 14 year old son, Mondi. Mondi was a wiry boy much too tall for his age and had a back covered in scars of lashes. His countenance was the spitting image of his father save for the calmness it exuded. That and a certain weariness that age had perhaps brought on much too prematurely.
What was intended as test for me was also a lesson for Mondi. Mondi, as I came to learn later, had no enthusiasm for battle in defiance to his father. This should have been a simple spar. Some hits, a few scars and a laugh afterwards.
The fact that he began with a hard sweep sending me flat on my back meant that no quarter would be given. As I lay they flat on my posterior, I could see his cold sneer. What I couldn’t have seen was a boy whose father I had snatched away in the name of duty. There, taut on my back, I only saw an unjustified contempt for me on his juvenile face.
Then I saw red.
And as I rose then descended on him with perfect savagery, the air filled with the tinge of iron. Yet still, I didn’t yield. By the time Midega tore me off Mondi, his body was in its final throes. I roared yearning to carry on as a guard held me back. Meanwhile Midega knelt down beside Mondi just in time to catch that final quivering of the lips as his soul left this plain.
For all the duty, care and lessons he had given me till then, I gave him back a dead son. Was any of it balanced or fair? I wondered then. I don’t wonder anymore. At this point, I have killed so many that worrying about that first death seems like absolute petulance.
As I lay back there on my back staring at the reed roof above me, I could feel it. Beyond the invigoration of adrenalin and bloodlust was the calmness that follows death. It was as though once the soul had left the body, then it had to pass over me. It phased through me like a light possession causing my skin to tingle uncontrollably before I felt it rise into the sky. Such a glorious moment. But not even a king can hold on to something that precious I suppose.
Needless to say, Midega was banished into the wastelands beyond our borders. The council advised as such and I saw no need to oppose such counsel. The wild beasts would ensure his silence. Meanwhile, I was left with this aching desire to take life again. Yet even at that age, I was smart enough to know what kind of trouble I would court with such a compulsion. It helped that the council gave a me a secret sit-down to gently impress upon me the gravity of situation.
I could see on their pitiful faces the fear as they pleaded with me to never do anything like this. They justified that it was because I had not know the love of a mother.
But I wondered then, just as I wonder now if that might have tamed the flame that was just beginning to roar within me.
I saw them clearly now for the first time. They were just a bunch of old men scared of stirring things. I wondered if all aging is this utter loss of one’s spine. At least they were smart enough to see the bigger picture: to implicate me meant to lose their claim to power.
“You are the last of the divine bloodline of Bito” they said ” We must preserve it”
That voice that howled in joy when I made my first kill was the very same one that told me that this would lead me to ruin if I continued on that path. Or at least didn’t act cautiously. Ultimately, it was that voice that I heeded even above the council that restricted the terms of my rule. To keep my predilections out of the mouths of subjects, I changed my training grounds from the royal enclosure to the one much less dignified. I annexed a portion of the royal cattle pen away from the eyes of my subjects. I then conscripted the youngest council member to whom I was friendly, Rapando to secretly ensure the supply of a calf to me each week.
I started by asking for the smallest one possible. I would wrestle it in a bid to kill it with my bare hands. As time went by, larger and larger cattle was delivered to me. By the time I was 16 seasons old, I had come to realize that an agile man armed with a dagger can take down a fully grown bull. Meanwhile, the royal court ate beef each day of the week. They were fattened and too full to question the splendour.
I was 17 seasons when the drought visited our land. Our grains were in moderate supply but without adequate livestock, we couldn’t hope to get through the period of great famine. Even the lake of Mwitanzige seemed to have no fish. So I convened a council meeting to make my decree to ‘take’ cattle from our neighbours. We had seen other tribes and nations do it but we had never had to. Not even in the old country by the Nile. Our survival now meant that we had to.
I remember the dawn we charged the field of our neighbours to the west. I remember thinking that whether or not the council agreed, I would have still gone ahead with the raid. I was ready now. And I hungry for human blood once more. All they saw were the demons from the east howling in the wee hours. Slashing and taking. And this young demon king covered in ochre wielding a shiny machete that led them here.
I slaughtered and danced upon the fields finding glorious rhythm beyond any song or drum of festivity. I was glorious standing in the wind hand wet with the blood of weaker men. This glory of that day that I ended Mondi. I felt it as it welled up in me and multiplied. When we were done, it was almost high noon and most of their men lay dead.
The ones that remained were too young to even hunt.
Even the primal desire had not set into them. Just fearful law abiding boys that had no clue. We took them all back to my kingdom along with droves of our newly acquired cattle. Their task would be to herd them
As for the girls, they would become ours.
I pitied these young ones. But not in the way of tragedy that life had dealt them in our raid. Looking at them, I could see their whole life stories. I used to envy children with parents. But now I see it.
I see how parents tame their children from birth. Trying to make them more agreeable, better behaved and polite just to send them into a world that is itself totally wild. But I wasn’t raised. I was trained to do things out of duty. Dispassionately.
I was just taken care of till I came of age and that is what kept me feral.
I suppose that if life wasn’t fair to me, then it wasn’t fair to them either.
That, I think, is what I shall teach my children one day. That shall be the way of the kings
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